* Posts by Intractable Potsherd

4159 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

PayPal freezes 400-job expansion in North Carolina over bonkers religious freedom law

Intractable Potsherd

Re: States rights & hypocrisy

'"States rights" is code for "let us discriminate and don't tell us we can't"'

And that is why we in the UK are having a referendum about leaving the EU - the outers want the right to discriminate as they see fit.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Freedom

"If you offer a service to the public, then you must offer that service to all of the public equally. If you are not prepared to offer your services on an equal basis then you should not be offering your services."

I don't agree with that philosophy. There are some services that should be constrained this way (public services run by or on behalf of central and local government, e.g. healthcare workers and emergency services etc), but a business should have the right to to decide who they can treat with. I see no particular problem with a cake-maker, florist, or hotel saying that they do not want to supply services to a person on the basis of any thing they like - just as I as an individual have the right to not engage with any business (or individual) I don't like. It is not like there won't be other businesses quite happy to have the custom from those turned away - and it may well be that the business with restrictions finds that they will lose custom from people not of the group excluded because they don't approve of the stance taken. I don't actually see any difference between "I'm not serving you because <whatever spurious reason>" and "I'm not serving you because you don't have enough money".

April Fool decries Blighty's dodecaquid

Intractable Potsherd

Re: "12-sided muppet"

I know I'm a bit late, but surely "dodecamuppet" has some mileage?

Top Firefox extensions can hide silent malware using easy pre-fab tool

Intractable Potsherd

Re: NoScript = Tor browser bundle

I can't work out whether you are being serious, AC. However, in case you are (after all, there is a first time to find anything, even it is well-known), NoScript is a very well-known and trusted script blocker for Firefox and its forks: https://noscript.net/. I have been using for years, and I suspect I heard about it on these here fora - the list of comments runs to ten pages: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/search/?q=noscript&sort=score&page=10.

Which keys should I press to enable the CockUp feature?

Intractable Potsherd

Re: widdershins

I was looked at very strangely last weekend when I used the word "widdershins" (we were walking around a kirk, and it reminded me of a story I read many years ago*). That my wife didn't know it wasn't a surprise (English as a second language), but I was disappointed that my English friends didn't get the reference. By the time I'd explained that it meant going anti-clockwise, and that, no, I didn't know the etymology of the word, I wished I'd been quiet ... and so did they, probably!

* "The Man Who Walked Widdershins Round the Kirk" by Sorche Nic Leodhas, in the Second Armada Ghost Book. Sad, aren't I?

Oz uni in right royal 'indigenous' lingo rumpus

Intractable Potsherd

Re: To the victors, the spoils. @Pompous Git

"they regarded the Stone Age inhabitants as animals and hunted them"

I try to be reasonably open-minded about these things, but I can't for the life of me see why anyone would think that they weren't animals. Living a hunter-gatherer existence is little better than cattle or dog-packs, and certainly not significantly different from species of ape that we don't class as human. I'm probably a bad person, but I don't see the big deal about taking land from primitives, regardless of what continent it is. It is the way of the world.

Hospital servers in crosshairs of new ransomware strain

Intractable Potsherd

That was going through my mind when I read it. I'm not a techie, though, so don't know the feasibility.

Adblock wins in court again – this time against German newspaper

Intractable Potsherd

Re: I keep asking and no one answers.

"It's ironic that when I post on a subject I actually know about I attract downvotes."

It may be that, while you have knowledge, you don't actually know what you are talking about in this context. Under the print model, newspapers etc were responsible for the adverts they served. There was a specific policy of what was acceptable, and this was known to all. Adverts were specifically approved by people working for the publication, and, because they were static, I suspect hardly anyone noticed any of them. What online media has done is hand over the responsibility to third parties with no policy except "make money!" This has led to a race to the bottom, and people are fighting back - quite correctly.

The solution is in the hands of people like you - I suspect you work in the newspaper industry from your comments - not us. You need to take control of the ads, make them acceptable, and take responsibility if you are publishing ads that cause damage etc. The industry might just survive that way. If not, it will die, and someone else will come up with a better model sometime in the future - some form of Samizdat, possibly.

Claiming you know about a topic is insufficient when you are arguing for the status quo which is clearly unacceptable.

Microsoft's Brad Smith on encryption: Let the politicians decide

Intractable Potsherd

I was going to post something similar - it would be nice if the statement that "... decisions are best made by people that are elected by people ..." was true.

That one phone the FBI wanted unlocked? Here are 63 more, says ACLU

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Old law - so what?

