* Posts by Voland's right hand

5759 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2011

Nintendo says sorry, but there will be NO gay marriage in Tomodachi Life ... EVER

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Re: AC They have learned actually

Quote: " Of course, right after creation the game would deviate and, instead of fighting, your gay soldier gets arrested for sodomy, "

That is if he was lucky enough to be a US soldier. If he was a UK soldier or a USSR soldier that would have been a jail sentence, criminal record and a lifetime ban from working for the government or any of its contractors. In USSR that would have been GULAG too - under the same section as the enemies of the state (one of the subsections of article 58).

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They have learned actually

Err...

Do you like it or not the overall number of social concervatives worldwide is bigger than the number of people supporting the mandatory manifestation of LGBT rights in any and every aspect of a product. Note - there is a significant difference between LGBT rights and "mandatory manifestation of them in every product".

The fact that some LGBT groups are extremely loud does not suddenly make them a majority. So from a business perspective Nintendo has learned and learned well and they have made their choice - stick with the majority of the audience (something Nintendo has been doing all the time).

As far as losing billions in a market, that is exactly what they have assessed here. They do not want to have half of the world closed to them because of including the LGBT option - off the top of my head that makes the game unsellable by law or social convention in most of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Russia, etc.

Is their choice morally right? That is a different story. Is it the right choice from a business perspective? Sure it is.

Oracle vs Google redux: Appeals court says APIs CAN TOO be copyrighted

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Re: Probably the death knell of the "industry"

"Popularity voids Copyright"

Interesting idea... Did Google just try to sneak its implied right to steal the Linux kernel or any GPL work.

Now _THAT_ would be the death knell of the industry as we presently know it.

Do no evil my a**e. Cucking Funts...

London cabbies to offer EVEN WORSE service in protest against Uber

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Re: Maybe the cabbies in London ....

Could not care less about the torrent of abuse. Torrent of attempts to deliberately defraud the customer by giving him the scenic route if the customer has an accent, well that is a different story. London cabbies are nowdays as bad as the Paris and Moscow ones which are probably some of the worst in Europe.

As far as Uber - I would never use them because as some other people have noted you do not know what you are getting. There are plenty of private hire companies, get the phone of one that is big enough to always have a car in your area and use it. Excellent service, comfortable cars (instead of that abominable tourist bait on wheels which the cabbies drive) and ~ 50% of the price. Vetted too.

China 'in discussions' about high-speed rail lines to London, Germany – and the US

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I would not be so sure

Ryanair maybe one of the biggest sc*mbags in the universe, but even they comply with UK and EU airworthiness and air safety rules. United complies with both Eu and USA.

Compared to that Chinese rail complies with rules which it sets itself predominantly derived from corruption and vested interests. With rather obvious results:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

Dunno, I would think not twice, but thrice before I ride such a transcontinental train.

If it is operated by German railways or TGV... That would be a different matter. Not that they do not crash - they do. They at the very least try to be safe and crash because of accidents not because of "natural corruption and mismanagement" causes.

Vendors pushing fibre on developing countries, says Oz minister

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Fiber is not a cargo cult

Greenfield fiber is cheapest - it takes the same amount of money to put in the ground as new copper. It is cheaper than HFC (coax is not particularly cheap and coax street box infra is more expensive). It is massively cheaper than greenfield fiber+copper. It also has the lowest cost to maintain (assuming PON).

In fact, the same math applies to developed countries too. It is simply a matter of what depreciation period do you put on it. If you put 10 years depreciation period (a number most utilities put on their infra) instead of sub-5 years (most telcos) fiber to the home ends up being cheaper than maintaining and upgrading HFC or fiber to the curb over the same period.

The problem is elsewhere. With fiber in the ground 90% of the telco field workforce will be out of a job. Try getting that idea past the union.

Yosemite National Park bans drones

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Re: Safe havwn

Petrol engine drone + idiot operator is a good recepy for starting wildfire. In fact an excellent one. Second best only to breaking glass bottles and leaving the shards behind you (I have had to participate in extinguishing a couple of those caused by glass myself - it is not fun).

I am surprised we have not had a drone fire yet.

ARM tests: Intel flops on Android compatibility, Windows power

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Re: a paradox

User friendly for a given set of values of "userfriendly"

While the hardware is definitely more userfriendly it is also supporting secureboot from the start and having it enabled from the start. It is only a step away from this to the point where it will be impossible to disable.

