* Posts by Alvar

47 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2008

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Alvar

Re: Hmmmmmmm

- required four ambulances to ferry away victims.

One person taken to hospital in four ambulances?

Sounds nasty.

NASA scraps budget-busting GeoCarb greenhouse gas observatory project

Alvar

Is Oklahoma the Sooner state? (UK here so not sure)

You thought you bought software – all you bought was a lie

Alvar
Trollface

Re: "You own, at most, a serial number"

My impression of NFTs is they give you the right to say no more than "I own *this* copy of this JPG" as multiple functionally identical NFTs can be attached to different copies of the same file.

LG makes a TV roughly the size of a queen-sized bed

Alvar

Re: Missing

If you need to ask, you can't afford it :)

Microsoft trumpets updated HR-friendly policies (that comply with recently changed laws)

Alvar
Facepalm

Re: Non USA staff are 2nd Class

Because employees in civilized countries already have these rights?

I'm diabetic. I'd rather risk my shared health data being stolen than a double amputation

Alvar
Black Helicopters

Free at point of delivery

But for how long?

Bezos to the Moon: Blue Origin fires up BE-7 engine to be used in human lunar mission

Alvar
Alert

I can't decide

Is a spaceship built by committee better or worse than one designed by committee?

We don't know whether 737 Max MCAS update is coming or Boeing: Anti-stall safety fix delayed

Alvar
Stop

Re: Question for the experts

Neither.

Give the pilots the AoA disagree warning and let them do their job.

Assuming of course that the system actually looks at both AoA sensors (it doesn't as designed) and that the airline has added in the optional AoA disagree warning (it would seem that most haven't).

What the system should do -->

Staff sacked after security sees 'suspect surfer' script of shame

Alvar

Re: Odd.

I've rarely seen a company that wouldn't get along just fine with *the right* 40 to 60% of middle management shown the door.

FTFY

Unfortunately it's not usually the right ones that leave :(

Bloke fined £460 after his drone screwed up police chopper search for missing woman

Alvar

Re: F*ck every single flying peeping tom!

Height cap is 400 feet, not metres, little to no legal altitude bracket over built-up areas.

Article Removed

Alvar

Cryptocoin and iBook? no thanks.

I'd love to buy this in any sensible ebook format (Epub, mobi, basically anything that doesn't require me to tie this to Apple) and with real money. Until then I'll pass.

Autonomy ex-CFO Hussain guilty of fraud: He cooked the books amid $11bn HP gobble

Alvar

HP seems to have missed another red flag

Never trust a company that names their meeting rooms after Bond villains!!

Blighty bloke: PC World lost my Mac Mini – and trolled my blog!

Alvar
Coat

Re: Open-source techie Darren Moore

One that can be freely cloned and genetically modified, as long as you include access to the source DNA?

Mine's the one with the tongue swabs and latex gloves in the pocket ;-)

NHS IT bod sends test email to 850k users – and then responses are sent 'reply all'

Alvar
Big Brother

Re: It's really not rocket science

I always wonder whether these are deliberate exercises, and those who reply are highlighting themselves as prime candidates for the next round of redundancies.

Roboats hunt 'mines' and 'submarines' on Ex Unmanned Warrior

Alvar
Mushroom

Re: "The bad guys will have 1000's of automated sub killers"

True, but they've no shortage of volunteers who'd happily *say they'd* row a nuke across the Pacific (before rowing south and defecting).

FTFY

Ex-HP boss Carly Fiorina sacked one week into new job

Alvar
Alert

Re: On behalf of the human race

Spellchecker issue

Trump 2016: Make America grate again

Here's a great idea: Let's make a gun that looks like a mobile phone

Alvar

Re: Dial M

*Courtesy of the IT crowd.**

** Who stole it from Not the Nine O'Clock News :)

So, what's happening with LOHAN? Sweet FAA, that's what

Alvar
Joke

Why not ..

Launch it from the top of the stack of paperwork generated by this process, that way you could just stick a firework up the back end and still reach the target altitude.

Stand-up and be counted²: Nerd is the funny word

Alvar

Why?

Why are they trying to avoid eviscerating a unicyclist? Much more fun if they aren't trying to avoid it :P

Is is a Bird? Is it a Plane? NO! LOOK OUT it's an ASTEROID!

Alvar
Coat

Re: Microwave

It'll go 'DING' of course

Nothing illegal to see here: Tribunal says TEMPORA spying is OK

Alvar

Re: no suspicion that the user has committed any offence?

2. Not on the right-hand side of the pond

Hundreds of folks ready to sue Bitcoin exchange MtGox

Alvar
WTF?

Selachii - really?

A law firm called 'Sharks'?

I thought lawyers had their sense of humour surgically removed when they qualified.