Yep - many of my students query whether I've made a mistake when I teach about the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The age of a law does not necessarily make it bad, but there does need to be close scrutiny of laws that are hundreds of years old. Times change, and the problems being addressed may not exist any more, or society may have changed to the extent that the initial aim is no longer acceptable. I tend to think that the All Writs Act falls into this category, but I haven't looked sufficiently at justifications given for its continuing existence, nor whether other jurisdictions have an equivalent law.

Here's a great idea: Let's make a gun that looks like a mobile phone

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Urrmm...yeah, but.... @NotBob

You are right, but not necessarily for the reasons you give.

It is really easy for us in different countries to take the piss out of the USA, but it is not realistic. The gun-genie is well and truly out of the bottle over on the left side of the pond, and there is no way to put is back, even if there the political will existed. The logistic problem of getting even 50% of the guns handed over is fatal to the idea.

What also needs to be taken into account is whatever it is in American society/psyche that makes the number of gun-deaths per gun significantly higher than countries with equivalent rates of gun-ownership. It is easy to see how people would feel the need to have guns for self-protection - the saying that goes something like "I'll give up my gun when I can carry a policeman in my pocket" makes a lot of sense when there are so many guns on the streets, and so many people apparently willing to use them.

Unfortunately, this means that the tragedy is going to keep running on and on. Idiots will take out their frustrations by climbing towers or walking into schools or cinemas and killing lots of people, others will respond by buying guns that they don't really know how to use and killing themselves or others accidentally, and mistaken assessment of risk will lead to frightened people killing strangers, and the cycle will keep going.

The FBI lost this round against Apple – but it aims to win the war

Intractable Potsherd

Re: End of the War @ tom dial

" ... Statutory and case law based on the fourth amendment has increasingly narrowed the scope of government action ..."

You are correct in terms of history, but it seems that the narrowing has reached the low-water mark, and is now being reversed. The State is finding lots of new ways to involve itself in ordinary people's lives - interception of internet records, for a start - and the assumption of innocent unless proven guilty seems to be under threat in at least some areas. Your comments seem to relate to a time that will need lots of work to return to.

Internet users don't understand security or privacy, says survey

Intractable Potsherd

@ Charles 9

Whilst it may be selfish to harm yourself because of the effect it might have on others, I think the right of self-determination trumps the interest of others not to be harmed.

Intractable Potsherd

@Pascal

"When your secrets are bad, if they are a threat to other people's lives or livelihood then the Government damn well has the right to make it its business."

On the bare fact of what you have written, you are wrong, Pascal. Maybe you meant something slightly different than you wrote, but even secrets that threaten others may not be any business of the State, or anyone else. Many secrets are just about opinions and thoughts. In fact, it is often the revelation of these secrets that causes the harm - e.g. a married bloke fancies a colleague but does nothing about it, his friend knows about it and lets the wife know, resulting in harm. Indeed, many affairs would cause no harm if the other partner knew nothing about it. Stepping up the scale, a person might fill in the lonely hours of the night by plotting murder and mayhem. As long as that remains a secret, there should be nothing the State can involve itself in.

William Hague: Brussels attacks mean we must destroy crypto ASAP

Intractable Potsherd

"What about bioweapons like a mutant flu?"

About as likely as Han Solo's blaster, and a pretty piss-poor way of doing anything - the releaser (or his/her sponsor) is likely to be victim too.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Coded, not encrypted

"At dawn, the geese flew overhead" - meaning #1

"The geese flew overhead at dawn" - meaning #2

"A skein of geese flew over my house at 6am" - meaning #3

"At 6am, a skein of gees flew over my house" - meaning #4

"At dwan*, the geese flew overhead" - meaning #5 ... and so on.

There is no effective way of monitoring for "odd phrases" - we have so many people with different levels of English language skills that there is really no way to do it. If someone is on a list, then it would be possible to do textual and fist analysis (though the number of false positives would be huge), but to do that for every, or even a small proportion, of the messages sent would be impossible.

*Example of a deliberate "typo" thrown in.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Huh?

To this type of person, privacy and free speech together *are* more dangerous than guns.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: But they often don't act on what they already know about terrorists

"mutant flu ... pet weasels"???

Really?

EU ministers to demand more data access after Brussels attacks

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Tinfoil hat time.

As I've been saying a lot - the small numbers killed and injured in these target-rich environments show just how little we have to worry about.* It is still a hugely small chance of being near, let alone involved in, a terrorist incident.

