Posts by frank ly

Woman charged with blowing AU$4.6m overdraft on 'a lot of handbags'

It took a while for the bank to notice

It seems that neither she nor the bank live in the real world.

Siemens Healthcare struck by rebranding madness

It'll take about a week to heal so no jolly rogering for a while.

Reduced roaming charges, net neutrality come into force in EU

Re: Roaming - just don't care

As far as I'm aware, in the UK, calls from a mobile to a 'standard' landline and other mobile networks are the same. (Having said that, I'm on a contract with a fixed number of minutes a month.) I know that some mobile networks offer discounted or 'free' minutes for calls on PAYG within their own network.

How to evade the NSA: OpSec guide for journalists also used by terrorists

Re: Hmm. If one is an aspiring terrorist......

Windows 10 with automatic updates enabled !

ICO fines NHS trust £185K for publicly airing personnel files

Re: Why do they need to know

There is a legal requirement to give equal opportunities regardless of religious belief and sexual orientation. Also, as a publicly funded body, the NHS has made commitments to these principles. How can they prove that they have given equal opportunities, for compliance checks and flag waving? Simple: they note, record, analyse, (and publish) these data metrics about their staff.

(However, I have a feeling that if you said that you're a pansexual Pastafarian, your career wouldn't go very far.)

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

"...President Trump has quite a ring to it, ..."

Sounds more like a farting sound to me.

MongoDB on breaches: Software is secure, but some users are idiots

Actually

“We can't force them to make these changes, but we can educate them.”

You can force them, in new versions, but that might drive them away.

Free, permissive licence, many users, lots of forums; what's not to like? Oh, wait a minute, what's this security thing?

Getting shafted the Silicon Valley way

In the background?

That looks like the foreground to me.

F-35s failed 'scramble test' because of buggy software

Mayday! I have flight stability and weapons arming problems!

Have you tried turning it off and then on again?

Chap runs Windows 95 on Apple Watch

This is strangely admirable

Like an abstract work of art.

If the Internet of Things will be SOOO BIG why did Broadcom just quit the market?

"In a separate statement, the company's founder and CEO Thurman Rogers has announced he will step down from the role, saying that the board and executive staff have urged him to “bring new blood” into the company."

That sounds like polite code for being kicked out.

ICANN in a strop that Intel, Netflix, Lego, Nike and others aren't using their dot-brand domains

Re: Extortion and crime in the DNS game?

"... I delegate .com, .net, country codes and the few .info sites that are criminal so all these other domains effectively don't exist."

Did you mean to say "... that are not criminal ..."?

Daft draft anti-car-hack law could put innocent drivers away for life

It's an investment ....

.... to prevent this in the future:

"... which caused the car company to recall 1.4 million vehicles for a software upgrade ..."

Pop goes the weasel! Large Hadron Collider blown up by critter chomping 66kV cable

Dual Redundant Power Feeds?

I heard about this idea somewhere.

Rampant robot tries to rip my clothes off

re. "Rampant Robot"

That could be a good model name for some kind of autonomous sexual stimulation device. I'm sure there'd be some suing going on but that could add to the general excitement.

UC Davis chancellor suspended after headlines like this one undo $175,000 online name-scrubbing efforts

Myopia

Why did it take them so long to notice the breach of 'conflict-of-interest policies' regarding her husband, son and daughter in law? Is it that you're allowed a certain level of corruption (a level which you're never told the exact value) and then get smacked for everything when you go above a certain amount?

The university authorities need a good smacking for allowing all this to happen.

One black hole, three galaxies, four BEELION solar masses – found by accident

Re: Simple question

Time in any other universes doesn't matter in our universe. I don't have enough space to explain why.

The Internet of Things edges toward a practical reality

Re: utility poles and vibrations

For a broken/fallen utility pole, can't they send a pulse down the line, using simple portable equipment, then note the timing/distance of the large reflection caused by the break?

