Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

NASA boffins: Space 'scope JUST missed dead Cold War spy sat

In other overblown hysteria

I was travelling to work this morning when I recieved an automated signal from the TRAFFIC (will think of contrived acronym later) light which suggested that 30tons of truck would be intercepting my orbit off the sliproad which would have resulted in a massive collision.

Fortunately my car was equipped with a kinetic energy to heat transferal system intended to reduce my orbital velocity into the parking space at the end of the mission/commute

The decision was taken to initiate a BRAKE (acronym to follow) manouver and the truck passed ahead of me missing by mere meters (a gnats hair on a canadian scale)

Thousands rally behind teen girl cuffed, expelled in harmless 'explosion'

Re: unintended f*c*i*g consequences.

Mentos and coke would be a weapon of mass destruction and a war crime

Brit horologist hammers out ‘first’ ATOMIC-POWERED watch

Re: I happen to have experience transporting radioactive material across international borders.

>My Tritium keyring from El Reg never so much as raised an eyebrow.

Was it under 2oz and did you put it in the magic terrorist-proof clear plastic bag?

Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves

Re: So, they're making a loss ...

They don't even have to make a profit on the books - they may just be trying to postpone the day that an all powerful Amazon crushes them.

Google 'will be pulled back in front of MPs' on its UK tax affairs

In the blue corner ....

MPs are going to 'name and shame' Google by publishing the details of it's tax avoidance in a parliamentary committee reported in Hansard paragraph2, subsection3, clause 4.....

In the red corner :

Google are going to splash details of MPs (perfectly legitimate) tax avoidance and creative expenses claims all over ... the internet.

Feds want to fine companies that refuse wiretap requests

Re: Dangerous thinking ..

Ironically the safest place to put your data would now be on a cloud server owned by a Cuban/Iranian/Russian company

Surprise! Republican bill adds politics to science funding

Re: Mixed feelings

Sorry that should have been "grey suit "(auto-complete on the phone)

I hope none of the downvotes were due to people who despair of the great leader's tailoring.

Re: A poor anaysis from Reg readers (sorry).

The problem is the science and technology committee in US politics.

Science has zero public interest, it also has very little commercial input (except for defense) - this means that a member of the science and technology committee cannot raise enough financial support from the public or corporations to fund their re-election campaign. Being on the committee is electoral death.

As a result the comittee is the dumping ground for lunatics that couldn't get on any other comittee and people with an inherited seat (generally from the bible belt) who don't need to raise money because they have captive voters.

Mixed feelings

As a scientist who has worked in the Eu and US I would naturally be against this.

However, the idea of a USA without any technology does have a certain comfort factor.

The idea that the next little adventure in overseas democracy will consist of Southern baptist preachers standing around a cruise missile (without an engine or warhead) commanding "the power of Christ compels you to fly" while on the other side a short fat guy in a great suit is photoshopping extra tanks - does have an appeal

Re: American credibility?

Given Ms. Palin's opinions on " fruit fly research in Paris, France.”" I can't see NSF funds being used for many more international projects.

Re: Separation of church and state

No it should just be treated like any mental illness.

If during your driving test you continually ask the invisble elfs on the steering wheel if you should stop for pedestrians - you generally fail the test. In politics you fail if you don't claim to listen to them.

Re: As one who at one time did benefit from NSF funding...

Surely, armies of researchers looking for evidence that Jesus rode a dinosaur will produce something useful !

Is this the first ever web page? If not, CERN would like to know

Obviosuly a British invention

When your tag line for the world changing invention = "don't be disappointed"

UK.Gov passes Instagram Act: All your pics belong to everyone now

Re: Is this really a bad thing?

That's the problem - these images are marked otherwise.

But certain organisations (the BBC) have been taking images - either sent in by viewers or copied form websites, stripping the EXIF data and then they become orphan works. Just like if I tore the cover form a book and claimed it was now mine because the author wasn't identifiable

A licence to print money

I did a diligent search on "who did the picture of the queen on a fiver" and it returned nothing.

So I'm assuming the 5 pound note is an orphan work and will be doing my own copies of it.

NATO proclaimed winner of Locked Shield online wargame

Be suspicious of the losers

No Mr NATAO - here under very public conditions we were totally unable to hack your wonderfully secure systems. We recommend you make no changes to your procedures.

Спасибо

Your Russian friends

Opera sues designer for leaking trade secrets to Mozilla

Re: Hate to say this... but...

Perhaps in the USA - but Europe occasionally has worker's rights.

Some places in the US (Massachusetts especially) lean so heavily toward the corporation that if you worked on software at company A then any use of a computer at company B is regarded as infringement.

It got so bad that many silicon valley firms wouldn't hire anyone who had ever worked in Ma.

Ten ancestors of the netbook

Because Microsoft, fearful for canabilising their OS sales on laptops, mandated 1 Gb Ram and 1024x600 limit on the machines to be allowed to run the cheap / low power versions of the OS.

Chinese cyber-spook crew back in business, say security watchers

Re: The obvious .... to those in states of denial

But it's not fair - we used to be the only ones spying on commercial rivals in other countries because you had to spend billions on Echelon. Now any kid with PC in an internet cafe can do it - it's just not cricket

Re: Ban this UNIX malware !

No simply hand control over English language over to the RIAA/MPAA - then anybody attempting to hack a system by using commands based on English words will be violating copyright and they will come down on them like a ton of pirate DVDs

Review: Nokia Lumia 520

Re: No Gorilla glass

hmmm ?

Why would the manufacturer not fit something that would prevent you having to buy a new phone the first time you put it in the same pocket as your keys?

Can't find your motor? Apple patents solve car park conundrums

Re: Already exists!

