* Posts by Pete

486 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Mar 2007

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'Transportable' raygun 'deploys' - across Albuquerque

Pete Silver badge

first rule of laser warfare

only fight on bright, cloudless days

That's the nice thing (possibly the only nice thing) about Albuquerque: it's got great weather. Clear, cloudless days with very little haze and visibility all the way to the horizon. No wonder astronomers locate so many of their telescopes in New Mexico.

However, the USAF discovered in the 60s that this is not always a good thing. When they trained their fighter pilots in these clear, calm conditions and then deployed them to cold, cloudy, wet "yurp" the silly old pilots kept flying into mountains, or otherwise crashing into large stationary objects (like the ground). Training in a place where you can see for 50 miles, then using the techniques you learned in visibility measured in feet (or metres) doesn't work.

They may be about to learn the same lesson again - that a weapon developed in and for clear skies is less effective when the clouds or sandstorms absorb all your offensive, coherent, collimated radiation.

Ofcom finds few using e-gov

Pete Silver badge

that actually sounds like a reasonable take-up

Given that a large fraction of individuals (even if we only take adults) don't have to fill in a tax form and fewer still are involved in financial dealings of a company, there's very little interaction needed with the burgeoning government machine. There is still a large number of people who don't want to use computers, don't like interacting with a "machine" or simply don't have the language skills (either as they're not good at reading/writing, or aren't fluent enough in english).

Where online services don't work is when you need to talk to someone, or ask (or answer) questions to determine what you qualify for, or what your entitlement is.

Battlestar Galactica eyes 'technology run amok'

Pete Silver badge

Bad ending to a crummy series

Go with your first impressions.

That was the lesson I learned from watching BSG from the beginning. It started with a civilisation that had faster-than-light spacecraft, massively powerful AIs, what seemed to be a mature and stable society (although based on the subjugation and exploitation of intelligent machines). Yet, the people still wore spectacles, depended on field-telephones on their versions of Enterprise and required 1980's (there's the clue) style video cameras to film their political system, that hadn't evolved from the 19th-century. Now I realise that all this was merely a framework to hang a story on, but it grated. If the writers can't even get the basic science to be consistent, what hope is there for the story they wish to tell? The answer, as we find out 4 years later is none, at all.

Add into the mix a load of mystic nonsense about "arrows", that "point" the way to earth. A robotic adversary that turns out to be human - right down to the genetic level and you can see the basic premise falling apart right on the screen, every yawn-worthy time it's on. I gave up on watching this junk years ago - although I admit to watching an episode here-or-there, just to see if it got any better - it didn't.

The newsgroups were all a-flurry when the "heroes" (whoops, here comes another turkey) landed on what they thought was earth. I duly gave it another chance to be good - FAIL. It turned out to be the Planet of the Apes set. Boy, did I laugh!

But worse was to come. The finale (here comes the spoiler, unless you're reading this on Wednesday) was a collection of messianic nonsense in the first half and (as others have pointed out) a complete rip of HHGTTG in the second half - even to the point of closing on an iconic piece of music: I was half expecting Louis Armstrong, I must admit. We now hear that the writers are saying that it wasn't about science fiction, it was about the people. Well, fine: it goes from being a space opera to a soap opera. This sounds so much like a back-pedalling rationaliastion, that I can't help thinking they didn't really have much of a clue where they were going - other than the basic idea of ripping the original 1970's series.

So, my first impressions were that it was bad. It didn't reconcile the science (oh, here's another one: why do their manned (gimme a break, 1940's/WW2 much?) fighters suffer from multipath distortion on their radio transmissions - they couldn't possibly be using A.M.) with the concept. The story meandered for years and eventually went out with a bang, then a whimper. Nothing I saw during it's entire run changed my mind from the first impressions. The only real contribution it made was to give us all FRAK.

Salesforce.com to empower corporate Twitter snooping

Pete Silver badge

They'll look pretty silly ...

... if twitter crashes and burns as fast as it's risen.

Since it's not making any money[1] - and shows no talent, desire or ability to do so the chances are good that someone who *can* make money will pick it up for a song, and all the freeloaders who now use it gratis will be off as quick as they can tweet "bye bye"

[1] according to The Register, less than a month ago

Google designer quits over performance obsession

Pete Silver badge

one less prima-donna to worry about

Somehow I suspect there's more to this guys departure than which shade of blue to use. When we get defensive, we all cite the most absurd examples [of the other guy's behaviour] that show us to be level-headed, mature, professional and flexible.

