Posts by CD001

begs the question

This sort of begs the question of "what are they trying to achieve?" ... are they _seriously_ trying to nail Google/MS or are they trying to point out inconsistencies in the way the law is applied. If Google/MS win then the argument could be made that other tracking sites that also just link to infringing material (rather than hosting it) should be safe from being sued.

I wonder what would happen if a tracking site ran with the line "look at all these naughty copyright infringers we've found - and all these files they're hosting - someone should do something! We've shown you where they are."

TV

TV was out in Wolvo last night but broadband was fine oddly enough... actually ended up watching Beeb2 for a bit - when they kill off the analogue we'll be stuffed though.

or...

> For now, though, the great thing is to remember over the coming festive season that in fact the various horrors about to befall us aren't ones that can be dealt with by running away and hiding nor bludgeoning them repeatedly with a surplus thighbone etc in primitive-human style.

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Oh but they can, they so very, very can - though it may be easier to find a tyre-iron than a surplus thighbone these days.

Alternatively

Just set up a zogging great old skool tabletop wargame using with General US-A using pieces representing the known forces deployed in the region and General Them-B using pieces based on military intel of the suspected/known enemy forces in the area.

Sort of a mix between tabletop wargames, "Risk" and "War on Terror: the boardgame" - it would be cheaper and have better AI... probably.

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

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However, as there were few terrorist activities in Kent, regular officers generally have a low level of knowledge of anti terrorist legislation

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I dunno - I suppose Maidstone just _looks_ like the result of a terrorist attack?

at least...

... China is an up-front, honest repressive regime - they don't have to invent bogey-men to terrorise the populace into welcoming repression with open-arms - they just say "Oi, NO!".

Seriously...

research...

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carried out by Pro Juvenile – an organisation which aims to protect kids from unlimited videogame violence

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... and how many wargames (CoD4:MW2 for instance) are 18 certificates? Or indeed games that aren't wargames such as Grand Theft Auto.

Kids are already protected from violence in videogames by the BBFC/PEGI rating certificate - so what they're essentially saying is that "children playing unsuitable games may be exposed to things that are unsuitable for children" - no shit, really?

so there you have it...

IF you are a smoker - don't buy Apple, build your own PCs instead. Buy a decent case with a "crap filter" in front of the fans and if/when something borks you can just replace it.

I smoke at my PC and accept that it's not going to do it much good; I've seen the crap that accumulates in the filter in my Lian-Li case - inside the case however there's barely even any dust let alone that funky, brown, tar-laden smokers dust.

In the last 10 years or so most of the hardware failures I've had could be tracked to something else - StarForce copy protection killing a DVD drive, power-cut during a BIOS flash on the mobo (very bad - before I invested in UPS), manufacturer fault on a Seagate Barracuda (yes, from _that_ batch), faulty power-supply... and so on.

... hmmm actually - if it was an Apple rather than a self-build I _might_ not have had most of the faults I have had... maybe.

corpus-deus@softhome.net

I propose an online open database containing data on all members of the law enforcement community, their places of work and residence, information on their salaries, spouses and children - if they've got nothing to hide they've got nothing to fear, surely?

Numbers game

According to a quick search...

646 MPs,

2,875 MP's staff,

1,741Commons staff,

741 Peers,

450 Lords

150,000 Police officers (approximately)

We outnumber them by about 385 to 1 - the only conclusion I can draw from this is that people enjoy being shafted by the powers that be - there's no way they could force any issue without our implied consent.

Despite the government complaining about "political apathy" - secretly they must be very relieved - civil wars ensue when people get really angry about politics.

so much meh

> Just a shame we haven't all adopted the 'precautionary principle'

Whereas I've adopted a "do not care" principle. Even if we nerf the climate to the point where humans become extinct - plenty of other organisms will thrive - life goes on - well, potentially for the next 3 billion years or so anyway before this particular rock burns. We can't save the planet, the best we can hope for is to keep it ticking over long enough for the human species to evolve into something that doesn't need it.

curious

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It's a browser people, it doesn't need to look good, just needs to render quickly and properly.

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A similar thing could be said for almost every application and OS for that matter - it doesn't need to look good it just needs to work quickly and properly... hell, I still use command line prompts and .bat files on XP.

Ms Bee

... and yet curiously, with the football reference there, there's nothing wrong in the heterosexual male mind with leaping into another man's arms and giving him a big sloppy kiss when he manages to kick a ball into a net?

not entirely true...

MYSQL doesnt strictly fit under the definition of an RDBMS because it lacks features such as referential constraints...

