Re: It's no joke

If possible, get some Roach-Proof (boric acid) and sprinkle that around the affected devices. Lay it down pretty thick - like you are the Winchesters laying down a circle of protection from demons. Arthropods don't like the stuff - it gets into their joints and tears them up, causing them to dehydrate, as well as getting into their spicules and choking them.

Re: Bah!

The "signal" is a release of pheromones, specifically a "distress" pheromone - not an electrical signal. "Spoofing" that pheromone would mean synthesizing it.

In normal conditions, the idea is "that which kills one of us may kill all of us, so let's kill it first!". Great, if what is 'killin joo doods' is something that can be killed, like an anteater. Bad, if it cannot, like a high voltage circuit.

Re: UK car insurance is fucked

"So if it's optional and boy racer ploughs into bus queue, crippling a dozen people, then when they try to claim compensation he just laughs and says 'Tough, I'm skint'

Compulsory 3rd party is essential[....]"

I totally agree. The only way it can be optional is:

chav: "Tough, I'm skint"

Judge: "Oh, but that's where you are wrong, my friend. A lung, a kidney, part of a liver (don't worry, it'll grow back, usually) all fetch a high market. Skin - do you know how valuable skin is? and we can keep harvesting it. And then there is the forced labor - I hear the Japanese would like some help with a little mess that needs cleaning up, fuku-something."

Another clear benefit to tourists:

Many tourists to the UK come from right-side-of-the-road countries. Among many, that is why I planned my upcoming business trip to the UK in terms of taking the Tube and the train rather than driving - the LAST thing I want to have to do after 14 hours on planes/in airports is have to keep reminding myself "keep left".

"Sealed" - using the time

I've often pondered this as well. What if you had the train split into 2 sections: "sterile" and "non-sterile". Let me get into the non-sterile side, and then, as the train is rolling, go through the security checkpoints and be admitted into the "sterile" side.

And likewise, let me get off the plane into the "sterile" side, and go through Customs and Immigration as the train rolls.

Re: We've had this discussion before

"Can we try to get it right next time please?

Energy x Time = Power"

Yes, let us do try to get it right:

Power * time = energy

Energy / time = power.

Re: ...'allows online users to store their most sensitive documents'...

@AC: If you are going to quote me, cite it correctly:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2013/05/10/paypal_password_obliterate/#c_1821280

It look like you're declaring war on a neighbouring star system. Would you like help?

"It look like you're declaring war on a neighbouring star system. Would you like help?"

"yes"

"THEN YOU ARE WEAK AND DESERVE TO DIE."

Re: That's not how fractional reserve banking works, though.

Unfortunately, while what you said is how it is *supposed* to work, it does not in reality work that way.

In reality:

Deposit 100 moneys.

Bank loans Abe 80 moneys, puts an 80 moneys IOU in the "assets" column. Bank still has 100 moneys of "assets", only 20 moneys of which are real money.

Bank loans Bill 80 moneys, pointing to the 100 moneys of "assets". Other banks nod and wink at the check written against the IOU. Bank puts Bill's IOU next to Abe's.

@AC: RTFineA - Video is mentioned

"Liquavista's tech is called electrowetting, which it claims can make displays clearer in all lighting conditions and play video without using a lot of power." (emphasis mine).

Insurance

And soon Apple will take the next step:

"That is a lovely device what you have bought from us. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it, right? But we can help you with this matter; we can provide iNsurance."

Eat PETA

Ugh. I'll take the bugs.

Re: He should also remove all atoms in his body

Evidently, both you and 8 other people failed to see my statement was in regards to an action Dr. Hawking should perform, not Nitsana Darshan-Leitner should perform - the suggesting is Dr. Hawking should remove his computer, so why should he not be expected to go all the way.

Re: ElReg Standards

Obviously, an amp should be defined in the amount of current it takes to render one PHB unconscious with a given length of time of exposure (holding EMF constant, natch.)

The one with the current metrology sticker on it.

Re: Yes, that will work well.

Just use Beethoven's First Movement.

Re: The problems it causes.

