Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Feds to carmakers: 'Rein in high-tech dashboards'

Re: Ban touchscreens

That's why BMW's Windows(TM) I-drive didn't catch on.

Right click -> preferences -> windscreen options -> wipers -> on -> apply -> OK

Re: but my Sat-Nat told me to go this way

Over here they are much better trained.

They are all able to work a Panasonic Toughbook - bolted to the dash - while driving.

The advanced ones can do this while drinking a coffee and eating a donut

Reptile boffins spot world's smallest chameleon

I was more worried about the Lizard-Boffins.

Picturing T-Rex in a lab coat

Muscle pants give girls that skin-stripped look

Women's clothing is priced by 1/square foot

The less there is the more it costs - and may it ever be so!

Space: 1999 returning to TV?

Dept Homeland Security at the ready

The eagle toys came with very realistic little metal cargo pods with a nuclear symbol on them.

All through the 80s there would be news stories of somebody digging one up in the garden and a big police/army/bomb disposal alert

Secondhand MP3 shop can keep trading during EMI trial

Same with software

You can't resell your old software licenses http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/23/ecj_asked_to_rule_on_resale_of_software_licences/

Interesting how far this extends.

Can you sell your car if you only licensed the software in the engine management system?

Can you sell your house if your don't own the copyright to the design?

Airport bomb Twitter joker in second fine appeal bid

That was the point - the airport, the police and security services didn't take the threat seriously - they declared it wasn't a credible threat, raised no security alert and did nothing at the airport.

The later prosecution was completely malicious.

Ineffective threats

There was also a prosecution for endangering an aircraft when a drunk tried to open a door inflight, although the doors are held closed by several tons of air pressure and totally impossible to open.

So does an ineffective threat still constitute a threat? If I was to say "I will use my magical powers to curse Robin Hood airport and call up the hoards of Cthulhu to destroy it" - does that constitute a threat?

Royal astro-boffin to MPs: Stop thinking about headlines

Yes but even they don't rely on the opinions of a Big Brother loser to decide how thick to make the sheilding on a reactor.

Revealed: Apple's plea for fairness in mobile patent war

That's the problem if Apple don't want to accept the % of the product FRAND that they were offered then who gets to decide what % of the 'value' of an iPhone is the phone part.

If it was on components then Apple could simply do a deal with their chip supplier that the GSM module costs 1c, so paying nothing in royalties, and then simply overpay for another part from the same supplier.

That's a common trick for avoiding paying tax, eg. Microsoft Windows includes a large payment to a Microsoft subsidiary in Reno that owns all their IP so that MSFT in Redmond doesn't make a profit and doesn't pay tax.

Halliburton latest biz to dump BlackBerry for iPhone

Remember that's in total - for ALL Blackberry users

You're new here aren't you ?

Google goggles with Terminator HUD 'coming soon'

This only blocks Apple billboards and Apple stores

2020: A Press Odyssey – reporter licensing explained

Tip - the verity ones are clever and funny

Anonymous releases law firm's emails about Haditha killings

Probably similar to the logic that says 8 US troops in US uniforms with US weapons kill a bunch of civilians - but it wasn't a US military action.

Then the same US military that says it wasn't a US military action, and they don't approve, acquits most of those involved and punishes the ringleader in the same way as if he had turned up with dirty buttons on his uniform.

Upgrade eliminates Atlantis from Google Earth

Fibre cable laying. The Canaries are a convenient place to split Africa-Europe-S America cables

UK gov rejects call to posthumously pardon Alan Turing

The argument in that case was that they were wrongly convicted - because shell-shock/PTSD wasn't recognised at the time. Although that's just political weasling.

The 'correct' thing to do would be to say that; looking back, it was wrong to persecute gays, just as it was wrong to deny women the vote, or to prevent Jewish asylum seekers from Germany in the 30s - or a whole bunch of other stuff. BUT more important would be for the same politicians to consider this the next time they are reacting to a Daily Mail headline.

No, but if I was a security officer at GCHQ and I had a candidate with a conviction for smoking a joint or for hacking his school's computer, or some other criminal act - I might think twice about automatically rejecting them.

There is a theory that you can learn from the past.

Whether it's not invading Russia in winter or not hiring the best candidate because they are gay/female/muslim/black - it's worth remembering.

MPs rattle telcos to help kill extremist material online

"Archbishop of Canterbury get censored"

Well to be fair, his website does include numerous pictures of a Jew being tortured to death

But he won - you can't be a terrorist if you won.

Apple vs Amazon in ereader format smackdown

Same way that GarageBand (R)(TM)(ETC) attracted customers to iTunes.

Second 'Blue Marble' NASA sat pic apes Apollo 17's stunner

There's no call for that sort of language - this is a family website

Zuckerberg's 2012 personal income tax bill: $1.5 billion

It's a bit complicated but (IIRC) you get taxed on them on the day of the IPO as if the difference between the option price (effectively nowt) and the launch price had been salary.

If you never sell the shares or the they become worthless, eg. the company goes bust, - you still owe that tax. Some friends got screwed by this in the first dot-com bubble 10 years ago.

SpaceX successfully tests SuperDraco rescue rockets

Almost everything about SpaceX engineering ability is impressive.

It reminds you of the sort of stuff Lockheed skunkworks used to do in the old days.

There is a great interview with one of their engineers where he says: the trouble is that all the systems are designed for multiple cheap reuse for when we are eventually running like an airline - if we could just do good-enough for now the progress would be much more impressive.

It already seems pretty impressive by the standards of any government space agency !

Sounds expensive and complicated

I thought you could make anything safer by simply hiring more layers of managers to produce presentations about safety - didn't NASA prove that ?

