* Posts by handleoclast

1287 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jan 2012

Regulate, says Musk – OK, but who writes the New Robot Rules?

handleoclast

Re: Working out what AI is thinking and why

@John Riddoch

Your argument is valid. Only one minor correction: it's not just about AI. It's also true of humans. "The most powerful computing resources available" (your words) but it can be a bit of a bugger figuring out why they did what they did. Even when you ask them, they may not know.

According to one school of thought, we don't know why we do things. We do something because one part of our neural net decides to and then our consciousness comes up with a reason why we did it. This is particularly true of children: remember when you did something wrong, adults asked you why and your answer was that you didn't know? The adults refused to believe you (they must have forgotten similar events in their own childhoods), so kept pressing until you invented a reason. As you grew older, you invented reasons more or less automatically (because you had become used to having to explain your actions) and eventually adopted the delusion that those invented stories were why you did something. Neurologists have shown that the bits of the brain involved in conscious thought come into play after the bits responsible for performing actions.

So yeah, to quote you again, "transparency isn't their strong point." Or ours. Unlike AIs, we are capable of inventing explanations, but invention is all that it is. Informed speculation about our own actions, with more knowledge of internal state to go on, but it's still speculation not fact.

The best we'll be able to do with AI is keep a record of all the inputs. That will at least tell us if the AI is at fault in a given situation and then we'll have to find training that eliminates the error.

El Reg is hiring an intern. Apply now before it closes

handleoclast
Coat

Telecommuting

So how come telecommuting isn't an option?

ICO slaps cab app chaps for 10-day spam crap

handleoclast

Re: And this is why people we have spam.

@VinceH

You want more people to report spam? Easy.

Make it so that a portion of the fine (if there is one) is split amongst everyone who reported the spam. If there are too many people or the money is too low to divide it sensibly, have a draw to determine the winner (or lucky 3 or whatever).

You'd get shitloads of reports then.

Hmm, you'd probably also get a load of malicious reports too.

Massive iPhone X leak trashes Apple's 10th anniversary circus

handleoclast

Re: Animated poo is one of the last things any sane person would ever want to see!

@TRT

You started it. You posted a video. I have no choice but to retaliate with the nuclear option. Not entirely suitable for work.

Cake?

handleoclast

Re: Bristol Stool Chart

@Simon Harris

If you're impressed by the Bristol Stool Chart then you'll be overwhelmed by this (not entirely suitable for work). The Top 20 puts the BSC to shame. Especially the guy at what I hope was one of Donald Trump's golf courses.

handleoclast
Coat

Re: Apple has redrawn the poo emoji

There are many representations of poo. There are even many animated representations of poo (or representations of animated poo, if you prefer).

Here's the description of one. See if you can figure out what it is (answer at end).

Imagine a dog laying a dog egg. A rather round one. Impressed by this, the dog decides to lay a second egg on top of the first. This second egg is given a slight sculpting on top, by artistically crimping it off using the anal sphincter. The double dog-egg works wonders and starts dancing around.

Yes, it's EDF's "Zingy" mascot.

Bosch wants crowdsourced data for future connected cars

handleoclast

They've been making other things, too.

My Wielyfox Swift reports various Bosch sensors. Some of them are obviously software-derived versions of others (game rotation and rotation, for example), but there's at least 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis magnetic field hardware.

The sort of thing I'd once have expected from Ferranti (had they not shot themselves in the foot), Marconi (had they not shot themselves in the foot) or Smiths Industries. These days I'd have expected Japanese, Taiwanese, South Korean or even Chinese manufacture. Instead it comes from the German equivalent of Lucas.

They have to be damned good at it to undercut the oriental companies.

Daily Stormer binned by yet another registrar, due to business risks

handleoclast

Re: The Paradox of Tolerance summarizes my opinion:

@Geriant

You hit the nail on the head with the Chomsky quote.

