Posts by James 51

Lavabit founder: Feds ORDERED email providers to stay open

Re: business is booming

Would be a nightmare to register them all.

How long before being forced to stay open comes as part of the court order to hand over the keys?

Samsung to throw fat wad of Won at rare earth alternatives

Re: Help

It's messy and expensive. They'd lower their own costs and reap the benefits of owning the patients on environmentally less destructive technologies. Most likely they’re getting tax breaks for the R&D too so it’s a win-win scenario for Samsung. Just glad to see someone is putting the money into basic research.

I remember reading an article about analysing trees to see what minerals (particularly gold) were in the soil. Scaling that up so it’s economically viable to effectively mine the trees (or other plants) seems unlikely, at least without some GM thrown into the mix. Would be a radical shift in the mining industry if it was possible though.

Good luck to them (and the stretchy silicon people too).

Google, Microsoft to drop child sex abuse from basic web search

Re: Muphry's law in action

I know, same way I spell spelling spieling.

Re: Title is too long

Keywords can trigger ads but people aren't trying to obfuscate the meaning of the content of an email or search when they're emailing customer support for product support or their friends to organise a night out. An ever evolving slang would be very difficult for an automated system to keep up with and we haven't even touched on stenography.

A.I. because context is king. Remember the album cover of a baby swimming in a pool that got flagged? Even people make mistakes and computers are generally as dumb as bricks. They need to be guided by the hand unless you're going to allow fuzzy logic to open you to legal action when you block legal material.

Addresses for these sites could be made available in dark net chat rooms without having to go through search engines. It's only going to make things difficult for the most technologically ilteriate.

Every little helps but for the amount of resources being put into the problem, this is pathetically little return.

Title is too long

"If the search engines are unable to deliver on their commitment to prevent child abuse material being returned from search terms used by paedophiles, I will bring forward legislation that will ensure it happens."

What a moron. Just because he passes a law doesn't mean that the impossible is magically made possible. The technical challenge is worthy but immense and I doubt short of proper A.I. could ever be fully automated.

On a seperate but related note, If the article is accurately reflecting the PM's views, he seems to confuse search engines not returning the nasty results with the nasty content being removed from the web. Getting search engines to not return the results is only a part of a large battle and that seems to be ignored.

CEO of bloated outsourcing firm Capita quits after 26 years

Capita confirmed that Pinder will "receive no payments for salary after his retirement"

Strange, I thought a salary was what you got for turning up and doing some work. With his track record though, maybe they'd pay him not to turn up. Good luck to his new firm. They're going to need it.

Google spaffs $80m on Sun-powered kit: Calm down, Oracle. It's SOLAR

I loathe Google's sprunging of our lives and serving us up as data sushi for advertisers but if they can do for renewable energy what they did for driverless cars, that would be something they could be proud of.

Tales from an expert witness: Lasers, guns and singing Santas

Very entertaining and interesting.

Jolla's Android-aping Sailfish OS smartphones to land in November

Colour me interested. Conract expires in six months, should be able to see what these handsets can do by then.

Canadian teens cuffed over alleged Snapchat child sex pics ring

If we take the article at face value the boys were harassing the girls to take photos and trading them. They do need to be punished for what they have done but these laws don't seem like the appropriate way to do it, particularly given the stigma they carry. Harassment or even assault charges might be a suitable substitute in the mean time.

Most laws of this nature can't cope with people who are underage being sexually active with each other (not quite the same but I know of one place that the age of consent for boys was 16 but 17 for girls. If a boy on his 16th birthday kissed a girl who was older than him but by less than a year, he risked prosecution as a paedophile but I never heard of that happening) . They need to be rewritten to take account of this and could take a swipe at revenge sites while they're at it.

Brit ISPs ordered to add more movie-streaming websites to block list

Sounds like their trying to bail out a sinking ship with a sieve. They'd be better off building a better boat.

'Burning platform' Elop: I'd SLASH and BURN stuff at Microsoft, TOO

Re: Why not...

I use sigil for most of my word processing now. Makes structuring text pretty simple (as long as you've got a working knowledge of html and css).

Elop seems to be a slash and burn sort of manager. Gets the shareholder a nice dividend in the short term, himself a nice bonus and tomorrow he can move on to pastures a new.

Bitcoin burglar bags a million bucks

No insurance against theft? Getting crime recorded is the first step into pressuring the police into doing something about it.

EYE-GASMIC: Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch with Retina Display

Sounds like the writer was hinting that people should really pick up last year's model at presumably something of a discount.

Another 5 years on Nokia's patent CHAIN GANG for Samsung

Re: easy

My irony meter would probably explode if Nokia bought Jolla.

So they are getting money for old rope, but where is the new rope going to come from?

Here's what YOU WON'T be able to do with your PlayStation 4

Re: No clouds in my sky

I'd like to add their ereaders to that list (even if the last model was restling on their laurels). Best on the market for note taking and annotation.

Nokia wins UK patent spat: Quick, let's boot HTC One out of Blighty

Re: Conflicted here

Nokia, MS licensed them but didn't buy them. Leaves Nokia free to go after manufactures now they don't make their own phones and MS doesn't get the bad publicity of attacking everyone left, right and centre.

NSA, UK hacked Yahoo! and Google data center interconnects – report

Re: WOW

The answer to his question is "Of course it is you louse.".

Z30: The classiest BlackBerry mobe ever ... and possibly the last

Re: Here we go again...

