* Posts by Adrian Midgley 1

502 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

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NASA agent faces heat for 'degrading' moon rock sting during which grandmother wet herself

Adrian Midgley 1

And the NHS scores

again.

Keep it, it is good.

New satellites could cause catastrophic space junk collisions

Adrian Midgley 1

Plugging satellites together

So there are fewer, larger, satellites would appear to be a strategy.

And adding Lego bricks of thruster clusters on each end could maintain function.

We thought we'd build one space station, then Clarke indicated 3 so let's head back toward that.

The Register's guide to protecting your data when visiting the US

Adrian Midgley 1

However, their direction has changed...

Hitherto the nice helpful world-wise ones would tell the paranoid foreigner-haters how to behave in the expectation that all the way up to the top of the Administration they would be recognised as correct.

Munich may dump Linux for Windows

Adrian Midgley 1

Time spent on Windows is no more free

than time spent on any other operating system and desktop.

Nor is it, in my personal and business experience, less time on Windows than on Linux.

'I'm innocent!' says IT contractor on trial after Office 365 bill row spiraled out of control

Adrian Midgley 1

Re: Based on assumptions...

Not officially the government I think.

Adrian Midgley 1

Re: Devils and details.

Charities should be using FLOSS..

HMS Queen Elizabeth is delayed, Ministry of Defence confesses

Adrian Midgley 1

Re: The French

Rafael is quite pretty, and I gather works on carriers.

Adrian Midgley 1

Rather than penalty clause

it may be that they do not promise or propose to do things that are not yet well worked-out.

However in (deterrence of and actions a bit short of) war, building ships for the last war may not work well.

Huge doesn't seem to be the problem - "steel is cheap, and air is free" - but for warships, even rather large ones, making them smaller targets than they might be is probably beneficial.

Deadly Tesla smash probe: No recall needed, says Uncle Sam

Adrian Midgley 1

Would you like to libel any

particular one, to add to Tesla?

Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo fit to go: Europe's GPS-like network switches on

Adrian Midgley 1

Geolocation

Old chum.

Climate change bust up: We'll launch our own damn satellites if Trump pulls plug – Gov Brown

Adrian Midgley 1

Well done California

Vandenberg is federal, presumably, so which other launch facilities are to hand?

Adrian Midgley 1

Bad idea

Prepare for the worst. Relax and be pleased if it does not happen.

Labour's Jeremy Corbyn wants high speed broadband for all. Wow, original idea there

Adrian Midgley 1

Do you feel the job of HM Loyal Opposition is to

oppose, and therefore he and the party he leads should be against high speed broadband for all?

It is a socialist idea, as is a flat rate postal service and the provision of water.

Adrian Midgley 1

what level of support would indicate success to you?

The Labour voters were 2:1 in favour of remaining. How much more do you demand?

The Tory voters were 1:2 against - with the leader of their party telling them to vote for. You think the leader of the Opposition is going to influence that very much?

Adrian Midgley 1

ID cards - useless and expensive...

I was struck by the last effort to have us buy ID cards and be obliged to use them by one thing overall - that the government which proposed to require them would not accept them as ID or require that anyone else did.

(It was also notable that the thing didn't offer any prospect of doing anything else for the carrier - not an NHS card, not a driving licence, not an entry card to a workplace for a civil servant...)

I actually suggested a law was required first - that when an organisation requested ID, that if the subject presented a UK ID (card which had not been repudiated and looked like them) an offence would be committed by asking for any other form of or additional ID.

That would have granted convenience and usefulness to the holder.

No chance.

Adrian Midgley 1

Which other matters does your headline writer

want there to be no policy on, or a policy simply opposite that of someone else's?

Teen in the dock on terror apologist charge for naming Wi-Fi network 'Daesh 21'

Adrian Midgley 1

To have a plausible backronym,

almost anyone sufficient sense must have.

World-leading heart hospital 'very, very lucky' to dodge ransomware hit

Adrian Midgley 1

You overestimate the familiarity

Nhs people have with such things.

Swiss, geez: Robo-hooker coffee shop to be erected in Geneva

Adrian Midgley 1

Gynoid

is surely the operating system to expect.

(Gynoids were always going to precede androids)

Capita STILL hasn't delivered usable Army recruitment IT system

Adrian Midgley 1

Not really a solutions or software company are they?

Rather, they are a company good at writing bids and proposals in terms which have become an intricate game themselves.

When they get a contract, then they go looking for someone who might fulfill it.

Today the web was broken by countless hacked devices – your 60-second summary

Adrian Midgley 1

Running your own DNS and using hosts files

down to a local level seems more useful today than last week does it not?

Adrian Midgley 1

Heaving to is the analogy there.

Not making progress, but not sinking or breaking, is weathering the storm.

Once the storm abates progress resumes.

#philology

You work so hard on coding improvements... and it's all undone by a buggy component

Adrian Midgley 1

Another closed source shill?

Open Source: it is impossible to be prevented from checking it or having it checked;

Closed source: it is impossible to check it unless you closed it, and impossible to know it has been checked or corrected.

NHS patients must be taught to share their data, says EU lobby group

Adrian Midgley 1

Or if it were a collaborative effort by citizens

and agencies for the good of everyone?

So unfashionable now, alas.

Or if it were administered by competent and honest administrators.

Or perhaps even competent /or/ honest ones?