That depends upon how strongly you define "Free". I tend more towards RMS's level, that if you cannot modify, compile, and run the resulting code, it is not Free. It may be Open Source, but it is not Free.

So saying "Sure, here's the code, but we won't make the private key available to you, we won't let you sign the executable, and thus you cannot use a version you built for the intended purpose" means it is not Free.

You may define Free differently.

The problems it causes.

OK, you want the problems:

1) the *only* way DRM can "work" is that the DRM mechanism must have a secure channel from the decryption code to the user's sensory organs. If at any point in that channel there isn't total security, then the user can intercept the data at that point, and then do whatever they want with it. Thus, the ONLY way DRM can be implemented is if the content holders control your computer, not you - otherwise you can subvert that secure channel.

2) DRM means that just because you can access something today does not mean you can access it tomorrow. You may have that copy of "1984" that you bought and paid for, but if whoever controls the DRM key server decides you shall no longer have access, you don't. The system is totally asymmetric in terms of who's "rights" are "managed".

3) Likewise, it is an invasion of privacy: if you do have local "managed" media, whoever manages the key server can see when you access that media. You may not care if they see how often you want My Little Pony, but do you perhaps care if they see how often you read those "subversive" works - or even how often you re-read that one chapter of "50 Shades of Grey"?

4) It means restrictions on competition.

4a) No Free Software can implement DRM, since if I have the ability to compile and run the source, I can intercept the decoded data (see 1, above).

4b) Indeed, since the algorithms and implementations must be kept secret, that means that whoever controls the algorithms controls who can make players (e.g.: The digital FM system here in the US, iBiquity, requires as a part of the standard that all data SHALL be encrypted using a key from iBiquity - and so if you want to make an HD Radio, you SHALL pay iBiquity for that key. And if they don't like what kind of radio you propose to make, you don't make it. Look up "Griffin HD Radio Shark", and what happened to it.)

5) It can lead to restrictions on media creation. If entities like the RIAA have their way, then once DRM is widely available, they can start towards requiring ALL media to be rights managed. You want to upload your funny cat video? You MUST use a key, and guess what? You MUST rent that key from them! (Yes, this is a "slippery slope" argument. "Slippery Slope" is not a fallacy, but rather an assumption. You may chose to question the truth of the assumption, and thus the validity of the argument, but it is not always in error, and given what has transpired in the past, the slippery slope is more often than not taken).

Why aren't stores forced to use chip & pin everywhere?

"Why aren't stores forced to use chip & pin everywhere?"

I think you have the question backwards: what would force stores to use chip and pin?

Look who gets hurt in a credit fraud:

Usually, not the account holder - if they can prove the fraud is not their fault they usually are not held responsible for most, if not all, of the cost.

Not the credit card company - almost always, they just reverse the fraudulent charges back to the merchants.

So it's only the merchants who have any motivation to deploy anything more secure. However, the "invisible hand" only works when there are real alternatives, and since the credit card companies don't really offer a meaningful alternative to mag-stripe, the merchants have no choice - they take what they can get (mag-stripe) or they don't handle credit transactions (read: they don't get any business, because who can be bothered to carry cash or checks in this spend-spend-spend era?)

I knew of a guy involved with a very large company's web site, who detected a massive credit fraud-in-progress. He held the transactions, contacted the credit card company, said "I can give you the address they are wanting the goods shipped to: call the police, nab them in the act, done!" The credit card company's response? "Don't care, not our problem, don't let the transactions go through or we'll just charge it back to you, bye now<click>".

Re: Let's play a game....

iCame - rounded corners are a must here.

Partials are not boring

I would disagree; even a partial eclipse is not boring.

Take your hands, crossing the fingers of each hand to make a 4x4 grid. Spread them just a bit, to make a bunch of almost pinholes. Hold over a flat white surface. Watch what would normally be round spots become little crescents - you've just made a bunch of pinhole viewers. Go find a tree that is making a bunch of pin-holes between the leaves. Make a pinhole viewer from a gum wrapper. Let your inner child-scientist loose for a change!

