Posts by Otto is a bear.

Re: British oil company Shell

I think on the whole they prefer to be referred to as Anglo-Dutch, they are incorporated in the UK, HQ in the Netherlands, primary listing on the FTSE. They pay tax here as well.

@Alister

I'm not sure that's wholly true, as it was sold off in 1995, and has subsequently passed through many hands, but Network Rail may well have created a new network, or bought back some of it from Thales in 2009.

Radio signalling has been used for years in the UK notably on the Far North Lines, ETRMS is already in use on the Central Wales lines to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli.

Of course the simplest hack would be to radio jam the system, which would fail safe and stop the trains, but hacking the system and making trains crash would be a lot more difficult.

Talking of autonomous cars, I wonder how well they handle level crossings? Especially the ungated kind.

Re: I'm confuzzled

A recent conversation I had with a wide area network vendor, who is by the way installing their own dark fibre, lead me to believe that any spare dark fibre BT has, either does not exist, or they aren't even using it themselves, as I was informed, BT's fibre network is, in many places oversubscribed. (Pinch of Salt?)

But having worked in a large technology company where assets were not released, just in case someone important wanted one, I can well believe that one part of BT isn't releasing dark fibre, just in case someone important needs it. It will be very interesting to see the outcome of Ofcom's ruling, I can't think of any outcome that would surprise me.

If BT really do have a lot of spare Dark Fibre capacity, then it may very well have a catastrophic impact on smaller competitors, as the wholesale prices will drop considerably.

Re: How does it compare

Why would you compare it to the Mac Book, iPad, yeah, but a laptop? I have a touch Laptop, and, I have to say I still use the mouse and keyboard, to the extent that I'm wondering why I bothered with touch at all.

I'd also wonder, if you already have a slate, Android or iPad, why you would even bother looking at a Surface, let alone buy one. As a business user, I use an MS Laptop, and less so a Note, as I've found my notebook (paper) far more versatile in meetings than anything electronic. There still isn't a killer app for any slab. I need to run project and visio, and using the cloud is not an option, I'll stay with my lightweight laptop. BTW. With the legal status of MS and any other US cloud provider still in the air, why would you put data on their clouds?

At home, I'll stick to my Air as well.

Re: I hope this is programmed right ... and works in reverse

Mrs. Bear has a habit, when in a hurry, of taking the car out of gear before it has come to rest, so in reverse this turns the reversing sensors off. BANG! at least twice, and she ain't alone in this habit.

I'd hope that in these auto stop vehicles the sensors work, regardless of the position of the gear leaver.

BTW: This is true for both manual and automatic vehicles as you can slap either into neutral whilst they are moving in either direction.

Me, I wait until the vehicle has stopped before I attempt to power off in the other direction, and my clutch loves me for that.

Re: Good strategy?

But then if you don't need lots of CPUs, you can always use Standard Edition, or move to Postgres. SQLServer Migration is only a no brainer if you have very little PL/SQL to migrate, and don't happen to use any of the other Oracle Database modules that don't exist in the Microsoft world. The costs of re-writing triggers and procedures can easily exceed any licence savings you might make for quite a few years. Postgres, on the other hand, can actually deal with PL/SQL, and is cheaper than SQLServer.

If you need a basic SQL database, even high availability, then Open Source is the way to go.

What gets me is that both Microsoft and Oracle want you in their cloud, they already lock you in to expensive software stacks, that give poor value for money, just think how much more they can lock you in, if it's into their clouds, and then hike those costs when you can't go elsewhere.

Re: and the reality is......

Like any objective, set it low so you can't possibly fail and look great when you exceed it.

What you mean you don't do that for your annual reviews? Honesty in business pah, that went out with the MBA.

Backups

I expect he'd backed it all up using the Memory of Water then.

Though not the best future

If we are talking mobile device entertainment, then I foresee an upsurge in upper back problems for the younger generations. Watching my fellow commuters hunched double over their phones and pads on the train and tube (subway), let alone how they might work in the office or at home on their laps.

At least the Old PC Monitor or Telly across the room allows you some relatively good posture and comfort.

Mines the Icon for the chiropractor and migraine pills.

Gone

I suspect that if they had frittered it all away, he might have difficulty paying up. Alternately if he pays up then you have to wonder how much else he has acquired.

As for the lady's £1M, I would guess the bank is on the hook for that. They changed the access details, probably without informing the original address, which my bank does.

Re: Hold on

Do we know what the hacking group actually did with the information?

Not that it really matters the US system seems to be based on spectacular vengeance and lawyers making money. The loss has probably been the cost of Microsoft's lawyers working out that there was $1's worth of IP loss. If I was the defence, I'd consider billing Microsoft for the Pen Test.

