Posts by Martin 6

@Paul 98

We had a lecture from the nice man from the police and we asked how could we prove that random numbers weren't an encrypted file? His response was that basically it would be ok genuine researchers at a university to have random numbers.

So if you aren't one of Ross Anderson's students then it would be a good idea to delete any digital camera pictures where you left the lens cap on.

Except that having deleted but recoverable pictures on your hard drive isn't a defence if you are a knowledgeable person (ie. know how to undelete them)

You could scrub the drive, but having a pattern of ranom bits written to the unused blocks would also be suspicous.

Probably safest not to have a computer or a camera these days if you live in the UK.

@MinionZero

WWII is exactly the reason we need this level of comms monitoring.

Since the RIPA was passed in 2000 we have seen a huge drop in the incidence of war with Germany over the previous century.

The introduction of ID cards will extend this and will lead to a further reduction in the incidence of Viking raids over the previous millenia.

Or out of range

There have been a lot of people who are in the backcountry or out at sea that have been rescued by a txt when there wasn't enough signal for a call.

There was one in the caribbean who texted their parents in the UK, who then called the US coastguard.

Going to make war movies crap

Cue 80s power-balled soundtrack, cut to rounded figure of fighter pilot as he pulls on his thinkgeek T-shirt (XXXL) and sits down at his monitor.

See him reach for the joystick with one hand while simultaneously grabbing the can of red bull with the other.

is this allowed

iPhone don't let you have any sort of VM or runtime on their platform. Even game roms are banned.

They aren't about to let .Net in - even if they do have a great deal of love and respect for Microsoft.

@CODECs shouldn't be patentable

That's no so much the problem, if you beleive that a particular patented CODEC is worth paying for rather than using an unpatented one - fine thats a business decision.

The problem is allowing patented CODECs (and file formats) to be adopted as ISO standards. It's like adopting the metre, everyone agreeing to use it and then deciding to charge them.

Britain got their first ....

So the solution is obviously to tax all existing broadband to pay for running gigabit fibre to some goat herd in the Pyrenees.

Now if you could only find a large national telecoms provider willing to undertake a task of such benefit to the community, and a politician courageous enough to give them billions of euro to do it.

@Are we entering a brave new world?

No, every public company fills in this form, it's just legal botty-covering.

Without it anyone who buys a share of MSFT stock can sue them if they had known about anything which might affect their business and hadn't disclosed it.

The more 'threats' you put in the filling the more covered you are.

Clever anti-aircraft statergy

Pick unused bit of mountain/desert

Pour a bit of concrete

Cover with signs saying "secret underground nuclear plant"

Watch as enemy waste time bombing it.

Optional:

Surround with anti-aircraft missiles.

Blow expensive enemy bombers and pilots out of the sky.

between one and 25 PCs

>Windows XP Mode has been designed for small and mid-market customers, defined as

>running between one and 25 PCs

I understand how you can design it for at least one PC - the design for those running less than one PC is a bit tricky.

But how exactly is the code designed for only for those running upto 25 PCs? Is there a call in Win32, getNumberOfMachinesInCompany() that I'm missing out on?

Does virtualisation not work if I own 26PCs?

Better than a remake

Having remade all the decent 60s movies they have started on the 70s.

Taking of Pelham 123 was 1974 so we only have 5 years to wait for the Alien remake (with Denzel Washington and car chases) anyway.

Canada's is easier

The canadian one is something like;

1, The role of the federal government is (a) to serve the people. (b) serve the country, (c) be nice to kittens and first nations people (d) all of the above.

Repeat question for The Provincial Government, the RCMP, the Army, Revenue Canada etc.

If you can complete it without laughing you're in.

But you do have to swear an oath to the Queen, presumably making Canadian immigrants loyaler subjects than the Daily Mail readers in the UK

It's close

6 is a number, 147 is a number - so the answer was at least a number.

When the unemployment figures are announced to be a 'suffusion of yellow' you know they are really screwed up.

Is this enough?

Is 16 planes really enough to protect us from neighbours that put bottles of bleach in their bins?

Could we perhaps donate our aluminium saucepans to allow more fighters to be built?

Remember there is a war on!

No loss

None of the beta testers were ever going to pay for a copy. All the employed ones would have it as part of some empower/msdn/bizspark membership, the independants would 'obtain' a copy by the normal means

And with textbooks

Amazon is looking to move into the lucrative US textbook market with kindle.

Does this mean you will have to keep buying each years new edition of the textbook if you want to keep your revision notes?

@Hang on...

Thats exactly the point, imagine your website with your data, controlled by and licenced to you.

@Government "success"

Any response where The government wasn't dragged out into the street and guillotined by a torch wielding mob - is pretty much the definition of success these days.

Can't wait until we next win the ashes (don't laugh - it could happen) to see if cricket will be added to the filter.

@Do all you guys ever do is moan

And complain about the weather.

@The usual bollocks.

You missed the bit where the spreadsheet was a photo of a screendump printed out and placed on a wooden table before being pasted into a spreadsheet.

Not the real problem

Even if you pick another browser MS is still going to have it's update and genuine disadvantage sites require IE, it's home page will require Silverlight. So online banking , shopping and government sites will continue to be IE only.

The EU could simply require commercial sites to be standards compliant so other browsers including those for the blind can work with them. That's what government bodies are for.

@You get what you vote for

Bit confused about what these MPs are for?

You vote for the president you want (Blue torch vs Red rose), whoever wins gets to make all the rules, if he resigns the vice-president for that side gets the job.