Laser deflector shields possible with today's tech – but there's one small problem

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No, it cannot - you cannot realistically maintain the plasma bubble under atmospheric conditions especially if you are traveling at 2Mach+. This is a space-only option.

Also, as far as practical implementations go, this is more of a Babylon5 solution that Star Wars. Firing plasma into the path of the laser cannon in order to disperse it is something workable while trying to surround yourself with plasma probably is not.

SpaceX wins court injunction to block US Air Force buying Russian rockets

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Re: national security

There are no friends at that level, never were, never will be. There are fleeting momentary alliances between the non-enemies and long-term "enemy" relationships.

The truth here is that after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia stopped classing USA, UK and most of western europe as an "enemy by default". Some of Western Europe did so in return. As a result Russia runs some fairly reasonable trade and business relationships with Germany for example. USA and UK never did so and it only got worse over time (f.e. the current UK government is significantly more russophobic than the previous one). It has, is and continues to be classed as an arch-enemy with money being spent and invested accordingly.

Brain surgery? Would sir care for a CHOC-ICE with that?

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Re: Stalemate

Err... I call bull...

There is still qualified staff in quite a few locations. Dunno if it is magic pot or magic potions but that is a statement of the fact. Parts of Eastern Europe - Czech republic, Romania, Bulgaria as well as locations in Western Europe such as Northern Ireland (or Ireland proper for that matter).

We have reached the point where the qualified IT staff in these locations shows Nellie a finger straight away (actually the tradition in Eastern Europe calls for the Antonio Banderas style full arm gesture).

There is qualified IT staff and staff is being trained there (at least compared to the UK). It also _STAYS_ there. The reason why it stays there is that it is actually paid _MORE_ that most "mainland UK" companies are willing to pay their staff. So you cannot make it move. Let's face it, convincing a Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian (or someone from Belfast for that matter) that they have to have their salary decreased by 30% and move to a location with 100% higher cost of life is not a winning proposition.

Vladimir Putin says internet is a 'CIA project'

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Re: I always thought he was a bit crazy

@ I ain't Spartacus

Who told you that he is "doing it" in Ukraine. He may have started it, but it does not look like him "doing it" any more.

For starters, Ukraine is bordering to Transdnestr which is:

1. Lawless product of a stale civil war with the mob and illegal weapons trading being the biggest economy contributors

2. Predominantly Russian (despite being in Western Ukraine).

3. Sitting on one of the biggest weapons caches in the region and selling some of it from time to time to other conflicts in the region.

4. Shipping russian nationalism and mercenaries throughout the region the same way Chechen were trading in mercenaries during the previous decade (the Bosnia wars, Afganistan, Middle East).

5. Crimea takeover was organized and executed with Putin "doing it". What is happening now is no longer Crimea.

Add to that every nationalist nuthead (and Russia has quite a few of those) picking up a gun from the closet (Russia has quite of few of those too) and shipping out south-west. Frankly, I do not think he (or anyone) is in control any more.

While I understand the geopolitical motivation of the Eu and USA, what they have done in Kiev is going to bite us in a way compared to which Afganistan and Syria will be nothing.

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Re: Russia disconnects from Internet

An analysis of the Pros:

The master C&Cs have not been in Russia for a long time. Russia economy is emergin out of the ex-Wild East state and the ex-mobsters who have gone legit are not particularly forgiving when their interests are affected in any way. You are more likely to find the master C&C in Ukraine or one of the failed African states now. It is still run by the same mob, just not on Russian soil.

An analysis of the Cons

You live in the past. The days when mail-order brides were advertised on Slashdot and shipped to key Linux kernel developers (with all the consequences) are long over. Same story - as economy improves the migratory pressure decreases.

Rejoice, Russians! The annexation of Crimea is complete and legitimate – Google Maps proves it

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Sweden is the best comparison actually

If memory serves me right Finland (which is within the 1658 borders) treats its Swedish minority as equal, Swedish is a valid language and most signs are double-language.

The previous government in Ukraine voted a similar regime to take place.

The hunta currently in power revoked it as its first act after staging the putch. If it did not we may have had a second example of the Swedish (from Finnish perspective) solution in Europe. Now we do not.

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Re: GOOD!

@Fihart

First of all Tatar, not Tartar. Tatar are people, Tartar is sauce. Crimean tatar may actually have a claim to an independent state which is _NOT_ a part of Ukraine, sauce definitely does not.

