* Posts by I ain't Spartacus

10123 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009

NASA demos little nuclear power plant to help find little green men

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Coat

Re: So basically....

Would you get an explosion with boiling Sodium?

Well I did. Think I got the recipe wrong. I boiled the water in the saucepan, then when it was bubbling, threw in the sodium I can't remember what happened after that...

Exclusive to all press: Atari launches world's best ever games console

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Stop

Ah I see Indiegogo

Indiegogo. Aren't they the one who allow companies an option to collect from the credit cards even if the target amount isn't reached? Or have they since stopped that?

I was also listening to a piece from a guy who's used both Kickstarter and Indiegogo. He said that Kickstarter take 1-2 months to give you your money after a campaign, while they run a few checks. Indiegogo hand it over straight away.

Now he was describing that as a point in Indiegogo's favour - whereas I feel rather differently...

I do quite like the idea of buying my brother one for a 50th birthday present though. Maybe he'll even be able to play it, by the time he's 60.

Royal Bank of Scotland decision to axe 160+ branches linked to botched IT gig – Unite

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In my opinion, they're too big to fail. As are all the main UK banks. Even Northern Rock was too big to fail, because of the massive loss of confidence it created. And they were mostly a savings/mortgage bank, with many fewer current accounts.

The EU competition action had nothing to do with that anyway, they did it because of state aid. Too-big-to-fail is a job for the banking regulators, not the competition ones.

It's the complication of resolving the bankruptcy while a few million customers lose access to their savings and current account - and all the customers of other banks try to withdraw a few thousand in cash, so they don't end up in the same boat. That's what destroys economies and creates depressions. It's what the Eurozone deliberately did to Greece, and what made the 1930s Depression so awful. Well that and lack of social safety nets.

Technically all retail banks must have a plan to resolve them. I just don't believe any government would dare to use it. It's like the Eurozone. The Italian banking system has been on the brink of disaster since about 2011. The government are unable to borrow more money to bail them out, and the Eurozone have changed their rules so the only way to do it now is for savers over €100k to take losses and junior creditors to be bailed-in. That is so confidence destroying that nobody dares do it, unless at gunpoint like Greece and Cyprus. Worse the Italians and Spanish had a mis-selling scandal, where their banks were selling unsecured junior bank bonds to retail customers, as if it were as safe as a savings accounts! Even though the savings account is guaranteed up to €100k and these aren't.

I think moral hazard is a pipe-dream. There's moral hazard. If we're going to have banks, they must be able to be bailed out by the state temporarily, or we get bank runs.

However we've now ring-fenced the money in retail banking, which means that the bit of the bank you allow to fail is the rest of it. While keeping the retail bank alive.

The other thing we should do is probably to give bankers more of their bonus in shares, that they can't sell for years. So they have a financial interest in the health and survival of their banks. Sadly the EU had the bonus cap, done purely for reasons of populism, even though it's led to bankers getting paid more for bad performance. Yes people take risks for bonuses, but the system also allows banks to cut costs easily in bad times - and if we could make those bonuses into long-duration share options, that would probably also help.

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They should get away with it. Closing branches is an inevitable part of modern banking. We demand free banking in the UK for personal accounts, so we're not going to get the great branch services I used to get in Belgium (where I paid for every transaction). Plus a lot of people are banking online, and not going into branches. And the cheque is dying out.

If the bank weren't a threat to competition before state aid, why did they suddenly become one after. It's not like they gained advantage from that state aid. It wasn't to help them outcompete other banks, it was to stop them from imploding.

You can argue moral hazard, but that argument is what led the BofE to allow Northern Rock to go bust - which was actually very well run, and the US Fed to let Lehman Brothers go (which wasn't).

Instead the UK have put in place a new regulatory system to make future RBSes less likely. They have to have a wind-up plan, though to be honest I think that's pie in the sky, in an emergency state aid and partial nationalisation is the only option (and contains a punishment of soaking the shareholders). Their are also CoCos (which are loans that turn into shares if the bank is in trouble - so the bondholders are taking more risk, but don't just get wiped out and there's a transparent mechanism. We've also increased the captial adequacy ratios to well above 10%, and they're being annually stress-tested to determine the correct levels.