Why do you need to pay 650 people to just sit on benches to remind you of the score?

Couldn't you simply have a post-it note on the doors of Westminster saying red team=349, blue team=196 at a great saving in expenses.

I commend my idea to the house !

In other news

The register was blocked when it was detected that it started with the same address "http://www." as a child porn site.

@Aerodynamic?

The market for these is second cars, that means soccer mom taking the kids to school and doing the shopping. The car makers have just spent 10years and a squillion $ convincing them that driving anything other than an SUV will cause their children to be squashed and eaten by paedos.

It also means that the price/performance only has to compare with small SUVs which isn't exactly difficult

@Jon Thompson

Suppose a republican billionaire buys the rights to Obama's book and tells Amazon to delete all the copies of it? Or Mitsubishi don't like the portrayal of their aircraft in a movie about Pearl Harbour and pay netflix to delete everyones copy of it.

Sufficiently Orwellian ?

@Richard IV

I agree, but we should probably lock up Sean Bean anyway - just to be on the safe side.

@Steve Swann

>why not

Cos they haven't got a womb - where's the fetus going to gestate, you going to keep it in a box?

@So if thats the case

@Indianna Jones - The swastikas are generally removed from comics/toys/computer games but not the movies.

They do get rather 'Germanic' about the rules - although it's actually an allied occupation law.

Even postage stamps in collections or railway tickets/timetables from that era have little black circles over the swastika when displayed in museums, and the tails markings of German aircraft are normally painted out.

@Inevitable

>I would rather see the UK's contribution go towards our own numerous problems

It does - thats why projects like this are so expensive.

All the contracts for the project are doled out to the member countries in proportion to their contribution.

The bids naturally go to companies with experience of bidding for government contracts (cough)BAe(cough) who then sub the job out to someone who actually knows how to build the magnets.

So the magnets are built by one company but they have 10 different 'customers' managing the purchases and all taking a cut.

Viewing?

And you view the pictures in 3D how exactly?

@GPL.

Opensource is about sharing and getting some benefit back in turn

Microsoft use the BSD TCP stack - doesn't seem to have benefited BSD very much.

The GPL is like me borrowing your car, but in return I promise to give you a lift whenever you need it. BSD is like me borrowing your car and selling it.

And as to the programmers aren't lawyers - see how well that works with Microsoft,

I didn't know I needed a client licence as well as a server licence and a licence for the desktop and he cytrix session and Exchange and the SQLserver instance. I just bought the computer - I'm not a lawyer.

And yet..

When these same shops 'find' porn on some celebrity's machine they are an absolutely unimpeachable chain of evidence.

>investing in the economy

@Seriously, who cares? The money could be put to far better use investing in the economy.

In aerospace companies perhaps?

A bargain

When compared to BAe or Westland jobs though.

@'Bout time

Another view is that this, along with cuts to science missions, talk of merging NASA with the military's space efforts means that the future of Nasa is a wing of the USAF devoted to pointless but headline grabbing Man in Space publicity stunts..

So it's back to the 60s but this time playing 'our Germans are smarter than their Germans '- against the Chinese.

@ust to clarify...

Well there is also the costs of all the new hardware to handle all the new customers in other industries that all the publicity is going to bring in .

Alternatively

Download Ubuntu live CD for free.

Steal colleagues USB key, or pick up a government one from the pub car park.

Select install to usb stick

Spend $80 on beer

@John Bailey

Like Apple wouldn't sell an iPod for 50% more than another MP3 player and lock you into an exclusive drm'ed format.

My bet is at least £299 and only available on one network, with a >>£299/year contract.

@Godspeed

It's not a religous thing, it's to overcome the lack of numeracy in american schools.

The speedo on the shuttle is calibrated in 'slow, moving a bit, weeeee, god that's fast and F@@@ me. So godspeed was simply telling them to turn the dial to the third click.

This is why we need Windows7

Finally it's only with Microsoft's revolutionary .net technology that lots of people in different places can see a grainy low resolution black and white moving images in their living rooms.

This is going to revolutionise entertainment and may be the end of the kinescope industry.

Good ad for blackberry

So this pretty much demonstrates that Blackberry's encryption is good and that they don't allow random 3rd party phone-tappers into their servers.

If the government doesn't need your help in spying on you - then you have to worry!

Last laugh....

So he now has a criminal record which will show up if he ever wants to go near a school or work for the council. Not prosecuted or convicted of course, but having been arrested means they wont employ him, or let him coach the football team - better to be safe, think of the children, no smoke without fire.....

And he can't enter the US without the long process of getting a Visa, even assuming he is granted a visa - after all he is a terrorist suspect. So if he works in IT or aerospace or any high tech company he is probably going to get fired now - because he can't easily visit US customers or conferences.

And an arrest under the terrorist act is going to put a little red star on his ID database entry, lets hope his number plate is never read anywhere near a demo.

Become a PCSO, earn valuable prizes - ruin peoples lives.

(not anonymous - cos I already left )

@@I didn't even get as far as not rolling out Vista yet!

Haven't you realised the whole business world has changed ? You can't go writing memos and adding up sales in Office 2000 as if it was the olden days when business were profitable.

The new features of office 10 are vital for dealing with modern business needs, in Excel cells are default filled in red and all $values are automatically negative , the new Word has one button redundancy notice generator an Outlook now automatically sends your CC details to Nigeria .

Remember they're American

So they get as far as the first McD's eat a weeks worth of food and become so obese they have to be driven around in Hummers.