Posts by BillG

Boffins build program to HUNT DOWN CO2 polluters where they LIVE

Re: Thanks boffins

Let the Witch Hunt Begin!

Assange chums must cough up £93,500 bail over embassy lurk

Re: "which is recognised legally as Ecuadorian territory"

Upvoted to counteract one of the incomprehensible downvotes.

Upvoted all those who upvoted to counteract one of the incomprehensible downvotes.

I'm sure those downvotes would be happy to donate to Assange's lost bail?

US said to designate Assange 'enemy' of the state

Re: He is a traitor to the United States.

Why is it that people that scream against the PATRIOT Act have never read it?

Re: Optional

Look, Obama has designated Assange as an "enemy of the state" and Obama is determined to see Assange's ass sitting in a U.S. prison.

No amount of whining by anybody is going to change Obama's mind on that. Deal with it.

Climate sceptic? You're probably a 'Birther', don't vaccinate your kids

Climate sceptic? You're probably a Scientist

Climate Fanbois Hate Facts

Conflict-of-interest scandal could imperil Wikimedia charity status

I'm Shocked, Shocked!

it's been discovered that a close-knit group of friends and business associates who run Wikipedia have been selling services to manipulate Wikipedia entries for personal gain and to reflect personal bias.

In other news, Inspector Renault is shocked, SHOCKED!, that gambling is going on at Rick's Cafe.

Twitter to world: We have NO rivals, ha ha ha!

Chinese Marketing

China’s most popular microblogging platforms from Sina and Tencent have way more registered accounts - over 300 million each

Anyone who has ever dealt with the Chinese knows that they can't be believed when it comes to marketing figures.

South Korea probes 'mobe patent bully-boy' Samsung

Re: Samsung = Copycat

I can't speak to today, but back in the 1990's I saw Samsung blatantly copy other people's electronic products. Samsung semiconductor used to copy other company's semiconductors and sell them as their own.

FBI says Apple ID heist claim is TOTALLY FALSE

The penalty for being a witch is they shove a living snake up their ass.

Privacy warriors win right to fight Google's itty-bitty FTC payout

Money Buys Influence

Google told The Register: "We're confident that there is no basis for this challenge."

Translation: "Google is the Third Largest Contributor to the Obama Re-Election Campaign!"

Leaked Genius Bar manual shows Apple's smooth seductions

Re: Not a cult... Apple

I agree, nothing new here. This is how Marketing works. Apple has figured out how customers make technology decisions and they are addressing these customer's concerns.

However, marketing gets evil when someone is manipulated into buying something they can't afford.

LG first to flaunt quad-core Qualcomm smartie

Don't Expect JB

The handset touches down with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich too, although with a Jelly Bean update expected soon.

I wouldn't hold my breath. LG is famous for their contempt for developers, and promising updates that never happen. I'll never buy an LG phone again.

'United States must renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks'

Re: I've got to say

> So we should just disregard somone seeking political asylum and

> hand then over to the regime they are fleeing, right?

Whoever said Assange was seeking POLITICAL asylum? Politics has nothing to do with it, Assange is just being cowardly. If it DID have to do with politics, why choose Equator, a country with an oppressive attitude towards free press?

Should Equator just disregard the legal system of the U.K., their host country, and interfere with the laws of the E.U.?

It's really hypocritical when Equator complains that the U.K. is interfering with Equator's interference.

Re: I've got to say

Obama has his sights set on Assange, and Obama will see Assange's ass sitting in jail.

Deal with it.

Neil Armstrong dies aged 82

A Real Hero

> RIP Neil. A real hero.

Best way to sum it up.

Thanks, Neil. Thanks for inspiring me, thanks for inspiring a generation.

Has cash corrupted open source?

Re: Linux?

> > Don't mention assembler in front of the children.

> Psst, wanna have a look at some machine code?

> 0xA2 0x0A 0xCA 0x20 0x00 0x01 0xF0 0xFA 0x60

WAAAAAAH! That doesn't look like C!

WAAAAAAAAH!

Re: Linux?

> And before UNIX, RSX-11, and VMS, there were mainframes with OSes in assembler,

Don't mention assembler in front of the children.

Police mistake reveals plan for Assange's Embassy capture

Re: Cue Dame Stella Rimington

Because this was intentionally leaked? To let Assange know how far the U.K. will go to capture him?

