* Posts by Steven Roper

1832 publicly visible posts • joined 10 May 2011

Amazon Free Apps start to rile developers

Steven Roper
Facepalm

Yes, the Steve Jobs way

which is to patent-troll every form of technology you can get away with and then stifle innovation and competition by suing the arse off anybody who dares to make any product that is even remotely similar to the ones you sell. Which is more likely to ultimately fail than Android's method, I think.

State-sponsored 5-year global cyberattack uncovered

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Yes, I was going to say

that the word "China" in that article was conspicuous by its absence.

Google waggles free* Android phones at Americans

Steven Roper

As always

there's an xkcd cartoon dealing with things that are supposedly "free":

http://xkcd.com/870/

London plods raid Wikipedia in counter-anarchist operation

Steven Roper

Living through the 70s?

I WAS alive in the 70s and I can tell you first-hand that people then were *nothing* like they are now. Aside from having dreadful sense of fashion, the biggest difference was that political correctness didn't exist, and people were a lot more laid back about things as a result.

You didn't have to worry about "offending" someone with every little thing you say, racist and sexist jokes were considered funny, you were allowed to smoke on planes, trains and buses (in smoking compartments), CCTV cameras only existed in banks and police stations, the local plods were more apt to let you off with a warning if you were caught speeding or not wearing a seatbelt, and if your kid grazed his knee on playground equipment you stuck a band-aid on it snd sent him back out to play instead of suing the arse off the council, the equipment manufacturer and everyone else your lawyer could think of.

As a result, the world was in many ways a much better place. The only improvement has been in technology, while the majority of people seem to have turned into easily-offended, litigious PC arsewipes.

Cops arrest man over phone-hacking, police corruption claims

Steven Roper

71 is not too old to be working

One of our customers owns and runs an import/export business in Melbourne. He's 76 this year and still got plenty of go in him yet. He maintains that the day he stops working is the day he drops dead. And if, for him, the alternative is a retirement home aka "God's waiting room", then good bloody luck to him.

With most people these days living into their 90s, and the Australian government if not others on track to raise the retirement age to 67 and then to 70 within the next 25 years, it's no longer unusual to see people working past their allotted threescore and ten.

Doom dude says violent games lower aggression

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

I concur with John Carmack

After having to keep my cool dealing with a difficult customer, I find the best way to blow off my frustration and get back on par is to spend fifteen minutes to half an hour on Postal 2, running around in the game world blowing heads off with the shotgun. It's a real calm-down, and I'm ready to return to work refreshed and able to deal with people without wanting to scream at them. I encourage the staff at work as well to take a bit of downtime on a game of their choice if they're feeling pent-up and frustrated, because the downtime is more than made up for by increased productivity and improved staff morale.

Acer turns to trains for imports

Steven Roper
WTF?

Chongqing to Berlin in 18 - 20 days!?!

Australia's Indian Pacific traverses a comparable distance in 3, across some of the most hostile terrain on the planet. That must be some really shitty railway infrastructure forcing trains to crawl at 5 miles an hour most of the way if it takes that long to get there!

Schmaltz-powered Chrome overtakes morally superior Firefox

Steven Roper

I wonder how long you'll keep your job

once your boss finds out that the browser you just rolled out at work is dutifully reporting everything the employees do is being reported back to Google.

Steven Roper
FAIL

"Users have to check a box or similar to install it."

No they don't. That's why I've banned it at my workplace as malware (see my earlier post.) Chrome is, in every instance I've seen, an OPT-OUT install. That means the checkbox you mention is already TICKED by default and if the user isn't paying close attention, it'll install itself *and* make itself the default browser unless you UNTICK the boxes to tell it not to.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been called out to people's houses because they installed a program without carefully checking what they were doing and this piece of shit hijacked their system.

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

@Frostbite

Absolutely agree with you there.

