Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Seafaring robots shatter unmanned crossing record

Re: What about wind power?

Would require a big heavy keel and would probably lead to it being blown around and damaged in storms.

Lightsquared cries dyslexic Havoc, unleashes 'gods of law'

When your opponent has nuclear weapons.....

If these guys win - GPS stops working.

The USAF runs GPS. The USAF has lots and lots of bombs.

It's like the story about Lawrence-Livermore labs giving Cray technical support a hard time.

"You're not our only bloody customer you know"

"No, but we are one of the few with nuclear weapons!"

Encyclopaedia Britannica nukes print edition, goes digital-only

Re: End of an era..

Got a set from a library sale for 20quid. The newer ones (after 1995?) aren't really an encyclopedia, they have half the volumes as short articles on lots of topics and the other half are longer (10+pages) articles on the most popular topics.

Interesting when they are well written. Anything science is mostly poor, except the few places that they have used articles from top writers. The technology coverage is terrible, reads like those 'future' bits from 60s 0r 70s magazines.

IT pros lack recent skills

Re: No training here

The trouble with teaching yourself is that it doesn't count.

I see form your CV that you wrote the Linux kernel Mr Torvalds - well really we need someone with a Redhat Linux Certification for this job.

Nokia readying Win8 tablet for 2012 release?

With innovative new 3 touch screen.

Or are they just going to fit ctrl-alt-del buttons?

How a tiny leap-day miscalculation trashed Microsoft Azure

Re: Whoever designs system that have changable clocks will always have problems

"Digital Timezone consultant" - I spent a week doing that once.

We had to coordinate some environmental observations done by schools/volunteer groups all over the world

Someone in East Timor say they measured it at 8:00am on 21Mar = what timezone do they use, are they in daylight saving time, when did they change clocks, do they change clocks?

Multiply by a 1000 observations!

Picture this: Photo-fiddling app Instagram on Google Android

Excellent news

My Windows8 RGB->BGR conversion app should be ready when Windows8 launches

Although it's free - the fact that Windows has 100x as many users as iOS guarantees that my app will be worth billions.

Judge nixes Apple's bid to patent-bash bankrupt Kodak

Re: prior art?

But this has rounded corners!

World's Raspberry Pi supply jammed in factory blunder

Re: too all the nay-sayers and trolls...

I don't think Beagle board has very much global power. All the other single board computer makers are one man in a garage setup who are paying retail rates for parts and 1000-off rates for making them.

In one of the interviews the RP people explain that being a charity, component makers who would otherwise have told them to b****** off for not buying million/year quantities were prepared to talk to them.

Re: model A

Nope that's why you make them in the far east.

5mins to rework a board at $5/day salary = 100boards/day = 5c / board

We used to do a lot of this re-engineering. If you are making stuff in China it's cheaper to have it screwed together by hand rather than making the complex mold tool to have plastic parts snap together.

Re: Can I please buy one made in the UK

Cos that's how manufacturing works.

Corning, the US glass maker, produced the Gorilla glass on the iPhone at their plant in New York.

Their customers are foxcon in China, so do they carry on making the glass in the US and shipping it to China taking 6weeks to arrive?

What do they do when Apple changed the size of the screen glass 6weeks before launch?

Do they make 6weeks advance production of different sizes in case a new Apple product needs that screen size? Do they airfreight it to China overnight?

Or do they just open a factory next door to Foxcon?

Re: Can I please buy one made in the UK

It wasn't the extra tax it was the lack of companies that could make it in the quantities / timescale.

The problem now is the infrastructure. You might have workers in Britain but the component suppliers are in China, the PCB makers are in China, the makers of the machines to make the PCBs are in China and pretty soon the machines to make the machines to make the PCBs will be in China.

That was Apples complaint about making the iPad in the USA. It would only cost 5% more in labour but there was nowhere left in America with the infrastructure of so many subassembly and component makers together in one place.

Pacific nation prepares to flee rising seas

Re: Doesn't mention Perth

Well anything is better than Aussie beer

FCC ponders: When is it OK to switch off networks?

Re: THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

This wasn't a restriction to emergency services in an incident.

This was a planned protest against the shooting of an unarmed handcuffed citizen by the police on the subway. The phone ban was to prevent the demonstrators effectively organising the protest.

It's like shutting down all the road and rail into London on the day of an anti-government march.

Re: Crystal ball time

Weren't they planning to dump TETRA and replace it with Blackberrys - or better still, with a whistle and a pair of tin cans on a bit of string?

There was a great announcement in the US a couple of years ago.

In the same week they announced that everyone from the New York Port Authority to the Girl Guides would be given the authority to shut down GPS to prevent terrorists using it if there was a threat of an attack.