Second, Tatar Crimea existed as a independent state for ~ 400 or so years. From ~ 12th century to 16th. After that it was an administrative entity in the Ottoman Empire until the 18th century when Russia cleared the Turks off the Black Sea coast all the way out to today's Romania in the West and Caucasus in the South East.

Prior to that it was part of Khazar empire, greek colonies - you name it. The Tatars assimilated these by the 14 th century with not trace. So we will not go further back in time as there is nothing back besides tombs, skulls and bones.

Based on historical precedent Crimea can be (in chronological order without implied claim to validity):

1. Russian Province

2. Turkish Province.

3. Tatar Independent State.

All of these have viable and valid claims to it. Ukraine is not on the list. A birthday present by a dictator is not really a valid claim to ownership.

In any case, back on topic Google is reflecting reality same as it reflected reality on the Balkans long before most of the world formally acknowledged it. C'est la vie.

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Re: GOOD!

Surely you meant 1954? If memory serves me right, Krushev made himself a birthday present after getting shitfaced off his tits in 1954, not 1953 (that is the _ENTIRE_ basis for Ukraine territorial claim to Crimea, there is no other).

In any case, the issue is simple. Is there the right to self-determination or not?

We have allowed Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Kosovo and we are now allowing Scotland to decide which way they go (though quite clearly some people in Westminster have some second thoughts about the last one). We have supported them and even forced the issue by any means necessary. Why is the population of Crimea any different?

In any case, people in glass houses should not throw stones. If the newly unelected hunta in Kiev did not revoke all minority rights as their first act of power Crimea would have probably been still in Ukraine.

As far as the "gas station". If it was indeed a gas station it would not make our Etonian graduates look like dummies every time they sit at the negotiation table. First Syria, now the "remove all illegal occupations clause" in the Geneva agreement. The Ukrainian government signing an agreement that mandates it to remove itself from power and having it countersigned by the EU and USA. I was laughing madly when I read the news for half an hour (and quite rightly too).

AMD stock soars after positive quarterly report

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Not just prices - specs too

Intel is yet to deliver anything remotely close to an A-series APU. The recent Athlons are pretty good too. I assembled myself a new 8 core test FX yesterday and it is pretty much on par with a dual socket Xeon box that is 10 times its price.

France bans managers from contacting workers outside business hours

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Re: 9 to 5

'If it is a company phone, it is "expected".'

So you go and hand it back - I did it in my previous job and I do not hold a company phone in my current job. I expense company use when I have to.

In any case, as far as working hours determining everything - there are industries where they do. IT is not one of them. In IT the worst productivity per capita is in the areas where they work longest hours.

Japanese schoolkids arrested in £2.4 MEEELLION phone fraud bust

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Interesting...

This type of fraud is quite popular in Bulgaria and Romania. There it is a highly organized business - people trawl the net as well as stolen social security databases for data, prepare themselves and do it properly.

I am surprised to see this working in Japan - extended family bonds tend to be weaker in established industrialized societies.

Back off, Siri! Microsoft debuts Halo beauty Cortana

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Guess this is one product that will fail the "wife test"

Nothing could wind up my wife as fast as Nokia's "girl in command" standard GPS maps voice. This was one of the key sell points for her to move to Android and Sygic which operates using a classic "I am your butler, how can I serve" you style voice.

I would love to test this new and wonderful product on her. My only problem is that I would have to pay for the repairs demolished Carphone Warehouse shop after the test. That and the dent in the salesman skull too.

Want to see at night? Here comes the infrared CONTACT LENS

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Devil

Re: More realistic...

That depends on the IR band as one famous Italian celebrity of the bygone age can testify (she got nailed by this one a couple of decades back during a supposedly innocuous photoshoot).

Hint, the average summer dress is quite transparent in the near IR band.

So if someone comes up with a near IR google glass mod things may get very interesting indeed. If you think that they treat a glasshole badly in a bar now watch what will happen then.

By the way - a lot of sensors and cameras have more than sufficient sensitivity in near IR to do this so it may in fact be just a matter of tweaking the camera firmware to do this.

OkCupid falls out of love with 'anti-gay' Firefox, tells people to see other browsers

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Re: Product != CEO

Not just that. Every person is entitled to his views provided that they are not _FORCED_ on the other (and especially on his employees). Contributing to a political cause is part of the normal way the world functions. For example, I occasionally contribute to GreenPeace (especially when they do something right like that case when they dumped a dead whale on the lawn of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin). That does not suddenly make me into a rabid environmental terrorist.

