Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Five bods wrongly cuffed thanks to bungled comms snooping in UK

Re: It's not about the truth

> everyone is guilty of something.

Even if it's only being Irish.

Although presumably the police's job is easier now you just have to prove they have sufficiently good enough tans that they might be muslim

Tweet like escaping Hell depends on it, Twitter Catholics told

Re: Seriously??

No, once a Catholic always a Catholic.

You could join the Taliban and you would just be a bad catholic

Dara O'Brian

Re: Phibible

Odd strategy from God really.

You let the Jews get it wrong for 1300 years, then send the kid along to tell them how to do it but they are wrong for 1500 years until a monk comes along to say they were doing it wrong ...

A bit like patch-Tuesdays

Ex-prez Carter: 'America has no functioning democracy' with PRISM

Re: He's right

How do you support term limits in a democracy?

" I demand that I not be allowed to vote for this candidate next time !"

Re: "they don't give you the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing"`

>Remind me, what did Obama get it for?

He reminded them of Kissenger

UK investigators finger emergency beacon for 787 Heathrow fire

Re: Echoes of the DC-10

> Everything on that plane is checked by the FAA before it's given a certificate of air worthyness.

Nothing on the plane is checked by the FAA - that's not how certification works, not a single FAA engineer touches the aircraft.

They check that Boeing has procedures in place to test the aircraft and check that Boeing follow those procedures. Boeing then does the same for its sub-contractors.

ACLU warns of mass tracking of US drivers by government spycams

Re: Why do they do it? Because they *can*

>The UK has had ANPR in many sites with data retention for up to five years but WTF for?

To protect the children

A police patrol car out in a residential area one evening got a message that a car with no road tax had been detected by the ANPR in his patrol car - so set off in hot pursuit. At 94mph through a pedestrian crossing - killing a school girl.

Fortunately it turned out to be a false alarm - the potential terrorist road tax evader had paid.

Water, sunshine or pig s***: How will YOU power your data centre?

Re: Easy answer.

Most of downtown Toronto's AC now uses a big pipe of cold deep lake water from whichever great Lake is next to the city.

PRISM scandal: Brit spooks operated within the law, say politicos

re: GCHQ circumvented UK legislation

That is true they didn't - because they didn't have to. The existing legislation lets them do anything they want.

They may have allowed the NSA to circumvent US legislation, but that's because the US doesn't have as much control over it's subjects as we do.

Now you can be the NSA: Snoop on a Google Glass hipster with a QR code

Why

Would anyone bother spying on a Hipster?

Microsoft DENIES it gives backdoor access to Outlook encryption

I feel sorry for Richard Nixon

If only he had thought to have a secret court declare what he was doing perfectly legal there wouldn't have been a problem

Ad man: Mozilla 'radicals' and 'extremists' want to wreck internet economy

Business friendly solution

Mozilla should charge him the same rate for his ads appearing in their internets as Fox charge for advertising on their network.

PM writes ISPs' web filter ads for them - and it must say 'default on'

Re: Why is regulation a bad thing?

Because there won't be an official regulated government list created by sane (or at least accountable ) people - that would be Big Brother.

There will be an order to "use a list" but the ISPs are free to pick any "unaccountable opaque censorship restriction" list they choose.

Re: Is it a national blocklist ?

I'm sure the government will leave it open for the ISP's to choose a list and they will choose the list that they are already using "to protect the children".

It doesn't cost them anything, everyone else is doing it and if you object you are obviously a peado

Re: Is it a national blocklist ?

The "Internet Watch Foundation" produce the list, they are a charity so they are independant of government (snigger) but also don't have any official oversight - they ban what they want and you have no appeal.

you also have no idea who their backers are, who is funding them or what their political/economic/religious motives are - but you can't possibly have a problem with this because they are protecting the children

Not any more - unless you want the reg on the banned list

Microsoft's next device could be a Surface Watch

Re: Memories........

Alarms are fine - you can set the time that it reboots to install updates everyday

Boeing batteries back under spotlight as 787 burns at Heathrow

Re: Typical knee jerk reaction

Burger kings attempt at in flight "flame grilled whoppers" not a success

Analyst: Tests showing Intel smartphones beating ARM were rigged

It is too easy to pick on benchmarks.

