* Posts by ratfox

3721 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Sep 2007

Prudish Indian censors cut James Bond Spectre snogging scenes

ratfox
Paris Hilton

"Also, there should be a dance sequence somewhere in the film"

VirusTotal invites Apple fans to play in updated Mac malware sandpit

ratfox
Coat

But if we fight viruses…

Won't we breed new strains of more resistant viruses?

Google extends search tendrils to cover data in apps

ratfox

Makes sense

People create apps rather than web sites to give a better experience, but they still want what they offer to be discoverable…

Apple's Faulty Powers moment: iPad Pro slabs 'temporarily bricked' during recharge

ratfox
Coat

Rechargegate!

You saw it here first.

UN fight for internet control lined up in Brazil

ratfox
Headmaster

Re: When conferences were in power

If you check sources, you will see that the United States signed the treaty, but never ratified it. And UK did not sign at all.

The same conference also resulted in a treaty against chemical weapons, which was ratified by everybody except the US. Hmm.

Decoding Microsoft: Cloud, Azure and dodging the PC death spiral

ratfox

Re: What PC death spiral?

"yes a mac is a PC"

Depends on what definition you use, innit? "PC" has been sufficiently attached to Microsoft that it allowed the "I'm a Mac and I'm a PC" campaign. One way or another, Macs aren't bringing a lot of money to Microsoft.

The x86 powering back ends are nice, but Microsoft revenue still has taken quite a hit these past years.

The Internet Association backs FCC's muni broadband push

ratfox
Flame

Re: Fixtures

I'd add that the oligopoly between US providers is especially chummy. There's lots of oligopolies and even duopolies which see vigorous competition, but somehow this just isn't happening here. To the point that the CEO of Comcast stated they should be allowed to form a monopoly with TWC, since they were already not competing anyway…

Drug-smuggling granny's vagina holds Kinder surprise

ratfox
Devil

Lucky for her it wasn't in the US!

She'd have gotten 2 years more for bringing a Kinder surprise in the country.

Microsoft capitulates, announces German data centres

ratfox
Go

Re: Not buying into any of this....

a know, where are all the European competitors to these American giants, with their own EU based data centers?

Go ahead and build one. It's not rocket science.

UN privacy head slams 'worse than scary' UK surveillance bill

ratfox
Coat

Re: Nothing new about 'trolls'

He went about writing anonymous messages on notice boards after dark.

Romanes eunt domus!

ratfox

Re: Vincent Cerf was right.....

Agreeing with Vint Cerf.

On a side note, it is the anonymity of the web which caused the apparition of trolls and flame wars. Those old enough will remember how articles of the late nineties reported with nothing less than astonishment the way that otherwise normal and polite people would insult and demean each other on newsgroups, due to this fancy new anonymity allowed by the web.

I'm not entirely sure whether that was a blessing or a curse, but the fact trolls still exist does seem to indicate we are still more anonymous on the web than we were before it existed.

Cops gain access to phone location data

ratfox

Re: "161 years in prison for the robberies, despite being a first offender"

He didn't make a deal. Big mistake. Just like getting sick without having an insurance; you're guaranteed to be in debt the rest of your life, having to pay thousands for what would normally cost a few bucks.

Freebooting: How Facebook's 8 billion views could be a mirage

ratfox
Paris Hilton

That means that Facebook users, instead of just posting a YouTube video, go to the trouble of downloading them and reuploading them to Facebook? What's the point?

LG picks up US smartphone crumbs, gains on Apple and Samsung

ratfox
WTF?

How come Apple Maps is installed on only 29% of devices, when it is installed on 100% of the 43% of iPhones??

Judge bins Apple Store end-of-shift shakedown lawsuit

ratfox

Re: According to reports from Brazilian (and other countries) prisons...

So that's why iPhones have been getting bigger!

ratfox
Alert

Re: I wouldn't work at a place...

I wouldn't work at a place that has so little trust and regard for their own staff.

I suppose it's great you are able to find a job so easily that you can afford to set conditions, then.

Cloud will kill tech sales jobs

ratfox
Go

Cloud will get rid of salespeople?

Good. /grumpycat

Trident test-shot startles West Coast Americans

ratfox
Happy

4 millions views! That's a bit like winning the lottery.

Gods' own broadband: Loon option for DEITY

ratfox

The problem with using Loon in India is that the balloons would eventually end up flying over China. I can't see them being happy about that.