As long as he keeps his political views out of the dat to day operation of Mozilla there is nothing wrong with him doing what he has done. Same as there is nothing wrong to contributing to the opposing side.

Tesla firms hot bottoms: TITANIUM armor now bolted to Model S e-cars

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I'm pretty sure I saw someone claiming that the 777

It probably still is - per flight hours. It is once again a function of lies, lies and damn statistics.

The accident probability in aircraft is proportional to take off/landings, not flight hours. So when you apply "per flight hour" statistics to something that is used only on 8h+ routes you get a very glowing rosy safety picture.

Same as with the Tesla - for the time being it does not see shoddy maintenance by "approved franchises". So compared to the rest of the industry it is a statistical anomaly. I do not see how will Elon manage to maintain this when (and if) it stops being an anomaly and becomes a mass production vehicle which uses the mass production vehicle mainenance infrastructure.

Mt Gox staff tried to warn CEO of Bitcoin loss risks – reports

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Re: $1500 a day?

It is not buckingham palace mate, it is reality: cost of office, national insurance, company pension contributions, medical, employee insurance, etc. The overhead is nearly 50% before accounting for office space. If you take that into account ~ 60% is not an unfair guesstimate. That is ~ 100K per annum salary which is fairly average for the higher level IT in finance.

Google confirms Turkish ISPs 'intercepted' its DNS service

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What is there to intercept?

DNS has no protection from transparent proxying.

The protection from MIM leaves a lot to be desired too - you can break it by rewriting all zones as unsigned from the top and downwards. While most of the TLD zones are signed, the clients on end-user machines are not yet checking for the signatures and have no expectation that they should have a signature. So you just break them all :)

Microsoft: Let's be clear, WE won't read your email – but the cops will

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Re: *sigh*

Was there any time not to?

YouTube follows Twitter onto Turkey's block list

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Touchy when they are showing our corruption, aren't we?

You gotta love politicians when transparency goes "out of their control".

Hot, young under-25s: Lonely slab strokers who shun TV

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Re: Stating the obvious ..

The ones under thirty are watching TV, just not on a TV. They are watching it on a fondleslab or their laptop.

It is not watching tellie which is dead. It is watching tellie together which has finally kicked the bucket. With every teenager having a tellie in his room it was on long term life support anyway. It has now finally kicked the bucket.

iFixit boss: Apple has 'done everything it can to put repair guys out of business'

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There are specific DMCA exemptions for repair and fixing and there is a raft of legal precedent existing against anyone trying to apply the DMCA in this "creative manner". So while Apple would love to apply it, it cannot.

Returning a laptop to PC World ruined this bloke's credit score. Today the Supreme Court ended his 15-year nightmare

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Re: Greedy

Quote: "The fine article stated that it affected his ability to secure financing for a house. Even if it only affected a few percentage points, I can see that adding up over the period of the loan."

If memory serves me right, 3 bedroom semi in a prime area in the south of the UK cost ~ 125K around that time. You could buy a house in the better areas of Finchley for that amount of money in 1998. Around Edinburgh? That would have fetched you a mansion. As far as Spanish properties circa 2003 (as referred by the article as as the official reason for the damages claim) - 250K would have bought a villa with a swiming pool in a prime location in the Canaries or Balearics. I do not remember the exact numbers, but I do not recall a single property on the market around Es Cana/Cala Llonga in July 1999 to be above 200. Most were under 110K with some as low as 65-70. 166K is 2007 prices (right before the crash).

IMHO the court was actually on the generous side awarding the initial 166k. There is no way someone who needs a loan to buy a laptop would have been able "consume" more over the course of the 10 years while this case has dragged on. In fact I fail to see how this could have costed him 166k. A default on an unsecured consumer credit agreement raises the cost of your credit by ~ 2 points (if you never default on credit cards and other ongoing payments) 2% extra cost means that he has to have 800000 worth of credit outstanding for it to cost him 166K. Yeah, right, a person who will be given 800K worth of credit agreement in need to take a credit to buy a laptop.

GitHub probes worker's claims of hostile, sexist office culture

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I was going to say the same

Took the words out of my mouth. Hoola-hooping != harrassment, sexism, etc. People should get a life and stop behaving like HotLips.

