* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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UK watchdog fines biz £130k for 900,000+ direct marketing calls to folk who had opted out

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I once did a short sales course. It was part of our companies "see how other nits of the company work" sort of thing. The biggest and most emphasised point the head of sales kept making was "each sales area OWES us x amount of money and it's our job to go get it". It came across as a protection racket to those us not actually in sales.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Or they could pay a little more for a properly sanitised list in the first place. I'd be prepared the bet the extra for a sanitised list from a reputable company (they do exist, don't they?) would be much less than the fine. The problem is, how many cold callers are prepared to bet against getting caught in the first place?

UK urged to choo-choo-choose hydrogen-powered trains in pursuit of carbon-neutral economic growth

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Huh

An interesting stop gap measure, and in the UK likely to be in service for 50 years, but how much dead weight is the diesel engine when not in use?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: No all electric

"can't use it over level crossings"

Is a train ever moving so slowly it can't coast over the length of a crossing? The momentum of a train, even where the station is only 50 yds from the crossing should easily be enough to carry it over the crossing. And that;s assuming there only one power car at the front.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: No all electric

Is 3rd rail a huge problem in London for trolleys on the line shorting them out? Not all of the underground is underground and it's all 3rd rail AFAIK.

Hubble Space Telescope may now depend on a computer that hasn't booted since 2009

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Er, yes, mate?

""The computer was replaced in 2009," and hasn't been turned on since it left the lab.

Apart from the in-situ diags they just might possibly have run when it was installed in Hubble. It'd be a bit silly to spend millions getting it there and hours of spacewalk time just to plug it in and leave it there without even checking that it powers up.

Three things that have vanished: $3.6bn in Bitcoin, a crypto investment biz, and the two brothers who ran it

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: How untraceable, exactly?

"However, like many have already mentioned, crooks make mistakes and that's how they get caught."

...and these crooks are aged 17 and 21. They think they are indestructible but they've not been alive long enough to have gained much, if any, wisdom. I suspect they'll be found sooner rather than later.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Surprised?

And IIRC, this same scenario has already played out with at least one other cryptoexchange.

But really, who invests 6-7 figure sums in a cryptoexchange run by a 21 year old and a 17 year old?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

I suspect his body will be by a river on an island somewhere in the South Seas. Might not be the best place to grow tulips. A bit warm for them I suspect.

Euro court rules YouTube not automatically liable for users illegally uploading copyright-protected material

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"What if it was only possible that rights over a song could be owned by the author and the composer, and not being transferable in any way?"

...and the performer. Otherwise no one would ever perform them and neither the author nor composer would get anything unless they were also performers.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Sarah Brightman?

She was also the original Christine opposite Michael Crawford in Phantom of the Opera. You m ay have heard of that too :-)

John McAfee dead: Antivirus tycoon killed himself in prison after court OK'd extradition, says lawyer

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Great bloke ...?

"( ... give or take some drug smuggling, a bit of murdering, and odd rape and sex with a minor ... all alleged obviously)"

Can you slander the dead? Not sure "allegedly" is needed now, maybe just an "in my opinion" is safe enough. I guess it depends on how rich and if "the estate" wants to try suing.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: New QAnon conspiracy in 10, 9, 8…

"Donkey" rides on the beach with Shergar?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's A Very Complicated Story...

And not forgetting, of course,. that the whole point of extradition treaties is that, in general, if you commit a crime in your home country and flee to another where that would also be a crime, then you will be extradited. Obviously it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the jist of it.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's A Very Complicated Story...

"Christ, he was 75 and faced 30 years in a US jail."

An ex-copper was sentenced to 28 years for sex offences the other day. He's 69. And will have to spend 6 whole years on the sex offenders register release. Mind you, this is a UK prison, not a US one and the usual procedure is release on licence after 50% of server time. Then again, a 69 tear old ex copper in prison. And it's not likely to be a very low category or open prison, at least not for the first few years. He might not make it out.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: John McAfee Tweet From Prison Oct 15, 2020

From his past antics, I'd suspect that of more being his last great disrupter than literally true.

Anyone still using cash? British £50 banknote honouring Alan Turing arrives

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Turing was snapped in 1951

Depends on which way you look at it. The vast majority of people probably have no idea who's face is on any of the notes they use every day other than the Queen. So putting him on a higher denomination note could be seen as more prestigious.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Here in Euro territory

"You'd have thought that by now we'd be able to request which denominations we'd like, though I guess we don't really need any more reasons for the person in front of you to spend FOREVER at the cash machine :)"

The default seems to be to dispense the minimum number of notes possible to make the total. This minimises the machine running out of lower denominations and needing re-filling more frequently.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Here in Euro territory

"Along with relatively large denomination notes from a bureau de change... which is why one should buy something on arrival at an airport shop in order to get some smaller change."