That it came down to questioning his decisions about shades, or pixel-widths make me think that maybe there's things here that we aren't being told. For example, does Google have standards for these things? Do they, for example, state that lines should be 5 pixels wide, and our unemployed friend went all luvvie and decided he must have (darlink!) lines 3 pixels wide - for artistic reasons?

Personally, if these were the biggest differences of opinion, and these make his job unbearable, it sounds like they're well-rid of him.

Parents in dark about kids' school life

Pete Silver badge

@Simon Painter

> All it takes is a teacher with email

But we all know how terribly, terribly overworked all these teachers are. How can you possibly suggest thay they increase their (already overwhelming) burden with yet more?

... sorry, I can't go on with this facade. Yes, that's all it would take. However, most teachers are utterly useless with technology and extremely resentful of any possibility of someone checking up on them. While they can threaten the children in their care for not doing the assigned work, no-one can (or dares) criticise the teachers when they goof-off, find excuses for not doing things professionally, or put road-blocks in their own way to sabotage the possibility of "outsiders" discovering exactly what they do for the few hours each day when they're in front of a class.

Just as exam results are really a reflection on the teaching quality - not on the kids' abilities, maybe the best solution would be for the kids to write-up weekly reports on the teachers. Not so much what _we_ did in school as what the paid professionals did to teach us.

Pete Silver badge

WIIFM?

Talk about reporting the bleedin' obvious.

Everyone knows that kids don't talk about "what we did in school today" - at least, when they get past the grand old age of 6. How do we know this? Because we did it ourselves, plus our parents did the same and no doubt their parents before them.

Part of the reticence is about power: there are few areas where kids have any control, and having your parents ask you for information is obviously one of them. However, part of it is also about intrusion. A school is a place for the kids (despite what the teachers might think). If their parents start intruding into that place - either by turning up there and seeing for themsleves, or by giving their kids the third-degree, there's bound to be resentment and resistance - afterall, the kids don't ask their parents "what did you do at work all day" (or, worse: "what did you do sitting around at home all day"?)

However, if they really want to know, and I suspect that if they were ever told the unexpurgated truth, they'd quickly learn never to ask again, there should be a quid-pro-quo. After all the kids should be able to get something for this seemingly valuable information. If parents are so anxious to find out what goes on, their kids could well ask "What's In It For Me?" Let's see how much they're prepared to pay for it.

Prof pooh-poohed in pig-v-whale hippo genealogy brouhaha

Pete Silver badge

wrong way round

maybe a whale is really a type of hippo.

Anyhow, the whole is it a pig, is it a whale, is it superman? question can be simply resolved over the barbeque. Does it taste of pork?

Boffins sniff keystrokes with lasers, oscilloscopes

Pete Silver badge

Don't thinkk I'll lose much sleep over these

The laser microphone trick is old news - published at least ten years ago, maybe more. So far, the IT world hasn't come crashing down around our ears - possibly because so many people have sound-insulating double glazing. Although there are valid reasons why secure installations don't have windows. It's just that the overwhelming majority of PCs can be cracked in easier ways, without having a van parked outside your building, attracting attention.

The stuff about minute electrical currents - yeah, well. I think I'll wait until the "can" in the article has been translated into "here's a video of it being done".

Until then, I'll keep my PS2 keyboards (and mouse) plugged in. I'm not planning on moving away from my window either.

TinyURL, your configs are showing

Pete Silver badge

overblown

Oh no!

A theoretical weakness in a non-critical server gets front-page billing. Even if tinyurl (which I use, myself: how's that for handing out personal information? I suppose I should be shipped off to Guanotanamo Bay for that transgression) did get hacked, so what? It would be back up in a short time and there are other URL shortening sites out there. Any talk of risk to it's "users" is pure bull.

The big lesson to learn from this is that even with this misconfiguration being made public, the site is still running. That either tells us that no-one's much interested in hacking it or (more likely) that the risks presented by this minor issue are nowhere near as exploitable as the article would have us believe.

Hefty 'battle strength' electro-laser breaks 100kW barrier

Pete Silver badge

ship

While this silver elephant is too big, cumbersome and (as mentioned) probably too fragile to hitch up to your humvee and bump down a dirt track, it *would* be practical to put something this big on a warship. All you need then is a seabourne adversary who's willing to accommodate your latest piece of techno-porn by sending over a number, not more than the number of lasers your boat has, of missiles, bombs, planes etc. simultaneously.

Plus, of course, if they send over a submarine you're still screwed.

