"The White House agrees … that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties,"
It sounds like somebodies contract is up..
Posts by Katie Saucey
452 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Mar 2011
White House comes out in favor of legal mobe unlocking
Pirate Bay 'seeks asylum' in, er, 'North Korea'
German boffins turn ALCOHOL into hydrogen at low temp
Thursday 28th February 2013 06:55 GMT
Re: 24 litres per second?
You forget about the topper, the CO2 produced (mol for mol) is the same amount as the H2. Which problem does this H2 transportation 'solution' address again? Oh right. Interesting stuff for sure, but definite 'rat-hole' territory for any direct commercial energy product (unless of course they find a catalyst to convert the CO2 to diamonds and O2).
Chinese Army: US hacks us so much, I'm amazed you can read this
Thursday 28th February 2013 20:03 GMT 
Very disturbing
Being a decadent lazy westerner I skipped the article and went straight for the video. From what I understand Chinas' weaponized bear technology is decades more advanced than we thought. Although on the upside once they invade I can smoke at work, so where can I email my user/passwords to hurry this along?
Strategic SIEGE ROBOTS defeated by 'heavily intoxicated' man, 62
Larry Ellison buys airline
Thursday 28th February 2013 08:17 GMT 
Isn't it obvious?
Since he's based in the Pacific, his first acts as owner will be a new route to connect with Java, and a name change to Sun Airways (maybe Solaris for short?). Guess it's possible though he's only doing this to hang with the cool "I break records" gazillionairs (and have airlines and space stuff) like Branson and Musk. Let's just hope his airline will have a better security record than Oracle....
Apple CEO Cook's investor-meeting reveal: 'Dog bites man'
Thursday 28th February 2013 07:09 GMT
Sideshow Bob..
"....spiced up that word-for-word repetition with a sly reference to Sideshow Bob"
I agree with the Bob reference. Cook should have been wapped by multiple rakes at random times throughout the presentation, this would have at least attracted attention from the washroom shortage question.
Stop saying 'Cyber Pearl Harbor,' RSA boss pleads
Wednesday 27th February 2013 10:46 GMT
Re: Cuber Purl Hurbor
"Also:
> a transactional risk engine based on feedback from 50 billion data points
WTF does that shite even mean?"
I assume it means 50 billion more tax dollars are needing for further greasing of this "risk engine" +supporting think tanks and consultants. That's probably low balling though, I hear the data point/dollar exchange has been shit lately.
Wednesday 27th February 2013 02:30 GMT 
I would agree with Mr. Coviello the 'Cyber Pearl Harbor' is a stupid metaphor, but that's the exact phase every single news outlet will be screaming when some major shit does hit the fan, ( hopefully such an event won't be such a completely unmitigated disaster/surprise that the black hats are tweeting "tora tora tora!" ).
Yet more world+dog patent suits, this time over encryption
World+Dog don't care about climate change, never have done
Nvidia plans new 'reptile HQ' to match its IT aggressiveness
Sony promises PC-based PlayStation 4 for Christmas
Thursday 21st February 2013 12:32 GMT
Re: Well hello there...
" we'll receive PC-like games to a console"
Good luck with that. PC games such as the Civilization series would be a nightmare minus mouse and keyboard (shortcuts). FPS ports to consoles and consoles back to PC also generally suck, mostly because of the lack of precision control on a console forced devs to include the lazy gamer "auto aim" button (and associated strobe-like cross-hair so you know which enemy you might hit). I'll stick with the mouse and keyboard until direct thought interface comes out.
Chip daddy Mead: 'A bunch of big egos' are strangling science
Wednesday 20th February 2013 22:33 GMT
Re: The last I heard
"Innovation is indeed dead."
What? Just because Apple has been focusing on lawyering, don't paint everyone...
Couldn't resist. I disagree with "Innovation is indeed dead," though. A fair amount seems to be happening in material science lately, meta-materials come to mind, along with loads of other neat things that (may not outdo school shootings and political scandals for evening headlines), are to numerous to mention.
Agile development may be taught in Australian High Schools
Wednesday 20th February 2013 04:19 GMT
They'll get way off track..
..and will probably end up tied to vendors with an agenda. How about just a solid grounding in linear algebra, finite (series etc) and then calculus? I can't count the number of "comp-sci" graduates I know who, (for example) couldn't find roots/max/min of a function, and thought boundary conditions are something chicks at the bar set. After learning the math(s) skills, when the need eventually arises to write some (useful) code it'll come naturally. This sounds like it'll end with a lot of kids who know the menu bars of IDE_of_the_week and Adobe Creator (student edition). /ranting But what do what do I know? Maybe I'm just in a rotten mood.
