Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

Laptop potato scammers turn to onions

re: A fool and his money

>What kind of person decides to pay cash for a laptop from someone they've bumped into on the street

The kind that grows up and joins the government where they are put in charge of IT projects.

Pope makes central London no-go zone for BT engineers

As BT excuses go it's not bad

Following in their legendary series of ..

We would open up local ADSL to competitors but we don't have the address of our exchanges.

We needa subsidy to install ADSL in a village 2mi from Cambridge science park because it wouldn't be commercially viable

We didn't realise phorm invaded privacy.

Now we just have - wrong sort of religious leader on the roads.

Intel confirms HDCP copy-protection crack

Erm .... so what

An HDMI capture card that can grab 1080p is >1000quid, plus whatever Matrox are charging for a license this week - the PC and raid array to store the raw stream isn't cheap either.

All this so I can save my cable box's recordings of midsommer murder or copy a BluRay disk that was on torrent sites a month before the movie came out?

Trident delay by the Coalition: Cunning plan, or bad idea?

Mutually Assured Destruction and the British Shed

The point of deterrent is that if the Russkies/French/Germans/Iraqis/(delete as appropriate) ever try and nuke us - we will blow them to bits.

To make this threat credible we need a massive amount of nukes - a coupe of 100kt Trident warheads aren't going to destroy the USSR.

The obvious solution is to forget the expensive submarines and missiles and just put them all in a big shed in Berkshire - with say 100-200 * 10MT weapons the blast from the home counties would damage the enemy wherever they were in europe without the inconvenience of having to deliver the devices to them.

Facebook follows papal line on censorship

"its about making sex dirty and keeping it dirty"

Yes please.....

Custom superchippery pulls 3D from 2D images like humans

@3D cameras do not create 3d images

You can create exactly the same 3D model from a stereo camera as a laser scanner - all you need is to find the same point in both images and know the camera separation.

This is going to be fun with the fake street scenes painted on the sides of buildings here.

I also expect a lot of cars to drive into bus shelters that have car ads featuring pictures of the open road on them!

Tinfoil 'radiation shield' maternity wear hits 'Frisco

Too late

But by the time you're pregnant it's too late - the baby will already have been programmed to buy iPhones by our lizard overlords.

You need my new tinfoil underwear to protect your love-spuds from being tainted by the EM waves

ID fraudsters sell stolen Aus house

Re: Odd result

>Basically, you need to be able to go the land title office and find out, definitively, who the owner is.

Ironic that .

>What if the fraud was four, five, a dozen, transactions ago?

Or in Australia about 230years ago ?

Linus Torvalds outs himself as US citizen

Finland and WWII

When it comes to Finland and the last little pan-european adventure the Allies don't have an awful lot to be proud about.

Software re-sale restricted by US Court of Appeals

Other things with software

> funny how there was 2nd hand book shops

The publishers did try this 100years ago and the same court ruled that first sale doctrine applied.

The problem with this ruling is that everything has software in it. You bought your car but you only licensed the ECU software, so the dealer gets to decide who you can sell it to?

Same for your iPod, phone, PC CPU with embedded microcode ?

Playboy centrefold freaks out at 10,000 feet

open seseame

So given that it's impossible to open plug doors physically - would I be arrested if I sat in my seat ad said "open sesame" after all it's about as much danger to the aircraft.

There was an incident in australia where an oxygen bottle blew up and happened to hit the door arm opening it - but the door still didn't open.

Cinema chain bans laptops, tablets

@Perhaps he has a job.

Unlikely - it did say Leeds !

US raygun jumbo jet fails to beam down test missile

@pew.. pew..

Laser puts out lots of energy in a short time.

The energy heats up the outer skin of the target and melt/svapourises it.

If the target is the thin skinned wall of a highly pressurized liquid fueled ICBM fuel tank then it goes pop - if it's anything stronger it laughs at you.

