* Posts by The Other Steve

1184 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Oct 2007

Spinning the war on the UK's sex trade

The Other Steve
Flame

@ "Even one 'x' is to many" retards

Yes, yes, one child abused is to many, one woman raped is to many, one spliff rolled is to many, yadda yadda.

Those of you esposuing this rather ill thought out argument need to go away and have a little chat with yourselves, turn on your TV and watch some news, read some history books. Open Your Fucking Eyes.

And see : The world we live in is brutal, messy, dangerous and unpleasant. There are bad people, doing bad things. Got that part ? Now, take a deep breath and realise that YOU CAN NOT STOP THIS FROM BEING THE CASE.

How exactly would you propose that we undertake to prevent your "one to many" of whatever 'x' you've got your knickers in a twist about ? You would need to live in a society so thouroughly totalitarian that everyone, and everything, is under surveilance all the time, no exceptions, and in which the state has the ability and the will to intervene for every infraction of the rules*.

There are a number of rather horrid problems with this, not the least being that it is abhorrent in the extreme, but leaving that aside for a moment, how would you achieve this goal ? At a stroke, you've got to have a large chunk (> 50 %, probably by quite a bit) of the populace working as surveilance drones for the state, and who watches them ? And are the minority that are left over able to fulfil the UK's need for productive work ?**

By using the "even one 'x' is to many" line of reasoning, you are actively soliciting your government to opress you, you are begging for them to turn the UK into one enormous prison, something they'll be quite happy to do if you ask them. Of course, it won't actually prevent "one x", but it may have the effect of you never hearing about the >1 x that take place, because let's face it, a state like that is not going to want to keep it's citizens very well informed, now is it ? Imagine if you allowed your wise leaders to enslave you in this way in the cause of preventing 1 'x', and there were multiple 'x', you'd feel all stupid and revolutionary and wonder if it was all worth it.

You're taking part in this circle jerk of autocratic brutality based on two really flawed premises, viz that you can prevent "one x", which you can't, and that if you could then the way to do it would be by making perfectly ordinary things illegal, which has never worked, from drugs and prostitution all the way up the chain to nuclear weapons.

And you're also effectively saying that it's OK for the government to tell porkies about the numbers if it's in a good cause. You wankers.

*(C) Jacqui Smith, 2007/2008

**'Course, if you're a strong AI cheerleader _and_ a totalitarian facist bastard, you could posit a vast omniescent AI that will do the surveilance and enforcement, while leaving the fleshies to go about their business, I doubt even you retards would want to go there.

Bees on cocaine: The facts

The Other Steve
Thumb Up

In other news

Researchers have shown that Polar bears also act like complete and utter knobs when coked off their boxes. An effect never before seen, since until now, no one has been wrecked enough to stuff a 1300 pound Ursus maritimus full of Bolivian marching powder.

Adobe brings AIR to Linux

The Other Steve
Happy

@ A J Stiles

"If it builds on *one* Linux, it'll build on *any* Linux -- not to mention Solaris, Mac OS X and the BSDs?"

Hahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhahahahhahaaaaa.

More seriously, for some value of build, it will build on any appropriately configured linux, given the correct version libraries, the correct version GCC, the correct version binutils, the correct version of the build system, all found in paths that are recognised by the config script.

None of which is necessarily guaranteed unless you're using some supported version. Yes, I suppose you could say that it will build on "any" linux, but that's provided you're prepared to end up with a linux that isn't the one you started out with at the beginning of the build process, and you can be arsed.

UK will save its 48-hour opt-out, says employment lawyer

The Other Steve

@ElFatbob

<ElFatbob >

The elected MEP's vote on things that we seem to think we can negociate our way out of yet the unelected EU Commission issues dictats and we have to comply...

Can someone explain this to me...

</ElFatbob >

I don't think you need someone to explain it you, you seem to have got the gist as it is. The elected parliament proposes and votes on stuff, but it doesn't matter a fig because the Council Of Ministers can do as they damn well please*.

Good eh ?

Like western civilisation, European democracy would be a good idea.

*it's slightly more complicated than that, but not by much.

Wikipedia self-flagellates over vanishing 'farmsex'

The Other Steve

@Dave

OK, that's a good start, those are some things I hadn't contemplated. I am selfish enough not to have children, so I have no idea about contemporary <16 education. SWMBO works in FE and HE, and so I am au fait with that end of things only to the the extent to which she is involved, and she doesn't teach out of wikipedia.

As for the goals, what are they ? See I was right, I _am_ missing some vital context.

The Other Steve

Update LOL

"this topic might be improved to the "top 1%" standard necessary for "Featured Article" status"

A featured article on shagging animals ? I thought they only just got of the IWF watch list.

The Other Steve
Paris Hilton

Could we have a Wikipedia article ...

... to remind us why we should care ? I mean that in all seriousness. I'm sure there is one, and I even try to read the continuing series of "Wikkifiddlers in the wild" exposes, but I can't get far in to them before mine eyes glaze over. Not due to the authors engaging style, I might add, but just because I stop caring.

I feel sure that I must be missing something, some vital piece of context that would elevate this story above a childish semantic dispute played out amongst a shadowy conspiracy of dog fuckers*.

A "Wiki watchers guide" or "Wikipedia, 10 reasons why you actually _should_ give a toss" would be most helpful in this regard, ta.

Paris, because I'm sure she "gets it".

*The one thing I did take away from this article, was a sense of wonderment that an academic would publicly put his name to a complaint about editing the wikipedia entry relating to sticking your love trombone into livestock. And for this I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Jacqui calls Vodafone man to run massive snoop database

The Other Steve
Stop

@VPN

Ah yes, but then you make it obvious that you have something to hide, especially if your VPN tunnel is to an offshore server (remember "they" can still see the dest IP for the tunnel) .

