Posts by DavCrav

Re: Big Pharma

"Whereas I totally agree with you about this (I have a niece in the business), I'd be far more sympathetic to Big Pharma if they didn't spend 2/3rds of their budget on advertising, mainly about drugs for first world problems like restless legs and hair loss."

Citation needed.

Here's proof that GlaxoSmithKline spends a lot more on R&D than advertising:

Advertising spending: £1.35bn.

R&D spending: £4.48bn.

Looks to me that they spend three times as much on R&D as advertising. And of course their total expenditure is about £25bn, so it's closer to 1/20th, not 2/3rds.

Re: "Stick to the OS GUI's way of doing things."

"Hmm, if only that were true when targetting Windows - do you use the XP/Win7 way, the utterly "innovative" (ha ha) Win8 way or the total free-for-all/it-will-probably-look-different-next-week mess that is Windows 10?"

Ah, this is an all or nothing deal, not a la carte. He covered that with

"If you're from MS, make it look like Windows 7"

Re: $120 million fine

"As a US-Government-imposed fine, they can just seize and garnish."

Well, yeah, but they are still going to have difficulty unless he has a Picasso in the basement.

Re: Had the fire brigade called to a five star hotel, in Malta....

A recent fire at a university halls of residence was caused by a broken toaster. The (drunk) student wanted toast, so he pushed the lever down and it popped back up. A few more times of this and he decided to 'fix' it, by pushing it down and placing a heavy book on top of the toaster to force the bread down. Went back to his room, forgot about it, passed out, and was woken up by alarms and sirens.

Re: A logical outcome

"...that they only planned for their preferred outcome is the reason for the extent of the subsequent shambles."

Perhaps it's really hard and you cannot easily plan for it. Especially as the other side refused to say anything until A50 was triggered.

"Does that rhyme ?"

The full lyric is

"Dr Dre can suck my dick, that bitch got no Ph.D.

I lost count of mine, I got stupid whack degrees."

So the answer is 'sort of'.

Re: Vi

"As @DavCrav says, the functions in a mechanical typewrite were separate, but in the one lever."

I think that's only modern typewriters as well, I believe older models (as in 100+ years ago) did not combine them, but I am very happy to be corrected on that.

"If I remember correctly, the connector for a floppy drive is just four bare pins and it's your responsibility to do any lining up and orientation. No hand-holding here."

Now I think about it, it definitely does. I was teaching a friend how to build computers and I took my eye off him for a second and he connected the power to the floppy the wrong way round. A little popping and it was back to Jungle (gives you an idea when this was) for another floppy drive.

Re: Not biting the hand that feeds it?

"2. It's close to the middle east."

It's 1500 miles from Djibouti to Baghdad. No quite popping out to the shops.

Re: I recall even my mum (a bit like Dilmom) telling me a fire story

"- Dropping lumps of sodium into dishes of water"

I can confirm that you haven't been able to do that for a while. We had to watch a video of it.

"Batman's super power is that he's rich, so he can build crazy gadgets."

Batman is a billionaire who spends money producing new types of armour so he can more easily carry out his hobby of hospitalizing the impoverished in a recession-hit city. It's like American Psycho but without the business cards.

Re: 'Google, the giant information vacuum cleaner'

"That’s not how Google wants to play it: It intends to control the data. This creates a trust problem for publishers. They aim to build close, sometimes emotional relationships with readers, listeners and viewers. But, under Google’s terms, they’ll have to tell these customers explicitly that their data will be handed over to a third party, Google, without specifying what Google will do with it."

Google has written new terms and conditions, indeed. That they are highly likely contrary to the GDPR is important. I am also highly dubious that a company can write a contract saying that if they are found guilty of a crime that you agree to pay their fine for them.

Re: And some 40 million citizens using your thing

"39,999,999 after I left last month. I have no regrets.

4 thumbs up & 1 thumb down"

I didn't know Mark Zuckerberg read El Reg.

Re: Yet again...

"We all know what happened to the TSB."

Do we? Has something happened with them recently?

Re: Extradition?

I have been trying to find this out: in a Reuters report from 2016 it says that he remains in the UK but has sent a legal representative. Since charges were thrown out in the UK, and he was a UK representative of a UK company submitting UK returns, the forum bar should whack any extradition on the head as well.

But courts are weird.

Re: Papers please

"but you absolutely get asked for your ID by the UK cops."

And from a legal point of view, unless they are arresting you you can tell them to go whistle for it.

Re: In the publics interest? Dream on!