Now the rest, including involvment of spouses in work matters is beyond disgusting (if even a small fraction of it proves to be true).

This city's smog is so TERRIBLE, people are told to stay indoors. Beijing? No – PARIS

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You are mostly spot on

I have had to deal with multiple french car from both major french manufacturers over the last 25 years.

First of all, it is only PSV which suffers from the oil burn problem. Renaults generally burn clean even when they are 20 years old. We have given away a 1989 Clio we used to have as a present to relatives and it is still running at this age somewhere in the "Wild East" and still having a very nice clean burn. No smoke, no smell of oil at all. Passing MOT emissions with flying colors every time.

Second, PSV has gotten better now. Their worst years were during the cooperation with Ford on engines ~ 10-15 years ago when every PSV (and every Ford for that matter) started to stink of burned oil between 5-7 years of service. These are now are behind them (newer ones are nowhere near as bad). That is not surprising as the reliability after 5-7 years was also complete crap. Funnily enough their own engines (ones they did not cooperate with anyone on) from the same period f.e. the 1.9 basic non-turbo diesel which went into vans and the lower spec Citroen Xara estate do not stink, do not burn oil and still run like a clockwork till this day (16+ years after they have left the factory line). So it may not necessarily be PSV's fault anyway - it may be the "partner" from that period.

Elon Musk slams New Jersey governor over Tesla direct sales ban

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Re: IMO, Elon is a huckster

I agree with you provided that the manufacturer wants to have franchisees in the first place. Elon does not.

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Re: right idea

That does not quite work. The way the anti-consumer state authorized racket... err... dealer-only laws... work in the USA is that you cannot register a new car in the statet unless it is bought from a dealer. So in fact, no New Jersy customer will be able to register a new Tesla in New Jersy from now onwards.

Watch the MIT MER-BOT – half droid, half soft 'fish' – swim by itself

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Re: Can a head mounted laser be far behind?

Definitely not far. It can now execute the "evasive action after successful attack" maneuvre.

FANBOIS' EYES ONLY: United Airlines offers FREE MOVIES on iOS kit

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Re: Suits me

That app is already monstrous and does anything but cleaning the dishes.

No thanks, can I have a _SEPARATE_ app for that so that the one that matters (the one that has mileage, boarding passes, etc) actulaly works.

Forget superstars, this HYPERGIANT star is 1,300 times the size of OUR SUN

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Re: Black hole in the making?

First things first, someone needs to put things into perspective.

No boom today, boom tomorrow. There will always be a boom tomorrow. Boom.

6-7 magnitude fop a star that is not a white or blue giant means it somewhere fairly close. A quick google shows 12k light years. Difficult to judge really. If it goes supernova we may end up with way more tan than we would like. Not particularly bad though - the last close supernova (the crab nebula) was 6.5k away.

Candy Crush King plans IPO valuing it at $7.6 BEEELLION

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Re: You're having a giraffe...

Neither F***book, nor Tw*tter have a successful addiction model. I have no idea which slime has come up with the idea of "micropayment to skip a mandatory wait between games", but that is real moneyspinner. I was watching someone playing it (rather cluelessly too). They were a mark for the taking. I suspect that King has patented every single means of implementing this.

All he needs now is to come up with one or more games every few years that fit into this monetisation model. If he does he will continue staying at ~ 50%+ margin (where he is now) and multimillion revenues.

Mastercard, Syniverse target holiday payment security with mobile verification system

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Yeah... right...

So if I have taken out the SIM and put a local SIM in, I get all of my credit card transactions declined as an added benefit. Nice...

The identity of the customer in this day and age is no longer the SIM - it is the phone or to be more exact it is the identity for the "Big Three" services on that phone.

Any such harebrained scheme will be reliable only if data is enabled and only if the bank surrenders to the inevitable and asks Google, Microsoft or Apple how would they like it - with hot coffee or with ice cubes. Then it will work with _ALL_ of my household phones including the ancient "spare ones" I take with me when going to the more dodgy places.

Sony can't wait to flash you its enormous disc ... a 1TB Blu-ray spinner

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Re: Must be a cruel twist of fate!

No reason to suspect life.

I have tried to setup backup to BR ~ 10 times over the last 5 years and I have abandoned it every time for one simple reason - too unreliable. The write out dies on a regular basis after which you have only one choice - to hit the reset button on the machine. Totally unusable for the supposedly one and only remaining role of optical - reliable long term backup.

