* Posts by Voland's right hand

5759 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2011

It's OK to fine someone for repeating a historical fact, says Russian Supreme Court

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Re: Or the Russians haven't updated their website yet

>Stalin would have attacked him around the winter of 1941.

No. Read up on the early days of the Barbarossa campaign. The Russians were totally caught with their pants down.

I have read up including a lot of what the Russian historians have written after the wall fell. The fact that Stalin was quite clearly not preparing to keep the peace has been discussed quite openly there.

The Red Army was caught with pants down all right, EXACTLY BECAUSE it was preparing for an attack and was in a position which they could not defend. If the newly occupied zone was simply garrisoned and the main forces were at their well established fortified pre-1939 positions the whole Barbarossa adventure would have failed miserably despite Stalin decimating most of his experienced and qualified command staff in 1937-1940.

To break it down in detail:

1. USSR did not build a single defensive fortification in the 2 years in the occupied ex-Poland, now western Ukraine and Baltic republics. The line of fortifications (it was quite extensive in the area facing Poland) left behind at the old border was left untended too.

2. What was a one million army doing in peacetime in Ukraine? The total loss to USSR from the Kiev encirclement is 700K+, the overall participating soviet army north of 1M. That is > 80% of USSR "peacetime" army during that period. It was caught with pants down all right, but its pants were down right next to the border. That army was _NOT_ freshly drafted troops either (something even Soviet historians admit). Even if we assume for a moment that it was "freshly drafted", how would a fresh draft be equipped and moved to Ukraine by 7th of July across USSR with the roads it had at that point (beginning of the battle for Kiev). By teleport? It was there and it was preparing for something. What - well that one is fairly obvious.

3. USSR had 90% of its army fighter aviation within 300 km of the border without trying to prepare defensive positions for any of them. It was sitting on temporary airfields. It did not even have proper AA emplacements on them - the only explanation is that they were considered utterly temporary. This is why the Luftwaffe took it out with ease on the ground.

4. What was nearly all of Baltic fleet doing in the Riga bay, besides preparing to assist in a ground offensive?

5. What were all of the few heavy river fleet assets USSR had at the time (the few existing monitor ships as well as torpedo boat squadrons, gunboats, etc) doing way up the Dniestr river past today's Modova? Their "heroic retreat" to Odessa is well documented, but WTF where they doing there in the first place.

6. What...

I can continue the list of rhetorical questions for quite a while, but the idea that Hitler attacked "peaceful soviet people" is a piece of preposterous Stalin propaganda. They were the two sides of the same coin - equally psychotic, equally genocidal and equally ready to tear apart any agreement with them and stab you in the back. The sole difference is that Hitler lost and Stalin won the war.

Now, where is my fine for stating the bleeding obvious (and supporting it by historic facts).

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Re: Or the Russians haven't updated their website yet

Actually, the early collab between the Nazis and USSR could be a great lesson in history to the Russian people

More complicated than that. If Hitler did not strike first, Stalin would have attacked him around the winter of 1941.

That was the real reason why in 2 years between 1939 and 1941 USSR did not build any fortifications anywhere around their new conquests. That was also one of the (carefully erased from history books) reasons for Germans to start planning a war against USSR _BEFORE_ they finished off Britain.

Anyone who is having any doubts about that should ask himself what exactly were 1000+ aircraft, 2000+ tanks, thousands of support vehicles, and so on (the tally of what Luftwaffe first wave at 4am on June 22nd destroyed is well known) in _NON_ _FORTIFIED_ positions within 300km from the border.

By the way, a _LOT_ of Russians know about this one. They just do not like talking about it.

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Re: Fascism

Slightly more complicated.

Do we like it or not the Nuremberg trials swept under the blanket a lot of Stalin war crimes. Stalin killed hundreds of thousands of jews directly (jews constituted significant proportion of the old Bolshevik guard from the days when you had to read the Das Kapital to become a member and it was not available in Russian), indirectly - as a part of the Collectivisation famine in and associated purges of refuseniks, "voluntary migration" of Jews to the Jewish Soviet republic (to mine uranium and rear Earths under the barrel of an NKVD gun), etc. All of these were blamed on Hitler and co at the Nuremberg trials. They assign any blame for WW2 solely to Hitler and Co - Stalin is "blameless". According to Nuremberg the whole sorry affair with Poland in 1939 did not happen.

