Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Who wants a smart meter to track'n'tax your car? Hello, Israel

Re: road congestion

Alternatively you could spend a squillion pounds on a high speed rail link to allow them to live in Birmingham and travel to London to sit at a computer

German boffins aim to burn natural gas - WITHOUT CO2 emissions

Re: Where does the carbon go?

It will all be turned into laser printer toner to keep up with the demand if you keep writing Flüssigmetallblasensäulenreaktors everywhere

Re: pointless stupidity

Alternatively if we burnt all the C to produce lots of CO2 and destroyed the nasty toxic oxygen we could return the planet to it's natural pristine state.

I for one welcome out blue-green algae overlords

Boffins propose photon-swapping entanglement experiment on ISS

Re: Well at least it's almost science

No it's more like claiming that Apollo was a major scientific experiment when they dropped a hammer and a feather and they fell at the same time - so testing that Newtonian gravity also worked on the moon.

Otherwise it's like repeating the Michelson-Morley experiment in Houston to check if the aether exists in the confederacy

Well at least it's almost science

So far more use than the typical school science fair projects that the ISS normally does.

But it's also 'proving' something that nobody seriously doubts, doing it to the ISS rather than across an optical fibre is slightly trickier technically but still pointless.

French spies do a Barbara Streisand over secret nuke radio base

Re: Probably an Idiot

Possibly even more worrying that the secret inteligence services of a european nuclear power is staffed by such weapons-grade morons.

On the other hand it is nice to discover we have something in common with the French

Library ebooks must SELF-DESTRUCT if scribes want dosh - review

Re: What’s the point?

> The royalty revenue will continue as long as the copy is available, and, if that is for ever, why should that be a problem?

Because the library load royalty ( a few pennies) goes to the author.

When a library buys a hardback, the 20quid goes to the publisher - and a few pennies gets passed on to the author.

Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

Re: RIP Mrs T

There is a typo:

I have to agree, it is only a shame that the later governments left a whole generation still with the attitude that the state owed them a living this time on bailouts........

Re: At least two sides to this story

That's true - when Darfield main closed I begged our dad to move to Canary Wharf and become a foreign exchange dealer but he were just to workshy and feckless to leave Barnsley and spent the next 20years looking for odd bits of part time work

Tax man to take a bite of tech employees' free meals?

Excuse me?

" And I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees,"

Martin McMahon, Jr., a tax-law professor at the University of Florida,

And who is paying the salary of a professor at University of Florida? = all those high earning programmers at Google

London Boroughs join forces in mighty £1bn IT procurement framework

Crystal ball mode=on

Theory = buying in bulk gets discounts, by pooling all our buying we will get massive discounts.

Practice = only IBM will be big enough to bid on this contract. They know they have a captive market so will charge 2x retail price for everything. The costs will then double again as every council has to throw out all their existing Dell/HP/local-shop stuff and be integrate din the new IBM only system

New rules to end cries of 'WTF... a £10 online booking fee?'

Re: I await RyanAir's response with interest

Don't forget the http recycling fee charged on all those bytes you dump on their servers

My cell phone company over here in the off-world colonies adds a $7.95 "system access fee" to my monthly bill

Pyongyang to unleash NUKULAR horsemen of the Norkocalypse?

North Yorkshire to the Rescue

One of the justifications for upgrading the Fylingdales Early Warning base after the fall of the USSR was that it would protect us from rogue states like North Korea. So any attempt to launch a missile on London from say Bridlington could be easily detected.

Of course the conspiracy theory is that it was built in anticipation of an independant Scotland and to provide warning of a Haggis attack on the home counties.

Hold on! Degrees for all doesn't mean great jobs for all, say profs

Re: Privatised Education

No just privatize the loans. Then the banks can take the decision if it's worth the risk of giving you the loan to do media studies in Barnsley or whether they should only fund engineering at Imperial.

Funnily enough that would see an immediate return to the socialist 80s system of rich Annabel's doing art history at Cambridge and clever kids from comprehensives doing engineering at Imperial - but decided by the market.