Drones are dropping drugs into prisons and the US govt just doesn't know what to do

ratfox

Thousands of buildings use nets to keep the pigeons away. I don't even know what the problem is.

Linus Torvalds targeted by honeytraps, claims Eric S. Raymond

ratfox
Trollface

You wish.

UK cyber-spy law takes Snowden's revelations of mass surveillance – and sets them in stone

ratfox
Big Brother

It must be soooo frustrating to GCHQ that people are still able to harbour thoughts in their mind, and that they have no way whatsoever to read those.

Man hires 'court hacker' on Craigslist ... who turned out to be a cop

ratfox
Happy

Re: Model Penal Code

Sounds about right that the crime would be "transitive".

Otherwise, you could ask someone to ask someone to ask someone to ask someone to ask someone to kill somebody, and escape with a fine if caught.

Spanish town trumpets 'Clitoris Festival' thanks to Google snafu

ratfox
Coat

Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd

Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu

Google snaps Dutch woman completely taking the piss

ratfox
Coat

"A Village Fair with a Church Behind"

What's so ecclesiastic about this uncovered behind?

Google, SAP continue love-in with a patent-share agreement

ratfox

It's just a patent cross-licensing agreement. I doubt their employees will ever meet apart from lawyers.

'Govt will not pass laws to ban encryption' – Baroness Shields

ratfox
Windows

"The first duty of any government is to keep our country and our people safe."

"Those who would give up essential liberty…"

Oracle: Fight for the right to be third to Amazon's AWS

ratfox

Keeping old customers is easier than convincing them again.

Oracle has a lot of customers in production apps is that they have few other places to go, and migrating is painful. I'd go as far to say that a lot of customers would want to leave, if only they could.

If it comes to developing new solutions in the cloud, however, Oracle has no such user base. And I feel that a lot of their customers are weary to tie themselves again to the big O.

Taking advantage of your monopoly is a dangerous game.

'iOS 9 ate my mobile broadband plan'

ratfox

"The suit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $5m."

So little? Apple could save a lot of time and just pay it right away.

Google can't hide behind Alphabet, EU competition commish warns

ratfox

Don't hold your breath

The previous attempt to fix the issue took too long for the antitrust commissioner to see it to end before he had to step down from his job. And that was the fast track.

It's mind-boggling that this can take so long, but I guess each side is allowed months to prepare their retort. Even when the retort amounts to "Your momma".

US broadband giants face 'deceptive speed' probe in New York

ratfox
Devil

Karma is a bitch.

Mystery object re-entering atmosphere may be Apollo booster

ratfox

"How long was I out there? They won't tell me anything."

Court to Wikimedia: Your NSA spying evidence is inadmissable, so you can't prove NSA spying

ratfox

Re: Get a big broom, judge!

Sorry, copy-paste failure. I meant 1000 m3 of course.

ratfox

Re: Get a big broom, judge!

1000 mm3 of sand is a square patch of 30 meters by 30 meters, and one meter deep. On most beaches, that's a pretty small patch.

Numbers of cubic meters always sound more impressive than they are.

Oh, and grains of sand are much less than 1mm3.

You own the software, Feds tell Apple: you can unlock it

ratfox

This is stupid

What the feds say is that Apple's EULA allow them to hand over the data. What Apple says if that they are unable to decrypt the data.

There's no law that makes it illegal to flap your arms and fly either.

Sales down, profit up, 1,000 bods chopped: Your one-minute guide to Planet Microsoft

ratfox

I hear Google is hiring.

Google stock buy-back: You'll groan when you realize where that $5,099,019,513.59 figure came from

ratfox

Re: Stock is way up after results.

The news failed to turn heads on Wall Street one way or the other. Google stock was up by a modest 1.43 per cent at the end of the day, trading at $651.79 per share.

Erm. That happened before they released the results. The stock was up 10% after hours to $720, which I believe is an all-time high.

Some like it hot ... very hot: How to use heat to your advantage in your data center

ratfox

Re: Data centers can be run much warmer

I do understand that the current limit on DC temperatures isn't set by the machines, but the people servicing them.

Google's YouTube Red deal: Sign, or we'll make you disappear

ratfox

Re: Subs service...for YouTube?

The current YouTube is staying as before, kids are going to keep watching. What is new is a paying ad-free service with a few more features.

Though I read in TechCrunch that Disney has refused the new terms, so there's that. Disney might still leave their videos on YouTube without monetizing them (no ads shown), otherwise they will disappear.