That smells of collusion! I don't mean the wildly overpriced perfume at the airport shop either :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Chips

I have the same issue with portion sizes in chippies. Although when I'm down in Yorkshire, most places I go seem to do much smaller portions, eg not just "standard" but "small" actually on the menu. Failing that, try asking for a child or "pensioners" option. Few will actually quibble that you are not a child or a pensioner, especially of you start to walk out if they refuse.

Intrepid squid mission may help in kraken riddle of why zero-g makes astronauts sick

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Clothes washing

Or the old SF staple method of "washing" clothes. Hang 'em outside the airlock to freeze dry the sweat and bacteria, bring 'em back in and shake them clean.

Spacey McSpaceface: Artemis takes shape ahead of '2021' launch – but first you need to name the crash-test dummy

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Delos?

Wasn't that also the name of the creator of Westworld too?

SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband constellation to achieve full global coverage by September, boss claims

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Does space have an ecology?

I won't up or down vote either way, but every definition I can find of ecology involves living organisms. There are no living organisms in orbit other than those we have put up there ourselves, therefore there is no ecology. This brings us back to my original point. "There may well be consequences, that's true, but what will be the effect on the ecology?"

Someone is probably responsible for keeping an eye on things up there, but it's NOT a job for ecologists.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Does space have an ecology?

"ecological due diligence...may result in a greater number of collisions, which would increase the amount of space debris,"

What's the ecological consequences of more debris in space?

There may well be consequences, that's true, but what will be the effect on the ecology? Trees dying? Fish dying? Birds dying? People breathing in debris and getting lung diseases? I've not yet seen space trees, space fish, or space birds and the people up there are sealed off from the "ecology" because it's already deadly as it is.

(integral trees and the iron chicken notwithstanding)

Facebook granted patent for 'artificial reality' baseball cap. Repeat, an 'artificial reality' baseball cap

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: UK Law......one more opportunity to ignore it!!!....and be spied on at the same time!!!!

Could get interesting in those places you think are public but are actually private land with no demarcations. eg in front of big expensive buildings, particularly in parts of London where security or door staff have been know to come out and object to people taking photos. Not to mention shopping centres where, again, security have been known to object to photographers.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "hats solve the problem presented by AR glasses"

...or any other helmet mounted visor-based heads-up display as used by air forces around the world.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "hats solve the problem presented by AR glasses"

"I think it works the other way. If anything that goes over the head can be described as a hat, then the patent can be easily invalidated by the plethora of prior art."

Yeah, but someone with money and can afford to go to court has to do that first. And then, if it really is a slam-dunk, go on to sue the US Patent Office for assigning a patent that was blatantly invalid and not doing due diligence.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "hats solve the problem presented by AR glasses"

So attaching "thing" to hat is already a done deal. Yet Farcebook got a parent for hanging a different "thing" from a hat? Maybe the whole of Australia can sue farcebook for the cork thing they have prior art for?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Holmes

Re: "hats solve the problem presented by AR glasses"

Sueball from Farcebook incoming!!!

Icon, because I like his hat ---------->

Dozens of Iranian media websites devoured by the Great Satan, apparently

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Pravda?

"The left in the US is trying to federalize elections to ensure 1 party rule forever while at the same time indoctrinate our children with Marxist ideology!"

You have no idea how far right the US so-called "left" is in terms of the rest of the world. Marxism isn't even on the radar of the US "left", it's too far away to see,

'Google is present at almost all levels of the supply chain' for online ads: It's time for a competition probe, says EU

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Its not as if Internet advertising was essential to life -- or even commerce

"I'd guess the reason for going after Google is the same reason people used to rob banks - its where the money is. Its so much easier to shake them down for a hundred million or two Euro than come up with a reliable and fair taxation scheme. There's plenty of others that want a piece of Google's business as well -- why spend big on R&D and facilities when you can get a court to effectively hand over a chunk."

Or maybe, just maybe, Google, even with their army of lawyers advising them, are not staying within the rules in every jurisdiction and need to be slapped down. I doubt any fines which may be imposed will be anything more than a token compared to Googles war chest and daily income and I can guarantee none of the fines will go to any competitors R&D departments. Even to the smallest economies in the EU, a few 100 million credit units is a drop in the ocean, so it's not even enough to be called a "tax grab".

US Navy starts an earthquake to see how its newest carrier withstands combat conditions

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: That truck video is Awesome!

I wonder why no one else is trying out putting a bit of a ramp at the end instead just a flat deck? Not being an aviation engineer, I don't know, but I'd have thought giving some mechanical assist to the angle of attack would be a good thing, no matter the (air)craft being flung off the end.