And then you will become a Person Of Interest, because only paedos, drug pushers and terrorists have something to hide.

In order to determine which one you are so that you can be properly punished, pour encourage les outres, the rest of your traffic data, including your location as supplied by the mobile phone companies, will be mined for behavioural anomalies. Possibly all the way up to a real time tap on all your comms, and if they're _all_ encrypted to a fare thee well, you can expect a court order for the keys, penalty for non compliance* is detention at one of Brenda's finest prisons.

After all, if you've nothing to hide...

*Or disclosure of having received the notice, which is the part of RIPA that is _really_ nasty.

Fly-tipping yes, dog poo no - Jacqui promises Ripa changes

The Other Steve

@David Hicks

<sigh>

"I don't believe that being out in public is in any way implicit permission for my activities to be recorded."

What about while you are committing a crime ?

"No, I don't believe that dog crap is important enough to justify monitoring the entire population 24/7"

And nor does anyone else. The suggestion is that a dog warden ought to be able to to take a photo of you allowing your dog to foul the public highway, e.g. while you are committing a crime. _Not_ to monitor everyone all the time to see if they own dogs which might foul the pavement. You are confusing a man photographing you with the proposed uberdatabase.

"Every study shows it too be ineffectual."

That statement is meaningless without a lot of citations attached to it. You will need to identify "every" study, and provide links. Ditto with the follow up "Studies also show ...". I suspect what you really mean is "anecdotal evidence which is largely made up by the Daily Mail or some bloke down the pub suggests", but I will willingly stand corrected if you are able to supply a list of studies which do indeed suggest that the behaviour you describe is unavoidable and universal.

"The system should be available to the police and the police only, if it exists at all"

What is this "system" of which you speak ? I'm asking you about a dog warden with a camera. And if you think that the cops ought to be responsible for policing parks for turd-crime, you need to go and talk to a policeman so he can explain to you why he hasn't got the time for that.

"They are trained and they are accountable, sometimes"

Sometimes ? Really ? That's good enough is it ? And if the corrupting behaviour that your myriad studies have irrefutably proved is universal doesn't apply to them because "they are trained" , why can others not be so trained ? And remember, we wouldn't be having this discussion if RIPA hadn't made the 'council snoopers' accountable.

So now I've knocked down your straw men, will you tell me if you are advocating a right to privacy for those who are obviously committing an offence, and what measures should replace the ones you have the problem with ?

The Other Steve
Coat

Dog shit

@ David Hicks

"I don't think dog fouling is important enough to allow the intrusion into privacy by ever more people"

Where is the intrusion into privacy ? You walk a dog in public, it shits on the pavement in public, someone takes a photo of you and your doggy pal doing the dirty, in public.

Also, allowing your quadrupedal companion to foul the public highway is a crime, why would you expect to have any right to privacy during the commission of a crime ? Are you really sure that's what you want to advocate ?

Penultimately, who are the "ever more people" intruding into this non existent privacy right ?

And lastly, "If Labour had been honest about the intent of the RIPA then it never would have got through". I'm not sure about that. If they had said that as well as terror, crime, etc, it was going to place limits, a requirement for authorisation, and an audit trail on local authority decisions involving surveillance, none of which existed before, and if they'd made it clear that, counter to what seems to be popular opinion, RIPA doesn't grant anyone any powers at all, and in fact exists to place limits on them, then perhaps the opposition wouldn't have been able to grab hold of the "snoopers charter" argument, which is bollocks in the way I have described. RIPA doesn't enable anyone to do anything, it merely mandates that they ask first before undertaking certain kinds of activity.

Spooks they were a'spying and councils a'snooping well before it all got codified into RIPA, having it written down and regulated arguably makes it slightly less sinister than the pre-existing regime where much was done on the nod and the wink, and mainly done in the dark at that, where you can't see it, and where, as I pointed out, you are unable to complain about it.

RIPA is broken, but it still heaps better than no RIPA. Governments, councils and the like will arrogate these kinds of powers to themselves any way, all bureaucracies do so as long as they are allowed to exist, and there is not, will never be, and never has been, anything you nor I can do about that. At least this way we can see what they're doing.

The Other Steve
Coat

Sound and fury, signifying nothing

The pie faced fascist bitch rides again ! Notice that she has basically said more or less nothing ? "We'll continue to do as we are, only with extra magic pixie dust to make sure it's OK, and no more dog poo stories in the Daily Mail, ta" is about the gist of it.

So ya boo sucks to her.

Perhaps all the the frothing at the mouth RIPA haters can answer some pertinent questions though, like how should we gather evidence of dog fouling ? If, indeed, paper boys are carrying to much weight, in breech of some H&S regs, how do we check without sending someone to have a look ?

Why, exactly, is it a disproportionate use of "state power" for a public officer to photograph someone in the commission of a crime ? How _DO_ I check if people really live where they say they do, and I suspect they are lying in order to defraud the state ?

There would be no problem here, if it wasn't for the common (and justified) misconception that RIPA is somehow only for terrs and crims. If NuLab had told the fecking truth for a change when they were hammering this through instead of caterwauling about how we needed it to protect us from the four horsemen of the apocalypse, viz: terrorists, drug dealers, peados and organised crime, we wouldn't be having such a bloody hysterical frenzy over it's use.

For those of you who obviously haven't bothered to read it, RIPA specifically provides for the authorisation of directed surveillance (e.g. snapping poo spreaders) for the purposes of :

<RIPA>

(a) in the interests of national security;

(b) for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder;

(c) in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom;

(d) in the interests of public safety;

(e) for the purpose of protecting public health;

(f) for the purpose of assessing or collecting any tax, duty, levy or other imposition, contribution or charge payable to a government department;

...

