Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

VMware sued, accused of ripping off Linux kernel source code

Re: tisk tisk VMWare

It makes everything GPL effectively LGPL.

You take any GPL code, wrap it in a service that you use via DBUS, publish the code to your service wrapper and keep your code proprietary.

Pentagon 'network intruder', dozens more cuffed in British cops' cyber 'strike week'

Re: Let's hope police forces around the world go after these criminals.

I assume they will first be extradited to the Netherlands for the theft and then to Russia / china / Iran / etcv wherever the hacked sims ended up being used.

Virus writing?

Is a crime since when?

I wrote a backup script which (accidentally) recursively copied our log folder to a subdirectory - infinitely deeply . Who do I turn myself in to ?

Canadian bloke refuses to hand over phone password, gets cuffed

Re: Not just Canada

You have computers in NZ ?

Actually - you have government in NZ?

Re: Okay, so they ask to see my laptop.

>Okay mister border guard, what now?

I've been stopped at security like that.

"Turn on your laptop"

Boots to a command prompt.

"No - turn it on."

It is on ?

"TURN ON THE COMPUTER"

Eventually worked out what they wanted, "startx" and wiggle the cursor

The world was once safe from terrorism and VMS.

For extra bonus points it should start a command prompt in klingon

Mummy, what's the point of Evgeny Morozov's tedious columns?

Re: I do not think it means what you think it means...

>>"The fastest way to reduce wealth inequality would be to forbid people to take out mortgages"

Only because of the unique way in which wealth inequality is calculated - or reported.

Take a capital city where houses are so expensive that people take out 100year multi-generational mortgages and spend 3/4 of their take home pay on repayments.

Compare a city principality where the crown prince owns all the housing but rents it out cheaply. The entire population of millionaire f1 drivers and tax exiles spend all their money on fast cars and drink.

Which has biggest wealth inequality ?

Re: Evgeny Who?

"Worstall is a marxist-socialist type"

More a marx-fraternalist type

Paul Allen hunts down sunken Japanese WWII super-battleship

The military leadership doesn't prepare for the next war

> they prepare to fight the last one

Generally the winners fight the last war - after all they won so they must have been doing it right.

The losers generally get the opportunity to hire a new set of younger generals (typically after shooting the incumbents) who take a long look at what went wrong and come up with some new ideas.

In the case where the last war was some considerable time ago it can be quite entertaining - such as the Royal Navy's attempts in WWI to re-fight the Battle of Trafalgar against the Germans.

Re: Who trained the Japanese to torpedo bomb?

We did a beta release for Pearl Harbour which the Japanese observed Battle of Taranto.

Pity the Americans didn't take any notice - probably because it used canvas biplanes to destroy a naval fleet and the Americans didn't have any canvas biplanes so their fleet was safe.

Sophie the Stegosaurus was a teenaged fat lass claims triple-D model

Not quite birds then

>Dinosaurs are related to modern birds .... but their anatomy could have been quite different in some cases

Especially in the case of large viscous teeth and claws for example ?

US military SATELLITE suddenly BLOWS UP: 'Temperature spike' blamed

Re: 450 nautical miles up

>You have no idea how superior nautical miles are to the French equivalent.

For navigating at sea on a great circle - they are ideal (well assuming you are doing your navigation using astronomical sightings and a stop watch and don't have a calculator)

For orbital mechanics they are less obviously the ideal choice

Re: Defense Meterological Satellite

It's offense meteorology you really need to worry about

The US navy will claim it was a gay suicide pact.

DHS will claim it was a 5year old on the no-fly list

NSA will claim it was north korean hackers

And British nuclear Fuels will claim it that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all.

Re: 450 nautical miles up

They will do anything to avoid metric won't they.

US court rubber-stamps dragnet metadata surveillance (again)

Re: The FISA court is worthless...

But even then you would expect it to reject 20% for being on the wrong form, send back 30% for queries, lose 40% in the system and then launch an internal inquiry into what happened to the other 10%.

Remember it's only DMV grade incompetence that protects us from government

Re: The FISA court is worthless...

Remarkably effective for a government service.

Silent Circle revamps secure smartphone

Re: And yet for all its cleverness

If you are using GSM voice for calls then it is recorded anyway, because the nice men from the TLAs are very good friends with the nice men from the Telcos. They don't need to crack the SIM.

If you are using encrypted messaging on the phone then you are obviously a terrorist anyway

Would you trust 'spyproof' mobes made in Putin's Russia?

Re: So they own all the circuitry...

There are GPS transmitters but they are rather large and obvious and generally bolted to satelites

Re: Neil Barnes Switching off phones does not disable built-in GPS functionality

The GPS receivers (or rather the calculation of position) is very power intensive.

The solution with 2nd generation GPS was to use base station triangulation as a starting point rather than a lock from first principles, together with an accurate time reference, avoiding the need to keep an updated position..

The newest generation can pass the semi-raw GPS signal to be processed in the base station or even in the cloud and the result returned to the phone.

Re: @Kraggy

Whereas we have the knowledge that Lord X will eventually produce a public inquiry on the matter which will totally exonerate the government.

At least secret police thugs cost less/hour than QCs

Re: Who do you fear most ?

Given the list of things that are now "terrorist" in the eyes of NSA/GCHQ- like protesting oil pipelines, merchant banks, billionaire tax evasion, or union activities - then I assume you would get a commendation from the KGB

Reckon YOU can write better headlines than us? Great – apply within

Re: Duh, I dunno know boss

Didn't last week's travelogue say that you can't do sarcasm in SF

Re: Pet Peeve

If your were working for a global multinational like el'Reg you wouldn't have to use BART.

