Posts by frank ly
2123 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 09:17 GMT
Page:
Try a new recruitment strategy
"It seems that when TSA screeners are shown finely rendered images of air passengers' nude bodies, rather than simple outlines, they tend to linger on each image, which slows the lines down."
If they recruited scanner operators who have been active members of a nudist/naturist club for at least a year, or perhaps retired porn actors/actresses, then the operators wouldn't be fascinated by the sight of naked bodies.
Sow the wind ....
... you know the rest.
Just provide a reliable basic service
"... inevitably out-innovate and reduce operators to the status of bit pipes."
The gas company don't try to sell me saucepans and food to cook. The water company don't try to sell me bottles of flavoured mineral water; they concentrate on providing a reliable basic service. For at least 10 years, ISPs and telcos have wasted money trying to be something they are not. They should pump my data through their pipes and work at doing it well and effectively, so they can make a profit and be content with that.
Tesco Mobile (using the O2 network) provide me with 500 minutes, 5000 texts and 1GB of data for £10 a month on a 1 month rolling contract. If I could find anyone who did it cheaper with a good signal in my area, I'd change to them very quickly.
" ...an office in France with its entrance in Switzerland."
I have an idea for a whacky science-fiction story; suitable for children's television. The stationary cupboard is in Basildon, but that can change at random.
@AC 10:20 Re: @AC 09:14 An unfashionable idea ......
1: I'm not answering the point because I'm asking the question. You say it's too expensive and we can't afford it. (Note: I don't play computer games and consume about 15GB a month. Don't try ad hominem stuff unless you're sure of the facts.) Others say it's vital for our future and will pay for itself in terms of increased productivity and economic activity in the future.
2. You might be right.
3. Another reason why 'it can't be done'. Oh well, I'll stick with 10MB/s down, 1MB/s up for the foreseeable future. I'm fine with what I have.
@AC 09:14 Re: An unfashionable idea ......
You raise good points and I did make the comment hoping for discussion.
Point1: Who paid for the roads, the national grid, the NHS, etc?
Point 2: They could and they might. That would be for planning and discussion and El Reg would do it's usual job of keeping us informed (or inPhormed) I'm sure.
Point 3: Disregarding my tongue in cheek final comment, would it matter who built it?
"Why not simply create an environment ......."
Why not indeed? Why isn't it happening? How the heck did this country ever get a national motorway network, A-road system, national electricity grid, gas grid, water network, sewage treatment system, NHS infrastructure, etc? I am beginning to wonder.
Well done!
"Our fellow sci/tech websites seldom allow any external scrutiny of their traffic, ..."
If they've nothing to hide then they've nothing to fear!
I'm sorry; I've been reading the Daily Mail (I found it on a train).
An unfashionable idea ......
If it is vital to the economy and an essential regional/national infrastructure, like roads, then why don't the government plan/make/fund it, like they do with roads? They could then hire it out to ISPs, and if it was worthwhile then a consortium of ISPs may even be willing to buy the completed project from the government.
One caveat: In the UK, BT would not be allowed to bid for the initial laying of this national fibre network.
It sounds like PR spin to me
They're just doing their job as best they can. They can't help it.
Posted in You're not cool enough for some malware
@moiety
You can edit posts now. Go to 'My Posts' to see the 'Edit' button under your post. It's active for some minutes after you create the post. I think it deletes the original post to indicate that an edit has been made.
Re: An eco-friendly solution
"...cattle class so that (t)he swine ..."
Ad hoc mixed metaphors are not certified for use in flight.
Re: Ad spend on mobile - Microsoft FAIL.
"... but I'd love to see you find fault with my logic."
Looks......
"..white elephant around its neck..", "..going nowhere fast, ..", "..left over from Google's and Apple's dinner plate..".
That's not logic, it's soundbites and cliched imagery. It could be regarded as a form of poetry, but not as logic.
@Chris Re: 'We were big softies all the way' - Yeah, right
" ...but the prosecutor says she wasn't pushing for that and thought 6 months would be appropriate. "
That was my point. I don't see how any prosecutor can bring charges that can net 30 years, or more, and then say , "I only expected him to get 6 months and that was what I was asking for". To my inexperienced and possibly naive ears, it sounds like a lie. It certainly beggars my belief.
'We were big softies all the way' - Yeah, right
"Swartz faced 13 felony charges including counts of wire fraud, computer fraud and recklessly damaging a protected computer, which could cumulatively carry a sentence of more than 30 years."
Those don't sound like low-sentence, low security prison crimes. Could it be that somebody is lying?