The universe speaks: 'It's time to get off your rock!'
Saturday 16th February 2013 13:16 GMT
Re: Space Monkeys
"Though if we're going to be spending money, surely it's easier to work out ways to divert an asteroid than to move a chunk of civilisation into space."
How about shelling out the cash to actually spot the death rocks first! Last year NASA only got about 5.8 million for their asteroid survey, which I imagine is roughly equivalent to to that of our leaders dog grooming bills (possibly excluding the Queen).
Vertu-alised Android revealed at an all-too-real €7,900
Wednesday 13th February 2013 13:41 GMT
Re: "can survive a strike from a 110-gram ball bearing"
You're being to hard on the poor writers, it's not like there's a vast resource of free reference (copy and paste) material at their finger tips. </sarcasm>
Illiteracy aside, if the "50kg of pressure" is taken as the "arts major translation" of kgf/cm^2 then this is a pretty bold claim (that's roughly the total pressure at an ocean depth of 500m).
Rogue Squadron: Unit of X-wings Kickstarts in response to Death Star
$195 BEEELLION asteroid approaching Earth
NASA melts mysterious 'metal Martian flower' myth
Only way to stop the iPad: Flash-disk mutant SPEED FREAKS
Tuesday 12th February 2013 12:54 GMT 
WTF is with that bar chart?
Maybe it's just Monday and my caffeine/blood level is low.. but I can't figure out the x axis on this colourfully painted chart. The tittle is "Hybrid Possibilities", OK, I can see clearly there are many different products listed, but WTH does the length of the bar represent? A sales number? A relative market share or %? To further baffle me on closer inspection, I notice that there are 7 graduations..so 0 to 70 % total? 0 to 100 (in increments of 14.3??).
What am I missing here?
Pope resigns months after launching social networking effort
Australian Parliament issues summons to Apple, Microsoft, Adobe
Monday 11th February 2013 02:58 GMT
"They have got a growing number of retail outlets, which I am happy about—they are creating jobs locally; that is great—but surely those outlets do not cost $5.5 billion to maintain.”
A quick Google gives the number of Australian Apple stores as 18. Well, that's only ~300 000 000$/outlet, seems legit... I assume each store employs 5000-6000 people?
Curiosity photographs mysterious metal object on Martian rock
11-YEAR-OLD code wizard hacks Greedy RuneScape geeks
Friday 8th February 2013 18:33 GMT 
Newsflash!
People are retards, and will always cheat/take the easy way for profit (even if it's just Rune gold).
Also, WTF is with the hardware/games comment pages? Defaulting to a "most votes" ranking seems kind of pointless for the Reg forums. Since a fair % of comments generate further response/follow-up, most of the top voted comments are left displayed with no context. Basically to find out what's up, you need to click through to the "all comments". This would be done anyway if you had any interest in the discussion. This, leaving the "most votes" section at best, a waste of electrons, and at worst an inconsistent eyesore.
Paper computers: Not mere pulp fiction
Friday 8th February 2013 17:57 GMT 
I still like the paper..
..for novels, I find it much more relaxing reading a book as opposed to an ebook. When I comes to reference texts and manuals it's kind of a toss up. Code documentation was made for the screen and in most cases it's fine to read from the screen (especially since multi-monitor set ups are cheap these days), for some reason though, I think I'll always prefer my hard copy collection of CRC and Shaum's references (stained and tattered as they are).
Taiwan's Polytron promises see-through phones
Seagate squeezes out 4TB desktop monster
Thursday 7th February 2013 20:00 GMT
Re: Seagate has now produced 2 billion hard drives :(
I can only assume Seagate has learned the manufacturing ways of Western Digital then. I've pretty much got their RMA line on speed dial, and the banter with the rep is second nature now. "yup... yup... yes windlg failed it.. twice...here's my email..."
Thursday 7th February 2013 13:07 GMT
Re: But at what price
My first was an Amiga 500 add-on drive. About 80MB I think. At the time (1990 ish) we had to drive almost 300 km to Toronto to get one. Pretty sure it was upwards of 800CAN$ (my dad bought it for me). 80MB was incredible to me back then, as such, it's pissing me off to no end that I'm downloading a 158MB(!) printer firmware update package right now.
Now UK must look out for crappy SPACE weather - engineers
Thursday 7th February 2013 19:43 GMT
Re: Tin foil hats
In the A.C Clarke "A Time Odyssey" series, that's pretty much what solves the problem, most of London gets covered with an enormous dome to protect against the world ending solar event. Of course the rest of the world gets scorched and the Firstborn eventually end up sending Mars to oblivion, but London turns out OK.