This has the interesting side effect in a country where the Holocaust denial and anti-Nazi glorification laws (similar to the ones Germany and France have) explicitly specify the Nuremberg judgements as a "primary source of truth". Yes - we all know that stuff was swiped under the carpet. No, sorry, you are not allowed to say it - this is against the law as it stands and the law is ass.

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Re: Fact-checking, we've heard about it

if they accepted an expert witness willing to lie and deny something that is pretty much public knowledge

There is a good form in doing that lately. Just look at the special "preface" mandated by the Polish Television to "Ida" in order to be screened.

Paint your wagon (with electric circuits) but leave my crotch alone

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Re: Thirteen kilograms less Dabbsy?

Either that or cargo shorts. Good ones are about 15 quid on amazon.

I have banned the SWMBO from buying me clothes after the last "fashionable" pair of trousers she bought me for my birthday resulted in a new cracked screen. It is a choice of cargo, cargo or cargo now.

The only downside is that you cannot run - having a 5 inch phablet beat against your leg is quite annoying. For those occasions you need an armband. Not something I will wear all day, but more than sufficient for a couple of hours of exercise.

Tim Cook: EU lied about Apple taxes. Watch out Ireland, this is a coup!

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Re: Apples own published results suggest otherwise

It was 0.005 only in 2014. Apple gradually paid less and less ever since the deal was set-up.

So 12Bn sans interest is probably an exact sum of the difference between what was paid and what should have been owed at 12.5.

IPv4 wealth redistributed

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v6 is and remains as non-sensible

Well, I had v6 - I turned it off.

When you have retards like Google and Microsoft (probably the same person in the Gmail team getting a job in Azure after that) using v6 in a small network is a lose-lose proposition.

The RFC-specified email retry semantics are - you try the lowest MX, if that does not work, you try the next higher and so on. It says _NOTHING_ about v4 or v6.

The retarded monkey in the Gmail team who coded their retry sequence _LEAVES_ it on v6 and does not try v4 ever again. Once v6 always v6.

In violation of all RFCs. So if you have two links - one with v6 the other one without you lose mail delivery retry capability for anything coming from the Chocolate Factory and will occasionally lose mail. Outlook 365 moved to a similar bogus retry sequence at some point too.

As a result even Comcast which is one of the biggest proponents of v6 amidst SPs has _REMOVED_ their v6 MXes and has switched back to v4 only mail delivery.

So on the balance of things - a network transport which is not usable for the most basic Internet protocol? You call that sensible? Give me a break.

ABBA-solutely crapulous! Swedish router-maker won't patch gaping hole

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This size of this hole is being blown out of proportion

The ACS server is supposed to reside on the provider internal management network. The CPE connects to it via its provider facing interface.

In order to perform a MiTM on it, you need to either insert yourself into that network or change the routing in the provider network. If you can do that to a provider, they have much bigger worries to worry about.

When Irish eyes are filing: Ireland to appeal Europe's $15bn Apple tax claw-back

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Re: What if taxation is inherently unjust?

The inefficiency of the government's use of tax revenue is _BENEFICIAL_ in the big picture.

Taking money out of circulation into a Leprechaun jar at the levels practices by the companies the size of Apple creates significant deflationary pressure.

This has to be compensated for by government doing quantitative easing which is orders of magnitude less efficient than direct spending by the government because now the government is not just spending, it is printing money and wasting it to buy various assets it does not really need. On top of that, it devalues our savings and destroys our future. Want to retire? Well, then out of all your wishes allowing Leprechauning is probably the last, because healthy inflation in the ~ 2% range without the need for the government to defibrillate the economy is essential for you to have something to retire with.

So I'd rather have them spend our taxes _INEFFICIENTLY_ on what they are supposed to spent on - infrastructure, education, fundamental research and defense. Better than them not having any tax revenue at all and 10-15%+ worth of GDP annually being taken out of circulation into Leprechaun jars (this is the current estimate for Eu). If the inefficiency is the cost of preventing Leprechauning of profits for decades, well, so be it. It is a small cost to pay compared to the benefits of keeping the money _IN_ circulation.

As far as it not being unfair state aid, well when I file accounts of my limited company I do not get 0.0005% tax rate. So I could not care who, how and when offered this rate it walks like a form of illegal state aid, it quacks like a form of illegal state aid, it is a state aid.

Google scraps its Project Ara modular smartphone wheeze

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Re: We're in the big squeeze right now.

