Posts by briesmith

Northrop wins $55bn contract for next-gen bomber – as America says bye-bye to B-52

Good Idea Son

A warplane, with people in it, in 2030?

Now there's a good idea if I ever heard one.

Not.

How much do UK cops pay for Microsoft licences? £30 a head or £137? Both

No fair, cops are getting it in the neck

That's because Scotland's population is roughly half that of London's where there's been a single force since Harold marched down from somewhere near Chelsea.

Re: Why pay fees at all?

Because they are not free. Want proof? Ask anyone who works in sales for these open source suppliers what their sales target is. Oh, and the software's shit.

So, what's happening with LOHAN? Sweet FAA, that's what

Well Spent

Are you mad? Do you know what these bumbling fools are doing? What their dream is?

They are building a balloon or a rocket or some combination of both which they will then launch into the heavens.

Nobody investing in this project can possibly be a supporter of money being well spent. The whole idea is mad; something done for the hell of it. There will be never any monetary gain to be had from this; just the right to say, over and over, "told you" with all the smugness you can summon.

If what you are after is unlikely profit gain I recommend you buy a lottery ticket or a premium bond.

Woman makes app that lets people rate and review you, Yelp-style. Now SHE'S upset people are 'reviewing' her

Missing the Point

Everybody - well, most everybody - commenting here is preoccupied with the website and its potential features but what about the crap she wrote in her "apology"?

Are people that can pen that sort of nonsense allowed out without a carer? She needs help if that's how she sees the world.

She's made this crappy app because she loves us and she knows we love everybody else; that's her basic shtick. Have the Mothers reformed? Is Frank acting creative director via some celestial interweb connection?

What a complete load of total bollocks.

Hey, folks. Meet the economics 'genius' behind Jeremy Corbyn

Re: technical or political

Because he's the boss with knowledge and expertise in economics? Used to have lots of defence related political stuff here as well but that seems to have fallen out of fashion. Shame; we techies don't have to be single issue OCD sufferers; well, not all the time.

What a Dick Richard Is

Like Tim, I am also banned from his "forum" for not agreeing with him. He is, of course, not just Corbyn's go to man for economics, he is also regularly on the BBC, quoted in the Guardian etc in the way the left use their circular validation system to promote their own.

He's in the Guardian - which the BBC buys in numbers you wouldn't believe - so let's have him on Question Time, Today and so on. He's on the BBC and in the Guardian, let's get him to write a "report" on something says the TUC. Some left-wing captured outpost of the UN employs him because of his work for the TUC and the BBC get him back on because he is now a UN validated "expert" and round and round it goes.

In my view his parents knew something when they christened him.

Typewriters suck. Yet we're infinitely richer for those irritating machines

Drives us mad...

Managed an IT department which had a key to disk system. Many of the operators (all girls then) would Tippex over the cursor because its constant flashing as it sat in the top left hand corner of the screen when the station was idle used to irritate them.

PS The IBM Selectric typewriter would remove characters using lift-off tape when the backspace was used; if you knew how to tell it to.

Preserve the concinnity of English, caterwauls American university

Re: Liff's too short

I believe all letters were created equal; even k and q which I have to force myself not to be judgmental about. "Least" implies the relevance in other circumstances of "lesser"; that's why you shouldn't say "least letters"; preferring "fewer" is more correct as "few" and "fewest" could also be correct in different compositions.

"Few" or "fewest" convey a sense of being special while "less" and "lesser" simply disparage those letters which have no one to speak for them; except me.

And, anyway, which letters are the least letters is so subjective. And can there be more than one; surely, there is only the least letter? (Probably k or q but there I go again.)

Guardian: 'Oil reserves will soon be worth NOTHING!' (A bit like their stock tips, really)

What's It Mean to Us Though?

I see all these projections for the catastrophe that global warming will bring to the world but no one, so far, has told me what it would mean for Hertfordshire.

Intuition, logic, common sense, all say a warmer world just north of London would be every nice.

Less heating expense, more arable productivity, fewer winter deaths as Grannies stop dying from the cold, greater health/less obesity through outdoor activity, and so on.

Isn't that worth something? Shouldn't we be paying the Chinese to get on with heating everything up a little bit that bit quicker?

Forget Nokia: Finland's promising future is to be server central

Iceland Is Another Country

There is a "Scandinavian" country not mentioned here; one that could really do with the money. Iceland.

More totally green hydro electricity than any reasonable person could want, bags of cold places/water with which to keep server farms cool (you could probably just leave the windows open in the winter) and more unused land than you could shake a stick at.