UK gains 'adequacy' status on data sharing with EU, but making that stick all depends on how much post-Brexit law diverges

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Meh

"adequate"

That word seems so....inadequate somehow. Almost like you just barely scraped through on the exam.

Hyundai takes 80 per cent stake in terrifying Black Mirror robo-hound firm Boston Dynamics

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Likewise the Black Mirror episode where the dogs from the amazing warehouse attacked the non-buying "consumers" because they were not paying customers.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Random

"Step six, realise that all this tech can be replaced by weighted random number generator that tells who won the conflict"

Step 7. Order those people who were "killed" in the simulated war to immediately attend the disintegration chambers.

At least that's how it happened in the Star Trek scenario broadcast about 50 years ago. And I'm pretty sure that was based on an even older SF story in print.

It's 2021 and a printf format string in a wireless network's name can break iPhone Wi-Fi

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"I don’t believe it is exploitable,"

Famous last words?

It does sound very unlikely that this might be an actual security vuln, but then so many previous ones have also been "very difficult or impossible" to exploit too. Especially when one exploit is linked to others. Maybe some hacking group or TLA out there is going "Oh crap, that was one of our better ones too!"

Updating in production, like a boss

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The random expiry time

"That would explain business class flights."

Do they get there quicker than cattle class because they are nearer the front? Or just more likely to have a vacant seat?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

So you finish the email with "...and so I strongly recommend not proceeding and will await your reply instructing me on what to do next"

New York congressman puts forward federal right-to-repair bill

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Coming soon

That could get interesting. According to EU and still current UK consumer law, that two year warranty we enjoy also extends to "a reasonable lifetime" whereby the retailer is still responsible to for a repair/replacement/refund proportional to it's age/expected life at the time of failure. I'd expect most devices to have a minimum life of 4-5 years and there will be people buying much closer to the service shutdown who might even still be in the two year warranty period.

The lesson from the above is to always buy your IoT tat from a reputable local* dealer.

[*] where "local" means in your national jurisdiction.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Coming soon

"You won't be able to purchase a device at any price, only lease."

To some extent, that's already true. Anything with s/w or f/w has licenced stuff you don't own in it, and with DRM laws, it may not be repairable, ie fixing bugs, once the manufacturer stops producing updates without replacing the s/w or f/w with open source (if that's even possible)

South Korea’s nuclear research agency breached by North Korea-affiliated cyberattackers, says malware analyst group

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why is North Korea connected to the Internet ?

They have a couple of connections to China by land and a sat link provided by Russia but that may actually be running through leased space on IntelSat.

You could block their allocated IP addresses but that won't stop them doing their stuff proxying through random Chinese and Russian IPs then and then on through other proxies. I can't see either China or Russia taking steps to block a State who attacks "the West" and causes disruption, just so long as the Norks don't do it to their gateway hosts (or at least not enough to piss them off.

Mayflower, the AI ship sent to sail from the UK to the US with no humans, made it three days before breaking down

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: Re 'Smile, AI is watching you'

Isn't the point of journaling to obviate the need to fsck?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Discrimination

You know those people who delight in telling us that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile? Well, you lazy bastards, I doing a facial workout, try it some time!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Never learn ...

On the other hand, it's actual people makiing the offers. Doesn't matter what the posted price of the property is, people will only pay what they think it's worth. Prices already bubble in "in-demand" areas. Just look at the 2nd home and holiday let market in the SW and Wales at the moment. That's having devastating consequences in some small villages where most of the properties are already empty in the winter and the locals have no chance to buy. That may well burst in a couple of years leaving some 2nd homers and holiday letters in negative equity. The smart ones will be selling next year and start the local price crashes.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"

On the other hand, it demonstrates the costs of not having a crew on board. Autonomous cargo ships are the long term goal, but unless you have a real person on board to do repairs and maintenance or some way of getting one there through an Atlantic or Pacific storm, then I suspect insurance is going to be high, or the overall rates will climb massively once the first few very expensive losses have to be paid out.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: "With no one onboard to fix it"

Is that the Offshore branch? AI AA O. We know a song about that :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: To be fair....

Yeah, that was my first thought too. Next time I fuck up, I just stay in the office all day and the boss can't get to bollock me :-) Well, that might work if I worked in a office :-(

Petition instructs Jeff Bezos to buy, eat world's most famous painting

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A lame excuse

...and anyway, there was no such place as Italy back then :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: A very educational petition

"This assumes of course that there is no extrinsic value to be created in his gobbling of it, "

He video the act and sell the NFT for the video.

BOFH: When the Sun rises in the West and sets in the East, only then will the UPS cease to supply uninterrupted voltage

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Another option is to just build a brand new A2000. :-)

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