I've gotten so sick of removing Chrome from peoples' computers because it opt-out installs itself with every fucking freeware program out there, that I now classify it as malware and have added it to my company's blocked applications list. It's right down there with the fucking Zango toolbar and the old Gator and other spyware/malware crud that snuck its way on by using opt-out installation. I also warn everyone I come in contact with in the field that Chrome is malware as well.

To those who say otherwise - Google Chrome is indeed malware. It reports your usage history to Google (I know they say it doesn't, but anyone who believes them is kidding themselves - this IS Google we're talking about here) which is spyware. And that's what I warn people of when I remove it from their computers after they've called me saying their computer's been hijacked by it.

The more people that do this, the more likely it is that Chrome will eventually be listed as malware by the antivirus companies, which will send a strong message to Google that this underhanded behaviour is NOT acceptable. Don't be evil? Don't make me fucking laugh.

It's official: IE users are dumb as a bag of hammers

Steven Roper
Stop

The WAIS test is a steaming pile of crap

From personal experience - I've had to take that test 5 times over the last 15 years, administered by 5 different psychologists (I don't count the times I've taken it online voluntarily) and gotten 5 different results. My highest score was 132; my lowest, 98. That's a huge variance for something that a lot of authorities set great store by as a judgement of someone's abilities.

IQ tests are inherently flawed, because they attempt to put a single quantitative value to something that by its very nature is qualitative. Intelligence isn't simply the ability to match patterns, do sums or retain read information, it consists of many indefinable qualities that enable each of us to perceive, interpret and respond to the world around us in our own way. It varies as well over time, with conditions such as general well-being, state of mind, stress factors, and illness. Taking the test when you have a shitty head cold and have just lost your job is going to produce a much lower result than when you're fighting fit and just landed a $50k contract.

So I tend to regard IQ tests, the WAIS test included, as so much bullshit. Anyone who sets store by peoples' IQ results is doing those people a great injustice.

Truck nuts swing onto US freedom of speech agenda

Steven Roper
Thumb Down

@peyton?

And I'm just as much against the kind of stuck-up elitist snobbery that people like you espouse. Let me tell you something. I've been friends with t-shirt-and-jeans-wearing rednecks (they call them "bogans" where I live) and I've been friends with shirt-and-tie-wearing yuppies in my time.

Guess which friends were there when I needed them? Guess which friends helped me out when I was down on my luck? Guess which friends stabbed me in the back in order to get ahead? Guess which friends borrowed money off me and then either denied they owed it to me or just made endless excuses as to not being able to pay it back "yet"?

In case you can't figure it out, the answers to questions 1 and 2 above are - bogans. And the answers to 3 and 4 are - yuppies (I don't know what else to call them, but with your attitude you strike me as being one.)

When you get to know them, and don't look down your nose at them just because they don't have a string of university degrees and a six-figure salary, "rednecks/bogans/chavs" are often hard working, no-bullshit, and trustworthy friends to have.

No doubt a lot of people here will disagree with me, probably because sites like El Reg aren't high on a bogan's reading list, but having been around and seeing your comment above, I felt compelled to put in a good word for them.

Firefox maker moves towards a browser-free world

Steven Roper

For my part

having written programs in just about every language since CBM BASIC V2, I can say that the HTML5/CSS/JS (hereafter referred to as simply HCJ) platform is by far the best I've ever worked on, for one simple reason: the separation of presentation and computation.

With HCJ, your interface layout markup is in the HTML component, your layout styling is in the CSS, and your gruntwork is also separated into JS on the client and PHP/Perl/Python (P*) on the server. This allows you to focus much more on the specific aspect of development to platform component you're currently working in, e.g. with HTML you focus on layout, CSS you focus on styling, with your functions in JS/P*. It makes it so much easier to organise projects and keep your dev team focused on their assigned jobs. Also, because each component is designed solely with its specific task in mind, it's much easier to build, for example, an interface with HTML/CSS than with all the component positioning and other crap in say, C++.

I think that this conglomeration of HCJ has come not before time. Now that I'm using it on a regular basis I'm amazed that we didn't come out with the idea of presentation/computation separation much earlier in the history of computer programming.