The key lesson that isn't being learned by those in power is that the information they need already existed in each of the recent incidents. More powers aren't going to alter that.

* I know it sounds callous put like this, but we are talking about what actions need to be taken in response to this type of incident. If I knew any of the people involved, I would be mourning, just as I would if anyone else I knew had died. However, I don't, so I am no more affected than I am about the thousands of other people who die every day.

Police create mega crime database to rule them all. Is your numberplate in it? Could be

Intractable Potsherd

Re: 3 points @Charles 9

Sorry, you are wrong. Only in extreme circumstances is negligence a crime - Gross Negligence Manslaughter, for instance*. Crime is defined by the answer to the question "can the State imprison or fine you for it?". If yes, it is a crime. If no, then it is either a civil matter or nothing punishable at all. Simply having knock-on effects in public doesn't make the initial action a crime.

*Of course, you might be thinking of recklessness, but the rule on this is very tightly proscribed, at least in the UK - it requires a subjective test: successful prosecution requires that the prosecution proves i) that the accused was aware of a risk that it exists or will exist; and ii) that it is unreasonable to take the risk." This is quite a difficult hurdle to get over.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: If Datamining worked

"As for the stock market, since unpredictable humans and insider hijinks are involved, the data set will always be inadequate to make a truly accurate prediction."

Surely these factors apply equally to crime prediction, so the result will be equally inaccurate. My first thought when I read the article was "Get access to the data and then plan an unpredicted crime".

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Psychic? @Loyal Commenter

I have to say that I have never read anything so frightening on these pages as what you are suggesting. You really need to get a sense of perspective, regardless of what your partner does for a living.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Responsibility @sysconfig

Agreed. As has been said by many people here over the last few years, I am far more worried about the government than I am about criminals or terrrists. A criminal or a terrrrist** can make life miserable for a few people, but a government can do it for millions*,**. It is becoming more clear that the government's priorities are not the same as the population's when it comes to security - and why might that be.

* Unless the criminal is a data-thief.

** The two recent well-planned attacks in target-rich environments account for less then 1000 direct casualties, showing how difficult it is to cause mayhem with the tools available.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: History being mostly cyclical, what did we do last time? @Version 1.0

"You will elect an English version of Trump - the UK is heading in the same direction when politicians of both sides only cater to the rich."

Whilst it isn't certain that Trump will win the election, I agree with the sentiment. Western politics is going through a very bad time, and the quality of "leaders" is going down continually. I probably won't be around to see it, but revolution is becoming more and more likely by the end of the 21st century.

Boffins find a way to put your facial expression on Donald Trump's mug

Intractable Potsherd

"... so Will Smith will never work again."

I'm in two minds about whether this is a good or a bad thing ...

Apple Macs, iPhones, iPads, Watches, TVs can be hijacked by evil Wi-Fi, PDFs – update now

Intractable Potsherd

Re: NIght Shift

The research is quite robust on this topic, and there definitely seems to be something to it. I use f.lux on my windows laptop (I haven't found for Mint yet), since it can't hurt to do so.

A Logic Named Joe: The 1946 sci-fi short that nailed modern tech

Intractable Potsherd

Re: A million monkeys is a bit unfair...

Keith Laumer is another author I have recently rediscovered. I remember some of the stories from my teenage years (presumably in anthologies, which our local library liked to stock for the few sci-fi readers in industrial South Yorkshire).* I found various volumes of his work transferred to ebook on Baen Free Library (I think), and I have really enjoyed them. Humour, insight, and knowledge of the human condition characterise most of them - well recommended.

* As mentioned by someone else earlier in this thread, my parents wrote a letter authorising me to have a card for the adult library well ahead of the age-limit, because I had read all the sci-fi in the children's section (there wasn't much!), and I kept pestering them to use some of their library allowance each visit to get me "real" sci-fi! The arrangement was that if the librarian didn't think a book was going to be suitable, I wouldn't be allowed to check it out.

Intractable Potsherd

I've read a lot of Heinlein's stuff over the last 40+ years, and I have to say that I've ever found him to be right wing. Libertarian, yes - TANSTAFL is the epitome of extreme libertarianism. Even the sex is libertarian - do what you want but hurt no-one. Virtually everything he wrote is in direct line from John Stuart Mill's "Harm Principle", which is a very good academic argument for libertarianism.

Pornography, violence and JG Ballard: High Rise, the 1970s' internet

Intractable Potsherd

Ah, yes - the dial 'phones with a different interval for each digit! It was so easy to work out who my family were calling by listening to the sound of the dial turning!

