* Posts by BristolBachelor

2200 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2009

Australian sports get busy with copyright special pleading

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Exclusive deals

To be honest, I'd like to see the end of the "exclusive deals". What seems to happen is that there is a bidding war, and in the end one of them always wins; and ends up paying more because of the war.

Then the same content is sold to the public who have no other way to get it, so it costs the public (much) more. Oh, and where does the extra money go? Well how else will those stars / managers / promoters get paid £20000 a week? (or $, €, etc.)

To make it even better, in the UK the winner is normally Sky, so you need to have a dish (if you are allowed), and to get the thing you are interested in, you normally have to pay for a bundle including lots of other (overpriced) crap.

UK's digital policy seized by fanatical bureaucrats, say MPs

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UK's digital policy seized by fanatical bureaucrats, say MPs

BristolBachelor welcomes all commentards to comment here :)

Adobe adds Flash sandboxing to Firefox

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Joke

@Andy Fletcher

Yeah, it seems that the work experience kid didn't know how to make coffee. He had to do something while he was there...

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Trollface

I protected Firefox by not installing Flash :)

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Adobe security

Hold on. So Adobe; the people responsible for all the holes in the plug-ins that are so frequently used to attack peoples computers are the same people implementing the sandbox? Isn't that like employing peodophiles to keep the kids safe in kindergarden?

Brazil sues Twitter over police checkpoint tweets

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Joke

Family Guy ?

"Homeland Security just deported two UK tourists for making jokes and quoting Family Guy

Well, they should've watched American Dad instead, and then they would've been prepared :)

Hackers may be able to 'outwit' online banking security devices

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Coffee/keyboard

Please; a little warning before you say things like that!

<- My keyboard

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Barclays PinSentry

I am quite impressed with the Barclays PinSentry. It is not connected to the computer, and cannot have it's firmware "updated" to include a virus/trojan.

If you want to make a payment to someone new, you need to authorise it using the pinsentry. To authorise it, you must type into the pinsentry: your PIN, the account number of the recipiant and the amount of the transfer. The pinsentry will then give you the code to type into the website.

So for this to work, the man-in-the-browser has to convince someone to press "Authorise" and then enter their PIN, an account number and an amount of money, and then type that number back into the website. Compared to an alternative scheme with a bank I know who give you a card with a list of 200 numbers that you may be asked to type in for any number of reasons, it should be reasonably clear that you are authorising a payment. I think that this is unlikely except for vulnerable people.

I suppose that it may be possible to convince a mark to make a small payment to a company which they authorise with pinsentry, and then for a trojan to try to make a much larger transfer later. In this case I don't know what the bank does; if someone authorises a payment for £5 and then tries to make a payment for £5000, do you ask them to authorise again?

Apple tells authors: All your books iBook files are belong to us

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Microsoft

The IP lawyers at my previous employers looked over the T&C that everyone signs when they used MS Office package, and told everyone that the license actually meant that MS owned all of the work that you created in their software. Obviously, everyone had just been accepting all the EULAs on the software up until that point (anyone seen the Dilbert cartoons about this last week?).

Eventually, MS backed-down and said that they only owned the copyright in the actual doc and xls files, because it was their software that created them, and they weren't trying to steal your IP. I think in the end even that went though, and Open Office etc. can now open the files with impunity.

MPs rattle telcos to help kill extremist material online

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Trollface

What I find ironic, is that given the definition of Terrorism that the UK / USA gov put together to justify certain laws, history would report the actions in Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan as terroism and also people such as Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus Christ, etc. would be called "extremists".

As for what constitutes "objectionable content"; almost anything that is good in some countries is objectionable in another and visa-versa. Perhaps the MPs should just close all the borders and cut the hardlines like North Korea?

Doctors sick of anonymous-coward NHS feedback commentards

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"...unemployed because someone on the internet put him in an impossible situation."

I don't know about that. Does that mean that everyone who lost their temper was justified in doing so because someone put them in an impossible situation? It is no longer required for you to act professionally because someone upset you?