LOHAN spaceplane project starting to shape up nicely

Steven Roper

Folding wings = not good

Moving parts have serious problems functioning in near-vacuum and at low temperatures. Ordinary lubricants freeze, joints contract in the cold, and so these wings are likely to cold-weld or seize up very quickly. NASA uses^Hd very expensive lubricants and specially engineered joints and hinges on movable items like the space shuttle doors, which you may or may not have trouble sourcing for LOHAN - even if you can, the cost is likely to blow your budget real fast.

So I'd stay away from moving parts as much as possible. Obviously you need your release mechanism, but folding wings represent an unnecessary risk of failure.

Sony brings its online bank to Aus

Steven Roper
Thumb Down

Given that Sony's MO

in the event of a breach is to shut their entire service down for weeks on end while denying anything happened, I somehow don't think I'll be trusting them with my money.

Canon crossbreeds mouse with adder

Steven Roper
Headmaster

@ Jonathan Richards

That is as it may be, but theregister.co.UK is an English language news site, based in England, for English speaking people, therefore it is reasonable to expect that those who use it have a good command of the English language.

Steven Roper

I rest my hand on the mouse

and have been for the last 23 years with no ill effects. The mouse carries most of the weight of my hand, and I move east-west by rotating my wrist, while moving north-south by flexing my thumb and fingers against the mouse. How one holds a mouse is a matter of personal choice, The Indomitable Gall, so I must disagree with your proposal to make all mice to force people to use them in what you consider to be the correct way.

Obviously that means that this calculator mouse wouldn't be much good to me personally, since my palm would be pressing buttons all over the shop every time I moved it, but it's a good idea nonetheless.

Lost 1967 spacecraft found crashed on the Moon

Steven Roper
Boffin

Heat death isn't the only possible end

I personally favour the "Big Rip" theory over the Big Freeze. As universal expansion accelerates over time, the Hubble radius (the distance at which the expansion reaches the speed of light) gets correspondingly smaller. Follow that to its logical conclusion - eventually all other galaxies are receding from us at light speed and thus no longer exist in our frame of reference, then other stars, then planets. In the last fraction of a second your feet are accelerating away from your head at light speed, shredding you into your component subatomic particles, which are themselves subsequently ripped apart, until the Hubble radius equals the Planck length, at which point nothing resembling a universe can exist. This final spaghettification is expected to come about 22 billion years from now, according to the authors of the theory.

I rather hope it all ends this way. At least it's nice, quick, clean and final, unlike the slow multi-billion-billon year running down of entropy, with the last surviving civilisations cadging the last few ergs of heat from fading white dwarfs. And what an experience it would be to watch, in the last few hours as the planets, then the sun, then the moon, then other countries, and finally your friends in the pub around you disappear at near light speed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_big_rip

Grassroots Brit project plans .app top-level domain bid

Steven Roper
Stop

All those saying TLDs such as .exe, .gif, .jpg, .msi etc would cause problems

You people obviously don't understand how the domain name system works. A TLD never points to a file, by definition it's a directory. If you could fool a computer into executing something with a TLD like http://malware.exe, don't you think it would already have happened with http://malware.com? Think about it - what do .com files do on a computer? Remember those? Does COMMAND.COM ring any bells?

Escalation of execution privileges as a result of TLD spoofing is a non-concern. I'm not saying this free-for-all on TLDs is a good thing, but the "somebody could register ".exe" and confuse your computer" argument doesn't hold any water, because it would have already been done with .com if it could be done - and as a security issue would thus have already been addressed.

Russia: 'We'll dump the ISS into the sea after 2020'

Steven Roper

In 500 years' time

human civilisation will be deep into the final dark age that is now well on its way thanks to the resurgence of religion. By then, the entire West as well as the Middle East will be under sharia law, China will be an Orwellian oligarchy frozen in its development by the need to preserve its status quo, and the remaining christians will be packed into Latin America and on their way back to hunter-gatherer. So there's really no need to preserve the ISS as a museum, since by the time you're talking about, nobody will be able to visit it or even know what it was.

