Posts by Mark 65 3439 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
Hey, Government, why can't you stop terrorism?
Because it keeps the war machine rumbling ever onwards.
Is there any nation the Americans have interfered with that they haven't totally fucked up? Not sure how many attempts they want to have in the Middle-East before they realise they don't have a clue.
I think there was a fair amount of consent there - implicit or otherwise. The public didn't care because there was a clear benefit to them - more channels of shit in higher definition and generally better image quality and sound clarity.
Tell people that they can never effectively bank securely again or ever communicate without every word effectively being digitally transcribed and see how far that gets you in your electoral campaign. There's a good reason Snowdon's revelations were revelations i.e. state secrets - they weren't exactly palatable to the masses.
@Trevor: Yes, I think it matters. If someone is basically saying to us all that "give us these powers/remove all these freedoms and we will protect you" I, for one, would like to see evidence it will. Frankly, however, I fear that such evidence is about as rare as rocking horse shit.
@Trevor: Wrong. Atheism is about a desperate need to believe there is no god.
There's no desperation at all. There is no magical guiding hand. Religion stems from mankind's inability to explain the world around them in times gone by. Can't explain it? God did it! Most people moved on but some are obviously desperate in their need to believe there is a greater power to explain that which they cannot comprehend. The biggest irony being that the greatest chance you have of ever encountering a magical guiding hand is if you were in the choir or attended a Catholic school - the court records testify to that.
Read the post again dude. I specifically said I didn't agree or disagree but noted that people seem to have a don't give a fuck attitude when it doesn't directly affect their income detrimentally. Incidentally, as you mention offshoring, they are also pretty bloody quick to whine about shit like that on here. That's the point I'm trying to make to the OP - instead of just labelling them communists they might want to consider how they'd react to their job being handed over to a cut price end-run around the visa system in a slack labour market as an equivalent action.
I may be entirely wrong here, but I always thought that your insurance company would not cover your car if you used it for private hire unless you'd specifically taken out a policy geared for such. Does Uber truly enforce this insurance requirement or can drivers get away with just having normal personal use insurance, in which case occupants would likely be uninsured in the event of an accident?
I have many fond memories of a night out in London whereby every black cab travelling past after about 7-9pm had the light off with nobody in them (except the driver). If they didn't think you looked too pissed, or you wouldn't cause any issues the light would quickly flick on and they'd pull over. You were then subjected to the "I'm headed back to Hounslow mate" test. If there were two or more blokes you were likely shit outta luck.
Maybe. How would you feel if they opened the immigration floodgates to people with your particular paid for skillset and thus totally fucked your income? Not saying I agree or don't agree, but people do tend to have an "it doesn't affect me negatively so who cares" attitude. First they came for the cab drivers?
I think the whole point with RIPA and the minimal number of prosecutions under it were that they just haven't tried to prosecute an individual with the right financial resources yet. Once they do, I think you'll find it isn't fit for purpose. The mere concept of having to prove you've forgotten something is just kindergarten logic - what fucking 'tard came up with that?
I believe where we will end up on encryption will be exactly where we are today. You cannot uninvent it. You cannot remove the many reference implementations like GPG/PGP. The mathematics is well known. You can mandate in law what you want, who cares? Breakable encryption will just result in the failure of their precious propped-up banks as any transaction can be MITM'd. No company will want to implement a busted system as they will become the next MySpace to a foreign upstart that refuses. Encryption is here to stay and I, for one, am glad of that no matter who may choose to use it for nefarious purposes.
...and then they have the cheek to complain when the public won't help them! So many people in positions of power have glossed of the fact that, fundamentally, their position is one of public servant and not "he who must be obeyed". Why would the police act any different when their political masters act with such authoritarianism?
On the defensive side, NSA has recommended that implementers should transition to elliptic curve cryptography, which isn’t known to suffer from this loophole, but such recommendations tend to go unheeded without explicit justifications or demonstrations.
Isn't that because the NSA stuck a fault in the PRNG so that it repeats numbers hence making it a touch useless?