Space-junk RAYGUN wins Australian government funding

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Why lasers?

Second law of Newton. Controlling the orbit of the cleaner satellite will be loads and loads of fun.

Excuse me for being stupid, why lasers instead of an Archimedes mirror? A 64 segment mirror can exert 30+ the pressure of a laser while not being affected by range. A 128 segment mirror will vaporise the target outright. Sun angular diameter is 0.5 degrees so the "spread" of an archimedes mirror is comparable with most lasers. You do not need to zap that piece of junk at any time by order of supreme cheef of staff so the fact that a mirror needs to be a in a "good" position relative to the sun to be effective is irrelevant. In fact, if your job is to clean junk there is always a nice selection of targets to whack relative to the mirror. Apply the same number of whacks while "ahead" of the sun and while "lagging" it and you are in the same orbit. And so on.

Most importanly - we can build it now. All it takes is a set of precise actuators, an unfolding mirror structure, a targeting radar and some software. In fact the software (keeping the damn thing in a proper orbit) is probably the most difficult part of the lot.

Dell thuds down low-cost lap workstation for cheap frugal creatives or engineers

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Re: What's the point?

http://www.misco.co.uk/product/Q656961/HP-255-AMD-Quad-Core-A4-5000-15-6-IN-4GB-500GB-DVDRW-Windows-8-Laptop-Notebook-PC

Apologies -255, not 220.

Costs 1/3 of the cost of the dell, has higher spec. All you need is to throw out the miserable amount of RAM HP sticks into it and put two 8G DIMMs. It will eat them and smile. Total BOM ~ 400£ so half the Dell.

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What's the point?

HP220 and other high end fusion based systems can run circles around this. They all allow to install as much memory as you can stuff in them. I have yet to see one that will not eat 16G and smile. The CPU is comparable in speed to i5 (and to i7 for the higher end model), the on-APU Radeon is about the same as the discrete part on this and it costs 350$ before you stuff it with memory.

Review of UK data protection: Should fines go OVER HALF A MIL?

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Half a mil? You gotta be kidding

10% of worldwide turnover (at least), doubled for repeat offenders. Then it will be fine. Prior to that it is the cost of doing business so who cares.

Get Quake III running on Raspberry Pi using Broadcom's open-source GPU drivers, earn $10K

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Re: Call *me* a cynic...

My opinion about Fred and Barney is the least of the problems in releasing the source code.

I can get away with code that is indented the Klingon way, unused variables, compilation warnings, etc in corporate code provided that it works and is up to spec.

That is unacceptable for open source projects. You have to clean up all of that so it looks like an illustration from Kernigan and Richie in order to release. That may be doable for a driver or a module which is to go in a larger project. Doing that for an established closed source project is a major undertaking (often on par with writing it in the first place).

Alcatel unveils 'cheaper-than-Chromebook' Lapdock-alike phablet-powered laptop

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Re: MacBook Pro?

Not necessarily. The Samsung Chromebook has the same form factor and look too.

Frenchman eyes ocean domination with floating, mobile Bond villain lair

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You do not need one - the VIP cabin is below the water line. Just seal the door and open the viewports to the elements.

Hungarian eggheads unleash not-at-all-scary DRONE SWARM

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Re: Bird Brains

You are late with your welcome by 20 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-700_Granit

See the guidance mode section.

While the welcome to these particular drone overlords would have been very warm indeed, it would have been very short too. On the order of fractions of a second to the tune of Pink FLoyd's, 'Two Suns in the Sunset' .Thankfully, it has never been fired in anger.

China in the grip of a 'NUCLEAR WINTER': Smog threat to crops

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Re: They advantage of an autocratic country

Quote: "Sorry for you, Ken"

If you feel sorry now, how would you feel once the manufacturing will go _BACK_ to his (and ours) countries? Ultimately, the only reason for the ultracheap Chinese tat is not the labour. Labour is not such a big part of most modern manufacturing. It is the enviromental compliance. It makes anything between 10 times the difference (paper, paints, other chemicals and plastics) and 2-3 times the difference (electronics, classic heavy manufacturing) in price. This is without taking into account the cost of energy where clean vs dirty adds 1.5 or so times on top of that (particulate and sulfur control only).

The moment Chinese put real enviromental controls in place all of that manufacturing is coming to a town near you, like it or not.