* Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

21278 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Dec 2009

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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Thin plot, great CGI effects

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Re: Coming Fall 2016

Rear cover notes of The Silmarillion: an epic mini-series coming to HBO

REVEALED: Titsup flight plan mainframe borks UK air traffic control

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Re: MP

Well only a small proportion of them will ave voted for the minister in question, and if he has a safe seat even that wouldn't matter

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Re: User submissions need pre-check

>It's just they're heading to somewhere different to where they said they would.

>How do you fix that in your submission systems ?

Lasers (flying sharks optional)

This week it rained in San Francisco and the power immediately blew out. Your tech utopia

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Come to Vancouver

It rains everyday so we are used to it and can cope (although in true "British" Columbia style it grinds to a halt with 1/4" of snow)

Rents are only slightly outrageous, the secret is to build high rises at transit stations and in the downtown core, although house price are eye-watering to anyone not from London.

Lots of smart people, the city is majority ethnic groups that stereo-typically do well in school, and the country is prepared to let more skilled workers in. Best scenery in North America and food that is the natural result of taking everything UKIP hate and putting them in one city.

Only drawback is that the pay is 1/2 that of silicon valley because everyone wants to live here and Canadians are too polite to ask for a raise.

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

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Re: Mobile

He was promising to make a site which responds in 5mins - shouldn't be difficult to acheive that whatever your skill level.

( probably with a mixture of perl,Access-VB and ftp-ing changed pages to a server on each request )

GCHQ, police to team up to hunt down child abuse on the darknet

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Re: Can't be too careful

I think you are worrying unnecessarily.

if you are taking pictures in public, at least in London, you are obliviously a terrorist and will be dealt with by an armed response unit - or possibly an air strike.

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Re: Can't be too careful

I cycle to work everyday and I have ignored a crying kid who fell off their bike for the same reason.

If they were crying I assume they were breathing - if they had been completely still I might have stopped. It's become one of the rules of modern life in the UK - you don't talk to the police + you cross the road if you see a young child alone.

Glad I left.

Review mass-snoop laws regularly, says RIPA daddy Blunkett

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Re: Is David Blunkett a commentard?

But all the upvotes were by his giude dog - which is quite tricky if you only have paws

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Re: Oh dear

>It's not like terrorism is a new thing, and we handled it perfectly well in the '70s and '80s when the IRA were blowing things up, without any of these new laws.

Although we did have laws allowing us to round up and intern people without charge or trail based on their ethnicity.

We also took the same uncharged presumed-innocent people up in helicopters, put hoods over their heads and threw them out. They were only a few feet off the ground so it was classsified as "enhanced questioning" rather than torture by the inquiry, although the eu and Irish govts disagree.

'I don't NEED to pay' to watch football, thunders EU digi-czar

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It's also because the BBC doesn't make programs it buys them.

I make pop-idol-bake-off-challenge-in-the-attic-on-ice and I offer ti to the BBC for X pounds and Canada for $Y and Australia for $Z - if the BBC says it is going to charge people in Australia and Canada to watch it on iPlayer then I'm going to charge the BBC X+Y+Z to make up for my lost revenue.

But it does get silly - I can't download an episode of some 30year old radio comedy because there is a bit of music in the background that the BBC don't have international rights to - or they don't want to spend a year of lawyers and 1000s to find out who owns it, played on it, arranged it, etc etc

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Re: Oh, you mean

The TV company wants it to be a common market when it comes to basing its head office in Ireland or declaring VAT in Luxemburg but wants to charge different customers in different Eu countries.

Yes, Obama has got some things wrong on the internet. But so has the GOP

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Amazon will start lobbying for online taxes

Imagine if every little craft shoppe with a web store HAD to deal with 9600 tax codes and submit payments - the only peoplw who could afford to build the system would be Amazon/Ebay.

So they would have a monopoly on online commerce.

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Re: Common sense

It's not trivial even for a bricks and mortar store.

Not only is there a different tax rate for each state/city/town/municiplailty - different things are taxed.

Imagine if every hamlet in europe had totally different VATregs on what was a cookie vs a cake.

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Re: Common sense

So the same should happen for bricks and mortar stores.

When I buy petrol the transaction could be with Shell Holdings in the Dutch Antilles and so I don't pay any local sales or environmental taxes. just ask Google how it works.

A nation of CODERS? Yes, says UK.gov, and have some cash to do it

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Funny how the standard policy under 30years of tory+labour governments (pre Blair) is now a fringe party policy

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Re: Very poor rhetoric

Success in the modern world comes from going to Eton and knowing lots of people in government, the law and at the top of big companies who can help an old friend.

Or is that just the UK ?

Home Wi-Fi security's just as good as '90s PC security! Wait, what?

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Re: MAC address whitelist filter

But somewhat pointless if the router handed out by the millions by your cable co can be hacked by a simple buffer overflow on the public side anyway.