Bugger Popper's paradox. Even if he's right, he's wrong. If you decide you won't tolerate intolerance then you're intolerant. Simple as that. There are other ways of fighting intolerance than becoming intolerant yourself. They may ultimately (in the very long term) be ineffective, but in that case both options lead to the same end and the only question is do you get there by keeping your principles or abandoning them.

To the argument I'll throw in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty where he argues at great length that we should never censor minority views. Go read it.

I'll also throw in Voltaire's example. He wanted his enemies to publish their opinions so that he could destroy them using their own words and arguments.

I'll toss in a cliche too: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

Implicit in the freedoms enshrined in certain jurisdictions regarding speech, religion and political views is that you have the right to be wrong. Not to do wrong but to think wrong. You can think and say what the hell you like. There may be legal consequences if what you say is defamatory or if it incites criminal acts, but otherwise your speech should be legal (no matter how fucktarded it is).

Almost orthogonal to this is the first amendment to the US constitution. That applies only to the government. The government cannot apply prior restraint to speech (they can't prevent you saying anything). The government may deal with your speech post facto if, for example, it incites violence. The courts, so far, have mostly held that the first amendment prohibits the government from prosecuting you for saying something they don't like (mostly, because books saying that marijuana does no harm have been prosecuted in the past).

Individuals and corporations, in general, are not constrained by the first amendment. You can say what you want but you can't make a company rent you a megaphone to say it. Freedom of speech is not freedom to force others to hear it or to force others to sell/lease/give you the tools you need.

Different considerations would apply if the internet in the US had "common carrier" status. As I understand it, it doesn't. So registrars and hosting companies can discriminate against certain customers.

For those who think censoring nazis is a good thing, consider the current US gov't. It comprises people who like neonazis (or at least pretend to so that they can get votes from neonazi sympathisers). It comprises people who think abortion is always bad (even for incest or when both mother and baby will die if an abortion is not performed). It comprises people who think universal health care is bad (and are defunding advertising to get people to sign up for Obamacare). It comprises people who think global warming is a hoax. Do you want to set a precedent of censoring internet speech to these people?

F-35 firmware patches to be rolled out 'like iPhone updates'

handleoclast

Re: Update Process

@Number6

"Weight on wheels" is a reasonably good signal to use for this and is already available to ensure the radar stops transmitting/frying ground personnel.

handleoclast
Coat

Incremental updates

Call me stupid and old fashioned but why on earth would you need to update a fighter jets firmware incrementally?

The whole point of fly-by-wire systems is that they allow aircraft to be designed which are aerodynamically unstable. An aerodynamically unstable aircraft, if you can control it (unaided humans can't, computers can), is more agile.

Nothing could be more appropriate for an agile aircraft than agile development and updates. Devops with a vengeance.

And, like agile/devops, fuck quality and reliability. "Minor issues" will be fixed in the next release, in 30 minutes. The fact that your aircraft crashed before the new update just means you're no longer around to complain about the old release not working properly.

User demanded PC be moved to move to a sunny desk – because it needed Windows

handleoclast
Coat

Re: Urban legend fail. (was: PC fail)

Damn. Does that mean the story of how the Pet Shop Boys chose their name isn't true?

It's not like their music was worth listening to, so it was only that story that gave them any space in my head.

handleoclast
Coat

Re: Error 524

Hmmmm, I don't remember 524 being in the RFC. Let me check.

Ah. Found it.

524: an error code indicating that you're using Cloudflare and ought to switch to something else.

我的天啊! China gives Weibo users a week to use their real names

handleoclast

Re: Mao or less...

The remaining 25% use one of the new orthographies China insists on. Mousey Dung and Mousey Dong (the preferred style).

Oracle throws weight behind draft US law to curtail web sexploitation

handleoclast
Childcatcher

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

I remember the early days of home internet in the UK, as a Demon user. Early, as in before the intarwebs. No intarwebs, no message boards. We communicated through something called "Usenet News." Usenet news was pretty anarchic: anybody (with a little technical knowledge) could create a new newsgroup, any news server admin could carry, or refuse to carry, any specific newsgroup that he/she could get a feed of.