Obesity witchhunt is a 'moral panic' - sense out of Texas

Pete Silver badge

There's a very real problem here

OK, Pop Quiz time: which is more - the number of people with AIDS or Type 2 Diabetes?

Ans. Diabetes, by a factor of 4 or 5, throughout the world[1]. Even african countries are now seeing people with the condition - brought on from eating too much and not exercising.

Now, consider all the fuss about AIDS. All the publicity, all the changes people made to their lives to reduce the risk of contracting it. Now multiply all those initiatives by 4, and that would be a proportional response to obesity. With luck, after years of changing peoples' attitudes, we might start to see the kind of drop-off in numbers that we saw with AIDS.

However, taxing fat or other daft, knee-jerk reactions, are not the answer: just as taxing sperm or hypodermics wouldn't help with AIDS. It needs education and social change to fix this problem.

[1] source: FT weekend magazine about a month or so, ago.

Doc-in-chief targets 'passive drinking' with price hike

Pete Silver badge

prohibition by stealth.

Well you can't say they don't learn.

Whereas the yanks just came up with an outright ban (in response to some "do-gooders", who thought they knew better than everyone else), the brits seem to be going down the same road, for the same reasons, egged on by the same moralising, superior-minded types but in a slower, sneakier way.

Rather than just come out and say "booze is bad", they are planning to use the gently-gently approach, that has already made a pariah out of anyone who dares light-up, is intent on turning anyone with a camera into a self-proclaimed pervert and is well on the way to persuading the people (and has already managed that with the police) that an individual who doesn't fit within strict and narrowing lines of what's "normal" behaviour must, logically therefore be a terrorist - ill-deserving of any rights whatsoever.

Further, such huge changes in the way we (are forced to) live, come about "for our own good", although we are never asked for our opinions, nor have the chance to say "no" to these initiatives. Our democratically elected overlords take the one choice we make every 5 years and use this as carte-blanche to henceforth do whatever the hell they please - all in the name of democracy.

I'm so glad I live in a free country, god knows how others manage.

Pentagon inks deal on portable milli-wave raygun tech

Pete Silver badge

@Well this is just spooky

> But, if this is representative of the real device

Oh dear (and I've been accused of confusing TV - and SF with real life). Let's just be clear:

TV = fiction

what you physically see, touch, smell, hear = non-fiction.

Pete Silver badge

pick up a dustbinlid and reflect it back?

The biggest problem with RF weapons is that the nasty 'ole radio waves are easily reflected off metal objects. Unlike all of those crappy movies, and crappier cop shows, where hiding behind a car protects you against everything from a pea-shooter to a thermonuclear blast, this is probably the only occasion where sheltering behind a vehicle would render your assailants impotent (unless of course they start shooting, afterwards). In fact, a tinfoil hat might even be more than merely a fashion statement under these circumstances too.

Although the most effective way for soldiers to not kill civilians is still for them to not to invade other countries in the first place. However if national (in)security makes a country pathologically incapable of resisting the urge to reign death and destruction down on far away places, then not killing the locals is probably a small step forward.

Where to start with IT Security

Pete Silver badge

they missed the basics

Two fundamental steps before setting out on *any* programme of change:

* How will we measure its success?

* What value does it have (i.e. how much are we prepared to spend)

Now I know that "security" is one of those icky, intangible things, like fun or quality or safety. However if an organisation can't quantify its goats, it will never know when they've been met. How will the organisation know when it has enough security? Or too much?

So far as value goes: you really do need to quantify this. Are you willing to spend 100K to secure your data - and which pieces of data, exactly? Until an organisation is willing to pledge real, hard cash to improving security (or anything else for that matter) it's not really taking it seriously. Another measure of seriousness is who gets fired if something goes wrong? If it's merely a little manager somewhere, that smells of scapegoal - it's down to the seniors and directors to carry the can.

Personally, (god forbid) if I was a CIO worrying about how to secure an organisation, I'd give serious consideration to finding out how many problems were down to the staff, and what would be the worst thing to happen if they all had internet access removed, forever.

Court rules 'ceaseless liability' for net libel fine for free speech

Pete Silver badge

This law only works if you're very, very rich

The amount of money that a "libelled" person needs in order to bring a case to court is absolutely huge, as if you lose you will be liable for the defence's costs as well as those of your own legal team. However, if you win, your damages will be one of a long line of obligations that the libeller will incur: including the costs of theirs and yours legal beagles. Legal aid? I don't think so!