Re: Why not organic kitty litter?

Oh, I don't know responsible dog owners do and most cats prefer to bury their output in your petunias as a surprise for you later.

Anyway soil based kitty litter, will break down in landfill, and helps landfill sites to generate gas for the grid. It just becomes biologically richer in the process, although perhaps not in the way the soil cycle usually works. Ask any geologist.

Re: You don't need to vote anymore.

Well daaa, the trick is to pick the establishment you want.

Re: Ban them.

I was just wondering what Mr. Lawrence would consider as valid past times for adults that offeres value for money. I'm not sure there is such a thing as a cheap past time, nor for that matter is there one where someone doesn't consider you a twat for following it.

So gentle readers, what's a cool and cheap past time.

Re: Good

We just let the Tories increase them in exchange for a little power, thanks Nick.

It was Mad Maggie who deregulated the banks, not Gordon Brown, he just didn't have the stomach to reign them in. Most of the wonderful little product ideas that caused the banks to crash were originally thought up in the early 90s as well. I remember being told by a friend in compliance that most banks' managements didn't understand the products or the risks, but they made loads of money so they didn't care.

Re: "instead of putting it in my pocket, I put it in the seat next to me"

Ans S*d the person sitting there. Mind you, a burning phone would do a lot of damage to your car seat, god knows what fumes they might produce before you noticed.

Re: Worthless chip manufacturing plant??

Think you got the wrong person there Jimmy was commenting on the sexist remark, by Naive and not on the suitability of gender.

I disagree, unfashionable but......

In the West, you can generally trust your government to do what you voted them in to do, as well as the things they have to do, to protect your nation from inside and out. All Snowdon has done is shown that they are doing just that, and that it has scaled up in scope to meet the modern era.

It is not the fault of the Governments that mostly we don't chuck them out often enough, and allow parties to become embedded, and similar. Vote for someone else, even in the US there are alternatives to Democrat and Republican.

Indeed

Shock, Horror, Outrage, Meh.

Delete as applicable.

Are we really surprised that security agencies do what they are supposed to do by fair means or foul. 106,000 sim cards wowser, wonder how long they were good for,

Re: Good or Bad?

You also have to wonder, on those kind of sales, what a Qualcomm, Apple or Oracle would charge in device royalties if they chose to "Invest" in ARM.

I did like the BBC guy this morning who was pushing the ARM spokesman on how much of their profit was down to Apple, and what would happen if Apple went away. Now there's a man who's done his research. Ah, ARM make record profits, ARM gets revenue from Apple, Apple made record profits, therefore ARM's performance is down to Apple's.

You do have to admire the logic, all bears are otto.

Re: Ad infinitum & Catch 22

Quite apart from the conundrum of GCHQ admitting they have a record of you, after all, you actually wouldn't want them disclosing the fact they have a record of someone who actually is of interest, and by disclosing they have records of those who are not of interest, you could engineer a method to find out who is of interest.

Card organisations are very good at deducing the existence of a person through the transactions you make, I'd suspect security organisations have similar capabilities, so, you may, although not know it yourself, be in contact with a person of interest, and thus need to be there to say you are not a person of interest, otherwise you become a hole in the data and become a person of interest because no one knows who you are, to say you aren't a person of interest. It could also be said that to delete all your data, you would actually have to delete data about other people related to you, and so on.

They may have big problems deleting data, after all, what is the definition of delete, we have spent years making sure that data can't be accidentally deleted, and that deleting a record won't suddenly invalidate a whole load of other data, through logical deletes, that yeah you can delete the data, but then go and restore it from backup. You really can't delete the data from backup, because then it wouldn't be a backup, and to delete the data you would have to restore the backup, delete the data and back it up again however many times a person appears on a backup, which might be years.

Also they don't have to delete data that is a matter of public record, so exactly what data would you want deleted, you exist, therefore, you are.

Too right

If you have the time, and the local branch of MegaMart hasn't taken them all out, along with a host of other useful specialist retailers that lost their business because they couldn't by for what MegaMart sold for on the top ten best selling products. Amazon have only completed what MegaMart started.

It's worth remembering Tesco's clubcard knows more about you that the government, and should Amazon or Google get that information, well you can guess how much more product spam you'll get.

Re: What purpose?

One purpose for holding images of innocent people is missing persons. Another is searching for wanted people who haven't been convicted, or persons of interest (suspects), how would ports and airports know who to watch for without their photo. There are lots of legitimate uses for photographs, and the MK1 eyeball is also employed. Don't forget the Police also have access to the DVLA database so they can match your face to your driving licence if they stop you, amongst other things.

Re: Meh

Pity, I was up for an SSD, after all $9 how can you loose. ;-)