Pictures or it didn't happen!
I'm surprised that I'm the first.
@Pellinor Re: Ninja Accountants
I never said that income and profit are the same thing. Try reading my post - see the mention of expenses? The article (and the post) are not about how to calculate operating profit, they are about something else. Try reading the article to see if you can figure out what it is.
Ninja Accountants
" ...that price comes off the UK subsidiary's tax bill as an expense, .."
No. It comes off the profit figure, hence leading to a proportionate reduction in the tax bill.
Also, the US parent would see a profit of 50p for every box sold (minus selling expenses, whatever they could be made to be). The cost of the boxes to the US parent would be booked as an expense hence the total corporate books would show expenses of £1.50 and income of £0.5 (= expense of £1 plus whatever 'buying expenses' they can dream up). So, that expense can be moved to anywhere convenient for the company. Mix that in with licensing deals involving subsidiaries in a different country and no single tax authority can follow what is really happening.
Welcome to the money merry-go-round, where profit and loss are fluid, complex and sometimes imaginary.
How big is BIG?
How big is the 'final cut' when a 4K resolution 90 minute film is stored? What size workspace is needed for doing processing on such a film? (I'd imagine about 3X file size?) The article gives no indication of the amount of data required to work on a project or the total storage that the studio has to work with.
Re: Gay horse
But what if the police horse really was gay? Things can get complicated very quickly.
" ... or glass or quarts."
A quart glass you say? I'll drink to that. Is it too late to apply to be a mission planner at NASA? I've always wanted that job.
"What happens when someone deletes your metadata?"
Isn't that the same as filing the postcode or other identifying marks off a stolen bicycle or car? If not, why not?
Anybody who makes money from such a creative work is handling and using stolen goods and should have all proceeds confiscated.
Re: we're completely over it now
Is it just me, or has it been going around in a climactic battle spiral for the past couple of weeks and slowly not getting anywhere in particular? It's as if it's run out of steam, or perhaps the Foglios are stoking the boiler ready for something special...... ?
Re: IT don't grow on trees, you know, therefore you can fully expect it to be designedly expensive
You are henceforth banned from posting comments on El Reg. The CII directorate have determined that your posts contain encrypted strings that are intended to disrupt the El Reg forum servers. The CII directorate are unable to determine the exact nature and potential consequences of this attack but they feel that 'better safe that sorry' is a good principle, and they need to be seen to be doing something.
Re: And that is why
Yes but, they require a phone to be rooted, which is beyond the ability of the vast majority of owners.
Re: Star Wars is Science FICTION for a reason...
Everything you say is true; but that's not the point. The point is to encourage and to practice methods of analysis in general terms. That way, when something does happen that is outside the knowledge or experience of a scientist, they will have the intellectual methods and ability to deal with it.
"Anyone who is still practising Freudian/Youngian psychology is a quack though."
Quite correct. The genuine ones practice Fraudian/Jungian psychology.
Re: Quick...
"And who approves these posts?! >:("
Are you new here? If so, welcome. Say something interesting and stimulating, now!
All we need now .......
...... is room temperature superconductive carbon nanotubes. Five more years?
Android Apps for productivity?
I'm a fandroid, (Asus Transformer Tab, HTC Incredible, old Vega, old Wildfire) but I'm not a rabid fandroid and I do recognise the shortfalls of Android and am fed up with the creeping permission grabs of app updated, also mightily pissed of with two recent app updates that broke what I regard as essential functionality. (Fortunately, I have the old .apk files backed up onto my laptop, and other places, using the excellent Air Droid application which also installs .apks over WiFi)
What I don't understand is the totally clumsy method of selecting text on the screen. Do Microsoft have some kind of 'patent' on click-hold-drag to highlight? Android has click-hold to get beginning and end markers around a word; click-hold-drag each marker to the start/end of the text you want; press-CntrlC; click the 'done' icon at the top of the screen. (If there's a better way, somebody please tell me.)
Android is great for consuming content, which was probably Google's thinking in the first place, and I now surf the net and type El Reg comments on my Transformer. The cloudy goodness is wonderful with my data appearing on all my devices - I type my shopping list on the Asus Transformer and it appears on my phone, great :) For anything more than typing short text files, I'd want a laptop or desktop every time, running Microsoft Office (or FOSS/Mac/Linux equivalent). I've tried Polaris, it's a pain and has shortfalls.
Can you hear the hiss ......
... of escaping air from inside the inflatable structure, or do you need to go outside to listen for it?
Note: You won't be able to put that thing in a bucket of water to look for leaks.
