Posts by Anonymous Blowhard

Re: @ King Tut

GCHQ don't need to nick your phone, they can intercept the text messages.

Re: If that's their good will...

Their "ill will" is forcing you to remain as a customer...

Re: No sireee

"does Mars have pubs?"

I'm guessing that by the time they arrive, there'll be an O'Leary's on Mars...

(not strictly a pub to British Standards, but closest ISO equivalent)

Trying to beat McGuinness's time around the TT circuit would make even a robot experience fear...

"Or a deadbox."

You mean an Ex-Xbox?

Re: "but there are companies by the hundreds if not thousands that want to participate in this."

Thing is, once this is law they'll start making life difficult for those who don't sign up; loss of government contracts, inexplicable decisions against them in court cases, branding them as un-American etc.

"Their switching off their e-mail seems to indicate their mail server techs don't understand the concept of spoofing."

Or more likely, they just get orders from "on high" like:

"I don't know anything about spoofing, and I don't care, just turn it off!"

"Now they know I wonder how long that will last."

The answer is at the end of this quote from 1984:

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

And now we know who's wearing the boot...

Re: People still use Truecrypt and friends?

"you'll be better off just encrypting the whole drive with LUKS instead of making a Truecrypt container"

But you can use TrueCrypt for full disk (including system disk) encryption; works a treat, you can even use a single password to unlock all drives on the machine in one go (requires password caching in TrueCrypt, so is slightly less safe).

"destroying civil liberties is less of an electoral liability than accidentally allowing an unsuccessful terrorist plot to get further than it might otherwise do"

Or

"destroying civil liberties is less of an electoral liability than GCHQ publishing your browsing history"

Re: Idiots

"The licences should be nominal cost and for a single infrastructure company that resells to Retail Operators"

This sounds like "Openreach for for Mobile"; let's not go there...

Re: They didn't have much choice.

"Microsoft has their niche in the PC market, but it doesn't look like they will ever expand Windows very much outside of that."

Because no-one is using Exchange Server, SharePoint or SQL Server running on Windows Servers?

Re: Reindeer as tourist attractions

"I did ask if there was a farm shop"

Or you could go to "Mister India" in Oslo and enjoy a number 55:

http://www.mister-india.no/en/menu.html

Re: every time someone hits "reply all" a kitten dies.

Would that be using a "Kitten Stomper"?

Harry and Paul Dragons Den Kitten Stomper

Re: However...

"No, it's the deliberate use of the technology to kill, maim and supress other human beings."

I think you've got this the wrong way round; if humans didn't have the desire to "kill, maim and supress other human beings" then there wouldn't be a market for this kind of technology. Before drones were available, they sent men in aeroplanes, before aeroplanes they sent men with guns, before guns it was men with swords and before that men with clubs; right back through time until it was the strongest man who leads the tribe rather than the smartest.

Here's a great quote from "Lord of War" that I think encapsulates the reality of weapons technology:

"Keeping track of nuclear arsenels - you'd think that be more critical to world security. But it's not. No, nine out of ten war victims today are killed with assault rifles and small arms - like yours. Those nuclear weapons sit in their silos. Your AK-47, that's the real weapon of mass destruction."

Re: Who's to blame

"thinking rationally is associated with being an extremist, fascist"

I think you've got that last bit reversed; the "fascist" ideology means "sticking together against outsiders" (based on the symbolism of the fasces suggesting strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Fascism definitely doesn't encourage rational thinking, but it does explain policemen labelling every Muslim as a terrorist.

I thought cyber dildonics was a reference to Professor Kevin Warwick?

Re: And we need this for..

Freaking out people who can't receive WiFi in their brains?

Also, do I have to leave the lights on all the time? How will my alarm clock connect to the Internet when I'm asleep? This doesn't seem to have been considered!

