Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Facebook's 'awesome' plan to hook up with Skype?

MSFT adding functionality to FB

You can now throw chairs at your friends - with video !

Amazon swallows UK online bookseller

Currency

I'll miss em, they seem to understand that 1pound doesn't equal 1 dollar

Can Liam Fox break the power of British Army, Navy, RAF chiefs?

I thought the tories were back in?

Why not privatise it all?

Insider says doom looms at RIM

@oh dear

Well of course they are going to ignore him, he is only a developer at a software company - he doesn't know anything about the brilliant new corporate re-branding excersize that senior management have planned.

Feds shut down poker site

@Do some research before spouting shite

And you don't think the Americans might have put any pressure on the good burghers of Alderney? Something along the lines of investigating all the other corporations housed there?

Oracle: 'Google owes $2.6bn in damages'

The end of Java

So anybody thinking of using Java in a product is now looking at paying a 100% of any future income to Oracle in a lawsuit ?

Way to build a brand guys!

Umbrella-wielding Steve Ballmer gets cloudy with Office 365

@Pete 2

It's totally different.

In the 60s when you rented time on a timeshared mainframe your data was carefully managed and processed by professionals with the integrity of a company like IBM behind them and you had a contract detailing what they could do.

Now it costs the same but if Google/Microsoft/Dropbox etc happen to lose all your data, leak it all to hackers, hand it over to any government without a warrant or leave it on the train - tough.

I'll wait for 366

Never buy version 365 of anything from Redmond

US Supremes to hear warrantless GPS tracking case

@Are Warrants any use?

Yes, they leave a paper trail.

A warrant to track a journalist who is looking into police corruption to see who he visits would leave a potentially embarrassing public record - just tracking him to see which of your officers might be talking is a lot more discrete.

NASA's nuclear Mars tank arrives at launch site

Radioactive fuel

The decay rate of the fuel is knowable (and easily work-out-able-on-the-back-of -a-beer-mat). The limit is the radiation damage to the bits of the generate that generate the power.

It';s hard to work out on a computer and the people that know this stuff won't tell you cos it's secret.

Back in the 80s they wouldn't even tell us how long components we were asking to use on Hubble instruments would last cos we were foreigners.

You have to have standards – or do you?

Horses for courses

Metric is all well and good is you are trying to work out volumes of water or electrical charges - but if you need to know how many oxen you need to plough your garden you can't beat furlongs.

For everything else there is of course the el'reg unified linguine/grapefruit/Jordan scale

US Spec-Ops offered camouflage for a specific site

City camo

We asked the same thing in Belfast. Why are the landrovers painted green, to blend into Germany, instead of spray can graffiti and steel shutter to blend in with the city centre ?

The best bit though is the health and safety regs that required the poor guy with his head poking out of the top, his helmet covered in camo netting and twigs - to be wearing a hi-vis vest!

Liverpool cops compulsively snooped footballer's record

It's only the police

Your ID card, census and NHS data would be perfectly secure

Galileo 'can deploy 24 satellites with existing funding'

@rubbish

It's a question of escalation, they can jam it over a small area - but they could also just shoot down the satelites.

The US might do this over a small middle eastern country the next time they are feeling adventuress but without the Galileo they could take the much easier step of shutting down road pricing, light rail, bad weather landing and a bunch of other stuff all over europe next time there is a disagreement over farm subsidies

US patent reform jumps through second hoop

Invent first doesn't cause trolls

Invent first is reckoned to help big companies.

Challenging somebody else patent to show that it was already known is easy, you just have to show that is was published somewhere in the past - even a 60year old Disney cartoon will do.

Challenging a patent and getting one granted to you because you invented it first is tricky. It requires that you an prove when you invented it and that you didn't let anyone else know. That usually takes lab note books signed off by company lawyers and audited trails fro all emails/documents - easier for IBM than one man in a garage.

Trolls are caused by the USPTO allowing patents on very broad methods and allowing the patent holder to shop around for a favourable court district to try it in.

Google battles MicroSkype with 'open' VoIP protocol

The difference

Skype a global peer-peer voip system, mostly used to make free or very cheap international calls

GoogleTalk a peer-peer voip system could be used to make free international calls - as long as you are both in the USA.

Solar panel selling scam shown up by sting

30 year anniversary

They should cut the subsidy then all the middle class homeowners could come out on strike to defend 300years of solar panel capacity.

IT would be nice to hold the 30th anniversary of Corton wood in St Johns Wood

Indians appoint Huawei as technical spycatcher

erm...

This is the same Huawei that the US senate blocked from buying 3Com because it's basically the Chinese army's networking division ?

FBI fat-thumbs data centre raid

Not a cloud

The whole point of the cloud is that when the Feds, mother nature, or the International Brotherhood of Careless JCB Drivers take out your server - another instance spins up on the other side of the world

WTF are... connected appliances?

