Posts by Pen-y-gors

On the bright side

Putin doesn't need to write a new statement denying it. He can just recycle the Drumpf ones.

Who on earth?

Whatever the arguments over 'censorship', surely the fundamental question is who on earth would knowingly and publicly make money by running adverts for child prostitutes? How do these people look in a mirror in the morning? Do they tell their mothers what they do for a living?

'Lost forever'?

The drive may be lost forever but I suspect the data may well re-surface in various less-than-salubrious parts of the Web.

It should be considered...

So the cop accepts it can't work but still thinks it should be considered. Hmmm....

I've got an even better idea. As any fule kno, 16-year-olds, hackers or not, are unable to get up before mid-day. So we just change their watches (okay, clock on their phones) so they always show 8am and they'll never wake up. Or even better, stop the sun in the sky just after sunrise.

Actually it would be fun to have a working jammer - kids all over the place sitting in Starbucks, sipping a latte and reading a book - and causing some very angry customers.

The times they are a' changin'

Back in the day, when someone received an 'invitation' from the 'boys' in Sinn Féin (and their 'friends') they wouldn't dare say no!

Excessive sentence

He doesn't deserve jail time. He should have to go through school again, starting in Kindergarden, and not being allowed to leave until he's got the US equivalent of some A-levels. Thern he might be safe to live on his own and handle sharp things and matches.

Mistaken identity?

Are we sure it wasn't a not-very-bright GPU hacker who wanted to take down ElReg instead?

Worrying

It's worrying that this can be run via the amazon site - surely amazon can detect code that redirects the checkout? Odd that they have to axe individual accounts. Is there no pattern?

Dodgy law

I hate it when the lawyers try to twist laws to uses they weren't intended for.

I'm sure if they try they could find a way to prosecute this under the various terrorism or anti-kiddie-fiddling laws? Or even the Treason Act?

How long would it take...

for someone with a decent pair of bolt cutters to wander along the Russian border and cut Russia off from t'Interwebs? It would make the world a much nicer place.

What the public wants...

is basically bread and circuses. Ask about drones and the thought process is Drones = Bling = tech toys = Yay, fun! No thought of the implications. If you asked 'the public' if they should each be given a million quid I'm fairly sure they'd say yes, without thinking through the implications for inmflation, savings etc.

Basic problem is that 'the people' are not renowned for clear analytical thinking. There is much evidence for this <feel-free-to-ignore-if-you-voted-wrexit-or-trump>, just think of certain recent public polls in the UK and the US</feel-free-etc>

It's very depressing for someone who is at heart convinced that democracy is a good thing to discover that the opinion of 'the public' is generally not a good guide as to the most sensible thing to do.

Greatly missed

The world needs more like him.

Sheesh!

I think I'm with John Deere here, sort of. Perhaps the compromise is to say that anyone can read and tinker with software but it's a serious offence for modified software to be used in public.

The thought of a combine harvester racing down the High Street at 80mph because some 'smart' teenager decided to modify the software and confused metres and miles doesn't bear thinking about

30% takeup?

Sounds plausible. I can think of several 'domestic' use cases that can use speeds of 20+Mbps. House with several teenagers all streaming Netflix? Small business? But average houshold wathcing a bit of iPlayer and surfing amazon? No. We're getting FTTP in a few weeks, but I've still not worked out a way to justify going for more than 76Mbps nominal. The 20Mbps upload is what I'm really looking forward to - 8 hours for 1 GB at the moment (887kbps).

I know we will never need more than 640K of RAM, but what the hell will we need Gigabit connections for in the next decade or two? When we can teleport ourselves down the line, maybe, but not just yet.

And quality is important too. We upgraded to ADSL2+ a few months ago and my line was re-trained to 17.5Mbps. Nice. Except there were so many errors it was unusable. Cranked back down to 10 and it's fine.

Never mind the quality, feel the bandwidth.

Don't be cowed by terrorists

I see T May is urging us not to be cowed by terroriists. As far as I can tell, the only people cowed by terrorists are the editors of certain 'newspapers' and the government. The IPA is un-necessary, knee-jerk legislation, introduced by a weak government, too frightened of being called soft on terrorism by the editor of the Daily Heil to fight for the fundamental freedoms that the terrorists want removed.. The Government is dong their work for them.

I say fec the government and fec the terrorists.

Co-incidence?

Is it a co-incidence that the enxt article posted after this one is Non-existent sex robots already burning holes in men’s pockets? Have we been told the whole truth about Zuck's research?

The good news...

Personally every time I see the Dail Heil website (or the Sun, Excess etc) I feel I want to open a vein. Usually my own (but not always). Does that mean their websites can be blocked?

Nuclear War

Lovely board/card game. Aim is to assemble nuclear warheads and delivery systems and wipe out your opponents in a nuclear attack. Lovely game.

The sting in the tail is that when someone loses they can launch all their remaining stuff back, which tends to wipe out the attacker.

A very common result is that everyone ends up dead. Hmmm....