Posts by Christoph

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Equip the thing with a cheap cell-phone camera, use existing software which can locate and read bar codes or QR codes to find the codes stuck on a few things round the garden. Then triangulate off these. Should give you very accurate positioning.

Takes one to know one

"Economic predators, including nation-states, are blatantly stealing business secrets and innovation from private companies. This cybersecurity bill goes a long way in helping American businesses better protect their networks and their intellectual property,"

This would be from the country which has for decades had listening posts in the UK to eavesdrop on any and all communications? Which copies the hard drives from the computers of anyone foolish enough to visit it? Which demands the details of all bank transfers made by European firms?

Punish any failures?

If he is going to punish people for not getting an extremely complex system perfectly right, presumably he will similarly punish himself for any failure of his political and economic policies?

Will there be ...

... an eventual full write-up of all the engineering involved in this project and how to build it?

A sort of Haines Manual?

Heat Ray?

"the rover's heat-ray (for the laser operates in the infrared)"

We're sending Mars a machine armed with a heat ray? H G Wells would love it!

Can they get it to give Phobos-Grunt a bump-start on the way past?

Letting the police shut down web sites at whim assumes that the police will not misuse their powers.

The police have repeatedly demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. They will not restrain themselves, they will grab every possible extension of their powers that they can, legitimate or not. They have proved this over and over again.

Just what they need

If there's a major disaster that brings down communications, where better to keep the health records of the disaster victims than on a different continent?

And it's interesting that they specifically state that if a company has any presence whatever in the US then US law overrides local law in any other country they operate in. I wonder what the US reaction would be if the reverse applied?

What is the EU position on the clear statement that almost any EU personal data held in the EU can be grabbed at will by the US despite all EU privacy laws? So it doesn't even have the pathetic 'protection' of data that's deliberately transferred to the US under a privacy agreement.

I note also that this means that any company with a US presence can be legally required to hand over its trade secrets for distribution to its US rivals.

Cordon off all contaminated sites

If that amount of contamination requires the permanent closing of the site, they should also permanently close the land where they found residues from a WWII radium dial factory while they were clearing the site for the olympics.

100% safe

If they are convinced that the system is "100% safe" then they must obviously have had an external security audit done, or it would be ludicrous to make such a comment.

Could they please provide a pointer to the report they commissioned from Ross Anderson, confirming that his students have not yet been able to stroll through the security system like a hot knife through butter?

Trust improvement ?????

They want to monitor your every action so as to improve trust? Youse would not read about it.

By the way, you omitted from the list of actions to be monitored and reported on "Looking at me in a funny way".

Keeping up with the yanks

Reminiscent of the large number of people in the US who go into hysterics at anything resembling the number 666.

Expect the standard response

"Watchdog director Muhammad Talib Doger " will find his name being used as an obscenity as a substitute for the banned words. As will any politician who supports this. Are they then going to ban their own names?

The whole idea is ludicrous - do they seriously think they can keep up with new terms and creative misspellings?

Don't touch that stuff!!!

Don't they know that DHMO is DANGEROUS???

Correction

"If the MPAA [for example] wanted to bring down 25,000 domains associated with online piracy, "

That should of course have been "25,000 domains most of which have nothing to do with online piracy but we couldn't be bothered to check"

How about giving them a real vegetable

Chocolate is a Vegetable!

(see link for the proof)

http://www.themadmusicarchive.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=17460

Rubbish

1> That excuse is as old as the hills - when you are caught out, claim "Oh, but I was only joking".

2> PETA have made it very clear that they don't *have* a sense of humour.

Authorised by the US

"I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind,"

So he doesn't need any authorisation from the country where the person being attacked is living. He doesn't need to comply with their laws as to what evidence is required before assuming someone is guilty.

As usual US law trumps everyone else, even in other countries.

They're just trying to panda to people with more money than sense.

How fragile is it?

What happens if one of those Green Bottles should accidentally fall?

Altitude and speed?

"Every time the craft completes an orbit, it loses both altitude and speed"

If it loses altitude it orbits faster, it gains speed. To lose speed it would have to gain altitude.

Isn't it amazing ...

... that top executives are paid ludicrously high amounts because their expertise in running the company is vitally necessary - but when something goes wrong they never have the slightest idea of anything that was happening at the company they were paid a fortune to run.

Really really stupid

So he's told them both not to post messages claiming to be the other, and thinks that makes it OK?

They don't just get access to the partner's data, they also get full access to the personal and private data of other people who are friends of the partner and have given them access.

What crime have those friends committed, that their private information should be handed out to another person? What happens if that information release actively damages them - will the judge compensate them?

What's puzzling?

The structures are obviously the lids over the Clanger tunnels.

As immortalised by Sir Pterry

When Rincewind controls the terracotta army in "Interesting Times" it's clearly intended to be Lemmings.

Open door for terrorists

These would be the same americans that a few years ago were panicking every time they saw any white powder in case it might be anthrax?

The americans who complain to the pilot if they see someone on a plane who looks like an arab?

The americans who check halloween sweets for embedded razor blades?

And they're now asking strangers to send viruses to infect their kids.

Still the Prime Meridian

The Victorians don't need to worry so much. Whatever happens to the system of time keeping, maps are still going to use the Greenwich Meridian as the zero point of longitude.

Convict on suspicion

"Proactive approach"

"suspected of offering illegally copied music"

So when a provider is notified of a suspicion about someone they should check them carefully?

What a load of cobblers. Whoever claimed that must have know perfectly well that it's nonsense.

The provider will cut them off immediately on notification, with no further evidence whatsoever. Why should they spend money on investigating whether it's safe to take a risk, when they can easily avoid both the risk and the expense?

This will have a massive chilling effect on legitimate sites - and is presumably deliberately intended to do that.

But what about ...

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?

You WHAT???

*Uzbekistan* is calling for “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms"?

Slave labour in the cotton fields and boiling dissidents to death is respect for human rights?