Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Opera opens phone-agnostic mobile app store

Good start

You can see the Eu ruling that the app store is an anti-competitive monopoly and Opera are just the people to push this.

Feeling heat from Macs, Microsoft sells PCs sans crapware

Perhaps

>all of the appropriate drivers for the hardware type in question

Amazing - imagine including drivers for a machine WITH the machine. I bet some consultants worked hard to come up with that one!

> a suite of useful Microsoft applications and services, optimized versions of certain applications

So replacing the third party crapware and trialware with proper Redmond crapware and trialware

BAE Systems faces 'debarment' from exporting US war-tech

ITAR and Europe

ITAR does have some advantages. It effectively bans American companies from launching anything on Chinese or Russian rockets so Thales and Eurosat make a load of money building satellites that can be launched cheaply in China

New 'supercritical' generators to boost nuclear output by 50%

@Good news

The power plants aren't supercritical - only the CO2 is.

It's like 'explosive' CPU performance - you rather hope that the only the performance is explosive - not the CPU!

Obama to overhaul heinous US patent system

Good luck

So having so successfully battled the entrenched special interests of doctors, insurance companies and pharma to overhaul America's health service.

He is now going for the softer target of lawyers, VCs, and large corporations !

What next - peace in the middle east before building upto settling the Vi / Emacs wars?

From messiah to pariah: The death of open source on mobile

@Free Open Source does not have to be given away

Missing the point, if I use an open source package and give it to you then you have the same rights to give it to someone else.

Apple is saying that the user cannot share what they have downloaded.

open source

>examples of open-source apps for iOS or Android,

Like iOS (BSD-Darwin) or Android (Linux) ?

BOFH: This buck's for you

Isn't this supposed to humour

And not just the minutes of rail track's meetings about automatic train protection system ?

Ford punts prang-prompted auto cops-calling kit

Windows + voice

>Call 999

This requires administrator - do you want to restart with elevated permissions

> croaks yes

Restarting, say OK to continue

> faintly ok

Did the application restart correctly, say OK to continue

> even fainter yes

Do you wish to improve your Internet explorer browsing experience, say next or cancel

> c a n c e l

You will be prompted again in 5 mins

New updates are available, do you wish to install now?

> croak......

AFP terrifies MPs with ‘net pr0n tales

Simple algorithm

The police wan't more money/staff/powers

Politicians want to be seen to be doing something about a problem.

So police create perception of a problem - present it to politicians - police get more money/staff/powers.

If politicians not convinced by problem add child porn, terrorism, WMD, witchcraft, cancer or drugs label to problem.

Eurofighter Typhoon: It's EVEN WORSE than we thought

Sooooooooo.....

We aren't looking as daft as the Germans, they proposed the eurofighter to defeat the Migs of the East German airforce.

They are now looking at selling those same Migs to some dodgy third world dictator in order to pay for their slice of Eurofighters.

Cole not Dole and Sukhoi

So it's vital that we subsidize defense jobs whatever the cost because they are vital for national security - but subsidizing the pits was a commie plot.

Now we have an expensive eurofighter that could possibly beat a Russian fighter - except the Russians can simply turn a tap and cut off all our gas (and soon oil) leaving us to launch the fighters with a tea light candle from Ikea and some AA batteries.

Can I propose an alternative in which we kept the pits open and bought SU27s. Then we could have a proper war with the Russians - which we would win because our chaps have better mustaches.

And because our currency would be up there with Canada's, Australia's and other coal producing countries - we could buy them for now't.

Yanks outweigh Canucks: Official

The answer is obvious ... they allow foreigners in Canada

Canadians are pretty well insulated - once you get outside Vancouver or Toronto

It's all a question of rigged statistics - a recent study showed that Vancouver had the highest life expectancy in N. America. Because of the healthy outdoor lifestyle said the politicians - no because of lots of Japanese grandmothers said the statisticians.

If you only compare people of the same race it's about average. You don't suddenly get healthier by moving to Vancouver - unless you also become Japanese and female.

Library e-books to become too tatty to lend

Authors vs Publishers

Authors get a fee each time their book is borrowed - I'm guessing publishers don't get a cut of this.

Whereas publishers get a big chunk of the cover price of a new book and authors get a small cut of this.

Official: Booze prevents senile dementia

Especially a certain Dublin stout

Just look at the experimental results of Guinness on the recovery of senile dementia/ Alzheimer suffering CEOs

Sheila's Fails? The statistics of biological risk

Important distinction

Wasn't a case like this already thrown out because it would have a much bigger effect on annuity rates - women live longer and so pay a lot more for annuities - if this case goes through then won't the same logic apply?

Still you should be thankful that there is competition in car insurance.

Here when insurance was made compulsory the govt decided it must run it - so that it was available to anyone. So everybody pays pretty much the same liability part, somebody with 30 years experience and a mini pays the same as a 17year old who just got bought a Porsche by daddy. And although the insurance company isn't supposed to make a profit - it does have to cover government levels of operating costs - as you can imagine rates here aren't cheap.

