Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

So what would the economic effect of leaving the EU be?

Re: All the foreign companies...

That would explain why Microsoft, Goolge, Apple, Facebook, HP all have Eu headoffices in Ireland, Amazon.co.uk is in Luxembourg

Re: impact of uncertainty

The companies would move to the Eu, ie move their HQ to a brass plaque in Ireland or Luxemburg.

But the workers of banks and software companies would stay - after all they speak English and the wives of visiting US VPs need to visit Harrods - and employment law would become more US friendly.

Manufacturing where you need to ship real stuff to europe would be fscked. Even if you do manage to lower workers pay and conditions in the UK to compete with Ukraine and the Eu don't stick 100% duty on everything and don't demand that your salesman and lorry driver get a visa for each visit. It isn't going to make sense for a Japanese car company to build cars for the Eu, outside the Eu, at UK wages when they can make them outside the Eu in Mexico.

Facebook echo chamber: Or, the British media and the election

Re: It's still true.....

A free press is one which can print all prejudices of the proprietor that don't upset the advertisers

Re: I read somewhere...

>If they don't have that then they have to negotiate and that means the more extreme stuff gets watered down.

Or the extreme stuff gets through. We had tory governments kept in power by the Ulster Unionists - that didn't lead to a watering down of the political situation over there.

Imagine a tory minority government needing UKIP (or BNP) support to get a bill through, or Labour needing to keep SNP sweet on every deal.

Re: Utopias?

I thought that was due to the policy of putting all the political leaders in prison as soon as they were elected?

How do you "just report the news"?

You could just print corporate press releases, or governmet statements without comments - but that is hardy news.

You could state facts, "the rainfall in southern sudan was x mm" without any analysis if that will mean a famine or prosperity.

Canada passes controversial spook-powers law

Re: Reality check

The world has evolved to be vastly safer than it was in the past.

Unless what UKIP says about europe is true, they aren't currently dropping bombs on London.

The IRA/QLF/RAF/BM/SLA/MMB aren't currently blowing up shopping centers

But now we need to take various German acronymed security services as a role model to protect us from "threats"

Re: following the first terror attack on Canadian soil last October

Christians can't be terrorists - see Northern Ireland

Re: Not mentioned is what defines a "threat"

Since Alberta turned terrorist last week I think a crackdown is in order.

Re: nicely define bounds...

>so ... anything, anywhere, weather is has been authorised or not.

To be fair, the weather is a big threat to Canada - and if Bill C51 can do anything to ensure we only get federal authorized weather I will be happier.

Going up hills past blokes with coke-bottle legs: The Smart E-bike

People with a long commute, biking 30km each way is fine if you have the thighs of a coke bottle but it's a bit much for humans.

People just starting to bike to work who don't (yet) have THOFACB and want some confidence.

People who are rich in years and have a big hill involved.

Google's 'stale pale males' to be replaced by crack black chick pack

Re: Racism

Presumably discriminating against Jews has been patented

Re: Racism

I assumed there would be quotas limiting Asians and Jews because they are over represented in the techie workplace - like the good old days

Citizens denied chance to vote in local-government IT cockup

Re: No representation without taxation

By which logic only the unemployed and elderly should pay for social services

>but our council was switched on enough to deal with it...

Or switched OFF enough - clever stuff paper.

>purging of undesirables from the electoral register.

20 years ago - if you weren't on the electoral roll you didn't pay poll tax.

No representation without taxation

Red-faced Germans halt NSA cooperation after Euro spying revealed

Re: Industrial espionage

The mistake was hiring East German car workers - and putting them in the design dept.

Industrial espionage

There is still no evidence that the NSA are spying on German car companies and leaking data to their competitors though.

Why don't you rent your electronic wireless doorlock, asks man selling doorlocks

Re: Bad Crack

Renting a thermostat isn't totally crazy - imagine buying a service that handled all of your HVAC system (servicing, filter replacements, repairs), along with a deal based on how much electricity they save you with their fancy new thermostat.

Merging HP and EMC – hold on, wait, hear us out. The cap is still on the bottle of crazy pills

>First law of business regarding the IT industry:

Any THING involving HP is doomed to fail

Plod wants your PC? Brick it with a USB stick BEFORE they probe it

Re: Destroying the contents is no good in the UK

We had a speaker from the police at a conference talking about this new law when it was first created.

We asked him how we would prove that the petabytes of essentially random data from LHC wasn't encrypted?

We didn't need to worry because the law was only for use against terrorists.

Re: Automatic bricking...

>You have a right to remain silent

You have the right to repeatedly fall down stairs, you have the right to have kiddie porn "found" on your home computers, you have the right to have a mix up in the DNA lab have you convicted of rape.

Or if you do cooperate you have the right to have every electronic device in your home confiscated for 18months and then returned broken - never under any circumstances cooperate with the police.

From Manchester to Microsoft – missing mum :-(

Re: Mortgages are go!

That's why god invented Canada.

Nearly American wages, nearly American prices, better scenery and nicer people than the UK or USA.

We even have our own raving mad PM......

Re: Mortgages are go!

Frankly anyone in any sort of engineering (and not working as a contractor in the city) who stays on the right side of the pond is crazy.

Re: Weekend

Drive to Vancouver !

Despite to the wide diversity of eclectic entertainment available in America's own Peterborough - more and more seattle techies are taking advantage of the Canadian $ and live in Vancouver for the weekend.

Bruce Schneier's Data and Goliath – solution or part of the problem?

Re: We?

You don't but other people do.

Suppose stores handed your purchases on loyalty cards, your credit card company handed over your payments and your cell phone company handed over your contacts and movements.