"Those universities are crying because of one simple thing: their own personal interests. If shutting down the Facebook API would damage the work which universities do then that only tells me something about the poor state of affairs within said universities."

Oh come on. You cannot study social networks' effects on people's lives if you can get no data about their interactions with them because of some bullshit privacy argument that stifles actual research but allows the Zuck to sell anyone's data for profit.

"(I had deactivated it a few weeks ago, and decided I didn't need it, and with the recent announcement that they are moving all of Europe's records to the US, I decided to press the button and get rid of the slimeball once and for all.)"

Correction: it appears that they are moving everyone other than Europeans away from Europe to the US. I still do not regret my decision.

Re: RE: As a never-signed up non member....

"Again, your level of ignorance is worrying."

1) If he's not on Facebook, how can he know the exact way that tagging works?

2) The reality is that Facebook has photos of him, and are using them for commercial gain. It doesn't matter who gave them to Facebook, in order to use photos of people for commercial gain you need the explicit permission of everyone involved except in very restricted circumstances (e.g., news reporting). Holding the copyright is not enough.

More or less, Facebook's entire mode of operation is in violation of the future GDPR, particularly the personal data it holds of non-users. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Re: Case dismissed

"They would have been fine if they had put out a letter saying they would be treating Cryptocurrency transactions as foreign currency or as a cash advance but since its alleged that they didn't and it hasn't been dismissed, there's a strong chance the bank fucked up, and I'd hate to be in the Chief Risk Officer's shoes if they did."

I think cryptocurrency would always have been treated as a cash advance, and it was just a mistake it wasn't charged before. Result: you owe us fees on that previous cash advance, but we'll waive them because we are nice bankers.

Re: Walls can be useful

"I've often wished my friend's PC was similarly walled; he has enough knowledge to screw things up but not enough to fix them. Unfortunately he's wilful, too, so will insist on doing things his way and not mine."

When you say you wish his PC was walled, you presumably mean a wall placed between him and the PC?

Re: Next?

"Next?

So, where do the ads move to next? Overseas websites? Dark web?

Oh, all prostitution will end, will it?"

No point in prosecuting criminals, there will always be more crime?

Re: Sooo...

"you wouldn't see equal pay as a way for you to get your panties in a bunch about feminism."

It's not an equal pay problem. That's been solved. It's an equal representation in highly paid jobs problem.

"Be interesting to run this on the Register."

It would associate 'an Apple spokesman' with 'declined to comment'.

Re: Moot

I think it means no longer legally relevant as the law has changed. Do you think it means unable to speak?

Re: What happens when pedestrians learn to spot autonomous vehicles?

"Once pedestrians learn that they can cross a busy road by walking in front of driverless vehicles, forcing them to emergency stop ... at least it will redress the balance between cars and pedestrians, very much in the pedestrians' favour!"

Evidently you haven't read the news recently.

Re: brain farts

"The tone of your article belittles your professionalism as a journalist and supports Trump's arguments that the media is biased against him. This article is living proof of that."

It's not bias if you point out in a news outlet that someone is repeatedly lying. It's called 'reporting'.

"And every time you re-lay a road, you can retro-fit, until eventually everywhere will be connected (very few vehicle roads are more than 50-years-old in terms of the tarmac on them, I should imagine, even if the road has been there since the Roman ages)."

Sounds nice, but I was at a lecture by a civil engineer who was designing equipment to find all the stuff under the roads. First, some roads, particularly in London, are 'full', in the sense that with sewers, electricity, water mains, gas pipes, phone lines, cable TV, and more, there is no longer any room for digging underneath. Second, there are more or less no maps of this stuff. The recent pipes and cables have been mapped, but in most places in the UK, if you stand on a road and say 'where is the water main here?', the water company won't be able to tell you.

Retrofitting would mean that the water, electricity, sewerage, etc., would be cut off for over a week to somebody, probably much longer. I doubt you'd be impressed if someone said 'we are relaying your road. Move out for a week as you won't have any water or drainage'.

"We've already got rulings here in the Netherlands holding that a perpetual software license is treated as a good in all ways applicable to it, including right of sale and transference. AFAIK Germany and France have similar rulings."

That's weird. This appears to be an EU Regulation rather than a Directive, in which case it's not a transcription issue (as EU Regulations are not transcribed into local laws, they apply directly, so there's no issue there). There's a possible issue in the translation of the Regulation into different languages (this can sometimes cause a problem) or in the interaction between the Regulation and other UK-specific laws. I suspect a quick trip to the ECJ might be necessary, as this really should have a single definition EU-wide.