We've also stopped the banks from using their retail customers' money in their merchant banking activities. That's why RBS were in such bad shape, because they'd taken too many big bets with own-resources. Nice and profitable for them when it works, but no sharing with the customers whose money they're gambling. But if they lose, then the customers are sharing the risk, or if there's a state-funded guarantee, then the taxpayers are. So RBS have had to cut out their "casino-banking" side and finally got back to profit.

I think with all that new regulation being put in place, we didn't need to gild the lilly by kicking them when they were down with a competition law too. Particularly as that hurt us taxpayers, as the owners of RBS, who surely the competition authorities are supposed to be protecting.

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Re: All banks are cutting branches and spending on IT

I do love management sometimes. Fewer customers are using our branches, let's save money by getting rid of some. Check!

More people are banking online, let's save money by cutting IT spending. Huh! What there? Are you sure? Are you sure you're sure?

I believe I need to reset your logic circuits with this cattle-prod. Stand still...

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Re: 'Created' My Arse!!

It's not just branches, it's also customers I think they had to get rid of. Hence they had talks to transfer some customers and branches over to Virgin Money, and maybe other buyers in around 2010. But nobody sensible wanted that.

Then they had to try and spin out a new company - which was very expensive and would possibly have failed - so I guess they've given up.

I presume the Brexit excuse is that once we've left the EU, they won't be subject to EU competition rules, and can maybe get a more sensible decision from the UK government. Or they've managed to lose sufficient customers by natural incompetence to meet the requirement?

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Re: (some of) The Truth about Williams & Glyn

MyffyW,

To be fair to RBS management, they had tried to sell a bunch of their customer base first. But nobody was buying. As with Sabadell / TSB, it turns out buying banks and merging their systems can be hard...

They spent a couple of years doing that, and then as they were forced to do it, had no choice but to try and spin it out as a new independent bank.

It was a stupid thing for the regulator to ask them to do. At a stupid time, and in a stupid way.

The UK and the US fucked up our banking regulations before the crisis. And have worked quite hard to sort them out since. And done a reasonable job - so far. A few EU countries had a good old gloat, as the subprime crisis hit (remember Sarkozy and his comments about ze anglo-saxon capitalism?) - only to have to eat rather a lot of humble pie when it turned out their banks were equally pisspoorly run, and regulated. But then have spent the following ten years flailing and failing to fix the Eurozone - and sort out the government/banking debt "doom loop". At the Basel III talks they were desperately trying to water down tough new international banking standards because their banks were too weak to meet them. Actually so were the US and UK ones at the time.

Which is why the Bank of England stress-tests require UK banks to be able to weather someothing like an 8% drop in GDP recession, including 0% inflation and a 25% drop in house prices - and our banks have to meet Basel III capital adequacy requirements after that (8% I think - the EU argued for 7%), which means they seem to need about 12-13% tier 1 capital.

Whereas the ECB stress test from 3 years ago was talking about banks being able to cope with only 1% inflation, when the Eurozone inflation rate had already dropped to 0.5% and Italy and Greece were in actual deflation! I think they actually passed one of the banks that had already gone bust, due to the 9 month gap between tests and publication.

Obviously this particular clusterfuck was brought to you by the competition commissioner, but some joined-up thinking would really have helped.

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Re: Yet again...

I don't think this one is entirely the bankers fault. There may be an IT cock-up in the background of course. And the union might know that, but they're not exactly a disinterested source when it comes to job losses in the offing. Particularly as they used that line about RBS being taxpayer-funded. Which isn't really true. It's taxpayer-owned (well 80% odd anyway), but it's having to fund its own losses and re-capitalisation since that injection of government cash for equity. Hopefully we'll be able to sell it off soon, like Barclays has been. It was given huge loans in 2008 (like all the banks) - but that was done with printed money which has long since been paid back and un-printed. That's what Central Banks are for.