If you don't express outrage why shouldn't they do these things if they "enhance shareholder value" ?

Re: Someone didn't do their research

But the Catholic work ethic in Germany probably exceeds the Protestant work ethic here

Why OH WHY is economics so bleedin' awful, then?

But when you are elected you will be able to shut down the socialist BBC and newspapers owned by foreigners.

Re: The HOW now seems more important than the WHY

So Brown caused the US sub-prime crisis? Nice to know a post-war British PM had some legacy

Re: A good question

What could they have done ?

The only power they have would have been to take over the bank of England (preferably involving the SAS bursting through windows) and raise interest rates to what people were paying on their credit cards. Cause a massive housing crash, 100,000s of evictions and raise the value of sterling to the point that totally destroyed any remaining industry.

Or Blair could have gone on TV and said, "the economy is going to crash in 45minutes/weeks/months, trust me" and everyone would stop bing big screen tvs

Re: There were many...

>What could possibly go wrong there?

Well they could all decide that they don't need any of that stuff, stop buying anything, keep the cash under the matress and suffer a couple of decades of deflation.

And that is if they are lucky and started off with a prosperous efficent technological economy - what would happen outside Japan would be much much worse.

Major London rail station reveals system passwords during TV documentary

But how can they possibly run a C19 railway system with 10year old operating system

Re: Humans

Depending on the threat model that can be perfectly good,

If the physical access to the post-it note is secure - because it's in a room with guards - but the computers are on the net, then having a complex password written down can be the best security.

Boeing 787 software bug can shut down planes' generators IN FLIGHT

Re: So...Garbage from Non-Aviators

They shut off the generators but does that necessarily shut off the power to the computer controlling the generator?

Are they sure that a particular check disconnects all the many redundant power supplies to the GCU? Is this documented in the check?

Burger me! Microsoft's chainsaw rampage through sacred cow herd

The risk would be destroying any project which threatens the Office on Desktop/Server business - and the previous managers already did that,

The interesting bit will be whether he can get beyond the Gates era = "the Internet is new, it is a threat to Windows/Office we must dominate/destroy/own the Internet" to actually benefiting from new ways of using computers

Visual Studio running on OS X and Linux for free? SO close

Re: some thoughts...

If you are building software that can cause death or injury then YOU are on the hook anyway.

If you use GPL software you are responsible for any flaws in it in exactly the same way as software you write in-house.

Interestingly you are also responsible for any flaws in closed software you use - you have a much tougher job demonstrating to the regulators that you have a way of testing the COTS software to show that it doesn't have any flaws and have plans to remedy them. If you don't have a contract with the supplier saying that they WILL fix any flaws you find then your only remedy is to pull your product from the market.

It is far easier to build (or at least do the regulatory paperwork on) a safety critical system with open source software than closed

The same applies to hardware - I just spent the equivalent of a nice BMW getting a PC built by a certain CPU maker beginning with "I" - EMC tested.

It failed - despite the approval stickers all over its case. I now have to modify the PC to make it pass and show that I will apply the same modifications to all the other units I sell.

Re: some thoughts...

Unintentional harm - no.

Deliberately finding competing products and damaging them ....

Ryanair stung after $5m Shanghai'd from online fuel account

Re: Well... color me surprised...

And so it should be if the loss is still detected, reversed and the money returned.

If you have a contract with the bank which says that they are liable then you don't bother wasting money making your operations less efficient in the name of security.

Free markets aren't rubbish – in fact, they solve our rubbish woes

Re: We could have dedicated networks of rag-and-bone men

Similar problem here with the 5/10c recycling on bottles/cans.

Mostly it works very well - an army of "independant contractors" with shopping carts mean you don't see many cans around. People even put their empty cans on top of rubbish bins to help them.

But you also get people with trucks who will collect everyones blue box, have a minion in the back picking out the cans and then dump the emptied blue boxes and their other contents in a pile at the end of the street before starting on the next block.

Give me POWER: How to keep working when the lights go out

Re: Here's two more words for you:

I think it was actually the giant spider that was to blame.

Re: Hurricane Sandy

Similar problems in London "an incident" closed off access to our office - no problem as we had a backup site 1/2 mi away.

Trailed down to the street to find that the dear old bobbies of the Met (Total Policing (tm) wouldn't let us into the street.

New EU security strategy: Sod cyber terrorism, BAN ENCRYPTION

Make the tubes smaller

If the internet tubes were made smaller then you could order the Kalashnikov (other assault rifles are available) online but it wouldn't be possible to deliver anything larger than a peashooter to your web browser.

The Government Digital Service: The Happiest Place on Earth

Re: Rawhide!

They don't need to because they are dIGITAL(tm)

(capitalization is important)

Re: Martha Lane Bloody Fox

Does her name mean anything in Thai by any chance?

WHY can't Silicon Valley create breakable non-breakable encryption, cry US politicians

Re: There is...

> that only the American government can pop the lid on.

Obviously this would be unworkable, unfair and wrong. Instead the data will also be accessible by your own government, and security forces, and police, and parish council and those of any other Eu country.

The same keys will also have to be shared with all the agencies where the same software is sold.

So say 200 countries * 10 layers of three latter agency + 10 different levels of government + 10 different law enforcement agencies + the milk marketing board= 10,000 government depts havign access to your data.

Range Rover Sport: Like a cathedral on wheels, only with comfier pews

Re: Hmmmm

I think knowing the existence of Tesco disqualifies you from reviewing high end cars.

ESPN sues Verizon: People picking their own TV channels? NOOoo!

Re: Not fine enough.

Torrents definitely fund terrorism AND pedophiles.

While mix-tapes merely kill kittens