Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

BEELION-dollar lasso snaps, NASA mapper blind in one eye

Re: And this is why Science is a waste of money

When did medicine start being science…?

Self-driving cars? Boring. We want self driving, lizard dodging golf carts

Re: Armory

>You would have the first backwards flying golf cart, but not in a good way...

Unless you had 2 equal and opposite gattling guns ....

Also useful in busy traffic

Xiaomi aims to knock Apple off its branch with move into computers

Re: Drivers ?

The big difference is that we had to throw away a scanner and a bunch of printers when windows7 came out. When everybody goes to w10 we assume we are going to have to buy new printers etc.

Still have a couple of XP machines because we have a $25K bit of hardware purchased in 2012 that can only be controlled from 32bit XP

Falcon 9 fireworks display grounds SpaceX

Re: Again?

And the subcontractor was testing loads of cable, then driving the "tested" load around the corner back into the works and testing it again - while shipping untested cable to the site.

So, was it really the Commies that caused the early 20th Century inequality collapse?

But without unions, taxes, controls...

We would have had the same technologically led massive economic growth but it would have been concentrated in the hands of a few lucky owners of a few massive corporations.

Imagine if half the country's GDP and the only growth industries were owned and controlled by a handful of people who when they can't control government can simply ignore them.

Met Police to slash hundreds of IT jobs, hands £216m outsourcing gig to Steria

Re: Is it all bad news, look you?

And there is no job locally for the other half, and when you are made redundant in the next round of savings - what is there locally ?

Nobody lives in London, or New York, because they like it - it's because you can walk out of one job and into another without the whole family having to move across the country

Ashley Madison hacked potential competitor, leaked emails suggest

Re: Built on evidence obtained illegally? Yes, good luck with that.

The US does at least have laws requiring the NSA to be legal.

In the UK there is no general ban on evidence obtained illegally.

Re: Pen test

It's only a problem if the police obtain the evidence illegally.

Somebody could trespass and report seeing a murder - the police wouldn't ignore the call because the person was on the property illegally.

Glaring flaw in Apple car hype-gasm: The iGiant likes to make money

Re: Who cares how profitable the auto industry is?

eg, the new mini, the new beetle, the new fiat 500, pretty much anything from RangeRover

Re: So not going to happen.........??

> I'm more curious about whats under the bonnet- than on the dashboard...........

Then you would represent a very small minority of <25year olds

The level of dissinterest in cars for young, educated, well-off, city dwellers is amazing.

BYOD? More like CYOD as companies still set the parameters

Re: Why?

>Why do people insist on letting their company use their kit for nothing

Because the alternative to being able to read company email on your own phone is to drive back into work to check that email on your company computer

The good burghers of Palo Alto are entirely insane

Re: Nimbyism

>apart from Germany's lack of understanding of tea and the need for milk in it

Munich is nice and has a cricket club - so there is hope for German civilisation

Re: Nimbyism

Not quite the same scale that Stanford has had in Palo Alto though

Re: Stanford

Port of Felixstowe - where they invested massively to handle containers while every other traditional port was fighting to maintain it's old way of life..

Or Cambridge Science park - while the city council was blocking IBM building a chip fab near the city because it would industrialise the surrounding countryside.

It looks like olde-worlde Trinity are cutting silicon valley capitalists.

We have an extra terror here = Lawyers.

If the council pass a bylaw that restricts development in any way they are threatened with a lawsuit where even if they won it would cost our small town $$$$ to defend itself. And whenever they pass a bylaw that might allow any development they get hit by a threat of an environmental objections that would take years and cost $$$$.

The result is that nothing has happened for years - we might have invented the perfect form of government.

Re: I'm shocked!

Alternately the council could give every other plot of land in Palo Alto permission to build a skyscraper - thus reducing the value of the mobile home park.

If the valley wanted to cure the housing problem all it has to do is give automatic planning permission to any development that will increase density. Then the marker will decide how many $10M mansions, $250K single homes and $100K studio apartments the city needs.