We don't *know*, but we are pretty sure it does

We don't yet *know* if antimatter responds to gravity the same way as matter, but we are pretty sure it does; if it doesn't, it would really change our understanding of the universe.

The reasoning goes like this:

An object in free fall is following a straight line in space-time (the line may not seem straight in space, but remember, we are seeing a slice along the time axis, not the full line in space-time. That's why we say "gravity curves space-time", or more properly, "gravity IS a curvature of space-time.").

Now, consider if you had something that had a different response to gravity than normal. Let's say you have a ball that has an inertial mass of 1kg (that is, a force of 1N will accelerate it at 1m/s^2), but experiences a force due to gravity on Earth of 1N rather than 9.8N. You let your "odd" ball and a normal 1kg ball loose at the same time, close enough that the differences in the curvature of space-time are negligible. The normal ball will have 9.8N of force on it and will accelerate at 9.8m/s^2, the "odd" ball will have a force of 1N on it and will accelerate at 1m/s^2. But, in theory, both are just following a straight line in space-time, and since we've constructed the experiment that the lines should be the same, we have a reducio ad absurdum - we've created a paradox. So, the reasoning goes, inertial mass and gravitational mass must be the same. And since we do have a very good set of evidence that antimatter has positive inertial mass (things like the recoil of an atom releasing a positron, for example), we thus have a strong reason to expect antimatter to react the same to gravity as normal matter.

The experiments with trying to prove that are difficult, as we cannot just make an "odd" ball of antimatter and drop it - the quantities of antimatter can can make are small, they tend to come into being moving very fast, and even if we can slow them down to where gravity is a significant factor, they don't stick around very long (they tend to fall down, find some matter, and go FLASH in a very short period of time). So the error bars on the experiments are pretty large - we can say that antimatter is less than 100 times more strongly attracted by gravity than normal matter, and not less than -60 times as strongly attracted (read: repelled) as normal matter. That's like saying you have found by experiment to have between -60 and 100 heads - we suspect the real answer is 1, and -60 < 1 < 100, so our experiment has not disproved our assumption.

Now, if we ever did find an "odd" ball - be it antimatter, or floobydust, or whatever, but that didn't respond to gravity the same way as normal matter - then we'd have to rethink general relativity in a pretty big way, a way as big as general relativity was for Newtonian mechanics. That might happen: we know that quantum mechanics and General Relativity don't fit together, and we know that quantum mechanics and General Relativity are pretty good descriptions of the universe in their own domains, and we know the universe contains both the domain for which quantum mechanics is valid and the domain for which General Relativity is valid at the same time, so we know we don't know everything. A major re-think like that might explain a lot, but since we have no data that would shape what that rethink should be, we cannot start it now. And that's what experiments like this are good for: they give us that evidence to say "OK, this is the direction you need to be looking in."

MAC address in packet - not that myth again!

"I don't mind all of my data packets being made into digitally signed and certificated evidence (IPv6) with the MAC address of the packet origin device also signed evidence."

Not that myth again (I wonder if Snopes or Adam and Jamie could be pursued to address this....).

Yes, at one point there was the consideration to make the bottom 48 bits of the IPv6 address be the MAC address of the device, to simplify stateless autoconfiguration. Then EVERYBODY pointed out the obvious security flaws in that idea, and the idea of using the MAC address to form the publicly routeable address was DROPPED. AXED. KILLED. REMOVED. That idea is not pinin' for the fjords, it is PASSED ON.

Even the idea of using the MAC address for the link local addresses has been made OPTIONAL, and alternatives to allow link local addresses to be created randomly have been defined.

Re: Questions to ask objectors

"Do you own a mobile phone? [...] How do you expect to use it?"

Your typical NIMBY would respond with:

"What does that have to do with anything? What does that tower have to do with my phone?"

As inconceivable as it may be to most Reg readers, that sort of person often truly does not realize his phone is a radio, and needs a radio tower to work.

Re: The IRS...

"I assumed it was a picturesque reference to removing Excalibur from the stone"

But it wasn't Excalibur that was removed from the stone - Arthur got Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake - a.k.a. the "sword-flinging watery tart".