An island, so security - who's coming and going - is very easy to maintain.

Handily placed for internet wiring being mid Atlantic with, one imagines, many cables already running to it or nearby.

Quasi EU status might mean that data stored on servers there remained within the EU for the purposes of public procurement. (One for the lawyers).

Intelligent, well-educated, mostly English speaking populace. Six hours from Washington DC (Helsinki is 9), 3 from London (same for Helsinki).

What's not to like? Apart from the occasional volcano/earthquake... And the fish...

Want to see the back of fossil fuels? Calm down, hippies. CAPITALISM has an answer

Re: @ Anonymous Blowhard

Or, say, Scotland?

Wrong, wrong and wrong again

"we've used up half the oil in in 150 years. and the other half will take more energy to get it out that we'll get from it."

Just how wrong can one short post get? Is this one a record?

Re: A big If

And the tighter ones do what? :)

RADIOACTIVE WWII aircraft carrier FOUND OFF CALIFORNIA

Not All Plain Sailing

Reinstatement to the fleet is, however, expected to be delayed while the showers are replaced with baths and the CocaCola machines removed.

The good news is that the remaining aircraft are in excellent condition and, in tests, out performed the F35s ordered for the Navy's other "new" carrier. It's also become apparent that the planes can be restored to full fighting capability before the projected "first fly" date of the F35s.

Vodafone: So what exactly is 'ludicrous' about the Frontier report?

Re: Two words....

it's "kerb" ffs. With or without hollows.

That dreaded syncing feeling: Will Microsoft EVER fix OneDrive?

Alternatively

Try Kahootz at kahootz.com.

Another Battle

Let me posit a situation.

Microsoft are very keen on the cloud; they like the idea of us never owning anything, of everything we use being registered and renewed every month. They've almost certainly got 1,000s of evangelists for the cloud within their organisation.

Also beavering away for Microsoft is the OneDrive team; they like the cloud, they use the cloud but they want people to use OneDrive and that means syncing data reliably, cheaply, quickly and all the other lies.

This is an anathema to the Cloud evangelists. "You want your data in two or more places?", "Really?", "How quaint.", "Well it's never gonna happen." "What ever you want, whenever you want it, you just download it."

You can see why things don't get fixed?

And talking about things never getting fixed, document preview in Office is still broken (and Jimmy Savile is still dead, apparently.)

ALIENS ARE COMING: Chief NASA boffin in shock warning

How Long, Lord, How Long

Epsilon Eridani (BD−09°697), located in the constellation Eridanus, is 10.52 light-years from Earth and the closest star known to have planets orbiting around it.

Were there humanoid inhabitants of the Goldilocks planet orbiting EE then if they were, say, 100 years ahead of us in terms of evolution/development they could be here, finger in the air, next week having set out at 10% of light speed (107,925,285 kilometres per hour) 100 years ago.

BT slams ‘ludicrous’ Openreach report as Vodafone smirks

BT - Marching Backwards Slowly

Openreach or BT or somebody describes their DSL service as Superfast.

Enough said eh?

BT are beyond the pale, culturally hardly changed from their old GPO days and they are exacting a terrible price which the British economy - we poor bloody taxpayers - have to pay.

Oh, and if you don't like BT why, you can go to Plusnet.

More dishonesty and confusion marketing from possibly the worst company in the world.

Labour has a pop at the government over missed GDS targets

Sometimes you've got shit on your face...

We have had a working revenue protection system managing the London Congestion Zone for years. It's proved very difficult to get into the charging area without being caught by a camera and billed. The system seems to work; and work very well.

So what did "they" do when they wanted to switch to camera based revenue protection for the Dartford River Crossings? They built another system and called it DART or something equally stupid.

Now you may have to be an IT expert to balls up any Government IT project but you only have to be a really stupid, totally lazy politician to order a new, expensive, untried IT system when there is a tried and tested one fully operational less than 10 miles away.

And, what happened to fucking austerity? How did they ever get budget for this new DART system?

How many Watches will Apple flog? 20, er, 18.5, no, five, wait, 50 million!

Knobbery

That's why the downvote.

iWill but not Yours

Seems to me watches are bought as items of jewelery. If so, it won't be possible for Apple (or anybody else) to say, "this is how to build an iWatch". The design dominance they achieved with iPods, iPhones and iPads won't be possible.

