Posts by Paolo Marini

Is the electromagnetic constant a constant?

yours or mine?

why is most of the article written in two lines paragraphs?

I found that offensive and I will not be renewing the subscription!

Shale gas: If we've got it, flaunt it

none

what's a tristate then?

US.gov: We aren't hiding any space aliens

default

I guess that their only reason to look for organic life on other planets is to extract fossil resources (oil) then?

Colossal dead black neo-sphere approaching Earth

a good #shooter would know

that wind affects projectiles...

default

is this one of those things with a tail?

CERN boffins re-running neutrino speed test

light neutrinos?

are neutrinos affected by light and if so could the detector equipment actually be taking a "snapshot" of their reflection instead of the real ones?

Licensed to bill: software vendors love virtualisation

just use free software

who is still paying for software use? c'mon, in the third millennium we oughta be free of that...

DARPA issues call for notions on Starship-for-2111 plan

stupidity squared

in a new universal law discovered by the team working on the 100 year spaceship, human stupidity grows in direct relation with proximity to another human

El Reg pays by phone – mmmm, free cookies!

no, seriously?

So I have to answer/use all these after the usual 5 security questions when I call my bank? No Thanks!

"To register a Barclaycard online one identifies oneself with an account number and credit limit, then one has to come up with a username (eight to 16 digits, at least one number) and a password (six numbers, no repetition, no date of birth and no sequences). The card then has to be registered with the Quick Tap payment service, which requires a security word (six to eight characters, no keyboard patterns and no repetition), and another security word (five to 16 characters, as before) followed by a four-number PIN."

Seagate, WD should put a gun to Brussels' head

to add to the shame

Due to differences in domestic legislation, the EU and US deal with these

notifications differently. The Commission notes differences in notification procedures

that arise from EU and US domestic legislation and summarizes the EU-US notification

process as follows:

on receipt of a notification [from the merging firms], the Commission

publishes a notice of the fact of the notification [from the merging firms] in

the Official Journal. Thus the proposed merger is made public at the outset

and all mergers meeting the criteria for notification to the US are notified,

even where, on subsequent examination, they do not raise competitive

concerns. The corresponding US legislation9 requires that the fact of a

merger filing, as well as its content, remain confidential. Thus the US

authorities notify the Commission only when, after a preliminary

examination, they decide to open an investigation into the proposed merger

(1996, 3.1).

give an informed comment

There is cooperation between the two blocs in terms of discussing big mergers and there are previous examples in both directions, so before criticising and laughing at the EU, make yourself informed: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/legislation/eu_us.pdf

IP firm claims ownership of DVD video-menus

This post is not available in patent-encumbered countries

apparatus and method to assemble a sequence of letters and make sense of it...

Census threatens spies' cover

@Zimmer

somewhere between Bruxelles and Strasbourg... let me see the map, yes here: Maastricht :-)

Masked Santas disarm Swedish royal guard

let me be the first to say...

how does this relate to technology?

'Spacetime cloak' could act as 'Star Trek transporter'

chicken here, chicken there

yeah, they assumed that while the beams are going slower, the object several billion times bigger than a beam of light was travelling through a thick media of light... well done, boffins!

yeah, but...

if I understand the matter correctly, either you see a beam of light or you feel it...

the object crossing the beam of light (that in some way is slowing down in the vacuum, for what they say) will be in complete darkness but feel the light all around it, while the other external observers will simply notice a sea of light... or just the other way around, mr Particled-waver...

...and nothing of value was lost.

there are plenty of massless things that don't distort spacetime (you just thought of one)... does that mean that they are unable to change speed? or that our spacetime limits their speed?

Texan smut baron spanked over UK schoolgirl snap

landscape

so, if I happen to have taken the same exact picture of the landscape used in Windows XP, what is my chance of getting a compensation?

they could have used a similar-looking model and same colour of curtains... copyright laws do not prevent other people from reaching the same result independently... it's not like someone have an exclusivity on taking pictures with a hat and curtains... unless you claim it was really Coton's picture, which the publisher clearly didn't care about...

let me explain: two different people can take a picture of the same car (same brand, same model) and both independently claim copyright on the results. the fact that it has to be registered in the country where the infringement happened is just an example of a clumsy judicial system... once it's on the Internet... how do you register it in all the countries where it is accessible from??

Seagate stuffs 3TB drives in NAS box

the title exists

it's the different power adapter that makes $ become £, you dummy :-)

OpenOffice files Oracle divorce papers

how about BoxOffice?

not sure if it's a big hit, but surely will give sales a boost :-)

www.BoxOffice.name

and you're done!