The choice of wavelength is limited by something that isn't absorbed by the air/water vapour between you and the target. Shiny metal is roughly the same reflectivity across most of the practical wavelengths so target doesn't really matter.

Main defence is either to put some extra layers of insulation on the target so that these can be destroyed by the laser without doing any real damage - or simply shotting down the lumbering 747 that is flying in slow level circles around your missile launch site.

Rackspace claims credit for shushing Koran-burning 'pastor'

IT Angle

Really it's just a case of offshoring.

Catholics have been the official bogeyman and suppliers of terrorism services by royal appointment since 1536 - proper hand crafted British terrorism.

Now they just outsource it all to the third world with shoddy cheap foreign terrorism.

It's just not fair..

Hurd to take $950,000 salary after Oracle pay cut

@Why Hurd

For the stockholders that understood this and sold in the quarter when Carly/Hurd startede firing and outsourcing they did very well.

It's only those stockholders that expect the company to be in a good state AFTER the new CEO's performance bonus vests that suffered.

HP sues Hurd to keep secrets from Ellison

A happy ending

HP fired him because he single handedly destroyed HP last vestiges of engineering ability by driving out any remaining engineers.

They came to their sense and fired him - now the HP board obviously feel such remorse over what they have done to the proud Hewlett Packard name that they want to protect Oracle from making the same mistake.

That must be it.

Unless of course there is a good reason you would want to stop somebody so incompetent going to your competitor ?

NASA buys cutting-edge Cornish robot

@What the hell

Because it's much easier to have a dedicated 10p ARM processor responsible for the real time control of some valves than have the main control system be some ultra complex hard real time construction that has to respond to ever sensor and operate every valve.

It's the same reason you having an extra 'wasted' CPU in your disc drive/network card/printer/keyboard.

Happiness: Yours for £50k a year

@Rich people are happier

For happiness it does. People are happier in societies where the gap between rich and power is lowest - even if the average income is lower

(at least according to the same sort of survey last month)

Glasses-less 3D TV by Xmas? Not likely, says 3D TV exec

@Specless

The only reason for the shutter glasses is that it's (mostly) just a firmware upgrade on an existing 120Hz TV - so the incremental cost to the maker is bugger-all.

Then they can sell you a new 3D-TV at a nice price and screw money out of you for the $200/pair, only work with our brand, until somebody sits on them, glasses.

Large screen polarizer TVs using the same light, cheap, comfortable glasses you have at the cinema are much more pleasant to watch, but they cost more to make.

So you are selling your 3D TV at 2-3x the price and relying on the sales moron in Dixons/Best Buy to explain to the customer !

Monster Afghan spy airship to feature quad drinking straws

Vulnerable

Wouldn't this thing be a siting duck for the Taliban's advanced Mach2 stealth jet fighters?

You know the ones that the US and UK need the f35 lightning to fight against

Little black dress with SIM card slot offered for 2011

Paris TNG

Underwear that tweets what/who you are doing ?

HP and Dell trade (still more) 3PAR bids

@The Worrying Thing

The Worrying Thing is that HP are having to pay over the odds for somebody capable of putting disks in boxes - because the departing CEO fired almost their entire R+D staff, except for the ones that left in disgust when he was appointed.

Now they will acquire this new inventive company and fire their R+D staff to enhance shareholder value - then repeat.

If only there was an alternative, like HP having some ability to "invent" in-house!

US colonel blasts PowerPoint bureaucracy in Afghan HQ

@Why keep promoting?

Mostly it's time served as you said - there is also a problem of pay = rank.

So if you have a vital technical specialty that would get paid more in civi street the only way to pay them more is to promote them.

Lt Colonel is very common among a lot of engineers because it's the only way to pay them anything like what they would earn commercially - and so keep hold of them.

A great victory

Wasn't the whole point of our little4th Afghan adventure to bring the benefits of western democracy to these lovable but backward people?