Posted in Review: Google Nexus 4
Bug-gers
"The Nexus 4 is affected by a current kernel bug which causes excessive battery drain by stopping the device sleeping properly. Should be fixed with the next update."
I don't understand why this sort of thing happens. This is the kind of problem that can be caught by giving it to any reasonably experienced person for a couple of day and then asking them, "what do you think of it?"
Two days after buying my Asus Transformer Tab, I had found three 'bugs' that were simple, obvious and annoying. After the next firmware update, those bugs were still there. I suspect that the developers (and managers) are under pressure to get the product released to a timescale, not to a quality level.
Chinese whispers
If a user outside China and a user inside China had a conversation involving 'sensitive' subjects, I wonder if they'd see the same words on their screens. It would be an interesting experiment to perform; if you could find anyone inside China who was brave/crazy enough to volunteer.
Posted in Cisco sued by East Carolina University
Cliche me this
I thought that 'Tomorrow starts here', 'The future starts here', etc had been used as marketing catchphrases all over the place and had become cliches.
Posted in Robo-baby Diego-san shows creepy mimicry
Even more creepy .....
.... is that it's walking around with the umbilical cord still attached.
Sounds like a good deal??
"... more cost effective choices that include "using alternative and free to use software".
I know people who have 'free to use' software that they obtained from 'alternative' sources. Is this a similar thing?
"there is no obligation to buy stuff from the Redmond software giant though, and under the terms of the deal they will not be penalised for using an alternative."
Some negotiating genius managed to get Microsoft to allow schools to use non-Microsoft products without paying a penalty to Microsoft? Just like I persuaded Ford to sell me a car and not pay a penalty if I fitted it with some cheap Vauxhall car mats?
Do Microsoft routinely impose these sorts of conditions on bulk-buy customers, because it sounds like they do.
Re: Splitter
The People's Judean Front are the ones to join, if you like social events.
@Dr. 81 Re: Splutter!
Dr. Chen is a double doctor. I wonder if he has a TARDIS? Do you?
P.S. For what it's worth, I consider the man who prescribes my medication to be a 'qualified medical practitioner' (and not a particularly particularly bright one). You da real doc, boffin and all.
@AC 07:40 Re: "We adhere to the laws of the countries in which we operate."
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
Do you remember when Yahoo gave the identity of a Chinese man to the Chinese authorities, because he had made a statement that was critical of the Chinese government. Well, that act was illegal in China, so the man was treated very harshly. In Thailand, you can be imprisoned for any criticism of the monarchy. Do you think Twitter should obey Thai court orders to reveal identities of users who criticise the Thai monarchy?
So, try to learn from history. Twitter is a US company and will give out user information only if ordered to do so by a US court order. If you don't like or agree with the general principles of US law, in terms of what is an 'offence', then use a service based in your own country, or one who's laws you agree with.
Find out who signed the petition ......
... then go and ring their doorbell repeatedly and continuously. They'll understand and respect your position.
Re: " bonk-to-scoff"
I'm having mental images that I don't want to talk about. Thank you.
Re: Immature is as immature does
As to 'profanity' - look up the meaning.
It also passed the Tourette test.
Re: @GW -- P.S.
Remember to tell him how to change the stored image on a Kodachrome slide using electronic methods.
I'm wondering ...
"The school offered to let her use a lanyard without an RFID tag, ..."
What would be the point of that?
Adversity breeds ingenuity
I'm sure the El Reg commentards will come up with many useful and ingenious suggestions.
On e-bay, a 1.5KVA (continuous rating) diesel generator can be had, brand new, for £365. A brand new 5KVA generator is going for £650. Equivalent second hand ones would be cheaper, obviously.
These could be used for the outdoor power tools and maybe also an indoor immersion heater to provide a large quantity of hot water for use later in the day . Etc, etc ........
"Announced examples include ....."
It's all cutting edge stuff and highly relevant to driving a car. Oh, ........
"... police initially went on a wild goose chase .."
Why on earth did they think it was a wild goose that was involved?
Re: "consumers" or "customers"?
Are you saying that people who are poor/oppressed should not be a marketing target for advanced mobile comms/data devices? If not, why not? Do you want them to be left alone in their poverty and oppression? Maybe they should be left as they are as an example to us rich folk for what can happen when things go wrong?
What are you saying and what do you actually want to happen?
"crowing like a chanticleer "
That should be 'crowing like Chanticleer', i.e. the name of a character, the rooster/cockerel in The Canterbury Tales.
"It was shining and so beautiful....."
So they hooked it and dragged it to the surface where it died. Hmmmmmm.