Health experts flip over McD's burger-flip toy

Infiltrating the minds of kids

If the toys you played with as a kid really influence you - why aren't I Spitfire pilot?

Ex-PM blocked Steve Jobs knighthood

Gates charity

Not wanting to be cynical - on the reg - but corporate charities (like IKEA or Welcome) are a little different from your local oxfam shop.

Gates and MSFT pay very little tax due to a lot of this creative accounting - yes he is giving away a lot of his fortuen - but what else do you do with it after the first $100Bn?

It also buys a lot of personal and commercial influence - they are currently being investigated in a few countries for large charitable donations being immediately followed by governments abandoning opensource and making big MSFT purchases.

The gates foundation also operates like any other US fund - and some of it's investments are a lot less ethical than many high street banks.

Sir Ives

Is British and has made a major contribution to industrial design

(well at least as much as any luvvie that gets on stage in the west end and gets a gong for services to art)

Nokia DC-14 bike charger

Nokia R+D spend

And everybody was complaining that Nokia spend 5x as much on R&D as Apple do - but could Apple come up with an invention like this ?

Amazon confirms the terms of its declaration of war on Netflix

different in Canada

The difference in Canada is finding 200 minutes worth watching with their limited selection - how many times can you watch 'Broken Arrow'?

ps Free - Amazon prime customers pay $79/year to get free shipping, the movies are free on top of this. Alternatively of course it's $79/year for unlimited movies and you get the book shipping for free

London man gets 5 years for YouTube terror videos

Jury of peers?

I doubt very much that the jury in anyway represented his peers.

I'm betting the jury consisted of white middle class property owners on the electroral register who had the sort of stable jobs that they could take the time off and the sort of attitude that meant they wanted to be on a jury (it's ridiculously easy to get off one)

I would love all trials of police officers to have a jury of black teenagers - just for some balance.

Better go and hide my copy of "dambusters"

Posting a video of clips of British bombers destroying German cities is obviously OK - it's the staple of Sunday afternoon TV.

What if I posted clips of German bombers and the London blitz ? Since that's an act of terrorism would I be in trouble?

Operators to get new SMS 999 obligation

@Corporates

Worse over here in the land of ice and snow. You pay for incoming calls on your mobile!

My office uses a Voip system, a local call on the same area code from my office to my mobile gets charged as a long distance call from the city 3000mi away where the Voip system is registered.

@Emergency SMS

Is really useful - SMS messages will generally get through even if there isn't enough signal for a call. There have been a lot of people rescued from mountains and boats who texted a friend and asked them to ring 999 - it's nice to be able to text 999 directly.

Also be thankfull there is a vaguely joined up 999 service. We just had a hiker die on the local mountain, their family called the police when she didn't return home - but the mountain 2miles away is in another jurisdiction and the police in East Town didn't call the police in North Town - who run the mountain rescue.

Former Microsoft exec barred from taking job at Salesforce

fared much better in Washington courts

The laws for each state are different - California banning non-competes is allegedly one reason for the rapid growth of silicon valley.

The worst one is Massachusetts their courts have a history of enforcing non-competes so strongly, even when it wasn't part of the contract, that many companies have an unofficial policy of never hiring anyone who has been previously employed in MA because of the risk of a future lawsuit.

It's becoming a big problem for MIT spinouts, the students know if they go and work there then Google, Facebook, MSFT etc will probably not hire them.

Doctors warn on patient data

Protecting Doctors

Or when I'm looking to hire somebody I can pay $5 to a US website and check their medical history - I don't want to hire somebody who has a history of cancer or heart disease or diabetes do I ?

Ultimately i suppose there will be an app-for-that allowing me to check out how many abortions/STDs/breast enhancements my prospective date has direct form my iPhone

Conviction overturned for abuse images bought from bookshop

Publishers

Are the police going to go up against a publisher probably owned by Murdoch?

Or a bookstore with a bunch of expensive lawyers making points about Nazi book burnings.

But getting a prosecution against a 'peado' with a jury should be easy.

Expect to see a lot more of this tactic. You don't want to put a Guardian or BBC journalist in court - instead you pick some loser blogger who is going to look bad to a jury - get a conviction and then have case law that the BBC / Guardian aren't allowed to report say police expenses

WikiLeaks' Assange 'very likely' to lose extradition fight

@That is all well and good

They also failed to find any link between Iraq and 911 or any WMD - but that didn't stop them

Doctor Who co-star Nicholas Courtney dies at 81

Greatest ever quote

You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace who wasn't immune to bullets!

ECJ asked to rule on re-sale of software licences

@Software Vendors taking the michael

In theory yes - in practice no. The public and bandwagon jumping politicians would care about that - since it affects them, they don't care about B2B.

It could affect cellphones though if Apple decided you couldn't sell your fondleslab used.

Biggest effect is probably accountants and tax, if you can't sell software it's not an asset, so a whole bunch of depreciation stuff doesn't apply.

Brisbane's sewer fibre plan goes down the pan

Sorry no joke...