</RIPA *>

And again, try to bear in mind that _before_ RIPA, local authorities could already, and frequently did, put people under surveillance. RIPA isn't perfect by a long stretch, but if it wasn't there, there wouldn't be an audit trail for the Daily Wail to FOI in order to get something to whine about.

So there.

*http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000023_en_5#pt2-pb2-l1g28

More execs quit Phorm

The Other Steve
Black Helicopters

"you won't have anything to worry about if you aren't doing anything dodgy"

That's either wonderfully inept, or a bit sinister. It's almost friday, so let's go for the tin foil hat version.

Essentially a restatement of the old "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" straw man, except that as stated it begs, firstly, a thorough exploration of the term "dodgy", to whit - how is 'dodgy' defined, and more importantly, by _whom_ is it defined

Secondly, what exactly do I have to fear if I _am_ doing something that falls within said definition ? There at least two possibilities that I can see, that my 'dodgy' deeds will be somehow exposed to other people on my network, which is a breach of my supposedly assured privacy, or that my 'dodgy' deeds will noted by my ISP and I shall somehow be punished for them ? Which is also a breach of my supposedly assured privacy, and a massive feature creep totally outwith the stated purpose and the contractual terms currently available.

Sadly, it's pointless asking these questions of a TSR* since a) they won't know anything, and b) asking them hard questions is about as much fun as microwaving your face.

*Or anyone else at BT for that matter, since anyone in a position to give straight answers, and there must be some, will just lie.

Larry Wall on the Zen of Perl 6

The Other Steve
Flame

Sense of humour fail much ?

Like Perl, written lots and lots of hackish weird shit in it over the years, particularly prototypes. I prefer to work in other languages these days, but I still have a particular fondness for it.

And yet, I can still find the article funny, unlike some of the humourless bastards that seem to be unable to restrain themselves from commenting every Ted writes something.

Seriously children, if you don't like the humour, stop reading his articles.

And BTW Ted, there wasn't anywhere near enough profanity in that article, man up.

Economists: European ancestors are what make you rich

The Other Steve

perhaps a form of economic culture, a set of attitudes or beliefs

Or perhaps fuck off big wads of cash and a hot pluggable economic model ? And guns.

Wisemen bring Jesus Phone (free) cut-and-paste

The Other Steve
Alert

WTF ?

There's really no cut/paste ? And the solution is WEB BASED ??? Sorry, but whoever is responsible for the lack of cut/paste, and whoever thought that the best way to work around it is a solution that requires you to be connected a network so that you can use a fucking web service to copy a few lines of text are both complete asshats.

@jubtastic1

No, that doesn't help me to quote mail, and sending screen grabs is shit headed, stop apologising for asshats.

Daft list names Firefox, Adobe and VMWare as top threats

The Other Steve
Happy

Ho ho ho, meeeery christmas!

"Often running outside of the IT department’s knowledge or control"

If your corporate desktop policy allows users to install and run any old toss they download off the web without asking you, your security is already fucked way beyond these moron's ability to help you.

Nice try though, and I can imagine a lot of over stressed "IT managers"* in SMEs buying into it if they think it will stop their idiot users whining at them. Might even be worth it, just for that.

*E.g. those who have somehow found themselves in charge of an IT infrastructure that they are neither competent, nor sufficiently resourced, nor empowered by policy, to manage properly. E.g. almost all of them. I worked with a guy once who was in this position and re-wrote the org's security policy so that the security of the individual PC was the responsibility of the user, rather than the IT function, just to get around this kind of thing, neat hack.

Story withdrawn

The Other Steve
Coat

Meh

"Netizen" is hardly a neologism either. To my certain knowledge, it was in common usage on usenet at a minimum of 14 years ago (along with it's evil twin "Netiquette") and is mentioned in Howard Rheingold's vomit inducingly saccharine tome "The Virtual Community", whose frontispiece bears the copyright date of 1994.

And many of the other terms in the list pre date even that, esp w/r/t LOL, ROFL, *tard, and even "pwn/pwnage/pwned", which despite what modern ganers think, is a fine example of the typo wordplay typical of usenet, which predates the web by approximately a decade.

And while I'm pedantically pontificating, "Mashup", while a genuine neologism, is not a 'net' neologism, rather it is a word that was born in the music industry (or some subculture thereof) and subsequently repurposed.

Of the remaining candidates, while there are a few that really boil my piss, esp. the particularly vile "webinar", which is not just a gut wrenchingly web cheerleader-y portmanteau of the lowest order, but also stunningly inaccurate given the commonly received meaning of the word "seminar", the only one in sufficiently common parlance and increasingly threatening to burst free of the net and infect everyday usage (at least where I can see it), is the bastard son of a thousand screaming maniac postfixes "2.0".

The bastard.

Google Native Client challenges Microsoft and Adobe RIAs

The Other Steve

Oh really ?

Hang on, let me get this straight, rather than all the processing taking place on the server, it's a good idea to have all the processing happen at the user end, and the means of accomplishing this should be compiled binary code, native to the platform ?

You mean, exactly like the 'traditional' desktop applications that we've all been using since the nativity of the PC ? And which, in fact, almost everybody who isn't a foaming at the mouth fanboi still uses for most of their day to day data processing ?

What happened to the 'cloud' then ? Sun come out, did it ?

Ofcom rules on Clarkson strumpet gag

The Other Steve
Thumb Up

An unexpected victory for common sense

And one in the eye for whiny self righteous fucktards everywhere. Yay Offcom.