One day, one of the UK's "think of the children" Demon users [hi Stan, you fucktard] spotted the creation of a kiddy-porn newsgroup and demanded, via a demon.* newsgroup, that Demon should refuse to carry it. Wiser heads pointed out the standard quote "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it," but Stan persisted. Wiser heads pointed out that Demon could stop carrying that group but then other groups would spring up, but Stan persisted. Wiser heads pointed out that Demon could play whack-a-mole on new kiddy-porn newsgroups and then the paedos would just dump their stuff anywhere, that at least it was currently contained so it could be avoided, but Stan persisted.

Stan and his ilk persisted. More and more ISPs dropped the paedophile newsgroups. Prompting somebody to post kiddy porn to rec.arts.disney. Law of unintended consequences, anyone? Stan had been told that's what would happen but he persisted and that's exactly what happened.

Here's the point to all those reminiscences. If left alone a little longer, the criminal justice system would have caught up to modern technology and realized they had a golden, one-off opportunity. News server logs would show which IP addresses downloaded the bad stuff on a regular basis. ISP and Telco logs would tie that down to an actual phone number. Mass raids could be conducted. Not every paedo had the internet back then, but those that did would likely provide leads to those that didn't.

We could have cleaned out that cess pit, but Stan and his ilk, with all their protestations, served to drive the paedos underground before the CJS got its act together. They're now on the dark web where they're a lot harder to find. They used to be out in the open. I wondered at the time, and still do, if Stan was a paedo broadcasting a warning to the others, because that's the effect his complaints had.

So now we have a bunch of human sex traffickers, many of them kidnapping and renting out children, stupid enough to advertise on a web site. A perfect opportunity to take them down. Except that Stan, oops Oracle, is broadcasting a damned big warning that they'd better find a less risky way of advertising.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --Santayana

Wonder why Congress doesn't clamp down on its gung-ho spies? Well, wonder no more

handleoclast

Re: Archaic Merkin

@Pompous Git

You are correct. Where Merkin usage differs from ours it is often because our usage changed. Where our usage changed it is often due to snobbish affectation of French usage. So we have "centre" whereas Merkins have a more sensible "center."

Some changes are more recent. Like the use of "ise" instead of "ize." This was largely due to the dumbing down of the way English was taught in the 60s and thereafter. The last time I looked (a couple of decades ago) the OED still preferred spellings that usually matched Merkin usage rather than trendy 60s dumbed-down usage. Of course, it would be simpler if we used "s" for unvoiced and "z" for voiced sounds, although that would mean you'd encounter things like "hypothesis" and "hypothesize."

handleoclast

Shone

@Alister

It's Merkin usage. Shined instead of shone. Lighted instead of lit. Probably shited instead of shat.

Sorta like the Scots would use Alasdair instead of Alister.

Top tip, hacker newbs: Don't use the same Skype ID for IoT bot herding and job ads

handleoclast

Re: Hmmmm

It's hard not to find pr0n on the intertoobz, so I doubt that's his motivation. Anybody who can ferret out the tools on github can find pornhub. It's not hard (although after you watch pornhub for a while it might become so).

Since the article makes clear that he thought about the age of criminal responsibility, I'd guess one of two motives.

1) Low self-esteem, and/or getting bullied, and/or desperate for sex and being rejected. So wanted some kewl h4x0r creds to make him look better.

2) Wants to monetize the cams he takes over by selling the feeds as pr0n.

Option 2 seems less likely because few cams are positioned for that (unless they already are being used to produce pr0n.

Which brings us back to option 1, the standard skiddy motivation. He's in need of a BJ.

UK.gov launches 'co-ordination hub' for driverless car industry

handleoclast

If Barry put his hand in a fire, would you?

I remember that sort of question from junior school days. Intended to show the stupidity of doing something just because somebody else did.

So if the lead lorry had an autonomous brain fart and drove off a bridge...

