Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Massachusetts shoots down car dealers' Tesla-busting sueball

Re: The question is...

Originally they didn't want to- it wasn't easy for makers in the 1920s to finance and manage dealerships in 10,000s towns and cities across America

The rules Tesla was accused of breaking was to stop a manufacturer letting a local dealer invest and build up a market, get a good reputation for service for the brand and then have the manufacturer move into the town and undercut them.

It would be as if Microsoft was allowed to let small software companies invent new products,wait to see which became popular and then sweep in bundling their own free knock off.

Weekend reads: A new Poirot, drug-fuelled Champagne Supernovas and The Establishment

Re: So...

No it will be set on a bus, which is nuclear powered with a deadly virus onboard and will explode if it goes below 55mph and the driver has food poisoning so a passenger with a past has to take over the controls.....

Brit telcos warn Scots that voting Yes could lead to hefty bills

Re: Obligations

They can just re-nationalise it, as they could with the Royal mail

Get your Indian Landfill Android One handsets - they're only SIXTY QUID

Re: Android One...

Minimum spec.

The trouble with Netbooks was a certain monopolist requiring a maximum spec.

Boffins say they've got Lithium batteries the wrong way around

Re: "Advanced Light Source Synchrotron."

I think those are Advanced Light Source Syncopation

Evil mining firms? Please. Obeying profit motive is KINDER to the environment

Re: People are a Big Problem in Mining

The reason the new Pilbara operation is practical is that they built an almost totally robotic mine, operated form 1500km away, even the trains to haul it to the coast are automated.

Instead of moving the ore to the smelters, the next step is to simply move the smelters to the ore. If the smelter is also automated it makes more sense for it to be in the middle of Australia than in the middle of Sheffield. It's obviously cheaper to move 1ton of finished iron or steel than 5tons of ore or 20tons of rock. Then you move the automated factories to be next to the steel works.

It makes a lot more economic and environmental sense to have a train appearing out of the middle of the outback bearing Holdens than crushed rock.

Super Cali goes ballistic, Uber Pool is bogus: Ride sharing biz is illegal in the state, says regulator

Re: It wasn't supposed to be this way

Here is the efficient capital market of the USA we are installing an oyster card type system and security gates to replace the flat rate tickets with no barriers + occasional ticket inspectors (basically honour system)

It will cost $30M/year to operate (it's being sub-contrcted to the local G4 subsidiary so there will be no surpises) but will save an estimate $3M in fare dodging.

Re: It wasn't supposed to be this way

People still get killed in car/train coliisions, mostly due to the word Stop being so close to a Californian word meaning, "drive straight through if there are no cops around". It was recently proposed that the soln to this was for cars to have the right of way at crossings and have the train stop for them!

The redline was an even murkier story than in who Framed roger Rabbit. A property developer specialised in building quick and cheap on distant agricultural land. He promised a bus/trolley service to get building permits and attract buyers. As soon as the houses were sold the service would be discontinued and moved to the next development. Since the builders wanted to work cheap and they new the lines would be torn up again in a year they had an "interesting" attitude to the engineering aspects of building a rapid transit system.

Re: It wasn't supposed to be this way

>Car sharing for profit without a licence is illegal.

This case goes one further, it's car sharing with individual passengers paying different fares to go to different stops. That is known as a bus.

It's like my plan for people who have never met to get together at an airport and share a ride in a plane, each paying a bit toward the trip. Smoking is allowed, as are electronic devices and you can take all the liquids, sharp knives and guns you want without having to do all the TSA stuff because we aren't an airline we are just ride sharing a plane.

Drag queens: Oh, don't be so bitchy, Facebook! Let us use our stage names

Re: unfair, hurtful, discriminatory and an invasion of privacy

Not necessarily true in the US of A

If their fake name software rejected a disproportionate number of African-American names or Arabic or Chinese as fake they could be in trouble. Even if it wasn't deliberate.

>If you don't like the policies don't use the service.

Try running a bus company in the USA with a policy of "all black passengers must sit at the back" - and see how far you get,

Re: Enforcement

Money.