World's richest hobo (Apple) has worked 'tax-free' in Ireland since '80s

Alvar

Easy answer then

They should be defined as tax resident both in Ireland and the US and taxed by both (retrospectively) and until such time as they put a rational tax arrangement in place of this sham.

Brazilian slammer guards nab mobe-smuggling CAT

Alvar
Joke

Surely it'll be easy tto find the guilty party - just bring in a sniffer cat to search the cells for a stash of catnip .

US Justice Dept rejects criticisms of ebook settlements

Alvar

Since when do Amazon pay authors?

If an author self-publishes on Amazon they keep 70% of the price they set, which is more per copy than they'd get from a publisher.

If an author is published in the traditional fashion, they get the percentage of whatever the publisher sells the book to Amazon for, and what Amazon retails the book for makes no difference to what they get paid.

Swiss, German physicists split the electron

Alvar

Re: Hmm, I wonder what the fundamental particle of rabid control-freakery is called?

The mandelson, surely?

Quantum computing in our lifetime - IBM breakthrough

Alvar

More to the point, could it give the question to the ultimate answer?

Jedi light-sabre beats Taser in Oregon parking-lot fracas

Alvar

Playmobil...

Please :)

Ofcom to finally yank sat broadband biz off the air

Alvar
Thumb Down

Oh great

Just what the world needs - another patent troll.

Amazon to kindle Fire tablet tomorrow

Alvar
FAIL

Annoying as it is you can't blame Amazon for region locks, it's the dead tree publishers who haven't woken up to the fact that parcelling ebook rights out on geographical lines makes no sense whatsoever, and just pushes people towards cracked downloads.

It would be nice if these idiots actually looked outside their little cartels and noticed that this hasn't worked for the music and film industries, but that's probably too much to ask.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Alvar

Too close in spirit to the original??

Possibly not close enough for my liking.

I'm going to be trying my best to avoid using the 3rd-person cover system and takedowns, but it looks like at least they've got a lot closer to Deus Ex than Invisible War did.

Ridley Scott confirmed for Blade Runner pre/sequel

Alvar
Facepalm

Re: Original

Yes

Orange spreads Glasto goofery to t-shirts

Alvar
Facepalm

So if you stand next to a speaker all weekend

You'll be able to recharge the phone you can't hear any more !!

'A SHARK attacked my ROBOT', gasps ex-Sun exec

Alvar
Coat

But what we all want to know...

Was the shark equipped with a frikking laser beam?

SWAT team cuffs masked Dell flack for 'deadly' tablet promo

Alvar

Only one thing I can say to this

Playmobil or it didn't happen

The forgotten, fat generation of Mac Portables

Alvar

Oh yes it was...

I guess you never tried to get early Seagate and WD drives to co-exist in the same SCSI chain.

iPhone 4 vivisected in 'first legal teardown'

Alvar

But what about the most important question...

Does it blend??

Apple uncloaks deep details of its 11 iPad apps

Alvar

Ebooks portable?

I'm not remotely interested in buying an iWhatever, but I'd like to know whether the books sold on iTunes are going to use standard epub DRM so I can buy them for my Sony reader, as they'll probably have a better selection available than most of the UK booksellers.

Westminster politicos told to grasp Vista nettle

Alvar
Joke

Just goes to show...

that the Westminster techies hate MPs as much as the rest of us!

Samsung H1 Vodafone 360

Alvar
Joke

Social Netwoking?

If this involves flash-frying anyone who twitters or uses Farcebook I'm all for it :)

Microsoft woos web devs with (semi-)free stuff

Alvar
Joke

Could be IP problems with this

'The program has no upfront cost, but there is a $100 fee you can pay when exiting. '

Vince Sabio created the unsubscription fee back in 1996, I think Microsoft may be due to pay him for use of the concept :)

http://www.humournet.com/unsub_fee.html

Amazon files Googlebooks pact with the monopolies

Alvar
Big Brother

Re Amazon=

Well 1984 and Animal Farm are only still in copyright in the United States of Disney, anywhere with a sensible length of copyright Orwell's work has been in the public domain for some time.

And yes, reform of copyright is badly needed, to stop US corporations locking up all of the world's content until the heat-death of the universe.

Sony widens its e-bookshelf

Alvar

Re: Why is $200 a challenge?

"Furthermore, most readers, even the Sony is tied to an online store"

What gives you that impression? I can get .lrf ebooks from just about any online book store for my PRS-505, and if I can't find a book in the format I want it's easy enough to get another format (except maybe .mobi) strip any drm and convert it to .lrf or BBeB to load onto my reader.

Bees on cocaine: The facts

Alvar

Prizewinning research?

Surely a strong contender for next year's Ignobel prize?

Firefox update fixes critical bug brace

Alvar
Unhappy

Shame..

That the download link is broken