Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Pothole campaigner sprays Surrey street with phallic paintings

But they do provide excellent cheap housing for an entire family

Dodgy software will bork America's F-35 fighters until at least 2019

Re: Ouch!

>Why oh why we didn't build nuclear carriers

We, or at least the companies building them, intend to make lots of profit from selling copies of the carriers to TPL3WD after we, the tax payers, have paid for all the design cost

Making them nuke powered limits the range of tin-pot-little-3rd-world-dictators you can sell them to.

Re: WaitWhat? Affordability challenges?

It was a brilliant plan.

We need a high performance interceptor.

Which also needs to be stealthy

But able to carry lots of external ordnance as a bomber

To be cheaper than the planes it is replacing

And be strong enough to land on a carrier

And have VTOL

And have lots of revolutionary, never tried before, high tech

But have nothing secret so we can sell it to lots of "allies" and be compatible with all their systems.

And it has to have a human pilot because no way are we getting approval for anything this expensive unless we can sell the TopGun/Battle of Britain bit.

But it needs to have an in-service life of 40years so we can make the cost look good.

And they'll be the only ones that can afford the rent

Re: A boondoggle through and through and now ejection seats are also a problem?

The seats are fine. That you have to eject with a desktop computer and a couple of 17" CRT balanced on top of your head is an issue.

It is a concern though, how will the Royal Navy deal with the threat of attacks by Al Queda submarines in Afghanistan

HP Inc won't shake you down for ink in 3D printer era, says CTO

Re: When ever any Exec/VP/C?? ...

Disruptive and change the industry = Like a wrecked oil tanker does for tourist beaches

Re: Great, but I don't trust them

But doing all that would require engineering effort. HP got rid of all its engineers about 4 strategic re-orgs ago.

Clear April 12: Windows, Samba to splat curious 'crucial' Badlock bug

Re: OSX?

If Microsoft is also working on a fix it is presumably a flaw in the protocol rather than the SAMBA implementation

It's the end of the world....

>Engineers at Microsoft and the Samba Team are working together

It wasn't too long ago that Microsoft were bragging about having an entire team dedicated to frustrating samba. And Andrew Tridgell replying that he thought it was fun and a challenge

Hands on with the BBC's Micro:Bit computer. You know, for kids

Re: Sugar Free Raspberry Pi

Anyone remember this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versatile_Laboratory_Aid

We had one hooked up to a BBC micro in college to plot a waveform - so we had a DSO in schools in the late 80s. I only had an analog storage scope with a polaroid camera doing a PhD 10 years later !

Re: Bah!

Design your own amplifier did you? Or just slavishly copy the layout in the magazines.

Mashing up other people's work to create something different, and possibly better, is what we call progress.

The nice thing about this otherwise fairly useless gadget is that you DO write a program from scratch. Yes you drag and drop rather than typing linker commands in the console but you understand algorithms, functions, things happening as a response to other things. Much better than being sat down in front of an IDE and told to copy 100 lines of initialization boiler plate without understanding it, and without getting a single character wrong, just so you can get a blank window to appear.

Re: I was a bit skeptical at first

Except you need a Windows PC to program this

Re: ...there are only 583,212 Year Sevens in the UK, why make a million?

So one set of deliverables that the education dept manage to make on time every year !

Iain Duncan Smith's Universal Credit: A timeline

Re: Interesting coincidence with him resigning right when the docs were to be published

Or he generated a few 1000 low paid installer jobs and a few 1M/year bonuses for chums at the usual suspects.

Re: A word to chill those who lived through the 80s (and 70s)

Based on an airframe that was taken over by the government when it disastrously failed as a commercial project so it didn't look like a complete failure.

Re: IDS finds ejector button. Presses PIP.

IDS is a secret militant agent. Recruited at Cambridge by shadowy agents of the TUC to undermine the establishment from within and bring about the Bennite cause of exit from europe.

Now that would make a movie.

Re: existing system and new idea

A whole sheep?

Bloody scroungers, not prepared to do a decent months work for a decent days pay.

Re: existing system and new idea

I think he had a simpler system in mind where you work 3days a week on the lord of the manor's lands and once every lamas day you get given half a sheep - if only we were free of this european meddling.