In practice, therefore the downside of bringing a case is vast and the upside (generally) paltry as the costs incurred could well bankrupt your libeller before you get to see any redress. You'd have to be a maniacal gambler to take such a large bet with such a small prospect of winning.

Of course, if you have a few mil. just sloshing around, earning bugger all returns in these days of low-interest, then what the hell - go for it. The mere threat of an action (given the prospect of being taken to the cleaners by court costs) is usually enough to make your accused cave, on receipt of the first lawyers letter. If for some reason they are too dumb to realise their impending vagrancy, you can try again with their ISP - who, having nothing to gain and a lot to lose, will remove any and everything asked for in the time it takes to file the request.

So what we end up with is a nice, archaic piece of civil law, that works fine between monied "gentlemen" where the costs and awards are bearable. However for the average Joe-in-the-street with any assets at all, the mere possibility of having to defend an action is so far outside their financial reach that they have no alternative but to acquiesce - irrespective of the rights or wrongs, which will never get to be judged.

Hydrogen leak grounds Discovery

Pete Silver badge

I used to have a car like that

Unreliable, expensive to run, forever needed servicing. hopeless MPG.

Then one day some fool stole it - obviously they didn't know what they were letting themselves in for. Maybe NASA should leave the keys in the pod-bay door and see if anyone makes off with it. At least then they could claim on the insurance.

Screeching rails close London Tube station

Pete Silver badge

couldn't have been that bad

if the people on the platform could still hear the Tannoy - though if they could make out the words then there was definitely something wrong with their hearing.

Next thing you know, they'll be closing tube platforms every time someone spots a rat on the tracks.

Latest subject for peer review? You

Pete Silver badge

vanity driven popularity contests

There is no "wisdom of crowds", merely a superficial (and inaccurate) poll of whom they like best. Whether this is driven by physical appearance, "coolness", some weird ideas about what they think, or do - or just to rebel against unpopular judges (strictly .... what? exactly), there's no objective measures of talent, intelligence, skill or value to society. There is however, money to be made.

The trouble with all these things is that it makes participants feel as if their views have worth. That somehow, the casual, superficial and offhand decision they make about another person is as valid as a professional and expert assessment of whatever that person's attributes are. Not only does this make some of the participants think they are "as good as" the experts and that somehow they "have a right to decide", but it devalues the professionals training and experience to the point where theirs is treated as "just another opinion".

Maybe we should have a TV show where the audience votes on what medical treatments a group of patients gets - rather than the dull and anonymous concept of letting the trained and qualified doctors decide. Afterall, that's the process we use to elect governments.

Boffins build 'slow glass' light-trapping nanodoughnut

Pete Silver badge

@Anonymous Coward

> You do know Shaw's book was a work of fiction, right?

Err, yes. The clue is in the name of the genre: Science Fiction. Now when you get round to reading the article, you'll notice a couple of phrases:

Such technology was imagined by renowned sci-fi scribe Robert Shaw .... and

.... could offer something on these lines ...

which when taken together (as you can safely presume, since they're in the same article) could lead to the conclusion that "slow glass"'s ability to reproduce images was on the cards. It's not, as the properties of the material wouldn't allow it to produce a coherent image. However, one of the side-effects of slow glass, and the main tenet of the book, was that it led to the ultimate surveillance society - something we probably are headed towards, just not like that.

Pete Silver badge

still incoherent

The big flaw in Shaw's book was his explanation of how a coherent image was formed in the "slow glass". Since all the light from everything the glass can "see" impinges on the whole pane and then travels through and will be emitted omnidirectionally on the other side, there is no possibility of extracting an image from it (unless you buy his rather grasping-at-straws explanation).

Any practical use of this stuff, presuming it ever makes it into the real world, would be severely limited by this problem.

Court rules airline secret security list is stupid

Pete Silver badge

this ruling won't make a blind bit of difference

In practice the average punter still has no chance of arguing the toss about what's allowed and what's not - if they still want to board the plane after the debate. Apart from the sheer amount of time it would take to get through the various layers of (how shall I put it? "underclocked") security staff, they can still detain pretty much anyone for pretty much any reason, for long enough to make you miss your flight.

Even though we now know there's a secret list - it makes no difference as each plastic piggie makes up their own, arbitrary, list as they go along. One security guard makes everyone take their shoes off, when going through the detectors - whereas the one on the next aisle doesn't. (Been there, seen it happen). The person in front of me had a roll of sellotape confiscated "you could use it to tie someone up" - even though it's sold in WH Smith's just past the gate. You can't argue with any of these people, and they know it.

