Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Climate-change skeptic lined up to run NASA in this Trump timeline

Re: Skepticism

I hope he doesn't have a prejudiced opinion on the flat vs round Earth theory. We need to keep an open mind and launch satellites to just collect the data (or crash into the crystal sphere of the heavens)

Why? Most of NASA's funding and work is aeronautics and Earth observation. You should be a meteorologist airline executive not an ex-astronaut

And all commanders-in-chief should be ex-generals

Big Tech fumes over Prez Trump's decision to deport a million kids

Solution

Apple / Google /Facebook / etc build a campus in Mexico.

Same time zone, good comms links and housing 10x cheaper than SF. Then they can freely recruit SE Asians and Europeans - until their USA staff start to ask to move there.

China bans cryptocurrency fundraising schemes

Typical

China bans convoluted financial engineering schemes aimed at fleecing ordinary people in the markets - bunch of communists

Well, whad'ya know? 'No evidence' that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower

Re: Gee, what a surprise!

Wonder if Obama will sue for libel?

On the other hand, to prove damages, Obama would have to claim that people listen to and believe anything that POTUS says

Re: Absence of Evidence

So we have no evidence that Trump didn't kill JFK

Google's Hollywood 'interventions' made on-screen coders cooler

Always happens

Obviously Office Space was funded/written by SAP or IBM - it couldn't have been Oracle or it would have been X-rated for violence and language

Re: Reality?

You haven't worked in Palo Alto have you ?

Re: Hmmmm

The writers of Siliocn Valley are ex-silicon valley engineers, in the same way that the writers of Futurama are real scientists.

Memo to Microsoft: Keeping your promises is probably a good idea

Re: MS-as-usual

Silverlight was a good idea, just implemented horribly.

That's not the point. The point is that you were told by Microsoft that it was the future of Microsoft, you trusted that and invested $$$ in training and implementations on Silverlight.

Then one day they turn round and say ..... and it's gone .....

Big Tech slams Trump on plan to deport kids

Texas storm recovery

Isn't that going to be terribly expensive if all the construction is being done by New England craftsmen when you have got rid of all the immigrant labor?

>Nearly $50 million in the California state budget will go to expanded legal services for illegals

Splutter, that's nearly 1/7 of an F35 - no wonder the country is in such a state !

User thanked IT department for fast new server, but it had never left its box

Re: more relaxed meetings with the students.

We got new heavy wooden doors for the staff offices after a refit, replacing the glass doors.

Then a memo that we weren't allowed to be in a meeting with a student with the door closed.

So all the doors were propped open with fire extinguishers

Followed by a memo that you weren't allowed to borrow fire extinguishers

Then they fitted glass panels to each door - frosted glass

My post-doc ended - but I'm sure they are still working on a solution, probably involving cloud connected cameras

Malware writer offers free trojan to hackers ... with one small drawback

If you can't trust shadowy dark-net purveyors of hacking tools

Who can you trust ?

Deputy AG Rosenstein calls for law to require encryption backdoors

Re: Impossible

Except by the simple method of keeping you in prison indefintely until you reveal the keys and holding you upside down in a tank of water with electrodes on your bits until you remember

China: Cute Hyperloop Elon, now watch how it's really done

Re: This is what happens when all the leaders are engineers

It's what happens when you are allowed to promise anything irrespective of money or technical feasibility. But unlike the home life of our own dear leader, you are allowed to imprison anybody who asks about progress later

When uploading comments to the FCC, you can now include malware

Re: What ? A comment system that allows for uploading anything ?

Uploading is fine.

The problem is that this also lets you download, from an fcc.gov link with https and the nice little green padlock, and then a message asking if you want to trust content from fcc.gov

Couple fires sueball at Amazon over faulty solar eclipse-viewing goggles

Re: Get out the popcorn

If the glasses were brought from a third party vendor are Amazon responsible for any refunds requested?

Your contract was with Amazon, you paid Amazon, you went to Amazon because of their trusted name.

Otherwise every store would have a small print saying that they, Tesco, are merely a marketplace and the real seller is Tesco Trading Bahamas LTD

Re: Get out the popcorn

Should the corner shop run their own tests on a tin of Heinz beans?

If they decided to buy unlabeled cans from a bloke in the pub - yes.

Re: Site for sore eyes.

Just for the sake of argument, has an automobile dealer ever been successfully sued for selling a car with manufacturing defects it had no knowledge of?

But they do handle recalls.

VW can't say that a faulty car is nothing to do with them because they are VW Retail Ltd and are merely reselling a car built by VW Manufacturing GMBH and anyway they aren't talking to you because you are actually a customer of VW Financial Services SA.

(actually BMW did try this and got a mild wrist slap)

UK council fined £70k for leaving vulnerable people's data open to world+dog

Re: Train them

Then you get to a point where everyone's job becomes compliance arse covering.

Little-old-lady (tm) rings up to ask about her heating. Your priority is making sure that you have ticked all the boxes rather than helping her. If you miss asking her the correct 32 digit case number at the correct points during the call you can get fired, if you just hang up you are safe.

