Posts by Andrew Foster

This isn't Boeing to end well: Plane maker to scrap some physical cert tests, use computer simulations instead

"Actually probe expensive gear in real life? Pah. It's 2019. We're Boeing digital"

"Boeing digital" except when they are desperately trying to keep everything feeling analog and old school in the cockpits so that the aircraft can be type certified instead of classed as a new aircraft. No high tech displays or fly by wire technologies for Boeing. That would be modern and require pilots to be retrained. High tech testing, low tech instrumentation and flight controls - that's the way to go. What could possibly go wrong?

Woman says narco-cops used her PICS to snare drug lords on Facebook

Mathematically impossible?

How exactly can the "99% of those who do use fake names" all be Aston Kutcher?

Hero Playmonaut lost at sea as SPEARS ditches in Channel

Re: Splashdown

This is presumably why so many US flight tests are carried out over New Mexico. It's extremely poor luck if you somehow perish in the drink after launching from the middle of a whopping great desert.

Apple said to have let the name of the next OS X cat out of the bag

Surely ...

Given Apple's recent strategy Cloud Leopard has to be in the running

FCC (finally) cracks down on BLARING! TV! ADS!

I had a better solution ...

After years of paying for channels I didn't watch and didn't want, listening to ever increasingly loud and obnoxious commercials, and having low quality low IQ entertainment foistered upon me, solved the problem. I abandoned TV all together. Never been better.

Inside the shadow world of commercialised spook spyware

The new arms market

I'm really not very surprised to read that there are companies making money offering high tech spying kit to repressive regimes. It's just an extension of the traditional arms market where unscrupulous dealers would sell their high tech arms to whoever would pay them big money for it in a shadowy market dominated by spooks and former military personnel. Now, they're doing the same with high tech information gathering equipment that can be used just as effectively as arms to control and suppress. The only thing that puzzles me is that the name Dick Cheyney hasn't yet reared it's head in the investigations into this. I'd be shocked if Halliburton doesn't have a division devoted to just this kind of stuff.

In-flight fight for stubborn iPhone-loving teen

What about prosecuting the kid?

There is a Federal Law requiring air passengers to comply with the instructions of air crew. If they had announced over the intercom that all electronic devices must be turned off for final approach then if the kid did not do so he was in violation of Federal law.

I'm not defending the actions of the pensioner who assaulted him, but the law needs to be applied equally and fairly.

Google bosses get tasty raise

It's the new American Dream ...

As the gap between the rich and the rest of us expands in the US, making it to one of these upper echelon jobs is the New American Dream. If you make it into one of these positions (who said nepotism) you get to set your own salary, accept huge bonus payouts, live in luxury while absolving yourself from any responsibilty and well, ... generally contribute to further widening the gap between the rich and the others. Ah, free enterprise - gotta love it.

Software fraudster 'fooled CIA' into terror alert

Says it all ...

"Eventually a branch of French intelligence helped the CIA prove that the Al Jazeera "messages" never existed."

Even the French intelligence service (usually regarded as an oxymoron, with the emphasis being on the word moron) could see it was a con! How embarrassing for the CIA.

Senior IT workers caught in bank bonus tax crossfire

It's alright for them ...

Funny how when the banking industry gets threatened with a tax on their bonuses they are all up in arms. These bankers are the same people who decided it's ok to raise the interest rates on the average man in the streets credit card to maintain their profits (actually, probably more accurately their standard of living). Come on bankers, the tax is just a fee levied because the government wants to grab some of your money. Their tax is exactly the same as what you've been doing to the man on the street for a long time. Not so easy to complain about that though, is it???

Microsoft knew about Xbox 360 disc-scratch problem, employee claims

Hmmmm

Washing machines leak water if you turn them on their side too. Anyone up for a class action?