For Australian small biz, NBN retail prices look fabulous

Steven Roper
Stop

@ Mike29 and Grumpy Old Fart

Mike 29 says "The NBN does not close the market, if someone wants to build a competing technology there is nothing to stop them doing so"

Grumpy Old Fart says "If NBN is more expensive than your current copper-based service, and you don't need the speed, don't sign up for it (but let them install the fibre to your home so you don't get penalised when selling your place because the next owners will need to install the fibre)."

There's one thing you're forgetting there guys. It is a condition of the NBN rollout that once it's in place the old copper infrastructure gets retired. What that means is that those who don't sign up to the NBN now will be forced onto it whether they like it or not, because the old ADSL services will no longer be available. Internet prices are already outrageous in this country compared to the rest of the world, when the expensive NBN is the only option I think we'll see more internet cafe usage and less connections to already struggling households. You know, like in China. The way this country's been headed ever since John Howard came to power.

'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

Steven Roper
Facepalm

I can hang disparaging labels on people too

If I'm a AGW "denier", then those who say so must be AGW "believers", right? Maybe we just exist to test your faith.

Oz lawmakers mull Facebook parental snoop rules

Steven Roper

Alternatively

you could just not use Facebook and keep in touch with your friends using the good old methodologies of phone, email, and face-to-face contact. :)

Blighty's top cop quits over phone-hacking scandal

Steven Roper
Pint

Well

given the content of your posts on other articles relating to this topic I rather think people might be downvoting your posts by reflex action when they see your name next to them...

Google: The one trick pony learns a second trick

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

You mean

Who controls the spice, controls the universe. ;)

CERN 'gags' physicists in cosmic ray climate experiment

Steven Roper
Alien

Having read

that educate-yourself website (thankfully I can speed-read so I didn't have to waste too much of my life), there are a few things I'd like to add:

1) That site is THE archetypal epitome of "tinfoil-hat-wearing-nutjob". Seriously. Actually, not seriously, go and read it for some real belly laughs.

2) It states that one of the first goals of the "antichrist" and the NWO is to eliminate Christian and Islamic belief systems. All I can say to that is, if only the NWO *was* real and they really did have anti-religion mechanisms to wipe out or deprogram all the religious nutjobs - speed the fucking day!

3) The site goes on and on about mind-control rays and telepathic devices (where's your tinfoil hats guys?) being from technology that existed back in the 70s and 80s, that has now been refined to such a level that it's available to the mind-controlling NWO shits right now. OK then - if the technology exists now, and has for a while, why all the need for "preparation?"

Why haven't the Evil Illuminati Overlords(tm) just switched the fucking thing on and zombified the entire planet already, no muss, no fuss? Could that be because (shocker!) it DOESN'T ACTUALLY EXIST?!?

Thanks for pointing me to that Blue Beam stuff. I haven't had a good belly laugh for quite some time. For those who have some time to waste and want to have a good giggle, you can find it here:

http://educate-yourself.org/cn/projectbluebeam25jul05.shtml

Bug-Byte Manic Miner

Steven Roper
Boffin

Re: Rainbow Processing

Did the Speccy have a raster-compare register? I know what you described could be done on the Commodore 64 - I coded many a scrolly demo with "rasterbars" using the HBLANK colour-poke technique, in my time! But doing so requires a raster compare (on the c64 it was wait on $D014/$D016 change and STA #colour into $D020/$D021 IIRC, been too many years so I might have it wrong.) I didn't think this was possible on the Speccy, can anyone from that era enlighten me please?

AMD says Xbox 720 graphics to be good as Avatar

Steven Roper

I'll raise you another

I'm waiting for the day you can stand on top of a video game mountain and gaze out to the horizon over 100+ km of tree-covered 3D terrain, instead of the terrain fogging out to the skybox at 300 metres view distance like all the games of today do.

(I know flight simulators render to 100+ km distances, but try getting out of the plane and walking into a pub in one of those!)

