* Posts by Richard

208 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Apr 2007

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Online banking payment system aims to reduce fraud

Richard
Pirate

Who stands to gain?

The merchant is no longer at risk of fraud as the payment is guaranteed.

The bank is no longer at risk because the bank directly pays the merchant with money it knows the consumer has.

Doesn't this just turn it into a hi-tech Western Union transfer when the goods fail to be delivered?

I can see how it's more secure, granted; but the price seems to be the loss of any consumer protection.

Red Green Ken v Porsche in battle of the polls

Richard

Missing entry in the El Reg Phrasebook

Self-Servey

n. Survey engineered to justify the stance of an interest group.

cf. Self-serving Survey

I agree that the way it is set up unfairly discriminates against sensible large cars but don't worry! - those new cameras for the High occupancy lanes should sort that out with a per person CO2 allowance. What? You mean if I don't actually have passengers a Chelsea Tractor mightn't be a teensy bit unnecessarily polluting?

Jodrell Bank offloaded on eBay

Richard
Alien

STFC

Is way too close to STFU for comfort.

Given HM.Gov's odd priorities, the other dishes from e-Merlin could be joined together in another way: as a giant Olympic logo with the other 2 painted with London and 2012.

Clearly the lizard army from Rigel don't want us looking

Home Secretary in ID card gaffe

Richard
Alien

Who advises HM.Gov on data security?

The only explanation for such techno-utopianisms is that someone has managed to distill the essence of Gene Roddenberry into a super-pure form.

I don't seem to remember a certain set of CD's being copied off an internet connected server.

[Darn, now I can't shake the image of Jacqui Smith in a Starfleet uniform]

Has your shifty foreign neighbour got 16 mobes?

Richard
Stop

I've seen someone suspicious!

Don't those Blackberry doodads come with a multiple simcard option?

I saw this bloke using one in Westminster. The sharp suit isn't going to fool anyone; not when you're calling for things that are antithetical to the "British way of life" (tm). He'd got past Parliamentary security and everything!

"How can you tell if someone’s buying unusual quantities of stuff for a good reason or if they’re planning to make a bomb?"

What? Like Northern Rock shares?

Biometrics plan for London Olympic builders

Richard
Coat

The only sure way of identifying builders

Is arse crack recognition.

Mine's the one that's just a little too short at the back.

El Reg decimates English language

Richard
Paris Hilton

Cretinous indeed:

He either incorrectly doesn't capitalise Cretanism (although why he has something against the inhabitants of Knossos is a mystery) or misspells cretinism (which is particularly blundering as, like nouveau, it is a French loanword).

Quake rocks Britain

Richard

@All the "That's hardly a quake" comments

You might want to look at how close we are to a plate boundary. We're not insane enough to live anywhere near a current one. Most of the faults we get quakes on round here haven't been plate boundaries since The Cheviot was taller than Everest, if ever (Hint: it's now been weathered down to less than 1000m so it's been a while).

As it is, I slept right through it. I suspect it'll have to get up towards 7 or 8 before I even notice - I've slept through several car crashes within about 10 feet of my non-double-glazed bedroom window.

Blunkett gets another job

Richard
Coat

In the full BIg Brother's Little Brother tradition

Presumably there'll be a "behind the scenes" companion show presented by Kimberly Quinn called Banged by Blunkett...

Mine's the one with "If you can read this you're too close" embroidered in Braille on the back.

ISP data deal with former 'spyware' boss triggers privacy fears

Richard
Pirate

Commercial, Legal & Technical due Diligence

Call me cynical, but I can almost picture the scene:

Commercial 1: Will it make us a lot of money?

Legal 1: Will it make us a lot of money without being explicitly against the law?

Technical 1: How long do we think until a data breach?

Commercial 2: How much money will we have made by then?

Legal 2: How much would we get done for?

Technical 2: Are we just going through this process to make it look like we actually care about the customer when in fact it all comes down to how much money we can make out of it seeing as it's actually technically feasible?

*cough, shuffle*

I have to say I love how they claim that it's a new gold standard. Yes, it's better than previous iterations, but here better only means "not as bad". In a similar vein chocolate money wrappers are a new gold standard. And there's only a thin veneer separating them from something brown.

UK rattles 'three strikes' filesharing sabre (again)

Richard
Black Helicopters

This is going to be a spectacular cock-up

Lest we forget who's running with the ball here, Andy Burnham it was who was, along with Tony McNulty, wheeled out to discuss the more technical bits of the ID cards scheme on the Today programme,thus being in my personal top 10 for people who've caused me to shout at the radio.