I'm off to dance on Mary Whitehouse's grave to celebrate. It's been a while.

Google OS gOS - if at first you don't succeed...

The Other Steve
Happy

Dance monkeys, dance.

There hasn't been a column that provoked such hilariously drooling and ill informed commentage* since the sad demise of Otto Z Stern**.

All aboard the ROFLCopter.

*Made up words (net neologism) FTW!

** Hint hint

Jacqui promotes police handhelds

The Other Steve

@Red Bren

"3G transmitter to send all the info back ( to the uberdatabase and receive a list of suggested "crimes" you can be charged with"

In theory, that might actually not be such a bad idea, since half the coppers knocking about seem to have no fucking idea of what the law actually is.

US WMD report: Dirty bombs, chem weapons are bunk

The Other Steve
Boffin

@Greg Fleming - mod + 1 for wrong-oh, sorry.

Nuke manufacturing wise, there are at least two basic options for design, the 'gun' design, and the 'implosion' design. Implosion devices are the harder to make, and are the type used in high yield boosted weapons of the type you find perched atop a MIRV. (because you can build them smaller)

Manufacture of a high yield boosted weapon requires a state. And a highly technologised one at that, so we can discount them straight off the bat. But crude weapons, well. The engineering challenge* for a gun type device is that you have to be able to machine, or otherwise form some of your fissile material with a hole in it. For implosion types, you need to machine or otherwise form your sub crit mass to a shape that you can compress with explosives, and be able to compress it, with explosives.. (Detail missing on purpose)

Obviously, you have to be able to do this without offing yourself, which is hard since both common fission fuels are perilously toxic and dangerous to handle, as are the conventional explosives required.

It sounds quite hard, I admit, but enough of my psycho rambling on the subject, let me quote to you from the book "How to build a nuclear bomb and other weapons of mass destruction"** by a chap called Frank Barnaby :

"A group of two or three people with the appropriate skills could design and fabricate a crude nuclear explosive. It is a sobering fact*** that the fabrication of a primitive nuclear explosive using plutonium or suitable uranium would require no greater skill than that required for the production and use of the nerve agent and released in the Tokyo underground."

And Frank ought to know, since he's a nuke boffin who use to work at ARE Aldermaston. Note here the emphasis on _crude_ and _primitive_, You aren't even looking at the kiloton range, more like the 100 ton range. Because we're used to thinking of nukes in terms of mega- and kilo- tonnage, that sounds quite small, but the equivalent of 100 tons of TNT going up will spoil an awful lot of peoples day, and such a device is likely to be quite dirty due to inefficient fission.

Sorry, dude. Great big megadeath warheads, no. Big badda boom, 'fraid so. It's 3 AM, do you know where _YOUR_ fissile material is ??

* It was only Big Science the first time. After that it's all engineering.

** Anarchists cook book, my arse. Granta, London, 2003. ISBN 9-781-862-076-778, pp 36. Despite the catchy name it's a level headed, candid assessment of the various types of WMD, their effects, and the level of technology, expertise and finance required to manufacture and deploy them. A thumping good read, but perhaps not one for air travel. Read it before Jackboots Schmidt bans it.

*** No Frank, it bloody well isn't.

The Other Steve

America, Fuck Yeah!

"The two men and their associated commissioners and staff have since travelled the world, interviewing people "

Please fill in the survey, delete options as appropriate.

1) Do you plan to manufacture a WMD : Yes / Yes

2) Do you plan to use it before : 2013 / 2013 / 2013

"Well, it seems that the US must make more use of "soft power" and diplomatic efforts, seeking to stop countries from pursuing nuclear weapons programmes or civil nuclear power programmes which are dual-purposed as weapons production."

And countries who don't like Team America, World Police will continue to tell them to stick it up their hairy Uncle Sams until it stops being the most awful two faced hypocrisy. If the yanks truly believe they are the only country on earth fit to be custodians of nuclear weapons, they're going to have to invade some more countries.

Lapland New Forest website suffers 'unusual technical problems'

The Other Steve

Shame On Them

"they physically attacked Santa's little helpers."

Love it ! Imagine the scene, incensed (not not unreasonably) by having paid twenty five quid a head to stand in a muddy field full of dead reindeer looking a billboard, dad starts laying out to the elves. Kids screaming, dad makes his way towards Santa "And as for you, you fat bastard...", accompanied by cries from the missus "Leave 'im darren. he's not werf it! You can't punch santa you muppet!" "I Cahn' 'elp it Shaz, 'es ruined it for ahh Tiff'ny !"

It's like Eastenders writ large.

They deserve everything they get, spoiling Christmas for the kiddies. I hope someone hacked their server. Bastards.

Berlusconi plans to use G8 presidency to 'regulate the internet'

The Other Steve
Flame

Oh, and ...

The first person who says "the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it", is an utter fucktard of the highest order and should have their geek licence revoked until they have successfully passed a course of harsh re-education and stringent punishment. I will volunteer my services for free.

The Other Steve
Flame

ARRRRRGH!

night troll :

"will these prats of politicians realise they can not "regulate" the internet and that the whole point of the way it was set up was that no one country or individual could control it. Muppets, all of them."

David Wiernicki :

"Well... really, the point of the way it was set up was that so no one nuke or infrastructure attack could disable it. The rest is kind of a happy side-effect."

NO. NO. NO. Neither of those is even remotely true. Not even a little bit. I'm bored of trying to police this particular myth, so I suggest you go and read up on some history by yourselves. I'll give you some hints though, the nuke myth is to do with the involvement of Paul Baran. GIYF, except you'll have to ignore every page that restates the fatuous shit just spouted, because it's wrong. Try books. In the event of a holocaust, you will not be able to watch youtube videos, so not all bad then.