Obviously this article does not say what he responded to, but he did it representing his employers, and in public. In addition he did it somewhere that gives the impression that the whole purpose of the forum (to generally improve standards) is not followed up on.

Perhaps he could've done what the rest of us do from time to time to ease tension? go to the workshop and carry out a secure "erase" of a HDD using a hammer.

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Expectations

The thing is that I see it as about expectations. Imagine a ficticious website that allowed you to feedback you experiences at your local Sainsbury's. Imagine a poster said "Oh wow, I went into Sainsbury's today to buy some bread, and they had some; what's more they let me buy it!"

Possibly the people who posted on Choices saying "My doctor was wonderful, listened to me, and was very helpful" had much lower expectations (either through previous experience or guessed from general opinion of doctors). This in itself says almost as much as the posters who said "I went to the doctor, they were awful, and I wish I hadn't gone".

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Presumably you said this is your comment about the surgery then :)

CA wins copyright wrangle against ISI

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"...when creating the 2BDB2 tool to assist Macquarie Bank's transition off CA's Datacom database. CA claimed the ISI's software has replicated parts of confidential source and object codes without permission and lost CA revenue via license fees."

I would say it reads like CA lost revenue because the bank decided to move off their software. Perhaps CA needs to look at why the bank decided to do that for the blame, rather than go chasing a company who helped the bank move away from CA.

How long before Ford start sueing General Motors for lost sales from all the people who buy GM cars instead of Ford?

European revolt over ACTA treaty gains ground

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Joke

US border control

Didn't you get the memo? They can do anything they like. Now bend over; this will hurt as much as they want it to

New forum Wishlist

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Trollface

Yeah, I know. That's why I created a "user" topic about the French hadoop law one. I'm an engineer; it's my job to find solutions :)

Do you think that maybe he is under some terrible license from the mafia music/film industry that means he has to submit his articles without comments so that no-one is allowed to talk about them? :p

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You mean like this:

E = MC²

:)

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Post voting

Actually, thinking about this, I like the idea a lot, bit done slightly differently.

Instead of thumbs up or down, a column of icons (maybe 4-8) next to the post, done in typically humerous Reg fashion (i.e. derogatory to at least someone), each one saying what you thought of the post, e.g.

ROFL

Fail

Too bloody right mate!

Is your brain on holiday?

Honorary knighthood for this commentard please.

Then when you view the posts, you see the count next to each icon.

Maybe if this is not possible, then could I ask that if someone keeps posting AC and getting massive downvotes, that TheReg can arrange for them to get an electric shock from their keyboard the next time they login to the site?

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Joke

I down-voted this because I'm having a shit day and wanted to spread the missery around too.

I down-voted this because I hate you and look for all your posts and click the red hate button.

Spot the joke icon; I didn't do either of these things.

Oh and at one time I wondered if I had a stalker because ever single post I did got at least 1 like vote seemingly for no reason at all.

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I agree about a way to hide, or skip over posts that I've already read. Especially in the new user forums, where a topic may live on for days or weeks (like this one!). I'm not totally sure about colours, but that is one way to do it. Another may be to have older posts roll-up, with a clickable unroll? (possibly tidier, although more work)

Of course one problem with this is when you go to the page, but don't actually read all the way to the bottom, and the next time you go there, it hides the things that you didn't get around to reading last time.

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Nope, there's another reason. I only have 1 user name, but seem to be constantly logging in to vote/post.

Every time that I login, I see a nice little "Remember me" box with a tick in it, but my tick seems to be broken. Oh, it also doesn't help that what used to be "the register" is now also "register", "channel register", "the register", "reghardware" and last but not least "We couldn't think of another name register", and I seem to have to log in to each one separately - ho hum.

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Post formatting options

Please sirs, could you put a handy list of available stuff somewhere (and update it when things change) Oh BTW, when did strikeout become available?