Re: The issue is tha building on 'virgin' land...

So on one side of a road you have houses so astronomically expensive that people are spending 2/3 of their income paying the mortgage, leaving them too poor to spend anything in the local economy, leading to stagflation.

And on the other side of the road you have fields that the farmer is being paid to keep empty because the crops they would grow are already so cheap it wouldn't be worth adding to the stockpile.

And yet the government can't give planning permission to build houses on the land because ?????

Remember though in small town America the local council is directly elected as individuals - not just a block of lib-dems or labour depending on which lot in Westminster you are currently mad at.

So the local council is often stacked with local business owners (who else can afford to run and take an unpaid post).

Our little town almost bankrupted itself 10years ago by buying a bunch of land to develop houses on. The sale of the houses would pay for the roads, water, sewage etc that it had to build first - it completed the empty lots in 2008 just into the housing crash.

Now a block of local property developers got elected and not wanting any competition to their existing market - the lots are still empty, we are paying for the infrastructure, we are paying for the loans, and we still have a shortage of housing.

Re: Free Market Consistency

It's also where the free market and Bentham-ism align.

If you wanted to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people you would sell the land to the highest bidder and let them create as many apartments as they could fit onto the land. The poor disposed would then benefit from the drop in house prices in surrounding areas as people there are able to move into the city.

Deciding that some tiny minority of the poor are allowed to live in rent controlled apartments in Manhattan or a council house in Chelsea is silly. It's like solving the problem of public transit by giving 1 person in a million a free Rolls Royce.

Visitors no longer welcomed to Scotland's 'Penis Island'

Re: Proof, (if it were needed)

So just about every town south of the border should also have street signs in Latin because it was originally founded by Romans?

Big trouble in big China: Crashing economy in Middle Kingdom body slams US tech stocks

And in return gave them a government, an education system, railways, english and taught them to play cricket.

What do they get from Apple ?

Brit hydro fuel cell maker: our tech charges iPhone 6 for a week

Re: Buyout

Not the original battery. It contains A battery because the fuel cell can't provide the peak power needed. So the battery gives you umph (technical term) when you make a call or the CPU spins up and is then slowly recharged by the fuel cell.

Canadians taking to spying on their spies

The only Canadians who matter are those who turn up to vote AND live in marginal ridings in Quebec.

The concentration of seats means that the election is decided before many people wake up - so there is no point in even campaigning in most of the country.

Re: Hmm...

In theory the Canadian PM has less power than the UK because the senate (the upper house) can block bills - while the House of Lords can't. In practice gerrymandering and the appointment system means that senate is pretty much aligned with the government.

FAO EVERYBODY: From the Legal Outreach Team at Bong Ventures LLC

Re: I don't understand

i think it was Dr Johnson who said "The purpose of the press is to hold a selfie stick upto nature"

Why do driverless car makers have this insatiable need for speed?

Re: Call me cynical...

>have a quarter of the number of fatalities that human drivers do, legislation won't stop them for long

"Evidence based legislation" - know that would be a breakthrough !

Re: Call me cynical...

Competitor control.

Driverless cars are going to reduce the number of cars sold, especially small cars.

You aren't going to need a 2nd car if a driverless Car2Go/Uber will pick you up and take you to the shops.

So VW, Toyota, GM and other makers of small cars are buying up the infrastructure to stop it getting out.

Enjoy vaping while you still can, warns Public Health England

Re: "Almost certainly"

There is considerable evidence that drinking ethanol is harmful to health and is an acknowledged public safety concern.

Any plans for an Eu ban on cross border traffic of wine and beer?

Adulterers antsy as 'entire' Ashley Madison databases leak online

It wasn't the cheating that the hackers were objecting to it was AM's blackmail business model.

They (AM) were charging customers who had closed their accounts a fee to delete the personal data.