As for :

"Berlusconi plans to use G8 presidency to 'regulate the internet'"

Less stupid and venal people than him haver tried and failed, so I'm not going to worry just yet, plus as mentioned above it will soon become clear that the corrupt fat bastard really wants to silence dissent against him. How TF did he get to be pres of the G8 anyway ? Oh wait, because they're All fat, corrupt, plutocrats as well.

Human rights court rules UK DNA grab illegal

The Other Steve
Stop

Quelle Horror!

Suddenly I am reminded of the reg story "Government data review grants more data sharing power"*

"The response calls for primary legislation to provide the Secretary of State with a power by Order to remove or modify any legal barrier to data sharing by "repealing or amending other primary legislation, changing any other rule of law, creating a new power to share information where that power is currently absent".

So there's her emergency legislation. Bye Bye Human Rights Act, hello stasi Britain. (Of course, she's unlikely to be in office long enough to get it through, thank christ)

* http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/26/data_review_more_powers/

The Other Steve
Flame

RE: crime free = more rights

"if they had a voluntary scheme to collect dna then i would be first in line."

"By ___Anonymous Coward___"

So you want the police to have your DNA, but you don't even have the stones to use a pseudonym on the internet ? How does that work then ?

You could say it's "Jacquiavellian" *

And BTW, the problem of the "Jane Doe" corpses you seem to believe are littering the UK could more easily and cheaply be solved by people sewing name labels into their pants.

* Nice one AJ Stiles, that word is now part of my vocabulary for ever, and will remain so even after the (hopefully imminent) departure of the current car crash of a Home Secretary.

The Other Steve

Who will rid me of this turbulent pie faced fascist ?

"The existing law will remain in place while we carefully consider the judgement."

Let's unpack that a bit, the existing law has just been nullified by the ECHR, it is therefore illegal for the police to continue to retain the DNA records of those who have never been charged with crime (which as of this moment includes Damien Green, MP).

But JackBoot Smith says she will order the police to continue breaking the law until she's had a bit of a think about it ? Fuck. Right. Off.

Unfortunately, I agree with Dave, that means she'll keep right on "while we look for a loophole that means we get to keep the database".

The woman is incapable of realising that she can be wrong, so what happens now is that she will pick up a copy of the HRA, have a read through the many, various and massive loopholes, pick one, and introduce some legislation, or in her case, more likely some kind of emergency regulation that she won't have to consult parliament about that allows her to use one of them to do what the hell she pleases.

It's disgusting.

Jacqui Smith denies any knowledge of police search

The Other Steve

Spot the difference :

Operational Independence *

Complete failure of democratic oversight and abrogation of responsibility for such.**

It's amusing that Straw and the other wankers who keep screaming that we aren't in a police state hold that the definition of such is a state in which the government controls the police, rather than one in which the government can't, or won't, control the police.

*<Cough> BAE corruption investigation </>

** And not just in the case of Damien Green, either, but more generally.

MPs demand investigation into unlawful police action

The Other Steve

@myself, put BBC higher in your RSS list.

Coppers say different, oh deary me.

From the text of the actual letter sent by Inspector Knacker to Jackboot Smith* :

"Section 8 (1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act as amended permits a Justice of the Peace to issue a warrant authorising a constable to enter and search premises where satisfied on application by a constable that there are reasonable grounds for believing: "

...

"e) That any of the conditions specified in sub section 3 applies in relation to each set of premises specified. "

...

"c) That entry to the premises will not be granted unless a warrant is produced. "

"The effect of the condition in subsection 3 (c) is that a Justice of the Peace may not issue a search warrant under section 8 if he/she believes entry to the premises will be granted without a warrant (ie by consent). As there was no basis for submitting to a JP that it was believed that consent would be refused, it was considered that it was not open to a constable to make an application."

...

"The officers explained the nature of the investigation and the purpose of the search and were satisfied that the Serjeant at Arms understood that police had no power to search in the absence of a warrant and therefore could only do so with her written consent or that of the Speaker."

Double ouchies all around then, that's Gorbals Mick out of a job for telling porkies to the house, surely.

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7765081.stm

Speaker distances himself from police raids on MP

The Other Steve
Coat

@AC

"His home was searched too, did that have a warrant for that?"

Yes, they obtained warrants for all three of the other properties searched, but weirdly, not for his office in the commons, which was conducted by way of a consent form signed by the serjeant at arms (horrid spelling, but correct)

The serious allegation made by Gorbals Mick is that they did not make the sarjeant at arms aware that she was able to turn down the request to search (assuming it was her they ought to have been asking in the first place) and insist upon a warrant. This is a serious breach of procedure on the part of the officers involved (PACE Code B s5.2 *).

While it's clear that El Gordo and the pie faced facist bitch Smith are lying out of their arses, this does rather drop the met quite firmly in the thick brown fecal matter. If it's true.

* http://police.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/operational-policing/2008_PACE_Code_B_(final).pdf

McKinnon gets date for final showdown

The Other Steve

@Pierre

"More specifically, as everyone but hopeless morons know, the anti-terror law that is put forward by the prosecution was passed AFTER he logged in the unprotected, wide open systems."

In that case, can he STFU about having Aspergers, since his diagnosis was put forward AFTER he had been arrested and confessed to committing crimes ? Also, if you stabbed someone in the face today, but weren't caught for two years, during which time the offence was changed from GBH to something else, what what should the police do ? Let you go ?

And "the unprotected, wide open systems" make no difference under UK law, any more than I imagine they do under US law, so honestly, give it a rest.

