Posts by The First Dave

Laser-sharp research sees three top boffins win the Nobel Prize in physics

Re: Congrats to all the winners!

Stunning work, completely regardless of the people involved.

Developer goes rogue, shoots four colleagues at ERP code maker

Re: The scumbag!

I don't approve of this. Pretty much by definition, this guy was mentally ill - calling him names was probably what started this...

Re: A gun is involved in every single mass shooting.

Except that Americans have a bit of a problem with bow-hunting too, which is also "shooting"

Double problem really - I believe that they are allowed to do a certain amount of "out of season" hunting as long as they use a bow an arrow, despite modern compound bows being almost as accurate/lethal as a rifle, at the tiny distances usually involved.

Remember when Apple's FaceTime stopped working years ago? Yeah, that was deliberate

Re: The real crime

As has been widely noted, something that is an obvious solution to a problem is not _supposed_ to be patentable, and if a particular technique is the only sensible way of doing something, then it clearly fails that test. How this patent failed to get thrown out is a mystery, and has nothing to do with the size of the award.

Euro bureaucrats tie up .eu in red tape to stop Brexit Brits snatching back their web domains

Re: Thank you, Boris …

It is also possible to make that clear in the article...

Brit armed forces still don't have enough techies, thunder MPs

Re: The army has a lot of flaws career-wise

Then he is still clearly a fool - brand new Ruperts get treated with far more disdain than any squaddie.

Yada yada, take my money: Firms do not scrutinise software support spend – report

Pretty simple maths really - do you want to spend hundreds of man-hours, and loads of real pounds on implementing a system that _might_ be able to save us a few percent, or do you just want to renew this bill that was due yesterday?

Y'know what? VoIP can also be free from pesky regulation – US judges

Re: Vonage and 911 (US-specific, sorry)

I thought all phones had the ability to make emergency calls without being unlocked?

Google skewered in ad sting after Oracle-backed bods turn troll

Re: When you actively go looking for mistakes,....

I think the "take away" from that quote was that Cardinal Richelieu had way too much power, i.e. that he could legitimately hang anyone, if he really wanted to

Black holes can briefly bring dead white dwarf stars back to life

Re: End of the world as we know it?

What do photo's interact with now? I thought they were passive objects...

Anon man suing Google wants crim conviction to be forgotten

Re: Due Dilligence

Which is why there has been an official court record for centuries - hence the long-standing rule that an accurate record of court proceedings cannot be libelous/slanderous

Judge bars distribution of 3D gun files... er, five years after they were slapped onto the web

Re: @Martin-73

No, I don't think these _are_ good points.

That these plans aren't very good isn't the point, it is the _intent_ of them - you can't turn around in a year or two, when 3D printers that can produce metal prints are a reality, and say that readily available plans have suddenly become illegal - the horse will have left the stable by then.

Who are you going to ask about AI? Alexa or our 40 experts?

Alexa or Forty experts?

I think I'll take Alexa, thanks. At least she will only have one opinion, and I can be sure that it is wrong.

Back to school soon – for script kiddies as well as normal kids. Hackers peddle cybercrime e-classes via Telegram

Pupils already went back to school this week ...

Oracle's JEDI mine trick: IT giant sticks a bomb under Pentagon's $10bn single-vendor cloud plan

Re: Interesting that Oracle worries about "lock-in"

" “Standardizing on a single cloud today makes no more sense than standardizing on a single on premise computing architecture decades ago.” "

But surely everyone tried/tries to standardise their on-premise kit?

Sur-Pies! Google shocks world with sudden Android 9 Pixel push

Re: Its all in the name

Only two decimal places? Meh.

Porn parking, livid lockers and botched blenders: The nightmare IoT world come true

Re: Parking kiosk

Downvoted for incorrect use of (sic)

Either my name, my password or my soul is invalid – but which?

Re: University

What I always do is generate half a dozen or so, and pick portions from each, so they have no way of knowing what I used, even if they can work out who I am, etc.

Tech team trapped in data centre as hypoxic gas flooded in. Again

Re: Not good stuff!

So why didn't you just leave it to burn out naturally?

Adtech-for-sex biz tells blockchain consent app firm, 'hold my beer'

Can they take it out of this weeks housekeeping? Looks like she has plenty in the jar

ICANN't get no respect: Europe throws Whois privacy plan in the trash

Re: Slippery slope

If the viewer comes from a country where the viewer is underage, then yes, that must be restricted.

Decision time for AI: Sometimes accuracy is not your friend

So what?

Call your MEP! Wikipedia blacks out for European YouTube vote

Re: Animals

Do you/they mean a non-human animal?

Drug cops stopped techie's upgrade to question him for hours. About everything

Re: Made it here first!

Are you including, lets say, Paracetomol ?

Sysadmin shut down server, it went ‘Clunk!’ but the app kept running

Re: DEC Engineer

This is _exactly_ why you MUST let the outside person do it. He might be more likely to make the mistake, (though is more likely to check things properly beforehand,) but when things go wrong, it's not _you_ that gets the bullet.