My prediction? The iWatch will fail. Apple will fiddle about with it for a couple of years then they'll start to licence it to Longines, Rolex, Accurankle, Swatch and the like who will incorporate the iStuff in their designs. Then it'll work.

So long, Lenovo, and no thanks for all the super-creepy Superfish

Shat on for Years

This isn't new; this isn't restricted to Lenovo or the computer business.

The corporate world lost its way many years ago.

Confusion marketing; where packages are assembled with so many variables which only slightly differ it's impossible to do meaningful comparisons.

Bundling where you can only have the product or service you actually want if you buy a whole lot of stuff you don't.

Contracts which tie you in for so long it's almost impossible to remember to end them.

"Loyalty fucking" where anybody who renews a contract takes it up the arse while new customers get a free blow-job.

"No you don't" purchasing where you think you've bought something - a copy of Windows, say - only to find out you haven't, you've only rented it or you can only use it in months with an R in them or some other similar shit.

I'm sure Reg readers can think of many more practices which can't stand the light of day.

ATTENTION SETI scientists! It's TOO LATE: ALIENS will ATTACK in 2049

From Ours to Yours

Hello Gliese 581, pondscum calling from Earth, hello Gliese 581, pondscum calling from Earth...

Oi, UK.gov. WHERE'S THE DETAIL on your Google Tax?

No Need for New Law

This is yet another example of how pathetic HMRC are.

Leave a quid off your self-assessment and they'll rip you a new arsehole out of which to shit the unpaid tax, the penalties, the interest and so on. Fail to tell them about a change in your circumstances and they'll send the bulldozers round to demolish your house.

But if you're a multinational everything is so different.

There is already enough tax law to bring these companies to book. Costs arising from unjustifiable levels of Transfer Pricing can be simply ignored if the Revenue choose to and the tax calculated on the resulting restated profits.

Same applies to unjustifiable charges levied for use of brands and intellectual property. If they are at unreasonable levels they can similarly be ignored and the tax levied as though the charges were either not there at all or were imposed at a more reasonable level.

HMRC just needs to treat these big companies the way they treat little ones and remember if its Stasi time for SMEs it should equally be Gestapo calling for the multinationals.

You'll go APE for our new Gorilla Glass 4, Corning reckons

That's a Fail

Adam and Jamie; you shouldn't have done it. Should have left the shilling in the bottom of the glass. You've taken corporate dick up the arse and now you are fucked.

And I've loved you, in a West Coast sort of way, for years.

Why oh why did you do it?

The last PC replacement cycle is about to start turning

God, How to Waste Space

This article is so stupid as to provoke other thoughts. Is the author trying for the single longest troll? Is it a bet to see who can generate the most negative comments? Or an exercise in total contrarian dialectic?

It's wrong on so many counts it's almost impossible to begin.

When it comes to work humans, being intelligent beings, will always try to minimise effort. The author's approach is an exercise in, "Now let me see, just how hard can I make this computing malarkey?"

Complete tripe. Utter tosh. No, facile, childish, argumentative bollocks.

Google’s dot-com forget-me-not bomb: EU court still aiming at giant

The World Awaits Zimbabwe's Right to be Beaten to Death Quietly Ruling

See the EU believe their European TLDs ruling should also apply to Google's .com suffix.

I believe Mr Mugabe's lawyers are working as I type on their declaration that their country's ruling on the .zim TLD (or whatever it is; can't be arsed to Google it) also applies to every other TLD including .co.uk.

There's some bollocks comes out of Brussels but this surely etre le bouquet.

Microsoft confirms Surface NOT DEAD YET, next-gen version coming

So Want One But...

I would really like one of the new Surface 3 laplets but Microsoft have completely ballsed it up.

Configuration wise how can a laplet be a laplet if the keyboard is an extra?

Secondly; why so many models with tiny differences? Three would be more than enough; and sensible. Entry level, workhorse, one for the corporate knobs.

Finally; price. MS are trying to break into a market place. Far better to take losses now because the things are under-priced and reap profits later than to see the whole project fail because of mind numbingly high prices.

I just need an hour with someone from MS to put them straight. Beat some sense into them. The Surface is a beautiful device with a real role and purpose. Shame it's not made by someone who understands how to establish a hardware platform.

Google ordered to tear down search results from its global dotcom by French court

Worldwide Wotten Web

How a Spanish lawyer ever managed to persuade the EU judges that he had a right for it to be forgotten that he was a crook is beyond parody.