I started off thinking maybe McKinnon should be tried here, and in some ways I still do, but arguments like this make me want to ship the fucktard to Gitmo out of spite. Shit, it might be the UK's only productive export of 2009. If only the whiny sKript Kiddie cheerleaders had kept their mouths (and blogs) shut, perhaps his 'plight' would have been taken a bit more seriously.

Microsoft's C# to converse with dynamic languages

The Other Steve

@sabroni

"As far as ambiguous goes, I thought C# was like C++, undecidable. See here:

http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html

When I looked at this it looked very similar to C#...."

Virtually non of this applies to C#, since like most modern languages it's grammar is context free, q.v. also the comments in the same section w/r/t modularity and compare/contrast with the way a .NET application is assembled.

The link you quote is very specifically about C++, it has no relevance whatsoever to C# because they are not the same language.

The Other Steve

Oh, here we go.

From the article :

"C# 4.0, expected with the next version of Visual Studio."

Oh FFS. So yet again MS make some incremental improvement to the .NET framework and they think that in order to get it, I'm going to pony up for yet another new version of VS at 500 bastard quid, do they ? Gosh, I feel all warm and valued as a developer. Bastards.

"The statically typed C# was introduced with .NET in 2000 and has found huge success in the enterprise during the intervening eight years."

Because you get (nearly all of) the powerful semantics of C++, but you can't hurt yourself (as much) unless you specifically ask to. In the market that C# targets (enterprise RAD), that's a valuable asset.

"People say: 'Anders have you gone stark raving mad .. ?'"

Well, they certainly said that when you went to work for the Beast, yes :-)

And now :

@Daniel Chapiesky :

"So... the big idea is to let "managed" code (which ostensibly is "more" secure) have pure unfettered access to the existing code base of "COM" (read COMpletely unsecure) and that is somehow extremely cooooooool."

Given that much of windows' interoperability model is built from COM (including the parts of it that live inside the VS IDE, ironically enough), and that you want your applications to integrate with it with the least amount of effort and pain, it's more a necessity than "cooooooool". Since .NET (despite what the article appears to say) is nowhere near having replaced COM, any improvement is welcome. COM may suck, but it's core to the OS, and having better access from managed code beats the shit out of using P/Invoke to get around limitations, which just adds another thing to go horribly wrong and is pretty horrible to implement.

As for "ostensibly more secure", the idea of managed code is not so much to do with security as with removing the 'burden' of memory management, bounds checking and suchlike from the coder in order to improve application stability.

Personally, I do most of my Windows API and COM stuff in C++, wrapped in a DLL if it has to work with C#, but not everyone wants to, is allowed to, or can, do that. Which brings me neatly on to ...

@sabroni :

"But no, coding in VB doesn't make us feel clever"

And nor should it. You do know what the B in BASIC stands for, don't you ? There used to be a good reason to code in VB, because there weren't many competitors in the RAD market. That's not true any more, albeit that the most popular competitor is another MS product.

"I genuinely believe the only reason developers prefer C# is becuse it's indecipherable to most people."

Dealing with programmers first, there are very few professional commercial developers who haven't been taught in either C/C++ or a language whose syntax was derived from it (Java being en vogue on CS courses these days), even the lowly self taught webbies have javascript and PHP, so no competent programmer will have any difficulties with it at all. But you really seem to mean all people, incredibly, so ...

"Well written VB, on the other hand, can often be understood by anyone who speaks english."

Rubbish, pure and unadulterated. Unless you code like a complete moron. I worked with someone like that once. His argument was that his code was "easy to read", everyone else's was that it took him three hundred lines of code where ten would have done and been a damn sight easier to maintain. It shouldn't be (and isn't) a reasonable expectation that a piece of computer code should be readable to a layman, any more than you would expect a sociologist to be able to understand the notation of mathematical analysis without being tutored in it.

That's not snobbish, it's a fact about any discipline. Even if there were a language that was easy for the non tutored layman to understand (and there isn't, see the history of COBOL), there would be no good argument for using it exclusively on that basis alone.

"So what's the job of a programming language then? To make developers look clever or to interface between computer and human?"

Or computer and computer, or computer and network, or computer and hardware. I don't know why you've got such a bug up your ass about "looking clever".

"[I] don't find C# indecipherable"

Then what are you complaining about ?

"(though you can't deny it is often ambiguous)."

I don't know about the OP, but *I* can deny it is ambiguous in almost cases, since ambiguity is not permitted by the derivation rules of the language's grammar. If you write some code that is ambiguous, the parser will crap on itself and your code won't compile. There is a single notable exception to this, and it exists only because on noting the ambiguity, the C# 3.0 parser attempts to guess what you mean, which is a dumb thing for a parser to do, but even so it still throws a warning.

OTOH if you mean 'it can often _look_ ambiguous _to someone who doesn't understand the language_', well, go figure, that's because they don't understand the language.

If you feel this strongly about C#, for god's sake never look at any PERL or PHP.

The Other Steve
Go

@Greg Fleming

" "claiming somebody chooses C# out of snobbery is like saying C programmers like to strangle themselves whilst masturbating..."

But, sweetheart, they DO. Its a fact of life."

No, no. I have someone else strangle me, otherwise which hand would be holding the mouse ?

Teen-bothering sonic device now does grownups too

The Other Steve
Flame

@Mike JVX

"Here though, especially in "pure working class areas" you more than likely would get beaten severely, likely including having several people jumping and stamping on your head intending to kill you, then either end up in ICU or 6 feet under in a pine box."

What utter arsewash. And shame on you, because you know it's arsewash.

Hysterical fearmongering won't help, and since a quick comparison of population figures and reported crime will conclusively illustrate that the world is not as you describe it (or for me personally, just going outside, since I live in such an area), why bother ?