Temperature of Hell drops a few degrees – Microsoft emits SSH-for-Windows source code

ratfox
Angel

Re: Good.

Just like Powershell already can do somewhat more securely than SSH, you mean?

Wow, Powershell has been ported to Linux and BSD? I didn't know that.

Your one-minute guide to IBM's financial future – or just imagine a skier tumbling down a slope

ratfox

Re: Unless the management stops behaving like a bunch of accountants

IBM has a long history of hiring intelligent people, and I'm sure some of them are staying until retirement. But in the current job market, what intelligent person would take a job at IBM, when much more friendly work environments are available?

Weight, what? The perfect kilogram is nearly in Planck's grasp

ratfox

Re: Kelvin?

Wasn't Celsius originally based on 0C being the boiling point of water and 100C being the freezing point.

1) No, that's the reverse.

2) The boiling temperature and to a lesser extent the freezing temperature of water depend on the pressure, so that was a little bit imprecise. Celsius are now defined by the triple point of water, which determines both a precise pressure and temperature. The definition is now roughly: "absolute zero is 273.15 °C = 0 K, and at the pressure of the triple point of water, the temperature of the triple point of water is 0.01 °C = 273.16 K". The 0.01 value was chosen because that was the approximate value under the previous definition, and they didn't want to change all existing thermometers.

ratfox
Stop

Re: Kelvin?

The unit of a kelvin is based on a degree centigrade which is based on the melting point of a couple of metals (don't remember which) because ice/water/steam is a bit too variable.

Sorry, that's incorrect. The Kelvin is defined as being 0 at absolute zero, and 273.16 at the triple point of water. That's the current official definition, which they are planning to change:

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

Google publishes crypto mandate for Android 6.0

ratfox
Paris Hilton

What power does this have?

What happens if Sony or Amazon make a phone and load it with Android software that doesn't encrypt the phone by default, or not at all?

Google has the power to kick people out of their Open Handset Alliance if they make incompatible devices, and that's how they stopped Acer from selling a phone with Aliyun OS. Would this work the same?

…What happens to Huawei if China makes it illegal to sell phones that are encrypted by default?

Ireland moves to scrap 1 and 2 cent coins

ratfox

Re: How does this work?

Extending from this, what happens if something is 0.95 euros, and the person purchasing only has 0.90 in 'sliver' and three 2c coins? Who will lose out on 1c?

For the moment, shoppers are allowed to ask for exact change. In this case, if the customer insists, the store has to find a 1c coin to give back the change, and if they can't I imagine that they will just accept the customer only paying 0.94 euros.

However, this change is caused by the fact that nobody cares about such amounts. I remember a study showing that the psychological value most people give to 1c coins is actually negative, meaning that they are more trouble than they are worth.

ratfox
Go

Makes sense

Switzerland's smallest used coin has been 5 cent of a Franc (more or less equal to 5 Euro cent) for 30 years, and even those feel like a waste of time to keep around in your wallet.

Strangely, Wikipedia claims the 1 cent coin was still struck until 2006, even though item prices have been rounded to 5 cents practically everywhere since the eighties.

Switzerland also seems to have the most valuable coin in circulation: 5 Swiss francs, a bit more than £3.

Get ready to register your drones in the US – or else

ratfox

What's a drone?

What's the difference between a drone and a remote-controlled toy? The former are apparently a big deal, the latter have existed for decades without regulation required.

Job alert: Is this the toughest sysadmin role on Earth? And are you badass enough to do it?

ratfox

How many cops can there be?

More importantly: where would you drive anyway?

New Nexus 5X, 6P smarties: Google draws a line in the sand

ratfox

Re: QI and unlocked phon

Almost no phone requires unlocking for taking pictures. The assumption is that people want to take the picture now now now before little Johnny stops making that funny face, and unlocking goes in the way.

QR codes (that's what you mean, right?) are not decoded by the standard camera app; you just end up with a picture of a QR code and the phone does nothing with it. You need to use a different app for taking pictures of QR codes and having the phone follow the link.

Minicab-hailing app Uber is lawful – UK High Court

ratfox
Boffin

Re: some would say the taxi meter is the device that tells you the cost of the journey

The taximeter is the device that measures the charge. From taxi- and -meter, meaning charge and measure. Originally, a "taxi" was an abbreviation of taximeter cab, as in "a cab with a device that measures the charge".