Hacked Sun site greatly exaggerates Murdoch's death

Steven Roper
Joke

Normally I'd agree with you

but The Sun doesn't qualify as "media and communication." ;)

Microsoft turns screws on bot herders with hefty reward

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Saddle up

lock and load...

Samsung Chromebook: The $499 Google thought experiment

Steven Roper
Unhappy

Re: gah?

Would you criticise Ducati and every other vehicle manufacturer out there if they all started pushing bikes and did everything they could to part you from your car? What if Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi and GM all stopped making cars and only made motorbikes, so that in the end you have two choices: motorbike or Adam's cart?

Because this is what Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and every other computer manufacturer out there are doing with this "cloud" bullshit. They all have a vested interest in getting control of your apps and data, which is what this "cloud" shit is really about. It's about the ruling class getting back the control the advent of the internet has taken from them and put in the hands of the common man.

The future they envisage is one where you have to pay to access your own files, and pay again every time you want to read, add to or edit them. Pay-per-use applications - $1 for each document you type in CloudWord, $5 for every image you edit in CloudPhotoshop. Or if you edit a lot of documents you can now do so for the low, low price of $29.95 per month which lets you edit up to 500 different documents as many times as you like! Want to relive those old memories and view your photos? Only 20c per view per pic! Want to share a file with a friend? Only 50c per file per friend! Etcetera, etcetera. That's where this "cloud" business is going.

Alternatively, they'll offer a "free" cloud service but the catch is you allow them to scan your files so they can build profiles on you. Profiles that can be used to exploit your weaknesses to push psychologically manipulative advertising and sell you shit you don't need. Profiles that can be used by unscrupulous and corrupt governments to steal your business ideas, or to set you up to save one of their own arses. The possibilities are endless, once these bastards have your data in their hands.

If you doubt what I'm saying, consider this: What's wrong with selling an application that lets you access your own files, from your own computer at home, securely over the internet? Mobile VPN? That gives you all the benefits of the cloud, like remote access, while keeping the advantages of controlling your own files, like privacy and control of your data. Such applications do exist, but you don't see them being endlessly plugged, or made easy for the average user, by the likes of Google and Microsoft and Apple. Why? Because they want you to store your files on THEIR systems, not on your own. So they can get control of your data. That's the ONLY valid reason for pushing their "cloud" so much. Control, control, control. That's what it's always been about.

So these fuckers will hold your data to ransom the day they manage to force everyone onto the cloud. If we have even the slightest modicum of a desire for freedom and control of our own information, we will repudiate this "cloud" shit with all the contempt it deserves. They can't sell it if nobody will buy it.

Many sites cookie-track users regardless of opt-outs

Steven Roper

Quite often

the only content of a cookie is a session id or other identifying marker, which is simply used to tag a record in a database. My own sites use a randomly-generated 20-character alphanumeric string as a session id. Changing any character of this string simply means that your new session id is not found in my database in which case my site simply generates you a new one (and kicks you off any sensitive page that requires you to be logged in to see it.) It also logs the false ID string as a hack attempt; do it too many times and my sites will IP-block you for 24 hours.

Oz DNA tester’s privacy shocker

Steven Roper
WTF?

Two things in that article stood out to me

The first thing was: "Medvet’s managing director is reportedly seeking information from the company’s software supplier, rather than staging a public hanging of whoever set up robots.txt on its Website."

The person who set up the robots.txt file is in no way responsible. If your idea of security is relying on search engines to obey robots.txt I sure as hell don't want you working for me. Web design security 101 says that all sensitive information is to be held on a database and inserted into a web page only after suitable authentication of access privileges. Robots.txt is a guide for search engines, not an access blocker.

The second thing that jumped out at me was: "That's my address, but I didn't order a paternity test / drug test - who did and why?"