The Other Steve
Stop

Life, liberty, disambiguation / @Graham Marsden

"And to those slagging off Liberty, you are really missing the point."

Just so there's no ambiguity, I'm not slagging off Liberty et al because I don't like them, because I do. And Shami Chakrabarti can protect my human rights any time, rrrrrrr.

I just feel that :

A) They aren't making their argument very well, due to the massive holes in the HRA that were presumably drafted in just to make sure that it doesn't, in fact, actually grant any rights that justify the name, and simply citing it leaves them open to the kind of rebuttal I described.

and

B) That simply by using the term, rather than by playing it a bit smart and using something else as a jumping off point, they alienate many people. From those who have some understanding of the act (Guardianistas who will talk about balancing of rights, but think theirs come out on top, smug bastards) thru Daily Mail/Express (etc) Readers and BNP members (insert your own Venn diagram here) who have allowed themselves to be convinced that the HRA is somehow a villain's charter by people whom it prevents from reporting every tedious tantalising titbit of other's private lives (Desmond, Rothermere, Dacre, etc) and/or being beastly to darkies, cripples, jews, women and foreigners (Griffin et al, also q.v previous parens), depending on the coords in the diagram you just drew.

A is a problem with the legislation.

B is an unpleasant fact of life, made bitterly ironic by the fact that the above listed people are likely to be the first to shrill off about _their_ rights being violated (in fact, their opposition to the HRA actually revolves around exactly this, if only they were able to get their heads around that fact, q.v. also various comments), as rather neatly illustrated by the BNP invoking it recently after having campaigned against it for so long.

There's scope for a rational, measured debate about the use of such devices, and all similar measures, but it's borked when you start it by invoking the HRA, because A means the govt will just tell you to fuck off and mind your own business while they take action to prevent crime and disorder, which is very voter friendly, thank you very much. And B means that the vicious slavering mob will say "yeah, to right", seasoning with infantile racial epithets to taste. Bastards. they might even toss in the word "communist" if they're a total and utter fuckwit.

To further disambiguate, I personally think it's a repugnant idea that we somehow start to target some section of the population (any section) and remove their rights because we don't like them, which is what this is all about, even if it's being done in such a cak handed way as to end up effecting everybody. Firstly, because if you have a disenfranchised, alienated group (again, this is, in reality, the hypothetical target of such measures), treating them like shit is not going to help re-enfranchise or un-alienate them, quite the opposite, and secondly because if you pick a section of the populace and remove their 'human rights', or simply treat them as described and forget about the emotive terminology, you dehumanise them.

If you dehumanise them, you make them no better than cattle.

If they are no better than cattle, then it's OK to load them onto trains and ... well, we know where this goes.

"Liberty is protecting your rights too whether you realise it or not."

Quite.

Now, begin the flamefest, all those who think I've unjustly called them a Nazi.

The Other Steve
Coat

Yeah, nice one Shami &co

If they wanted to make a fight out of this there were lots of ways of going about it, public nuisance (as ably covered above), age discrimination in the case of the "yoof" version, the fact that it's indiscriminate in that it targets everyone, not just "trouble makers", the possible health issues, etc.

I would have thought that the fact it distresses infants (again, well covered above) would be a good choice, since the WSPTOTC* card pretty much trumps every argument in the minds of those members of the public and the house that need to be convinced in order for Something To Be Done, and in this case is actually quite reasonable.

But straight away they're in with the "It's a breach of human rights" shrilling, so now instead of having a sensible debate about it, it's turned into a wedge issue and Shami &co are guaranteed to fail in their mission, because the volk will say (not unreasonably) "what about _my_ human rights ?" and some wanker like Jack Straw will invent some other totally fictitious but reasonable sounding right like "the right to go to a 24 hour garage on the corner of a dodgy estate at midnight without seeing a tracksuit" against which the hypothetical rights which are being breached must be balanced.

As to the rights which may be being breached, I'm left, as usual, wondering weather Shami &co have actually read the Human Rights Act, which was worded in such a way that there's handy get out clause allowing each right granted to be suspended, breached, or flat out revoked, which is what makes it such a useless piece of legislation in the first place.

In this instance I rather suspect that the right in question is Article 11, "Freedom of assembly and association" **, in which case the get out clause is (sorry, quite wordy) :

<Human Rights Act>

No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This Article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, of the police or of the administration of the State.

</>

There's a whole grab bag of get outs in there which render the "human rights" argument somewhat useless, " prevention of disorder or crime" jumps out immediately as the one that will be thrown back in poor Shami's earnest, elfin face.

*Won't Somebody Please Think Of The Children

** http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts1998/ukpga_19980042_en_3#sch1-pt1

Web 2.0rhea outbreak bought, killed

The Other Steve

Self correction, doh!

Not MIT, rest of comment still stands. Bah.

The Other Steve
Paris Hilton

Good.

Someone hated it so much they bought it just make it stop ? If only I had that sort of money.

IIRC Pownce's 'selling' point was file transfer, ICBA to look it up, but the 'About' web page said something like "we were just a bunch of valley airheads sitting round in our cubicles drooling, to fucking clueless to figure out how to attach files to an email or use an FTP server, look what we did!"

I don't know if any reg readers have ever perused Leah Culver's blog, for an MIT alumni, she codes like an autistic monkey.

Classic fail.

Paris, because she's even cheaper than that Leah Culver gag I was going to make (and how come FF3 knows how to spell 'Leah Culver' ????)