'Contractual barriers' behind geo-blocking could breach EU rules

Re: I'm not selling abroad vs. my suppliers don't let me sell abroad

Because the same comp[nay that claims it has the right to licence a work for different rates in 20 different Eu countries - then also demands that it can register for tax in one of them and operate in all the others.

You don't offer flat deals across the Eu? Fine - but every Eu country gets to charge whatever import tarrifs it wants on your business.

Hand in glove: Google and the US State Dept

Re: Google Play Services

But you are in a public place and chose to have a phoen - so it's really no different from having a team of special branch following you around 24x7 noting where you go, who you talk to and what news you read.

And who could possibly object to that ?

Re: Google Play Services

So you trust that Google's secret spy service is stopped because Google's task manager says so?

In other news North Korean state TV announces that .....

I always assumed that the State Department, CIA and NSA were secret contractors of Google

Smartphones help medicos, but security is a problem

Re: other options

The FDA has (amazingly) greatly simplified the process - if you are using a regular app for its regular purpose, but simply in a medical setting, it generally doesn't need approval.

This was after it was highlighted that using your iPhone's flashlight to look into a patients eyes would require so many levels of medical device approval of the iPhone it would cost $10K to build.

The pulling of so many medical apps was because they made snake-oil claims to diagnose/treat you. You are allowed to play Tetris in hospital, you aren't allowed to claim that it will train your brain without some clinical evidence.

Re: Sending medical images via MMS

But it will require the specialist to return to their office to check the image on their secure terminal, or rather range of terminals since every hospital, insurer, ct scanner manufacturer etc will have their own incompatible system. This will result in a $500 bill for looking at your image.

So you will first have to fill out 20pages of forms approving this, and the doctor will have to get approval for the consult from 3 insurance companies (if in the US) or from a dozen hospital managers, budget committees and PPI consultants if in the UK/Oz/Canada.

In the meantime they will just email a picture of the wound to a colleague's phone

Ben Nevis embiggened by a metre

The OS use WGS84? I think not !

The Airy spheroid was good enough for our great-great-grandfathers...

SNP

If Scotland had got independence from the fascist English oppressors it would now officially be at least twice as high

Apple engineers rebel, refuse to work on iOS amid FBI iPhone battle

Re: Source Code

They can simply force Apple to hand over their code signing key, then the Feds can outsource the actual coding to anybody.

Re: It isn't clear whether the 5S are newer are vulnerable to FBiOS

But you can update the keyboard driver to copy all password keystrokes to FBI headquarters

But the iPhone 6 and 7 aren't invulnerable from this setting precedent which says the feds can use a 200 year old law to force Apple to "do anything it takes to enable access" = fit a backdoor

Re: The end of Apple

The US forces Apple, Apple's share price drops.

Google / Facebook / Amazon's price also drops because they will be next.

All of the SP500 growth is these 4 companies - so you trigger another "Great Financial Crash" - except this time you caused it.

Then you try and run for president in November .

Web ads are reading my keystrokes and I can’t even spel propperlie

I'm probably on a watchlist

Work for a medical device company and had to buy a bunch of stuff for a US trade show on Amazon.com - to be delivered to my hotel. Latex Gloves, surgical masks, cable ties, duct tape, garbage bags, a 110-220V transformer....

I'm tempted to add copies of "Silence of the Lambs" and Manhunter and a few serial killer biogs just to freak out any FBI algorithms.

Brits seek rousing name for polar research vessel

Re: In the spirit of Iain M. Banks

Surely the ship should be allowed to choose its own name ?

You just need a Google AI mind installed

Rights warriors slam US-Europe pact on personal info slurp, urge reforms

Re: Meh...

AC it isn't about protecting you from American 3letter agencies.

Even without data being offshored your own national spy agency will happily hand over the data to them. It's about the US having no rules about what companies can do with the data.

NHS medical records and prescription data get sent to a US company that aggregates them and decides that you are a poor health risk, they sell this info to your bank who decide that your life insurance or mortgage rates are going up.