Which country has 2nd largest social welfare system in the world?

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Or claiming the govt funded Space shuttle as public transport.

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For profit isn't necessarily inefficient and government isn't necessarily cheaper.

Here car insurance is a govt monopoly - everybody pays the same irrespective of what car you drive or how old you are. The only weighting is years of no-claims.

The result is that with max no-claims I pay >$1500 vs <$300 in the UK. Partly this subsidizes 17year olds being given Ferraris on their birthday but mostly it subsidizes the large "transfer payments" the government makes from the coffers of the insurance corporation to the treasury.

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Re: But the elephant in the room...

One claim was that if the US introduced free-at-point health care for everyone as in the NHS or Canada it would actually save money - because it covers so much of the healthcare anyway but does it at $50/aspirin hospital rates.

There was a bill to allow the VA and DoD to act together and use their buying power to force down the price of drugs they buy as you might do in a free market capitalist country. But it was blocked, seems the army don't pay as many lobbyists as the drug companies.

So this Saudi Prince calls and asks why he can't watch movies ...

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A long way away and a long way down

Worked for a company making environmental monitoring.

We had a call from a mine in Canada that needed a blast effects monitor urgently - so urgently they needed the manual scanning and emailing so they could learn to use it in advance.n

Got a call at 2 in the morning.

>It won't turn on.

Did you charge the battery for 24 hours like it says in the manual (we can't ship the internal battery charged)?

>No as soon as it arrived we took it underground to use.

Try connecting the charger it should run anyway.

> No there is no power - I need you to fix it now. We need to blast in the next hour.

So you are 5000 miles away, a mile underground, no power and the battery isn't charged - exactly what do you expect me to do ?

....

You don't have to be a genius to tap into Albert Einstein's BRAIN

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Re: "Digitised" in a manner of speaking

Original digital copies would be better. You could turn on track-changes and see E̶=̶m̶c̶4̶ ̶E̶=̶m̶c̶3̶ E=mc2

How HAPPY am I on a scale of 1 to 10? Where do I click PISSED OFF?

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Re: Even stupider security

And you might hijack the building and crash it into an airliner

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Re: Although a fairly accurate and amusing portrayal of LHR security...

As long as she turned it off for takeoff and landing you are fine

'Why do Register readers get so frothy-mouthed?' Thus started WW3

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Re: Out of the mouth of babes and newbies ........

I hope they are - it would be really frightening to think we were ruled by a bunch who acted like that normally

VCs say Uber is worth $41bn... but don't worry, we're not in a bubble

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Joke

Re: It probably IS worth $41B

But their real value is in being a totally new disruptive technology that demonstrates how somebody with a smart phone app and a bit of javascript can totally break the monopoly of a $40Bn industry

Analyst calls it: we've got a software-defined networking BUBBLE

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Analyst reports

That you should stick to products by the large well known vendors who buy analysts reports and stay away from commodity suppliers who don't

Magnifico! Galileo satellite nudged back into correct orbit

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Re: shorter life?

Your entire civil aviation, maritime transport, emergency services, road pricing, traffic management relies on a system which a semi-friendly country can turn off the next time you don't allow GM foods or hormone dosed meat into the eu ?

Or if you decline the opportunity to take part in their latest war then can not only call you cheese-eating surrender monkeys - but also shut down your transport infrastructure.

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Whose boosters?

>French launch company Arianspace admitted that its boosters were at fault.

I thought the launch had used a Russian rocket launched from Ariane's site?

The next launches will use proper French (well european) rockets

UK slaps 25 per cent 'Google Tax' on tech multinationals

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Re: Pull the other one..it's got bells on

Schemes which are solely designed to reduce tax - like a certain software company charging itself 100quid/copy for the rights to the name which is held by a Cayman island company - are illegal.

So if a government was prepared to stand upto a business it might decide that a swiss subsidiary charging 2.50 for 25p worth of beans might just be evasion in the same way as Jimmy Carr being paid in interest free loans

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Re: I'm confused...

>"costs paid to any company in the same legal group (ie. parent company, company owned by the same > parent company, subsidiary etc...) do not count as costs for taxation purposes in the UK",

Might make it tricky to sell petrol if you can't count the cost of the oil and refining and have to pay 25% of the price at the pump along with the other 75% petrol tax

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VAT is a tax on luxuries, like clothing - you can't tax an essential like advertising.

Feds dig up law from 1789 to demand Apple, Google decrypt smartphones, slabs

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Re: Confused

That's because there is a a lot of case law about safe makers and safe owners being forced to help open a safe for the police.

There is even more case law preventing courts demanding people admit what they meant by some writing's hidden meaning.

The feds are being careful to phrase this in terms of "it's just unlocking a safe" rather than George Washington being made to read all his private correspondence out to the British.

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Re: Zounds! I envisage a threat to public order!!

