Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

French gov 'plans to hand Google €1bn tax bill' - report

Re: Profit != Turnover

Since just about every company in the world is in bermuda, they hide $100Bn of 'costs' their, Bermuda has no armed forces - I think i can see a way of paying for those new aircraft carriers

Forgetting Microsoft: How Steve Ballmer's Surface could win

Re: Confused

Microsoft are far from fscked - they are going to be one of the most valuable companies in the market.

With $150Bn in cash, once they divest themselves of this silly little software sideline they can become a very sucessful hedge fund.

Petition for Alan Turing on £10 note breaks 20,000 signatures

Re: They'll probably refuse to put Turing on there....

Well he did violate the computer misuse act and pirated a lot of German intellectual property

Re: "Richard Branson"

>Who suggested him?!

Who do you think ?

Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

Realistic Bond plot

Bond arrives for work at M's secret headquarters - the big building on the Thames with the 60ft flashing tourist sign saying "secret military inteligence HQ"

Ah Bond - we have a special job for you.

We want you to go down to files, pull out all the stories about Arthur Scargil being a Soviet agent paid by Libya, change the name to Alex Salmond and leak them to the Daily Mail.

Go and see Q I hear he has developed some magical liquid allowing you to change things on a typewriter.

Afraid I can't says Bond flicking a speck of dust from his C&A casual bry-nylon slacks. I have to attend a course on updating health and safety requirements on working with paper clips in an office environment to meet the new civil service guidelines.

Re: distance

>Doesn't the inverse square law applies to the laser beam?

Yes but it's not such a big effect.

If you had a little 6inch telescope with a diffraction limit of 1arc-sec then from LEO at 200km you would put a spot about 1m (in ideal case), launch a Hubble size mirror and you can focus it down to about 1/20 of that = 2inches.

Sunlight is about 1000w/m^2 so your 1MegaWatt Acme space laser would be about 200,000x brighter than daylight

The atmosphere doesn't have much effect looking down. The distortion puts an angle shift into the light, so if you are looking at a distant star a fraction of degree movement is big, but if you target is only a few km below the atmospheric turbulence layer it's not such a big deal.

Pointing accurately to 1arc-sec even blind is trivial, with star trackers we can point the Hubble to 1/100 of that.

But on the whole the best way of killing somebody with a laser still remains dropping it on their head.

GooPad's eight-incher gives Apple fans cheap relief

Re: Samsung's lawyers should buy a few.

However you could sue rich American companies like Amazon for selling them, or go after ebay/paypal/credit card companies - there are lot of rich targets.

Microsoft's 'official' Windows 8 Survival Guide leaks

Re: Windows 8 promises to be a disaster in offices.

But what if your workers need to operate in a modern multi-media cloud enabled social web interactive multi-paradigm environment?

Vaunted Windows 8 RTM updates 'actually featured from Win2000'

SP0

So microsoft introduce the concept of service pack zero - one released before the OS?

They should patent that !

China's Goophone unveils US$99 Android iPad Mini clone

Re: AC re: Breitling

I wonder if there is a market for a watch that is just a slug of platinum, with no hands or watch - just as big bit of expensive shiny metal on a strap

Re: Howexactly is this an iPad clone?

I might buy one then !

Looks like an iPad, works like an iPad but cheaper and I don't have to dedicate my life to the iCult

Howexactly is this an iPad clone?

That's like saying my lenovo is a MacBook clone because it has an Intel processor, an Nvidia graphics card, a screen and runs a different OS

Huawei says US stance is 'protectionism'

Could backfire

We don't have any evidence that Huawei phones home or has any security links.

We do know that US telcos supplied warrantless wiretaps to US authorities, we know US (and UK) companies are required to 'cooperate' with the authorities without telling their users.

So we should assume that Microsoft software is a security risk and probably be a bit suspicous of any Intel network chipsets

Skype for Windows 8 is coming: Always on, always in your contacts

Re: Have they spoken to the phone companies?

I meant Symbian's current popularity.

Nokia spokesman = Symbian sales will continue to rise at their historical level until the day we ship Windows8

Reality = Symbian sales fell of a cliff the day they announced switching to Windows8

Have they spoken to the phone companies?

