* Posts by Rob 5

187 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jun 2009

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NASA kills comms with deceased Mars rover

Rob 5

Such a crumbling beauty...

"Nothing that a couple of spare batteries and a cleaning lady with a duster cannot fix. "

Or, as Tom Waits put it: "Such a crumbling beauty - ah, there's nothing wrong with her a hunnerd dollars won't fix"

Rob 5

Yep.

One of my two favourites ever (the other being extrapolation).

To Spirit - a shot of tequila and a cry of "Remember the Alamo. And Mars."

Timing attack threatens private keys on SSL servers

Rob 5
Thumb Up

Billy Bob FTW

Another silly stereotype falsified!

Brit expats aghast as Denmark bans Marmite

Rob 5

other online shops may be available

Is the ban restricted to the sale of the product, or does it also cover importation? If the former, go for it, if the latter, you might be entering something of a customs lottery.

We're OK for Marmite (in the USA) but we can't get Bovril. Found a few e-tailers offering to ship it from the UK, so got in touch with them and asked what the deal was with it making it through customs. The answer was, they'll guarantee to ship it, but they make no guarantee that customs will allow it into the country.

Star probe Kepler finds many multi-world alien suns

Rob 5

calculus

Leibniz is popularly regarded as the "runner up", true, but he was a contemporary of Newton. Kepler's work was a century earlier and there is a well argued view that had he but went one step further, he'd have come up with calculus (The Watershed is an excellent biography of the man). Hence the form of words "nearly invent".

James Loughner - if you can spare 5 minutes from sitting on your pedestal, making snarky comments about other people's education, you might profitably use them to work on your reading comprehension. It was a very short sentence and nowhere in it did I claim that Kepler invented astronomy.

Rob 5

Nice to see Kepler getting a name check.

Aside from the astronomy, etc, didn't he nearly invent calculus?

Lock up your lungs, here comes Grimsvotn

Rob 5
Paris Hilton

Dr Keith Prowse

The ticket agency?

Google was 'warned repeatedly' about rogue drug ads

Rob 5
Stop

Pharmacists, cartels, etc.

Destroy All Monsters makes a very valid point about the rent-seeking aspects of the pharma industries in the USA. I think the reason his post met with a poor reception is that people don't understand the scale of the differences between pharmacists in the UK and the USA.

In the UK, pharmacists still add value and provide customers with genuine services - from keeping an eye on prescriptions and raising a red flag over potentially problematic combinations of meds, through giving basic medical advice, to pointing out OTC alternatives that are cheaper than even the patient's £8 (or whatever it is these days, it's been a few years) for an NHS prescription.

In the US, it's nothing like that. Your pharmacist is a glorified supply clerk, whose main expertise is with health insurance billing systems and calculating co-pays. Most people never even see an independent local pharmacist, instead going to WalMart or a local supermarket chain, and any "medical advice" is limited to reading out the directions on the label in a bored monotone, so that everybody else in the queue knows what you've been prescribed.

It's this latter business model that the legal action seeks to protect.

Schmidt explains the Google way to self-erasure

Rob 5

Groups

No mention of Google Groups, with all of USENET in never expiring glory, on the Data Liberation page.

Broadband leads to drug abuse, say US boffins

Rob 5
Stop

Not about drugs...

Rather, it's about competition. You've got doctors over-prescribing like mad, pharmacists (basically glorified supply clerks) handling fulfilment and all of them making a tidy little profit from their guild and government enforced monopolies.

The argument from the rent-seekers is that it's about safety. But it's not. Chlorhexedine mouthwash (sold OTC as Cordosyl in the UK) is prescription only in the USA, so's the dentists can make an extra buck. Paracetamol and codeine (another OTC product in the UK) is supposedly a tightly controlled narcotic, though docs here hand them out like sweeties.

It's all about the profit. Folks sourcing prescription meds from other sources cuts into that profit, so must be deprecated.

HP's beloved 12c calculator turns 30

Rob 5
Pint

I had one of those.

Got it at a car boot sale, for 50p, just to muck about with.

Years later, I flogged it on fleabay for $50. Result!

'Porn lock' heralds death of WikiLeaks, internet, democracy, universe

Rob 5
Stop

Wrong end of the stick.

You appear have it.

My point, with the smoking ban analogy, was that government doesn't have a very good track record for letting the market continue to take care of things when it sees an opportunity to interfere.

Rob 5

If it were wanted by the public so badly, an ISP would have launched it as a product.

That's more or less what the pub industry and others said about the smoking ban. Didn't work then...

Feds please no one with first official net neut rules

Rob 5
Pirate

It matters not one jot what the regulations say.

The purpose of the exercise is to have some regs, any regs, so that:

(a) The bureaucrats and politicians can engage in more empire building and

(b) The industry lobbyists will throw more money, jollies and non-executive-directorships-upon-retirement at the aforementioned bureaucrats and politicians.