Red alert! Google assembles crack team to AVOID privacy gaffes

Job Description

As a Data Privacy Engineer at Google you will help insure that when we make future "mistakes" (hahahahaha), that those "mistakes" (hahahahaha) will follow our tradition of always compromising privacy and never protecting it. You will further insure that those "mistakes" (hahahahaha) will be so subtle that they will never come to the attention of government regulators. Alternately, we may decided that if you cannot detect those "mistakes" (hahahahaha) then government regulators won't catch them either.

A detailed knowledge of browsers and an intimate familiarity with Monty Python are required.

Anonymous takes down UK government websites in Assange attack

Re: Yawn.

Yawn.

Seriously, what does Anon expect: "Oh No! Anon took down our websites! We better let Assange go to Ecuador!"

or,

"Those dicks took down our websites. Rush the Ecuadorian embassy".

Yawn, I say to Anon. Yawn.

McIntyre: Climate policy crippled by pointless feel-good gestures

Isn't this the same group of Climate "scientists" that refused to let anyone else look at their data?

WHERE is the raw data that pretends to prove global warming? What do these fakers think they are doing?

Greens wage war on clean low-carbon renewable energy

Re: I've seen nuclear fans hate on geothermal too

Wind and Solar have a lot of politicians' personal cash tied up in them. In the USA, Nancy Pelosi has invested heavily in wind and solar so she is against everything else, including nuclear and geothermal.

It's the fault of the politicians.

Google, PayPal, banks, mobile networks in pay-by-bonk peace summit

the focus is really on "education of legislators and regulators developing public policy around mobile payments"

Translation: It's about lobbying politicians so that consumers won't be protected. Make it even easier for an impulse buy. Let consumers go into debt without even thinking about what they are doing. Transactions are immediate and irreversible. Yeah, you can't drive drunk, but you can buy while high.

Personal responsibility? Look at the people in any train station and tell me who possesses that.

That giant sucking sound you hear is the rich getting richer.

RBS must realise it's just an IT biz with a banking licence

Re: "IT is the business..."

A retail bank is nothing but an IT company with a banking licence

That truly is a brilliant and insightful statement.

The RBS problem is ultimately symptomatic of a culture within many large organisation where the senior team believe that they can rule by "dictat" without having to understand the consequences of their decisions.

...out-sourcing can exacerbate bad management...

Or, as in the motto of Dilbert's pointy-haired boss, bad management, feels that anything they don't understand must be easy.

Hobbyist builds working assault rifle using 3D printer

Re: I can see this selling

It's illegal to sell. In the USA a license is required to manufacture firearms.

But I see 3D printer manufacturers putting in safeguards to prevent this sort of thing, the same way that the chips in printers and scanners sold in Europe are programmed to recognize and therefore not scan or print money.

Zynga plays BLAME GAME with Facebook as stock tanks 40%

@ZweiBlumen Re: Captive Users

Remember when Yahoo was THE place for search and apps? Remember when mySpace was the only place for social networking?

Neither Yahoo or mySpace lost market share because users lost interest, they lost because declining revenue forced changes that resulted in less users.

And Facebook looks to be on that trend. Their earnings are slowing and their stock price is a Wall Street joke. Worse, Facebook has lost some of it's "cool" among teens because their parents are joining. Teens are now moving to Twitter, but there exists a void between Facebook and Twitter and some startup is going to obsolete them both. Hey, it's the Circle of Life!

LG Optimus 4X HD quad-core Android phone review

Re: LG - Steer Clear

Current track record for LG would suggest that Jellybean will be promised, but instead the phone will be obsoleted ten months after introduction and ALL promises made to developers for drivers will be broken.

LG drops support for their phones faster than Charlie Sheen's boxers in a whorehouse.

GM to slash vast outsourced IT empire

Re: BillG Let us centralise all our support into just 2 locations...

@"Don Jefe" I worked as a vendor, so I got to see that parts they could have purchased, verses the crap quality parts they actually purchased.

Re: Let us centralise all our support into just 2 locations...

Everything will go wrong. I've worked with General Motors. They are a very screwed up company that puts cutting costs ahead of quality. Trust me, this is the beginning of the end.