Hey telcos - be the first to roll out Windows8.

The phones will cost slightly more than Apple, are less popular than symbian and have fewer apps than Babbage's analytical engine.

But there's a bonus - your users won't have to pay you for any calls.

Gates: Microsoft will merge Phone and Windows platforms

Re: No shit

And that was the idea behind .Net - "write once run anywhere" (now where have we heard that before?)

Somehow I think porting a major app from Windows PC to a phone is going to take a little more than just switching CLRs

Amazon's Virginia cloud data center knocked out – again

Performance issues

Your train isn't delayed - it is currently experiencing performance issues

Amazon accused of remotely wiping punter's Kindle

Re: What's that I hear?

Card charge-backs are limited in time, what about all the books she bought over the years and the device itself?

Amazon is a very big credit card customer, customers are a pain in the arse to banks these days

So her credit card company sides with Amazon, decides her charge-back is fradulent, cancels all her cards and black lists her on the credit rating agencies.

Options

1, Piracy = obtain book for free, read book for ever, on any device.

2, Retail = buy book for slightly more than hardback price. Agree to them tracking all your other purchases, eating your first-born son, flambe-ing your cat and all the other small print. Read the book on one device - until the supplier goes bust, or discontinues that product line. Have the product you "bought" deleted if they feel like it, or make a mistake, or they have a fall-out with the publisher.

Windows 8 versions will confuse the punters, say OEMs

Re: I don't think ordinary customers are as stupid

And the punters are going to tell the difference between a flat screen hinged to a flat keyboard = laptop and a flat screen hinged to a flat keyboard = tablet?

Suppose WIndows7 pro could only run on a workstation while Windows7 home could only run on a PC - and only home apps would run on home and only business apps could run on workstation.

And the workstation and PC looked identical except for the processor architecture?

Re: hold on there!

Would you like a Windows tablet or one of those weird Android things ?

Oh Windows please - I know that

...quiet voice ... did we mention it doesn't look like windows, work like windows or run any windows apps ?

European Space Agency to launch exoplanet-spotter

Re: if its small and cheap

Kepler finds the needle in the haystack - this measures the properties of the needle when you know where to look

If you know which local bright stars to look at, you don't care when or in what order it's easier on the spacecraft platform. If you are in low orbit the launch, communications and ground stations are cheaper.

Her Majesty's Secret Service opens a Q-Branch apprentice scheme

Re: Pay

Over here in 'Merika the system is.

Get hired on crap wage for this sort of job. Sit around in empty room playing angry birds for 6months while they process your security clearance. Leave and get hired as contractor by defense company

All the contracted out jobs need a security clearance, but it's incredibly difficult/expensive for a private company to get one, so you need to hire away government workers. The government workers all know this so it doesn't matter how incompetent they are, so long as they have the golden ticket they can work for you.

Nobody has ever worked out who does the actual work. We think it might be umpa-loompas, or aliens - or probably the chinese.

Facebook won't pull unmarked police plates page

Re: Easy - if the Police removed all the license plates from all of their unmarked cars...

>Great, so you just look for a car without plates and assume cop car.

No - you have a law making it illegal to notice that a car doesn't have plates

Can climate change be changed back again? Maybe, say boffins

Re: Eldorado

Because if global warming kicks in - that's what Eastenders will look like?

Oh the humanity ......

I just LOVE Server 2012, but count me out on Windows 8 for now

Re: Installing Linux

In addition some linux distros have their boot loader signed by MSFT

Probably annoys Richard Stallman a little but means that Linux will install with no questions asked.

State of Minnesota bans free online education

Re: @tkioz "While it would be easy to take pot shots..

The problem is that "some manager said we could ignore it" doesn't carry any weight in court when somebody sues you

I think you are confusing obvious common sense with the law.

If you did this you would be immediately fined and probably imprisoned because they aren't qualified to appear before the bar in that state.

Re: Must be Republicans running Minnesota!

> Allow free education for anyone?

Generally it's Democrats that are against non-standard education - the teachers union is about as powerful as the NUM used to be in the UK.