Pirate icon because that's what they are.

5 charged in $450,000 e-banking malware swindle

Rob 5
Happy

Bobbit.

That is all.

'Draw Mohammed' page removed from Facebook

Rob 5

This story makes no sense!

Tell the people!!!!

Or, if I can stop channelling Mr Teenie for a moment:

1: Court in PK orders PK ISPs to block Facebook.

2: The "offending" page is removed worldwide.

3: But Facebook had no part in its removal.

4: ???

5: Prophet?

iPad pawprints for voter registration

Rob 5

I thought the pawprints thing...

... was a reference to cats getting the vote.

I am bitterly disappointed and demand a refund.

Biometric cash machine lands in Europe

Rob 5
FAIL

I'm sorry, Sir...

... but your biometric identity has been revoked. Please report to the central facility, for reprocessing (as Soylent Green).

DVLA off-road system seriously off-message

Rob 5

hmmmm....

The response to Mr Collins' FOI request appears to have "Page 2 of 1" as a footer.

Sun sat sends stunning solar snap

Rob 5
Thumb Up

Stephen Baxter.

That is all.

eBay shill bid scammer convicted

Rob 5

This explains a lot.

When ebay started hiding bidders' IDs, we all thought it was to prevent us from analysing bidding patterns to ID shill bidders.

Turns out, no analysis is needed, they're that thick. shanconpaul and paulthebusman. FFS!

ASA to take over Facebook, Twitter regulation

Rob 5

@ AC - ASA or OFCOM...

It's touching to find somebody who still expects the people who "work" at these bullshit organisations to actually do the jobs they purport to do. The rest of us realise it's Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, all the way down.

Sadly, we're in that difficult time when it's too late to work within the system, yet too early to hang the bastards.

Man of God backs Beverley porncoder

Rob 5

The question is...

Will the PCC do the decent thing, and rule against the paper, or will it be a whitewash, with the paper getting off on the grounds of "Well, they never actually said he was a nonce..."?

Computer boffin on NHS Spine: Get out while you can

Rob 5

what about people who are no longer registered with a GP

Eg, those who got struck off in some PCT list cleaning exercise that went pear shaped, those who moved house within England, but never registered with a new GP, 'cos they weren't poorly or those who moved abroad, etc.

What happens to all their info - do they even have an option of opting out?

Computer Engineer Barbie coming soon to a toy store near you

Rob 5
FAIL

Pah!

When they make a Garcia from Criminal Minds Barbie, then they'll be on the right track.

Dunstone vows to bash Tories on filesharing laws

Rob 5
Stop

Yep!

He sees filesharing as a mechanism for driving customers to his business. Nothing more.

Remember the early days of the three strikes debate, with BT, shouting the odds about the privacy of their users at the same time as they were carrying out their illegal Phorm trials?

Microsoft's top lawyer demands a cloud computing law

Rob 5
Unhappy

this is what happens...

... when corporations decide that rent-seeking is more profitable than wealth creation.

Sadly the scum that we elect every few years are delighted to pander to that view.

Too much sitting can kill: Official

Rob 5
Boffin

So...

It seems that Staney Green was on to something after all!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Green

Knuckle rap for riot shield sledging coppers

Rob 5

I agree...

... with all those who said that the Super made a mistake.

Those coppers pulled off a blinding bit of community outreach, at no cost to the taxpayer and without getting involved with a load of paperwork and useless bureaucrats.

Perhaps that last is why the Super's unhappy about it?

El Reg sparks international incident with Olympics committee

Rob 5
Black Helicopters

@ ElNumbre

Message from the IOC:

All your 2012 are belong to us.

Santa menaced by sex offender postie

Rob 5
Coffee/keyboard

@ AC - doubts about Santa

Damn right! Plus, he's clearly a peeping tom who "sees you while you're sleeping".

He'll give you a present, though - if you're "nice" to him...

Gene testing firm goes titsup

Rob 5
Stop

selling the assets...

Might these assets include people's genetic assays?

US judge rules quadriplegic can bear arms

Rob 5
FAIL

@ LuMan

It's just you. You focus on his inability to unload the gun without assistance, while ignoring the fact that the same conditions apply to loading it in the first place. One sided, much?

US Spec Ops operates psywar websites targeted at UK

Rob 5
Stop

I see no mention of the UK.

I do see a reference to "but also French, and "English (British dialect and spelling)". Which would be handy if you were targeting former colonies (ours or the Frogs').

Colt Telecom cable cut mystery

Rob 5
Coat

Aha!

Broken cable under channel, continent cut off.

Cyber security minister ridiculed over s'kiddie hire plan

Rob 5

If I worked there...

... I'd be a little bit peeved at the implication that I used to be some kind of a crim.

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