Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Stephen Hawking biopic: Big on romance, not so much with the science?

Re: Hollywood Doesn't Understand

But in this movie he is American and is made bionic so he can walk again and save the world from evil steady-state theorists following a race through Cambridge in a jet powered punt.

Ancient pager tech SMS: It works, it's fab, but wow, get a load of that incoming SPAM

pretty much by-passes the receiving network’s billing systems

Not in bloody Canada it doesn't. You pay to receive a ****ing message most of which are spam from the network operator.

Can't touch this! Microsoft joins OpenGL 3D graphics group

Re: Bad News

No their new OpenGL standard is completely open, it just happens to fire up a copy of Excel to do any calculations and the display uses XPS.

US 911 service needs emergency upgrade and some basic security against scumbags

But if you put the handcuffs away and go home you look like an idiot.

If you arrest them you might find something else incriminating,

If not - well you got an arrest - not your fault if the DPP/prosecutor didn't make a case

Nuts to your poncey hipster coffees, I want a TESLA ELECTRO-CAFE

Re: more proof of the decline of the West

Since all Australian bar-persons moved to London obviosuly all the coffee makers stayed at home.

Re: Free WiFi?

Is it actually a customer service or is their security just crap?

Re: Large soya latte?

A white one with no froth?

I want a cup of coffee not wash me socks in it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXRLoJQK8f0

But they require you to wear hi-vis jackets to sit outside ?

London cops cuff 20-year-old man for unblocking blocked websites

>Ah, so he was black then?

The one good thing you can say about the City of London police is that they don't care about your race, creed or colour - anyone who isn't a giant corporation is equally guilty.

It's the City of London police - they don't need to do evidence or law or courts. They are a private corporate security outfit

Lawsuit claims SpaceX laid off hundreds without proper notice, pay

Re: You only need 10%

Yes - and when their jobs are no longer required they are redundant and there are laws about what you have to do with people that are made redundant. SpaceX decided to ignore these laws by claiming that all the people were simply fired.

It's like the coal board closing a pit and claiming that every single worker at that pit was coincidentally being fired for poor performance on the day the pit closed

Re: equivalence

In the UK you can't just walk upto people and fire them for no reason (at least once they have been there for a year) in most US states you can - so defining redundancy is harder.

Re: Why?

At some places I have worked upto 50% are below average

eBay bans CD sales of metal band Burzum, citing offensive material

Re: Can I complain?

It only took one complaint to get "Money for Nothing" by the notorious hard core band Dire Straits banned from Canada' airwaves

China cracks down on instant messengers: Users must hand over real names

Re: "slander and rumours"

Good job we never occupied any of the Indian sub-continent then

HTTP-Yes! Google boosts SSL-encrypted sites in search results

Re: I want my browser to optimise for privacy

>What problem are we trying to solve here?

Determining quality sites from crap sites.

If there are two tech news sites and one has an HTTPS cert then it probably has a proper sysadmin and is professionally run while the other is probably just recycling press releases and running spammy ads

Flying United Airlines? If you could just scan your passport with your phone, that'd be great

Re: Why not

But there is no point to all the security and biometric features if the only guarantee that the applicant is who they say they are is your neighbour signing the back of one of your pictures.

Why not

Just forget about passports (and the annual 3month delay because the passport office forget there is extra summer demand and/or go on strike and/or install a new computer system ) and just use your facebook login?

It is more secure than a passport and facebook has more of your details than the passport agency

Americans to be guinea pigs in vast chip-and-PIN security experiment

Re: Not such a big change

Slight difference. You know the warnings about checking for hidden card readers and cameras on ATMs where they might spy on your pin?

With chip+pin you get to enter your pin in 100s of different terminals at every convenience store, gas station and cafe.

If banks can't secure an ATM inside their own branch how much do you trust the cyber security of the chip+pin terminal at Billy-Bob's muffler store ?

Damn you guessed - now I have to change the universe

Re: Restaurants?

They have little terminals that they bring to your table, with batteries and radio waves so it doesn't need wires.

Re: 50 ways to love your lever

But only if they had oil and WMDs

Brit kids match 45-year-old fogies' tech skill level by the age of 6

Re: pfft

And the covers for her TPS reports looked like they were done with finger paint.

Re: Brain Overload

Had a banking app in VB that screen-scrapped a mainframe app that thought it was talking to 3270 terminals - so they could use PCs.

Then it got replaced by a webpage that screen-scrapped the same mainframe app.

Now they are talking about moving the web server/scrapper into the cloud.

The mainframe hasn't changed, just gets more memory/CPU/storage added every few years.