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Depends which engine you're running it under - true, MyISAM is NOT relational but InnoDB (which was already owned by Oracle) IS - pretty much.

corvids

Yes they're carrion eaters but they're also some of the brightest birds going.

Whether the birds in the observation were having an empathic response to a "fallen comrade" or just making sure "Old Bob's really dead" or even what he tastes like... we may never know.

Bad science would be to draw some kind of conclusion that the birds were holding funeral rites ... surely before you could even begin to make that claim you'd need to study families of magpies over a prolonged period of time to see if they exhibited any other behaviour that could be attributed to a form of empathy - particularly with other members of their species.

If they display no other empathic responses it's highly unlikely that giving poor ol' dead Bob a bit of a poke had anything to do with loss or mourning... perhaps to do with curiosity - which Magpies are renowned for.

uh huh

Just like Oracle killed off InnoDB ... oh, wait...

Even if Oracle DID "kill off" MySQL - there are branches such as MariaDB or you could just say "stuff it" and use PostGRES. I'm not really sure how MySQL got to be the almost defacto OSS DB server anyway - PostGRES has always been a bit better but it doesn't have a cute dolphin I guess.

@AC - Oh Dear...

I think I'll get that first paragraph printed on a T-Shirt :D

server side script

The script is server-side; it's PHP which means it'll happily reside on *nix servers... and in all probability it's (cheap) *nix hosts that have been targeted. That does not mean it will affect *nix clients however - it simply uses PHP to glean some information about the user's system, looking for known vulnerabilities - as the story states - initially in Adobe software and then MS vulns.

Unless you're doing something seriously daft, you should be safe under *nix (depending on payload). Under windows, noscript _may_ prevent the attack if it happens to be blocking Flash at the time of viewing a compromised site. If. however, it's a site that you've already white-listed, all bets are off... and that's assuming you've got Windows itself patched up to date.

My money is on an FTP breach - there have been a few in recent months, primarily targeting the cheap *nix hosting market - it seems to be something in the way the hosting companies have their systems set-up (open or anonymous FTP access - no IP address restrictions) - using keyloggers was the first "explanation" uttered (e.g. it's not our fault, it's yours for not securing your PC) but it could be packet sniffing or brute force... whatever.

This recent spate of cracks have normally resulted in .htaccess uploads (full of Mod Rewrite redirects) - it was only a matter of time before someone combined something genuinely dangerous with these breaches.

@sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD

Umm - it's Australia, therefore 6 month's out of synch with Scotland - so it IS Beltane (not Samhain) since they'll be moving into Summer.

don't try this at home

Soooooooo...... if you were to rent a movie from say, Lovefilm and clone it a few times, post it to some mates, then the Royal Mail would be liable for your copyright infringement (or at least inducing it) ?

meh

Just means they've not updated that particular error message in the last 5 years - no-one had seen it before since they'd not screwed up whatever it was they they screwed up to trigger it in the first place.

Considering...

... this probably relies on a wodge of JavaScript to do all fading to create that "minimalist look" isn't it, purely from the point of view of code and script processing overheads, bloat?

It's bound to be bigger than the ol' static HTML page isn't it.

hmmm

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If the card number does need to be held long-term (future repeat charges), then that's a whole different business, not the usual one-off web shopping visit.

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Actually - even then the merchant shouldn't hold the full number - merely the last 4 digits. Most payment processors have a system whereby you can enable repeat processing on that.

Timeframe?

I mean if 100 people netted a mere $1.5m over a year then they'd probably have been better of with legit jobs? If you're gonna do the time you may as well make sure that the crime is worth it in the first place.

every... single... time....

A "browser wars" article comes up there is always at least one comment to the effect of:

""Market Share" of free web browsers? Who really cares? Why do Microsoft care? It's a free product after all... and as far as I can remember always has been."

Given enough dominance in the market the maker of any given browser can ignore any agreed standards and make their browser incompatible with any other. Web monkeys will have to code for that browser (potentially) at the expense of all others because it's the dominant browser... and this has been happening for years with IE dominance.

Taken to the final conclusion - control enough market share and you ARE the defacto standard - and you can change that standard whenever you like - in essence you control the entire global GUI that is the web.

If IE had almost total market dominance, MS could quite easily kill off support for Flash and push Silverlight on everyone, even build it into the browser as a "standard" - they could have IIS push out a custom HTTP header (yes, they've done it before) without which IE would refuse to display the page properly - and the web monkeys would have to comply because that's what everyone uses. Since, in this admittedly extreme scenario, there's no alternative to IE - MS can effectively control every aspect of the www from servers to plug-ins and development software and even, to a certain extent, operating systems (by not porting IE from Windows) - THAT'S the financial incentive.