While we wait for that, two important questions remain unanswered about the laptop data crimp:
Who requested confidentiality for laptop imports, and why?
Why did the ban on networking data last only a month?
A pet theory for question one: Apple's finding ways to hide its affairs from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). If it can import a swag of MacBooks without their value being made public, the ATO will find it harder to pick apart the pricing practices it uses to avoid tax.
I'd imagine the ATO can get its hands on the data, what with it being slightly higher up the pecking order than the ABS given it raises a lot more revenue that it pisses away.
There's also the added issue that, if anything, you want per capita numbers as you can add to GDP by having ever more low paid individuals yet that doesn't equate to the nation truly becoming richer if viewed from a standard of living perspective. That's the other side to the Government juicing of the figures - can't add wealth then add headcount + debt.
I deliberately don't brake a lot of the time, instead controlling my speed with the volume pedal and gearstick. Those drivers who dab the brakes at every bend in the road are nearly as bad as the ones who don't believe in braking distance or blindly follow overtakers into oncoming traffic.
Although I agree that people that ride the brakes are one of life's great pains in the arse (motorways have more than their share of drivers that can only operate a car by stamping on the accelerator or the brakes) there are caveats to engine braking. That is that it's normally considered to be somewhat useful to change your speed by dabbing the brakes as it illuminates those little light things at the back that tell the driver of the 44T lorry behind you that you're slowing down. I believe that brake lights are considered signals much like indicators are so an arsey copper could well pull you over for failing to adequately signal.
The issue may be - not turning it on - but spoofing the 'turn off' so it didn't. It just appears turned off. Of course those that complain of bad battery drain overnight know what I'm talking about.
There was me just thinking it was Apple wanting me to update an old iphone.
I'm guessing that these cars will still pass the UK MoT test in their current state which, I believe, tests for CO/CO2 and HC in exhaust gas. As such, surely this then makes the "software feature" an after-market enhancement that someone will no doubt provide to boost what will be the future shitty performance of these vehicles post-recall?
"Under the new scheme, called Toolbox"
Should have called it "piggy bank" or "cash cow".
With regards the mouthpiece's comment about making it simpler and easier to understand, how fvcking stupid does he think the user-base is?
I can understand it. Under the old system I pay once and use forever. If you happen to make some marvellous improvements I can choose to give you more money for an upgrade. Under the new system I get to pay every month even if you produce fvck all of any worth in order that I can still use the version I found useful, and that's if you haven't forced loads of updates on me.
I don't agree. I'd actually pay to read El Reg content - not a lot, mind, but I would do it - because I read an awful lot of their articles and see interest in what they offer even if I don't agree with some of what is written. I would miss not being able to read it.
However, news sites have the issue that most of what they contain is bullshit, propaganda, or both. Most of it is just syndicated shite with no value-add overlay that is just redistributed around the ether. That I will not pay for.
I was going to ask:
Isn't running your own mail server something best done from a rented server in a data center somewhere?
I always thought that running such a thing on a residential connection is a recipe for unavailability and untold frustration especially with regards the blacklistings.
Whether you can get enterprise level support or not is absolutely irrelevant. As I have witnessed with the plague-like advance of Oracle throughout Government and quasi-Government organisations, I can only assume that the Oracle client entertainment is second to none throughout the deal-making process and the Oracle legal team is second to none when it comes to license renewal time.
Keenan's assuring Australians, and visitors whose images are captured when applying for visas, that this program “will not be a centralised biometric database and will not retain or store any images that are shared between agencies
It doesn't need to be central or retain any of those images as each agency can do that itself and we can be pretty sure that any bytes ASIO receives are always retained.
And if having something than only do 720p video cuts the cost down then, well, I'm all for it
I'd wager it increases the profit margin rather than cuts the cost down. I had a Dell Inspiron in 2001 that had a 1600x1080(?) screen. More than that shower of shit reviewed anyhow. That was 14 years ago. Disgraceful.
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