Daily Mail savages Data Protection Act over stolen dog

totally agree

try to report a theft to the police in this country, and they'll tell you "hey, it'll come back some day, so it's not *stolen*" (since the definition of stolen is that it's gone for good)... lucky bastards!

Microsoft secretly yanks TechNet product keys

title

when they are written on a web page, why not :-)

irony of web 2.0 aside, who would trust a license or T&C written on a volatile medium...?

Facebook open sources live MySQL makeover

kindergarden code

the code doesn't implement a check to see if the ALTER TABLE instruction is in the comments (and documents this deficiency), how silly can it be??

Online sales hit £5bn a month

Given that the number of people with a credit card is half that of the total population

Given that the number of people with a credit card is half that of the total population, I'd say we are spending a least £160 each...

BBC wins go-ahead for Freeview HD content controls

digital going one-way only?

as far as I remember, a TV licence grants me the right to receive live programs or to record any program from "TV" signals... it doesn't put any restriction on what I can do with the recording - as long as I don't redistribute copies as that would infringe copyright, but backups should be allowed as fair use - correct me if I'm wrong.

now, with digital systems it is even easier to stream this live or recorded programs to other rooms of my house... why would I have to buy several receivers when I can simply have a display where I need one?

excuses, just excuses to make us spend more money by imposing "virtual" limitations...

Home Office passport fraud sweep flops

let's see

my view on this scheme: they had the "estimate" figure of 4,400 frauds to start with, so they set that number as a target but needed 500,000 interviews to come-up with that many possible cases (fail #1) then, following full investigations, they were only able to "catch" 8 fraudsters out of these 4,000 applicants (fail #2).

so either their estimate is way off the scale and only a dozen false identities are used in new passports each year, or their officers are rubbish at questioning and couldn't limit themself to a dozen thousand interviews to get the job done.

in any case, the cost of getting a passport has increased three-fold, and we all pay more taxes...

Wireless signals to be jammed in Canada for G8 summit

popularity vs elected

if instead of spending so much time and effort in trying to be re-elected (or simply elected) with false promises, these politicians would actually do some sensible and start keeping their campaign promises and taking popular decisions (as in appreciated by the majority of the people), then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't have to worry about being so unpopular for these meetings and the population could enjoy their life better, without worrying from themselves too, because bombs and the likes (if any should be present) rarely only kill the intended target but cause many "innocent" casualties

Linux wins the SCO vs Novell case

and who has (not) benefited from this?

let's not forget who or what was behind the whole allegation of Unix copyrights and the real motives for the long and prolonged pyrrhic battle... just a hint of what a dying monopoly is trying to "invent" to put-up with its last gasps...

[read Groklaw if you need more information]

First WiMAX handset not Sprinting from stores

maybe

if I'm not mistaken, Wimax is not stricly LTE and the Evo should use LTE if my memory serves

China sidesteps Great Firewall with web roadmap

same story here

I agree with Ed and others: that statement doesn't sound much different to what is already in place in most "western" countries and regarding free speech, I can tell you that these "western" countries might have other means of silencing the crowds (or activists, because apparently pacifist is not kosher to use anymore in the media...) but the effect is the same.

as supporting evidence, there is a recent story in UK of someone venting his frustration on Twitter for an airport closure and he got jail time for that, I repeat: he was sentenced to jail for that!

Appeals court absolves firm that exposed man's SSN

wtf?

there is a clear example set by that company who has a service to "protect" your identity and whose manager put his SSN on the advertisement only to see his name/ID used in countless frauds (well they were a dozen plus one if I remember correctly)...

surely having your very personal details published somewhere it's very prone to misuse and crime... sooner or later...

Government opens public spending database

distribution means

it would appear that one of the format used to distribute the large file is Torrent, so I wonder if someone finally realised that this method has indeed valid and proper use for file sharing...

I also wonder which computer/user is doing the first "sharing" (I think the correct term is "seeding")

Intel delays USB 3.0 chipset until 2012

what a shame

it could be really useful for those working on large sets of photos and/or home video... should we consider again the still speedy eSata (external Sata)?

Intel answers Microsoft's Linux 'noise' with MeeGo show

mistake

"The world's biggest software company..." - that would be Apple now... in case you missed the recent news, Microsoft is now the second-biggest software company...

and don't start saying that Apple is a hardware one because Microsoft also makes Zune, Xbox, joysticks, webcams, keyboards and so on...