Better to export questions and gather answers, giving each citizen a monthly account of who asked what, under what power I'd pretext.

US reactor breaks fusion record – then runs out of cash and shuts down

Adrian Midgley 1

What is its maximum performance?

Great that it set the record, but the requirement is a lot more than that, no?

Time for a bigger newer machine.

But is it safe? Uncork a bottle of vintage open-source FUD

Adrian Midgley 1

Re: The GPL is the biggest obstacle I've seen to adoption

It isn't remote, it is absent.

Silicon Valley’s top exorcist rushed off his feet as Demons infest California

Adrian Midgley 1

Oh my

Oh my oh my.

UK copyright troll weeps, starts 20-week stretch in the cooler for beating up Uber driver

Adrian Midgley 1

but these days you

would be even more likely to be correct.

Brave telco giants kill threat of decent internet service in rural North Carolina

Adrian Midgley 1

Social perspective

the job is to connect everyone. That's what the money is for.

NHS health apps project plan: Powered by your medical records

Adrian Midgley 1

Re: There is no security issue

Nearly broken by Tatcher-Major...

Fixed by Blar - it to a lot better.

Now being broken under Cameron-May. The Liberal stub slowed it for a while.

UK nixes Land Registry sale

Adrian Midgley 1

Dematerialisation was followed by fraud, and then to combat that,

by another identity check system which costs each user £100 if they can find someone to do it.

Not really a big usability jump there.

US Marine Corps to fly F-35s from HMS Queen Lizzie as UK won't have enough jets

Adrian Midgley 1

Airbases...

Are big, so one probably isn't lying down on the bit that gets hit, and work with large holes in them.

Sony wins case over pre-installed Windows software

Adrian Midgley 1

Suppressed by a supplier though ...

thus tending to change the pattern of purchase.

An option which would not be ridiculous would be:-

Press A to accept and complete installation of your pre installed bundled software or

Press B to permanently remove pre installed software, you will need an operating system.

Offering to generate a code to hold to demonstrate deletion would also be good for a consumer.

Feeble Phobos flaking as it falls to Mars

Adrian Midgley 1

You think solid rock is easier to mine

than crunchy powdery stuff loosely held together?

Removing it from the elevator path might be the way to go.

Officials, lack of kit to blame for 'critical delays' in sex abuse inquiry

Adrian Midgley 1

Almost as if we do not have

a civil service or consulting industry of a size and of competencies fit for the end of the 20th Century.

New booze guidelines: We'd rather you didn't enjoy yourselves

Adrian Midgley 1

England drinks more

than is good for it.

Having offended everyone else in the world, Linus Torvalds calls own lawyers a 'nasty festering disease'

Adrian Midgley 1

He has a point, and the quote is subtly different from the story

and headline.

NHS slaps private firm Health IQ for moving Brits' data offshore

Adrian Midgley 1

They would not have cracked it because

it is impossible.

If you don't collect the data together, but instead send the queries out, you might make some use of it, but that doesn't satisfy the centralists.

Top digital Eurocrat issues non-denial about hyperlink non-tax

Adrian Midgley 1

Weirder than usual - from something that has not happened

to a tirade about therefore how bad the people who have not done it are for doing the sort of thing they have not done.

Its a club.

The members - the States - make the rules and the officers run it under them.

UK IT consultant subject to insane sex ban order mounts legal challenge

Adrian Midgley 1

Re: "He was found not guilty, therefore he is innocent"

You may be on sticky ground if you were to state that someone who has been found not guilty of a crime is not innocent of it.

IANAL.

French, German ministers demand new encryption backdoor law

Adrian Midgley 1

They'll need a new name though, because

private key doesn't adequately describe a key which is not private.

Paper mountain, hidden Brexit: How'd you say immigration control would work?

Adrian Midgley 1

this is an effort to apply logic to

something where logic is not involved.

And really. it is better to leave the thickos to try to solve it than to do their homework for them.

ICO wades in after GP doxxes woman to her estranged ex-partner

Adrian Midgley 1

IT Managers are outside

Practices, the NHS having been very very keen to take that over.

But it doesn't seem to be IT related.

Adrian Midgley 1

Damages would be civil, and for damage

no?

Perlan 2: The glider that will slip the surly bonds of Earth – and touch the edge of space

Adrian Midgley 1

Weight...

Not absolutely necessarily...

Adrian Midgley 1

Rotating orbital tether: a budget elevator

A long cable with clever hooks at each end and a central mass could be used to pick up such a glider, and by carefully choosing when to let go route it onward. Engines still required, but less mass.

For a fictional treatment see Neal Stephenson's Seveneves.

Australia hires former head of controversial UK care.data plan

Adrian Midgley 1

Well, he needed

a new job, because the old one was not going to continue.

Follows a lot of English doctors out to the Colonies, but is he part of the solution?

Or the problem.

Milk IN the teapot: Innovation or abomination?

Adrian Midgley 1

Mess tin tea

where it is cold outside adding milk over the flame may be reasonable.

Microsoft to rip up P2P Skype, killing native Mac, Linux apps

Adrian Midgley 1

Interception: interesting

I believe anything you tell me of course, but in order to convince other people, would you share a demo' of it, or the recipe, or somesuch, please?

An anniversary to remember: The world's only air-to-air nuke was fired on 19 July, 1957

Adrian Midgley 1

Valves...

Which are not that bothered.

And gears and bicycle chains.

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