This one is also down to the regulators. The EU competition and banking regulators have made a pretty pisspoor job of it since the financial crisis. Lloyds were forced to sell off branches because of the emergency merger and RBS because of the state aid. But that state aid was required in order to avoid the British economy becoming a smoking crater. Meanwhile several major European banks have been allowed to pass piss-easy stress tests and then collapsed immediately afterwards. What we needed was a bit more common sense, and a bit less wishful thinking.

RBS were told to sell those branches. Who to? In 2008, who wanted to buy into retail banking? Well Virgin Money looked at it, but didn't. So then RBS had to spin off Williams and Glynn, but that means a head office and more importantly lots of spare money. Something RBS are a bit short of, what with having to meet increasing requirements from the Bank of England for Tier 1 capital and cover their restructuring losses. The new management didn't need that extra fun-and-games taking away time and budget from the important business of trying to save the whole shebang. They've wasted billions on this.

Apple and The Notched One: It can't hide the X-sized iPhone let-down

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Re: Commoditization is not going to be Apple's friend.

I buy iPads. Because I think they're the same price as the premium Android tablets and premium ones are better than cheap ones. If I couldn't afford £400, then I'm sure I could easily live with a £150-£200 ones, but my experience of anything cheaper than that is not good.

iPhones are way too expensive for me though. Even though the company is paying. I don't particularly like iOS as a phone OS anyway, as my phone is both work and personal. And it doesn't handle that split of 2 email accounts and 2 lots of addresses terribly smoothly. It's surprisingly crap for such a premium product, and no I don't want an integrated mailbox thankyou.

Top-end Android phones are also over-priced given what you can get for £200. I don't understand why a top end tablet is so much cheaper than a top-end phone. Well I do, it's because they can. But I don't see that situation lasting for long.

Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain

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Re: Was it really only the maintenance costs?

I believe Air France weren't making money. And hadn't for ages. They didn't want to sell to BA, even for spares. But without both companies, I doubt the maintenance costs were affordable.

I'm still not sure if Branson's offer was genuine, or just good PR. And trying to get under BA's skin of course...

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Facepalm

Re: Wonderful memories

When I was a similar age, our teacher split us into groups to plan a class trip. The winning group's trip would then be our end-of-term treat.

I think I may have misunderstood the brief somewhat...

My aunt had just been to Mexico to Chichen Itza. I therefore had a lovely new t-shirt with a pyrmid on it. That (and some shiny brochures from a few trips to helpful travel agents) was the basis of our presentation on the destination.

This was to be a day trip, so how to get there? Well I'd seen a thing on TV, or in the paper, that you could hire Concorde for something amazingly cheap like £20,000. (mid-1980s money). However, I believe that was a short hop over to the coast and back, and may not have included fuel. And certainly not the fuel and two flight crews needed to get us to Mexico and back. Let alone the transport from the closest available runway.

We went to Southend-on-Sea.

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Re: Misapplied brilliance

John Miles 1,

It's because people can't see the future. The 747 was initially a failure, that probably came quite close to bankrupting Boeing. Because even if you come up with the correct technical solution for the future, that only counts if your customers also realise that you've got it, and give you the cash. Otherwise you go bust, and someone else buys your technology on the cheap and maybe tries again.

Look at the Comet. The future of civil aviation, and a brilliant plane. Far ahead of the competition. How were the designers to know that those big windows weren't a very good idea? We still don't have big windows on our planes today, because of those fatigue problems, and it's possible that any new future airliner (supersonic or not) will have no windows, to save weight and maintenance - and make the cabin bearable with screens instead.

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Re: But

Not cheaply. And I'd imagine the airframe is the cheapest part to replace (relatively speaking of course).

You can't just replace the engines on an aircraft designed to supercruise. Engine power, engine inlet inlet air control, fuel consumption, weight etc. are an interlocking set of design decisions. Change one, you've got to re-design others.

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The drunks don't really only pay £4.50 though.

And the problem with any supersonic airliner is that it's going to be more expensive than the competition. Both for the new plane, and the fuel.

