* Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

21278 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2009

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Lawyer: Cops dropped robbery case rather than detail FBI's StingRay phone snoop gizmo

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Re: Couldn't happen over here, of course ;-)

We can however allow evidence obtained illegally to be used in court - at the judges discretion.

There is no 'fruit of the poisoned tree' rule as in the USA.

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If you are a freedom fighter/terrorist/cultural organisation involved in a civil war against a Nato level military and you don't assume your phone is bugged you are an idiot who deserves everything you get.

If you are a peaceful democratic political party with nearly enough support to get your home rule referendum passed - you should probably also assume the same thing.

ditto for union leaders, journalists, anti-war protestors etc etc

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Re: This made me laugh

Plea bargains are very common in the US, it's how public prosecutors manage to get 1000s of convictions without having to waste time in court.

Plead guilty to possessing this small amount of drugs, otherwise we will claim you are a major dealer and we will arrange for a 25year sentence.

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There was case in the UK in the 80s when a school girl was kidnapped and the police were appearing on TV appealing for help where they claimed they couldn't track the phone calls because BT's new all digital system-X didn't allow calls to be traced.

This raised a few eyebrows on the computer security sites.

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Most people didn't know about it so when offered evidence they were persuaded to plead guilty or the public defender didn't want to bother making a fuss.

It can also be used to get other evidence which you do present in court - so you never have to mention the illegally gathered bit

So why exactly does almost ALL tech live in Silicon Valley?

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Re: A Zombie concept?

I was commenting on the difficulty of solving the remote recruiting reputation problem.

If I have a very simple easily packaged bit of work that I can send out to a remote dev and be able to see if they have done it correctly - then I can probably have it done cheaply by somebody on elancer.

Otherwise unless somebody has an international reputation it is very difficult to pick somebody from the web to risk person-year projects on.

Accountants are not only easier to judge but their differences matter less. A great dev can be 10x more effective than somebody picked at random, and if I was George Soros and needed to hide a few $Bn I would be careful in picking the best. But if I simply need form X submitted by a State Certified Y then I don't. The same with lawyers, if I'm Hans Reiser I need Alan Dershowitz, if I need a stock NDA I don't.

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Re: I'm sorry, but some assumptions are wrong

Selling advertising is just as much about technology as building a rocket that can land on a barge.

And it gets harder every day, you are competing with other companies also selling advertising and with people becoming immune to advertising. Elon Musk just has to make a control loop faster, he doesn't have to deal with gravity becoming stronger every month.

I would say SV is one of the areas least guilty of pay disparity between bosses and engineers. You can hire a dozen CFOs on any street corner but I have to pay software devs more than Google will pay (in $ or by promising that their shares will be worth more).

Layers of incompetent middle managers who got where they are by playing golf with the right people (US) or having gone to the right school (UK) are a lot rarer in a startup than they are in almost any other industry.

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> a highly specific branch of history.

Worse, it's a highly specific branch of politics or philosophy.

"I think this is a supply side classical recession and we should introduce austerity" - because I'm a right winger who wants to cut taxes / "I think this is a demand led Keynsian recession and we should introduce stimulus spending" - because I'm a bleeding heart liberal who doesn't like to see poor people.

Engineers might argue about the best solution - but they don't normally choose the alloy based on whether their surname was originally Norman or Saxon.

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Re: Question:

But all those grew for exactly the same reason and in the same way as silicon valley - or were a government program to replicate SV. They don't prove that you can do distributed innovation. They prove the exact opposite, that if you want a silicon valley you replicate silicon valley.

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Re: A Zombie concept?

In theory yes, in practice no.

I can hire developers anywhere in the world, but I have to find them. How do I know that somebody in ToadSuck Ak is any good? Unless they are the inventor of Python/Ruby/etc then I am comparing them to somebody in India charging $1/hour on Elancer. By coming to work in the valley they have proven to me they are good because they were hired by %BIG NAME%, or simply have proved that they can earn enough to pay rent here.

Similarly the person in ToadSuck Ak who wants to be paid $100/hour can do that by coming to the valley, or by inventing their own language and hope it becomes wildly popular 10years later.

Once they have a reputation they can move back to ToadSuck and get $250/hour rates because everyone knows them.

I can (and do) have lawyers, patent agents, accountants completely online. They are a commodity, all accountants are equally good-enough, or I can judge how good they are easily.

But I need to raise money - so I have to meet VCs - the VCs are here. I could fly to SF every week to see them but at some point they are going to want to meet the team, see a prototype, get "a feel for the company". This is difficult to do if I have to fly a bunch of consultants in from around the world who have themselves never met before - to instantly bond in a motel conference room.

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They produce more finished specialist steel than before, but their expertise is in adding all the exotic ingredients - the steel comes from outside. So it's reasonable to say they are in the molybdenum business rather than the iron business

America was founded on a dislike of taxes, so how did it get the IRS?

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"Good" from the point of view of extracting more profit from you.