Your alcohol purchases and vehicle use data from ANPR cameras get sold to your car insurance company. In the Eu they cant use this personal data - but they can ask now for advice on your premium from their US office.

FAA's 'drone smash risk to aircraft' is plane crazy

Re: Everybody knows

It's worth noting that 30,000 Americans kill themselves on the roads every year.

But the "set radius of an airport" can get a little silly.

Here they included the harbour (because seaplanes fly out of it), downtown (helipads) and hospitals as airports - and the rule is no drones within 5mi of an "airport" so drones are banned for 2million people in the city. And the rules don't specify what is a drone.

If it is better to be safe than sorry, I recommend a ban on guns within 5mi of the same "airports"

UK draft super-spy law 'not fit for purpose,' say 100s of senior lawyers

Re: 200 Lawyers!!

Tell them you fully support their employee monitoring and you will yourself be constantly videoing your time on site, their health and safety procedures, their staff behaviour and will be insisting on an audit of their manager's expenses and the company's VAT and income tax returns.

Steve Jobs, MS Office, Israel, and a basic feature Microsoft took 13 years to install

They used Windows. That was the point of the article. You sell Office on Mac to show that Windows+Office isn't a monopoly - but don't support the feature that makes it usable.

It's like when Formula 1 engine makers had to supply their engines to another team so the races were "competitive", so Ferrari only sold it's engine to the Scunthorpe Morris dancers factory team.

Cops hacked the Police National Computer to unlawfully retain suspects' biometric data

Re: Graham Marsden "no prosecution will be mounted by the CPS"

Pah, tory wimps. I see your Ms May and raise Darth Blunkett

Re: That's completely wrong.

But the trial judge gets to decide what is admissible.

And since many judges are really on the side of the criminal and deeply distrust the police - they regularly throw out corrupt evidence.

Polite, helpful? Stop it at once in the name of security

Did that once at HP

Visited their lab in Bristol. I was late and busting for a pee - didn't see the reception desk so followed somebody through the big sliding glass doors toward the cafe I spied in the distance.

5min and a bit relieved later I tried to find reception to sign in.

It was the other side of the big glass doors

Which wouldn't open from the inside (?)

And which reception wouldn't open to let me out

So had to wait for security to come and ask what I was doing in there.

Fortunately their ideas about how to do cloud was so laughably incompetent (you FTP your data to a server ad then telnet in to run a java app) that I never had to go back.

Rocky times for startups: Mutual funds devalue and VCs turn off money hose

Re: Like Anything else

The unicorn+VC model worked because one VC putting in money raised the value as far as all the other VCs were concerned - the actual business was irrelevant.

They also had preference shares which guaranteed their profits - so long as they weren't the last one putting money in. I believe the system was described by the notable economist Ponzi.

What part of "venture" don't you understand

"when you don't know what something's worth, you don't know whether you are getting a good deal or a bad deal,"

Isn't that what you are paid the big $$$ for ?

If you only want to put money in something where you know what it will be worth - buy 20year treasury bonds. But good luck charging 20% fees for that.

What's next? FBI telling us to turn iPhones into pocket spy bugs? It'll happen, says Apple exec

Re: America is not the world

That's exactly their problem.

As soon as America wins this the Chinese, Russians, UK, Iranians and Belgians are going to demand the same.

Apple could make a different version for each country and give them unique keys - but if the US is going to demand keys to any phone then the same keys will work for the Belgians. So the ruling will give those Belgians access to the phone of every American politician.

We will be eating our Freedom Fries with mayonaise by christmas.

Re: I totally agree with Mr. Cue here

>I hope you're being sarcastic here

Sarcasm, on a website for British sysadmins ? Never !

Re: I totally agree with Mr. Cue here

America is a modern freedom loving democracy with a constitution and the rule of law. They aren't going to use anti-terrorism laws to crack down on journalists or people fibbing about where their kids should go to school like some tin-pot 3rd world monarchy.

IBM to erase 14,000 people from the payroll – Wall St analyst

Re: Stop me if I'm wrong

>How can IBM management not spot the obvious?

Cut staff - share price goes up - bonus based on share price, not increasing losses. = Obvious