At which point you're then going to need extra types of aircraft in your fleet and that means much more expensive logistics, maintenance and training costs.

With all the latest knowledge it may be possible to make a viable supersonic passenger aircraft. It could always find a place on routes like the Atlantic (and Pacific if it can get the range).

But the airline industry is a pretty volatile one. And pretty risk-averse nowadays. I saw a comment from Warren Buffet a few years ago, that he'd calculated the global airline industry was still running at a loss. As in all the carriers combined since about 1910 have spent more money than they've taken in total revenue. And there are a lot fewer governments willing to subsidise / bail-out their flag carriers for reasons of national prestige nowadays.

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Re: It was spent getting a dozen people to the moon and back instead

I'm not sure the moon landings were really done for the "betterment of mankind".

Yes the space program gave us loads of new technology and knowledge (as well as paying to train thousands of engineers), but we could have set out to get much of that knowledge with research and still saved all the funds spent on the hardware. All those medical sensors, for example, that were developed to monitor the astronauts could just have been invented by spending cash on medical research.

We do these things for a combination of prestige, "because we can", PR, idealism and progress - because we can't always know what technologies will actually be viable - until we've built them.

That's the thing with these kinds of projects. Some work and become essential, some work but fail commercially, some fail to get off the ground. It's not always easy to know what you'll get at the start, when you have so many problems to resolve, and you don't know if your solutions will be good enough or so amazing that the new technology changes the world.

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Re: Not just for the rich and famous..

I read a nice version of sneakernet the other day, which I hadn't heard about. Apologies if others have.

Amazon have got a couple of articulated lorries full of hard drives. When someone wants to transfer obscene amounts of data to Amazon's cloud they drive over, hoover it all up and drive it back to one of their datacentres.

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Happy

Re: Surprise Sighting

There's an episode of the excellent 'Cabin Pressure' where they're forced to leave an airport by road, due to a lack of available fuel. And other various silliness.

Mines a 25 year old Talisker please. Or is that apple juice?

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Re: Minor Point

Lots of airliner prototypes have escape hatches. Particularly as a lot of them do test flights with large crews on board nowadays, playing with all the computers. After all, you've got all that space in the back, why not fill it with servers and techs.

On colour, Concorde did get painted blue at least once. Pepsi did it (paid BA I think) for a publicity stunt when they changed their cans from white to blue in the 90s. But it wasn't able to go supersonic without melting the paint, so just bibbled over to Paris for a photo-op and went home for a respray.

Can't log into your TSB account? Well, it's your own fault for trying

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Re: French Cinema

Ah Monkey! That was brilliant. I tried to track it down a few years ago, and was rather disappointed to see that they'd only dubbed the first series into english, so you couldn't watch it all done by the same people.

About ten years ago I bought the brilliant digitally re-mastered version of Das Boot. There was some awful dubbing in that, as I think the film version was dubbed whereas the TV mini-series used subtitles. Very unusual project that they shot a 3 hour film simultaneously with a 6 hour mini-series.

Only the main actors had done English dialogue. So they went back to all the other original German actors and got them to re-voice themselves.

So you can now watch it in German with subtitles, or in English but with the original actors doing it so it's actually good.

One of the Amazon reviews complained that in english, the voices don't synch with the lips. What you want them to re-shoot the entire 6 hours, as well as re-doing the soundtrack!?!?

Newsworthy Brit bank TSB is looking for a head of infrastructure

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Re: If their application process is anything to go by ...

Why does the phrase career portal make me think of Even Horizon?

Leave it to Beaver: Unity is long gone and you're on your GNOME

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Trollface

Re: On the face of it

It's funny as a non-Penguiny person. I've not read as much about Linux of late, so was amused to see a review talking about people being sad to see the back of Unity.

Which is about the first pleasant thing I've read about it. Given all I remember is reading stuff from years ago from people saying I'm dumping Ubuntu and heading for Mint.

So when do I expect the article mourning the loss of systemd?

BOFH: Guys? Guys? We need blockchain... can you install blockchain?