Tux makes home on the iPhone

The Other Steve

@Martin w/r/t pub based coding

It may be heresy to mention it in a comment on an article about linux, but I use a Windows Mobile PDA for this. You can get a wide choice of languages on board, Python, Tcl, C*, C#, Java and some others, You can get some nice units, mines got on board WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth, so eminently hackable, and lot's of fun. Even though MS want you to give them more money to code for it on a desktop, you don't have to, since Embedded VC++ is both free and still quite capable. It targets no higher than the Pocket PC 2003 SDK (superseded by WM5 and 6 SDKs only available in >= VS2005, although there are in fact ways around this limitation), but I haven't found anything that's missing that I can't cope without just yet.

Depends on what you're targeting, obviously, but for hacking away on algos and suchlike, it's quite nifty.

"And yes, I do take mobile computing devices down to the pub"

Yeah, me to, that's why it's "mobile", innit ?

*Even a port of GCC, although currently unmaintained.

The Other Steve
Linux

Obviously, asking "why" is redundant ...

... because there is no "why", always yield to the hands on imperative*, we've all been there.

On the other hand : "Some details are missing: the port won't support writing to the storage memory, networking or the touchscreen. It can't make noises or phone calls, but it can take console commands sent over the USB connection, and that alone is pretty damned impressive."

Erm, it's actually, you know, kind of not. What you have there is a brick. With a USB connection.

Someone else can do the "Linux hackers finish prematurely" joke, to cruel for me.

<-- Penguin, yay linux**, saving the world one dead badger at a time. Woot, and all that.

*Oh good god, I can't believe I just quoted the Gospel According to St Levy, could someone send me a large amount of medicinal disinfectant and a hard bristled brush please ?

**And I run um bongo on a G4 Powerbook, before anyone starts, ta.

EU cybercrime strategy backs law enforcement Trojan

The Other Steve
Thumb Down

Scary, pointless, but then again

It's the thought police, trying to control thought crime by spreading FUD. If you have to worry that THEY are watching your every move, you'll be much less likely to click on that donkey pr0n link, Astrolite G recipe or any other content that TPTB deem to be unfit for consumption by the plebs.

They don't even have to actually implement it (although I believe several LE software outfits have had a fair bash), just talk about it a lot, and since this is being wheeled in under the "won't somebody think of the children" banner, you can't possibly object to it unless you're a kiddy fiddler. Neat.

"You gotta love bonehead politicos."

You can't make me.

Mandy preps list of UK businesses to save

The Other Steve
Thumb Up

@pctechxp

"When did you last see a dedocated sweetshop?"

I'm pretty sure I've never seen a dedocated sweetshop, but there are two shops in the laughably nomenclatured* 'city' centre not far from where I'm sitting that only sell sweets.

*I would expect to have made at least one spelling FUBAR in this post, perhaps that was it.

McDonalds survey scam is super-size fraud

The Other Steve

But surely people just aren't that stupid ?

Oh, wait, hang on, sorry. My bad.

McKinnon faithful to stage further US embassy demo

The Other Steve

Dances with retards

"Supporters of Gary McKinnon are planning a further demo outside the US embassy next Friday"

What, all twelve of them ? BFD.

Prosecutors gather evidence on secret BT-Phorm trials

The Other Steve

Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 27th November 2008 14:09 GMT

"Don't get me wrong, I'm completely against it, but we don't want to be setting up straw-men that can easily be shot down by the government, undermining our credibility."

Well said. It is the traffic data, not the content that (it is claimed) will be of interest, and even end to end SSL has to have IP addresses and port numbers in the clear, otherwise the intertubes won't work.

Neither constant encryption or massive random noise will prevent you from being profiled by the proposed government interception system, despite the many idiotic comments to the contrary, and indeed both would most likely see you on the Persons Of Interest list pretty damn quickly because your behaviour clearly telegraphs the fact that you have something to hide.

That's why it's called behavioural profiling, y'know ?

Government data review grants more data sharing power

The Other Steve
Black Helicopters

Democracy ? We've heard of it, but it's not really for us, you know ?

"A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said .. The power will be exercised only in circumstances where the sharing of the information is in the public interest and proportionate to the impact on any person adversely affected by it."

Well let's see :

a) We don't believe you

and b) when said power is that of "repealing or amending other primary legislation, changing any other rule of law, creating a new power to share information where that power is currently absent"

Then the impact is literally on "any person", all persons in fact. I suppose whether one would consider that the populace is "adversely" affected by giving a Home Secretary the ability to effectively mould the law the land to suit their own particular ends depends on at least two factors, viz whether the Home Secretary is a sane and rational person with all our best interests at heart, and how you feel about democracy, since adopting such a measure would effectively drive the final nail into the coffin of the pretence that we have some.

Example : "A spokeswoman for the ICO told us that information transferred in this way will still be subject to the Data Protection Act."

Until the Home Secretary repeals it because it's getting in her way. RIPA ? Gone the same way*. Human Rights Act ? History. Piff paff pooff. All the protections they afford us, gone. And I personally don't doubt for one moment that the current incumbent of the HO would happily do that in the blink of an eye, because, well, I was going to write something wordy, but like NB says above, it's becoming harder to think of calm and measured responses, so let's go with because she's a vicious, ignorant, power crazed bitch to whom reason is as kryptonite is to superman.

And I still can't get used to hearing the phrase "Ministry of Justice", makes my bloody skin crawl.

*If you think RIPA is a piece of crap, wait until you see what happens without it.

FBI warns NY officials of Thanksgiving Day terrorist plot

The Other Steve

"plausible but unsubstantiated" ?

Genius.

Also, that whole deliverance of the pilgrims thing, was that before or after the yanks tried to wipe out the native Americans with Smallpox, a Weapon of Mass Destruction ?