Just about the only thing that I reckon would make any difference is if the confiscated items were destroyed right at the point of confiscation - as I have a sneaking suspicion (completely unfounded, but that would explain a lot), that the guards simply take things they want. If they were denied possession of the things they take, there would be little incentive left for this legalised mugging - though they might demand a pay rise to make up the difference.

Tiscali shares suspended on titsup fears

Pete Silver badge

@Nick Woodruffe

... what about all those companies ...

Hopefully any company that really, really needs the internet to run it's business (rather than merely as a toy for it's employees) will have both redundant and diverse[1] feeds. If they don't have these already then they'd better have a really fast plan in place to get them,

Of course those companies that only have internet connectivity for their employees to goof around on could see a massive rise in productivity if their ISP goes bust! Clouds? silver linings?

[1] i.e. connections entering their business from more than one physical location, so someone with a JCB can't dig up both their feeds at the same time.

Illinois restores Pluto's planetary status

Pete Silver badge

proof of extra-terrestrial life!

Illinois is famous for the corruption, bribery and general dodgy practices among it's politicians. So we can probably assume that the reason they took this (frankly ludicrous) decision was because someone, or thing, greased a few palms. Now, there can be no-one on earth who would think this sort of trivia worthy of anything more than a few seconds of attention - so the conclusion is that it must have been the Plutovians, or Plutonites, or Plutinos (or whatever they call themselves).

Obviously it has taken this long, since the de-planetisation decision was made, for them to hear about it and mount an expedition to earth. Presumably we can expect more countries and pseudo-governmental institutions to come out in favour of re-planetisation, once the back-handers[1] spread. I just hope the politicians involved held out for real, hard currency and not the promise of prime real-estate on one of the (newly announced) planet's golf resorts.

[1] not sure if you can give a back-hander while greasing a palm - maybe we should ask the Illinois officials.

US killer robo-plane makes strike without remote pilot

Pete Silver badge

outsourcing opportunity?

There are only two jobs that an airforce has to do:

* destroy stuff

* carry things (and people) around

Now it seems like the first of these functions has been deskilled to the point where normal people can do it, So all that leaves is the logistics/air-ambulance role. Presumably, the vast majority of this work could be given to DHL or RyanAir or somesuch. The only bit they might have a problem with is moving wounded people out of a combat zone - or getting them (in an unwounded state) there in the first place.

If that is all that an airforce is destined to be, it kinda begs the question of whether they still qualify as a separate branch of the armed services, or should be treated as another specialised group within the army - such as the Engineers, or Signals.

Web maven gives convicted botmaster keys to new kingdom

Pete Silver badge

he could do a lot of damage if provoked

... and nothing would provoke him more than getting fired.

This "compassion" thing sounds to me like complete bull. If the hacker ever did anything to damage the company, the shareholders who lost value or employees who lost their jobs, as a result would be pretty pissed-off. What's more compassionate? employing someone like this, or looking out for the long-term security of your other employees and investors.

NHS study produces ejector-seat ambulance design

Pete Silver badge

art students designing ambulances?

Sigh.

When I read this I was planning on writing a cutting, but insightful response. But I just can't be bothered to expend energy, commenting on the trivial and whimsical flights of fancy of the future long-term unemployable.

Intel dubs 2009 'The Year of 10Gb Ethernet'

Pete Silver badge

2009, the year of ...?

s'funny.

I thought 2009 was the year of linux on the desktop. Or will that be 2010, or 2011

Child porn suspect ordered to decrypt own hard drive

Pete Silver badge

UK law has never had a blanket presumption of innocence

@Anonymous Coward post#1, @Neoc, @Chris C

IANAL, but tn the UK there are long-standing laws where it is up to the accused to prove innocence. The example I was given (when I squawked up about innocent unless proven guilty) is the law regarding living off immoral earnings i.e. being a pimp. In this case, the onus of proof has always been on the accused to demonstrate that their earnings came from "moral" sources.

So there is a precedent in UK law to assume an accused person is guilty, I guess this case of passwords and encryption is just one more in the long, creeping, erosion of what we thought were our freedoms.

Pete Silver badge

proof of encryption?

So, for the sake of argument, say someone found a 500MB block of random data on my hard drive. They then claim that this hides some encrypted data that I'm not supposed to have and they therefore demand that I decrypt it (as they can't). In response I say that it's not an encrypted file, it's just some random data and I don't know how it got there - or that it's a set of random numbers I use for some other purpose.