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Devil

Re: Unfortunately he hits the nail on the head again.

Chief of Un-implementable New Technology...

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Re: Familiar...

I was expecting the BOfH to simply set every server in the datacentre to Bitcoin mining, perhaps after judiciously adding £10,000 of graphics cards to the budget, and then wait until people noticed and complained. Then of course blame the boss's blockchain project.

Europe fires back at ICANN's delusional plan to overhaul Whois for GDPR by next, er, year

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Happy

Re: SEO spam..

You could at least have signed him up for the Watchtower...

Ordering a pizza on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours would probably be going a bit far.

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Re: Interesting wording

That's a double meaning right there. We're taking into account your desperate efforts to comply vs. we're taking into account you pisspoor efforts at proper governance despite the fact we've been warning you about this since 2003! Because they've never been in compliance with previous data protection laws either, as the statement implies.

Also there will be a complaint on day 1. Some campaigner will do a quick WHOIS search and send off his letter. In fact, I might consider it, just as revenge for the spam I've had to tidy up due to our registrar charging for anonymous details. It was the most minor of annoyances, because almost no spam makes my inbox, but that's not the point...

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Re: It's always fun when organizations pretend that the law doesn't apply to them

I really hope the first European regulator gives them both barrels with the first fine. Normally I believe organisations should be given time to comply, and a recognition that they're working on a solution (if belatedly) does deserve to be taken into account.

But in this case it's an organisation with a government advisory committee to tell it that they're doing it all wrong. Their really is no fucking excuse.

Hitting their bonuses is probably the only way to make the ICANN Board sit up and take notice. Or perhaps a few swift punches to the face at the next ICANN meeting might be in order?

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FAIL

ICANN tell you that...

It's not ICAAN.

The correct name of the organisation is ICAN'T

Apperently just making it policy that the registrars aren't allowed to charge for the privacy policies they already offer is so hard that it's taken them years to fail to come up with as their new policy.

I think it's all that first class air travel and free champagne does it. It rots the brain I tell you. That's why I stick to walking and Special Brew...

Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes

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Happy

Re: I wonder...

Was that the one where Leslie Phillips tried to seduce the manager's wife in order to get the key to the vault?

Oh, I say! Ding... Dong...

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Devil

How will they ever deal with a cyber attack.

What are you talking about? They're the only bank in the world that's totall safe from any cyber-attacks!

This is just the logical extension of the saying, "my network would be perfect if only it didn't have any users."

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Re: What are IBM going to do? Wave a fucking magic wand?

It's a bit of an EU cock-up in my book too. RBS have apparently wasted spent a couple of billion trying to sell several hundred branches to comply with competition rules - but nobody in the end wanted to buy them. So they're now spending billions more trying to spin them off as Williams and Glyn. That means setting up a head office, management, IT, and a cash pile/reserves.

This TSB thing is a similar exercise in regulatory box-ticking. That's doing nobody much good. How much have we really gained as customers attracting another Spanish bank into the retail market, as a minor player with just a few hundred branches?

We had state aid and shotgun mergers during the financial crisis and that broke competition rules. But they really should have ignored them. At least until a later date. There's a reason that when banks buy other banks they tend to leave them on the old systems for years, and only slowly transition across (if ever).

Rules are important, but given this was a once-in-a-century level of global banking crisis, I think a bit of pragmatism would have served better. Worrying about moral hazard was what caused the US to let Lehman Brothers collapse and the Bank of England stuff Northern Rock. Nothing good came of those 2 decisions. Similarly the rigidiy in stopping Italy from trying to solve its banking crisis has stored up potentially horrible trouble for later.

Presumably the main blame still goes to TSB and Sabadell management for doing the migration on the cheap or too fast.

Avengers: Infinity War: More Marvel-ous moolah for comic film-erverse, probably

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Re: Miserable old git

nkuk,

I just don't buy that as a reason. There have been loads of interesting and different films in the last few years. This is the most diverse, interesting and "brave" that Hollywood has been in decades. We're getting musicals again, a silent film has won an oscar, kids films are far better than they were when I was a kid (my Mum had to put up with some shite in the late 70s / early 80s).