Microsoft sells out of MSNBC.com, plans to open own news pipe

Bad news for MSNBC

Before they bought NBC, Comcast tried to ditch MSNBC from their cable lineup. Turns out they couldn't because MSNBC is linked to NBC - businesses that buy advertising on NBC are often forced to buy ads on MSNBC as well (as if anyone wants to buy ads on MSNBC? HA!)

Now Comcast can finally kill off MSNBC. Microsoft saw this coming.

NVIDIA Developer Zone, user forums plundered in hack attack

NVIDIA, Again

NVIDIA has a lot of disgruntled customers, given NVIDIA's distaste for the open-source community and their abandonment of developers. They might want to start looking there first.

Google expected to cough measly $22.5m for Safari privacy gaffe

"Accidental"?

The law should read that all accidental violations of privacy must be treated as deliberate and corporate officers are legally responsible. Threaten to put Google's CEO in jail for ANY privacy violation and watch them clean up their act.

Re: lies

you learn write bad

Total bankers: Twitter and LinkedIn's cynical API play

Re: "API" is being used in two senses here

I think API has become one of those terms that has outgrown it's original definition. Is the Facebook Android app an API?

I was struck by this part of the article:

"Many other things have changed in the valley over the past five decades. I've become increasingly concerned about one thing that is seldom discussed: the valley is no longer as concerned about serving the customer, and even sees great opportunity in exploitation. We are beginning to act like the bankers who sold subprime mortgages to naïve consumers"

The exploitation is in the realm of privacy. I first stopped being shocked at how companies like Facebook (overwriting a phone's address book) exploit their customers, and I recently stopped being shocked at how customers allow themselves to be exploited.

Facebook: Our phone app DID seize your email

Re: yeah yeah, it was a bug...

It's not a bug, it's a feature... bitches.

It's like during the early days of the Google toolbar, when a toolbar update set Google as the default search provider and deleted other search providers from browser search. OOPS! it was a bug.

Why is it these bugs always work in the vendor's favor and never against, hmmm?

Facebook phone app attempts to seize ALL YOUR MAIL

Not Rooted?

"what's the advice for those of us who haven't rooted our phones and thus aren't actually able to remove the "operator installed" apps"

1. Disable auto-updating for the FB app from Google Play

2. Clear all the data for the app by long-pressing the app in Launcher and select Application Info, then click "Clear Data"

This should make the FB Android app unused and uninitiated.

SHUT DOWN YOUR PHONE completely, then restart (do NOT reboot)

Now Never, NEVER EVER use the FB app, use the web interface instead

Assange: Australian neglect made me flee to Ecuador embassy

Re: Surely..

Surely it can b e difficult. The Ecuadorian Embassy is in a walk-up flat and there are about a dozen steps to get to the street. Even if he got to a car, it would be stopped, he'd be arrested on additional charges, and Ecuador would be in diplomatic trouble. He's already in trouble for breach of bail - if he tries to flee there would be criminal charges as well.

Assange has no chance of getting into a car and Ecuador knows that. More likely, Ecuadorian President Correa is using Assange as a tool to negotiate for something he wants from Great Britain,, possibly improved trade status, in exchange for happily turning Assange over to London police.

Isn't it strange that Assange chose Ecuador? Correa is someone that passionately suppresses freedom of the press. He's filed personal defamation lawsuits against journalists who disagree with him, has tried to force independent radio and TV stations out of business, and temporarily shut down radio and TV stations that criticized him. In June 9, Correa told his ministers to stop granting interviews with private journalists.

Assange's own show is financed by the Kremlin. Russia isn't exactly y known as a promoter of the free press, either.

Anyone else see a selfish pattern here?

For Assange, freedom of the press is less important than attacking the United States and saving his own conceited ass.

HBO 'sorry' for skewering Dubya

Re: Hilarious

Would it have been hilarious to you if they used Obama's head?

If they had, there would be a cry to put them all in jail. And MSNBC and CNN would be doing two-hour specials on political bias in Game of thrones.

NASA cuts inspire 'Planetary Exploration Car Wash & Bake Sale'

Read your history. NASA spending goes down when the President is a Democrat.

BTW, the "Bush era tax cuts" were/are for the upper-middle class. It was a shift in the tax brackets. That's why Obama enthusiastically extended the tax cuts. I know because I actually had to read the bill while everyone else repeats everyone else.