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Truly?

Just to add to the stories a bit, I was brought up in South Yorkshire. We didn't get a 'phone in the house until I had been at secondary school for some time - so about 1975/6. We did have an indoor fitted bathroom (no shower) because the house was a post-WW2 council house, but it also had an outside toilet, just in case. Colour TV arrived in the house just after the phone, so I guess the improvements were a result of the better wages for firemen after the strike of 1975.

Domino's trials trundling four-wheeled pizza delivery bot

Intractable Potsherd

Re: What am I missing?

" It isn't like a fresh out of the oven pizza is edible anyway, it relies on some heat loss before you can eat it."

I disagree - part of the fun of eating pizza is popping the blisters on the top of your mouth the morning after!

Mighty Soyuz stands proud at Baikonur

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Horizontal assembly

It depends what s/he has in his pockets.

Web ads are reading my keystrokes and I can’t even spel propperlie

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Ads

Interesting you should say that. Recently on BBC4 there has been a short series about renaissance art. Mrs IP and I have had a theory for a while that a lot of paintings across the years have been adverts for goods and services, and this series (though it wasn't mentioned by the presenter) really underlined it. The positioning of all sorts of things that just happened to be made in that town or city was almost identical to what we see in ads these days (eye drawn to the item, positioned or held unnaturally, lighting effects different around it etc).

Flying Scotsman attacked by drone

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Land of the free....

I think you missed some quotation marks out - "preserve freedom", for instance :-)

Intractable Potsherd

Re: I didn't

Keep them mowing blades sharp.

Or should that be rotor blades?

Secure email bods ProtonMail open signup floodgates to world+dog

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Price @ZSn

" ... this is compromise between usability and security ..."

Probably true, but it still isn't usable enough for my wife or mum to use - and I doubt my employer will accede to a request to send all my emails via ProtonMail. I'm not being snarky here - the point I am making is that there are so many areas in which encrypted mail will not be possible that it becomes pointless for most people.

Subjects! Speek your branes to Parliament on the Snoopers' Charter

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Letters to MPs time, everyone @AC new party

"I think the time is ripe for a new political party, one that stands for the people, not the popular bullshit peddled by the press, one that allows the people to voice concerns and opinions and if some are rejected then it is done in a way that explains fully the reasons without resorting to said popular media bullshit. "

I've upvoted you, but a huge part of the problem is the party system. It is inherently corrupt. What we need is a way of supporting independent candidates who will actually listen to their constituents. I'm at a loss as to how this would happen because of the media thing, and the FPtP voting system - and the ingrained habit of people voting for a party not a candidate. We have a lot of clever people here - any ideas?

Intractable Potsherd

Re: OK I admit it - I was wrong... @ Steve Evans

"That's possibly the most disgusting part of this whole disgusting episode... Those that are paid to represent us, doing sod all."

Yep. I got a response from my MP (SNP, and I didn't vote for him) yesterday to a letter I sent regarding the IPB prior to the vote, in which he said, basically "we think this is a bad Bill, so we did nothing!" I replied that the actions of the SNP and Labour were cowardly and weak, and explained that the actions of the Lib Dems (a close second in the last election in this constituency) and the Greens (okay, their only MP) meant that they will be getting more favourable scrutiny from me in the future. It will make no difference - the SNP are indistinguishable from Labour and Tory parties, with a very nasty streak of Scottish Presbyterian authoritarianism thrown in (see the Named Person Scheme - the No2NP website is good) for an example.

Snowden WAS the Feds' quarry in Lavabit case, redaction blunder reveals

Intractable Potsherd

Re: I wonder...

"No level of injustice makes Terrorists into Good Guys when they attack civilians."

So what level of injustice makes soldiers/drone operators into Good Guys when they attack civilians? Remember, under the rules of war, most "terrorists" are civilians.

What "injustice" turns those occupying other countries many miles away from their own borders into Good Guys, which is an attack on civilians even if no-one is killed?

I initially planned to post a comment to the OP that, in my opinion, no-one thinks they are the Bad Guy when they act: either they think they are doing good, or they don't think about it at all After they act, some will decide that they were the Bad Guy, with psychological effects from remorse to a shifting of their world-view to make them the Good Guy in their own eyes.

Top rocket exec quits after telling the truth about SpaceX price war

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Reality versus spin @ A Melbourne

I don't agree. Having options is rarely "dumb". At the moment*, Space X is giving itself those options. I don't see the basic principle as being different from trying to catch rocket engines in mid-air with a helicopter**, actually.