There's a bunch of Star Wars films been made in the last few years that don't suck - unlike the ones from 15 years ago, but then Cristopher Nolan has been able to make a diverse range of interestingly different blockbusters.

Tomorrow (this being a non-special non holiday period) in my local home counties market town multiplex I can watch the Avengers film of course. On many screens. Or Rampage, a comedy/action The Rock and his pet gorilla film, which is apparently not bad. A comedy drama about the Nazi occupation of Guernsey. The Quiet Place, which is apparently a very good sci-fi horror about aliens that are listening to you. Ready Player One that was apparently pretty enteratining, also with The Rock. Peter Rabbit that got awful reviews, but everyone I know who's taken their kids to see it says was great. Every Day which is a weird sci-fi body swap teen thing. The Leisure Seeker which is about dementia and Helen Mirren's slightly ropey southern draw. Truth or Dare, a rubbishy looking teen horror. Love Simon, amazingly a teen romcom about a boy who happens to be gay. And the Greatest Showman, a musical about PT Barnum.

That's a pretty diverse list (some of it even brave) and if you can't find anything to interest you in there then you're not a proper cinema fan.

I'm not sure if I'd call this a golden age of cinema, but it's healthier and far more diverse than I can remember it.

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Re: Miserable old git

Is it just me then who's totally fed up with these endless bloody comic-book films? Pack it in.

Nope, it's not just you. However, there's plenty of people still enjoying them. Hence the huge wads of cash from the box office. Which is the viewing public telling Marvel to make more of this.

My question to you though is, why do you care? If the films aren't for you, don't watch them. Nobody is forcing you to. So why not let other people enjoy their popcorn movies in peace (well OK bloody loud surround sound), while you get on with your day.

Mark Kermode said a clever thing about one of the later Transformers or Pirates of the Carribean films. He said something like: It took a lot of money, but that doesn't mean it's good. That just means a lot of people paid to see it. That doesn't tell you if they enjoyed it.

The films that make huge oodles of cash, like Titanic, Gone With the Wind and some of the Marvel and Christopher Nolan stuff, all do it through repeat viewing. It's the people who went three or four times to cry at Titanic (spoiler - it sinks but takes a bloody long time about it), that really made it so stonkingly lucrative.

The fact that Marvel's box office keeps going up tells you that they're not dropping the quality. Or at least that if they are, they've found a market who like it.

I wasn't a particular fan of Iron Man (too annoying and smug for my tastes), but I've really liked every other one of the films I've seen. Even the one I was dragged to thinking it would be rubbish, Guardians of the Galaxy. Which was stupid, but with a great soundtrack, and plenty of laughs.

But if you don't like, there are plenty of alternatives out there. Cinema has even belatedly recognised the old git pound recently. So I've seen 3 films with Mum in the last 6 months, all based in WWII. Their Finest (brilliant - I was expecting a weak romcom so thanks Mum), Nolan's Dunkirk (he truly is a great director) and Darkest Hour (which I hated for the liberties it took, though Oldman was good in it).

Google Pixel 2 XL: Like paying Apple-tier prices then saying, hey, please help yourself to my data

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Re: the threat of closing down an Apple factory

katrinab,

We don't know Apple's contract terms. One of the things Tim Cook did very well, when he was Steve Jobs' chief elf, was to deploy Apple's vast cash reserves as a way of making manufacturing cheaper. He'd buy up a few billions worth of components in advance, to bugger the opposition and get a fixed price - or lend money to suppliers in advance to get cheaper overall costs.

And I'm sure they still do that. But leaving Foxconn probably isn't more than a year's work. They may even be able to do it quicker - as they often test out other manufacturers and suppliers.

Apple have over $100bn in the bank. If the excrement hits the fan they can just buy themeselves a manufacturer - or buy a plant off one, as that wouldn't require all the regulatory approval and paperwork. It would wipe a hundred billion off their share price, and maybe as much as $10 or $20 billion off their revenue for a year - but they'd survive. China might find itselft with a few million suddenly unemployed and unhappy workers on their hands though. It might have no effect, or it might bugger China's economy in the way that all the various seizures of corporate assets have knackered Russia's.