Did these fail because of any interesting technical issue or just a business failure sort of thing?

Sorry I can't think of anything particularly clever to say about sewers and t'internet

Facebook pulls naked smutty filth from NY Academy of Art page

No urns you see

You can tell it's art not nudity by the presence of urns - if you have urns (or cherubs) then naked ladies are ok !

(Pete and Dud ?)

Fox promises all change at MoD

Things have changed

So the tories don't have any marginal constituencies with big defence contractors in them.

Flash drives dangerously hard to purge of sensitive data

@IronKey

How do you know? Did they give you the source code? Can you compile it yourself and download it into the device?

There was a story on here about a big name tape company that promised 256bit AES encryption on their tape drives - turns out they simply AES encrypt the password and then XORed the 256bit result with the data!

Westboro Baptist Church taunts Anonymous over supposed attack plan

God hates all fags ?

Or just gay fags ?

He obviously hates Harley riders, thats why he made them fat and ugly - or in the UK made them all solicitors and dentists during the week.

But what about those that are just bike-curious ?

Facebook reviews smut policy after slave site uprising

@I refuse to enoble a simple forum post!

Of course if these people really are masochists - then setting up their own server, OS and forum software and getting it online should be exactly what they enjoy .....

@Coherency 101

>obsession of US corporations, ... trying to eliminate the simple fact that sex exists

Of course we are making the assumption that Americans are the result of sex.

Given the obvious physical and mental differences between American's and their human neighbours to the north - it is entirely possible that they are another species, probably alien.

If Americans actually reproduce by eating their own weight in hamburgers and then divide like amoebas then they would find the whole sexual reproduction business strange and disgusting.

This also explains the appearance of so many of them - next time you see a fat American don't laugh - ask when the happy day is.

sex does get everywhere

>Any content that is primarily related to sexual activities

Most facebook pages seem to be bragging about their kid's latest accomplishments

Now unless a lot of these kids were born in a stable in Bethlemhem, their existence is related to sex in some way.

Passport office loses applications

Confidence

So they lost all the most identifying details of 21 people.

They don't know how they were lost - or who ,if anyone, has the details but they are confident that there is no risk of identity theft ?

Presumably some new meaning of the word confident I was not previously aware of

Windows 8 squeezed to fit 2012 Dell fondleslab?

where's the app for that?

If you want a platform to be succesful don't you need applications ?

Don't those still need developers (or has IBM's Watson really made a breakthrough) ?

If you intend to launch in less than a year and you haven't even told the developers of the existence of the new platform they are expected to all switch to - isn't your app store going to be a bit bare on day 1 ?

Peruvian spuds entombed in Arctic 'doomsday vault'

Svalbard is oop north

Svalbard is a bit chilly, it's the sort of place where even gordies put on a jumper.

It would take a lot of global warming to turn it into a tropical paradise - and then they have freezers.

It doesn't take much of a temperature rise to change the rainfall or allow some new insect to live in the potatoes natural home.

Census threatens spies' cover

Ethnicity

@JaitcH - it's not just illegals.

A previous european government found the ethnicity entries very useful when planning their railway timetables. Ironically they also got a US company to do the data processing

Gadget makes bombs, mines go off 'on average' 20m away

Mines - really?

So this can generate a high enough field that a bit of wire in a detonator, inside a metal mine casing, buried 0.5m under water logged soil gets a high enough current to vapourise and detonate the charge ?

Sex offenders will get a review – after 15 years

@40 years ago

Hence the need for a comprehensive school register - it has come to the government's notice that the majority of criminals (that get convicted) went to comprehensives - while the majority of those who made a small administrative error in their tax or expenses went to public school.

The only solution is a comprehensive register of former comprehensive students (or peasants , to use the technical term)

@Why are our officials illiterate

All home secretaries since 1979 have actually been robots operated by the same computer program.

Unfortunately the software was done in a rush on BBC micro in basic and is still running on the same system (if it ain't broke ....). The software for other cabinet ministers has been upgraded allowing them to use polysyllabic words - also without making any sense.

European child abuse image law a step closer

wedge?

Remember the law to stop people "suspected" (not charged or convicted) of being football hooligans travelling abroad? Well somebody forgot to make it specific to football hooligans - so it's first use was to stop anti-globalisation protesters, it's also been used to stop people travelling to anti-war protests. But you can possibly object to a law against football hooligans can you.

So now a law against child porn images, well you can't possibly object to that can you ? And of course the law couldn't be expanded to include terrorism images, or images of other crimes?

Pretty soon a web site showing pictures of local speed cameras will be banned.

Hacked BBC streaming websites serve up malware

6music

Were both listeners affected?

Apple cripples iBooks for jailbreakers

@so what? #

I think you're confused - the purpose of iBooks isn't to read books it's to buy them.

Once you've iPaid for something then Apple don't want you distracted by reading it - that might delay the time before you go back and iPay again.

Can Oz compete in the outsourcing market?

@New Zealand?

Pay peanuts - get Hobbits