* Posts by Trigonoceps occipitalis

1593 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2014

Cheap, flimsy, breakable and replaceable – yup, Ikea, you'll be right at home in the IoT world

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Lightswitches...

Most capital cities that are not Paris are not in France. There, I said it.

Ofcom wants automatic compensation for the people when ISPs fail

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Nonsense, they will pay "up to £6."

Disney plotting 15 more years of Star Wars

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Looking forward to Episode XVIII

Personally I can wait for "Jar Jar Binks - His Life and Times." A long time, a very long time, oh so long, please, pretty please.

Our Sun's been using facial scrub: No spots for two weeks

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: What am I going to blame random outages on now?

Sporadic E always worked for me.

Gift cards or the iPhone gets it: Hackers threaten Apple with millions of remote wipes

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Quite ironic

" ..has made it so damned easy to restore Apple's data ... "

FTFY

'Australia Card 2.0' is dead: Government ditches plan for one ID to rule them all

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Just replace "Standard" with "ID"

https://xkcd.com/927/

US military's latest toy set: Record-breaking laser death star, er, truck

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Slow moving targets only

The laser weapon was used to dazzle the Argentinian pilots at low level, say on a bombing run over San Carlos Water. It relied on the light being diffused by the canopy. Very similar to the prats who point lasers at airliners.

As I recall lasers used as blinding weapons are banned. Range finders, target markers and anti missile systems are OK, any of which may damage eyes as a collateral effect.

Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: @GATTACA

6:1 against me. I didn't make myself clear and if I offended anyone I apologise. Collection of DNA by companies is only OK if they are under a remit to help those unfortunate to be discovered harbouring a genetic disease, or disposition to disease, beyond that given to the fortunate majority. With power comes responsibility.

Any and all excuses will be proffered as to why a company should only take the benefit, I offered only one. If I was not able to impart my views that is a fault in my use of English.

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: @GATTACA

@Unicornpiss

So the companies can help the unfortunate employees with extra pay and medical cover. Oops - that would discrimination against the healthy.

There is no prize, none, nada, zilch for correctly guessing which side of the line this will fall.

Official: America auto-scanned visitors' social media profiles. Also: It didn't work properly

Trigonoceps occipitalis

@ thesykes

Every time someone makes that comment I remind them about the way that Robin Hood airport was saved by checking social media.

ZTE-gads! Chinese giant fined $900m by Uncle Sam for Iran trade deals

Trigonoceps occipitalis

"Last time I looked, "we" are more than happy to sell arms to dictatorships and oppressive regimes."

Yes, but they're our dictatorships and oppressive regimes, bought and paid for - this can be a problem because someone with deeper pockets may always come along.

Come in King Battistelli, your time at the Euro Patent Office is up

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: He's probably got a patent on

"All other units can only ever be fractions of B"

Wot about the Trump, surely 1B must be a fraction of 1T?

Did your in-flight entertainment widget suck? It's Panasonic's fault, claims software biz

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: General Protection Fault?

Is that because Major Fault wants to prosecute Private Data as he failed during the RAID?

Licence-fee outsourcer Capita caught wringing BBC tax from vulnerable

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: @ Mister D

You are at liberty to use "tv reception equipment" as a monitor or to play DVDs for free. It is reception of, or recording at the time of transmission, broadcast TV, or the use of iPlayer (but only iPlayer) that requires a TV Licence.

It is in the interest of the BBC to maintain, without actually lying of course, that mere possession of TV receiving equipment needs a TV licence. Vulnerable people will be more inclined to cave in.

Gov wants to make the UK the 'safest place in the world to go online'

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Two words spring to mind...

@Dan 55

"What's wrong with configuring your own parental control software ... "

Because my children and their partners wouldn't have a Scooby. In any case I suspect my 8 year old grandchild can get around any blocks they put in place. Often said but none the less true. I can offer only limited help, sometimes I get the "Dad's got his tinfoil hat on again" look.

Fortunately they are able to make sure that their children get the correct advice and help about social media etc. They will see nothing wrong with the government mandating blocks on content - partly because they understand their technical limitations in this area and because they have already sold their soul to Google, Facebook etc. It is just part of normal life to them.