And a $Bn investment in a new secure GPS augmentation service that would prevent terrorists causing chaos by blocking GPS

Crystal ball time

Police demand the ability to switch off mobile phones at will to control a disturbance

Police (and fire/ambulance) switch to using GSM based phones instead of the latest underperforming and over budget radio system.

Nobody notices this until the next major incident.

The true, tragic cost of British wind power

Learning from history

All those arts degree civil servants obviously just studied the last tory government.

When they shut down a slightly uneconomic energy industry, which led to a year long, very expensive strike and has left half the country economically destroyed 30years later.

The government just doesn't want to see thousands of former windmill villages destroyed and is factoring in the cost of policing and social costs of millions of unemployed former windmill workers.

Peugeot 3008 HYbrid4

Re: Struggling to see the point?

A battery powered car that can do 80mph on a motorway all day even with a small engine to charge it - is a way off. The battery on this would only provide 1.5HP for an hour.

This is an economical family diesel where you don't need to run the engine in traffic and at low speed around town.

KERS only makes sense if you aren't mostly slowed by wind resistance, as in a car. It does work if you need massive fast braking (as in F1) or you weigh a lot and need massive slow breaking (as in a Truck/bus) and you brake/accelerate a lot.

Chunnel mobile available – but only while heading towards UK

Re: Err

You mean that damn-foreigners will be allowed into the games?

Nobody mentioned anything about that - these were supposed to be the "London Olympics"

Where's my monocle - I must write tot he Telegraph about this !

Ereader sales to slump as punters snap up cheap slabs – report

Bought a tablet ( a $75 Chinese Android 2.2 model).

Mostly useless for reading books - except for pdf/chm technical stuff

Now have an ereader ($75 kobo) not the greatest model, takes 30secs to start compared to wife's Sony - but use it everyday.

No 10 develops Terminator iPad app 'to fire ministers'

"an objective set of criteria"

There is - it's the opinion pole rating of the minister in question.

As soon as it gets higher than the PM's they get fired

The only issue could be if Mo Mowlem has a business method patent.

Russia’s fraud-busting Webcams join the party

PR disaster

Wouldn't a reliance on universal surveillance of voters with CCTV give Mr Putin the smear of association with Britain?

Surely not something a young democracy seeking to legitimise itself would want to risk.

Android a photo-slurper too: report

Re: option c)

But doesn't this mean you need to give the security app access to everything?

Can you trust the security app?

Apple claims its 'innovation' creates 514,000 US jobs

You are forgetting the millions who labour tirelessly in the rounded corners industry

Tony Blair closes RSA 2012, denounces WikiLeaks

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair

Can anyone read that without hearing it in the voice form the begining of Porridge ?

You are a habitual criminal .....

UK will share passenger data with US in Euro deal

Re: Questions

Well if you can't trust the US intelligence agencies to behave with totally honesty and respect for personal liberty - who can you trust ?

£30m gov ID scheme to be steered by dole office

Only 30M ?

Don't see how you can check the ID of, store the details of and issue ID cards to everyone for 50p a person. Or does the 30M just cover thinking up a name for the scheme?

So the real cost will be passed onto the customer.

Lost your job? Well you can claim dole as soon as you have applied for your 90quid ID card, and one for each of your children.

Top Gun 2: It's happening - and the choice of star is stirring controversy

Obvious aircraft is

A de Haviland mosquito to match Cruise's wooden acting.

Election hacked, drunken robot elected to school board

Re: Sheer stupidity not absent technology

The admin/admin was on a terminal server on the network.

Are you sure about all the default passwds on everthing on your network?

Really sure? Including the printers, VOIP phones, the conference system, the security cameras, the fax machine.

Are you sure there are no manufacturer's update/service passwds you don't know about on an of them?

Re: Forgive me if I'm wrong...

But difficult for people to vote online - which is the whole point, getting people to vote without them having to get out of the chair and making the whole thing cheaper

Steve Jobs' death clears way for '7.85-inch iPad prototype'

Re: "no changes need to be made"

Surely you just need to stand 25% closer?

(And have 25% smaller fingers)

Stolen NASA laptop had Space Station control codes

'codes' doesn't mean codes

In a lot of science and engineering "Codes" mean programs or algorithms

You have "fluid dynamics codes", "smooth particle hydro codes" - so in Nasa speak, space station codes could be the thermal models of the structure or the orbit empheris.

It's not the root password to make the ISS crash into Belgium

Powerful, wallet-sized Raspberry Pi computer sells out in SECONDS

Re: Why was this a surprise

I assume Broadcom will produce newer versions of the ARM as they come along and the GPU will only get better and if it becomes popular and standard enough there will be add-on boards and clones.

