Posts by jbburks

Notepad++ website sent to China's naughty step after 'Stand with Hong Kong' software update

Stick to editing

While China is undoubtedly opressing the Uighurs, I would rather my software vendors stick to cranking out excellent code than wading into politics.

You'll never get Huawei with this, FCC tells US telcos: Buy Chinese kit and you won't see another dime from us

Universal Service Fund

The Universal Service Fund, or USF, funds telecom service (mobile, wireline phone and broadband) for rural areas that are very expensive to serve, due to low subscriber density, as well as schools and universities.

It is funded by a surcharge (tax) on telephone bills in the 10% range, so that's a HUGE pool of money. It is doled out back to the Telcos to provide these services once approved.

Like all big pools of government money, this gives them a level of control much more than what they are allowed to prohibit or require through laws.

Bill Gates – I WISH I was like Zuck and spoke Chinese. Yep, I drink poo

I think RosettaStone comes in a Windows version...

YouTube flushes Flash for future flicks

Re: Ming the Merciless

Personally, I have always agreed with Ming: Flash is evil and should die. It's a kludgy way for content-mad developers (usually advertising agency-driven) to deliver buggy, yet compelling, applications to the desktop.

Die, Flash, die.

NSA gunning for Google, wants cop-spotting dropped from Waze app

Just radar, not police.

I don't want to see where police are... just where radar surveillance is in process.

I have a disability and I'm allergic to X and K band radar waves. ;-)

UK govt preps World War 2 energy rationing to keep the lights on

Re: "expensive, unreliable renewables"??

So, I suppose you've dropped your connection to the grid and the gas mains and just grab this free energy?

There goes the rest of the UK manufacturing...

Well, this should put a nail in the coffin of the sliver of UK manufacturing that's left.

With India-style dodgy power, there will be no reason to manufacture anything in the UK.

And with service jobs going from the Polish to the Romanians, there won't be anything left for employment other than bankers in the City.

Furious Google techie on NSA snooping: 'F*CK THESE GUYS'

If Google *really* were upset about this, they would move all their traffic to SSL encryption (https) at the user end, as well as between data centers.

They were already handing this stuff over to the NSA - they are only upset that it's now public.