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User: Neil_Brown

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Comments · 345

  1. Re:As far as colon cancer is concerned on To Reduce the Health Risk of Barbecuing Meat, Just Add Beer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Concentrate on the elephant in the room

    That would need one heck of a lot of marinade...

  2. Re:Too bad it won't apply to everyone on EU Votes For Universal Phone Charger · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apple complied in 2011 by including a Lightning->micro-USB adapter in the box with all of its European models, and has done so for the last three years.

    They certainly sell an adapter, but it is not supplied in the box, at least in my experience of devices bought from Apple stores in the UK.

  3. Re:Power Source? on Vodafone Foundation Launches Cell Site In a Backpack · · Score: 4, Informative

    The backpack cell site can run on 110/220 volt mains power or a 12 volt battery; it also has an enclosed battery with four hours run time, and can also run off a 62 watt solar panel if needed. It can also charge up to three phones.

  4. Along with anyone who lives in Essex on Great Firewall of UK Blocks Game Patch Because of Substring Matches · · Score: 5, Funny

    Or Sussex, or who is researching Wessex.

  5. Accepted capping, and paid for a suitable limit on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Fight Usage Caps? · · Score: 1

    ... with the possibility of increasing the cap if needed.

    I am in the UK and wanted to move to an ISP which offered FTTC, IPv6, a static IP, would be happy for me to run servers and would not implement CG-NAT, and offered good technical support in the event I should need it. The ISP which was most highly recommended to me based on those criteria offered FTTC for a fixed monthly price, with a cap — if paying a proportionate more-than-average-in-the-consumer-market price gave me a proportionate more-than-average-in-the-consumer-market service, that sounded like a good trade-off to me, even with a cap.

    Coming from an uncapped connection, I was nervous about buying something with a cap, but, having checked our usage for a three month period, I picked the option with a cap three times that (guessing that a faster connection would mean we use it for me) and, so far, that has worked out well for me. If I want another 100GB, I can pay for that, either as a one-off, on a particularly heavy usage month, or to upgrade the connection permanently.

    (The ISP is Andrews and Arnold and, so far, I have been more than happy with them. I guess that they have to pay upstream for capacity, and an unlimited connection would entail a pretty significant premium to ensure that they were not left out of pocket.)

  6. BlockSite (for Firefox) worked for me on New Keyboard Accessory Shocks Users When They Try To Go On Facebook · · Score: 2

    I realised I was wasting far too much time on Facebook a couple of years ago, along with other forums, and found it hard not to browse there - often, I found that I was just typing the URL without thinking about it, and loading the site without giving it any thought. A friend recommended BlockSite to me, and, whilst I felt a bit stupid at needing this crutch, I took it, and managed to get things back under control.

    Just add in the URLs of the site in question, and it blocks access to the pages (and elements at those URLs from loading as part of other pages). Editing a hosts file is probably just as suitable, but this worked for me...

  7. Well that sounds positive on Duracell's Powermat Ties the Knot With PowerKiss · · Score: 3, Funny

    What bright spark came up with the idea of this merger?

    Perhaps we could have one charging company merge with another time after time after time, thereby doing it in series.

  8. Re:rather have money on Do Developers Need Free Perks To Thrive? · · Score: 1

    With $100, I'm pretty sure you could order a pizza and lots of soda sent to your office

    Two or three, maybe even four, times, perhaps — but if that's an extra $100 per year, or even per month, there would be a lot of days without the free pizza or soda?

  9. Re:Presentations... on Fedora 19 To Stop Masking Passwords · · Score: 1

    Unless you are installing a production system in front of a room of people, and then not changing the password afterwards, just carry on as usual:

    Maintainers of the Anaconda installer in Fedora have taken it upon themselves to show passwords in plaintext on the screen as they are entered into the installer

  10. Re:Thank god the iPod is dead on iTunes Store Turns 10 · · Score: 1

    For those of us who used platforms that it didn't work on, it made owning an iPod/iPhone a nightmare

    I used my old iPod with Amarok under Ubuntu for quite some time — I actually found it easier to use that iTunes on Windows, which, for me, crashed more often than it worked.

  11. "99 cents ... was below the sub-$1" on iTunes Store Turns 10 · · Score: 0

    Close. 98c would be "below sub-$1"; 99c is the first sum in the sub-$1 region.

  12. Re:Relevant amendments: on Groups Accuse EU Parliament of "Caving In" To Pressure From Business and US · · Score: 1

    Great links — thank you!

  13. Re:Relevant amendments: on Groups Accuse EU Parliament of "Caving In" To Pressure From Business and US · · Score: 1

    once your name, phone number, profile picture and other identifying data is stripped, they can do whatever they want with your data?

    If all other identifying data has been stripped away, it is really "your" data any longer?

    I'm not sure that the situation you describe here would protect the data under the existing rules either:

    (a) 'personal data' shall mean any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identification number or to one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity;

    I think there is a difference between the situation which you describe (which seems to be anonymous data) and pseudonymous data, though, in that pseudonymous data does not have all identifying data stripped out, but rather replaced by a less obvious identifier.