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I don't know if this is sort of what he/she is referring to, but when you up/down vote a post, the link to go back to the forum is actually a link to the post you just voted on, like this:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2012/01/12/Minty_Welcome_to_the_latest_forum_features/#c_1295825

However, I don't know another way to get the link to the post - unless you count rooting around in the page source!; oh and for any Australian's reading this part, the other use of rooting applies here too :)

But, thumbs up to being able to tell that someone has replied to one of my posts (The replies sometimes keep me on an even kiel; if it wasn't for them maybe I'd have a white cat and fleet of space shuttles by now...

Oh, and I know I can't spell; writing is not my job, just a bit of fun I do (badly) on the side.

This is a test

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Joke

I think that it is early days, the addition of formatting for people who have been hanging out here almost since before HTML existed (joke!) won't be a problem for them. Oh and we are no ordinary users, we are.........¡¡¡Super commentards!!!

For newer people who studied computer science at university when the sylabus only covered how to type a document in MS Word, I'm sure there will be something more user friendly along later :p

Brit space agency sends up 1st satellite

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Yes, that's true, but also UKSA may be a new entity, but really is just the renamed BNSC (British National Space Centre) which was a club of all the departments interested in space. (and that had been going since '85 according to Wikipedia)

And yes, apart from building lots of satellites in the UK, there are also satellites owned and operated by the UK too (gov. or UK companies).

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Return on investment

"It has a much better chance of a return on investment"

Well, yes, sort of. But as soon as the investor is the government, there will be a negative return on investment. The spec would be changed every month. After a couple of years, the spec and design will look like each part was designed by someone wearing a blind-fold and not knowing what anything else in the project was like.

Eventually, there would be a series of reviews, and eventually hourly pregress reports at which point it would be dropped and everyone would say the idea was crap, or that the poor sods working on it were incompetent.

Keep the government out of our space projects.

Google 'chooses' not to censor Mosley content, MP says

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Can't speak for the other commentards, but:

I think that he was well and truely wronged by this. I have no problem at all that he wants this video to never have existed. I think it's fair that he can go after the people who post it up, etc.

My particular beef is with the moron saying that Google can automagically kill this. Sorry doesn't work like that. They could try, yeah. They'd get rig of a few, yeah. People would start using other things to describe it so that it doesn't get black-listed by Google, and then Google are just trying to play catch-up. At the end of the day, they would almost have to delist anything with his name in it.

They might also be able to recognise the video itself, but that is hard work, and everytime the video gets transcoded, it doesn't tend to get flagged. Again it's a bit of a running battle.

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Coat

@AC 12:54

Sorry, I didn't know that you Max wasn't actually wearing a Nazi uniform; I haven't seen the video and have no interest in it. I actually think that he is more than entitled to his privacy; my grief was with the person that the article is about spouting off that Google could censor the video, but not understanding what he's talking about to the point that he doesn't realise that it wouldn't work.

As far as Google delisting links; I got the impression that they already did that in this case. The problem was that as soon as they delist a link, another pops up. What you Max actually wanted was for Google to automagically know that it was this video (or I guess discussions about it) and automagically de-list it.

Now apart from delisting anything with your his name in, I'm not sure what they could do. And any keywords that are used to de-list a page could just be removed from subsequent pages. Likewise any attempts to actually recognise the video itself could fall down for any number of reasons.

Oh, and cudos to Annihilator for spotting the sarcasm. I didn't think that I needed to mention that if Max Mosley disappeared from the internet that it might hurt him more than if the odd person saw his video.

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FAIL

"However, Bradshaw said Keller's answers were "totally unconvincing" and that Google was able to remove material if it wished. "You could do it if you want to, you choose not to," he said, according to the Guardian's report."

Where the fk do they get these people? Really I mean they should emply people with at least half a clue!

I suppose that perhaps Google could de-list any pages that contain the name "Max Mosely", or the phrase "stupid fucker in Nazi uniform", but how else does this guy expect it to work? And what happens when people then change their pages to say "That formula 1 bloke" instead?