It's official: Users navigate flat UI designs 22 per cent slower

handleoclast
Flame

The ultimate irony

El Reg publishes this article about flat UIs being shite.

The commentards seem to overwhelmingly agree that flat UIs are shite.

The next day, El Reg alters the symbol at the top of each article that leads to the comments section. It used to be oval (ish) and blue and stood out. It is now rectangular (ish) and the same colour as the body text, and doesn't stand out at all.

*sigh*

France to tack weapons onto spy drones – reports

handleoclast

Mountain Dieu!

Ze french, zey are buying ze weapons Americain?

I thought they insisted on making everything themselves. And did pretty well at it. Whatever is the world coming to?

Facebook's music plans mean you'll never leave Facebook

handleoclast

Re: Or, Perhaps Not

@Barry Rueger

I was poised to give you an upthumb. And then I read your final paragraph about you finding twitter useful. Not enough to earn you a downthumb, but you lost the upthumb.

Another day, another drone upstart skips the consumer market

handleoclast
Coat

My concentration is wandering

Which is why I read the headline as containing "drone upskirt." And thought "that sounds like an excellent idea. I wonder if the article has any pics."

Time to watch some more cat videos, I think.

Climate-change skeptic lined up to run NASA in this Trump timeline

handleoclast

Re: Skepticism

@JLV

Very well argued.

I'd love to see a coherent, rational response from Bob or John (or both). I'm not holding my breath...

handleoclast

Re: Pay no attention to the facts behind the curtain...

@Someone Else

I wish I could give you another upthumb for Lügenführer. Then another one for correct use of umlauts. But then I'd have to give you a downthumb for not italicising foreign words. That would still leave two upthumbs, alas I can give you only one.

handleoclast

Re: Belief has nothing to do with it: The fundamental difference between religion and science

When a scientist finds that new facts contradict his/her theories, he/she concludes that the theories are wrong.

When a priest finds that new facts contradicts his (priests are almost always "he") beliefs, he concludes that the facts are wrong.

You can pretty much apply that statement about religion to any ideology. Marxism, Chicago-school economics, psychiatry, whatever. Both religions and ideologies are constructed by men (it's almost always men, rather than women), the only difference is that religions claim their sacred writings were handed to them by God rather than being derived from their own (allegedly) superior thought processes.

The reason religions/ideologies are such malign forces is that they do not allow facts to sway their beliefs. As in the last financial meltdown, where the Chicago school economists claimed that the problem wasn't deregulating banks (which sane observers concluded was the problem because it let the banks get away with all sorts of shenanigans) but that we didn't deregulate the banks enough.

Reality. It would be nice if the ideologues visited it occasionally.

Thousands of hornets swarm over innocent fire service drone

handleoclast

Re: Nest in Garden

@cornz 1

My parents had a few apple trees. Apples would fall off, become bruised, and start to ferment. Which attracted loads of wasps, who then went on all-day benders.

I am of the opinion that wasps are the skinheads of the insect world. They get pissed and start fights. If you're lucky they get so pissed that all they can do is stumble around on the ground and you can give them a good kicking. If you're unlucky they don't indulge quite so much and do some drunken flying and stinging.

Bastards.

handleoclast

Re: Paraffin is the answer

@cornz 1

Not safe, not licensed for destruction of wasps nests.

Yes, but streams of flaming paraffin destroying a wasps' nest are fun. A lot more fun than bendiocarb.

handleoclast

Re: Info on Asian hornets in UK

Maybe they'll kill the oak processionary moths that have appeared in the south-east of England. They're similar to the pine variety that plague France. Very nasty things.

Our climate used to be too cold for them to survive here. It's a good job global warming doesn't exist (ask Bombastic Bob for details) or we'd have a lot more of them. /s

handleoclast
Flame

Paraffin is the answer

Paraffin was my father's remedy for wasp nests.

Of course, there was a little more to it than that.

1) Ball up a sheet of newspaper.