Would this be from the same processor maker whose performance library and compiler famously "improves" benchmarks when run on it's own "genuine" processor family and disables optimizations when run on competing CPUs with the same instruction set ?

Sysadmins: Everything they told you about backup WAS A LIE

Re: Some extra points

You need to backup the working environment not just the data.

Our data is totally backed up and we can restore it instantly to our server farm which is currently;

a, underwater after we were flooded

b, in the middle of an area of the city that is cordoned off because of the bomb threat

c, working perfectly but inaccesible to all of our staff because of the above

Screw it, says NSA leaker Snowden: I'm applying for asylum in Russia

Re: I wonder

An arrest warrant was issued for an Israeli general flying through Heathrow

The police (definitely not acting under instructions from number 10) declared that they had no authority to board a civil commercial airliner parked at Heathrow and let him depart.

Chromebooks now the fastest-growing segment of PC market

Re: dedicated button for dualbooting

You don't even need to reboot. Since Chrome is running a Linux kernel you can also run "real" Linux at the same time and just hot key between the two.

So they were less use than a phone at being a phone?

Would a $3000 alienware, multi-core i7 with a TB disk and Windows8 been any better?

Re: Better than windows 8 for a laptop?

I have one and it's fantastic for $200 - superlight, battery lasts all day, instant on and zero maintenance.

For web browsing on the sofa or travel it's perfect. It replaced an HP netbook I had for travelling and a tablet for web browsing.

For web stuff, like ranting on el'reg, a keybaord and a full size screen beat a tablet.

I did install Ubuntu on it side:side but that's pretty pointless. If i need a Linux laptop I have a real Linux laptop. Compared to a $300 bottom of the range Wintel machine then for the stuff it's good at ( web/ email) there is no contest.

Forget Snowden: What have we learned about the NSA?

Re: DEFCON

This could have the biggest effect:

The FEDS are going to go to DEFCON this year, they are going to be sitting outside photographing everyone

Next year they are going to "suggest" that anyone who goes to DEFCON is a terrorist.

Major companies are going to stop sending their people to an event associated with terrorist criminals

Then anyone who has been to DEFCON is not going to get approval to work for the government / defense contractor / bank.

So in a few years we are going to be protecting our vital infrastructure from criminal gangs / foreign intelligence agencies with civil servant programmers who have no idea about hacking.

Re: What we learned

In the words of the philosopher:

"give them Rule Britannia / gassy beer / page 3, three weeks in Espania and sunday striptease"

It does seem unfair that Americans only get the gassy beer

Re: Secret laws

> It goes against all sense of what we have been told our country is all about.

You country was founded by a bunch of religous nutjobs who wanted to persecute others and execute dangerous radical Quakers.

It then turned terrorist to overthrow the legitimate government

It then started a program of genocide against the indigenous population

It then built it's wealth on slavery

Exactly what were you told your country was all about ?

Re: How are they using the data?

Do they pass it on to companies vital to the US national interest ?

Do they assist other federal departments ?

Is there scope creep so that the Arkansas office of fishing licenses eventually get access ?

Do large ursine mammals defecate in a the siviculture ?

Re: OT - Assange

Remember when the Met had their special "shoot a Brazilian" away-day?

And within hours the news was full of stories of how he was wearing a big coat (false), had jumped the barriers (false) had resisted arrest (false) and had an expired student visa (true)

It's almost as if there was some police operation to feed false information to the media, and a media ready to cooperate in getting the "party line" out.

Microsoft biz heads slash makes Ballmer look like dead STEVE JOBS

Re: Risky Stretegy

So is doing the opposite. How is the English Electric Valve company EEV doing these days?

Ubuntu 13.10 to ship with Mir instead of X

Re: Mir, where did I hear that name before...

The Space station that went at 17,000mph non-stop for 15 years without crashing ?

EU competition inspectors RAID European telcos

Because fscking customers over with high prices is perfectly legal.

If the UK telco had done a secret deal with a foreign telco where they detected you had put in a local SIM and still charged you international prices - that would be anti-competative and get them raided.