So time to short Apple and go all-in on canned goods and shotguns?

I would not be so sure. I hope you are wrong, but we will see.

Part of the long deflationary pressure resulting in having 10 years of "real terms" recession (any "growth has been purely on paper since 2002 or thereabouts) has been money being taken continuously out of circulation and stashed in tax heavens to the tune of 10s (if not 100s) of Billions a year. This is coming to an end. New tax regimes in Ireland, Lux, Holland for FY 2015 have produced some interesting results (like Irish GDP foir the 2015FY being 26% up). If this continues we can see some interesting effects:

1. States again having money on infrastructure, healthcare, education and fundamental R&D. Real money - not fake money produced by quantitative easing.

2. Corporations will have significantly higher fiscal incentive to invest in true R&D instead of Californication style M&A and Jinnie style cost-cutting. Before they had only "local" money to play with for tax reasons while the money in Lux, Ireland, Holland, etc was stashed. Now they have real incentive to invest in real R&D and do so GLOBALLY to reduce their tax burden.

Both of these will result in some money sloshing around which in turn will create some inflationary pressure. That may (or may not - nobody has modelled this properly) soften the recession considerably.

Phytium's 64-core ARM chip

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Interesting

The spec is certainly interesting. Once production motherboards start shipping I may get a couple to upgrade my old home servers.

Making us pay tax will DESTROY EUROPE, roars Apple's Tim Cook

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Re: This:

And if you read forward through your history, you would also note that the 'Normans' who came to Britain also objected to being buttf****d by the monarch residing in Paris...

Bollocks, what do they teach kids in history classes nowdays.

Isabella (The French She-Wolf), wife of Edward the 2nd Plantagenet, applied to buttf*** continental France on behalf of her then underage son, the future Edward the Third. She was also obnoxious enough to be the only one not show up in person and send an underling on her behalf. Her representative rightly (or wrongly - depends whom do you ask) got told off that "Lilies do not knit" by the other Peers of France.

So there were no attempts to _BUTF***_ the Normans whatsoever at any given time up to and until the point where they decided that they are entitled to have all of France as their b**ch. In fact, French monarchs went out of its way to ensure that the oath of allegiance taken by the British monarch on behalf of its estate in Normandy is acceptable and applies to Normandy only during the years between the Conquest and the sorry incident at the Peers of France meeting on who should inherit after all local direct heirs of Philip the Fair kicked the bucket leaving Edward the Third the only direct descendant (albeit over a female line).

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Re: I don't get it.

@ Bob Dole (tm)

By extracting money from Apple the EU is saying that not only is Ireland's word not worth the paper it was written on

Ireland put its word in writing on the relevant Eu papers first. Eu is calling Ireland on ITS word. Further to this, its word in the conversation with the Eu which it is being called upon is part of signed international treaties and Irish laws (directly or indirectly through the principle of international obligation primacy which is in all Eu state constitutions except the only one that does not have any - Britain).

So while you are correct that this is a matter of "being called upon your word", you are unfortunately (quite deliberately I suspect) blind to the word which is of importance and at stake here. While I understand the overall "international treaties are toilet paper and we wipe our arse with them" attitude as seen in Brexiters and USAisians, I disrespectfully disagree.

Its word to Apple is an opinion of a tax clerk. It's word to Eu is the law of the land. I am surprised that you fail to see the difference.

Samsung's million-IOPS, 6.4TB, 51Gb/s SSD is ... well, quite something

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Re: If you have to ask...

And then you would be able to hot swap them and use hardware raid

Same thought - it is cute, but you should be able to deliver comparable IOPs, throughput and MTBF using lower class SSDs and an old-school hardware RAID controller.

Astronauts sequence DNA in space for the first time

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Re: Nanu Nanu Pores

I don't suppose anyone expected DNA sequencing not to work in space

Not so fast. A lot of chemical reactions work very differently in the absence of convection. This is doubly so for complex reactions where you have to go through multiple reagents at each stage. So the fact that a piece of equipment to perform chemical reactions works in 1G does not mean it will work in 0G.

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Re: Is that a mars bar in your pocket...

Did not know that Ethan Hawke posted on el reg. Though that begs the question of who is Uma Thurman(*)

* The scene with the sequencer from GATTACA...

Exploding phablet phears phorce Samsung Galaxy Note 7 delay

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Re: Well at least

Apple would sell them anyway and blame the user for setting them on fire.