Fotoshop by Adobé: The miracle beauty treatment

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Model size reduction

That was great. Better than some things that I've paid to watch!

I also like this video I should've posted this the other day when there was the other fotoshop article: Youtube

Demand for safety kitemark on software stepped up

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FAIL

Not Verified by Visa

I don't get this very often, and each time it is more than 1 month since the last time. This means that my password has timed out, and I need to create a new one.

Here's the rub; all the details that I need to provide to change my password to a new one are exactly the same details that I had to provide to the online store to make my purchase. Ergo if I can make the purchase, then I can reset the password on any Not Verified by Visa scheme!

<sarcasm> So my time spent wasted in their little box really helped make me secure </sarcasm >

Oh, the onther thing is that each time it does it, it doesn't allow any of the old passwords, so I have to create another one.

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FAIL

FAIL!

You have just failed your test. If you looked at the email, it automatically ran some god-forsaken Adobe busting exploit that installed the banking trojan on your PC....

This used to be easy until just clicking a link could install any number of things on your PC (or Mac) behind your back without you knowing. When big companies fall to these exploits (including firewalls, email scanners, corporate AV, group policies, no root, etc.) then your average PC buyer stands little chance.

I'm sorry to say that the only way to be safe is to be completely paranoid and never do (or look at) anything fun on a computer :(

Optus trumps Telstra in war for digital PVR freedom

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My reading of the article is that Optus are providing you with a video recorder. YOU program what you want it to record, so that YOU can watch it later at a time more convienient to you. It says that the copyright laws allow for this, so no problem there.

Now it also seems that the video recorder that Optus provides is based at their facilities, but then the copyright law probably does not specify where exactly the video recorder has to be placed. Hence nothing seems to have been done wrongly.

The Register Comments Guidelines

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Trollface

We're thick-skinned, but... if you slag off The Register or its writers your comment may get canned

Is that why certain articles don't have comments enabled? :p

Oopsy, does that count as a troll? :)

Court defies Apple demand to ban Samsung tablet

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"Apple-owned patent ... will be torn up"

"...Samsung maintains that the technology the patent seeks to protect was widely used long before Apple bosses filled in the patent application form."

Any chance of a link (or reference) to the patent?

EFF helps MegaUpload users claw legit stuff back from Feds

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Evidence

The prosecution say that they have already taken the images that they need to prove their case. (In the UK, ISTR they would actually need the originals for court, but I guess since this is all cloudy and doesn't really exist, images of the files will suffice :)

Depending on how the prosecution play this, they may not need to prove everything that was on the servers. Maybe just the internal working files of MU are enough. Possibly any amount of non-infringing files on the servers won't make any difference to the case? Possibly they will argue that the deletion of the files is a commercial matter between MU and it's providers (even though it was the World Police frozing the "terrorists" money that caused the commercial matter to occur)? Who knows?

Gov's 'open data' strategy: It'll cost too much and won't work

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Alert

XML Tax rules

I think your idea of the tax rules being described using XML is great. However, I could see it falling down next time that the tax rules change. Tax rules seem to change at whim, becoming exponentially complex and seem to change for 1 of 2 reasons.

The first is that some people are obeying the tax rules that allow them to pay the "correct" amount of tax by the way they organise things to take advantage of the rules (R&D credits, subsidiaries and Jaccuzis as business expenses). This upsets some people who complain about loopholes, and then change the rules, making them increasingly more complex.

The second reason is some lobbying that some sector needs tax breaks. The problem is that the tax break will be something like "but only 1% tax for companies that were formed on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, have orange in their logo and who's principle shareholder is a contributor to our party". These rules may be very difficult to describe in XML. (however, they will lead to more tax avoidance, and hence to multiple changes under category 1).

I'd use the joke icon, but sadly it isn't.

Amazon France leaks iPad 3 release date?

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Indeed. Amazon also had listings for other Apple stuff before it was released, but the books didn't actually become available until a while after the actual things were out. I think that the publishers just do it as a place-holder (plus probably 80-99% of the book will just be exactly the same as the iPad 2 one so is already written anyway!)