ICANN takes Whois begging bowl to Europe, comes back empty

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Charles 9,

Money. Money is the way to solve jusidiction problems on the internet.

If an online registrar is failing to comply with the GDPR, then that means they got some European persons data when that person registered with them. So OK. they're in a third country. No matter. That European person had to pay them. Bang! The EU can pass rules to tell the credit card companies or banks not to deal with them.

It's a hassle, and therefore only worth doing when it's important. But if Google and Facebook don't jump-to and deal with some of their more egregious privacy-invasion, fake-news spreading and general shit - then this is the way they can be dealt with, even if they close all their EU offices.

If you follow the money, you will mostly eventually reach someone that you can force to act. And by forcing them to act and/or cutting off the money, you can force actions up the supply chain to the real miscreants.

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Unhappy

Re: ICANN will be first on my hit list...

Actually ICANN have barely a bean to rub together. Sure they took loads of moolah in the dot.word rip off domain name sale. But that's long since gone out in increased salaries and bonuses. 20% pay rises don't fund themselves you know! And all those conferences in Bermuda need to be covered...

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Re: 'no solid plan for what to do'

I don't think this is a US issue at all. Even Facebook claim they're complying with the GDPR.

This is an ICANN incompetence issue.

Their controlling committee are greedy and incompetent. However they were allowed to keep the IANA contract without ever quite introducing any of the governance reforms they vaguely promised to do.

So they're in this great position where all oversight leads to various sub-committees of the board, who are then forced to produce independent reports slating their incompetence (or malice), but then lead to appeals to other sub-committees of the board who ignore them.

What they have is circular oversight. And big bonuses. And they love it!

This has clearly gone to their heads and left them fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with the real world. Such as trying to ignore legislation they've known about for ages.

Of course they may still get away with it. Being in California, if they've got no European offices then what can the EU do to them? They can fine the various registries that do operate here, so maybe ICANN still think they can get away with it?

Whoops! Google forgot to delete Right To Be Forgotten search result

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Happy

Re: Sounds like many sites will publish enough hints

Or tell them you were on tour doing backing-vocals for Justin Bieber...

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It's not their fault who their barrister may or may not have worked for. Remember that chambers aren't a unified buiness anyway, it's a partnership where everyone chips in for the expenses, but earn their own money doing their own job. It's commonplace for barrisers from the same chambers to appear against each other for both defence and prosecution.

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Re: Sounds like many sites will publish enough hints

Google are only forced to delete the search results on spent convictions. Which it's not lying about if you don't disclose (as you're not required to). Unless you're filling in the forms for some kinds of enhanced checking/vetting - where you have to declare everything.

So the law has already covered this area.

Scratch Earth-killer asteroid off your list of existential threats

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Happy

DJO,

Thank you. I am most grateful.

Unfortunately I now need to go to Putney High Street, as I am unable to visualise 1 single unit of PHS - let alone 1.2 qunitillion of them.

However, due to its obviously huge asteroid strike risk (otherwise why would you mention it) I am also afraid to go.

Therefore I think I'm going to stick my head back under the duvet, and hope that it's both monster and asteroid proof.

I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
Coat

Re: You never hear the rock that kills you

In space, no-one can hear the scree...

OK, that was bad. I'm truly ashamed. I'll get my coat.

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Happy

Well if Clint Eastwood can do it...

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Happy

DJO,

What kind of rubbish calculations are those? Volume should be measured in Olympic swimming pools and area in Waleses. We'll let you off using the Bulgarian Airbag because Space is Big. Really Big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean...

Has anyone got a piece of fairy cake?

Reg writer Richard went to the cupboard, seeking a Windows Phone...

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Re: Compared to the **** that is Android WP was lovely ...

When I got my first Droid - it was an HTC Wildfire on Android 2.2. 2.3 was already out when I bought it, but not only was there no upgrade, they carried on selling the model for another 18 months on 2.2.

