Posts by Martin

per passenger km

It's going to make congestion in London a lot worse if they have 747s taxiing down the buslanes torepalce the tube.

@Just wondering....

Signs on the cages saying "prudence", "recovery is just around the corner", "I have the full support of my party"

@Fraser

Ros Anderson's proof of how to do a man-in-the-middle attack on the super secure chip is a little artificial.

The real fraud that occured at Tescos and Esso stations just after the cards were launched was much simpler. The pin for the chip is the same as the pin for your magstipe+ATM. Just put a little recorder on the handset and you have the pin and a swipe of the magstipe and you have all you need to make an ATM card.

Having the same pin for both is simply to avoid the cost of upgrading all ATMs and tills to the chip - but it makes the card much less secure than it used to be.

@A key point

>If Citi reinvests its Asian profits in expanding to countries outside the US, say Eastern Europe >or Africa or South America, I don't quite see why they should pay a tax to the US.

It's when Citi (Bermuda) charges Citi (USA) a licence fee for every transaction, so that Citi (USA) makes a loss and the only profit is made in tax-free Bermuda that the government gets interested. This is what Dell,Google and MS did in Ireland to avoid paying tax in the UK and Germany.

A little behind the times?

So this is aimed at early adopters who really must have a computer in their kitchen - but still have a landline phone at home? why not just build it into a gramophone?

Not really absurd

>And I agree that a 911 is an absurb 'practicality' target

But it makes sense from a business point of view.

If you were a small Californian hifi company it would make a lot more sense to try and sell $10,000 audiophile amps than try to compete to make iPods.

Fiat/Hyundai/VW etc will knock out an electric vehicle for the masses but if you are first in the market it makes a lot more sense to pick the profitable customers.

Especially since the torque characteristics of an electric motor mean you get huge 0-60 acceleration.

@I wish...

The scandal isn't the politicos smoking a joint in college - it's that the same lying b*ards then making it a class B drug the day before the scientific evidence came out in order to appeal to a few Daily Fail readers.

If the young lady was a British politician she would be busy calling for the licencing of mobile phone cameras to 'protect the children'.

Freedom of speech

>If that's the case, then the hosting firm will *surely* also decline to host a website for Labour,

>Conservative, SWP or any other party.

I'm sure they would happily host any party's site that paid.

What they might object to is a site that is likely to get a huge volume of traffic being hosted on a cheap personal site package.

Otherwise all the people that are sharing a single copy of Apache running on the same cheap 1U server as the BNP site might reasonably complain.

Yes it oes suck

The state aim of Nasa is to advance scientific knowledge. Flying aging senators to LEO and back or taking historic basketballs and schoolkids drawings with them is not science.

Their choice to have a ex-military, ex-astronaut as leader suggests that it is back to the 60s of having square jawed crew cut (although now racially diverse) heroes pointlessly going where everyone has gone before. In order to prove their superiority over 3rd world countries that merely efficiently and cheaply launch useful payloads.

Being a war time pilot is not a basis for leading Nasa, anymore than it is for being president. The USSR chose it's political and industrial leaders on the basis of them having fought at Stalingrad - that worked out well for them.

@Wow

It's had a lot of replacement parts, pretty much only the bodywork and the (faulty) mirror are original. It also sat in a box for 5years after Challenger blew up so it's even longer life than they are claiming.

They have also been lucky that it's been an unusually quiet solar cycle and so there hasn't been as much atmospheric drag as expected.

The life of ISS is a bit more political, it can stay up there as long as you are prepared to repair/replace bits and boost it's orbit.

@No one in the US cares, because no one in the US is as stupid as him.

His timing was just bit off, If the US (also) had a right wing authoritarian government that had run out of ideas, was facing defeat and needed a quick 'wont someone thing of the children' policy they would have leapt at it.

Wouldn't have worked - but at least someone would have answered the phone.

1024 x 576

1024 x 576 is PAL 16:9 so probably a plant making these screens for TVs DVD players etc.

The Dell mini 9 is $200 on Dell.com outlet site and I'm visiting the US, but they will only sell them to you if you have a US credit card as well.

Tilted compass

You can do a digital tilted compass but you need a 3 axis magnetic sensor and tilt sensors. It's tricky cos the way the maths works out an error in titl is 2-4x as big in heading ( God I'm such a nerd) it's also a bugger to cancel out the display and battery.

@Here's a "Different Perspective"

>I mean really, what have we gotten from the billions spent on the shuttle and the ISS?

A republican California.

Do you want Boeing/Rockwell/Lockheed Martin to have compete commercially?

@I read a quote from

So there are now three different syntaxs to set a variable

int i = 0; // but you still can't do this in the ctor

i(0), // need to do it this way in the initialisation list

int i = {}; // useful if int is redefined I suppose

@Goverment idea of "Security"

You forgot:

6. Repeat

@What?? $489.00

>placed out of reach of the average consumer!!

But firmly in the reach of the more-money-than-sense consumer!

Noticed Apple/BMW/Rolex going bust recently?