Can you spell "lawsuit?" Paternity testing is a particularly dangerous thing to associate with random addresses! You see, there's this problem: the vast majority of women will undergo thermonuclear fusion the moment their chosen man even dares to question the paternity of her unborn child. That the woman has biological assurance that the baby's hers while denying to the man any such assurance beyond her word is one of the great double standards of the feminist era.

On a biological level, a woman who falsely claims another man's baby as her husband's does the same thing, from a genetic point of view, as a man who rapes her. That is, by choosing her partner, a woman exercises her right to mate choice - whose genes to pass on to her offspring. A man who rapes her takes away that choice. By choosing his partner, a man exercises his right to mate choice - whose genes to pass on to his offspring. A woman who gets pregnant to another man and lies to her SO takes away that choice. So rape and paternity-deception are effectively the SAME THING. However, the punishment meted out is not the same - hence the double standard.

So now, to get around this discrepancy, companies like Medvet provide a "discreet paternity service". Such a test is often called a "peace-of-mind" test because it's not admissible in court (although it does give grounds for a court-approved test later on). The idea is that a man orders the test, uses the supplied swabs to take saliva samples from himself and the baby, sends them in, and gets a confidential reply saying yea or nay. Secrecy is of the utmost importance lest the woman get wind of the test and explode. There's no way any sane man would dare to question paternity openly to his wife/girlfriend, because the result is all too predictable. He just has to "trust her". Yeah, right.

So if this Medvet has leaked addresses (and wrong ones at that) there is a very real risk that a woman living at such an address might think that her husband has ordered a confidential paternity test (even if he hasn't; the site just mentions the address) and it could destroy their relationship. And I can see some pretty serious lawsuits arising out of that one.

Incidentally, a nice piece of poetic justice concerning a woman who tried to pass off another man's baby as her boyfriend's can be found at: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sea/274495936.html

Rebekah Brooks quits - Murdoch accepts this time

Steven Roper
Thumb Down

Re: Has anyone else spotted

Whenever I see words like "stereotype" in a post I can safely assume the poster has resorted to the crude use of PC psychobabble as a substitute for actually *thinking*.

Steven Roper

I'm trying to figure out

how "Baked Beans" anagrams to "James Murdoch" but I'm not having much luck.

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

She still might have

To quote from the site you linked:

"Many factors can impact the interpretation from any single person's writing. The content, knowledge of the material, age of the author, nationality, experience, occupation, and education level can all impact writing styles. For example, a woman who has spent 20 years working in a male-dominated field may write like her co-workers. Similarly, professional female writers (and experienced hobbyists) frequently use male writing styles. Gender Guesser does not take any of these factors into account. "

So with that in mind, and considering the Ms Brooks has been a newpaper editor for a long time, it's certainly conceivable that with the adaptation of her writing style to that of her colleagues she still could have written that speech.

Furthermore, just out of interest, I posted a couple of pieces I've written into that Gender Guesser. One was a fictional interview with a female character from one of my short stories. It was written entirely by myself, of course, but when I pasted the female character's responses into the Gender Guesser, it identified the writer as female for both informal and formal writing modes. The other was a post I made here the other day concerning a proof for atheism. The Gender Guesser correctly identified the writer as male for both modes that time.

Which tells me two things: 1) a man who can write like a woman can fool it, and presumably vice versa; and 2) I can convincingly write like a woman. That may yet come in useful at some point, now that I know I can do it!

California Mrs cuffed in drugged-hubby todger slash case

Steven Roper
Mushroom

@Elmer Phud

Are you seriously suggesting that possible infidelity is a valid reason for castrating a man? How about a man cutting a woman's tits off for the same thing - do you feel the same way about that? Or are you just such a pathetic fucking mangina that you think all men are scum and all women are innocent victims like the feminists whose boots you lick?

Official: Pastafarian strainer titfer is religious headgear

Steven Roper
Boffin

To contribute my 2c worth

Interestingly, I was just thinking about atheism and came up with this interesting idea, which I've posted on my blog, and thought for the atheists on this forum I would repost it here.