It's hard to go to an advertiser and say you have an audience of millions, with names like ButtFace97 and SharonZaSlag

But if you can tie their facebook stuff to their Amazon purchases, their credit card and medical records you can target slag products specifically at Sharon

Apple Pay is a tidy payday for Apple with 0.15% cut, sources say

Re: what's the date today?

>Not 'everybody else on the internet' is making the ludicrous claims that you hold dear to your heart.

Everybody else on the internet does think that knowing someones purchasing patterns in real time is worth money, especially if the persons are young, rich and fashion conscious iPhone owners.

iPhones may have some features better than their competitors and some worse, but they are no longer the only game in town that they were when the iPhone originally launched. They might soon be making more money by being a credit card processor than a phone maker.

Re: what's the date today?

>there's nothing in it for them to track the kind of purchases that you make.

So everybody else on the internet is wrong?

>That's not their business model.

Their current business model is to sell phones that are 2 years behind Samsung's offerings to people who already have a previous model of the same phone. It's possible that they might want to start looking for a new business model

Italy's High Court orders HP to refund punter for putting Windows on PC

Re: I think the real issue here was the EULA thing

>just complete stupidity by HP?.. You decide.

Tricky, with HP since the level of stupidity and greed are both infinite

Net neutrality fans' joy as '2.3 million email' flood hits US Congress

Re: Unfortunately ...

>Capitol Hill ignores the electronic world.

I think they accept campaign contributions by electronic transfer now.

Its very inconvenient for cable companies to stuff millions of $ in brown envelopes

Scottish independence: Will it really TEAR the HEART from IT firms?

Re: Get out of that ridiculous British welfare state mentality!

Yes an independent Scotland led by arch-thatcherite Alex Salmond will be free of the crypto-communism of David Cameron's tories and more business friendly.

Re: Sod the IT arguments

So by that logic Germany shouldn't have been allowed a referendum on reunification unless the USSR allowed them to have one?

Re: @IaS

Except that the sole point of the euro was to allow southern europe to borrow at low interests rates to buy German exports. A southern euro with 20% interests rates and a bunch of northern euros who all already own all the Bosch dishwashers and BMWs they are going to need doesn't really help the Germans.

Re: Registered office.

If that worked why didn't the government take advantage of it during the crash?

It could have dropped an elite unit of SAS accountant Ninja into Frankfurt by black helicopter, have them nail up a brass plaque with "Northern Rock" written on it and let the Bundesbank pay for everything.

Or should it be more worried that Scottish sympathizers could continue working undercover in the heart of Cheltenham as moles (or possibly Salmonds) ?

Apple's Mr Havisham: Tim Cook says dead Steve Jobs' office has remained untouched

Re: Gut feeling?

Or it will be packed in a case and hidden at the back of a giant warehouse.

Where top people can study it, top people.....

Slough isn't fit for humans now, says Amazon. We're going to Shoreditch

Re: Is it safe...

What Boris ? Yes but don't use it three times or it may summon him.

Re: moving for tax reasons?

Careful comments like that can get you into trouble ......

Sir, we have reports of somebody in London Englandshire mentioning "jellied eels" on their phone - could be a terrorist code word.

Closer to their customers

Presumably more of Amazon's customers and authors live in London than live in Slough.

It's obviously important for a company to be close to both its suppliers and customers.

The Apple Watch and CROTCH RUBBING. How are they related?

Re: Pebble's nearly there

>I want a car that can take me to the door, then find a parking space by itself, and come back to pick me up when I summon it.

Also known as a teenager with a parent ?

Oh noes, fanbois! iPhone 6 Plus shipments 'DELAYED' in the UK

Re: APPLE STORE LIVERPOOL

They would also get to sample the fast and efficient phone recycling service offered by the local scallies outside the Apple store.

Re: £699

Maybe not necessary - but it is a sacred duty for a follower of the righteous path of the black polo neck

Let XKCD's Randall Munroe satisfy your curiosity in this excerpt from his book, What If

Re: It's excellent

It is excellent - and I have a hardback on order, just as I have the paperback of the cartoons.

