Posts by Jason Bloomberg

"Definitely in the public interest."

Absolutely. If we are killing for arguably legitimate reasons that is one thing. If we are murdering for no good reason and putting everyone at risk through potential retaliation for that then we really ought to be allowed to know.

Simply saying we can't be allowed to judge which it is because it affects our national security is nonsense, merely ducking the question. It's no better than saying we cannot investigate allegations of police misconduct, racism or corruption because that might undermine operational effectiveness. All it does is keep the truth hidden and suggests to me that what they do does lack legitimacy.

They want to wage wars on behalf of the public without the public having any say in the matter. Those aren't our wars; they are their wars, but we are the ones who inevitably pay the price. We should all have a say in what is done in our names but they won't even let us know what is being done.

Re: The perfect calculator!

How many of the kids at school ever borrowed it a *second* time?

I was going to say the same; the most frequent refrain after "lend us your calculator" was "where's the equals button?"

I still have mine. I think it's a lovely design but, beyond having to grapple with RPN, it had two problems; poor battery contacts and the sliding power button had prongs sliding over PCB tracking which were not good at withstanding wear.

"We're innocent really"

Perhaps not innocent but I think it's fair to say that duress was a strong motivating factor. When someone has a gun to your head and promises things will turn 'well nasty' should you refuse or reveal what you are being forced into it is hard to stand up to that.

What we really need to know to pass judgement is how obliging these companies were and who resisted as best they could.

Re: That seems like a very sensitive revelation

Sensitive perhaps but not necessarily anything not already suspected nor necessarily life endangering - unless taking the side of the spooks where any disclosure of anything can be said to be potentially life endangering.

That's the real battle; over where the line is drawn in an allegedly free society. Do we just bow to the spooks and say 'yes sir, anything you say, you know best, sir' or do we have some scope to discuss things despite some risk in allowing such discussion?

Though the spooks seem to believe it is best for all of us if all discussion is shut down when they say it should be I don't think that is society's belief. It is ultimately who works for whom. Do we collectively decide what risks we will accept or do we let them tell us what risks we will accept? If we accept their dictating what we can say then what notion of free speech is left?

Re: Good

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

You would seem to be saying that to refuse to let evil triumph when told to do so is traitorous and demands the punishment of execution.

I respectfully disagree.

Re: None of this makes any sense

It probably does make sense and it's probably the simplest explanation which makes most sense; we make you smash your things up because we can. Be very afraid. And, from the Guardian's side; sure, we'll play along with that.

It's a face-off. Trying to make any more sense out of, particularly debating how it could or should have been done better on both sides, is likely missing the point entirely.

Having said that; my gut feeling is that it's the Guardian taking the lead. I'm not entirely convinced the events did happen as described. Why casually drop such an important revelation in the midst of an editorial commentary when one would expect front page banner headlines? Plenty of outrage over Miranda's detention but little on their computers getting totalled. C'est la vie? There has to be a reason for that even if we don't know what it is.

It does throws down a gauntlet for the spooks and government to deny the claim and perhaps the Guardian are hoping for that to provide the circumstances to let fly with whatever revelation they want to make.

Speculating and creating conspiracy theories is fun but I don't think there's much to be gained beyond grabbing the popcorn and watching how it plays out. Only the protagonists know the game plan.

Re: Broken for me.

Seems to depend on which link you follow or it's time dependent. The El reg link worked for me, others I followed on t'web did not. Is there a chap standing by the lamp post? If so; no double arrows, if not they do appear. YMMV.

Some parallel universe joke perhaps?

Re: Whats new?

"Watch BT sport free"....

then in small print it says "if you have BT broadband and line rental costing 21 quid a month"

I'm surprised. I would have expected more like "line rental costing 7quid a month". And in even smaller print "For three months, 21 quid thereafter", and, even smaller still, "Discounted line rental does not apply to existing customers".

This ain't trolling

If you don't feed the troll they tend to die off from starvation

Except these aren't trolls and aren't trolling. They are horrible, hateful, spiteful bastards who are really trying to cause people grief and delight when they achieve that. It is not just a case of casual commentary or abuse in jest; these are targeted, persistent and determined campaigns with intent to make people's lives a misery.

Bullies, plain and simple. And they won't stop until they are harmed themselves through being exposed or shamed, forced to confront the harm they cause, or punished for that.

We wouldn't put up with such bullying at work, at home, or in our social lives, so why should we have to put up with it online or see it facilitated through the security of anonymity?

We seem to have increasingly adopted a more American ideology of 'free speech' online where almost anything goes and almost everything has to be tolerated in its name. That is however incompatible with free speech within British culture which is far less tolerant of hate speech and that which causes harm. We have ended up with traditional limits of acceptability being stepped beyond with impunity and we urgently need to rectify that.

That is not be against free speech - these people are already infringing AUPs and site rules - it is just that we do not have effective means to deal with those who do step over the mark with service providers also slow or reluctant to take action.

Re: Good

I work extremely close to heathrow and it is remarkable how quiet the aircraft are nowadays.

Are you sure it isn't just continual aircraft noise slowly making you deaf?

Re: blah

And while we are at it; we should be looking at why more men don't get into the haute couture business, why some men consider it "sissy".

Stereotypes are being broken down but it's not going to happen overnight and it's also fight against those who want to keep those stereotypes and associated prejudices.

I don't think we will ever remove stereotyping completely, but if it become mere personal opinion rather than an obstacle to people doing whatever they want to, then I am sure we could live with that.

Re: Returns...

One of the problems I recall is that a manufacturer used a different memory chip which required an SD card image that recognised the memory type or it would not work. People were using SD card images they knew worked, but would not work with a new Pi, so they assumed it was the new Pi at fault, never thought there may have been a hardware change that stopped old cards from working.

NOOBS on a pre-installed SD card is a good idea in my opinion if it helps a user know what they bought is working. With just a board and everything else DIY it is hard to tell why a Pi will not boot if it does not - Is it a problem in downloading the image, configuring the SD card, a fault with the SD card, a problem with power supply, a faulty Pi, or something else? That is a lot for novices and the inexperienced to figure out, leading to frustration and, sometimes,simply 'junking the damned thing'.

There is no need to use NOOBS beyond that initial boot but if people want to I don't see a problem with that. I find it much easier to have everything provided on a plate and then learn from that, go in whatever direction I want to go. Not everyone wants to learn from principles before they get stuck in. Why should some kid wanting to use a Pi to learn programming have to learn about disk formatting or Linux before they can dive into programming? To me that's like saying you should not learn to drive before you have built a car and understand its mechanics.

Those who want to force that model on users are not opening things up to others but are insisting on having things the way they believe things should be done. To me that is the very opposite of what the Pi is about.

Re: Security

If there were a zero-day exploit that made use of such a feature, the results could be devastating for both customers and Intel.

That seems to be a mighty big "if".

While a system relying on those silicon extensions could have issues if the extension were flawed it is difficult to see how faulty silicon could be used to create an exploit elsewhere. The flawed extension would have to affect something else the system relied upon for security to achieve an exploit through its use.

You could argue that every part of any implementation within silicon is an exploit just waiting to happen - and that may be so - but it seems a case of confusing threat with risk when it comes to how likely that would be.