My proof for atheism (that is, demonstration of the non-existence of God) is by argument from agnosticism as follows:

We cannot know if the universe is the product of an intelligent mind or not (the agnostic hypothesis). This is because our minds, contained within our physical forms, cannot perceive beyond the limits of the universe in order to establish the existence of such an entity. The universe could, for example, be a virtual reality (a la the Matrix) or a lab experiment, or simply some super-being passing the time. Alternatively, it could simply be the result of a random combination of physical events that gave rise to what we now perceive as the universe.

So we could assume that for the existence of *any* form of creator-intelligence there is a probability of x, and for the non-existence of same there is a probability of y, where x and y are finite values between zero and one, and where x + y = 1 (there is/is not a creator-intelligence being all possible states).

So, there exists a finite and potentially measurable probability that the universe was created by *some* form of intelligence. But the moment you start *defining* the nature of said putative intelligence the odds become infinitely stacked against you. So if you say that the creator of the universe is called Yahweh and he sent his son in the form of Jesus to die for our sins, you've just defined one member of an infinite set of possible creator-intelligences that *could* exist. What if you're off by one letter and god's real name is Yalweh? Or Yarweh? Or... you get the idea.

Thus, regardless of the *actual* probability of *any* kind of creator-intelligence existing (be it 0.5 or 0.1 or any other finite and measurable probability), the moment you put limits on any putative creator-intelligence by defining it in any way, because there exist an infinite number of *possible* creator-intelligences, as well as an infinite number of ways the universe could have come into existence without any creator-intelligence being involved, you are by definition instantiating one of an infinite possible number of creator-intelligences (this is why so many different religions exist, and in fact there are an infinite number of possible religions, one for each possible defined creator-intelligence.) Note that Protestant, Catholic, Baptist etc churches are classed as different religions in this context, because although the gods they worship are all called Yahweh and Jesus, their *definitions* of those putative intelligences differ by biblical interpretation and denomination.

Unless you can perceive outside the universe (which we by nature cannot do) you cannot collapse this set to a defined quantum state by physical observation of the existence or non-existence of any said creator-intelligence - to "see the true face of god", as it were. The set of all possible creator-intelligences remains infinite unless we can thus perceive beyond the limits of the universe.

Consequently, the probability of existence of any *defined* creator-intelligence, being a finite member of an infinite set, must mathematically be zero, since any finite number divided by infinity is zero.

Therefore, the gods defined in the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, the Talmud, or any other holy text that ever has been or ever will be written, do not exist. QED.

Sth Korea govt cracks down on blogger blaggers

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Good

This should happen everywhere, not just South Korea. If bloggers want the rights and privileges accorded to the press, they can also accept the responsibilities and obligations as well.

Google muzzles political dissidents with YouTube ID tweaks

Steven Roper

I've noticed

that Vimeo seems to be popping up in a lot of sites with embedded videos. It appears to be the YouTube alternative of choice these days, and I can see it becoming as big if not bigger as more people realise that YouTube is no longer what it was.

Remember before Google, Yahoo was the king of search. They got replaced by Google because the latter gave people what they wanted - a search engine that produced relevant results instead of paid ones. In the same way, the likes of Vimeo could well replace YouTube by simply giving people what they want, in this case anonymity.

Amazon's anti-iPad arises 'in October'

Steven Roper
WTF?

Ok guys

Firstly, to mlo0352 and Joe 35: As pointed out, my proof of this happening is articles published in The Register and elsewhere. I understand that while El Reg has its biases as any publication does, in general its articles are reasonably factual. And Amazon may have pledged anything to spin the damage, but it doesn't matter whether or not they WILL delete anything in future - what matters is that they CAN (and can thus be forced to by a judge acting on behalf of a rights holder.) They've set the precedent, and nothing they can spin can alter that. The ability for them to do so still exists in the Kindle.