How can some legal person/entity demand that one decrypt some arbitrary data, without first demonstrating that it does, in fact, contain decryptable data?

Any encryption scheme worth a dam' would not have headers saying "this is an encrypted file, use the XXX algorithm to decode" It would merely sit there and at best say "maybe I am, maybe I'm not, you can't prove anything" when subjected to any sort of detection for encrypted data. Leading to the conclusion that the only way to demonstrate a block of numbers is encrypted is to actually decrypt it in the first place.

If something like that ever made it to court, that would be a trial I'd follow closely!

Brit nuke subs exposed on Google Earth

Pete Silver badge

@What's the issue here?

So far as GCHQ goes, I doubt that anyone working on the "good" stuff is permitted to have anything as un-Tempesty as a window.

Plus, with any of these bases just try parking a car or a van nearby them for any length of time - see how long it takes before a patrol arrives. For extra stupidity points, try unloading a rocket-launcher sized length of plastic guttering/tubing and see if they come any quicker.

Ryanair may charge cattle to use the bog

Pete Silver badge

It could well be worth it

If you're allowed to stay in there for the whole trip. Better legroom, no screaming children (or screaming adults, either) and no queuing for the loo.

However, I can't help thinking that they'll implement a timer, so after your few minutes are up the bog seat will turn into "ejector" mode and flip you out into the aisle, whether you're ready or not.

I wonder if they'll also have a "priority boarding" option for if you reeeeeely, need to go NOW.

El Reg suffers identity crisis

Pete Silver badge

What the Daily Mail says

is "A respected technology news website".

Now I was going to tick this box, but I'm genetically, morally and intellectually unable to agree with anything in the Wail, so had to go with one of the other entries.

Teen sacked for 'boring' job Facebook comment

Pete Silver badge

@Greg Fleming

administrator, manager, DBA ... it's only a job title. In real life it means nothing - what you actually produce is what counts.

Pete Silver badge

on the bright side

... she won't be bored anymore

I wonder if she'll show the foresight and intelligence to remove that comment, before going for her next interview

Microsoft trades goodwill for TomTom Linux satisfaction

Pete Silver badge

why all the panic?

Open source has been involved in lawsuits before. Anyone else remember the problems with the compression algorithm used by .GIF files? The key thing is that OSS is like a river and Microsoft is a rock. Drop a rock in a river and the water will just find another way past (it will also eventually erode the rock down to sludge).

What are the security threats?

Pete Silver badge

poor security is not a problem, it's a set of symptoms

Just like you can't pop a pill that'll make you fit and healthy, you can't plop a "security" product into an environment and solve all your woes.

There are, in fact, many parallels between being a healthy person and having a secure computing environment. In fact the process of being secure, like the process of being healthy (or having a good job) are often referred to as having "hygiene factors" as, like personal hygiene, they don't make you healthy/secure, but they stop the opposite from happening.

Like keeping good health, you have to practice good security throughout everything you do. Getting a tan is like installing a firewall - superficially, it makes you look healthy to the outside world but does nothing to prevent internal problems from occurring. In a secure environment, it's not the tools you deploy that make the system secure, it's how you approach the whole issue (though, obviously, the right tools help).

So what we find is that whether a security issue is classed as "malware" (a nice excuse), internal people, accidental or whatever - the underlying cause is that the systems in place and the people behind them allowed a problem to occur. Adding more stuff won't help unless the mindset of a company's employees are changed and the directors of the company are prepared to back them with the policies and money needed to take a professional approach.

Sadly the security industry is packed full of snake-oil sales people, proffering a quick solution. It's also packed with decision-makers after a quick-fix, due to the short-term planning and results based reward sysytem of most companies. Plus of course, there's no objective way to reliably measure how secure a system actually is.

Ryanair trades blows with 'idiot blogger'

Pete Silver badge

They get my respect.

I far prefer an airline (or any other type of business) that comes out and says what it thinks. Whether about it's customers or it's competition, rather than one which hides behind weasel-words and platitudes: saying insincere things just to smooth the ruffled feathers of someone who thinks they are special and believes it when advertisers tell them they are "worth it".

It's also refreshing to hear them on TV consumer shows, putting up robust responses to whinging proles who want 5-star treatment at 1-star prices. Especially when they have the confidence of knowing that no matter how much they moan, they know that the customers will be back - simply because they can't resist saving a few pennies.

Good on 'em. I just wish more businesses would be straightforward with us.