* Of course, the barge-landings might yet have to be lost because they can't be done reliably.

** A plane, possibly, but not a helicopter (for the reasons given above relating to rotors and shrouds/lines).

The Pirate Party finds a friend: A-G backs member against Sony

Intractable Potsherd

Just for clarity ...

This is is being heard by the Court of Justice of the EU (the article just says "European Court", which is a bit confusing because of there being two: CJEU and the ECtHR).

UK Snoopers' Charter crashes through critics into the next level

Intractable Potsherd

Re: "gutless" by the Liberal Democrats.

Yep, and this plays into one of the major reasons I won't be voting for leaving the EU - it is the closest thing we have to a written constitution that can be relied on by individuals. I've studied and taught too much Constitutional and Administrative Law to think the "unwritten constitution" is anything more than an excuse for government and Parliament to do exactly as they like (which it is - all that has changed in 400 years is that the divine right of the monarch moved to an elected body (look up "Parliamentary Supremacy" and compare with "the Balance of Powers" if you don't believe me)).

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Typical Labour

"Andy Burnham said that the ... bill's nickname of "Snoopers' Charter" was insulting to the people who work to make the country safer."

"Safer" than what? We hardly live in a dangerous environment. There are few existential threats to the population or the country itself*.

*Except from the people who want to make it "safer".

Judge orders Universal Credit internal reviews must be disclosed

Intractable Potsherd

Re: I wholeheartedly agree

Mrs IP and I are just about to become parents. One thing I am trying to fit into the next 18 years is home-schooling, because their is nothing in either my memories of school, nor recent reports from parents, teachers, or university students that makes me think that warehouse education is a good thing. Teach facts where needed, but ensure that research/learning skills are always underlined. Putting teachers in a position of doing things because if they don't it reflects badly on them (OFSTEAD reports etc) is a truly stupid idea.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: A "chilling effect"

Consluttancy - from:

Con - to trick someone out of something; slut - a person of few morals who just wants to satisfy themselves. At some point a spelling error became the standard form, so we usually see it as "consultancy", though the original meaning still applies.

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Really

Nice idea, but it would only be effective if there were any actual repercussions for not "... get[ting] up of[f] their collective arses, do[ing] the research, do[ing] the work and deliver[ing] accordingly." This is unlikely to be the case - a civil servant's career progression is decided by different criteria than most of us would recognise, and it has very little to do with actually delivering the stated result.

Osbo slaps down Amazon and eBay – who'll be liable for traders evading VAT

Intractable Potsherd

Re: In other places...

In general, it would be good to see a breakdown of how various bodies calculate their "administration charges", because they never seem to bear any resemblance to what the real cost would be. Anyone would think that they are just pulled out of thin air ...

Labour will create FUD and then abstain on UK Snoopers' Charter vote

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Lords

"Once again, it's left to the 'undemocratic' House of Lords to uphold the rights of the people"

FTFY

Polite, helpful? Stop it at once in the name of security

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Holding the door open

Following a recent reshuffle, I now have an office on a corridor with a card-based security system (no-one knows why a) I am down that corridor, or b) why it has a security door). The corridor is heavily used for various reasons, and the door is on a very slow closing mechanism (about a minute from open to closed), with no pull handle on the inside. The card reader is buggy as hell, hence unreliable. The practical upshot of all this is that the door is effectively open to all and sundry, because there is no effective way to pull the door closed after going through it, and the buggy card reader means that if anyone did, and the person after them could not get in, the atmosphere would be somewhat fraught. Combined with the apparent lack of need for the security door, it is all very silly, because the default position is to be as nice to people as possible and hold the door open if anyone is within 10 yards of it.

UK plans robo-car tests on motorways in 2017

Intractable Potsherd

Re: Perhaps "the most fundamental change to transport"

One of the interesting things in what has been written here is that the optimum lane for car-trains would be lane 2 (the middle lane on most motorways). There is no reason why they would not be able to travel at 70mph (which is the general speed in lane 2*), which would allow slower vehicles to inhabit lane 1 most of the time, and faster vehicles to use lane 3. Personally, I'd be quite happy to latch on to a car-train (though at a safe distance) since it would make adequate progress in a reliable way.

I confess that I love the idea that car-trains would be a way of encouraging Audiots and BuMWees to use indicators - no indicator, no exit!

* Subject to the lorry driver that just "has" to go 1mph faster than the lorry in front of it, and the (usually) woman that seems to think that lanes one and three are very wide pavements and that the national speed limit is 55mph.