@Kurt 4

Self driving cars are already being tested on real roads; their safety record is pretty good:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car#Traffic_accidents

Self driving cars are now pretty much inevitable, they will be safer than human drivers because once they are developed to an acceptable level of risk then all of them will be capable of driving to the same standard. Humans have varying levels of driving competence, ranging from those who kill themselves, or someone else, within a few days of getting a license to those who drive for fifty years without having an accident.

The USA has around 30,000 fatalities a year, so the humans are already way behind on safety; I can easily imagine a time in the future when insurance companies will prefer self-drive cars over human control, and that's what will force the issue. Already a young driver in the UK will expect to pay £2000 for their first year of insurance after receiving full license; if they can get mobile in a self drive car without the cost of learning to drive or a huge insurance bill, then why would they go to the trouble?

The same argument may also apply to hire cars; why would they take on the risk of people with variable driving skills, possibly in an unfamiliar vehicle with the controls on the wrong side, when they can simple rent out a self drive vehicle for less money? I know they make a lot of money on the insurance, but those who are renting self drive cars will undercut them in the market.

Humans driving cars could soon become a leisure activity for those who are prepared to pay for the additional risk involved, and it may even become illegal to drive oneself in urban areas where the risk of an accident involving a third party is much higher.

Re: Probably been said before

We're the People's Front of Judea!

Re: Advantages?

"Are there any tax advantages to being off-planet for long periods of time?"

Freeside here we come!

Re: IMHO

I would never trust the "WHOIS" to identify the "owner", and therefore the trustworthiness, of a site; so this aspect is clearly a red herring, there's no money riding on this, other than for lawyers, but as other commentards have pointed out there may be people's lives on the line.

One option could be the concept of a "trusted domain" where the owner pays more for the registry to validate credentials; if you want to be anonymous then you won't be able to apply for a "trusted domain", and this would be reflected in the WHOIS data?

Re: Value?

"The iPad Pro runs iOS not Mac OS. Which means no mouse pointer on screen, no need for a trackpad."

Phew, otherwise they'd have wanted another $99 for the trackpad.

Re: Is it too late for entries to Edinburgh's funniest joke?

Outsourcing can save money where Crapita and Crap Gemini aren't in the mix...

I think that the problem is that the different police forces all want to solve the same problems independently so that there's no option to look at combining forces; after all, why have one set of highly paid leaders when you can have nearly fifty!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_police_forces_of_the_United_Kingdom

I wouldn't necessarily advocate a single force for the whole country, but some rationalisation could help reduce costs, and some forces (South Yorkshire) have been involved in so many scandals that removing them could improve morale and public support at the same time.

Re: It's really simple

"but are they likely to sell twice as many books?"

That's the $64,000 question; as you point out, selling 1.99 times as many books for 0.5 of the price is actually a money loser. So the aim has to be to dynamically match the price to the demand; in the old paper-based model they would issue the book at £12 as a hardback, getting a small number of sales to die-hard fans who had to read it first, then after a few months it would go out in "trade" (large) paperback format at about £8 and eventually as time went on as a normal paperback at around £6.

A similar thing can be done on eBooks, but with even greater flexibility as the price can vary much more quickly and in a more granular fashion in response to demand. But only the retailer has the data to do this, which is presumably why Amazon wanted price control.

One aspect of the paper book market, missing from eBooks, is that retailers have a limit on shelf space, so eventually they want to remove stock that isn't selling and return it to the publisher. The publisher also has limited storage space so they may then either destroy the books, which costs money, or sell the books off cheap to budget book stores, thereby making a little money in the process.

As a frequent traveller and book reader I find that the Kindle makes the process a lot simpler than trying to plan how many bulky books to pack; and as a cheapskate Yorkshireman I keep an eye on the "Kindle Daily Deals" and stock up on titles that interest me for a bargain 99p (top skinflint trick here is to use Prime with non-next-day delivery to earn a pound credit for eBooks with every order with Amazon).

Re: It doesn't do much...

"it's just like this... great big pepper pot."

Disabled Dalek?

Re: Cue for a song...

What's with the downvote? Don't you know the origins of the song?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_Japanese