WD storage technology exec defects to rivals Seagate

Corporate secrets

The only secret is that spinning rust is dead and I'm not sure that WD execs knew that

Government embarks on futile mission to censor teen music vid viewing

Re: Teens and music videos?

>So you can buy porn in the UK before you turn 18?

No, you can get married at 16 but you have to keep your eyes closed during sex until she turns 18

Re: I blame

Ah the good old days, when BBC Radio DJs would ban records because the band was gay and then go out and rape kids.

IRS: Tax-record snaffle scam actually 200% worse than first feared

Re: Now that your credit and identify have been raped and strewn around the world

It was even funnier last time they lost the records of all federal employees.

They signed everyone affected up for free credit record checks and announced in the press that your login details would be your name and the last digits of your SSN - the very details the breach had stolen.,,,,

You CAN'T jail online pirates for 10 years, legal eagles tell UK govt

Re: I'm sorry

> viz. that it allows a range of sentences so that discretion can be allowed

The discretion between the treatment of the director of a bank rigging LIBOR and a black teen shoplifiting?

Spain triumphs! Fascist anthem hails Spanish badminton champ

Re: Fascist?

'God Save the Queen' isn't nationalistic - it's all about the queen , not the country.

Android apps are flooding on to jailbroken Win10 phones

Marketing solution

Once this works he can claim all Android phones as sales of Windows tm (compatible) mobile devices

Amazon UK conditions 'exhausting', claims union

Re: £2bn, 7000, 5 million square feet.

Well a lot of the £2bn was the tunnel to the channel islands where the stuff is actually sold from

Re: Any Amazon IT types care to comment?

Time Off In Lieu - now that you don't get overtime, the hope that you might be able to leave early on wednesday to make up for being called in at 2:00am on sunday to fix something

Re: I've been wondering about this for a while.

American soaps are produced for the advertisers.

If Cadillac was in charge of deciding the story line on Corrrie or Brookside - they would be rather different.

Re: Responsible (ethical, presumably) corporate citizen

Depends on whether you intend surviving beyond the next quarter.

If you want the company to be around in 100years and want the staff that will allow you to beat the next startup that can offer the same product 0.1% cheaper - then a little ethics can help.

Don't fight the cistern: Voda takes the plunge with plumbers’ parking app

94.7% of people claimed that 86% of statistics are made up on the spot

Would YOU make 400 people homeless for an extra $16m? Decision time in Silicon Valley

Re: No choice really.

How many condo towers are they going to build on the land?

If you can fit 100 mobile homes on the site then you can probably build a couple of 80 storey condo towers with 4 units/floot = a lot more homes for people than a trailer park

Skills crisis? Not for long: More and more UK kids gain STEM quals

Re: In my experience, the problem lies with management

But in the UK, an engineer is unlikely to be promoted to a position where they are managing business graduates. A business graduate will soon be managing engineers.

Re: A-Level results

Yes, we used to be taught calculus at O-level, now I have physics undergrads starting that haven't done any calculus at A level.

Not their fault, the system is for the schools to pick the options that gets the easiest good grades and we choose to admit the kids with the highest grades.

Re: "so-called" skills shortage is right ...

But that rosy picture is not the whole story.

In 3 years the business guy will be promoted, the planner will have a job for life and the developer will be fired when the next new sexy technology comes along

Re: Good.

It said there had been a 20-30% increase, it didn't say what percentage overall were taking them.

It's easy to have a big increase in a small baseline

Gazan medico team 3D-prints world-leading stethoscope for 30c

Re: Am I just too pessimistic?

And any new design or modification has to pass expensive testing and licensing, you have to find distributors to stock it, you have to renegotiate supply contracts with insurance companies hospitals and national health services. All for a gadget that you might sell one or two per doctor per lifetime.

You can make an opthalmascope (light for looking into eye) from a pen torch and bit of silver foil and a pin hole - but buying a "proper one" still costs a few $100