Re: Good

Hopefully this progressive government will rescind all those anti-business nanny-state laws about child labour and we will have a ready made workforce willing to work 18hour days in the dark satanic data centers and data mines

Newly spawned Dixons Carphone leaps onto LSE as £12bn sales org

Re: I don't understand

Or why didn't they just take the 12Billion quid and stick it in a tracker fund - logically all the bottom half of the FTSE should do that.

Scottish independence debate: STV player flops under weight of viewers

Re: Double edged sword...........

After independence the Orkneys won't be ruled by some distant parliament in Edinburgh and will vote for independence taking the oil with them

Re: Put it on Youtube

And more people in Canada want Quebec to leave

Simian selfie stupidity: Macaque snap sparks Wikipedia copyright row

Re: Doesn't intent have any sway?

If it was David Bailey passing by and he posed you, chose the camera angle, chose the exposure and framed the shot - then took your picture with your camera then he might have done more to create the copyright than just press the button

Google's mysterious floating techno barge SOLD FOR SCRAP

Re: I always figured the plan was:

1, Cost building barge $2-5M

2, Cost of parking it $0.5M

3, Value of Google(tm) mentions on main stream news services ... priceless

Scotland's BIG question: Will independence cost me my broadband?

Re: Christian my arse

But at least you still sacrifice virgins on midsummer ?

Re: Yes but.........

What Oil?

After the referendum the Orkneys will be able to throw off 800 years of Scottish oppression (after they were pawned as a wedding present) and be able to reclaim their rights to the North Sea and their true Viking inheritance.

But presumably the rest of Europe still won't accept Scottish Euro banknotes

Re: I hope they do leave and learn hard reality.

>You'll be hoping Northern Ireland leaves the fold too then?

If Scotland leaves it would only be fair for Northern Ireland to go with them

They have such similar cultural and religous interests, along with a pair of common languages it would seem a shame that the two regions are separated.

Re: Cameron in the Shetlands

A subtle and cunning plan worthy of Baldrick himself

Re: No Scottish HS2

But now the Birmingham-Glasgow link will be a prestigious international project like the Channel Tunnel or Concorde

Re: Cameron in the Shetlands

Bit confused about this - if Scotland goes then 40-50 safe labour seats go.

Why isn't Cameron up there side-side with the Salmond promoting freedom for the oppressed haggis eaters?

Since I get all my political news from the Reg and Sandi Toksvig I might be missing something.

Re: Hearts and Minds

Might I suggest you learn from Quebec

Keep demanding independence and threatening to leave unless you get special legal rights and extra funding - then narrowly vote no everytime there is an actual referendum.

Re: I hope they do leave and learn hard reality.

At least they aren't planning on stealing and mangling the language like other former colonies.

Israel's Iron Dome missile tech stolen by Chinese hackers

Re: Mirage

"Mirage - when you care enough to counterfeit the best"

re: another US autoblowjob

Oddly this time it isn't. Although US tax dollars paid for it - the design and technology is Israeli and the US are now buying it for their own use - usually overseas aid is strictly under condition that its spent buying weapons in the senator's own backyard.

The most astounding feature of this missile system, other than that it works, is managing to get funding to build rather than buy.

Senate introduces USA FREEDOM Act to curb NSA spying excesses

Oh ffs...

"Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT)"

They couldn't think of any words to spell "ACT" or would that get too recursive?

The Campaign to Liberate Terrorist Organisations and Rehabilitate them Into Society isn't doing as well.

Kiwi Rocket Lab to build SUPER-CHEAP sat launchers (anyone know 30 rocket scientists?)

Re: Error

>New Zealand is not "sparsely populated", there are dozens of us.

Blimey - the sheep can type now.

Re: favourable launch location in NZ

It is also about as far south as you can travel in the USA without having to invade somebody.

Launching from the equator is rather advantageous for most orbits.

It also has a large area to the east where it wouldn't really matter if you dropped a rocket - although the same could be said for everywhere between Pasadena and Boston.

The best strategy is remembering that you used to have a country named after you, almost exactly on the equator on the east coast of S. America and building a launch site there.

Re: favourable launch location in NZ

British rocket scientists built a launch site in Australia but the lack of real ale meant productivity was poor.

favourable launch location in NZ

NZ is about 41deg S.

Unless they have changed the Earth's rotation recently the only thing favourable about it's location is that you could explode something rather large there without disturbing the neighbours.

Google's Canadian 'memory hole' to continue

Re: Security services at work here...

They did resolve it and this company lost so it went overseas and uses a series of disposable websites whenever they get shut down.

Google's problem is that they originally said the Canadian court had to no authority to rule on them even in Canada because they were a US company. The court replied that it could order them to do whatever it wanted and hold any Google officer in Canada in contempt if they didn't