Re: Moron thieves

these days it would be a $4M fine for ripping CDs he owns to MP3

Re: Read into that comment what you will.

As the great Nelson Muntz commented, Ah Ah -

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/microsoft-campus-hit-by-thieves-only-ipads-stolen

Re: Netbook market

Exactly - these aren't notebook replacements, they are tablets with a keyboard

They are also (at least in the USA) 1/4 the price of Microsoft's surface and seem to do pretty much the same.

The Samsung is also 1/5 the price of a mac book air if you just want to hang around in starbucks looking cool - you an always buy an Apple logo sticker for it

Re: Thats the real issue..

And it wasn't - the fine was because nobody in the organisation had even bothered to give any thought to protecting the details of the people they are caring for.

If they had sent a regular DVD of the video footage but kept the identifying details and names/addresses encrypted or anonymised they would be fine.

The need for security isn't exactly unknown in medical data. We generate test files for CT scanners and have to anonymise the "patient info" in the DICOM file of a density wedge before the hospitals will accept it!

Re: A confused old fart writes....

they just forget a field for "species=cow"

Re: Right we get the point but

I think you're forgetting who a conservative PM works for

Re: Or we could try to fix it

Software patents aren't always bad:

I invent a mechanism and implement it in cogs and gears = patent no problem

I implement the same thing in analogue electronics = patent

I do the same thing in a DSP or FPGA and that's software - without software patents anybody can copy it.

Re: Apropos of aluminium

However the IUPAC says 2 i's

They do however bow down to the forces of ignorance and suggest spelling sulphur with an "f" - filistines.

Re: Its the USA isn't it?

So just fit a gun to your drone and the Oregon politicians will be falling over themselves to defend your right to it

Re: A good place to start

Prior art can be anything, there is even a famous case of a Donald Duck cartoon from 50years ago invalidating a patent.

The problem is that the USPTO only checks for prior art in its own patents before granting. They take the view that it's upto the court to deal with any arguements. Although the rules change next month.

The trouble with going to court is that if you lose - you lose big. RIM (blackberry) lost in court to an obvious patent troll who claimed any push messaging to a mobile device. It cost them $$$Billions and meant that any responsible CEO had to settle with a troll or risk losing the company, and a shareholder lawsuit.

Newegg recently refused to settle with a troll who claimed shopping carts - but they could only do this because they are owned by the CEO and he can say "screw patent trolls"

Re: So now we (the taxpayers)...

I don't think the money will get as far as the people making the fart app.

There are a lot of creative consultants and PR people to pay first

re: close to customers

That was my problem with a web based startup

establishing an office in everyone's living room

Re: @What do any of these companies actually do?

And an app to vote on which end of your egg to open

Because if you were located in leeds or manchester or newcastle you might be forgotten about by your friends in westminster when the next load of cash was being handed out

Re: Why should this be necessary?

And what happens when they go bust and their hosting company turns the power off, the landlord wont let you in to access your servers and the company they leased the hardware from retrieves it and sells the drives containing your data on ebay?

Re: Russians - hard as nails, not fazed at all

Have you been injured at work by a hypersonic space rock?... you could be entitled to compensation

Re: Not a meterorite@Nigel 11

However - extending the same statistics to just Cambridgeshire suggests that people from East Anglia are the brainiest in the world

Re: Not a meterorite@Nigel 11

I hate people who make generalisations about people - them and the Belgians

Re: Conspiracy Theory

God frustrated at Tetris

Re: Mercator

It also has a large east-west extent and since most things flying around the solar system are in the plane they are going to be going sideways on the map

Re: Helen Boaden

When they stopped making programs and started commissioning them from outside companies the only job left was producer (in the movie sense) but since nobody in the "creative" parts was made redundant they ended up making everybody a manager/producer

Re: No i?

And for everyone else who was distracted by the whooshing sound of a joke going over their head

The BBC used to produce serious documentaries, funny sitcoms, expensive drama, decent science programs etc. While the commercial iTV produced cheap bargain-house-price-cooking-with-celebs type crap.

Now that the BBC's 97 channels produces nothing but ....

Re: Why not....

No - a real movie plot would have the french guy from MI/Leon/Ronin hack into the car's computer with a laptop (that oddly has only a 16x4 character display) while dangling from a helicopter

Re: 2 Year Elec Eng Project

Mine was based on flint, we didn't have any of this new-fangled bronze technology back then

Re: Mix Tapes

And where are those bands now ? Gone

No showaddywaddy, no Roxy music, no Genesis (well ok that one was self inflicted, and anybody who made a girl a Genesis mix tape in the 70s was probably going to be dissapointed)

Proof that home taping killed music !