Just set the ****ing clock

More than 20years ago I worked at an HP spin off that was going to have connected appliances - before anyone outside a CS PhD had heard of the internet.

After much market research and out of the box information paradigm shifting blue skies research we came up with the idea that the clocks on all your appliances could be automatically adjusted for summer time.

It would still be a nice feature to have .....

Bloke pissing in reservoir prompts 8m gallon flush

Bears can't even s**t in the woods

All the forest that is part of the watershed here is fenced off - in case somebody pees against a tree.

It's full of bears of course - who presumably don't do it in the woods

Euro commissioner tells Facebook it has nowhere to hide

A real crack down

Against internet companies that steal or lose data.

Except American ones of course, and any Japanese companies with deep pockets, and Chinese or Russian owned ones because there isn't much point. And any that are too small to be worth bothering with.

And it wont apply to any government bodies that lose or sell data because that is upto the individual country.

But the rest had better watch out !

Brits told how much they'll pay for HP TouchPad

Dissapointing

Surely it should be more than the iPad?

I want to demonstrate my deeply cool and stylish nature by having the ultimate status symbol of an HP tablet - but if it's priced the same as the prole's iPad how does that work ?

The only solution I can see is that it will only come with a starter pack of coloured pixels and once you have used those up it will be 400quid for a refill.

Euro space truck prepares for fiery death

@Recycling

Although to be fair, they are only allowed one bin/year

The intergalactic council will collect the blue box next year

NHS Trusts in the dark over CfH licence transfer

@idiots

That would be true everywhere in the world except software.

What actually happens if you centralise software for something like the whole NHS is that MSFT sell you a site licence - they price this as number of users * some discount.

BUT number of users isn't the number of people using the software it's the number of employees * some ague over factor of the number that will be using the MSFT software.

Generally the supplier argues that everybody from the cleaners up will be using it, the NHS argues that only a dozen secretaries will - but as the NHS reduces the number they count the supplier ups the price.

For a very-very large organisation it's almost always cheaper for individual offices/hospitals to get their own bulk deals.

Lenovo chief says netbook's day is done

Consumers outnumber producers

You only need a keyboard if you are generating content not consuming it.

Tablets will outsell portable-machines-with-keyboards by about the same ratio that TVs outsell TV camera, or books outsell copies of word.

Man says he lost $500,000 in virtual currency heist

@I live on this planet

And presumably you also live in a country with a nice stable government with a willingness and the borrowing ability to bail out banks.

If you had your money in Iranian Rials with the Shah's head on them, Rhodesian pounds, or Zimbabwean dollars you might not have been so lucky.

Even the Reichmark, backed by all the power of the National Socailist Government didn't do too well.

An explanation

For an interesting technical explanation of how and why it works - it's worth listening to the omegaTau podcast http://omegataupodcast.net/2011/03/59-bitcoin-a-digital-decentralized-currency/

Hardly bitcoins' fault

If I had money disapear from my account I wouldn't expect the Bank of England to be able to trace it - but the online wallet company he used should have been able to.

Probably not very smart to have kept it all in one bank - but tell that to a few local councils who thought Iceland was safe.

So what if he speculated? The money was worth what it could be exchanged for. Arguing it's worth only what he paid for it is like the BSA claims that software piracy costs billions - because every kid that pirated Photoshop would have otherwise paid retail for it.

A sysadmin's top ten tales of woe

The Snow bomb

Great story on the daily WTF about a US university that cut into an unused elevator shaft to lower some big iron into the basement machine room. They then covered over the shaft at the bottom - not the top.

After a winter of heavy snowfall came the spring thaw - and a 5 storey plug of snow and ice melted into the machine room. Quite impressive tsunami apparently.

Toxic Plankton feeds on Android Market for two months

code signing

"With no code signing in Android, the files could bypass standard techniques used to detect malicious code,"

These are deliberately written malicious apps - what good does code signing do?

It's like having https on a website that is intending to steal your credit card number.

Rogue software consultant's vast stash of DIY explosives

Terrorist

It's simple, terrorists are darker than say - Tan (0xd2b48c)

Go Daddy sued over email alerts

Obvious

One of the problems is that the USPTO used to (they are trying to tighten up their act) only searched prior art that was in their own patent database.

That's how that American pharma company got away with patenting Turmeric as a wound cleaner - the Sanskrit authors in 300BC forgot to register it.

So if it was obvious to send email reminders and nobody patented it they wouldn't find any prior art. You can bring up any other prior art you want when it goes to court. Of course this will cost you a $M in legal fees and they will hear the case in East Texas where the court always finds for the patent holder.

Strange that they would go after Zygo - probably just the last entry on the alphabetical list of customers.

Dam Busters dog dubbed 'Digger'

Following a sponsorship deal with BMW

In the remake a gang of plucky Germans will develop a bouncing bomb for use against Ladybower.