All these companies have luxury buses that pick up their employees from their downtown lofts and whisk them to their offices.

In the case of this esteemed mighty organ they probably have a barrow that does the alleys behind bars at chucking out time

FCC says cities should be free to run decent ISPs. And Republicans can't stand it

Re: They should compromise

Same with the police, 1/3 of my property taxes go to the local police and yet several entrepreneurial minded future young republicans offered to protect my parked car for a very nominal one-time fee.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: El Reg eggs Benedict

Re: you had me at Bacon..

English muffin - too much effort, a bap will do

Poached egg - fried egg is better

Avacado - substitute mushy peas

Hollandaise - that's just salad cream isn't it ?

So basically a bacon, fried egg and mushy pea butty with salad cream - sounds simple enough

Iran hacks America where it hurts: Las Vegas casinos

Re: Poor Enron.

Enron was obviously destroyed by time traveling North Korean hackers

Re: Hold them accountable

Now if they had inserted a virus that made the roulette wheels spin at a pre-determined rate .....

You obviously aren't a good enough customer.

I would be insulted - it's like somebody refusing to steal your crappy phone

El Reg regains atomic keyring capability

This one glows in the presence of idiot users - try it at work

Re: Also in US?

Not to mention Canadian terrorists smuggling Kinder Eggs of Mass destruction

canadian-kinder-surprise-smuggling-ring-broken-up-by-us-officials

Net neutrality victory: FCC approves 'open internet' rules in 3-2 vote

Re: One step forward after two steps back

Ma Bell's monopoly was arguably a good thing in the 20 and 30s and even 40s

The alternative would have been every town having their own phone system and a massive government standards body to set technical requirements for interconnection of devices that hadn't been invented and a regulatory body to ensure everyone played nicely.

This is pretty much what happened with the first cell networks in the USA. Roaming charges started when you stepped out of your house.

>How on God's Green Earth is any of that provision in law applicable to broadband internet service?

Perfectly. I rent a phoneline from you, I pay you for calls, you sort it out with the other providers how to bill them for calls to people on their system.

I rent a broadband line from you, I pay you for data, you sort it out with other providers how to bill them for data on servers on their system.

Re: We Internet pioneers breathe a sigh of relief

>May we see your actual evidence for this?

Fox news said so - what more evidence do you need ?

Re: Death to CDNs ??!!??

>Akamai is in a banned business model.

Akamai isn't banned.

Fox monitoring the stuff from Akamai and slowing packets containing HBO shows is banned.

Don't pay for the BBC? Then no Doctor Who for you, I'm afraid

Re: Devices

Give me a "B", give me an "A" give me an "N" give me a "D", give me a "W".....

Boffin: Use my bionic breakthrough for good, and not super cyborgs

Re: Once

Mr Smith, the good news is you have been accepted into the bionic astronaut corps.

Now the bad news ...... sound of chainsaw starting up ....

Solidfire offers unlimited SSD wear guarantee, punts software at market

Re: ...SSD warranties of up to five years...

Warranties are simply futures options contracts, Since the cost of the flash chips is innevitably going to drop over 20years, or even if it were to rise slower than the stock market, they will win by taking your money now and offering to replace your 128Gb flash drive for free in 20years.

Google hooks up with group formerly known as ISIS to battle Apple Pay

Re: I used Google Wallet a couple of times 6+ years back.

He bought a used Delorean

Re: Shame about the renaming

I think they will be forced to rename themselves to avoid anyone mistakenly thinking they are now linked with Google

I'm the wire starter: ARM, IBM tout plug 'n' play Internet of Stuff kit

Potentiometer + cloud

I'm having a bit of trouble seeing the advantage of being able to see the results of twiddling a dial in the cloud. Especially since the bit of kit sending the twiddling to the cloud has more processing power than you need to do anything reasonable with the twiddlige.

FCC Republicans slam brakes on net neutrality, but this wagon ain't slowing

I forget

Is it net neutrality that funds terrorism and government regulation that will allow child porn - or was it the other way round ?

Re: "Let’s leave the power where it belongs - with the American people.

That's true if you have a choice, something like 40% of cable customers don't.

And the others have a choice between two cable companies that both throttle Netflix and Amazon in favor of their own shows

Hawking thesp Eddie Redmayne and Snowden doc Citzenfour win Oscars

Re: Spaz, is the new sexy!

As Kate Winslet says in extras - "play a crip and it's a guaranteed oscar"

Marconi: The West of England's very own Italian wireless pioneer

Re: I think I may have family involved

Not if he just meant that one of his parent's were grand .

Re: Timeless wireless communication ...

Hence the IT angle an; off by one error

New Mexico mulls sale of first US commercial spaceport (and LOHAN launchpad)

Re: Ulterior motive?

>I wonder who they'd sell it to?

Aliens ?

The finest weird people in the world live here, and we're proud of it

Re: Expensive housing

Sorry I meant to say planning restrictions.

One of the big problems of working here is that you have to keep thinking if you need to translate English words and early on Sunday mornings you get confused and translate them twice.

Nvidia U-turns on GTX 900M overclocking after gamer outrage

Re: Laptops

>who cares?

UL/TuV/CSA and all the other people that have been paid to assure you, your home insurance company, the airline carrying you, your fellow office dwellers etc that the laptop is safe.

The millionaire former playboy, Hugh Hefner, and a crucial fight over playboy.london

Re: This is why extra TLDs were stupid

Or maybe this guy is a secret ICANN agent......

If playboy win this then there is no need for apple to run around paying to register apple.crapgadget or apple.bumfuckidaho because if anyone else ever does register it then the court will hand it to Apple.

But if he wins then Apple etc have to run out and pre-register everything they can think of now.