BAN UK tax breaks on patented tech, fumes German finance minister

Re: harmonizing of corporate tax

If Germany were to decide that there was no VAT payable on cars and setup a scheme so German cars anywhere in europe could be officially "bought" in Germany - I imagine some British politicians with a car plant in their back yard might object.

US Congress proposal: National Park will be FOUND ON MOON

Re: How do salvage laws work in space?

The Apollo 11 lunar module crashed into the moon so would be difficult to salvage - the lander stage remains US property in the same way that sunk warships remain the property of their governments.

Re: Not a bad idea...

The last time the US politicians had a tantrum and shut down government - they actually hired people to go out onto remote hiking trails in unmanned parks to declare them closed and stop visitors

So if the US stopped Nasa's budget under another tantrum they might be forced to launch another Apollo program by the same legislation!

Re: WTF?

Presumably the USSR would then claim low earth orbit as theirs - which might have bigger commercial implications

Human error blamed for toxic Russian rocket explosion

Re: Directional Arrows

Or if you are designing a component where orientation matters - don't put a symmetrical set of mounting holes.

Re: Give the poor guy a break!

Simply change the marketing material to "new automated mining system in trial of Russia - Australia direct tunnel" and you have a success.

Re: Typical Management.

> Did the test plan check for the error?

It did - the Russian test plan is generally to fire the thing and see if it blows up.

For bonus points make sure you test it near Germans - in which case it doesn't matter if it worked or failed.

Ciseco Pi-Lite: Make a Raspberry Pi trip light fantastic with 126 LEDs

Re: Send P&P packing

Dealextreme and the like manage to surface mail cheap crap for free by regular post, so either RM is doing them a great deal on the final delivery or they have really really good margins

Re: Send P&P packing

If you are just sending out a few boards then you need to:

Send kid down to staples to buy padded envelopes

Get kid to put them in envelopes,

Print labels

Make sure correct label is stuck on envelope

Take to post office

Weigh them, pay postage

Compared to sending out 1000s of items with a production line of kids paid Chinese minimum wage and a container full of padded envelopes bought at Chinese prices from the company next door. And then a bulk deal with China post.

We used to charge 25quid for a replacement serial cable for one of our industrial products. Our customers probably hated us for ripping them off - but by the time we had bought them from RS, dealt with all the stocking, taking orders, packaging, posting etc - all to ISO9001 - we were losing money.

European Space Agency goes for mostly solid Ariane 6

Re: Full spectrum cominance

>Want to make an phone call from the middle of the ocean (any ocean) or a ship or plane and you're not a member of the US govt?

Then you use a LEO relay system like Iridium or inmarsat.

You don't use a 3m dish accurately pointing at a GSO satelite 20,000 miles away

Re: Full spectrum cominance

I thought Arianes' big selling point twas that although it wasn't the biggest mass to orbit launcher it's third stage was so precise you didn't need to waste mass/cost/time on putting a lot of booster technology in your payload?

ps Is there actually a market for GSO communications satellites anymore? I thought their capacity was so laughably behind fiber there was no point for phone calls and everybody was now watching ESPN and FOX over cable?

Dead STEVE JOBS was a CROOK – judge

Cutting the price to kill Texas Instruments is perfectly fair

Agreeing with Texas Instruments that you will both add $10 to the price of all your games isn't

re: worldwide revenues

Fortunately "Apple Earth inc" makes a loss because of the royalty payments it has to make to "Apple Omicron Persei 8"

Euro GPS Galileo gets ready for nuclear missile use

Re: INS/GPS aren't the only options

GPS is very useful for knowing where your submarine is when you fired the missile - in order to set the INS.

That was the original reason for GPS, and the preceding US Navy satelite system. Having your sub sit on the surface for hours while people try and make enough sextant readings to get a fix was not condusive to health when there were Russian bombers overhead.

Not sure how much use GPS would be for a re-entering missile surrounded by highly heated and partly ionised atmosphere

Re: @John Smith 19 - Encrypted service has nothing to do with freedom loving

But they have to set the price low enough that you can't do better with SBAS and beacons so will never make back the cost of billing for the service - never mind the billions for actually launching the things