Anyway, there was no manual. Google at the time didn't do an Android manual online, there was just a few marketing blurb and "getting started" pages, and then it said to refer to your manufaturer. HTC also didn't bother doing a manual.

I did find the Android developer kit manual - but that wasn't much help in trying to get the bloody thing to cope with a VPN.

I assume (hope) things have improved since.

I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

Re: no fanbois...

Spellcheck on my Lumia is now punishing me for being too sweary. I've taught it all the naughty words, and that's fine when I want to use them.

But when I'm in a hurry and trust predictive text without my reading glasses on, then it gets its revenge. My phone seems determined to swear at my mother, for some reason.

I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

Re: I want you back, I want you back.. for good

Apple's iPhone 5s appear to have been pants. They got the usual rave reviews at the time, but in retrospect they were already too small and the batch we had at work pretty much all broke (either the charging socket or the battery control circuitry). And others I know who had them also seem to have had more problems than other models.

The great thing about my 2 Lumias (Nokia 720 and MS 735) is that they were each under £150. And so massively exceeded my low expectations.

Even Microsoft's lost interest in Windows Phone: Skype and Yammer apps killed

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Re: @NotSpartacus

E_Nigma,

Microsoft's support has been fine. Their strategy has been a pile of shite - but they've given decent support to the stuff they've released.

They aren't responsible for the apps. Being on a dying platform is why they're no longer being renewed. That's not MS's fault either, other than the aforementioned pisspoor strategy causing the death of their platform.

I've no prejudice against Android. I know the risks, as I did when I bought in to Windows Phone. For me, the apps are on the iPad, the phone is a tool for calls, texts, email and travel (satnav and timetables).

With MS I risked a lack of apps - but didn't care. Hence I recommnended it to my Mum, who also didn't care - but I've suggested Android or iOS to those that did.

For ease of use Android is less good. It does more, so is more complex. Not the trade-off I want in my phone, but what I demand in a PC.

As for support, I'm not sure there's any Android phone that you can trust you'll get even security updates, other than Google's very expensive Pixels. All other manufacturers have broken their promises on different models and Google have let them. I don't expect feature updates - though I do object to phones and tablets being sold new on software 2 releases out of date. The reason my tablet purchase went to Apple... I didn't update from Win Pho 8 to 10, but MS gave me the option.

I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
Happy

Re: Just one more month

Don't sit on the fence, tell us what you really think?

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My suspicious is that Gates was all for a phones strategy, and they were doing pretty well up to Windows Mobile 5. Had 50% of the "not-all-that-great-but-useable" smartphone market, along with Symbian.

But Ballmer was less enthusiastic. And then the whole Longhorn/Vista brouhaha hit. And I think all available management brain power was diverted into trying to sort that out. As they had to slowly remove all the interesting bits of Longhorn from Vista and desperately try to get the hardware vendors to write drivers, plus writing a big slew of their own, to keep the compatibility mess down to merely bloody annoying - rather than disastrous.

So I think they dropped the ball on mobile. And never seem to have done anything more than the bare minimum since. Which is a shame, because Win Mob 5 was OK for its time and hardware, and Win Pho 7, 8 and 10 could have been excellent with a bit more polish. And with a few less 2 year-long delays to get their shit together.

I'm often rude about Google. But their management have chose a few strategic areas and been willing to bet several billion over several years, with no guarantee of success, in order to achieve their goals. They've then swallowed the continuing losses until they got what they were after.

I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

That's sad. I was hoping there would be a nice 'Droid launcher to move to. I got my Mum onto Win Pho. She's almost never had to ask any questions about using it. I'm not going to be so lucky when I move her onto Android. I'm currently trying to persuade her to spend 3 times as much and go Apple, on the grounds she has an iPad and is used to it.

Though she says she doesn't like the iPhone 5 her charity gave her. But I think I've worked out that this is a screen size issue, and because she uses sensitive data on vulnerable kids, so the thing is totally locked down by IT.