> not even Congress has been able to get around someone answering, "I plea the Fifth."

Although the "put a bag over your head and a secret flight to a secret prison in Syria then attach electrodes to you" policy was a sort of way of getting around it.

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Re: "necessary or appropriate"

Because "All possible assistance" could include requiring Apple to send a copy of your key to Langley. After all you don't want to be aiding terrorism/drug smuggling/child porn/stepping on the cracks in the pavement - do you?

And of course once fitted the feature will be available to other partners, like the police, IRS, INS etc. then other governments are going to want it. Hey Apple, want to sell in China/Russia/South America - well we want access to the same keys.

Author fined $500k in first US spyware conviction

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Selling to an FBI agent....

Idiot - if he sold it to Iran or Syria he would have got export credit guarantees and a Queen's award for export.

Under the Iron Sea: YES, tech and science could SAVE the planet

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A plan with no obvious drawbacks

Changing the ecosystem of millions of cubic miles of seawater will no have no unexpected side effects - like say toxic algea blooms migrating to kill the fishing crop of a whole continent - because sudden giant man-made changes to ecosystems have always worked well.

Then of course it also means we can up our CO2 production because now we have a solution. If this can absorb 2x Britain's usage then Britain can obviously double its CO2 output, and since the solution isn't just Britain's - so can every other country in europe. And as this is in the Pacific then China and the USA can both increase their use of coal as well.

Fortunately this will be decided by economics - one group who are experts in the accurate long term prediction of complex systems and spotting unforseen side-effects.

Sharing Economy sharks need love, cuddles and SUBSIDIES – UK.gov

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If their subsidies are ended

Will we see a national strike of imagineering consultants?

Will there be benefits all over South Yorkshire to support the strikers?

Will we see police batton charges outside silicon Roundabout coffee shops?

Will police stop cars containing people with rimless glasses and goatees.

Blade Runner sequel might actually be good. Harrison Ford is in it

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Re: weighing the options...

The first film was based on a book which was based on a deep philosophical question by a great author.

This film is based on a tax demand to a studio exec

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That's the big reveal at the end.

The replicants are all open source so it doesn't matter if the Tyrrel corporation "end of life's" them - people can just fork the project and keep the old ones running.

Universal Credit CRISIS: Up to £200m in IT spend WASTED – NAO

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Re: Abolish the NAO.

But it doesn't.

No government minister, supplier or consultant ever thinks - I better not fuck up this IT project because I will face the terrible spectre of the NAO.

The reports aren't a surprise to anyone - even the few at the guardian and PrivateEye who read them

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Abolish the NAO.

Why spend money on a government department whose only job is to point out the obvious fact that your last massive IT project was a colossal waste of money ?

Everybody knows it will be a colossal waste of money as soon as it's announced - so why employ expensive specialists to tell you afterwards?

UK.gov biz dept: Youth apprentice? Get a degree while you're hired

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Re: Not good for the other students

There won't be anybody on the course not on the scheme.

Certain universities will be quick to "customise" degrees to fit this funding in partnership with specific employers. Some of this will be good - you will have engineering degrees specifically on fixing RR engines at whatever Derby Tech is called today.

But mostly you will have degrees in web design in partnership with some temp agency who farms the students out to different clients for a few months.

The real problem will be who is guaranteeing the scheme? 2 years into your sandwich the government changes the tax rules or the company decides to make cuts and you are suddenly hit with tuition fees for the remainder of the course or the uni just scraps it because it doesn't have a partner.

ASA raps vloggers over undisclosed ads

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And this will apply to print

The new "StarTrek 17 - the search for clean socks" is wonderful says the sun.

The sun is owned by global-megacorp who also own massive-megacorp who are a wholly owned subsiduary of inter-galactic giant-megacorp who made the movie.

EU-Canada airline passenger data-sharing is not a done deal

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Re: You can't help those...

And how would giving a foreign government a copy of your credit card number help with that ?

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>man was taken advantage of by some very bad people. He was twisted into a weapon and set loose to do indiscriminate damage.

So doubly ironic that he did at a memorial to the First World War

MI6 oversight report on Lee Rigby murder: US web giants offer 'safe haven for terrorism'

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"950 deaths took place in police custody, 317 following a police pursuit, 112 were the result of a road traffic incident involving a police vehicle and 54 were police shootings."

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Ban Father Ted

In 2009 2 soldiers were shot by religious extremists while collecting a pizza.

The same religious extremist group that MI5 and it's predecessors had been watching for 100 years

It's highly likely that these religious extremists watched Father Ted

We have a winner! Fresh Linux Mint 17.1 – hands down the best

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Re: Mate is a step in the right direction...

In the direction of a gui with a zero letter acronym

'Regin': The 'New Stuxnet' spook-grade SOFTWARE WEAPON described

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Re: Belgium

Probably the US then - they were targeting France and missed

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