Isn't sitting around giving Powerpoint presentations while trying to back-stab your way up the greasy pole the central theme of western democracy?

Isn't the solution to drop 1000s of laptops onto the Taliban all loaded with Powerpoint until they also dissolve into the same level of efficiency

First Dreamliner delivery slips into 2011

@Lee

Although the passengers in the "backside-turbine blade interface zone" are back in cattle class so it shouldn't be too upsetting.

Mozilla shrugs off 'forever free' H.264 codec license

does it help?

Is there any guarantee that the patents held by the MPEG-LA won't also apply to any future video standard?

Remember these aren't patents on H264 - they are patents on various techniques for compressing video,.

ARM chips put on their server boots

@64bit indeed required

You aren't going to be running CAD/CAE on an ARM

Imagine an ARM built into the SATA controller or the NIC - now your server instead of having a bunch of drives bottlenecked though an expensive Intel processors you have a 'server' per drive.

Royal Society opens inquiry into why kids hate tech

untitled

>Is programming still a fundamental literacy for the modern age?

Nope, never was. Kids today learning to make mouse over JScript is no more use than us learning BBC basic 25 years ago.

>What is the purpose of ICT or computing classes in school?

God knows

>Are existing qualifications fit for purpose?

No, but they never were.

>Should computing even be taught in the school environment

Typing would be useful. When I was at school they got rid of typing (girls only) and made the room into computer classroom.

>Why do students study computing?

Think it gets them a job.

>Do computing qualifications carry as much weight with universities as, say, maths >qualifications?

I sincerely hope not

I'm awaiting the Royal Society of Chemistry report into why kids don't want to study chemistry but are very interested in 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine

Energy-saving LEDs 'will not save energy', say boffins

@I re-echo the calls of "arsewash"

When we had candles we didn't light the streets, with gas lights we put one small lamp at the street corner, with high pressure sodium we illuminate entire freeways.

With LEDS it will be practical, for the same power cost, to light every parking lot and every street as brightly as the inside of your house

And in the US after the first person trips in an unlit packing lot or crashes on an regular lit road - the lawyers and insurers will make it compulsory

How extreme is your pr0n? Depends on your lawyer

Chopping bits off your willy

So is it only images or are we going to arrest people for ACTUALLY chopping bits off somebodies willy?

It would involve a large expansion in the prison population - you would probably have to start building special camps. On the other hand the Daily Mail would support it.

Inmate-frying microwave pain blaster turret installed in US jail

@Um

Thats like the arguments for Tazers - it's a better alternative than shooting someone dead.

But it soon becomes an easier alternative to talking to someone - hence the list of tazering of little old ladies for parking violations or while lying in an hospital intensive car bed.

So how long before these safe / no-lethal devices are used by the police every G8 demonstration?

Or installed in every shopping mall car park to stop skate borders, or schools are allowed to use them to stop kids talking in class?

119 iPad apps for admins, coders and geeks

Syntax error

"builds form an another class" (sic)

You have to worry if this is how well they proof-read the screenshot for the app.

Japanese press step into execution chamber

@Crime

That Japan doesn't have juries and has a pretty much 100% conviction rate helps.

Prudish Google slammed for Aussie censorship

@Lesson learned

That banning your political opponents while claiming that you are doing it for the children can keep you in power for a long time.

PA school district avoids charges over webcam spy scandal

@Lower Merion Webcam Scandal

>the real issue is that

The real issue is that the parents and kids can't trust the school district anymore.

Kids bring home laptop - you don't allow them to use it, the next 'administrative tool' might be checking your other home computers for illegal files?

School wants to give your daughter german measles vaccinations - do you trust them?

Do you need your kids to check for cameras in the locker room?

Single downloads big deal for UK comms industry

There are still artists left?

I thought my home taping of top-of-the-pops in the 80s already killed music?

HMRC staff fired for racism over benefits

@As it's Belfast

I suppose it's progress that the good people of Norn-Iron are now discriminating on the basis of skin color like normal people instead of worrying about transubstantiation.