Clearly a decision that has nothing to do with jurisprudence rather one that is set firmly by the left-wing nature of the EU's culture where anything US and or UK in origin is the spawn of either the Great or the Little Satan.

Unfortunately, as some contributors have pointed out, most countries would have something their courts and judges would object to.

In the UK, for example, it is stories about celebrities indulging in some light-hearted nazi style cross-dressing, whips optional, actors indulging in public Ugandan practices in soft top cars, hood (head?) down, on major highways, comedians shoving mountains of south American organic substances up their noses and footballers lining up their sexual partners in neat rows to save time.

I don't think Google can take on every country in the world big enough to demand it has its way. Sadly, for us all, It will have to do its best to comply.

By the way there never was a French general called Napoleon and he never went to Belgium either. Germany were never in the UK in 1966 nor over it during the period 1940-1944. Any references to a chap called Stalin must surely be about the chap who partnered Dr Barnado in setting up the orphanage movement and Mao Tse Tung was a devoted father and small time author of handbooks.

Quit drooling, fanbois - haven't you SEEN what the iPhone 6 costs?

End of Contract In Sight - At Last?

While the carriers provided bundled contracts where the mobile service was joined with a phone there was some argument for fixed term contracts. These contracts started off at a not unreasonable 12 months then crept up to 18 and now the norm is 24. If as TechnicalBen says these bundled contracts are fast disappearing then everything changes.

Firstly, why buy your phone from a carrier? Other retailers have significantly more massive operations and should be able to offer better terms. I don't see how relatively tiny Carphone Warehouse, for example, can compete with Amazon or Best Buy and the like.

Secondly, why have a contract at all? If all you have is the mobile service having bought your handset elsewhere - which is what wise shoppers have been doing for a long, long time - then surely there is no need for a contract and definitely no need for a 24 month agreement.

But regularly observing items on eBay priced above what they can bought for in John Lewis's (other stores are available) I'm not sure that the rational consumer beloved of economist's - and price theorists - truly exists.

Is it an iPad? Is it a MacBook Air? No, it's a Surface Pro 3

Re: @Arnaut the less RE"......... but for the mass market it just costs far too much....."

This is the nail, and you've hit it fairly and squarely on the head.

For the cost of a decent Surface you can buy a really good, I mean really good, laptop and an iPad or Android tablet of your choice.

The proliferation of model choice and the ludicrously high price points means this is another queued up, ready to go, failure,

Govt control? Hah! It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a successful command economy

Ah but what about the grain?

At the heart of socialism lies its contradiction with rational behaviour. To introduce a socialistic system requires that humans stop behaving like humans. Capitalism, on the other hand, is aligned with how we think. It is in tune with evolution, it harmonises with the struggle for improvement; it is sympathetic to our emotions.

When the first humans walked out of Africa they weren't practicing socialism; they were looking for advantage, for a better life. As their wanderings took them from place to place they didn't negotiate on the basis of need and equity, they out-competed whoever was there before them. They were by any definition free marketeers, they were capitalists.

A centrally planned economy could work in a world where there was no scarcity and where all choices/preferences were aligned. Until then socialism will always be cross-grained relying on compulsion for its survival as a system of government.

PEAK LANDFILL: Why tablet gloom is good news for Windows users

Weight and See

Reduce weight and see what happens.

Tablets are still too heavy. I have a Nexus 7 and that's OK but it's too small. My Acer Iconia is fine screen wise but too heavy to hold for more than a moment or two.

I'd like a tablet with Acer Iconia specs (or better) that weighs no more (and preferably less) than the Nexus 7.

Please.

Brits stung for up to £625 when they try to cancel broadband

Re: Married or Sharing? Just tell them you are moving overseas.

This is the very best way to manage contracts with utilities; otherwise known as cheating, robbing bastards.

The stratagem is sometimes called the Blair manoeuvre due to he and her having completely different names and the way it work is like this.

You are an existing utility user and you see an offer which is much better than your deal but it's new subscribers only. Once your rant about the CRBs is over, cancel your contract and get your wife to take out a new contract in her, perfectly legitimately, different name, taking advantage of the offer otherwise closed to you, and, then, when the next "special deal" comes round, cancel her contract and take one out in your name.

This can be repeated ad infinitum, costs you nothing and gives the CRBs a good kicking at the same time.

Let joy be unconfined, the Sky's :) the limit.

Why Special Treatment for Utility Suppliers?

I don't understand why it is that utility suppliers seem to live in a legal world of their own making.

The law otherwise is very clear when a contract is breached - as in early termination - the person suffering loss is entitled to recover that loss by way of "damages".

