Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

UK.gov recruiting 400 crack CompSci experts to go into teaching

Obviously 64bits have wrapped around to 8bits

Amazon's 'schizophrenic' open source selfishness scares off potential talent, say insiders

Re: Not a good citizen

>It *is* legally correct - and that's all that really matters.

That's all that matters to the lawyers - not to developers

It may be completely legal to outsource manufacture of a toy to be made by slave labour in a North Korean prison camp - but it might not be good business sense if your market is Gruniad readers.

It's upto Amazon to decide if the losses they would suffer from a competitor using fixes they made to a FOSS library outweigh the losses they suffer from not being able to hire the best people. It's the same calculation companies make with free soda, good office location or any other perk.

Re: Not a good citizen

The GPL requires that source is released for all software delivered to a customer.

Amazon claim that since the software is never delivered - only used as a service - they don't need to distribute the source.

This is legally correct, but not playing nicely. The programmers they are trying to hire are more interested in playing nicely than a lawyers definition of "delivered"

Re: A pattern of non-contribution

A company that uses lots of opensource code but hides behind a loophole in the GPL to avoid sharing that code - can't hire good programmers who don't approve of this sort of thing

Companies that make lots of money but hide behind loopholes to avoid paying tax - presumably can't hire good accountants who also don't approve of this sort of thing ?

Korean credit card bosses offer to RESIGN over huge data breach

Right response - wrong target ?

The banks presumably have to give the credit agency access to their data

So whether the banks had it encrypted or not seems irrelevant - it was the credit agency that didn't protect it.

Unless of course the response now is for the banks to give the credit agency access to their customer's data but not the encryption key !

UK IT supplier placed on ASA naughty step over 'misleading' HDD ad

We sell special ultra-test versions which we guarantee to have run for 42,000 hours continuously.

They cost a lot more but what are the chances of it failing in the next year if it worked for the last 5?

China forces users to upload videos under their real names

In china?

A Mr Zhang has uploaded a video critical to the government - go and arrest him.

'We don't use UPS. If we did we'd have huge UPSs and tiny computers'

The is the el-reg - we don't allow these sort of clearly explained well reasoned comments here.

Can you add something bashing apple fanbois and Microsoft's purchase of Nokia?

Re: Coolers on the roof?

Alternatively don't build your supercomputer in a country famous for being so XXXXing hot

ESA rejoices as comet-chasing Rosetta probe wakes from 3-year nap

In deed, why throw money at keeping european scientist and engineers employed and new ones trained when we could use the money to pay bonusses to bankers in the Cayman islands

Good news: 'password' is no longer the #1 sesame opener, now it's '123456'

Re: When you do not want to create an account

For sites that you don't care about - having to create an account to download an update - surely it's more secure to use "password" or "1234567" than anything more secure which might also be used in a similar form on sites that matter.

VCs drop cash on DropBox, bestow $10bn valuation

re: it just works

But it's vulnerable to Google/Apple blocking it on their mobile devices in favour of their home grown solutions

Almost everyone read the Verizon v FCC net neutrality verdict WRONG

Re: Nice straw man

The monopoly cable internet provider here in the Frozen North was charging customers who used other suppliers VOIP services a $10/month "quality of service" fee - to ensure the VOIP packets got through.

Nice little data packet you got here squire - be a shame if anything happened to it !

MANIC MINERS: Ten Bitcoin generating machines

Re: This isn't money

They are mined in exactly the same sense. The limiting value of metals is how much it costs to get it out of the ground, this varies around the world with concentration of ore, distance from markets and the cost of workers. Bitcoins depend on the cost of electricity which follows exactly the same rules as the cost of mining.

Bitcoin's real competitor is aluminium - if it's more profitable to use your electricity to mine bitcoins than smelt bauxite - you "mine" numbers

Re: @DougS RE:@Andy Kay

Ironically I'm spending more than £100/month in electricity to heat this place using a stupid electrical central heating - and it's not even doing any mining. And the furnace cost more than some of these mining boxes

Do that with 8bit home micros and you get knighted

Re: Volatility

>Those professors who started this had an easy time mining in the beginning, yes? Then sold the suckers >the get rich quick scheme.

The original "investors" who bought Manhattan for a few beads did rather well - it doesn't mean that a plot on 5th avenue is worthless today.

Google cleared to land in private terminal at Silicon Valley airport

>If Google as a company need to shuffle hundreds of people over long distances each year

Google One - Larry's 767 - has 15 seats

Re: Mystery...

>Why don't they just use Hangouts?

More people have corporate jets than have Google+ accounts?

Those NSA 'reforms' in full: El Reg translates US Prez Obama's pledges

Re: Lies and the lying liars who tell them

At least with organised crime they make a profit and you get to ask a favour when the Boss's daughter gets married

Re: "...three step protocol..."

Simple - first step is "you->phone company", other step is "terrorist->phone company", since you are both linked by a single step to the phone company then everyone can be spied on!

Re: T.F.M. Reader Brief summary of the (very good) summary

>However we, the public, do assume that the spying is targetted at the nations' enemies and those that could potentially be enemies.

That was always the role of MI5. The NUM, CND, Greenpeace, John Lennon, Jack Straw, Ricky Tomlinson.

In Britain anyone who wasn't at Eton was suspected by MI5.

Ironically since the KGB only seemed to have recruited people who were at Eton and Cambridge

Re: More presidential lip service.

Specifically it was based on the Netherlands - independent states with an elected but relatively powerless stadtholder as head of the committee.

However in the Netherlands it worked - must be something to do with the beer and drugs.

Re: Different needs

Same reason for having a Queen - you need somebody to wave and distract the proles.

Re: Best intentions != right

"Granted I would rather the US have these capabilities than the North Koreans, but I would much rather no one had them."