Earth-like planets abound in red dwarf systems
Thursday 7th February 2013 05:58 GMT
Re: Interesting but speculative
"Of all the big "breakthroughs" of the last twenty years or so many have been announced this way and of the top of my head I can't recall any that were that stood up to scrutiny."
Right now billions of red dwarf system dwellers are watching us on their cold fusion powered, faster than light neutrino displays, and laughing at our climate-change induced hysteria.
Solar undercuts coal in New Mexico
Power-mad HPC fans told: No exascale for you - for at least 8 years
Thursday 31st January 2013 14:35 GMT
Just build a nuclear plant.
Of course research leading to more power efficient HPC needs to continue, but what's wrong with building a new 2GW power plant (a quick googling says ~$2-5 bn) with a new exa-number cruncher on the side. The extra power could be sold to help offset the computing hardware costs, and as HPC efficiency improves, more computing capacity could be added. Not to mention that the life time of the plant far exceeds that of any particular HPC setup, and it you get the added bonus of packing that many more smart people under one roof (physicists/mathematicians/comp engineers etc). To get around the NIMBY/eco-nut problem just tack the whole thing onto an existing research lab such as Oak Ridge or Sandia National Laboratories.
TodDANG! Rampaging monkeys storm Indonesian village
New York Times probes China's Premier, gets hacked by Chinese
LOHAN teases with quick flash of spaceplane
Game off: No end to official China console ban
Google offers $3.14159 MILLION in prizes for hacking Chrome OS
You thought watching cat videos was harmless fun? Think AGAIN
RIM blows on the dice, gets ready for its FINAL THROW
Naked intruder cracks one off in Florida rampage drama
Meet قلب, the programming language that uses Arabic script
Monday 28th January 2013 12:50 GMT
Re: @Suricou Raven, you owe your english teacher an apology.
well... to accommodate the latests god google
..,,,,,─────,,,,,.
／ .. ＼
/ ／ ＼＼.. ＼、
| // .＿＿＿＿ 丶 ヽ
| .／ ＼ ＼ ヽ|
ヽ/ /::..,,,,,. ,,,,,,.::.＼ ヽ|
ヽ!!l::.”⌒`.:i i::’⌒`ヾ.!!|iiiヽ../
;〈..⊂・⊃| |:⊂・⊃.:::〉iii/
\!!, …／/| |ヾ＼…..:,;;iii/
｀lir…. /(,,∪,,)＼…Yiiii/
;!iiii彡━━ミll,,lllli<
;;llllllllllilllllllllilllllii; ＼
／;llllllllllllllllllllllllll;ヽ |＼
＿／ヽ ,;lllllllllllllllllllllll; | |…..|＼＿
::::;| ヽヽ,illlllllllllllllllllllll!ﾞ.| |::::::|::
Apparently that's the guy, can I haves virgins now?
Boffins, cause I read it on the internets.
Saturday 26th January 2013 08:57 GMT
@Suricou Raven, you owe your english teacher an apology.
You seem to have forgotten about the English (first or second) language speakers of the Commonwealth nations, as well as all of the English speakers in the EU (just guessing but I doubt that too many Europeans use the American spellings), I think you're out numbered.
As for the "art" in this article, I present "Hello World" as art (some help from google translate of course).
# تشمل <iostream>
باستخدام مساحة الأمراض المنقولة جنسيا؛
باطلة الرئيسي ()
{
محكمة << "أهلا بالعالم!" << ENDL؛ محكمة << "أنا فنان أكثر من رائع!" << ENDL؛}
Star Trek saviour JJ Abrams joins the dark side: Star Wars VII
Apple 'dismayed' to find over 100 kids building its iDevices
Saturday 26th January 2013 09:51 GMT
Re: Eadon.....Nice try...
Thanks for the "puesdo Eadon" Jamie. But you need to make the posts' content even further from the point of the article. Oh yeah, next time make use of multiple "windoze", "wintard", M$ etc. to achieve that holier-than-thou late 1990's Linux guru feel. Overall good effort 7/10.
Opportunity celebrates nine years on Mars
Friday 25th January 2013 10:13 GMT
Re: Cleaning Crew
Yes indeed, but what happens when our Mars based Von Neumann machines become sentient and form some sort of robo-society (most likely a cult based around a laser wielding Curiosity descendent)? Probably the story will start something like this...
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenthtwenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his not mortal like his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise...... "
Biting the hand that feeds IT
