Posts by lglethal 3889 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2007
Dabbsy I'm not sure what your complaining about - you got £398 change at the first stop!
(Based on my personal experiences with cashiers - if the machine says they should give out £200 change on a £2 purchase, then the machine must be right. The machine is always right after all...)
@ Fuzzie - Was just thinking the same thing, its not mentioned in the article but what characterises best seller? Quantity of phones sold? or Profit from phones sold?
Considering that the Iphone X is not that much different to the others, I would guess a lot of carry over, so X should have VERY good profits. Makes it easier to be the best in that regard....
"If you are one of the roughly 28 per cent of households that have a security system.."
28% of households have a security system? I assume thats a US figure? But even that seems ridiculously high. Silicon Valley/San Fran, maybe. Where does that figure come from?
I have to admit, I have never lived in any place, and dont know any friends who have a security system installed. Thats in Aus, the UK, Sweden and Germany. So 28% of households (businesses are a different story) seems to be a very cherry picked figure.
Lets do a quick El Reg survey - if you have a securty system downvote this post, if you dont upvote. We'll see if we get anywhere near 28% of downvotes...
A similar thing happened at school when I was younger. We had a new American teacher and one of my class mates started asking around the class for a rubber. She got quite upset, yelled at him and sent him out. She apologised in the next lesson, having spoken with her colleagues and finding out that a rubber in Aus was an eraser and not a condom as it was in the US.
She was a pretty good sport about the continuous jokes she got for the rest of the year...
NT1 has lost his case, but you still cant name him? How long until that protection runs out? I assume there is a set period in which he has to file his paperwork to appeal. If he doesnt appeal, the case is finished and the protection disappears, correct?
Or am i missing something?
"The objective of achieving commercial parity seems contrary to the duration and single award aspects of this contract. The single-award removes competition, which was the very impetus that drove the current cloud market.
Also, the potential duration for this vehicle is 10 years, nearly equal to the age of the cloud market. This duration fails to recognize how fast this market is changing… The structure of this vehicle locks DoD into one vendor for the next decade."
OK the first objection sounds ludicrous to me. The award of this to a single party removes competition? Surely the award of a multi billion dollar contract should ENSURE a very high level of competition to try and win the contract. It should mean the Pentagon can drive an extremely tough bargain.
The second objection is much more reasonable, in regards to vendor lock in. However, with clever contract wording, advancements in cloud technology (got that sounds awful - bloody wishy washy sales terminology), advancements in off premises distributed computing technology (much better) could be part of the contract and mean that the vendor lockin does not cause problems in a few years time as things advance.
10 years is an age in computing, but at least a contract that long should drive a bloody good price. Provided the management oversight is strict and the contract wording tight, DoD should get a good deal...
Because 4G was such a big draw over 3G? Can anyone actually remember the difference between 3G and 4G? I mean maybe its a little bit faster. Dont know, cant say I've particularly noticed. My phone says I'm using 4G at the moment. I cant say I've noticed any "killer" differences between the two.
So whats 5G going to offer? It'll be a little bit faster? Will I even notice? Does it come with unlimited downloads? Nope, I'm guessing not.
So why should I be upgrading again?
If television has taught me anything, you can tell a black hat from the fact that they're wearing a hoody. If they're not wearing a hoody they cant be trusted. Preferably they should be wearing a hoody with a black hat/cap underneath. And with the hoody pulled up to cover there face. And maybe wearing sunglasses. All the time. Even when in a dark basement lit only by their monitor.
See its easy to identify these black hats...
Any chance of a name and shame of the worst culprits?
My just under 2 year old Sony still gets regular updates (current state says its up to date to 1/3/18). But wether its getting all of the updates it should, I have no idea. It would be interesting to see which are the worst offenders and which are the best.
Naming and shaming might be a good way to actually change the manufacturers behaviour. But probably not... ;)
Install some railway lines - it will make it nice and easier. You can put up fences along the lines, and then you dont need to worry about pedestrians/obstacles on the track. Loading and unloading might be a problem, but well we'll save that for another day/thought experiment.
Alternatively, a Roomba with a tray on top would probably work pretty well and you can probably claim it as a cleaning expense. (And it can actually clean up any mess it makes after hours! Bonus!). Getting it to bring the beer directly to you might take some creative use of those electronic wall things they come with. But I'm sure you can manage it...
"213 requested the prediction of account information"
Say what?
What is predicted account Information? I think this guy's name is going to be Tom today. I predict he'll be living in alabama next year and will probably still be a single white male with a drinking problem. My astrology reading predicts he might have a bad meeting next month...
"Dragon's Breath was created by a farmer for the Chelsea Flower show and is so potent that it had to be kept in a sealed container when it went on display."
It had to be kept in a sealed container primarily because otherwise some Chav would try to prove their manliness by eating the darn thing and the farmer doesnt want to be sued for the damage it does to them...