The right person to blame would be the standards droid(s) who came up with USB-C. There are quite a few places in it which read like "no boom today, boom tomorrow. There will definitely going to be a boom tomorrow".

Microsoft's beta language service gets C# dev kit

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Provided you do not ask Luis to book tickets to the MIddle East

Based on MSFT record of lately, it may book you one way tickets to Falluja or Tirkrit if you ask it to buy tickets to Riyadh.

USBee stings air-gapped PCs: Wirelessly leak secrets with a file write

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Re: Air-gapped...

SCADA - airgapped for security and USB enabled because the moron manufacturer requires a USB license "plug" for the software to work.

Ireland taxman: Apple got NO favours from us, at all, at all

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Long term, however, it will erode Ireland's attractiveness

Not really. While 12% are not 0.0005%, they are still about half of the corporate rate around Europe (20-25% or thereabouts).

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Re: Local Laws?

If this was really "legal", then the law is an ass,

Legal as per Irish law once upon a time - maybe. Legal as per the regulations under which Ireland signed when joining the Euro and Eu VAT and taxation regulations - most likely not. The question is - how much of these regs are in writing as they supersede local law in Ireland (and all other member states except UK).

EU verdict: Apple received €13bn in illegal tax benefits from Ireland

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Re: What about

That is happening too - Fiat, a couple of fashion houses, etc. She is not taking prisoners.

Anyone who thought Steely Neelie was an incarnation of a Rider, have not dealt with this one.

Windows 10 Anniversary on a Raspberry Pi: Another look at IoT Core

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We should use neither

Frankly, the Pi when you start pushing it beyond prototyping proves to be too unreliable, especially if used for more than one application.

USB storage if it is fast enough to saturate USB is nearly guaranteed to kill uvc video and other usb apps. A URB is lost and that is it. USB is still unreliable power-wise. Attach something that does not quite draw as much as it claims (f.e. some of the older Huawei cell modems) and it kills other USB devices and quite often the Pi too) . There are plenty of non-USB issues too - thermals (model 3 can overheat just by looking at it), WiFi does some ops in the broadcom binary firmware which is hideously slow resulting in 300ms+ pings under load, the SD card connectors being extremely vulnerable to environmental factors, etc.

Prototyping - yes. One-off where cost does not matter for a hobbyist - yes. If you, however, want to do something seriously, you might as well admit that the Pi is "Hobbyist Hardware (TM)" and do it properly and use proper sensors attached to microcontrollers like Arduino with a proper "FAT" collector running on a more reliable piece of hardware.

Microsoft redfaced after Bing translation cockup enrages Saudis

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I would not call that a mistake

That is a very accurate translation.

Europe to order Apple to cough up 'one beeellion Euros in back taxes'

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Hehe

Who told you UK will stop paying?

If UK will want to retain any tariff-free access to the market it will be paying at least more than now.

30% is lower bound - obey all market rules (like Norway), no right to vote. The price for any of the delusional ideas expressed by the leave proponents is unknown. My educated guess is 80% +

This is on top of losing the rebate and losing all of the special treatments negotiated over three decades.

So actually, Leave has shored up the Eu budget - the rest of the Eu should be throwing a party.

Phoney bling ring pinged by Tolkien's kin

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That depends where and what part

In some countries you are allowed interpretation, sequel and prequel if they have artistic merit of their own. It used to be the case in the UK too. Cristopher Priest, Steven Baxter have very good works expanding the Wells universe. Unfortunately, over time UK courts have started enforcing the rather ridiculous USA point of view where any "universe" works are owned by the original copyright creator. Court cases brought by the Tolkien estate have played a major role in this direction change

As a result UK readers will never get a chance to read "The Last Ringbearer" and any of the "Wizard of the Emerald City"/"Magic Land series".

Big data busts crypto: 'Sweet32' captures collisions in old ciphers

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a majority of OpenVPN connections

Not so sure about that, mine have been AES ever since via released AES acceleration (and long after moving off via hardware). Most sites I know have gone AES long ago too.

SpaceX Dragon capsule lands in Pacific carrying 12 moustronauts

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Re: Deja Vu

We did. However, our methods of examining the results where not anywhere near what we have today.

1. I have not looked it up, but I would not be surprised if the mice have an interesting genotype to start off with (we now can pretty much vandalize mouse genome to order - not something available in the 60s).

2. We can analyze the effects to a level which was in the realm of science fiction in the 60-s.

All, in all - this is the reality of live sciences: half of the time you are redoing old experiments with new methods.

