Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

'Nutjob' serves half-baked Raspberry PI scam

Re: To make a serious point...

New Judaism - "it's a religion and a dessert topping"

TripAdvisor didn't defame hotel by putting it on 'top 10 dirtiest' list

Re: Politics

Presumably anyone that evolved would be run out of Tennessee

Samsung: We can't find any child labour at our Chinese contractor

Shocking

You shouldn't employ workers under 18 on your production line.

You should get them for free on YTS.

Over 18s you should get for free as a 6month unpaid training period or they have their benefit stopped

Apple drones reject American drone-strike tracker app

Re: hmmm

>2) did you really just suggest that targeting individuals rather than whole cities is *de*humanising war?

Yes - if you carpet bomb Dresden then the people ordering it, and the people doing it, have to think about what they have done.

If you just draw a box on Google Earth and an automated drone automatically kills anyone in it until you click cancel - then you are a lot more likely to order it, the troops are much more likely to do it, and the people at home aren't going to object.

Think of drones as virtual minefields and they are a lot less acceptable.

DOCTOR WHO world, or Magrathea, SPOTTED* orbiting twin suns

Re: There is another planet

Stars aren't IN constellations - it's just a direction, it depends where you are standing

It might be in Cygnus for us and Kasterborous from there.

... I can't believe I bothered to write this....

Number-plate spycams riddled with flaws, top cop admits

Re: Bootnote

Peterborough had that on the A1 just outside the gate to RAF Wittering.

They put a cone in the emergency vehicle access gap in the central reservation and a single "roadworks 50mph" sign was there all winter which was completely ignored. On the first bank holiday a speed camera was added. Profitable!

Police beg for e-forensics team to probe crims' iPads, mobiles

Re: With Apologies

Black iPhones falling own stairs?

UKNova drops torrents after threats from FACT

What's that quote?

If a man tries to take my wallet by force I will fight him, if he threatens to take it by law I will give it to him and consider myself lucky!

A great service

I used it everyday to check for new interesting radio programs which I then downloaded perfectly legally from the BBC iPlayer site to my not_an_iPod.

Although the BBC spent 120M quid on new channel idents for the TV it doesn't seem to know it runs some radio stations.

UK ISPs crippled by undersea cable snap

>Do we really have an Internet where manual intervention is required to provide the routing that's required when >something fails?

No - you can have an internet where the router has the company credit card and will go and buy capacity on whatever link it needs, automatically at whatever the cost.

Open source author pulls code after GPL abuse

Yes he is in a perfect position to prove that the code is his.

But since it's in the enterprise space the chances are that the users are multi-million$ companies - so he has every right to march into the offices of their army of lawyers and demand that they go to court.

No, he is upset that people took his code, changed the name and resold it without mentioning that it was GPL.

A bit like me making copies of a Star Wars DVD, changing the name claiming it was my own work and selling it.

Re: All this and the Open Source community...

on the contrary this is the whole reason for building your business on open source. There is nothing the original author can do to prevent you and anyone else using and continuing to use the software you downloaded.

Compare this with a business that thought Oracle running on itanium was a sure bet!

Watchdog probes rules for naughty mobe fondling on flights

Re: those damn phones...

3 possibilities really: Nobody has ever deliberately or accidentally left an electronic device turned on, planes crash all the time due to this but the cause is covered up, they have F*** all effect.

Of course they can't possibly test all possible combinations of 300 different phones being used in different ways on every model of aircraft. Until they fitted cell phone cells to the planes to charge you $5-10 to make a call - then suddenly the phones were safe on all their flights.

Re: The unknown

On that basis we don't know if the static from plastic underwear can cause interference but we don't have to pull down our pants as we board.

The real issue is that a bunch of barely trained, perfume and duty-free drink sale-persons are screaming at you to do something because of the technical equivalent of; "a bloke in a pub told a mate of mine's cousin" - and if you disagree you are arrested.

It doesn't give you a great deal of confidence in the people flying and maintaining the aircraft does it?

The real reason

Is that in the "extremely unlikely event of..." they don't want people deafened with headphones and wires wrapped around their head.

When I used to fly a lot I did wonder what would happen if i put on my ear defenders and a blindfold during takeoff and landing.

Re: if

It is rather odd that they remove 25.1ml tubes of toothpaste for security and yet electronic devices that can crash the plane are on the honor system

Mars rover harangues empty landscape with loudhailer

>Humankind wasn't present at the beginning of time

It was in Texas - or at least within the first week.

1 MILLION accounts leaked in megahack on banks, websites

Re: Apoplectic

>Are you implying that El Reg have SQL Injection vulnerabilities in their code?