German prof scores €2.4m EU grant to crack software on your bicycle

Use of money

"... a €2.4m EU research grant to crack open embedded software on... e-bikes."

Might it not be cheaper and quicker to hire 'consultancy' expertise (and sight of the source code) from the companies that make them?

If the good Professor will be having influence over future standards and regulations, the manufacturers should be fighting each other to get to him first.

Go to Topshop, make a Bluetooth gizmo, stick it on your dress

So ....

"TopShop has worked on the program with L Marks, which created start-up incubator JLab for high-street giant John Lewis three years ago."

They have a track record in this area. What did they achieve in three years; does anyone know?

Re: Technology that is both useful and fashionable

It's amazing, the 'tax efficient' arrangements you can make when you're rich.

Microsoft fingered for Western Euro PC tragedy

Re: W10 vs W8

I loved Win XP. It was made useless (on my old laptop) by an amazingly large set of updates just before Win 7 was released, so I got a new laptop with Win 7. When I read about Win8, I switched to Linux Mint 13 because I didn't want to get caught again. With the MATE desktop, I made an XP look/feel setup on my old laptop that ran well.

Can anyone suggest why I'd want to buy a device running Windows (apart from obvious things like being committed to Photoshop, etc)?

Vanity dating site BeautifulPeople popped

Re: Confirmation is needed

Oh no, I forgot the joke icon.

Confirmation is needed

"BeautifulPeople told Forbes passwords and financial data were not at risk and claimed to have notified all affected users."

We should wait for an El Rel commentard to confirm that they have received a notification email and tell us how reassuring it is (or not). We certainly won't get this from an El Reg staffer.

CERN publishes massive data set

I always suspected that all those particles were in it together. It took a massive effort by CERN to flush them out into the open where we could see them and understand what they were up to.

A perfect marriage: YOU and Ubuntu 16.04

Re: Good to see the're progressing to get back to Gnome 2

"... this release is the first to allow you to move the Unity launcher to the bottom of the screen."

I laughed when I read that. (Long term MATE user here.)

Google Loon balloon crash lands in Chile

Re: Well

Does the owner of land have any kind of salvage rights over objects that fall on it?

Dutch students serve up world's first 'drone café'

"What's not to like?"

Indeed. What could possibly go wrong?

MoD contractor hacked, 831 members of defence community exposed

I assume that anyone who was registered with such a sensitive site would use a false username, a unique password and access it via the Tor network.

RIP Prince: You were the soundtrack of my youth

I'm wondering

Is it ok to get a couple of his albums from the torrents now. I'm never sure about the etiquette for these situations.

'I hacked Facebook – and found someone had beaten me to it'

Re: Are we even allowed to discuss this?

Is that because it's too cold at this time of year? Oh wait, I'm thinking about olive oil wrestling, again.

'Impossible' EmDrive flying saucer thruster may herald new theory of inertia

Re: I think _I_ can explain it (and it's not that hard)

"(and if photons were truly 'massless', gravity would not affect them)"

Gravity, caused by the presence of matter, makes space itself curved and so a photon follows the curvature of space as it travels. The question is, has anyone performed experiments on trapped photons to determine if they are affected by gravity (attracted to matter) when they are fairly stationary?

If you're equating the energy of a photon to an 'effective mass' via an e=mc^2 equivalence, then you'd have a situation in which X-ray photons have a larger effective mass than light photons and hence should be deflected more by gravity.

I'll wait for the next commentard to add to this thread by explaining why I'm wrong.

Toshiba notebook disk drive slims down. You like that, gamers?

Some retail pack SSD's come with a stick on plastic spacer so they can have a snug fit in 2.5" laptop bays.

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS arrives today complete with forbidden ZFS

Re: @LawAbidingCitizen - How to make Ubuntu look good

I did what you said, "How to make Ubuntu 15.10 look good", and there were two results. Your comment was the first result and an article in quora.com was the second one. There were no results from a YouTube search.