It always amazes me how naive those in charge are around technology. Is there a peculiar mindset with those who strive for power these days - didn't technology used to be what got it (sharper sword, better armour, better communications)?

Legislating for Utopia doesn't work - if it did, I'd be lobbying for compulsory hovercars (what do you mean they don't exist???) and for every British citizen to claim whatever they liked in expenses from businesses who trade here but don't pay taxes here (claiming disposal costs on all those AOL CDs from the last decade should at least start paying for the Montana bunker)

Aliens seize control of Daily Telegraph

Richard
Joke

Isn't this a very old virus?

http://www.progress.demon.co.uk/Fun/New-Virus.html

Strikingly similar if you ask me...

UK media consultant dupes 2.4m randy YouTubers

Richard
Paris Hilton

Steamy windows?

"'Approximately 10,000 young people from Lancashire voluntarily watched the clip. This is approximately 10 per cent of the target audience.'

The target audience is young men aged 17 to 25..."

I'm a bit confused as to the Lancastrian connection. Do 10% of young men live there? Or is it 10% of young men in a Hot-Girl-Starved area?

Paris, as she is classier than many of those west of the Pennines.

[Fanning the flames that are steaming the windows up]

Sarko calls for global Mars exploration gig

Richard
Paris Hilton

Pork <-> Barrel

This, of course, would have nothing to do with the expectation that CNES would get shedloads of money out of such a scheme.

Paris, because even a small share of Daddy's billions is quite a lot.

Calls to ban hoodie-busting sonic weapon

Richard
Coat

Discrimination

Wouldn't it be interesting if this could be pursued under the Disability Discrimination Act as this exclusively affects those who aren't disabled..?

I'm 30-something and can hear the damn things perfectly well.

Mine's the one saying something offensive in red text on a green background.

Straw: Police can bug MPs without asking Cabinet

Richard

There's a delicious irony in this

That the RIPA should be the get out of jail free card is brilliant. I hope that the zombie army of Labour MPs who were voting nigh on everything through at the time on the nod are now wondering what on earth they were thinking.

The standard government tactic on such legislation has been to say that only bad people will be affected by it, which always causes me to remember Dogbert saying that only idiots will have to pay taxes.

Boffin shortage will blight Blighty's prosperity

Richard

Why am I not surprised?

"Biological sciences have in theory grown massively, but this doesn't mean the UK of tomorrow will be strong in genetics or pharmaceuticals: those numbers come from a huge boom in courses such as psychology and sports science."

Which would be all very well if the population as a whole was becoming well-adjusted and capable of winning anything.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the Government put so much focus on the goal of getting people into higher education that it forgot that what they are actually studying may be important too. Much of the numbers growth has been driven by get-the-numbers-in courses so it's hardly surprising that PhDs in the natural follow-up subjects are booming.

Sociologists: Studying engineering turns you into a terrorist

Richard
Paris Hilton

Quetelet must be turning in his grave

Could it be that the only terrorists who get good enough to be noticed are engineers? Working with explosives tends to be very self-selecting (truly a case of survival of the fittest).

On a tangential note, I seem to remember noticing a preponderance of former LSE students among terrorists around the time that they caught Carlos the Jackal.

(we need a "may contain highly dubious content requiring an arts degree or below" icon - oh wait, found it!)

Critics split over DDoS attacks on Scientology

Richard
Pirate

Voltaire

Could it be that Anonymous are just paraphrasing a different quote pour encourager les autres?

Academics slam Java

Richard
Boffin

It's not about which language is best!

This article was always going to produce a fanboy comment war.

Steve Roper's comment above hits the nail firmly on the head - it's not about whether Java is a good language or nay, it's about whether it's a good FIRST language. It's not, just as a Hummer isn't probably the best vehicle to learn to drive in.

The toolkit approach starts at way too high a level of abstraction. The problem isn't that you can't learn the techniques this way, it's that you start to assume that the toolkit IS the language and thus make completely invalid assumptions as to its capabilities and flaws. In a similar vein, I think that students should have to write and run programs outside of an IDE for at least a little while to realise what goes on under the hood.

NHS frets over Brits' genitalia

Richard
Linux

Surely..?

They should go for a model that is more in line with the population at large ie with monster love handles providing self censorship. And manboobs. And cankles.