They have a duty to mitigate any loss and are only entitled to recover any actual loss; usually seen to be as the profit that has been foregone.

An example would be a caterer getting ready to cater for a wedding. In the event of cancellation that caterer isn't entitled to the whole fee. It would have to offset any notional loss by the value of the food it didn't buy, the wages it didn't pay and any other costs it otherwise didn't incur - with a duty to mitigate those costs as I said earlier - before sending in its bill.

That's the common law as it's been for 100s of years.

Which brings me to two points.

What is the ISP's loss in the event of early termination? It must be based on the lost profit element and not simply the monthly revenue it would otherwise have received.

And, secondly, why is the regulator giving legal advice (and to the contrary) when it is not a legally qualified body?

My advice? You don't want debt collectors calling you and you don't want your credit record affected so send a letter to BT, Plusnet whichever saying that you don't accept their charge, offer to pay the lost profit element. When that letter gets ignored send them a letter before action - it should explicitly say "Letter before Action" - insisting that they answer. When that gets ignored, pay the amount demanded and immediately issue proceedings in the Small Claims Court - see here https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/overview - for that amount. I guarantee you'll get your money back with the issuing fees almost by return.

Basically this could all be avoided if utility service contracts longer than 3 months were simply banned - that's long enough to recover the cost of a company's computer system recording the arrival and departure of a customer - and the separation of any goods supply into a separately priced and managed contract.

This is long overdue.

Just TWO climate committee MPs contradict IPCC: The two with SCIENCE degrees

Re: No Surprise

You would be surprised to learn that it's the uppermost bullet in a revolver that falls under the hammer.

Provided the bullets in the gun were loaded in adjacent chambers the early gamblers would do best. Don't be third or thereafter though.

UK.gov's Open Source switch WON'T get rid of Microsoft, y'know

Already Given Up

I think MS have already abandoned WORD; the document preview facility has been broken for years and never fixed - Not even in Office 2013 - indicating no money for investment - or inclination to take the product forward.

The gleeful hand rubbing that's going about it though defies belief. WORD was a major step forward in clerical productivity. It worked, every body knew how to use it and it was integrated.

If we are forced back to a plethora of competing products all of which support ODF but all of which work completely differently it is us who will be the losers.

Those that think they've dished Microsoft simply don't understand how the world works.

Standardisation is the greatest time/cost saver there is. We just don't need a choice of word processing package. As long as we all use the same one that's all we need. Choice is an indulgence the world doesn't need and can't afford.

Just think back to thread sizes.

Royal Navy parks 470 double-decker buses on Queen Elizabeth

Re: White Elephants to Sitting Ducks and no Carrier

Churchill forced a very reluctant admiralty to send Repulse and Prince of Wales which were originally intended to be accompanied by HMS Indomitable (whose force of Fairey Fulmars would have terrified the Japanese - not) but the admiralty very cleverly arranged for Indomitable to be damaged in the Caribbean thus preventing its sailing with the two ships and its inevitable loss.

The admiralty knew the game was up for battleships but were determined not to lose one of their modern carriers (which, interestingly, were reasonably well designed but had no aircraft to speak of - ring any bells?) and, anyway, where would you want to be in the world if your ship couldn't sail?

Churchill gained his naval operations experience running the Gallipoli campaign 20 odd years earlier of course.

White Elephants to Sitting Ducks

These enormous ships will sail around pointlessly (well, one of them will, the other will rust away swinging at anchor in Devonport or somewhere) with no planes to fly until the Jihadis perfect their cheap and cheerful drones which they will then launch in their 100s, swamping whatever defence we've managed to afford, to sink them.

This will be a slaughter like Churchill arranged for Repulse and Prince of Wales at the hands of the Japanese. This involved the casual sinking in less than 20 minutes of wrongly conceived, poorly protected, badly constructed, vastly expensive capital ships - the pride of the bloomin Navy, they were, as Uncle Albert might have said - that were in the wrong place with no possible role other than to provide targets for Japanese navy bombing practice .

That we are still annually butt fucked by our defence industry, venal politicians and hapless civil servants is a never ending catastrophe that inevitably leads to the death of our young men (and women now) whenever the guns start firing.

Our military is led by officers who would much rather defeat the other services than any enemy. The RAF considers it a point of honour - a bit like Cardigan and the French in Oh What a Lovely War - to sink the Royal Navy whenever it can, regardless of the consequences for the national interest, and the army just stands on the sidelines hoping that it will be remembered that soldiers in action need to be delivered, supplied and extracted and that takes ships, planes and helicopters.