Airbrushed Rachel Weisz gets watchdog hot under the collar

Photoshop launches it's new tool

"Our first multi-tasking anti-ageing tool targets 10 signs of ageing in one."

ASA can't argue with that !

Muscle chip strength leaves ARM shouldering meaty profit

Was abandoned long ago. On the desktop the push to move things like graphics into the kernel has made Windows a lot less portable.

In theory CLR technologies on .Net should make running any app on anything trivial but in practice they drop down to either very platform specific DirectX code or ancient GDI legacy as soon as you need to do anything useful.

Obama washes hands of O’Dwyer piracy extradition case

So nothing to do with Holywood

Threatening to stop writing checks this political year then?

http://rt.com/usa/news/hollywood-obama-sopa-support-229/

Apple lures Dixons boss Browett to run global retail biz

Moron bar

Is it patented?

Brit pair deported from US for 'destroy America' tweet

Yes - but there is a little difference between telling security at an airport you have a gun.

And posting a comment on el'Reg that "take off and nuke the site from orbit" is the only way to improve LAX.

... shit I did post this as anonymous ??????

The US doesn't do Transit - everyone has to go through customs+immigration.

This is a growing market for Boeing's new 7E7 because it can fly a lot of S. America and S.E. Asia to Europe direct without having to go through the US. This is a big market for a lot of S American airlines

ICANN responds to smut portal antitrust lawsuit

Not extortion?

Then I can create my own top level domain of .isapeado and offer celebrities the chance to not be listed on it for a mere $300 ?

WD's MyBook takes a Thunderbolt to the chest

It's almost as if 75% of the worlds hard drive factories were under water and there was a massive global shortage of spinning rust.

Google exec questions Reding's 'Right to be forgotten' pledge

They probably already do this. The advertising value of what new phone model you were Googling 6months ago is pretty low.

Google make more money by ensuring that they only sell data about you that is new.

It's only governments that are interested in what you where reading years ago.

That's a relief then

I wasn't sure if this was just a bit of pointless Eu bureaucracy or another law by lawmakers who don't understand technology.

But as soon as Google rushes out to say that the privacy rules are unworkable - I know the law must be effective. It's like you can't go wrong by automatically opposing anything the Daily Mail supports

UK probes Snickers over 'celebrity' Twitter adverts

Sponsorship

The same Rio Ferdinand runs around a bit of grass on saturdays wearing a shirt saying AIG.

Well I was concerned about AIG's credit downgrading following liquidity problems - but if an insurance expert such as Mr Ferdinand is willing to wear their name in public they must be OK.

Of course I wonder trust his opinion on what penautty chocolate bar to eat - that's just silly.

NEC slashes 10,000 jobs – blames Thai floods, smartphone slump

Things have changed

You can't be a 2nd tier industrial supplier and a 3rd tier consumer products company and just get by on being big and having a few existing customers anymore.

Nobody says - I would like an iPhone but I'll settle for a not as good NEC smartphone instead because ... why ? .....

Why O2 shared your mobile number with the world

Yes but you can presumably also find your arse with both hands - this is a mobile phone company we are talking about!

The EULA when you get the phone. You have a commercial contract with the company, they can do anything that's in the contract - if you don't like it get another phone.

Nuke support in UK hits record high

You can turn off a pebble bed reactor and will just sit there, you can pretty much turn off any negative temperature coeff design. There are still safety risks of having a big lump of glowing stuff sitting there even if it can't melt down.

I don't think the UK is going to be mining Thorium locally. If you can't economically mine coal from an existing coalfield, when you already have the mines built and the miners sitting on the dole - I don't think deep hard rock mining of Thorium is going to happen.

Proliferation isn't a big risk for the UK, we already have nukes - they MIGHT even work.

Thorium reactors aren't magic. They work by breeding U233 in situ, they don't (generally) produce as many long lived waste isotopes but these aren't the big problem to store anyway (long lived = low activity) the real pain is dealing with massive amounts of lower level, but still paperwork-involving waste, especially when you need to shut one down.

The plant itself still has the same safety issues as any modern reactor design - the big advantage of Thorium really only comes if your country happens to be sitting on piles of the stuff but you don't have any Uranium. Since the UK doesn't have either it's no big deal.

So all you need is a really deep mine shaft, with a very large cavern at the bottom, in watertight rock, where it's geologically stable enough that dropping a billion tons of water into it won't have any effect.

I suppose there might be bits of Scottish granite mountains where you could dig one, but it's going to be quite an impressive feat of engineering.

That's cos Forgemasters are dee-daas and therefore thick.

If instead of trying to borrow 80M they had bought derivatives in a credit swap in wippet futures the government would have given them 80Bn to bail them out when the deal went bad.

They ship dirty lignite coal to Poland, burn it there and pipe the electricity back.

The Germans get cheap power and clean air, the mining unions get to keep their subsidised jobs, the greens vote for the ruling coalition who got rid of nukes - everybody's happy.

The Poles get the shitty end of the stick - but that's what they are there for.

And the €0.1037 costs don't include having to keep an army in the middle east to protect 'our' oil supply or having to deal with rising sea levels putting London underwater.

Although personally I'm prepared to pay a lot more for electricity if it means the south east being underwater

Hold on a sec - leap seconds granted a last-minute reprieve

That's the exact problem. You get the time from GPS which has to and look in it's copy of The Farmer's Almanac to find out how many seconds off it should be.

If instead we all just adopted the sensible solution of counting seconds since 1970 and let the astronomers and druids worry about what local time the sun rises.

Now we have won this battle we can start campaigning to have the 0deg meridian moved back to Greenwich

Australia, US agree to space junk talks

The free market solution would be to have a refundable deposit on satelites, then people could collect them for scrap