Gone for the penguin as at least it's a more realistic shape

Beeb censors Fairytale of New York

Richard

@Only half a job

Of course, on the original appearance on TOTP, they censored it the other way - Kirsty Maccoll had to sing "ass".

Plus ca change!

MIA in Iowa - personal data on 3m UK driving test candidates

Richard
Alien

Why send it to Iowa?

Because that's where Captain Kirk is from, and UK.gov's information policies are developed by people who think Star Trek was a touch pessimistic. It is instructive indeed that _even Star Trek_ has episodes about aliens hacking into their computers and filling their boots with important information.

Greenpeace slams next-gen consoles

Richard
Paris Hilton

As usual Greenpeace aren't considering the whole picture

Responsible production and disposal or the lack thereof are what Greenpeace *should* be campaigning about, not that toxic chemicals exist and are in things. The only reason that the toxic chemicals are a problem in anything is that we live in a society that thinks end of life means straight to landfill.

I remember watching a documentary a while back which revealed how the EU directive to banish heavy metals like lead and cadmium from TVs and monitors led to a surge in demand for a certain kind of copper that can only be found in significant quantities in the Congo rainforest, where production a) caused large scale deforestation and b) was via slave labour.

As Greenpeace aren't campaigning over the use of mercury in energy efficient lightbulbs, you'd think that they'd got to grips with a slightly more holistic approach. Instead they're wasting precious resources on another headline grabbing "report", a job that they really should leave to one Ms P. Hilton.

HMRC coughs to more data losses

Richard
Alert

@Still nothing to fear?

Of course they've tightened things up! Presumably ANYONE could have just walked in off the street and burned a copy - we just didn't know it and blithely assumed that no one could be THAT stupid. At least now it's been upgraded to "people who work for us".

In other news, I guess the ID cards verification process will involve giving a whole load of details and the IPS seeing if they can get money out of a bank using them.

We so need a "Where's the Blunkett-esque justification?" icon for these posts...

HMRC offers £20k reward for ID goldmine CDs

Richard
Alert

I hope

that "Junior" staffers have had the ability to burn their own version removed, otherwise there'll be a sudden yellow envelope and jiffy bag shortage in HMRC to go with their other problems.

El Reg fires up online standards converter

Richard
Coat

Can I just check?

I note that I can't sell the code to Iran.

What if it's accidentally distributed on a CD via HMRC's internal post?

Coat chosen to check if the CD's are in there.

Will Darling's data giveaway kill off ID cards?

Richard
Flame

If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear

The government is doing its level best to ensure that [Amount to Hide] tends towards zero.

Bumblebee boogie analysis in webserver boost

Richard
Coat

Biomimetics in action

Surely the weasel experts write project management software..?

Local govt think tank slams road pricing plan

Richard

Bus subsidy

This reminds me of a tale a few years back when some council or other were rumoured to be looking at scrapping the subsidy to the local bus operator. Said bus operator huffed and puffed saying that there was no way that they could survive without subsidy - however they might just be able to get by on [a lot less than they were getting]. Cue swift subsidy cut to more realistic levels...

Suggesting it on a national level sounds like a fantastic political wheeze of Absolute Power proportions

Question mark over Tony Blair web privacy policy

Richard
Black Helicopters

Paranoidly...

That's exactly the right number of ?'s to spell out George Walker Bush without spaces

Bangkok vigilante 'wipes out' sleeping security guards

Richard
Coat

Where's..?

The Chuck Norris angle?

Darn that scriptwriter's strike!

Paris Hilton exits missionary position to save Universe

Richard
Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton confounds Rwandans with Final Solution

(sub) Tragic mix-up sends Godzilla to Kigali

US doesn't need orbital battlefleet - pundit

Richard
Coat

The real reason...

is that Games Workshop owns the copyright on Space Marines ;)

Royal Navy presses IT Crowd for nuclear missile 'servers'

Richard

Zen master?

I'm reminded of the classic AI koan:

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly: "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.

Reg lexicographical Shock Army liberates mobe

Richard
Mars

Was this..?

The big amanfrommars reveal?

Battle of Britain pilots actually crap shots

Richard

Surely it's more impressive?

"In total the RAF claimed to have shot down 2,698 German planes. The actual figure was more like 1,294. The RAF lost 788 planes - far fewer than the 3,058 the Luftwaffe claimed."

So based on the claims of the respective air forces against "actual" figures, the RAF go from losing by 360 planes to winning by 506. More of this kind of revisionism please!