It would be nice if it became an international success though rather than another 'British' invention.

For some more nostalgia. Who said "one day computers will become bumps on cables"?

Well this low powered 'toy' is 100x the CPU power of a Sparc5 workstation from 20years ago.

Re: Re: Shame....

James - Just a personal congratulations!

ps Remember everyone on el'reg forums are professional grumpy old men.

Re: Re: Awesome

For actually creating something - a real something that really ships real things to real users.

Not just a social media site to share links to other social media sites. - That's worth an awesome in itself

Then this is going to enable lots of people to do things with computers that they didn't think of. Yes most of them are going to el'reg readers who already have a dozen PCs making XBMC players - but this just means more units being built to go to schools and kids.

Any government with an ounce (25gm) of foresight would have lent them $20M to make an initial run of a million - for less than it's cost them to print the brochures about the next "key stage achievement target ratio of excellence in ITC teaching".

Re: Re: Pre-Order

That's the idea of the early geek launch.

By september there will be apps, tutorials,course materials etc all freely available online

It might have been better if they had allowed pre-orders a year ago for people on their mailing lists allowing them to build an initial 100K - but it wouldn't have got the press interest.

Re: Re: Bit late to go buy one then...

That's a chip - this is a computer.

You can buy an ARM core licence for about 5p but that isn't the same as a box you can plug into the TV

Feds unlock suspect's encrypted drive, avoid Constitution meltdown

Re: Ignoring the obvious

It's because of the next step.

Providing a combination is obviously the same as a safe key.

A passkey isn't much different

But beyond then when do you stop having to provide a key?

A text message saying "see you tomorrow" - does that decode to "we are going to rob the bank" ?

If there was a bank robbery do you have to provide that 'decryption' and so admit guilt?

How do you prove that "see you tomorrow" doesn't mean anything?

Blighty's Post Office computer system goes titsup

They've got a computer !!

I always assumed it was done by an infinite number of trained monkeys

- at least that explains the teeth marks and faint smell of bananas

'Kill yourself now' - Torvalds throws openSUSE security tantrum

Suse is supposed to be enterprise

Any regular user can change HR's printer to be the one in their office?

Any user can change the date/time

And this is supposed to be a secure OS?

Of course Windows is better. On Vista if you skipped to the next month in the date/time control to see what day the 1st was it actually changed the system date and then changed it back! Good job nobody would be running anything important on Vista

France: All your books are belong to us

But available in French

So then basically irrelevant to the rest of the world!

It's like making all the worlds MP3s available in my own unique compressed format - for which there is no reader. But I do get very good compression if it's write only!

Epic net outage in Africa as FOUR undersea cables chopped

Re: Why undersea?

Cost at sea. Hire of boat + x km of cable

Cost on land. Permits, payments to landowners, bribes to local officials, hiring JCBs, digging a tunnel alongside a road, building a conduit, closing roads and building tunnels under them, building your own road and bridges where there aren't any - plus the cost of x km of cable.

Then you have the risk - there are a lot more idiots with JCBs than there are idiots with anchors. Undersea cables are only really vulnerable when approaching land, there aren't a lot of people anchoring in 3000m deep oceans.

Novel solution

Many solutions to Africa's problems have been tried over the years but unplugging it and plugging it back in again was an obvious action

Younger generation taking 'sledgehammer' to security

Re: What's new?

You never could trust client devices - the only difference is that 10 years ago it was only the boss who had a laptop or a phone that could do email.

And they could insist on not having a password, on lending the machine to their teenage kid and then connecting the virus laden POS to my network, and they were exempt from having to run a virus checker, or not have admin rights and they had to have access to everything on the network (or thought they had!)

Windows Phone armed with 'military-grade' email upgrade

But it's US military grade

So all it does is delete the email of any Brits or Canadians that happen to be nearby

Hubble snaps exploding star's near-fatal weight-loss bid

Re: Business opportunity?

Have you done an environmental impact assesment and costed the cleanup operation and safe disposal of the nuclear waste?

Child abuse suspect won't be forced to decrypt hard drive

Re: America does not understand the concept of rights

The British system is much fairer - innocent until proven Irish

Re: Double standards

Lucky that the first case the police tried was child porn then isn't it?

They didn't try and get a journalist to decrypt details of a leak, or a banker to decrypt their tax records or a Yamikotai to decrypt details of their pirate MP3s

And of course if they had got a favourable ruling in the child porn case - they would have made it very lcear that they weren't extending the precedence to anyone else.

Secret high-security Chinese shipments point to iPad 3 exports

Perhaps it's an invasion

Maybe China has decided to foreclose?