Because they speak French

The French eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Japanese eat very little fat and also have fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The French drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

The Japanese drink very little red wine and also have fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.

Conclusion: It's speaking English that kills you.

Page 3 isn't porn

But it is illegal if the headline for the pictures of famous Ms Fox is correct

"Sam, 16, Quits A-Levels for Ooh-Levels."

A good start

SO if God is all powerfull why does he allow Jim Carry movies?

Almost as good as wIne then ?

Could this finally be the year of the Windows desktop?

@Process can be patented

But their patent is claiming the idea of adding colour to make it coloured - not how to do it!

Can I patent putting your iPhone in your jean's pocket? Then apple can patent putting it into different coloured jeans.

Simple solution

Why not have replace everyones name with a number?

Then they could have a little card declaring that the were citizen12345678 - you could even tattoo it on their wrist (call it biometric)

@Thats just too much

>I have to take exception to "fire an AK47 at the feet of an immigrant worker who's stolen your job"

I think it's terrible that we are reduced to using foreign guns to fire at the feet of our immigrants.

In my day we used proper British guns.

Goes off to write to the Telegraph......

@Civil Servant in a Blender

No - but they do shred the bus the key was left on.

Security you know - can't be too careful.

So I'll need an adaptor then

If I decide to take my electric car with me the US as hand baggage?

Erm....

These machines are behind a firewall right

They only have official paid for software installed

They are only used for official government business, no looking at dodgy websites.

USB keys aren't allowed anymore.

They are managed by expensive EDS/Cap Gemini/IBM etc consultants.

Shouldn't somebody be fired when a machine gets a virus?

@Perspective

There is a difference between being able to tap a limited number of international calls manually and a completely invasive fishing system.

Visit a website that had a GreenPeace ad AND your cell phone was in London duirng an Earth Day protest = better flag you as a possible anti-government activist.

Then we can check up if you apply for a government job, or log your car number plate if you go within 100mi of a nuclear power station.

@Daniel

Brilliant, just f***inkg brilliant...

@The only way the Oracle-Sun merger makes sense

Solaris is the most popular Oracle Unix platform.

Sun go bust / get bought by IBM - all those sites are suddenly shopping for new kit.

Do you think the IBM HW salesman on the doorstep might have been offering some inducements to switch to DB2?

Erm have they thought this thing through?

Chance of hitting an Al Queda stealth bomber = 0

Chance of hitting own side, allies, blowing up own ship etc due to 'computer error' = 1

3 tshirts in Newcastle?

Obviously overdressed

adwords

So the government just has to buy up all the ad words for terrorism, extremism etc and redirect them to cornify and everyone will be happy and safe.

Automatic brakes would be good

And they could fix the system that detects an amber traffic light and causes BMWs to accelerate.

Another cunning plan

>when trying to find out how to fight government warrants

So you click a link to complain about our benevolent dictators and get nicked for child porn.

@Subterranean urban infrastructure

Doesn't have to be 'sub'

DSL failed at all the offices on our business park, no JCBs in sight, phones still worked etc. BT claimed nothing had changed at the exchange.

Turned out somebody installing a new phone line had decided to 'tidy-up' a junction box and manged to patch all the DSL lines to the exchange 1mile away, via a village 5miles in the other direction.

BT only checks the lines are intact and only do a DSL survey with a new installation - they have no system for dealing with anything that changes after a line is installed. It took a week of calls to different bits of BT to get us back online.

All school subjects are useless

I learnt all about gaciers in Geography but day to day I hardly ever have to make one.

@Isn't this really REALLY easy to solve?

Then ex-pats could also watch iPlayer.

I would happily pay the licence fee (or some percentage) to stream the BBC output - rather than paying $70/month for cable to watch Fox.

Super secret stealth satelite

>They insisted it was up there, even though the US couldn't ever track it on radar

Yes but remember that many tin pot little third world countries are able to build up huge fleets of weapons of mass destruction that are completely invisible and undetectable even when you have taken the country apart.

@iPod Touch?

The touch has been able to make and receive Skype calls for a while now - although you have to get a bit 'unofficial' to install it.

@I've always said ...

>I'd be more willing to trust a web site that had paid tens of thousands of dollars.

Like you would trust AIGwith your savings but not a local building society.

clothes?

I never understood why the supposed spirits of tormented souls also have clothes.

Are these the ghosts of a pair of Levi's that died before their time?

@And yet...

>Ireland made a lot of hay while they were the cheapest manufactiring site in the EU

They were also a nice little tax haven. Eire has the lowest corporation tax in europe. Dell somehow managed to make a loss on every machine they sold in Germany while paying tax on them in Eire - they got a little telling off for this recently.

It's a shame for the friendly and helpful people in Dell's Irish SME office - but if your country is competing in the high tech manufacturing by simply being the cheapest workforce you had this coming.

@AC - Before ya know it, we'll be in a recession

>you have to say that the economy is exhibiting negative growth.

We are in an "Economic growth priority realignment situation" Didn't you get the memo?

We can't be in a recession the defence show is still on - and larger than ever.