But exactly what is the point of an electronic version of a set of blog posts that are already online?

Other than Randall's tip jar - why collect a bunch of bits that are freely available online, zip them and charge $15?

Cops apologise for leaving EXPLOSIVES in suitcase at airport

Re: the public was never in danger

I doubt there was a bundle of sticks of dynamite in the suitcase.

There may have been a few grams of explosive in one pocket of the suitcase.

Do you check all the pockets of a backpack everytime you fly?

Profitless Twitter: We're looking to raise $1.5... yes, billion

Re: Wow

Exactly the same statements were made about television - with the additional problem that TV was very expensive and would only ever be available to a small number of users.

I wonder if anyone ever made any money out of that TV stuff ?

Found inside ISIS terror chap's laptop: CELINE DION tunes

Re: Celine Dion ...

So is it known as doing a Connery or doing a Dion ?

Re: Proof of the gateway theory

Or Radical Islam is a gateway to fundamentalism Celine Dion ?

Smart meters in UK homes will only save folks a lousy £26 a year

RE: So, why the hemming and hawing?

Because the purpose is to allow the electricity board to charge more - and then charge you £200 to fit the means to charge you more.

They installed them here to allow for "dynamic market rate adjustment" - so if its a hot day and there is a big demand for AC in the city they can just put up the price of your power for a few hours. Or if the market rate means that your local windpower could be sold as "green tariff" power in Germany for more than you are currently paying they can increase your price to the market rate.

Heavy VPN users are probably pirates, says BBC

Re: Nail on head.

Except they signed such piss poor deals with the production companies that they can't offer the shows to foreigners

- Obviously the BBC had no real negotiating power, merely controlling access to the airwaves, to be able to negotiate with such hard nosed titans of industry as the makers of "cash in the attic"

Re: BBC Worldwide

>"black people in baggy clothes are probably shoplifters?"

Or saying BBC employees are probably pedophiles

BONEHEAD FANBOIS encamp outside Apple Stores

Re: The funny thing

I think Bayer saw something like this response to their Heroin(tm) product

Re: What is sad about this?

Perhaps that is the new product. The iKiosk comes with a 42" screen, 7.1 speaker surround, indefinite battery life with permanent charging and gigabit networking.

Admittedly it is a little less portable than previous products - but it does have rounded corners

Re: Hang on,

>People who have been paid to take a queue take pay from other people to leave it ?

>Isn't that the very definition of mercenary ?

Strangely enough it is the very definition of GDP - doing this presumably helps the economy

Re: not a Delivery?

Magic fairy dust needs renewing every night - I thought everyone knew that

Snowden shouldn't be extradited to US if he testifies about NSA spying, says Swiss gov

Re: Couple of words about the Swiss

You can trust the Swiss to act in the best interests of the Swiss.

If Snowden's revelations mean that Eu customers don't trust US hosted cloud services and Eu govts ban US safe harbour provisions then where would you trust as a cloud service hosting county.

Switzerland for example?

Re: direct flight

And Russia could retaliate by banning that country's airlines from flying over Russia.

It's a long way for Air France or Lufthansa to the far east if they have to go west.

Rack-mount 24TB RAID 5 disk array for $5,000. Let's just check the label here. Uh, it's TiVo

Re: needs more tuners

Is there anywhere in the world where you could conceivably have 6 broadcast shows that you would to watch - let alone broadcast simultaneously ?

Square Kilometre Array reveals its 1.6TB-a-day storage and network rigs

> tape is for stuff you never want to have to read again.

Or stuff you want to read in 50years time

Mozilla certification revocation: 107,000 websites sunk by untrusted torpedo

Re: In a few years time ...

It really doesn't matter how many bits you have if Mozilla trusts "honest Achmeds" root certificate as signing the google.com you visted

Reddit wipes clean leaked celeb nudie pics, tells users to zip it

Re: i don't understand

But if you had never heard of any of the celebs (I hadn't) then presumably they have less value than regular porn ?