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Comment Re:What power have laws, in this digital age? (Score 2) 195

"we're not even based in your country, so your laws mean precisely as much as we allow them to"

They do have a footprint in Europe, which is why they had the Irish Data Commissioner crawling around for 3 months last year. Multinational means multi-juristictional too, something to do with having your cake and eating it.

Comment Surprised this is news (Score 1) 203

My father was on submarines, and would come home from a 10-12 week patrol mildly short-sighted. He was ordinarily long-sighted, with a prescription to match.

We tell cube droids to 'rest their eyes' periodically during a 8 hour shift, by taking some time to focus on something that isn't 2 feet away (out the window, etc) exactly because this is a known issue. How did no-one assume that the same would happen on the ISS?

Comment Re:who's over-inflated idea of his own importance? (Score 1) 425

The shift you're talking about pretty much defines mass media. When you were commissioned to paint a chapel's ceiling, or portrait some fat cat, it's in your better interests to tell them whatever they want to hear. You do the job, they pay you, you walk away. Shifting units is a whole 'nother ball game. Instead of walking away, you can keep selling that piece over, and over again, for as long as you can remind people it exists. It being *your* piece of work is central to your legitimacy

Comment BackWeb (Score 1) 150

weather.com were using backweb.com to do this in 99. backweb seems to stem back to 96-97. The user installed client-side backweb agent, then subscribed to one or more channels. The backweb agent downloaded new content from these channels as and when it was added to the channel. The content was 'multimedia', being pretty much anything that could be encapsulated in flash or java. I don't know how it handled low-disk conditions for part 4 of claim 1, but "not dying horribly" should be an obvious extension to parts 1-3 of claim 1.

Comment Re:Odds ? (Score 2, Interesting) 622

It's a lot more 2D than you'd assume. To maintain any kind of launch readiness, you want to spend most your time as close as possible/comfortable to hover/launch depth. A few sane points that are being completely missed here, are that "playing games" with each other is the job of attack boats, not bombers - and the English Channel, separating England and France, and home to atleast one of the Royal Navy's principle ports (however, not home to the clyde submarine base nor relevant RNAD), happens to be relatively shallow, and one of the busiest seaways in the world. It is a shame tho. They finally managed to stop the acoustic tiles from falling off the the Vanguard class, and now they keep playing contact sports just to foul them up again.

Comment Re:You are an idiot (Score 1) 136

Since we took them away from the RAF, the UK's nuclear fleet is our only nuclear capability. Considering even the French manage to bear four SSBN and an airlaunch capability, I think maintaining the Trident fleet is the least we can do. We really can't be shown up by the French .. And as to the actual article, the comment made to the BBC regarding trusting the navy is spot on. If you don't trust your Senior Officers with a nuclear arsenal, don't send them off to sea with 40-off warheads.

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