Robot babies fail in role as teenage sex deterrents

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Useless for the intended purpose

One week of standard "feeding regimen sleep deprivation" will provide significantly better results.

Google 'Solitaire' ... Just do it

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Not fair

The biggest time-waster was, is and shall remain minesweeper.

The Internet of Cows is moo-ving fast … no bull!

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What mating management

A prize bull can consider himself lucky to mate even once in his life.The poor sod is milked same as cows (slightly different equipment and stimulation methods) and his juice injected in the selected "offspring carriers".

Anyone who has delusions of "mating management" in cows needs to see how a modern farm operates. There is some of it left in other parts of the industry (sheep, goats, etc), but not a lot. Cows - it is all mechanical.

French submarine builder DCNS springs leak: India investigates

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Re: Something fishy

This is not new. It is old as the world.

It is more effective today though as the Internet allows leaked material to be circulated for a considerable amount of time even in places where censorship is the order of the day.

English Uber alles in London taxis? No way, TfL – taxi app titan

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Re: Do I really need my driver to speak English?

You have never had the experience of trying to get somewhere in a foreign country with a driver that neither knows the country, nor the language. I have had that and have observed that first hand multiple times in different countries. Ensuring that it cannot happen is fair as far as regulatory requirements go.

Applause to the TFL - provided that it is _NOT_ discriminatory. All must sit the test (even British passport holders).

Nokia taps former Rovio man Rantala to market relaunch

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Re: Party like its 2010

Actually, I think they are onto something.

In a world where everyone has at least one smartphone in his hand and at least a couple of spare old ones in his drawer you need to use some elastic rubber and a sling to get rid of the surplus supply. Otherwise you are not selling anything.

What next for the F-35 after Turkey's threats to turn its back on NATO?

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It's as if the commander of the Provisional IRA were living in Virginia

You are obviously too young to remember when it was not just the case, but when IRA ran fundraisers and young aspiring billioners (nowdays presidential candidates) with severe hair organization deficiencies were guests of honour - introduced by Gerry Adams himself.

Not particularly different from Chechen terrorists who had direct involvement with the Rostov-na-Don hijackings, Nord-Ost theatre incident and the Moscow metro bombings walking freely the streets of London by the way.

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Re: I'm sure Mr Putin

turkey becomes russias

Why becomes?

Breakdown:

6Bn Tourist trade

Several Bn Energy dependency. While Turkey can get oil and gas from elsewhere (there were some interesting satellite photos of their southern border published this year), its only cheap and guaranteed supply is GasProm.

6Bn+ Trade and transport dependency - Turkey primary trading partners are Eu and Central Asian nations. No permits for trucks to traverse Russia to get there and back, no trade.

Various odds and sods - construction, etc.

Why do you think Erdogan went to Moscow. He could put on a brave face only for a limited amount of times. Vlad has always had him by the balls, it was only a matter of time for his mind and soul to follow.

Bees bring down US stealth fighter

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that they didn't "bring it down"

Depends on interpretation - the fighter was taken out of operations until the stray swarm was collected and taken care of. So while it was already down, it also remained down.

'Alien megastructure' Tabby's Star: Light is definitely dimming

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Pandora's star

Erecting the shield to contain the Prime civilization around Dyson Alpha is taking longer then usual. Probably unionized contractors at work.

BlackBerry: Forget phones, Lawsuits In Motion is back – and it's firing off patent claims

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The lyrics for the picture

Using the Sunset Boulevard pic was the right analogy, just the wrong version. The Andrew Lloyd Weber one with Glen Close would have been more apt. Not for any other reason, but because of the fitting lyrics:

Fill someone's glass

Kiss someone's wife

Kiss someone's ass

We do whatever pays the wages

RIM is doing whatever pays the wages and it is all governed by the attitude of: "You are Norma Desmond, aren't you. You were big" - "I am big, it is the pictures which got smaller".

Nigerian cops cuff cybercrime suspect, reveal you don't need 419 to make $60m

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Re: Both are currently on bail?

It is not bail, it is the "freedom to operate fee" which he forgot to pay.

What's long, hard and full of seamen? The USS Harvey Milk

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Re: Funny thing

Those would be the only destroyers ever built using no armour plate whatsoever,

Not the case. They did have armour, but not enough to be noticed by a 300mm+ shell.