The internet is for violent jerks, study finds

Pete Silver badge

survey based on what people SAY they do?

So, you ask someone a question, write down thier answer, crunch some numbers and come up with ... what? Random noise or a profound understanding of the human psyche? Whatever happened to designing experiments that measure what actually takes place. Or should we scrap CERN and merely ask the world's nuclear scientists whether they think it's "right" for the Higgs boson to exist?

Personally, until someone else is able to repeat the survey and get the same results (a property that proper scientists call "reproducibility"), then I reckon they've got nothing of any value.

Just as most psychological research (and therefore virtually the whole subject) in the '50s, '60s and 70s was based on studies of american undergraduates - as these were the people who responded to the "test subject wanted for psychology study - pays $10 advertisements, to extrapolate the behaviour of the whole internet and all it's 1billion users from a group of Tiawanese children, is somewhere between laughably naive and cluelessly lazy.

However, since psych. experiments are hardly ever re-run and never come up with the same results again (which is why they're hardly ever duplicated), I'm sure this result will stick in the minds of our law-makers and regulators as "evidence" when they want to further reduce our freedoms and liberty - that's progress.

Spooks and techies to be vetted for their online networks

Pete Silver badge

vetting is about failing

The spooks who perform the vetting procedure are looking for reasons to fail you. As individuals, or as a department as a whole, they have nothing to gain from granting someone a "passed" status. it's not as if you can appeal a judgement - we're not talking open, democratic, procedures here. Better to fail 100 candidates who might just be dodgy than to let through one that would ruin your personal reputation.

Anyway, true geeks have nothing to worry about - they don't have any friends.

Ten of the best... noise-isolating earphones

Pete Silver badge

but they still play "compressed to hell" MP3

Warble on all you like about sound quality, but it's all wasted. No matter how much you spend, you can't turn the pigs ear of a 128KBps compressed stream into the silk purse of high-end audiophile sound.

Yes, you can filter out extraneous sounds (confession: long-time user of Etymotic ER6i's here) and that's their single, best, overriding, feature: you can't hear the screaming child in the seat behind, or the inconsiderate "I'M ON THE TRAIN" idiot, either. Plus you don't risk permanent ear damage as the accoutic seal means the volume can be kept down - while still hearing all the (compressed) good bits of the music itself.

However, don't kid yourself that you're hearing sound quality that represents the £150+ tag of these top-end puppies. Apart from the inconvenient truth that very few people have ever heard top-end kit (away from passing traffic noise, over-flying aircraft, or even other people moving around in the house) and so have no real benchmark to compare these with, the sound of your own body functions (oooh, err,) for example your hearbeat gets amplifed by these devices and detracts from the "quiet bits". You'll also find that wearing these while running, or even walking, is not a nice experience as the "thump thump" of your footfall is so loud.

If you do buy these, buy them to remove external sounds - but be under no illusions that they'll improve a poor quality sound source. Finally, don't *ever* wear these while driving.

Woolies Pic'n'Mix bows out with eBay auction

Pete Silver badge

failure was their biggest success

The ironic thing about Woolies was the huge amount of interest (and sales) they generated during their death throes. If, somehow, they had managed to get even a fraction of that sales volume while still a going concern, they'd be one of our most successful retailers - instead of a bankrupt and shut-down flogger of tat.

Is this simply a case of "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" or does it demonstrate the power of publicity, to get punters through the doors? If anyone knows the answer, they'll make a fortune.

Nudie subterranean rat protein could arrest human ageing

Pete Silver badge

bald and wrinkly?

so if that's all it takes, I should live to be over 600.

Next step is to find a 500+ woman who finds those attributes attractive.

Pro-Heathrow demo challenges Carbon Cult killjoys

Pete Silver badge

so would the "pro"-testors like their houses bulldozed, too?

Putting aside the whole CO2 thing[1], there are two other sides to the story. The people who will lose their homes and the people who's lives will be blighted by the noise from the extra capacity. Surely it's time to recognise that Heathrow is in a bloody stupid location and far from squeezing more flights into a location that has so many disadvantages, we should be thinking about expanding somewhere more suitable instead?

[1] Apparently, if we all stopped eating so much meat, the CO2 reduction would far outweigh the contribution from air travel. Source: New Scientist, 14-Feb-09 p6

UK 'bad' pics ban to stretch?