Pity it wasn't as feeble as American dams. I visited the Hoover dam and had my tiny Swiss Army keyring knife taken off me - apparently the dam is a terrorist target and a 1inch nail file could destroy it.

Who will play the Germans?

Since the bad guy in all hollywood movies has to be played by a Brit actor isn't it going to be a bit confusing to have cut-glass accents on both sides?

- unless of course all the RAF roles are played by Americans

AMD promises 10 teraflop notebooks by 2020

limited market?

"used to test nuclear explosions " ....... "And now you're going to be able to get that type of capability in your notebook."

I don't want the capability to test nuclear explosions in my notebook - now, creating nuclear explosions might be useful !

IATA: this iPad could BRING DOWN A PLANE

A major air defence saving

Our government were just about to pay $8Bn on some stealth fighters to defend us from foreign air attacks. Now we just need a few 1000 Nokia 1100s across the North Sea and we are safe.

Good job we found out in time.

Please turn off your electronics

Whereas officially approved installed aircraft entertainment systems have provably caused at least one crash (Swiss air 111) kill 250 people. Passengers own equipment might, according to something someone heard a mate of a pilots cousin say in a pub to someone on Facebook - cause problems

The New C++: Lay down your guns, knives, and clubs

There is a world outside Cobol

ADD TRANSACTION-AMOUNT TO LEDGER-BALANCE works but -

"ADD THE FLOATING POINT ABSOLUTE OF THE PHASE OF THE INPUT SIGNAL IN RECEIVER 7 OF BLOCK 3 OF RACK 12 TO THE ACCUMULATED SUM OF THE PHASE DIFFERENCE IN THE MAXIMUM ENTROPY FUNCTION UNLESS THE COMPLEX PART OF THE BASELINE IS MORE THAN ..."

Is probably easier to put in as a formula.

Midlands council laughs at zombie-apocalypse threat

Detection is the first step

Has anyone suggested a way of detecting if Leicester was invaded by a load of shambling incoherent braindead lifeless zombies ?

Lanarkshire wristslap after vulnerable adults' data lost

Wasn't the data encrypted?

Surely all council workers should be equipped with a captain mystery secret decoder ring

HTC Flyer 7in Android tablet

High st prices

Apart from Apple fans, and people with more money than sense - are any reg readers actually buying tablets on the high st?

My 'straight from China' MID7 2.2 tablet cost $90 with shipping - seems to do everything a tablet should.

Ex-Google engineer dubs Goofrastructure 'truly obsolete'

Mission Critical?

"I've gotten prototypes off the ground, shown it to people, or deployed them with hardly any barriers."

Like testing perhaps?

It's not like Google going down a for a couple of days would be a problem!

Explosion at Intel's 'Fab 32' Arizona chip plant

not an explosion

Almost certainly wasn't an explosion.

It may have been a rapid combustion - like a shuttle solid rocket booster going off.

Or even a deflagaration - like a cannon going off.

But probably not an explosion.

Brit censor stamps on The Human Centipede

New rating

Viewers must be over 65 or a member of the house of lords ?

So the last film to be refused was 2 years ago?

The BBFC pay an army of staff to watch this stuff every day and they find something once every two years!

3D-printed bikini goes on sale

Playmobile reconstruction

Err, no that's wrong somehow .....

Tory terror changes promise moon on stick

Predicting terrorism is easy

You just need to check for jeans and a T-shirt.

My experience of the Met's specialist anti-terrorism detection capabilities are limited to trying to get into a defence trade show at Edexcel while wearing (gasp) jeans and a t-shirt.

I had left my company logo shirt and suit on the stand, cos I didn't fancy a walk across London in the summer in a suit or a tube ride with a baby-killer-corporation logo shirt.

He wasn't interested in my exhibitor pass or business cards - I obviously looked like a wrong-un. Meanwhile people were streaming in by simply wearing a nice suit. Eventually he got a call on his radio and wondered off - presumably somebody muslim looking wearing a suit was taxing their powers of logic.

Desktop virtualisation: Yes, it's cheaper

Replacing PCs with....

Generally other PCs running remote desktop.

Or simple hardware that just runs Remote Desktop? Except because of economies of scale they cost more than a PC. And somehow the company only ever stays in business a year so you end up with a dozen different models from different vendors because you can't get the old ones fixed. Or they only run 1024x768 screens, or they don't do HDMI.

Or remote desktop gets updated on the server end and the old model can't handle the new security so you have to buy new ones.

Funny, X-terminals seemed to work perfectly well 20years ago.

Movie-goer punts 3D-to-2D cinema specs

@Good idea

Unless the sun is a laser on your planet it isn't polarised.

It is polarised when it reflect soff surfaces, but that's a linear polarisation and cinema glasses are vertically polarised so either way round 2different or 2 same will have exactly the same effect