No, el'reg runs on DBase II, dos batch files and a self aware BBC micro

Samsung fights to stay on US shelves as Apple calls for ban

Re: Shirley is serious ...

>The idea that patents inhibits innovation and industrial activity is disproven by the historical record

You could make an argument for Watt's objection to high pressure steam and his stranglehold over patents on the steam engine. And Andrew Carnegie getting very rich by the US's ignoring of foreign patents on steel making.

The problem is that patents are now being used to crush other markets. So design patents because they are more enforceable than copyright, business method patents on comparison shopping.

East Texas jury shopping becoming like the libel cases in London where you can prevent publication of something anywhere in the world by threatening to sue in London.

I'm not convinced that the real problem here isn't juries. They have an important role in criminal trials to stop the police having it all their own way - but since these cases innevitably go to a higher court, wouldn't it be easier to just have the trial in the higher court? Or separate technical courts as in Germany. Having technical patent or complex tax cases decided by 12 random people off the street is like Intel picking 12 random shareholders to design a CPU or rolls Royce having a turbine design approved by the first 12 people off a flight.

Re: Talk about counting chickens before they are hatched...

>I expect the South Koreans to be intelligent and measured about how they respond to things.

You expect Samsung's management to be inteligent about things.

The problem is that these cases are decided by juries of 12 ordinary people. Or more generally these days in the USA - 12 unemployed people, since having a salaried job is pretty much a valid excuse to get off a jury.

So just like juries have occasionally convicted someone in a criminal case just because of their skin colour - we now have juries in the patent lawyers favorite jurisdiction who decide the case based on which company is the most American.

Imagine that just after the Rodney King trial you were a white cop facing a jury of black teenagers! That's going to be the next US company going to court in Korea.

Odd - presumably in such a complex case the jury would mostly have consisted of UI designers and software engineers.

It's not like you are going to decide a multi-billion $ international trade dispute on 12 random individuals who had nothing better to do.

Re: Talk about counting chickens before they are hatched...

>but patents aren't worldwide

But justice is supposed to be.

If Apple won this case because 12 hicks in East Texas voted for a Merikan company over gooks - then there is quickly going to be another case where a patriotic Korean jury decides to ban all Apple products, and probably Microsoft and Google aswell, in Korea.

Hotel keycard firm issues fixes after Black Hat hacker breaks locks

Re: What's the real risk?

>Why would someone shimmy up several floors on the outside of a building

To deliver chocolate?

Perhaps your wife is just worrying about getting fat?

There was a proposal from one US state to require these keylock boxes for all multiple occupancy buildings (ie college dorms, condos, apartment blocks etc ) for emergency services to be able to get in.

But so that a paramedic/fire/etc arriving wouldn't need to contact a manager to get the code in an emergency - the requirement was going to be that all of them could be opened by a single master "911 key code" which every police/paramedic/fireman would know !

Court confirms $675,000 fine for sharing 30 songs

Another solution

I haven't bought any music new since the mid 90s when Sony decided it was illegal for me to copy a CD I owned to a minidisc player I owned, for my own use.

I never buy downloads and I only buy CDs in charity stores, garage sales or swap with friends - so not a penny goes to the record industry. Of course it also means not a penny ever goes to the artist either - but that's also the RIAA's policy !

New US rule aims to crack down on Congolese capacitors

Re: The exercise of cataloguing all the components

We only use ethical gold, we get it from Switzerland, who got it from Nazi's who got it from Jewish false teeth, who got it from Spanish noblemen who got it from South America. So historical and totally ethical.

Neil Armstrong dies aged 82

Re: Stop

True the moon landings weren't down to him, there were 100s of navy or airforce pilots who could have flown the mission sucessfully - but it was a long way from being a payload on a rocket. Read "how apollo flew to the moon" for a detailed technical account.

The only thing that could be said against the generation of apollo pilots is that it left a legacy of astronaut=hero which meant that later crews were still being chosen from the ranks of combat/test pilots instead of scientists. And biased Nasa in favour of projects like the space shuttle which could be flown by 'real' pilots

Hard-up Kodak selling consumer film biz

Re: So they think that the market

The first thing they sold was their CCD division. They used to make the best CCDs and in colour performance they still are pretty near the top. But it's too easy to make customs CMOS imagers these days even for high end cameras.

Re: They're finished

They are/were the major supplier in industrial colour printing (books, magazines, catalogues, packaging).

Based on a 100years of expertise in colour they were doing quite well in the area until they got a nasty dose of management.

Going viral 9,500 years ago: 'English descended from ancient Turkey'

Re: I call...

That's pretty much the technique.