Amazon staffers protest giant's 'support of the surveillance state'

Re: Hmmmmm

@AC: "I feel that the EU is not a democratic enterprise"

Unlike Westminster?

You've heard that pop will eat itself. Boffins have unveiled a rocket that does the same

Re: No casing?

A feeder nut will only work if you can keep the thread from rotating.

Apple's QWERTY gets dirty, leaving fanbois shirty

Re: That's the trouble with...

It's not the amount of travel that matters, its the response, something that Apple keyboards have usually been pretty good at.

UK.gov demands urgent answers as TSB IT meltdown continues

Re: Select Committee !== Govrernment

Such committee's are usually _selected_ almost entirely from current and previous government members. The clue is in the name.

UK rocket-botherers rattle SABRE, snaffle big bucks

Re: That's good, but...

Are you trying to suggest that a Septic didn't quite understand the Queen's English?

Sysadmin shut down the wrong server, and with it all European operations

Re: Soldier?

Have a look at EWBB - _that's_ a bridge.

Virgin spaceplane makes maiden rocket-powered flight

Out of interest, how fast is the speed of sound at that altitude? Was Mach 1.8 actually fast enough to create a sonic boom?

Are meta, self-referential or recursive science-fiction films doomed?

Re: Films - meh

Alien was logical throughout??? Even when they made a clone that somehow was already impregnated with an Alien?

Capita screw-ups are the pits! Brit ex-miner pensioners billed for thousands in extra tax

Re: Outsourcing .....

@AC: "The solution widely deployed is to outsource the department"

At which point most of the good staff leave and find a job that suits them better, while the dross continue to work for the new company...

US broadband is scarce, slow and expensive. 'Great!' says the FCC

Why do people think they have a 'right' to roads at the expense of all?

Thar she blows: Strava heat map shows folk on shipwreck packed with 1,500 tonnes of bombs

Re: CastleMartin

There is even a regular* public bus service to Imber Village.

*Once a year.

Supermicro is, like, totally harnessing green energy sources to churn out servers, dude

So, Fossil Fuels are _increasing_ ??

Biker nerfed by robo Chevy in San Francisco now lobs sueball at GM

Re: I think the cyclist is at fault.

The trouble with "lane splitting" is that it is only legal in the UK "if it is safe", but it never is. If the surrounding traffic is stationery then you have no where to go to, and if the traffic is moving then (as others have already said) you _have_ to assume that the other vehicles are about to change lanes.

No one ever has a "right to overtake" so I just don't get why bikers think that _they_ do.

FCC drops idiotic plans to downgrade entire nation's internet speeds

What makes you think Beardy Branson knows that he doesn't own it?

Nervy nuke-armed nation fires missile with 5,000km range

Re: Building "death tools" is not a choice

The British are to blame for many things, but 'partition' as it is known, occurred _after_ India re-gained independence.

Boffins use inkjets to print explosives

Re: Not usually one for pedantry

"Explosives are triggered by pressure"

That is fundamentally the difference between "an explosive" and a "High Explosive" - the latter detonates, while the former burns rapidly. Shock alone will not set off Gunpowder (unless it generates heat on contact), while most kinds of Plastic explosive will burn safely.

Elon Musk lowers his mighty erection for test firing: Falcon Heavy preps for maiden voyage

Re: putting a fueling station into orbit

AS the article said, it _IS_ a question of whether the vehicle can take it. Clearly there is a concern it isn't strong enough to take the force of three motors, so five is going to be way too much without a major structural upgrade.

Whizzes' lithium-iron-oxide battery 'octuples' capacity on the cheap

Re: x8, x 4, x2

Any kind of fire extinguisher, if used correctly, will put out a gasoline fire.

Not quite the same when a battery short-circuits itself.

Re: Oh look, another one.

On the contrary, what we need is MORE people publishing papers - far too often research that fails to produce anything with commercial potential is dumped unceremoniously, potentially resulting in other people repeating the same research.

The saying goes "we learn more from failure than from success"

WD My Cloud NAS devices have hard-wired backdoor

Programmer? No.

Work Experience kid who doesn't know how to keep test code out of Production? Yes. Probably now a senior manager.

Security catch-up: Nigerian prince email ring cops collar ... Louisiana OAP?

Mainly by not being Muslim

Nest's slick IoT burglar alarm catches crooks... while it eyes your wallet

My house is two years old. Gas meter is outside, but 'leccy is inside the garage.

Judge rm -rf Grsecurity's defamation sue-ball against Bruce Perens

Re: I want cake

"Why can't gr security go to court, prove what they do is indeed legal ..."

Who would be the other party?

Bigmouth ex-coppers who fed media MP pr0nz story face privacy probe

Re: Those ex cops need prosecuting

It seems fairly clear to me that if these ex-coppers were still serving, they would (pretty much) immediatly be dismissed for Gross Misconduct, and probably charged with "Misconduct in a Public Office".

The fact that they are no longer serving _shouldn't_ make a big difference.

SCOLD WAR: Kaspersky drags Uncle Sam into court to battle AV ban

Re: Interesting legal theory

Kaspersky could probably make a fairly good case purely for Libel.