NSA snoops told: Get your checkbooks and pens ready for a cyber-weapon shopping spree

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Citizens paying taxes to be spent on spying on them

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all advertisers are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Personal Data, Legal Immunity and the pursuit of Profit.

Toxic Uber sued after driver allegedly tried to rape passenger in car

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Not an Uber fan, but

" ... but they are the worst offender ... "

Are they? I don't know one way or another, do you have a reference that is reliable? Like them or loath them, unsubstantiated adverse comments don't advance the discussion.

(I know this is the Register and some leeway is expected but really only works in technical area where we are more or less expert.)

Alert! The dastardly Dutch are sailing a 90-ship fleet at Blighty

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Funny old thing, I copied that phrase in order to make the same comment. I thought I would be lucky to get in first, I wasn't.

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Stern carving.

The Elgin Marbles are just as much a part of our history as that of Greece. Whether that means we should keep them or hand them back is a can of worms I do not want to open.

New UK laws address driverless cars insurance and liability

Trigonoceps occipitalis

In the UK Insurance Companies, through the MIB, pay out when uninsured drivers are at fault. They are free to recover from the "guilty party". Quite often the guilty party has no funds but the victim still gets a payout. Of course the law abiding, insured drivers are paying for this one way or another through increased premiums.

I imagine that something equivalent will apply to autonomous vehicles once they become popular. It should apply if the software is out of date, just as the MIB is on the hook if some prat has doubled the power of his car and left the brakes as standard.

(Simplified statement of the MIB responsibilities.)

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: 30 years....

Maybe I need to update my Satnav?

Swedish politician wants weekly hour of paid sex. For exercise

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Is this what is known as...

Being paid for sex is legal in the UK. It is the peripheral elements of the industry that are illegal: running a brothel; living off immoral earnings; soliciting; kerb crawling; etc.

'First ever' SHA-1 hash collision calculated. All it took were five clever brains... and 6,610 years of processor time

Trigonoceps occipitalis

PDF BACKGROUND

Is it possible that the change of background colour is a part of a suite of changes that hide the addition of "not"?

LOST IN SPAAAAAACE! SpaceX aborts Space Station podule berthing

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: In space ...

"Recalculating route."

is always better than,

"Unexpected item in bagging area!"

UPS & drones: Delivery company launches UAV from truck

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: How's this stuff signed for then?

"Or even dropped off securely?"

Don't worry, once your expensive new tech has been smashed by the fall no one will want to steal it.

Big data should be 'part of UK's core national infrastructure' – Civil Service chief exec

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Services driven by open data ...

So why not put my paid for data (Ordnance survey, Post Codes etc) into the public domain?

EU privacy gurus peer at Windows 10, still don't like what they see

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Deleted personal data is the only thing that is properly backed up and always recoverable.

Trigonoceps' First Law of Data Storage.

If you want to make sure that your raid never fails ensure there is a deleted personal data partition on it.

Trigonoceps' Second Law of Data Storage.

EE unveils sky domination plans with drones, balloons

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Yet-to-be-patented technology

"Kites are worse! Also been used since radio was invented."

I have a WW2 box kite used by downed airmen to elevate a rescue beacon antenna. Flies really well.

Software glitch, not wind farms, blacked out 60,000 in South Australia

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Power optional

The Chinook, the Khamsin, the Mistral, the Freemantle Doctor - now the Goldilock.

BT and Virgin Media claim 'broadband' tax will cost £1.3bn

Trigonoceps occipitalis

As property value can go down as well as up, a minority will have been overpaying.

FTFM

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Any tax based on a property value needs some form of "agreed value" as its base. This to avoid fluctuations in tax take and constant arguments about the instant value. When there is an election due it is politically expedient and all too easy to postpone the revaluation. When the process if finally undertaken the result is a vast hike. Those affected forget that they may have had several years underpaying. As property value can go down as well as up, a minority will have been underpaying.