Pete Silver badge

a simple solution

Just assume that everyone in the country is/was/will-be guilty of some sort of imprisonable offence. By-pass the judicial system completely and incarcerate everyone, possibly under a 42 day "because we say-so" law (and keep rolling it over ad-nauseam). Declare the whole of GB as one, big open prison. We already have the level of monitoring and restrictions in place, so there won't be much change needed.

If possible, encourage other countries to prosecute brits under their own laws and to imprison them overseas, at their own expense - thus outsourcing part of the legal system. Even go so far as to charge them if the things they are accused of aren't illegal in the UK. Make it known that the british government won't make it difficult (in fact, will probably even help) to extradite people who are even suspected of anything, without asking for any evidence to be presented.

This sort of process will also allow the govt to collect DNA "evidence" from everyone, to further their aim of knowing everything about us, without having to bother with any nasty new laws that people who obviously have things to hide might object to. By using ever smaller and more dubious quantities of DNA for matching, it should be possible to connect someone with pretty much any crime (if the level of confidence is reduced far enough).

Even better, since prisoners are not allowed to vote, the next government can be elected by a landslide of the only people who won't be in jail: the MPs themselves!

Photography rights: Snappers to descend on Scotland Yard

Pete Silver badge

sliding down the slope

you start by demonising the activity (photographs of people in public places, must be for pervy reasons - what else could it be?)

then you issue guidelines (.. provided it doesn't cause a breach of the peace ...)

then you "embrace and extend" (no photos of official buildings, either)

then you legislate, quietly and stealthily (no, we just need the option ...)

then you enforce, heavily and inflexibly (camera == terrorist)

then you control the media

then you can act without fear of criticism or oversight

then your powers become unlimited

then you rewrite the history books

then everyone's happy (according to the news reports, on every channel, all the time)

Kids online: Parents need to regulate, says Ofcom

Pete Silver badge

but we're too busy!!!!!

is the usual cry from people who don't want to do something.

Whether it's filling in tax forms, cooking proper meals, reading a book or taking a role in the local community. In fact, these days "busy" translates into either "lazy", "not interested" or "don't care about" - especially when the responsibilities or duties in question can be dumped onto an anonymous, official body (subsequently referred to as "they" - as in "they ought to do something ..." or, better, "it's their fault").

Ultimately, people need to realise that the internet is an unregulated, anonymous entity where anyone can do anything with impunity. Just as you would not let a child roam around the dodgier areas of any big city without supervision, parents should not permit their children to do the same on the internet - it's an adult medium with occasional, but unreliably monitored, areas that contain *some* child-friendly content. And so it will always be - that's life, deal with it.

If parents are unwilling to spend the quality time with their children, due to being "too busy", then the answer has to be to remove their internet access. I'm sure the kids wouldn't like it, but that's the price they have to pay for having parents who aren't willing to live up to their responsibilities.

Top MI6 spy: Terrorism less serious than bird flu

Pete Silver badge

less serious than brid flu and much easier to prevent

... just stop bombing the crap out of groups of people in far-away countries, whom you know nothing about.

If you want to stop the spread of radicalism, spend a few $Bn on home comforts: usable roads, 24*7 electricity, nice food, engaging TV programmes, decent jobs and educating the masses. They'll be far to dumb, fat and happy to want to go around blowning themselves (or anyone else) up, plus you'll have undermined the true believers ability to stir up discontent.

Want to stop the scourge of drugs, drug-related theft and killing? Simple, just buy up the heroin, cocaine and dope at source. Pay the farmers more than the cartels do (see above: terrorism) then distribute it legally, through government run outlets. Apart from the savings on interdiction, the govt. could make a pretty penny from taxes - just like with booze, coffee, tobacco etc.

So far as bird flu goes, that's more difficult. You need to set up labs to isolate the quickly mutating strains, produce, test and distribute the jabs and make sure there's enough to go around. However, with all the surplus cash from solving the other major world issues, it shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility - there may even be enough money left over to solve world-hunger and climate change, too.

Virgin Media trials longer bandwidth throttling

Pete Silver badge

just another sign they have the wrong business model

It's remarkable (hence this remark) that a business punishes it's customers for actually using the service they provide. What's even stranger is that the customers put up with it. We know they put up with it, as they don't do the obvious thing and change to a different supplier.

That Virgin Media have to go to these extremes, tells us that they have a completely wrong way of charging their customers. Imagine if Tesco did the same: pay £20 and cart-out all the food you like. However, if you do this, you'll be given a smaller basket.

Surely this lazy (and oh, so 1980's) way of billing people for the services they use needs to be completely thrown out and a more sensible approach of billing for resources consumed brought in?

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