    The phone number 07700 900771 might become a2t6#g1, but, if, in a stream / sequence of data, that number always becomes that alternative descriptor, anyone in control of the algorithm / key could convert obtain the original number again with relative easy — just run all possible permutations of the phone number (which is of standard form, with specified structure) through the algorithm and pattern match.

    To my mind, provided that the algorithm doing the conversion is appropriately protected, pseudonymisation may be one good method of reducing the risk associated with the processing of personal data, protecting it in the event for a data breach, and thus be a form of security measure, but is unlikely to stop the data from being capable of identifying the individual, in the hands of the party carrying out the pseudonymisation.

  14. Are the closing pages of a chapter / book on Startup Offers Pay-Per-Page E-Books · · Score: 1

    capable of commanding a higher price than the opening pages?

  15. "Secret" as in "well signposted"? on Secret UK Uranium Components Plant Closed Over Safety Fears · · Score: 4, Informative

    The AWE plant at Aldermaston is well signed from the road, and its website seems at least reasonably open about what it does:

    Our role at AWE is to manufacture and sustain the warheads for the Trident system ... Our work at AWE covers the entire life cycle of nuclear warheads; from initial concept, assessment and design, through to component manufacture and assembly, in-service support, and finally decommissioning and disposal.

  16. Re:There is no compulsion on Rennard... on How Mobile Operators Are Caught In the Middle In the Middle East and Africa · · Score: 1

    He can opt to pack all his employees and leave, without risking their lives.

    Absolutely. Indeed, as he is quoted in the article:

    Firstly, we have to protect our 2,000 employees in this region ... You just have to be able to protect your people in the country."

    The article goes on to ask whether Orange has a corporate responsibility to keep communications running in situations such as this, and Rennard replies:

    “In the end, I decided to send just three members of staff back, because if the network goes down, the public will ask, where were you when we needed you? But if I send these three guys back, and one of them is killed, that is on my conscience and I have to live with that. It’s not an easy decision to make, but this is my job.”

  17. Re:Missing the point. on Why You Shouldn't Design Games Through Analytics · · Score: 1

    It's a long read, but most of the important points are made in the first page. The rest (sadly) qualifies for TL;DR - it simply rehashes and expands on the same ideas from different angles and in more depth.

    It sounds like your neat summary of the article might also describe the difference between "social" games and "regular" games.

  18. Re:Ok, ok, I believe you know about game design on Why You Shouldn't Design Games Through Analytics · · Score: 1

    some executive just had a seizure on that guy's keyboard

    One of those wipe-clean seizures, one might suspect.

  19. Re:Trade mark or copyright? on The Copyright Battle Over Custom-Built Batmobiles · · Score: 1

    Bring it over to the UK — add in passing off and an unregistered design right :)

  20. Trade mark or copyright? on The Copyright Battle Over Custom-Built Batmobiles · · Score: 1

    Warner attorney J. Andrew Coombs argues in legal papers that the Batmobile incorporates trademarks with distinctive secondary meaning

    but

    Towle's attorney Larry Zerner, argues that automobiles aren't copyrightable.

    Since something need not be capable of protection by copyright to be capable of protection by a trade mark (a single word, for example) and since something need not be a trade mark to be eligible for copyright protection (this eliminate pretty much everything which is protectable by copyright today), Zerner's statement may be true as a matter of law, but it does not address the Warner's claim.

  21. Re:I can juggle three ... on Juggling By the Numbers · · Score: 1

    trying to do four in one of the harder patterns, and then claiming that four is harder than five, is simply perverse.

    Fair point :)

  22. Re:I can juggle three ... on Juggling By the Numbers · · Score: 1

    Juggle four by doing two in each hand, in a vertical plane parallel to your shoulders, the throws happening asynchronously.

    If just for the sake of juggling four, or as the basis for tricks with five, then sure — as a means of progressing to a five ball cascade, I'm not sure that would help at all? For me, that was great for co-ordination training for three in each hand, but not as something on its own. But I guess everyone juggles for their own reasons!

  23. If achieved, the end of spectrum licensing? on DARPA Wants Wireless Devices That Can Blast Through the Noise · · Score: 1

    If spectrum licensing is predicated on the basis of a need to prevent / minimise interference, if such a technology is developed, the requirement to license spectrum (and for governments to print money carrying out such licensing) would seem to fall away.

    Yochai Benkler has already made a persuasive case (I don't know if this was officially published) around this and, if it was possible to deploy widely technology that worked irrespective of interference, we'd seem to be one step closer.

    The cynic in me thinks it might fail as a result, since I doubt many governments would want to lose the money, or incumbent operators a means of excluding others from the market.

  24. Re:I can juggle three ... on Juggling By the Numbers · · Score: 1

    Then don't do that!

    Fair advice :) I'd just skip 4 and go to 5, but I didn't express that too clearly!

  25. Re:I had no idea that it had a name on Juggling By the Numbers · · Score: 1

    If you do not have access already, get hold of a copy of Charlie Dancey's Compendium of Club Juggling — you've obviously got siteswap mastered anyway, but, as a collation of some fantastic (and some simply fun) moves for club juggling and passing, it takes some beating.