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Re: House prices

There are big versions of Thomas the Tank engine. I know people from York that commute into London and the government wants to spend a gazillion quid on making Birmingham a London suburb

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Re: House prices

One of the problems with SF is that there is a desire to keep the place low rise and low density. So high demand and low supply = prices rise (the policy is set by voters = property owners)

In Houston there is 300mi of empty land between Houston and San Antonio which is being filled with suburbs as fast as the concrete can set, prices are low but you have to sit in movie grade traffic jams.

And distances are bigger, you can commute to London from Yorkshire. You can't commute to SF from Detroit. I'm guessing that >50% of the UK population live in comutting distances to London?

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Re: re: Here you have condo-fees if you live in a flat or townhouse

Leasehold always used to be pretty cheap though, I paid £100/year ground rent and a few quid for external lighting/etc in the UK.

Here even ordinary flats come with hefty fees and I get the impression that the property developer regards these as the profit margin. If the place has a gym or outside pool then the fees can end up being 50% on top of the rent/mortgage. It's enough that the mortgage companies take it into account when working out how much they will lend you.

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Re: Taxes etc

You generally end up doping a tax return for the year after you leave - but probably end up getting some money back! US citizens have to file every year even if they have never lived in the country.

The problem is that US politicians reward their sort of people with specific rules/loopholes. So if you just fill in the boxes you pay a lot more tax. Even regular working people end up getting a big chunk off (mortgage interest is deductable, so is any money borrowed for investing). For people on software developer salaries you need accountants to start doing "MP expenses" level of tax-avoidance.

ps. Remember we conscripted a bunch of people for WWII and then told them they weren't citizens - like Spike Miligan. Not to mention the millions of Indian soldiers forced to fight for their "mother country"

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Re: Buying houses

The whole process here is much faster.

Make an offer (in writing and binding with a big penalty) then typically complete in less than a week. It's a bit of a rush to get inspections booked and paper work faxed to the bank but it means you don't have months long process that falls apart because somebody in the chain drops out and no gazumping.

Some places have a rule that all contracts exchange on the first of the month (as do all rental contracts) which makes getting a mover or even a uhaul van tricky.

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Don't expect this to work for "the world's global bank" - fscking HSBC

Also expect banking to be at least 20years behind europe. You will pay fees for being in credit, you will pay for cheques (which they can't spell) and you will use them a lot, debit cards are being heavily pushed as the "next big thing"....

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Another big difference, in the UK your home is your castle. Here you have condo-fees if you live in a flat or townhouse (block of houses/maisonette) which can be $3-500/month to pay for the general building stuff and you can be hit for massive $50-100K bills if they discover something major wrong with the building.

Even if you have your own home in the suburbs there will be a Home Owners Association who can set rules on how your house looks and fine you if you don't comply. Surprisingly for such an ethnic melting pot it is often used to make sure that the wrong sort of people don't get to stay long in your neighbourhood.

Anonymous unleashes online petition against US info-sharing bills

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Re: /append to list

But we need C-51 to protect us from the terrorists lapping at our shores.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Tortilla de patatas

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Tried it - couldn't get it to stick together enough to flip.

Ended up with basically scrambled egg on chips.

Still ate it though - delicous.

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Food can be divided into 2 groups - stuff that should have garlic in it and stuff that should have chocolate on it.

Don't shoot the Messenger: NASA's suicide probe to punch hole in Mercury

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At least Beagle 2 hit the correct planet. This is the American government - can Venus expect an example of "friendly fire" ?

BOFH: Explain? All we need is this kay-sh with DDR3 Cortexiphan ...

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Re: "Is there another internet?"

>Though it's mostly for educational stuff.

Lots of the stuff on the normal internet is educational - or at least I had never seen it done like that before.

Makerbot axes 'scores of staff' – 3D printing just doesn't pay the bills

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Business model

For home/hobby 3d printers the main use is printing parts for making your own 3d printer - not really a sustainable business.

Lack of secure protocol puts US whistleblowers at risk, says ACLU

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Re: The point?

So having https to communicate the data directly to the same government you are trying to whistle-blow against is totally irrelevant.

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Re: The point?

And the story applies to federal websites where the NSA owns the people running the server anyway - there is no need for the government to hack communications sent to the government.

UK now part of another Euro data-spaff scheme

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Re: Hmmm 42 years after joining the Common Market

>'Her Majestys' servants don't really care if we leave.

The police can however just ask a local magistrate for a banning order and confiscate your passport if they "suspect" you plan to do something naughty abroad. Of course the legislation was only intended for football hooligans - it just came in really useful for stopping anti-G8 protesters going to Paris.

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Re: GooglEnvy

Unless "the system was accessed more than 1.2 billion times;" just means the server logs.

So perhaps somebody did a "select * from" before doing all the processing in Excel ;-)

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Re: Hmmm 42 years after joining the Common Market

"We" as in UK citizens - we still need government permission to leave Her Maj's private island

Mega fatcat Kim Dotcom in deportation drama over SPEEDING ticket

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Re: @Michael Xion

That's the nice thing about total universal surveillance.

They don't need to be targeting you now, they just have to be able to trawl back through their database and find that TV episode you downloaded or that parking ticket you didn't mention or some other crime.

