Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/12/10/qothw_ending_december_11/

'Why the hell are we paying elite crypto crackers £25k?'

Plus: 'Stewardess REAMED ME OUT'. Ooer

By Anna Leach

Posted in Bootnotes, 10th December 2011 10:00 GMT

QuotW Water once flowed on Mars, we learned this week, and we also found that dinosaurs were bigger than previously thought and, about 100 million years before them, the sea was home to more terrifying all-seeing stalk-eyed monsters.

Speaking of dinosaurs, there has been fresh pressure on Steve Ballmer to step aside as CEO of Microsoft with a rumour that Gates was meditating a comeback.

One man who won't be coming back is Steve Jobs (god rest his soul) but he spoke to us from beyond the grave as the finalised renderings of Apple's new Cupertino HQ were published online by Cupertino Council. The giant dark glass doughnut is full of Jobs touches:

The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.

There's water on the Red Planet. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, a key Mars/water boffin explained:

This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock

A new dinosaur was discovered… and it was sitting in a museum all along. Andrew Farke, lead author on the study that identified and named the Spinops, said:

My colleagues and I were pleasantly surprised to find these fossils on the museum shelf, and even more astonished when we determined that they were a previously unknown species of dinosaur.

An athlete put himself on eBay

I’ve taken matters into my own hands – and am looking for sponsorship on eBay!” Ellington’s website said. “I’m offering to wear the kit of the sponsor at all appropriate opportunities from the end of the auction until the climax of the 2012 London Olympic Games."

Actor Alec Baldwin revealed both his short temper and Words With Friends addiction (it's an iPhone game) after he was kicked off a flight for refusing to stop playing it. He tweeted:

Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving. #nowonderamericaairisbankrupt

Andrew Orlowski reported on the strange child-freezing Gaia worship in a Somerset school that instituted a no-power day. The children in the unheated school were motivated by a visit from Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis. This is Cornwall reported:

Michael Eavis came into school to present the national 'Green Flag Award' which has given the school 'eco status' for their work on reducing their carbon footprint and environmental work. He was present to watch the unfurling of the green flag and to see the school chickens freed into their new home currently in the school quad.

And Android anti-virus software can tell you if snoop tracking Carrier IQ software is on your device but it can't do anything about it. Bitdefender said that

[Carrier IQ's mobile network diagnostic tool is] so deeply integrated with the device’s firmware [that] Carrier IQ Finder cannot remove it.

Twitter redesigned. And it wasn't just a design tweak on a website, it will bring you close to what matters to you:

Four new tabs bring you instantly closer to everything you care about

A 52 year old Alaskan ate frozen beer to survive snow drift. And not just any beer - Coors Light.. which he scoffed "like cans of beans". He recounted:

I cut the lids off and dug it out with a knife.

One of the elite code-crackers who broke the challenge puzzle on the GCHQ website proclaimed himself disappointed at the end of it when he was informed he could apply for a £25k a year job at spook central..

Why are we paying world-class cyber security experts what we pay passport-stampers at the border-control-agency?

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