@James Butler

Substitute ICANN for Government in general and you're arguing that a dictatorship is better than democracy? Personally I'd be tempted to agree with that if I was the dictator in question of course - at least dictators get things done (granted, normally not the things you'd WANT done but ... )

Pussy

Maybe they're just Rammstein fans and have been watching the new "pussy" video?

meh

No problems when they were ProTX... several since Sage bought them out - and not least in customer service (if you're lucky an email to support might get answered within the week now).

Sage seems to have a similar acquisition process to that of someone buying a "real doll" - buy it then f*ck it.

yuh

"We are not exactly sure what he was thinking at the time."

... "but we do know exactly which head it was that he was using".

Hmmmm

I wonder if it's possible to get kicked out of the EU for being a danger to yourself and those around you?

Frankly

In the face of countries like the US and China and not to mention the collective fail that is our current political state - I'd gladly dissolve the whole lot and become a subject nation of a United Europe.

Icanhaztreatment?

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For example, a typical monday involves waking up at 7:00AM, breakfast, exercise, chores, a "discovery quest," a follow-through session, lunch at noon, a "life quest," vocational skills, evening chores, dinner, a "reflection group," a "mindfulness" session, personal time, and lights out at 10:30PM.

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Shit - so even if you get OUT of WoW you STILL have to level grind to break the addiction - do you get let out of the "clinic" when you reach level 70? Or does that just give you access to bigger, scarier clinics?

co-incidence

I've just started reading Neuromancer again (for the umpteenth time) - and that strapline made me smile :) Thanky.

who cares

1: It's trivial to opt out and the opt-out uses the (presumably MAC) address of your modem as an identifier - you opt out the modem your whole home network is opted out; a much better opt out than cookies... read the blurb on the VM website.

2: VMs DNS servers have been shit for a while - I deliberately opted for OpenDNS, which does exactly the same ad displaying, for the improved responsiveness.

3: AFAIK, as far as Virgin are concerned, this only affects Virgin Media NOT their NTL business arm. VM is a service for home users, bit of YouTube, bit of WoW, email and eBay - and so long as VM are only hijacking 404s rather than say 502s I can't see this having a massive negative effect on home internet usage.

Why not just give up and moan in your beer...

Brixton

Handsworth

Chapeltown

Toxteth

Orgreave

Oldham

Harehills

Bradford

Give it another year or two and you'll probably be able to add a few more names to the list.

*sigh*

crap - just when it looked like the PPUK was having some reasonably sensible ideas (proportional representation, scrapping ID cards and the underlying database and patent reform to prevent "trolling") - some semi-literate school leaver comes along and says "yay I R Votin 4 PPUK ... wen iz old nuff" and all of the anti-PPUK rhetoric seems horribly justified.

yarr

Re:My encrypted data self-destructs... #

By Mark 65 Posted Wednesday 12th August 2009 10:34 GMT

and after all that shit you're not keeping anything illegal in it? WTF is the point in that?

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It only BECOMES illegal when used for blackmail purposes?

@ Effort ? By Rasczak

Amen to that

Hmmm....

Plague. See if it survives the radiation outside of the Earth's magnetosphere or if it mutates into a new, more resistant strain that can survive re-entry.

Would you be able to recover the payload or will the whole shebang be destroyed returning to Earth?

weirdly enough...

They WERE playing 'Don't Fear the Reaper' on the radio on my drive into work yesterday...

Hmmm actually, we've got similar weather conditions to those experienced (in Britain) in 1348 apparently, a very wet summer in a period of rapid climate change and now a similar disease (ok, the same disease - bubonic and pneumonic plagues were involved in "the great mortality" from what I've read) originating from a similar sort of region - well, it started in the east and moved westwards.

WE'RE ALL DOOMED!!!!!11!!!1!!1!

Can I has grant nao plz?

Punish the child...

... because the number of actual paedos at large in society doesn't match up the the figures the government requires to maintain it's policy of fear so they need another way to maintain the relevant terror levels and keep the position of paedo-hunter general open.

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There, fixed that for you.

As for children's camps - I think it's a much better idea to have NO adults in them at all; without adult influence all children are, of course, darling little angels, so it would be fine.

simples

just take all children away from their parents at birth and lock them aware in a secure facility where there are no adults until such time as they turn 18 - sorted.