We spend a lot of money - probably not as much as we should, but enough - and get bugger all in terms of modern effectiveness for it. It would be cheaper to simply pay off any emerging enemy. And a lot less lot bloody.

Cabbies paralyze London in Uber rebellion

Uber - for a little while?

Black cabs out competed by Uber; Uber out competed by - oh, I don't know, no more than a million apps?

Black cabs are taking a stop the world position which will do for them but if Uber think they've got it all their own way, just give it a few months.

The idea that a hopelessly Americanised service can sustain against home market tweaked opponents can't stand. Uber is an aggressively, off puttingly, frankly unlikeably US product and I expect Addison Lee and others are already planning its demise.

It will be Pyrrhic but the black cabs will have their revenge on Uber.

Revealed: GCHQ's beyond top secret Middle Eastern internet spy base

Maturity

We are used to these days indulging our "fuck you" attitude and glorying in our freedom to be anarchic. We doff our (baseball) caps to no man; bend the knee to absolutely no fucker whatsoever. And it's all so modern, so exciting, so "dude, you're the man and so the fuck, yeah, am I!"

But sometimes, children, things in life are serious; have serious consequences. I think over the coming years the more mature amongst will recognise that our government has to do this shit so that we can continue to live our "fuck you all" lives, with no nasty Mr Putin arriving to tell is that we can't.

We will slowly come to agree that you can't yell "Fire!" in a theatre and you can't steal your country's secrets and publicise them because you're pissed off at the world, God, Tony Blair, David Cameron, your hair stylist or whoever.

It's all so far "Mum's out, Dad's out, let's be rude" sort of stuff but we need to wise up a little, get ourselves under control and be a little more mature. Snowden has undoubtedly caused the loss of a lot of US/UK taxpayers' treasure and, sadly, probably some lives as well.

Britain'll look like rural Albania without fracking – House of Lords report

Where Could the Power Come From?

When the jocks fuck off with their bat and ball there'll be the problem of what to with all the more than slightly warm nuclear hulks slowly bobbing up and down in the waters of the Clyde.

Can't leave them there, the Scots will probably start worshipping them or something; we'll have to repatriate them.

So I suggest a bidding process where coastal towns in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have to say in no more than 500 words why their town should get one to plug into their local grid.

And Caroline bloody Lucas can't enter.

Re: Fresh water: It's the new oil.

Is the writer serious?

Canada short of water?

A huge country covered in vast depths of snow for 13 months of the year?

A vast country with even vaster lakes?

What is he on? I always thought Canadians were too dull to be doing drugs but perhaps I was wrong?

In three hours, Microsoft gave the Windows-verse everything it needed

Re: Too Little Too Late

"I don't think the enterprise really matters "

Tyrion, you're obviously a genius seeing the world in a far cleverer way than the rest of us. Or quite mad.

Or just plain silly.

Powerline Networking

If Only

I wish the effect complained of did, in fact, happen.

I have expensive BT infinity in the house but low speed PlusNet in my garage office about 70 yards away.

Ideally I'd get rid of the PlusNet using PowerLine networking to connect the house router to the garage - saving money and getting better bandwidth into the bargain - but the presence of a consumer unit in the house and another in the garage in the mains distribution circuits prevents the signals getting through. Attenuation is so high the router can't be seen in the garage.

And the wife won't let me run a CAT5 cable... (because of the mess, holes in the walls etc)

Eat our dust, spinning rust: In 5 years, it'll be all flash all the time

Re: Doubt it

Tapes are SERIAL devices, not sequential (although they can be that too).

Data on tape is processed serially not sequentially because it is ordered and retrieved according to time of writing and not some kind of logical identifier like an account number. Data can, of course, be pre-ordered, sorted, and then written to tape. That data will then be read both serially and sequentially.

Of course, SSDs will replace rotating memory. As John Wayne famously said, "in 12 or 15 years time".

Surface 2 and iPad Air: Prepare to meet YOUR DOOM under a 'Landfill Android' AVALANCHE

Tpyos

Too many; spoiled my raed.

Must do butter.

Alarming tales: What goes on INSIDE Reg hack's hi-tech bedroom

Wrist savaging watch

There is an enormous range of wristwatches - some of them quite well made - that will gouge a hole in the wearer's wrist at a preset time rather than making any noise.

Get one of these and some antibiotic plasters and you'll be fine.