Posts by Christoph

Don't worry, they will amend it so that security companies can still use these tools.

Only registered, regulated, licensed security companies of course.

Part of the regulation being that their tools will not detect any malware containing the string "© NSA".

Any Kuiper belt object big enough to be round is a planet!

OK, how many planets are there in the Solar System?

Err, we don't know. We have a very vague guess at lots and lots.

OK, how many planets do we know about?

Err, we're not sure. Some of them are just blobs of light. We don't know how big they are. Or how massive they are. So we don't know whether they are big enough to be round. And anyway some of them might look big but actually be two or three separate small bodies orbiting each other.

OK, what sequence are they in, counting outwards from the Sun?

Err, we have a rough idea, but we're not sure of some of the orbits, and the orbits are so angled that the distances overlap.

But we do have a list of definite possibles we can put in school textbooks?

Err, no, because the list keeps changing as we get better observations.

------------------------------------

We need a word to describe the eight inner planets - the four rocky planets and the four gas giants. The things we usually think of as planets. Now we could invent a new word for those, and use 'Planets' for those plus Ceres plus the Kuiper belt plus anything else we haven't found yet. But that would mean persuading the public to use that new word. Ain't going to happen.

So call those eight 'planets', and use a new term for all the rest. Anything else just isn't going to work.

So do we include Pluto? Even though there are almost certainly many K-belt objects that are larger and more massive?

It just doesn't make sense. It needs a much better justification than some US States made a law about it, or lots of people saying "I want it to be a planet, and I'm going to hold my breath until you change your mind, so there!"

It seems to be pure sentimentality. So are schoolchildren in a few hundred years time going to ask "Why is Pluto a planet when all the other similar objects in this Solar System and other Solar Systems are not?" and be told "Well some people in the 21st Century screamed about it, so we messed up the whole classification system just to shut them up."?

"Robot surgeons kill 144 patients

"there were 144 deaths during robot-assisted surgery

The second statement does not imply the first. If someone dies during surgery that may be because the surgeon is unable to save them, not because the surgeon made an error. Hopefully that's the reason for the great majority of deaths during surgery.

"It’s unthinkable for any business, especially one that runs on discretion and trust, to betray its customers’ confidentiality,"

ROFL!

"I think if Instagram had responded in time all this could have been avoided."

Or if Instagram had realised that people generally do not have unique names, and had bothered to check before assuming that someone with the same name as a celebrity must automatically be a fraud.

"Before every flight I always email the entire company saying that if anyone can think of any reason to hold off then to call or email me immediately, whether their manager agrees or not," Musk said.

NASA let management structure be more important than engineering. That's how they lost Challenger - the managers overrode the engineers. Then they didn't fix it properly and let it happen again - that's how they lost Columbia.

And if that doesn't work, try 'shibboleet'

The obvious main problem is older and non-standard systems which can run the release version of W10 but will later suddenly become unusable due to an update. There's already plenty of old systems (some XP!) which have deliberately not been updated so that old software and hardware will still run.

But there's another problem when most people can't refuse updates. They will be forced to take anti-piracy updates which disable important functions because the copyright agencies demanded it. And updates which disable security and encryption because the NSA demanded it.

So you won't be allowed to fully access your system, but the NSA will.

"a new generation of workers with the skills India needs"

Or a least a piece of paper saying they have the skills. The Beeb had an article recently saying that there is massive amounts of cheating on exams.

Why could they possibly want to store meal choices, unless it is being used as a proxy for religion?

Presumably they know they will be deluged in a shitstorm if they come straight out and admit they want to record everybody's religion and politics, so they are getting as close to it as they can.

If you don't like Firefox bloat, use Pale Moon.

Whale

Have they spotted the bowl of petunias yet?

Do they realise that the sun is shining on their sports ground without permission?

Would you rather spend 24 hours on a train, or 24 hours in airport security/waiting while they fix the plane?

Are they going to link this with Eurostar?

" a portion of this region will be imaged at about 500 times better resolution than we see today"

There will be major problems if the highest resolution photos show any detail that can conceivably be enhanced and twisted into looking vaguely like a face. The conspiracy theorists will have a field day, since there will be no possibility of later higher resolution images which show them up.

Do the impossible or you are unpatriotic

"this country wasn't made up of people who said 'It can't be done'."

"insisted that American innovation could find a solution."

Just make some vague patriotic sounding statements, and anyone who disagrees with you is Unpatriotic!

Dear Director Comey, perhaps you could demonstrate how trivially easy it is to do the impossible just by being patriotic? Go stick your head up your arse.

He might genuinely believe it was the manager's fault. If nobody dares report problems to him, and everywhere he goes he sees happy cheering crowds (because anyone not happy and cheering will be shot), he could be so cut off from reality that he simply does not believe excuses of problems and shortages.

Apparently some refugees from North Korea say that they did believe that it was the best country in the world, because they saw nothing but propaganda.

He wouldn't be the first dictator to not realise what's really happening (unlike the Tories, who know exactly what they're doing to the poor and revel in it).

Besides activist sites there's help sites for all sorts of personal problems - rape and abuse survival, stalkers, etc. where the person running it may have very good reason not to have their details exposed. If they ask even for donations to help with paying for the site hosting they will get hit by this.

Similarly for lots of other things. Someone running a web comic featuring gays or transexuals might not want their boss to know about it.

"it is not possible to release the exploits publicly or even to other researchers outside the UK without an export license"

Does this imply that you can't tell foreign software companies about security holes you have found in their products?

Here we go again

Hugely popular system, multiple discussion boards run by and entirely relying on unpaid volunteer moderators.

Admin treats the moderators with contempt, and then wonders why they are complaining and why the system is falling apart around them.

It must be the 90s again - Compuserve is back!

"Each day of the roll-out, we will listen, learn and update the experience for all Windows 10 users."

That sounds to me like: Each day of the roll-out we will find and try to fix more bugs.

I will wait.

It wasn't us that didn't do it but you're not allowed to know what it was anyway.

Have they chosen the next target yet?

If they want another flyby, will they be able to change course enough after the encounter? Obviously they can't mess up the Pluto pass, but I would have thought they might tweak it to make it easier to get to the next target.

"they can track who made the call, and the metadata of anyone the call recipient contacts, and anyone those people call."

Everyone who gets calls back from the same takeaway, the same travel agent, the same bank, the same government office ...

Not much of a limitation then.

One more strike and he gets superpowers.

And a hook

Get an old metal-wire coat hanger, untwist it and roughly straighten all but the hook on the end. You now have a couple of feet of stiff wire terminating in a hook, which can be used to reach into gaps under or beside things to hoik out whatever fell there.

By the way that's an interesting photo at the top, but what were Commercial Square Bonfire Society doing in your server room?

They are all wrong

The domain should obviously go to the Ruskin Museum in the Lake District, who have Amazon among their exhibits.