Windows Mobile Trojan frags gamers

@PC1512

maybe the same company who doesn't actually switch off the radio antenna when you switch off the phone so that push-mail can still be delivered and you get charged thousands of £/$/€ in case you decided to travel abroad with your phone and be subjected to the enormous roaming rates??

http://www.anders.com/cms/234/iPhone.Bill/International.Roaming

Universal Tech MyXerver Pro MX3800

yawn, been using (Apple) Time Capsule since years...

how dare they claim that it's a first??

Apple has been selling Time Capsule for years and it works just perfect for Mac, PC and Linux being a proper network server...

Most browsers silently expose intimate viewing habits

Firefox protection

you can already avoid this "history" problem by setting the following to "false" (in about:config)

layout.css.visited_links_enabled

Brussels declares war on web virgins

would you think of the children (and the elderly)

it seems to me that roughly 30% of Europeans are either too old or too young to know how (or to care) to use the interwebs, so why Brussels wants to push this down their throats exactly ??

on the old adage that statistics don't mean anything, I am really "suspicious" when I see Internet penetration in a country/region above two/thirds

LimeWire knackered by US courts

Particularly true

The car manufacturer analogy is particularly interesting as I suppose they always/often advertise the car's maximum speed, driving at which would surely be an illegal activity on all local and national routes... makes one think

What is this nonsense?

"engaged in purposeful conduct that encouraged copyright infringement with the intent to encourage such infringement,"

The reason why I never understand lawyers lingo and lawmakers lingo...

EU mulls new central cybercrime agency

Europol website is not compliant

The Europol website is not compliant with the recent Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which states that no discrimination is possible based on language (among other things), while in the Europol "Contact Us" page there is a nice note:

"Any request should preferably be sent in English. Should a request be submitted in another official language of the European Union delays in handling the request might occur. "

I reported them to the Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) but they said that they can't do anything about it... way to go EU !

Sony to demo 'world's first' in-box wireless tech

direction

as far as I understand, a laser sending/receiving system has to be "pointed" to each other, while the term wireless in more general meaning can take advantage of unidirectionality (transmits to and receives from anywehere)

US told to keep its beak out of European decisions

does it have to be the same company all over the place?

with all the intricacies of branch/parent relations in corporate law, I'm pretty sure that there is some possibility for keeping an Oracle's Sun in the USA and separate entities in the European Union...

why not?

EC needs new agency for three-headed security database

European "public" cloud?

I know that the public sector usually takes longer to adopt new technologies, but when it does they seem to work well.

Could this be a chance to show some initiative on this side of the pond (and this side of the Channel too, since UK is not part of the Schengen agreement and therefore doesn't have access to its security database) and actually setup some "cloud" (virtual) storage and computing for this?

Mars rover faces icy death

we are all wondering how to build lunar and martian bases...

but if we keep sending probes and rovers like this, I'm sure that in a few years there will be enough junk on the surface to be used as building material, plus some frozen water to boil the stew...

Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy

and the competent forum is?

maybe he's too progressive, or maybe I am.

I'm still puzzled as to how is it decided where to hold a trial when an "Internet fraud" or "Internet infringement" has happened... surely your telly or your boxing gloves are in a single physical place when something happens to them... but for an electronic document stored on Google, what says that the (eventual) infringement happens with the copy stored on Google's NAS, with the copy currently displayed on screen via the graphics card memory, or with the many copies kept at various stages through the communication link?

they are all the same "document" yet one copy might infringe national laws, and one might not...

have parliaments ever considered "multitude" issues in their proposals and discussions?

Mozilla fixes memory-hogging bug in Thunderbird 3

when are they going to fix the "Check for new messages at startup" option?

it was working fine in TB 2.0 but since the first betas of TB 3.0, the software keeps asking to log on the last used account in order to display an updated list of headers... why has this changed from 2.0? if the option is unchecked, it should not connect in any way!

High Court: Software dev agreement did not transfer copyright

what about printers?

slightly off-topic but: I wonder why we don't have to accept or verify a licence every time that we print a document in the office... isn't the printer going to hold a copy of the document while it prints it (and who knows afterward)? does the right to "see" or "read" something also automatically grants that of printing it? isn't the act of "printing" actually creating another physical copy of it and therefore considered "distribution" in copyright terms??

Southampton Uni slaps IP notice on FOI requests

Here comes the Queen

Your tax return form is copyrighted by the Crown in UK, but you are the author of the information needed for the tax calculations. Who "owns" the copyright on the final work?

I suppose this is a common problem: Southampton Uni owns the printer paper and possibly have a copyright on the design of the form, but surely they cannot expect to copyright a mere list of facts obtained by adding together a few numbers, like in this case... it's like teachers claiming copyright on the result of their maths exercises...