If the word for wild grass, horse, sky is similar in different languages, but the words for ocean,forest, snow etc are different then you can assume that they originated somewhere in central asia.

Has cash corrupted open source?

Organisations not just money

Most big opensource projects are supported/managed/'controlled' by large companies who have a particular need.

So when Qt was bought by Nokia they released it as opensource and put a lot of development effort into it. BUT most of that effort was focussed on using it for phones (naturally). So a lot of bug fixes and contrbutions for the desktop Gui went ignored. Yes it's opensource so you could take the entire project and fork it to fix a couple of bugs !

A few top Linux kernel developers have also complained that the influence of big-iron server makers means that the focus of the kernel is on server performance rather than desktop imrovements.

China could penetrate US with new huge missile

Re: China

>hope it follows the USSR into trying democracy and dismantling itself

Yes a china run by a few mafia bosses, with it's army essentially a criminal gang and a strangle-hold on europe's gas supply - that's what we hope for.

Re: What ICBM defences?

>What ICBM defences?

Nuking them first - remember an ounce of prevention is worth a megaton of cure.

Only 3% of UK's TV oglers want more sex

Re: Innuendo

Or humph on I'm sorry I haven't a clue.

"After tasting the meat pies, Samantha said she liked Mr Dewhurst's beef in ale; although she prefered his tongue in cider!"

"Samantha has to nip off now to meet her cheesemaker gentleman friend. He has promissed to show her how to put a blue vein into a Caerphilly"

Re: What about adverts

>adverts with boobs in

That's terrible what would small children think ?

dinnertime presumably?

Former Gov.UK sweetheart Logica evaporates after CGI swills it down

Re: Well, it's a start...

They managed to buy themselves in a hostile takeover and are now shutting themselves down to save costs concentrate on core activities and promote excellence in customer experience.

Reagan slams webmail providers for liberal bias

Re: A Bargain!

I wouldn't mind [e-mail] for $40 !

MoD to become even more top-heavy as a result of personnel cuts

Re: This is now beyond a joke

Either way neither of them is much use against a landlocked country or somebody planting bombs in the tube.

Unless Trident was a major reason for the end of the IRA ?

Proper efficent management techniques

The army is just like any other large corporate. You increase the number of senior management and their salaries and reduce costs by replacing the workers with cheaper ones offshore. Shouldn't the army do the same?

We have always done it on a small scale in Nepal but this could open up whole new opportunities for call center workers in Mumbai to pretend to be squaddies instead.

And for a fraction of the price of the new aircraft-less carriers we could employ a large number of Somali marine interdictions specialists.

Train crash knocks out fibre cables, delays 9/11 hearing

Re: In such a context

Fortunately the cancellation of the hearing didn't affect the verdict

Councils launch eight spying ops on Brits A DAY using RIPA

Re: Snoop

Thank you, your position has been noted and will be made available to the new government when it gets in.

Re: Bloody nora!

What would really happen is that they would get a record of all the guys emails, web browsing and Netflix downloads to check how many times he had watched "Showgirls" so that they would have some dirt to leak to the press in case he complained.

Then they would storm the RSPCA office next door because the address was hard to read on the photocopy of the fax of the carbon copy of the form

Titanic storage wrestlers grapple in summer frenzy

titanic storage

Is that really the right branding?

Perhaps it could be made to work - a very cheap and extremely secure storage but very expensive retrieval.

We take your data, put it on a boat and sink it in the north atlantic - certainly safe from hackers

We're raising generations of MUTANT KIDS, says Icelandic study

historical data

"Icelander chaps didn't usually get a chance at fathering kids until they were 34 at least, and the place wasn't overrun with autistic kids or anything"

Although that could be a lack of diagnosis. Perhaps Thorvin Skullsplitter just suffered from hyper-activity-skull-splitting disorder?

It could solve the historic question of why the Scandinavians suddenly became viking raiders. Perhaps it was just a boring school trip to Lindisfarne but after a week at sea with everybody having ADHD they were just a little over-excited when they landed.

Re: Or...

It's a major research interest among young male evolutionary biologists why this process produce women that look like THAT in Iceland but not in Norfolk

Apple's patent insanity infects Silicon Valley

If intellectual property rights are so vital..

Shouldn't Hollywood be allowed to patent things?

If you can patent rounded corners or putting a rectangular screen on the front of a device - then surely you can patent always having the car explode when it runs off the road or having the girl realise that she really loved the nice guy all the time?

Then increasing the number of patent trolls would decrease the number of formulaic movies!

Well actually it wouldn't but they would have to base them on Shakespeare and Austen instead of last months other blockbuster.

No - because fortunately we have an entire continent where US patents can be widely ignored !