On amazon.co.uk it's £470. The Note 3 is £516. The iphone 5S is £647 for the 16gb model. It is expensive but there is obviously a market for big, high quality phones.

EU tsars rubbish Brit PM over attempt to delay beefed-up privacy rules

So the EU is protecting the British people from their own PM. What a topsy-turvy world we live in.

Reg mobile correspondent Bill Ray hangs up his Vulture hat

Re: The title is too long.

There's free draw capicity on the kindle? I have seen the ability to type notes but not that.

The title is too long.

""Readers will no longer be passive consumers of writing, but active participants able to annotate and add to the content, sharing their thoughts with the world""

Sounds like you're describing the Sony ereaders. The ability to annotate and make notes is the sole reason I use them.

Finally! How to make Android USABLE: Install BlackBerry OS 10.2

A positive BB story!?! First one I cannot remember here for a while. Looking forward to those reviews.

Surface 2 and iPad Air: Prepare to meet YOUR DOOM under a 'Landfill Android' AVALANCHE

Until someone makes a tablet with the same easy to read screen and week long battery life, going to have my ereader and tablet when I go on holiday. And as for the tablet, don't see anything in these to make me want to get rid of my playbook and buy one of them. The Pro is interesting but never at that price.

Lumia 2520: Our Vulture gets his claws on Nokia's first Windows RT slab

In a few months MS is going to have two RT products. What are the odds they are going to keep both going and what are the odds that is the Surface that will win out? Unless Elop cares enough about this to fight its corner, can't see it surviving long.

It's the inability to run things like sigil that would prevent me from buying RT which is a pity as it's in this end of the market we are seeing the most innovation.

Furious French choke on chardonnay over NSA's phone spying in France

the irony being French Fries are Belgian.

Bacteria-chomping phages could kill off HOSPITAL SUPERBUGS

Okay, you got me on that one. Should have been paying more attention.

You're alternative is going to result in a lot of people dying. The advantage of phages that they co-evolve with the viruses they eat so it is more difficult for a virus to completely out-compete them.

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs muzzled by delays

"It will raise awareness of hacking. I'm not saying players will leave the game able to breach serious defences, but it's a game, so hacking might become a game too."

Too late:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Ofcom flogs ex-military 4G spectrum, but ONLY the iPhone 5 can use it

Re: You're kidding right?

Or go in for region locking the sims like samsung have done.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3: Once, twice, three times - a Very Large Phone™

Re: Re:Sounds like you want a N900.

Was on maemo.org a few weeks ago and they're trying to get something like that off the ground.

Re: It's inevitable...

Sounds like you want a N900.

EasyJet website crashes and burns

Was thinking about saying less bad than ryanair but then might need to fly with them at some point in the future:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/25/easyjet_story/

In fairness, easyjet is better than ryanair.

Google's latest ad push gives LONE LAWMAKER the creeps

I like a lot of friends pages not because I like the content but because they are my friends. Basket weaving and kittens aren't really my thing, honest. It doesn't take that much more effort to start salting the data so you like things you've never heard of and that starts to devalue the value of X likes Y. The photo is a nice touch as well.

If I thought something was worth talking to my friends about I'd bring it up.

Expensive blingo-rama iPhone 5S OUTSELLS cheapo-plastic 5C

Neither beast nor fowl. With a status symbol like the iphone, if you've got the extra 10%-20% on the rrp it takes to go for the top flight model, why settle for second best? Just telling everyone you're not quite as well off as you'd want to be.

Thousands! of! Yahoo! Mail! users! driven! crazy! by! revamp!

I just hook it up to the email in by 9320. Lot less painful that way.

Oracle says open source has no place in military apps

Sounded like a turkey farmer voting for Christmas.

BlackBerry's AD BLITZ: Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated

I'd love a Z30 or even a Z10 model with usb to go.

Netflix: OK, cable giants, who wants our PIPE stuffed in their BOX?

And still no native BB client.

I've love a lovefilm client for any platform besides kindle fires but that ain't going to happen.

Windows Phone 8 INFLATED by Microsoft ... to satisfy lonely phablets

Title is too long

"Microsoft also says it will be easier to allow handsets to act as wireless hotspots with Windows 8.1 devices via Bluetooth. El Reg would imagine this feature will be promptly limited by mobile network providers, who prefer to sell this as an add-on rather than bundle it in free"

This sounds a lot like the bridge between the playbook and BB7/BB10 phones.

MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross

Re: What are the alternatives?

Use Calibre to convert them into epub or just copy and page into Sigil and go from there. If you get your hands a little dirty with html it's very powerful but has good WYSIWYG as well.

Give me Scribble for the Amiga any day.

I didn't see any alternatives suggested in the article. I've been using Sigil

https://code.google.com/p/sigil

To create epubs and then review/edit on my ereader.

Blighty's National Crime Agency nabs first crook ...for £750k cyberscam

FB?

How many times has a new agency been launched and called Britain's/UK's version of the FBI? I think we're at least on FBIII or maybe FBIV.

EU digital tsar 'Steelie' Neelie Kroes: Telcos must adapt to losing roaming cash

Who elected the members of OfCom and the other regulators in the UK?

Thai kids find free tablets hard to swallow as govt scheme hits trouble

Unless you're a power user, most people could do 99% of what they need to do with any computer bought in the last ten years. At some point it's going to be the same situation for tablets too. Just how much horsepower do you need before you start focusing on what you're doing with it.