The problem of battleship and heavy cruiser main armament being overly optimized for battleship-to-battleship engagement and cruising through lesser ships without exploding is as old as the battleships themselves. It was observed in the Russian-Japanese war, it was a regular feature in WW1 with nearly all hits scored by the German Bayern class heavy cruisers on the Russian destroyer squadron at Moonzund being a "in-and-out" with the exemption of the hit on Grom where it did not explode, but hit the main boiler. It was a regular feature in WW2 engagements too.

Russian spy aircraft are flying over Britain – and the MoD's cool with it

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Re: majority still use antiquated film cameras

Antiquated film camera? Really?

The stuff Antonov-30 carries is more or less equivalent to a top-of the range Hasselblad with optics covering all vis spectrum and near IR using a corresponding film. I tried to get some of the film for it "falling back off the end of the lorry" in the 80-es and I remember my jaw dropping when reading the specs.

While it is antiqueated as in "non-real-time", it can produce adequate results. End of the day, for aerial photography what really matters is the image stabilization and resolution. The gyro stabilization used on the An-30 camera mounts and the optics + correct film produce both.

In any case, the flights are usually to targets that have already been picked by satellites, humint, etc and have the function of "whoa... what we have here, care explaining it?". The camera is just the evidence to back-up the conversation. For that, old fashioned film is 100 times better than anything digital as it is very difficult to falsify or alter without leaving a forensic trace.

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Re: Drone on

You are missing the point.

They are flying to already pre-recon-ed targets. It is a plausible deniability scenario. Oh, look what we just saw here...

In reality, the info on it has been available from other sources for a while, what the treatie allows is to request a direct overflight, with representatives of the target on-board and the right to ask questions: "WTF are you doing".

For that, you do not want drones. You want manned aircraft capable of carrying your and and opponent's personnel.

Apple Watch craze over before it started: Wrist-puter drags market screaming off a cliff

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Re: iRing

You ask, the internet answers:

Knuckle duster will be a better description.

If you are with small fingers like me, it will spin freely on any of them. If you have the physique which comes with "I'll be back" said with an Austrian accent, you are likely to end up in A&E with your finger swollen and the guys there cutting the ring in half to get it off.

Selfie-proof smartmobes will hit stores for Christmas

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Nice

This should improve the Darwinian selection properties too - as the likelihood of damaging the phone continues to decrease, the likelihood of the moron yielding it to capture that "one last moment" being eliminated out of the gene pool continues to increase.

Blighty's Coastguard goes into battle against waterborne Pokemon

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Capture? What capture

How about an alternative game where I can shoot the damn things (and competing hunters).

Coup-Tube: Turkey blocks social networks amid military takeover

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Sweet Justice

The only European head of state (probably an overstatement, only Turkey's arse is in Europe, its head isn't) to systematically block social networks because someone has posted something "anti-turkish" has had to resort to Twitter and Instagram in an hour of need.

The fact that the coup has fizzled so fast is bad news though - it shows that Erdogan's quest to move Turkey to an Persharaf/Bashar/Saddam style pretend-secular Islamic dictatorship is nearly complete.

Ad blockers responsible for rise in upfront TV ad sales, claims report

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Wrong stats

This reminds me of the imbecilic consluttant which recommended Virgin Wines 10+ yeas ago to drop support for Mozilla and Safari on their website because they were (at the time) less than 10% of the UK web population.

Result - revenue drop 50% as "global 5%" did not correctly reflect the distribution of people who would buy expensive wine online and in that set Safari and Mozilla use was > 50%.

6% audience based on global count means totally nothing on the Internet as it may actually coincide with the 6% of people most likely to buy on the net and having the disposable income to do so.

So far there has been no analysis on how does ad-block usage relate to shopping on-net/off net habits and disposable income. My educated guess is that there is a very strong correlation. So the ad slinging marketing scumbag low life is right to be worried. However, moving that money to TV is of no use as the set who is using ad-blockers is not watching any ad-infested TV either.

It's not our fault we don't hire black people, says Facebook

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Re: So what you're saying is...

Reminds me of an interview I had about 7 years ago. The CTO of the company smiled and told me: We have an openly discriminatory hiring policy. We discriminate and we are proud of it. We discriminate against STUPID people.

If we can't find a working SCSI cable, the company will close tomorrow

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Been there, done that

Deja vu all around. Both - the IBM engineer bending a pin and having to sort out cabling in the wee hours of the night.