Re: The drop out rate

So did the uni close the unproductive physics dept for failing to achieve it's "student output curve goal scenario" or did they just tell them to pass everyone?

Re: It ain't what you do, its where you do it.

There is at least a reason behind it.

If you just want N warm bodies for your management training scheme then requiring a degree means you have fewer CVs to read through and at least a reasonable chance that they can read and write.

If you want a smaller N, then requiring a degree from a top tier uni means that somebody else (their admissions tutors) has already done the sorting for you. Assuming you want a mixture of clever students, people with the right daddy and good rowers/rugby players - which is what most of British management runs on anyway

Re: It's looking that way in the U.S. too

It's much safer than having humans touch it.

There is less chance of cross-species transfer from lawyers

Kissinger and tell: WikiLeaks scrapes 1.7m US diplomatic reports from the '70s

Re: Mostly harmless

>western leaders held accountable???

To be fair, one of the leaders convicted by the ICC was european = Admiral Doenitz

So if you lose a war against the Americans you can expect justice

Silent Circle aims for email that's as secure as it gets

Re: HOW DARE U CENSOR ME

A perfectly encrypted message would be indistiguishable from random noise.

Similarly a perfectly random stream of gibberish would allow for perfectly encrypted messages.

Perhaps the OP is actually just a source of random OTP data?

Re: RSVP ..... to a Real Live Phish BetaTesting UKGBNI Intelligence Services .....

>part of the US military, governmental and globo-corp establishment

Those are the most paranoid - who has most to fear from the NSA reading their email? The CIA/army/FBI and other agencies that compete with them for funding and political power

Bitcoin briefly soars to record $147 high, driven by Cyprus bank flap

Re: NO

Industrial diamonds are synthetic and fashion accessory is subject to fashion.

Until the mid C19 diamonds weren't the most prized gemstone - rubies were - it would only take somebody with a bigger ad budget than de Beers to make diamonds worthless

Re: Commodity/currency? Nah, it's a penny stock.

And how exactly does the UK's military might set the value of the pound?

Accept pounds or we send in Prince Harry?

Re: NO

Gold has some industrial uses - but gemstones are only valuable because De Beers run ads to persuade your girlfriend that she has to have a diamond ring. If you want to know how intrinsically valuable jewels are - ask the jewel what the trade in value of that $5000 engagement ring is.

Re: @AC...13:51...Gee...WHAT a surprise!

No - somebody hacked an exchange.

If somebody hacked a bank that doesn't mean they have hacked the Dollar/Euro/Pound

>Cannot manage the uncertainty of the future as well as material monies

So I have a suitcase full of Reichmarks - can I buy a BMW with them?

>on the free market, commodity monies, and presumably gold and silver

Assuming there is a free market and not a government that suddenly takes 10% of your commodity monies or requires you to report your gold holdings

Publishing ANYTHING on .uk? From now, Big Library gets copies

Re: Beano

Just think of Eire as an offsite backup of the UK

German ransomware threatens with sick kiddie smut

Re: Devious and Disgusting

>if in the court's opinion the subject looks underage, even if you can prove that they are not.

So what about Angus Young - ACDC's not-so-young school uniform wearer?

Gov report: Actually, evil City traders DIDN'T cause the banking crash

Re: Try reading the damn article

It did indirectly.

Banking is a global business, if a British bank's shareholders ask why it isn't making the 10% returns that it's American competitors are by selling subprime mortgages, Mayfly futures and magic bean funds - it has to start doing more than lending only to the nice 40year old couple who want a tiny mortgage.

Re: Bollocks

The generation currently retiring might have - but the previous generation didn't.

Most women didn't work so the longest living half of the pensioners, paid no tax and no NI, many of the men were manual workers who paid no NI before the 60s

If you are in the generation that partook of WWII it's likely you were a massive net loss to the welfare system

How I nearly sold rocket windows to the crazy North Koreans

Re: Mixed lessons from history?

At least we had the decency to hire the Nazi scientists and get them to build copies of their rockets instead of doing the copying ourselves.

Australian Feds charge 17-year-old 'Anon' with four crimes

Re: Law is for the poor

If you employed the person, paid them to do the hacking as part of their job and profited from the proceeds - yes

Rackspace sues 'the most notorious patent troll in America'

Re: A Very Good Thing Indeed.