Labour policy review tells EU where to stuff its geo-blocking ban

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Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

> As much as the EU is common market, it actually isn't really....Companies are in business to maximize profits,

So you would have no problems with different countries in the Eu putting import tarrifs on your products or demanding that you HQ your company in their country before being allowed to sell there?

If you want to take advantage of cheap labour in Poland, cheap VAT in Luxembourg and cheap tax in Eire - then you have to expect customers to demand that they can buy cheap wine from France and watch British TV in Germany,

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Re: It's just like DVD region coding...

Then as a voter I should also want my government to extract the maximum price in tax and not allow them to sell stuff in my country while employing people abroad and paying tax abroad.

After all restricting foreign trade is the whole point of the eu isn't it?

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Re: How does this affect micro-businesses?

No you don't have to sell to anyone - you just can't limit the license to certain eu countries.

In the same way that I can refuse to let anyone into my shop but I'm not allowed to charge more to people who are French.

LA schools want multi-million Apple refund after kids hack iPads

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Re: Technology for technology's sake

> rest of the kids either copied the smarties' work or paid the smarties to do their work for them.

And THOSE kids you make into managers....

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Re: "there have been challenges"

Thinking that handing out expensive tablets to children would somehow create a digitally empowered next generation learning environment - when all they were allowed to use them for is to view powerpoint slide type summaries of stuff that is in textbooks

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> why did they not recover the money from the students that did not hand them back?

The kids lost/broke them.

Of course you could make the kids (or parents) responsible for the loss. But how would you feel if your boss made you take home an expensive piece of equipment everyday and told you that you were responsible for any loss or damage - you would tell him to stick it.

Scouts' downed Compass database won't be back 'til autumn

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Re: Stuck in the past?

I think most of the complaints about Scouting is that it isn't stuck in the past enough.

You now get badges for Tweeting and using Facebook but never start a fire, carry a penknife or go outside because it's too dangerous.

Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

Re: issues were around "potential access"...no one has hacked or broken into the system

IIRC from the original el'reg story - the security was pretty poor and their response was basically that it didn't need to be secure because it was private and could only be used by authorised users anyway. That fell down slightly when it turned out that the authorised users where accessing it over the internet and were "authorised" by the same poor security.

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Re: Huh?

Except now they are required to keep a database of all the volunteers and make that available to the authorities - BP didn't have to bother with police vetting.

Microsoft set to penetrate Cyanogen, promises app-y ending

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Re: History is not on their side

Depends whether your strategy is to partner with partners or do the other thing people often do to their partners.

Now boys and girls can we think of any reason Microsoft may wish to fragment the competing Android mobile phone market ?

Revealed: The AMAZING technology behind Apple's $1299 Retina MacBooks – a lot of glue

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Re: "Sir Jony's juice"

The way that they can decide tomorrow that the replacement service costs exactly 2x the purchase price of the model they just released.

Lib Dem manifesto: Spook slapdown, ban on teen-repelling Mosquitos

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Re: British politics in a nutshell

On the basis of "never believe anything until it has been officially denied"

Looks like a Labour SNP coalition has already been agreed

Although these days I think a NewLabour/Tory coalition would be more practical.

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Re: Rock and hard place

>The SNP and Alec Salmond will become the effective government/PM of the UK

Under the last lot of tories we had the shouty Northern Ireland lot (as opposed to the shooty NI lot) ) holding the balance of power - which kept any peace negotiations off the table and led to a few more years of killings.

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Re: Why bother with actual torture when psychological tricks work better?

>oldsters will linger and spend money.

Linger - yes, spend money - no

There is a reason that shopping centers around the developed world are closing and it isn't because pensioners aren't visiting them to buy the latest consumer fads due to a surplus of teenagers.

What's Meg Whitman fussing over: The fate of HP ... or the font on a DISRUPTIVE new logo?

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Re: "That connection is symbolic of the partnership we will forge..."

It was going to have more colours inside but the ink ran out and HP couldn't afford the cartridges

Google’s plan for WORLD DOMINATION takes shape. And it begins with a patent

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Re: This shit is patentable?

A movie - or Donald Duck cartoon is certainly enough to invalidate a patent.

http://www.iusmentis.com/patents/priorart/donaldduck/

Actually building a model was abandoned a long time ago, precisely because it gave advantages to mega-corps. Lone inventor with an idea for a fusion reactor? Just build a working model and you can patent it.

Nvidia's GTX 900 cards lock out open-source Linux devs yet again

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Re: JustNiz

It's not that Nvidia's driver source isn't available - it is that they require a signed driver.

So even if you wanted to run your own driver wot you wrote on your own card wot you paid for - you can't.

Nuclear fusion simulator among boffinry tools picked for monster Summit supercomputer

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Re: "Models seismic wave propagation through"

Gravity drives a supernova, if anything the thermonuclear fusion reactions in most SN collapses are energy negative.

In some ways, dating apps are the anti-internet

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"Is this not just the mantra of "the market will prevail" applied to human relationships?

Didn't Darwin claim that all male displays were the result of female selection pressure?

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