Actually I would much rather it WAS the North Korean's spying on all my communications - they can't do anything with it.

Instead i have to wonder if everything I store on sharepoint or Office365 is immediately being copied to my US competitors, if visits to US customers or collaborators are tracked.

Do I have to worry that my cell phone walking past the mosque on the way to the lab or my holiday visits to Egypt or Cuba are going to get me stopped from attending the next US held conference.

Do cops need a warrant to search your phone? US Supreme Court will rule

Re: broad implications

Same apparently applies if you are within 100miles of the coast of the Mexican/Canadian borders

The constitution still counts in small section of Montana and Utah apparently

Obama reveals tiny NSA reforms ... aka reforming your view of the NSA

Re: If you're not a terrorist, you have nothing to worry about

5. Person who unrolls a banner lettered with glitter outside an Oil company

Re: "Having faced down the totalitarian dangers of fascism and communism"

If it weren't for the involvement of the USSR in WW II, most of Europe might be speaking German today,

Intel confirms it will axe 5,400 workers in 2014

Merger

Intel, HP, Dell merge and share their core competency in reducing headcount

Eventually they reduce it to only 3 - all joint CEOs - and still aren't profitable

Intel treads water despite drowning PC biz clinging to Chipzilla's legs

That suggests some "imaginative accounting" - chip fabs do not make 60% profit margins

Signs of stabilization in the PC segment

There is also stabilization in the Pyramid building and Flint Axe making sectors.

NSA: It's TRUE, we grab 200 MILLION of your text messages A DAY globally

Re: Neat trick!

1, Country A and B have laws against torturing suspects

2, So you ship them to country C and have them apply the electrodes

2, You stand outside the door asking the questions.

Or don't know enough Clash lyrics (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/03/text_punk/)

I suppose back in 2004 they could eavesdrop on ALL messages

Clink! Terrorist jailed for refusing to tell police his encryption password

>is this another "incite idiots to talk stupid, then arrest them under terrorist offences"

After the pub you don't want to say "EEh I could murder an Indian" if you don't want to become a terrorist suspect

re: gofsckyourselfmate

That's why the same law was ruled unconstitutional in the US

If you had a password of "IwantToKillThePresident" then revealing the password would be self-incrimination.

But they have a constitution and a supreme court and all sorts of weird stuff in the Land of the Free.

Re: and another thing ...

We asked this when the police computer guy gave a talk to our high energy physics group.

How can we prove that background noise in the LHC data isn't an encrypted message?

Do we have to keep the data in Switzerland, if we access it remotely does that come under UK law ?

We were told not to worry because the laws were only for terrorists - so that's a relief then !

Re: If loose lips, sink ships ......

> if you "can't remember" who was driving when the car got flashed

Unless you are a chief constable, then you can claim that all records of who was driving have been destroyed - and get off

Re: IronKey

But calling up Ironkey and asking for the backdoor password does

Microsoft buries Sinofsky Era... then jumps on the coffin lid

Re: Henry Ford

But Ford did at least improve on the horse.

Microsoft have ignored the "faster horse" request and instead replaced it with a slower zebra where you have to press all the stripes to find the one to make the horse go.

Re: A common API is definitely a must.

But it's hard for Microsoft to do this.

It's not like they 10,000s programmers, complete control over the critical app and server infrastructure and a common language runtime that insulates the apps from the details of the machine

Amazon workers in Delaware reject trade union membership

Re: no sane person would want anyone like that to have any claim to represent them

Anyone remember the massive safety improvements Scargill and the NUM brought in - or do we only have the Daily Mail history of the 80s?

Unions were effectively banned off-shore in the 80s, every worker was officially an independent consultant and so there were no rules preventing anybody who mentioned safety breaches being NRBed (blacklisted). The HSE wasn't allowed any oversight of rigs because the DTI was in charge of both promoting the business and enforcing safety. After Piper Alpha we got unions, and the HSE, and safety and we haven't blown a rig up since.

Re: Propaganda wins

Looking forward to the day when you can only sell a computer to an accredited member of the BCS ;-)

Re: Seems they're getting less and less popular

>And why do tube drivers get so much?

Because they have the most ability to shut down the city by striking for a day.

Re: It all boils down to Morality

That was the point - it wasn't the oppressed shop floor workers that were given the choice.

The presumably better paid and more secure sysadmins were asked if they wanted to join the union, they said no and this means that another union can't ask the regular workers for a vote for another year.

At that point Amazon ask the accountants if they want to join the accountants union, they say no and the warehouse workers are blocked for another year.

It's a common technique in the US, at least in states where you can't just automatically fire anyone who joins a union

Boffins hampered by the ampere hanker for a quantum answer

Re: Is this the 21st Century equivalent

Except that people are being charged for the number of angles delivered

Optical filters head to Germany for Solar Orbiter build

Hope they didn't

Send it with DHL

(i'm still missing a xmas prezzy)

Tales from an expert witness: Prior art and patent trolls

Re: Naming patent trolls

The problem USED to be patent monopolies. The development of the steam engine was held back for a generation because James Watt held a near monopoly with patents and had strong views about high pressure boilers. But these were people who wanted to build something - it's just that they wanted to be the only ones to build it.

The business model of buying patents purely to sue someone with no intention of developing a product is new = patent trolling.

Re: I know how to fix it!

Who pays?

If the applicant has to pay for 1000s of hours of world class expert consulting - it's going to be difficult for the small inventor to get a patent.

If it's tax-payer funded then within a few years we drop back to the USPTO as more cuts/efficiency gains hit.

DOOMSDAY still just MINUTES AWAY: As it has been since 1947

Re: Forgetful?

I'm more worried about Microsoft or Google getting the bomb (I think Apple already have one)