In general anything stupid being done "for the good of the common people" is democrat, anything stupid being done "for competitiveness, growth and prosperity" is republican.

Re: Exactly how are they intending to enforce this?

They are going to introduce IQ tests when you get your driving license.

Anyone that scores over the average has obviosuly been reading books and will be punished.

Ironically Mn is in the middle of a row with telcos about it's plan to install $35M of public fibre to attract high tech business to the area - so long as none of those attracted had done any of that-there book-learning outside the state presumably.

There are 1000s of books published all over the world that are crap.

Should Minnesota ban it's residents from ordering from Amazon unless the book had been approved by the legislature?

New Oz road rules forbid touching mobes

Re: Of course

Well that would certainly help with all those "I'm on the train" calls

It doesn't bother me - the chauffeur does all the driving (well strictly he's a bus driver - but he prefers chauffeur)

Re: Enforcement

You're safe over here - we only taser blind drivers with a white stick.

Re: Isn't this the law in the Republic of Ireland?

>Article 4 of the Irish Constitution:

We are in England, we don't give a flying leprechaun what the Irish constution says.

If one of those TPLAC (tin pot little african countries) wants to call itself "the most wonderful and enlightened people's democratic paradise of Angola" we don't have to take any notice.

So we can call "the damp bit of the island of Ireland that is completely broke" anything we want.

The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

Re: What the hell

>Does one do with a box containing about 50 floppy drives, including some 5 1/4" ones.

Label them "Top Secret" and leave them in a bar in Soho

US climate-change skeptics losing support

Re: Mouth over reason

And now that we all have our own private phones (and never put them to our ear/mouth) the only failing of the Golgafrincham wouldn't apply.

Science is not democracy

It doesn't matter if 97% of Americans believe the Earth is flat and carried on a turtle - it doesn't change anything

, it will still be on the back of a terrapin......

IBM prepares to demo 125TB MONSTER tape

>Which is why tape should never be your ONLY backup

Except if you are using tape it's precisely because there is no other way of doing it!

Boss, I'm not sure if we can trust that tape robot with the 1000 x 125Tb cartridges in it.

Ok go and buy 100,000 USB harddrives and make a spare copy

Education Secretary Gove: Tim Berners-Lee 'created the INTERNET'

Re: The shame of it is

>Not quite sure what went wrong.

The advantages of mastering:

10 print "johnny is a w_nker"

20 goto 10

In the global economy, was rather less than we thought?

Re: I think...

That's the difference between ICT and CS.

ICT (=typing up your HW in Word) crosses the curriculum and other than perhaps having typing lessons in junior school alongside learning joined-up-writing - probably doesn't need it's own GCSE

CS is a reasonably genuine subject, it's either applied maths or applied engineering. So just like all the other sciences are applied physics but they still get their own classroom.

Re: deispite all the argument above

>The fundamental point for me is

>Gove == Idiot

Even more worryingly, compared with almost every other minister that has buggered around with education in the last 20 years - he isn't.

Re: The Distinction....

>The Internet is a physical network and all the logical structures related to packet layer communications.

Or the internet is a protocol on top of the wired network - or actually these days generally on top of some other packet protocol.

It's friday and I'm feeling pedantic

Re: Err...

> 'Well, I can't do anything about that because you haven't used the technical term. I need to know exactly what part of your knee hurts."

True - but if you took the car to the garage and said; the engines broke, when you mean you have a flat tire then they might be a little confused

Re: Hmm

>Finding math teachers is kind of easy because the whole population understands basic math

Finding maths teachers is easy because the school curriculum has about as much math in it as ICT has computer science.

Why James Bond's Aston Martin Top Trumps the rest

Re: Why hasn't he been given...

Because for most of the actors playing bond - either their wig would have fallen off, they wouldn't have got their gut behind the steering wheel - or in the case of Mr Connery, it would look like they were pedalling it.

Twitter censors bow to police, suppress Nazi tweets

Re: "First they came for the national socialists"

No - instead they censored the communists and banned any communist newspapers, just to make sure thsat those extremists didn't get into power