Mickey Mouse Whois ban threat sparks privacy fears

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Big Brother

Thin end of the wedge?

Firstly I agree that this is unlikely to make any difference to anything of benefit (those doing dodgy things will still cover their tracks).

Worryingly though, is where does it end? Maybe next year you need to prove your ID for an email address? (A license to use the internet perhaps?). Maybe a few years later, you need to put your electronic "internet license card" into the slot in the computer before you can connect to the internet. Plus all your doings will be logged to ensure that you didn't do anything wrong?

Media groups propose anti-piracy 'code of practice' for UK search

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Joke

Damages

"A value judgment on how "damaging" illicit material is to rights holders..."

I'd love to see this handled properly in a court case:

"...and the court finds that the plaintiff's work is a crock of shit that not even a deranged person would pay for, and therefore the damages to the plaintiff are ZERO!"

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Coffee/keyboard

Can I ask for a new icon that warns readers to put down their coffee before reading a comment to prevent keyboard damage!!

Boffin's blog blast births boycott of publisher Elsevier

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david wilson said:

"But then if some system is mandated where free access is guaranteed in a short period of time, who would bother buying a journal at all?"

There are a number of things that are "free", yet people still pay for them, and I think libraries certainly would. For example, there are a whole range of out of copyright books sold by Penguin and lots of people buy them, despite their content being "free". Also a lot of people buy prints of Linux documentation or similar. The content is free, but buying the print makes it easier to handle and more accesible for some.

However, I see the future for this type of think will become digital virtual libraries, and these could be funded by subscriptions from individuals, libraries, institutions, and of course adverts!

Polish lawmakers don Guy Fawkes masks to protest ACTA

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Lech Wałęsa ?

Drew V. asked:

"It's not the only country protesting ACTA, but why are the Poles seemingly taking a lead?"

Perhaps it's the fact that a lot of Polish people can remember (or their parents remember and tell them) the change that came from people like Lech Wałęsa and don't really want to go back to how things were in the 70s ?

North Korea labels phone users war criminals

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Coat

North Korea = San Francisco?

Is this just an extension of all the fuss over the "Bay Area Rapid Transport" network? Or are just just copying; Oh look the West turn off mobile networks when there is a risk of trouble, let's do the same...

UK sight-loss charity sues BMI

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Mushroom

Well Mr. AC at 11:26

If I can afford a Rolls Royce with chauffeur to drive me anywhere, I don't see why everyone else shouldn't use one. Hell; make the roads for Rolls Royce with chauffeurs only and get rid of the busses and trains too. I don't see why they should let little pricks like you on the roads, just because you can't afford one. Now fuck off before I get really angry.

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Thumb Up

You forgot:

4) The entire site becomes a massive Flash application and becomes practically impossible to use with Flash, and completely impossible to use without flash.

I vote for a cripling win, to bring this to the minds of all the web designers who think that every site needs to be a flash video game.

Maxwell: Under G-Cloud, gov will buy IT 'like stationery'

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WTF?

And then he went back to his 'shrooms...

When he says Cloud, does he mean Cloud Cuckoo Land?

Most EU states sign away internet rights, ratify ACTA treaty

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FAIL

"You can always vote with your wallets next time Hollywood - or whomever - wants your business, and just *refuse* to spend your hard-earned."

The problem is that they just show that their income is decreasing, and say that it is because of the pirates, and hence even more draconian laws are needed (oh, and here have another prostitute, senator)

Untangling the question of antimatter mass

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I thought that gravitational lensing worked because the fabric of the universe was curved around the mass, and that the light traveled in straight lines through the curved space, and hence only appeared to be bent (if you're struggling with that, think light travelling through a fibre-optic cable).

Newt Gingrich wants Moon to be 51st US state

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Trollface

"how does Newtie propose to pay for this 51st state idea and the rockets to Mars?"

I suppose that he could get the US to stop invading all over the world and spending $10000000000000 a day in stupid wars?