For what it's worth one of the drivers for the change from domestic rates (a property tax) to the community charge (a personal tax - poll tax to some) was the pain of the great increases expected in ratable value. Ratable value was calculated according to some arcane formula base on the rent that may be obtained at some time in the past. Rates were neither fair nor transparent.

New EU rules on portability of online content services move closer

Trigonoceps occipitalis

BT/BBC

The BT TV boxes that I have seen require a terrestrial TV antenna to play the freeview channels "live". Don't know about Virgin but Sky is, of course, satellite transmission.

Huge if true: iPhone 8 will feature 3D selfies, rodent defibrillator

Trigonoceps occipitalis

iPhoeniX

Isn't that Samsung's new 'phone?

MEPs in 'urgent' call for new laws on artificial intelligence and robotics

Trigonoceps occipitalis

I Look Forward to

The EU's 303 Laws of Robotics.

Global IPv4 address drought: Seriously, we're done now. We're done

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: IPV6...

It's the Klingon of the Interwebs!

FTFY

You know IoT security is bad when libertarians call for strict regulation

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Former libertarian

@ Charles 9

Ask Jeremy Clarkson, I think he has an inkling.

Forget quantum and AI security hype, just write bug-free code, dammit

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Whitfield Diffie

one of the inventors of public public key encryption,

FTFY

No crypto backdoors, more immigration ... says Republican head of House Committee on Homeland Security

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: These aren't the Republicans you're looking for

Big John

You know, I was in total disagreement with you, right up to the Wikipedia reference you used. You convinced me that you were right and I was wrong by using the most irrefutable source of reliable information.

Australia finally passes mandatory data breach reporting legislation

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Weasel words

No, they mean "up to mandatory." This is the Internet after all.

Bloke, 27, arrested, tech gear seized by cops over UK Sports Direct hack

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Incoming: Harsh action from ICO?

"... as they'll obviously promise to try and do a bit better in future."

Oh come on, that's no good. What about learning lessons?

A non-Standards Soviet approved measure of weight? Sod off, BBC!

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Whats the strangest thing you have used to measure something?

@psychonaut

That's funny, I only use a third of my cock.

Hello? Police? My darknet drug market was just hacked by criminals

Trigonoceps occipitalis

"The brightest minds do not look at a police salary and think "yes ! this is my ideal career path"."

Not everyone is just a venal free-booter. You do disservice to anyone who just wants to help society in general and policemen in particular - some of them clearly brighter than you are.

Coming to the big screen: Sci-fi epic Dune – no wait, wait, wait, this one might be good

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Can't be a single movie

"Who knows, Trump might even ban it."

Thus ensuring it will be an outrageous box office success.

We need to talk about Granny: She's way more likely to fall for phishing

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Trust? Who, me?

Professor Jimmy Edwards DFC please.

Parliamentary Trump-off? Pro-Donald petition passes 100k signatures

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Idi Amin

" ... one-time Royal Military Academy Sandhurst officer cadet ... "

Are you sure? I ask because I knew the man who claimed to be the first of his tribe (and tribalism was still rife) to go to Sandhurst. The reason he was selected was that he was of Idi Amin's tribe and not, like all the previous Ugandan cadets, one of the just overthrown Milton Obote's tribe.

Free smart fridges! App stores in fountains! Plus more from Canonical man

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Welcome to our new Fridge Overlords

Only if it makes it to the first service unbroken.

We see you, ransomware flingers, testing out your baddest stuff on... Germany?

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Occam's razor says...

May be it is the well known stereotype of a German. If the policy is not to open unknown links in an email a greater proportion of Germans will comply. If you can get your ransom ware delivered to a German company then change it from v0.9 to v1.0 and you're ready for the big time.

King Battistelli tries again to break Euro Patent Office union

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: More worrying

The EU has form for that, the whistle-blower who pointed out the inconvenient fact that the accounts had not been signed off for several years was sacked by Niel Kinnock.

Trigonoceps occipitalis

What are your stretch goals? A particularly gruesome and expensive death or another target?

Want to bring down that pesky drone? Try the power of sound

Trigonoceps occipitalis

Re: Sonic Weaponry?

Just play Slim Whitman's "Indian Love Call."