Mr Sulu causes DDoS panic after posting link on Facebook

I Canna Stop Myself

Sulu was NOT Captain of the USS Excelsior in the first Star Trek series, he was the Chief Helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise..

I could not stop myself from typing that correction. I tried, I really tried, I just couldn't help myself.

Chief Helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D.

Assange loses appeal against extradition to Sweden

C'mon. The extradition order was a year and a half ago.

Do you doubt that if he was anyone else he would have been extradited long ago? Do you???

Assange has money and influence and that has allowed him to evade the system while he lives in a mansion and languishes in luxury. Look, if he was truly innocent, wouldn't he just go Sweden prove his innocence, and it over with? But the more he tries to evade the system, the more guilty he makes himself look.

Of course, to the "tinfoil hat" Assange fanbois, none of this matters, does it?

Facebook's Eduardo Saverin: I'm not a tax-dodger

Re: Reading is Fundamental

I understand how this looks. Yes, I read the article. You are correct in what the article SAYS, but if you understand the United States Government you would know what the article MEANS.

A law is always broad but enforcement is selective. Cracking down on people that renounce U.S. citizenship for tax purposes is something that has been TALKED ABOUT in the USA for the past ten years. When Wall Street execs renounce U.S. citizenship for tax reasons and live in the USA as an expatriate, no one in Washington squeals one little bit. But having a highly publicized individual renounce citizenship during a highly publicized IPO during a -*!gasp* - ELECTION YEAR!

Well, the people in Washington have to justify their jobs! Harumph! Harumph! Harumph!

Taxing someone who is not an American citizen as if they were an American citizen is, of course, illegal. It's been tried in different forms - in the mid 1990's, when Chrysler moved their headquarters from a Detroit slum to Auburn Hills because three Chrysler employees were killed in two years on their way to work, Detroit passed a law to force Chrysler to still pay all local Detroit taxes even though they were not in Detroit anymore. It was illegal, of course, and Chrysler refused to pay.

No Taxation Without Representation. I think the Americas fought a war over that one.

But no one doubts that this law is aimed purely at Eduardo. I'm not even sure such a law will pass.

Re: "will tax their future investment gains no matter where they live"

Why are the Democrats singling out Eduardo? Last year over 1000 people renounced U.S. citizenship and unlike Eduardo openly ADMITTED it was for tax purposes, 499 in the first quarter of 2011:

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/06/13/are-taxes-causing-the-rich-to-renounce-their-citizenship/

Will the Special Ops Tax Collectors (SOTC) go after them, too? Oh, wait, those 1000 people are all Wall Street executives that donate to political campaigns. The Democrats will leave them alone because, uh, well, om, I'm sure there's a good reason...

Google's latest webspam crusade 'breaks' search results

I'm Affected

I've got two damn good websites that have been online for over ten years, hundreds of pages, and authoritative. I used to be in the Top Five results for my targeted keywords. Hell, one is/was the top website in a $15Billion semiconductor segment.

Now, I am on Page 2. Everyone before me is a large corporation. No one before me has less than $2Billion in sales/year! Some pages before me rank for no reason that I can see.

My last AdSense payout for the authoritative website is the lowest in six years, and half what it used to be.

Google is crapping on the little guy.

Ex-BP engineer cuffed 'for deleting Deepwater spill texts'

Re: re: Scapegoat

I think that's more likely. it seems that that engineer would WANT his texts to be read as an "I told you so" measure - after all, he was right, wasn't he?

I don't see a motive for HIM to want to delete the texts. It makes him look good and his management look bad, true?

I would deeply suspect that his upper management pressured him to delete those texts.

FBI track alleged Anon from unsanitised busty babe pic

Re: <-- See Icon

Someone else who should be filed under the category of "Arrest Me I'm Stupid"

Adobe reels in game coders with a quick free Flash

Re: Give up, Adobe!

yeah, but it has beautiful plumage.

ARM's ultra-low-power fridge-puter chips: Just what the CIA ordered

Re: Inaccurate and Wrong

"And 32-bit RISC is actually more efficient: it takes far fewer instructions and cycles to execute the same task as an 8/16-bit MCU (most are very CISCy and extremely slow, needing many cycles to execute even a single instruction and many more instructions to do a simple task)"

The above is so very very wrong it's clear you don't understand the issues. I can't believe you actually wrote that.

If bullsh*t were music you'd be a symphony.