Re: Chickens coming home to roost

And you have a civil service recruitment process that considers "diversity" to mean you invite old chums from both Oxford AND Cambridge to suggest any suitable chaps

Re: Out of work oap

Sorry you fail the vetting because you have a police caution for hacking the school's admin system when you were 11

Re: Smashing Pope

Your opinion of the loving mercy of the mother church might be slightly different if you are gay or a woman

Re: Take them to the cleaners, Benny!

>that's lasted through the centuries

The egyptian pharaos lasted longer, so that's Ra 1 : JC 0

Even the original line-up, Yawheh 1.0, are doing pretty well despite 2000 years of the church trying to wipe them out.

>asking nothing in return

Other than would you mind transferring all your gold to Spain, converting to our new religion and giving us your continent.

Re: Smashing Pope

I assume you are male, heterosexual and live in a rich country then?

Re: The Church is definitely not a business.

>I think he is a Jew

There is a certain precedent for a Jew doing quite well in the christian church

Of course you have to be crucified first .....

Re: Alpha....

But Itanium was designed from the ground up..... - BY A COMPETITOR

It's like Fedex deciding not to continue buying trucks, but accept UPS's kind offer to ship your stuff with them.

Re: History repeating itself?

In about 2005 HP flew us all out to their Bristol HQ to try and sell us this new inhouse cloud flexible dynamic computing clustering concept they had invented.

It consisted of being able to copy a drive image (slowly) from a SAN and reboot to gain an extra webserver or database server machine when you needed it. And this from the company that had incorporated the clustering technology of Tandem, Compaq and Dec !

Re: Good riddance?

> a halfwit without the ability to empathise with people of slightly differeing viewpoints.

Indeed there is no right and wrong answer and always two sides to every arguement.

My point of view was that Li-ion batteries were too unreliable to fit to a 787 but my colleagues assured me that they had prayed and truly had faith that they would be safe - so in a spirit of ecumenical tolerance I went along with their plans.

Now I hope to battle those people in health and safety who believe in this dis-proven "theory" of gravity and insist on safety railing.

Re: Look at our new v9...I mean v10 model!

You make a thoughtful and interesting point sir.

Now what have you done with the real Eadon?

There is a new technology that allows you to burn carbon in oxygen while generating less carbon-dioxide?

Re: twisted Pair...

But at least you could re-use and recycle the tokens. With aethernet everything is just dumped into the aether - polluting it

Re: Linux updates just work?

Of course on VMS we didn't even need to reboot to update the OS

On a VaxCluster you could replace the entire machine without the users noticing

But that's a cute little unix toy you have there ....

now you kids get off my lawn.

Re: Born Again'ers

The puritans left England because they wanted to persecute - they wanted to live somewhere where they could have absolute control over the way people lived and worshipped.

And the first place they went to try this was Amsterdam ????

If that was the IQ they started with - I think America has done rather well!

Re: Alternative title:

>When the value of the shares are down you have to pay some dividends, no matter how disgusting it is

Or you use your cash to buy those shares cheap

Paying dividends says to the market "we can't think of anything productive to do with this money - so we are giving it back to the shareholders so they can invest it somewhere else"

If you are a utility or a life insurance company that makes sense - it normally marks the beginning of the end for a tech company.

Re: Watchdogs with teeth please

But how would you tell if the operators weren't following the rules?

You would have to fit CCTV to watch them .....

Re: " If you hate the place so much, why don't you leave?)"

Can we start a Whitehouse petition to have Eadon repatriated?

Re: ice giants

You know who I pray to? Joe Pesci. ...

he looks like a guy who can get things done. Joe Pesci doesn't fuck around. In fact, Joe Pesci came through on a couple of things that God was having trouble with.

George Carlin

Re: 666

>Or have I missed some very subtle trolling here? ;-)

It's not in the original - only the "cash-in" sequel (The one with the upbeat happy ending and all the violence removed)

Re: Good riddance?

> A person showing up at a job interview and stating that he believes that a book written quite some time ago is the words of God, simply does not qualify as intelligent.

Surely the Holy book of K&R should still be revered? - even if you do use C++

Re: Broadcast

It's wasteful to use up all those megahertz sending pointless "celebrity diy house price on the attic" programmes to millions of TVs that are turned off.

Somebody is going to sell the frequencies for $$$$ so they can be used efficently for sending "OMG some celeb just said LOL" tweets to millions of phones.