Reg Standards Soviet defines temperature and force

Richard
Boffin

Hn Anomalies

It should be noted that the Hilton is a relativistic temperature measure as observed on Friday nights in Newcastle where thermometers regularly show 0°C but the empirical temperature is a good 2-3Hns higher.

Are we to understand that, like SI units, the measure held in Paris is taken as universal and local variants are merely derivations?

Bad security products thrive on confusion

Richard
Stop

Re: Best guarantee for Security Software

AJ, you're letting your open source evangelism make you sound like a twit.

To paraphrase from the article, you're indulging in "Open Source theatre"

Having the Source code no more guarantees Security than having sheet music guarantees the production of good music.

No software is without bugs, even fully audited. Good software, deployment and configuration testing are far better guarantors of quality than mere source.

Would you need the source code to know that printf("Hllo World") had a typo?

Neanderthals had key speech gene, researchers say

Richard
Coat

Keynote Speech gene

Slightly misreading the headline, I suddenly thought that this explains Party Conferences...

Microsoft targets developers with 'open' license

Richard

@yeah, right

Wasn't one of the reasons SCO didn't want to produce evidence (although quite how one brings a case without it I don't know) that the Open Source community would be able to code out the infringing bits?

Also, doesn't it provide the possibility of a smoking gun in the other direction as well? Let's say a Mono control works markedly faster than an MS one and the MS one suddenly speeds up due to new code looking markedly similar to the Mono source then surely we have a GPL violation there.

Almost all CCTV systems are illegal, says expert

Richard

New defence?

If so many of these cameras are illegal one has to wonder whether the defence teams of suspects caught primarily on the basis of CCTV footage will be attempting to get the images thrown out as evidence on the basis that they were obtained illegally.

It would be interesting to see the reaction of the press should someone get off because of this.

Public rejoices at new 'green' nukes

Richard

http://nuclearpower2007.direct.gov.uk/

Is the correct URL for the consultation.

Feds tell (other) feds to kill net neutrality

Richard

Re: What Net Neutrality really is

"Customers and Providers argue that they are just using the bandwidth they have paid for. Telcos say it was never meant to be used in this way. And both sides are right."

The biggest historical problem has been the way that Telcos have sold the bandwidth to consumers. Hosting providers have typically included transparent methods for saying how much data transfer is allowed as part of the bargain with options to temporarily increase it during unexpected busy periods.

With consumers, the Telcos have only themselves to blame when they use weaselly phrases like " Unlimited Internet * " and " up to 8Mb ** ". It's quite amusing that unlike the maze of mobile phone contracts it is the Telcos getting it up the rear this time.

* Internet may be be limited in ways that are in very small print.

** on a calm day, going downhill you might get 7.9. If no one else is using the internet anywhere in the world.

BBC cans Planet Relief special

Richard

Don't do another Comic Relief

The carbon emissions saved by not sending dozens of celebrities to Africa again will make just as big a point.

On the other hand, fundraising telethons are so flipping tedious that I would have thought that they result in mass TV switch offs anyway.

Venezuela plans crackdown on bloody silly names

Richard

Mileidy

Presumably someone is a Thunderbirds fan...

Yes, Mileidy

Naomi Campbell piles into Vogue

Richard

The problem with Naomi is...

...that she always manages to wrap up what could well be a valid point (not much ethnic diversity on the cover of Vogue, which could well be indicative of a small pool of talent where they are sourcing models from or institutional bias) into a point which we all go *groan, it's that Olympic mobile putter and convicted felon mouthing off again because she's not on the cover of Vogue any more*

One wonders what proportion of Vogue covers have featured black models since Ms Campbell's 1987 breakthrough. Her 7 appearances alone account for nearly 3% of the covers of the last 20 years. Against the demographics of the UK (about 2% are Black British according to ONS), that's not a bad return. Perhaps the real headline should be "British Black modelling industry heavily skewed towards Naomi Campbell"

Boffins issue speeding ticket for FTL photons

Richard

Speed of light?

Am I missing something here or aren't photons particles of light?

Surely this is therefore saying that light goes faster than light.

As if the interview on the Today program this morning wasn't confusing enough...

Web system sounds health alerts

Richard

Hopefully...

the messages will be in English as opposed to txtspk.

*Shudders at the thought of OMG!!! FT N MTH ON SUR FRM or what predictive text will do to H5N1*

God appears in eggplant slice

Richard

Oil

Looks like a case of oil + finger to me. Aubergines go like that.

*Smacks head at not thinking of this myself*

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