"Most people" in the music industry are musicians - they get screwed by the PRS / RIAA more than downloaders

Re: A Very Good Thing Indeed.

I think that's the Bard of Avon, the Bard of Avalon would be Bryan Ferry

....although he might also believe in killing all the lawyers - most people in the music industry do.

Lasers capture 3D images from a kilometre away

You get a return from each object in the path, most LIDAR systems will give you all the depth values or just first/last hit.

The difficult bit about using them at this range is that the beam is a foot across unless you are carrying optics the size of a truck to project it, it looks like their software is doing some clever surface reconstruction maths to get pixels that small so it will be confused by anything fuzzy - it probably also needs the target to stand very still to allow it to build up the map

Review: Intel Next Unit of Computing barebones desktop PC

Re: Nope

Intel ship another PC - same as the current PCs

Too expensive to watch TV, to expensive for schools, too power hungry and no connectivity for projects, not powerful enough for games.

Sadly it will sell for kiosks/digital signage to people who think they need windows to display a picture - and who will have a BSOD appear on their billboard on the dailywtf

Swedish judge explains big obstacles to US Assange extradition

Re: Are you insane?

And who would have thought that life long socialist, CND supporter and conscientious objector to school cadet force - Jack Straw - would have been behind US torture flights being supported from the UK. And then lying about it later.

Sci/Tech quango promises an end to 'events with no women'

Re: muscles

Here in Canada women are getting more widespread in mining. Women drivers of haul trucks are common if still a minority.

You don't need much in the way of muscle to drive a 300ton truck, for rather obvious reasons they have power steering. There is however still a stereotype that women drivers are more reliable, don't turn up for work drunk or stoned, don't get into fights at work and are more conscientious.

Mars to go offline for a month as vast nuclear furnace gets in the way

Re: We need a relay

Or a hyperspace bypass !

RAF graduates first class of new groundbased 'pilots'

What's the badge for

Completely automated drones?

The same but without the wings?

Or an RAF symbol flanked by two keyboards?

Re: "...required for safe and effective weapons delivery." - RAF

So they just drop a leaflet saying:

"We tried to bomb your country but you were out - please contact the RAF to arrange a re-bombing"

USA's H-1B skilled worker visa applications open

Re: This is the way to do it.

They can't travel to another Eu country to get work until they are a citizen of the first Eu country - which normally takes years.

Think of the Eu like the US, if you become a US citizen in Texas you should be allowed to move to California within 10years.

Re: This is the way to do it.

Competing with locals is good.

If they can do better than the locals they get the job, the company does better, the company becomes succesfull and hires more people and pays more tax (snigger).

Would you rather ARM could hire the best coders in the world - even if they were American/Japanese/Korean - or be limited to Bert from Saffron Walden because you wouldn't want anyone coming from outside S Cambs and taking local jobs

Prime Ministerial exploding cheese expert to become 'entrepreneur'

Re: Smell my cheese...

Your special adviser was a hamster and your policy smells of elderberries

Tech is the biggest problem facing archiving

Re: @Lusty

What if you were interested in looking for oil under Borat-istan. Before bribing the local rulers or persuading the US to invade - it might be interesting to look at those surveys you did when in the 1920s when it was British Eastern Turkey.

Tim Cook eats necessary crow, apologizes to China

Thank our (previous) glorious leader

For rejecting chinese style socialism and fighting for the rights of British customers to get one year warranties rather than the mandatory two years forced upon the other oppressed peoples of Europe

I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working

Re: This is all too familiar.

I just tell people I'm a gynecologist

A lightbulb that does IPv6: You know you want it

Re: so you really

>I've never heard of a power grid that struggled to meet demand at midnight...

You will when 4billion connected devices all try and get their updates and reboot at exactly 00:00 every night!

Pyongyang Photoshop tomfoolery shows wet Norks, skirts blown up

Re: a few people will get killed

In the Korean war we (the good guys) only killed about 25% of the population of N Korea - I'm sure we can do better this time.