Yes, I'm getting my knickers in a knot about this. Do any of you honestly not understand why this ability of companies to interfere with your devices is a serious problem? If I pay for something, IT IS MINE. This principle of trade has been a cornerstone of civilisation since mankind first learned to count. My ownership of something establishes in the eyes of the human race that I have the sole use of that item. That means that, for example, if I buy a bag of potatoes from you, it becomes my property and you cannot afterwards reach into my bag of potatoes and take one out, even if it is rotten.

By the same token, when I've paid for a device, what I put on it is mine and mine alone. Anyone who doesn't understand this simple concept and therefore isn't up in arms about this emerging trend of companies reaching into our devices is deluded, plain and simple. If you follow this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion you will end by not owning anything, not even the clothes on your back, if the companies "selling" them decide they no longer want you to have them - for "liability" or any other reason. Is this really where you want the world to go?

Steven Roper
Thumb Down

Oh joy

An Android tablet made by Amazon? Given Google's track record with Android and Amazon's with the Kindle would I be right in assuming that with this new table there will be not one but two companies able to reach in and delete stuff they don't like from it?

No thanks. After the Kindle 1984 fiasco I'm never buying a Kindle or any other mobile computing device from Amazon. Piling that on top of Google's ability to delete apps they don't like from Android machines just adds insult to injury.

Computers in the future will all have the ability for every fucking corporation on the planet to reach in and mess with your apps and data, it seems.

Anonymous spaffs Monsanto employees' details

Steven Roper

@Titus Technophobe

"Not everybody even thinks that Mansanto is unethical by the way, how about the scientists who think what they are doing is a good thing?"

I have a saying that deals with that issue quite well:

"The vilest evil is that which is convinced of its own virtue."

MS to WinXP diehards: Just under 3 more years' support

Steven Roper
Pint

Tempus fugit

Hate to give you a rude awakening, David, but 20 years ago was *1991*, not 1981. That was *30* years ago, my friend. Apple II and green screens were commonplace in 1981, but by 1991 green screens had all but disappeared (even ATMs had colour screens by then) and the Apple II had long been a dinosaur in the face of the Mac, Amiga and third-gen Windows PCs.

I know, it seems like it was 1981 only yesterday to me as well (I was just finishing high school), and I have to keep reminding myself that I'm now a lot closer to Marty McFly's encounter with flying cars and hoverboards, than I am to McFly finding out Doc Brown just built a time machine while listening to Hewie Lewis and The News.

Yes, we're now living in the time that sci-fi movies used to be about when I was a kid. The years, they do go by... ;)

'Being cyber-stalked is as bad as being raped, or in a war'

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

As an ex-soldier, you probably knew PTSD

as the syndrome called "shell shock." It's the same thing.

Sunday Times accused of blagging Gordon Brown's records

Steven Roper

Agreed

I'm heartened to know that as he approaches the end of his life, that Murdoch will now see before he dies, that history will remember him the way it remembers Randolph Hearst - an evil, manipulative megalomaniac whose grave will be collectively pissed on and whose death will make the world a nicer place.

Just hurry up and die, Murdoch. The world can't be rid of vile filth like you soon enough.

Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

@Mark 65

Gillard is more like the Antipodean Brown. Howard was the Antipodean Bliar. ;)

New Yorkers battle giant blindness-causing plants

Steven Roper

Don't bother watching either of the movies

as they're made by Hollywood, which means the only thing they have in common with the book is the title and having walking man-eating plants.

Instead, take the time to hunt down the 1981 English-produced 6-part miniseries. It is absolutely true to the book, right down to the dialogue; you can practically sit there with the book in your lap following along. It's the only instance I've ever seen where a screen conversion follows the book exactly without adding or taking away anything. Hollywood would do well to take a leaf out of this book considering their track record of butchering books.

Facebook snuffs Chrome extension for uncaging 'friends' data

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

He not only said that with a straight face

he actually believes it too.

HAHAHAHAhahahahaha...mmmffffff...waHAHAHAhahahahahaha!

Cisco drives epic Chinese surveillance network, says report

Steven Roper
Devil

Law? What law?

The only law I'm aware of is the one that forbids any interference with the ability of multinational corporations to make money.