Or if you have an original Nokia phone you could just throw it as hard as possible at random until it hit your car and set off the alarm which you recognise - and with a old Nokia the phone would still work

Re: Wouldnt it be simpler

Literary alternatives - just leave a trail of breadcrumbs, or unwind a thread from your cloak

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

A revelation

So Dr Dre's PhD isn't in acoustics then ?

Re: Beats vs. BeyerDynamic

And then somebody else to turn the loudness up to 11

Student falsely IDed by Reddit as Boston bomber found dead

Re: I'll get my baseball bat

Crowdsourcing works perfectly well with emotive subject like terrorism or murders.

The problem is that to train a neural net (human or artificial) you need to be able to classify the inputs.

Since in this case nobody knew what the crowd was looking for - it became a "find somebody young/brown/male" system

Which in fairness it was very good at,

Court orders Visa partner to allow donations to WikiLeaks

VISA can simply terminate it's operations in Iceland if it doesn't like the local laws there.

If Saudi airlines in Britain decided to refuse to employ women or gays or jews then the British court would have a perfect right to send them to the naughty step - whatever the rules were at home. They then have the choice to obey or go home.

Re: Makes sense to me

Or didn't allow donations to Greenpeace, or CND, or the labour party or ....

Cameron: Get those saucy websites off Blighty's public Wi-Fi

Re: Missing the point.

But how can you possibly argue with the "Children's Charities Coalition on Internet Safety" ?

It's got children, charity AND safety in it's name!

Re: Dear Dave

Yes but today on the internet those same children could see pictures of naked WOMEN.

What state would the government, the civil service and the conservative party be in if boys from public schools started preferring women ?

Re: No sex please, we're British?

At least reading playboy on your phone is safe http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/02/playboy_app_ios_apple_censorship/

Re: Yawn.

But then , when they grow up, won't they be more likely to want to have sex than blow other people up?

Won't somebody think of the children ( of the shareholders in BAe/Thales/Vickers )

Re: How would it work?

I'm picturing row upon row of civil servants each seated at a monitor wearing a strategically placed blood pressure cuff. If the "lever" goes up a bell rings and the site is banned.

Re: It's about time!

and killed Diana

(c) Daily Express

Re: Yes they do...

Wasn't there a cock-up recently when MP's emails about a sexual offences bill were blocked by the House's own system ?

Bogus gov online test tells people on dole they're just SO employable

Re: Applied Placebo Effect?

"If everyone takes the "test" and everyone has their self esteem raised...."

But if some people took it again - their esteem would be doubled each time

Re: Again?

Those are great fun.

You just ask, very loudly in front of HR and other applicants.

Oh I understand - you use the handwriting on the form to check if I'm a women and the colour selection to test my racial background?

"I have taken frequent stands in the face of strong opposition."

I tried it at Chelsea once, I thought their new stand would look good for our school sports field.

They didn't like it.

Arbeit macht Frei

Wasn't perhaps the best mission slogan for the new department

Re: Gov't tests

>The test is designed to find out if you can recognize a geometric series.

But disqualifies all those that know that rainfall doesn't follow a geometric series.

Got a Windows XP end-of-life plan? Neither does anyone else

My plan?

To shout - excellent, I have a proven OS that my users are very familiar with, that runs great on that 5year old HW and which MSFT is going to stop trying to break with updates every week.

So I don't get security updates - most of which fix the security flaws that were introduced by last week's update. Or that new IE feature to allow my phone to share cat photos with my car through facebook (or my cat share car photos - I'm never sure)

So I firewall my XP machines (and funnily enough my vista/7/8 machines)

I have rules to stop people opening attachments (in fact since most of my XP machines are doing real work - they don't even have outlook installed)

And basically breath a big sigh of relief and wonder how long I can put off the Windows9 upgrade

Google's $1 fiber deal will cost Provo, Utah $1.7m

Re: Recovery.

More likely contractor was paid to pull cable and filed the correct permits for that work.

But the contractor wasn't paid to hook up the equipment so didn't care which one was fibre #1 in cable #2 of bundle #3. The city engineering dept didn't care as long as they recorded which road was being dug up.

Since nobody has connected anything to these bare fibees nobody has a list of which ones go where

Ofcom to UK: Really - you're using the same password for everything?

Re: True but misleading

>far too many websites now are demanding e-mail addresses and passwords for the most basic of transactions and one-off purchases.

And lo he created mailinator.com and saw that it was good

White House backs US web sales tax - eBay hits panic alarm

Wouldn't the solution be for the states to collect together into some sort of federation and have a central federal government to regulate this sort of thing?

Re: Have I understood it correctly?

They could collect sales tax from buyers if, for example, the states had access to all your browsing history and email without a warrant - didn't I hear about a bill like that recently?

Re: Sounds fair

High street stores can just level the playing field.

Go into Best Buy and choose the item, go to the till and click to buy it online from their Caymen Island's web server and then pick it up from their instore delivery option immediately = nobody pays any tax.

Exactly what Boeing does when you buy an aircraft from them, or Rolls Royce does when you buy their engines.

ICO probes Home Office refusal to reveal Snooper's Charter details

Re: enough chat, what do I do about it?

Brazilian - and he wasn't wearing a heavy jacket, they made that bit up later,

Congratulations you could be home secretary!

Re: Why doesn't someone call Ms May out on her untruths?

>Food standards Agency ??

In the US, after 9/11, all the government agencies involved with public safety came under the DHS.

Which stopped commie pinko anti-business schemes - like inspecting meat plants for salmonella - to concentrate on taking 2.1.oz tubes f toothpaste from you at the airport.

Leading to several hundred extra deaths

Re: Paedophiles, Terrorists

Not fear but it does make them foam at the mouth.

Really the Daily Mail is just a psychology experiment that got out of hand.