Google plots pre-Christmas Chrome OS iPad killer

low-cost

So save on the $300-500 list price of an iPad by signing up to a 3year $100/month 3G contract ?

People have no bloody idea about saving energy

Reuising glass

The posh supermarket here sells its organic milk in glass bottles (at twice the price) and the bottles have a $1 deposit and are refilled.

Still uses more energy to wash the bottles and reuse them than to make a paper tetrapak carton and a lot more fuel to carry them around.

UK.gov drops Home Access scheme

Why not iPads?

Since each iPad saves 90K in printing costs - if we gave every kid one shouldn't we be able to cancel the national debt overnight?

BlackBerry bows to Saudi Arabia

@but why if...

It doesn't - if you are a foreign company doing biz in SA then either they ignore you, assuming you are paying the appropriate commissions to local advisors, or tell you to hand over the details anyway,

This is no different form the deal RIM and every network operator has with the UK, USA, and any other country with a police force.

This is about not letting the locals do deals, avoid tax and organise democracy without the local secret service being able to tap it - like they do in the UK, USA and .....

Hot babes discriminated against by some employers

@50-50 split

For most IT depts I'd settle for 50% human

US starts charging for online visa-waiver

@So let me get this straight

Not quite, you still have to fill in the green form, this is just an online version of the green form that might one day replace it - if they ever manage to get their systems lined up.

The problem is that the green form gets collected when you leave - under the new system you would need to go through a new layer of US immigration at the departure gate so they could record that you left the country,

Then you have the problem at land borders where there is no US immigration on leaving, now you just mail them the green form when it's expired. With the new efficient electronic system they have to build immigration posts at the exit as well as the entrance to record you leaving.

UK.gov finally kills ContactPoint

@Why so many and why so much

>Why did this system have to record all children in the UK to identify those recorded as being at risk?

The caring 'professionals' attitude that you are all guilty of something, even if it's just the possiblilty that you might do something. That's why we need to store the DNA of innocent people - just in case.

>Why did it cost £230 Million to develop a basic system to store names and addresses

Usual budget wrangling. Everybody wants a nice shiny new computer - you have a new big budget contract to stick the PO on.

You have been told to cut costs, so all your IT staff, maintenance contracts, HVAC, etc now get attached to the new big shiny contract.

You save costs, a big project becomes bigger and more important ..repeat.

Amazon opens UK Kindle store doors to teeming hordes

@Great in theory

>I've bought a handful of ebooks from the Kindle US store and they contain missing characters

Mostly 'U's perhaps?

They also seem to be completely missing any humour or irony !

Naomi Campbell admits handling 'blood diamonds'

Blood oil?

"Blood diamonds" is a marketing campaign by De Beers in S. Africa to stop people buying the competition. The same De Beers that cared so much about poor Africans it had nothing to do with the previous S. African regime.

Perhaps BP could start a similar campaign against middle easter oil?

Persuading people to only buy 'freedom oil' from the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea?

Leicester Council's iPad can chair meetings

@Cost effective

Of course if the council staff are doing that many meetings - and no other work, somebody might suggest a more realistic way of saving 90,000

Stealth fighter in Canadian Wikipedia brouhaha

@F-35 can do Catapult launches

Catapults need steam, which means reactors, which means:

1, the French get to build the engines rather than RR+BAe

2, you can't sell any of them to foreigners - except foreigners who already have nuclear powered aircraft carriers, and they aren't going to want a sub-compact version.

Scotland Yard cuffs six in megaquid phish ring probe

Losses of £358,000

If they added 6 zeros they would have been bailed-out instead of refused-bailed

Court slaps down coppers in photography case

@Properly nasty individuals.

"regularly attending .... protests should expect to be of the interest to the state."

A mere murderer or rapist isn't of interest to the state.

Remember the MET isn't a local police force, it's part of government answerable to the home secretary