Oh, ambassador! You literally are spoiling us: Super-stealthy spyware hits Euro embassy PCs

Re: For Sensitive Stuff

BBC Micro with Wordwise ROM

Re: Conspiracy time

someone called Boris, not just in the Foreign Office, but running the whole ruddy show!

Worse than that - he's an American

Re: Oxford?

I thought Cambridge was where the KGB recruited ?

Conspiracy time

Which north western european nation would most benefit from information obtained about other european countries over the next 20 months?

If you were MI6 would you

a, deliberately make your spy software look Russian to throw off the enemy

b, have spy software so simply super that nobody ever found it

c, not use spy software because it is ungentlemanly

d, have no idea what anyone is talking about because you rely on aged Oxford tutors to recruit all your staff and they haven't moved to fountain pens yet

e, see no need to spy because johnny foreigner will give in to all of Boris's demands anyway

China claims to have turbine-powered drone carrying 200kg payload

Being able to track them, and being able to stop them

The ships will be fitted with the new Boycott cricket ball defense system

The power of advertsising

1939 Germany announced it has a 2000kg rocket powered drone capable of making daily deliveries to London.

The home secretary expressed concern about the security implications and has sent a list of strategic targets in London to a Mr Von Braun to be excluded from the delivery route

How the CIA, Comcast can snoop on your sleep patterns, sex toy usage

Re: Not Surprised

Unless you put extra life batteries in your personal massager, strap your fit-bit to it and put your nest in the freezer.

Dell's flagship XPS13 – a 2-in-1 that may fatally frustrate your fingers

Re: Non-PC company

Thats' the problem with the one's from ebay - many were owned by greengrocer's

I want my iPhone to have a physical HP-IB port

Re: Non-PC company

But you are fine having an ARM cpu in your phone?

Even though they are part owned by the Saudis?

So you fully support their attitude to women, gays, Yemenis???

Mazda and Toyota join forces on Linux-based connected car platform

I was thinking more along the lines of a window like in a limo, rolls up and seals the noise from the rear in the rear.

And then a button that releases knock-out gas ?

Trump-hating Iranian is the new Uber CEO

Re: A win by default?

Well it was that or become White House Press Secretary ....

Re: Nothing wrong with the concept... it's the practice

And if it had been stopped by the normal BMW?

they are driving for commerce - they should have a commercial drivers license

Using a computer for commerce ? Should have a PEng license !

DJI strips out code badness, reveals some GPL odds 'n sods

Re: Banks...

The update is still being got from the store via the app, and hence approved by Apple/Google

Re: Wondering ...

Drones use GPS for navigation

It is possible that powerful GPS jammers in the vicinity of all airports, ports, hospital helipads etc might have unforeseen (or pretty easily forseen) consequences.

ps cell phones cause a large proportion of car accidents and supposedly cause filling stations and aircraft to explode at the slightest use. Perhaps massive GSM jammers could be provided along all roads and the phones destroyed when seen in use

How exactly do you protect it from this?

By submitting precise geographical coordinates of all your secret facilities and critical infrastructure to a Chinese company and have them broadcast this to everyone in the world who subscribed to their updates?

India responds to internet shutdown criticism... by codifying rules to make it legal

Re: Crowd-powered possible?

I'm not sure I want an army of Facebook members coming round to enact cat videos for me.

I would add reg commentators providing porn - but that's not an image you want in your mind

Re: OMG India actually publishes the rules it will use to decide on a shut down.

Fortunately in the case of an emergency the Home Office would issue orders to the post office to cut off the telegraph service and Ms. Rudd would order the confiscation of hashtags

Re: Harming the country's ability to maintain services contracts

How exactly do you protect it from this?

By having the proper close relationships with the ex-politicians on your board which ensures you are a special case

US focuses eyes in the sky as Hurricane Harvey starts to slam into Texas

NOAA conspiracy

NOAA is facing a 20% funding cut, as is NASA, and suddenly there is a major hurricane that only their satellites can predict - wake up sheeple

James Webb Telescope will be infatuated with Europa and Enceladus

The UK is a minor partner of ESA the European space Agency who are part building the telescope instruments, we will probably stay in that because the R&D center is at Harwell and even Canada is a member of ESA. The UK isn't part of Arianespace, the (just about) profit making launcher.

Re: Welcome Overlords

Ironically most of the design elements of the telescope, like the folding mirror, were set by a NASA requirement to launch it on an American rocket. The designs that would require the much larger Ariane were constantly rejected.

Re: Active for five to ten years

The mid IR instruments are cooled by a mechanical fridge, the near IR camera is passively cooled - that's the main reason for putting it so far out from Earth.

The lifetime is set by fuel for the maneuvering thrusters

UK.gov wants quick Brexit deal with EU over private data protections

Re: It is not that hard

But with a free trade deal with the rest of the world means the UK will get cheap America meat and wheat without any tarrif barriers or pesky Eu rules on hormones and GMO. Cheap American fracked oil instead of that expensive North sea stuff and be able to import everything else tax free from China

Prices in the shops should tumble - only slightly slower than the value of the currency and wages

Re: Meanwhile

But with 20,000 warheads on each side we were a lot closer to a software bug, radar fault, mid-air collision or confused junior officer launching one.