Ahhhhhh, it's called "Make Ubuntu 15.10 look good". Did Andy Turfer change the title?

Re: Centos & Mint

Mint 17.3 (released January 2016, based on Ubuntu 14.04) is LTS until April 2019. Mint 18 (to be released May/June 2016, based on Ubuntu 16.04) will be LTS until 2021. It's a bit close and a big overlap.

I got Mint 17.3 installed and hammered into shape at the end of January. After that exercise I'm going to wait at least a year before trying Mint 18.

(I was quite happy for three years running Mint 13 which is LTS until April 2017.)

Blighty ranks 38th in World Press Freedom Index

Re: Not surprised

I want to know more about olive oil wrestling. I have an unopen bottle of olive oil in my kitchen.......

Druva fills luggage with cash, heads to Japan

"The company's InSync products ..."

I was confused for a moment, because I have Insync on my computers. This is not the same as InSync and, in fact, the Druva poduct is not called InSync; it is called inSync as can be seen from their website. I hope that clarifies the naming situation.

Sneaky Google KOs 'right to be forgotten' from search results

Re: Syntax

So all we can say is that it needs more research. Friday afternoon would be a good time for that.

Utah declares 'war on smut'

"Taking arms against a sea of xHamsters, ..."

It's using hands, with a sea of xHamsters that's the problem.

Are bearded blokes more sexist?

Re: More Research To Be Done

"Do the gorgeous locks growing from my butt speak to a subconscious hatred of women?"

Depends if you trim them into a goatsee shape.

Re: My beard

A beard (even a short one) is great for keeping the winter wind off your facial skin.

Australia's Dick finally drops off

If only

"Dick Smith, the man, is now 72. He used his loot to fund aviation adventures, a made-in-Australia food venture and is a prominent philanthropist, environmental and political activist."

If I had just £1 million, I'd settle down into a very comfortable and obscure retirement. I've come to realise that this is why I'll never have anything near £1 million to retire with.

Bug bounty blitzers open-source sick subdomain-spotter

"if you rely on obscurity to hide your things, you're going to get f***ing owned,” ..."

Is klD2h8P73j5F54sh2.theregister.co.uk going to be compromised anytime soon?

If so, I'll stop using it to store my stuff.

Hey, Atlantis Computing. What the heck is this in your EULA?

Re: Isn't that basically already banned ?

Also, wouldn't damages awarded in any legal action depend on the harm that thad been caused to the plaintiff? If a plaintiff can be harmed by the truth being told about them, perhaps the jury would decide that they didn't deserve any 'damages'?

Database of patent licence terms could help resolve FRAND disputes, says expert

I think the waste storage volume should be isolated from the inner wall and be lower than the internal floor level.

Intel takes aim at Arduino with US$15 breadboard

A clever name?

You can't get anything smaller than a Quark but you need three of them to make anything that matters.

(Coat: The one with lots of small things in the pocket.)

'Bring back xHamster', North Carolina smut watchers grumble

Re: Detail?

Can you dumb it down a bit? Just a little.

Prof Hawking to mail postage-stamp space craft to Alpha Centauri using frickin' lasers

Re: Isn't it pointless

By the time it gets there, we'll have developed FTL travel and will be waiting for it, with flags waving and a band playing.

UK cops trial £250k drone squadron

Re: There is no such verb as "to trial"

From oxforddictionaries.com, available at an internet near you:

verb (trials, trialling, trialled; US trials, trialing, trialed)

1 [with object] Test (something, especially a new product) to assess its suitability or performance: 'teachers all over the UK are trialling the materials'

(The world changes and we must keep up with it or become lost, or annoyed, or both.)

NASA gives blacked-out Kepler space 'scope the kiss of life

75 Million Miles

I've read that it's in a heliocentric earth-trailing orbit. I've also read that the moon is 0.25 million miles away from earth and that the earth is 8 light minutes from the sun and that it takes 13 minutes for NASA to communicate with Kepler (I assume that's a round trip). It really is alone out there.