Ever so slightly off topic, but following on from your comment - i see that after Florida passed laws to restrict access to firearms for those under 21. The NRA is suing Florida for restricting young people's freedom to own guns. If they can sue on those grounds, how come Alcohol manufacturers cant sue on the same grounds ? Those damn alcohol laws mean Kids cant start drinking (legally) until their 21, thats a restriction on their freedoms that is...
Ok you want ot be able to take down Drones that are considered a risk. And the Police and Homeland Security want that. Ok I can see that. Doesnt sound unreasonable. I think 95% of people would be on board with that. Sounds good.
Wait you want to make your use of these takedowns a secret? Why? What possible reason under regular law enforcement cases or even in cases where the word terrorism crops up, could keeping the take down secret be useful?
Ok congratulations, you've just turned a law that would have had ~95% support into something that looks dodgy and creepy and reeks of nefarious purposes, and which will be opposed by 95% of the population. Well done team...
Or alternatively, its pay on delivery, and only after it has been throroughly vetted by an impartial international team of cryptographic experts. Failure at this stage means no payment. If somehow it gets approved beyond this stage, the firm/researchers who develop the solution are to be held liable for the eventual cracking of the backdoor.
That should scare of any tenderers, and save everyone money.
John, there is more then enough stupid bollocks coming out of both sides of your congress, so every legislator IS appropriate. Why dont you pull your head out of your bipartisan arse and realise that all politicians no matter from what political spectrum should face mockery.
The idea behind these sorts of protests is not really to change the offenders behaviour (we all know by now that you cant penetrate the Reality Distortion Field (tm)) - the idea is to bring attention of the "alleged" crimes and financial shenanigans to the people in government/police/tax authorities with the power to do something about it.
Additionally these sorts of protests attempt to bring the dodgy shenanignans to the attention of the general public, in the hope that people will change there spending habits and wont spend their money with the tax dodging buggers. Admittedly, anyone who isnt already aware of Apples dodgy tax dealings, is probably unlikely to hear about this either, but who knows, maybe a message will finally sink in to one or two more people.
I feel like this should not be that difficult to protect against and could probably be done pretty easily with software. An app on your phone has a list for all official fixed cell towers in your region. The App checks whenever your phone changes cell tower that the new one is one of the approved fixed towers.
If not, it alerts the user that the cell tower is not an official fixed tower and shuts down the ability to use certain programs (decided by the user in advance - such as calls, texts, emails, etc.). Keeping the list up to date shouldnt be that hard, towers have to be reported to the FCC (or whatever your local governing body is called) and lets face it they dont spring up that regularly. And whilst it might cause some problems where temporary boosters are being used to cover maintenance/damaged towers/insufficient capacity, security for the type of users who actually care about this stuff would outweigh some minor disruptions.
Added bonus if the program users direction finding or distance to source measurements to ensure that tower identifiers are not being faked and the "official" tower credentials are not now located 50km from where they should be...
If anyone gets around to making this app, wing €100 my way and a crate of good beer (none of that American swill) and we'll call it even... ;)
For everyone complaining that its slower than Concorde - this is a demonstrator! It's sole focus is on proving that a special body design can reduce Sonic Boom to acceptable levels. Sonic Boom occurs whenever an aircraft is travelling over Mach 1 and it really doesnt matter if its travelling at M1.4 or M40 if what you're trying to prove is that your design reduces the sonic boom by X percent.
If you are trying to prove that a new car design handles better when travelling at 100km/h, then you do not need to design your car to be able to drive at 300km/h from the start... Have some perspective folks...
"but the years confined to a pokey room in an embassy with only morons for company should be taken into account."
Why? He is there by choice. He didnt have to run away to the embassy and he doesnt have to stay there. He can come out anytime and face the music over his decisions. The choices are all his.
NoScript was great, and simple, and I taught many a family member to make use of it. After the 56 update, though it became a horrible UI mess of complexity and pretty much all of those family members either stayed with the old version of firefox or abandoned noScript entirely. I've tried transitioning them to uorigin, but it lacks the simplicity of the old NoScript UI.
Shame really, it would have been so easy to implement an easy version with a level of control replicating the old version and then providing an advanced version for those that want the detailed levels of control the 56 update provides. Oh well, the wait for an easy replacement goes on...
By the way, I unfortunately dont see poisoning the ivory or the like having an effect. The money available to facilitate crime, in this case removing the effects of the poison from the ivory, is always higher than that involved in attempting to police it or prevent it.
I think a simpler solution would be possible - simply anyone caught poaching or dealing in ivory gets castrated (sharpness of knife can be variable). That should reduce the numbers willing to do the poaching in the first place, and those further down the line will no longer be in need of the aphrodisiac after the operation. Should act as a deterrent...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