2) Fill empty washing-up liquid bottle with paraffin.

3) Squirt a little paraffin on newspaper.

4) Ignite newspaper.

5) Throw burning newspaper to ground directly below nest.

6) Squirt paraffin at burning newspaper then move jet up towards nest.

7) Keep squirting paraffin at nest until it's all burned up.

8) Keep squirting anyway, to catch the wasps returning home and see them fly into the flames.

Works for nests in hedges (the hedge does grow back, eventually).

Works for nests in holes in the ground.

Works for nests in dry-stone walls.

Works for nests in attics, although there may be some collateral damage.

Icon for obvious reasons.

Asterisk RTP bug worse than first thought: Think intercepted streams

handleoclast

Re: Alternatives?

FreeSwitch is thought, by some*, to be better than Asterisk.

It will have most of the same problems because it's partially a problem with how the protocol is defined. SRTP is your friend.

*The FreeSwitch developers.

Hubble Space Telescope spies possibility of liquid water in TRAPPIST-1

handleoclast
Coat

Re: cavorting

Little green men and women having sex. Filmed from a police helicopter.

Microsoft sets the date for Fall Creators Update

handleoclast
Headmaster

Re: Everything, except what we really want

@VinceH

Yes, his assertion does apply to everyone.

You don't have to use Windows. You could use a Mac, or Android, or Linux, or BSD, or an abacus or absolutely nothing at all. You may not be able to achieve what you want, or you may be able to do what you want but not in the way that you want to do it, but the choice is still there. It doesn't stop being a choice simply because you dislike all but one of the options. Your likes and desires influence which of the options available to you that you choose.

You really do not have to use Windows. Not even at work where the boss insists that you use Windows - you can simply leave a shit in a shoebox on the boss's desk and walk out.

His assertion does indeed apply to everyone. It may not be a choice that many find attractive for some reason or other, but it's a choice.

Big Tech slams Trump on plan to deport kids

handleoclast

Re: Then and now...

Your argument would be more persuasive but for one little fact. The US does not have a health system where those living in poverty can get access to cheap, effective contraception. Yes, there are charitable organizations, but in certain parts of the US (the ones dominated by the religious far-right), they have difficulty operating.

When you're so poor that most pleasures are beyond your means, abstinence doesn't seem very appealing.

It doesn't help that most of those affected are from Mexico and therefore most likely Catholic.

So yes, the government and the Pope are at least as much to blame as the parents themselves.

handleoclast

Random capitalization

What seems like random capitalization to you (and me, and most of the rest of us) makes sense in that seething cauldron of diarrhoea that is bob's head.

And even if you (and I, and most of the rest of us) do not understand the capitalization algorithm bob is using, it still carries information: he's forgotten to take his medication. Again.

Robocall scumbags already target Hurricane Harvey victims

handleoclast
Mushroom

Fire ants and scammers

Here's how one youtuber deals with fire ants. Perhaps the technique could be adapted to scammers. I doubt the end results would be as artistic, but as performance art it would be deeply satisfying.

US government: We can jail you indefinitely for not decrypting your data

handleoclast

Re: Use hidden partitions

@Mark 65

Truecrypt and other hidden partition encryption systems initialize the entire allocated storage with random data. That's so the opposition don't know if you're using a hidden partition or not, or even the high-watermark of your data usage. It all looks like random data. Clearly it isn't all random data because you've handed over your password to the normal partition. How do you prove there's no hidden partition?

You chose to use software that implements hidden partitions. Why use it if you didn't need a hidden partition? You have a reason? Yeah, that's what all the paedo-terrorists say. If Gary Glitter had been smart enough to encrypt his kiddy porn, he'd have claimed to have forgotten the password. If he'd been even smarter and used a hidden partition, he'd have claimed he wasn't. And don't forget terrorism. The gloves come off for terrorism.

Basically, you have a touching faith in the law and those tasked with implementing it. Maybe you're right. I don't feel like taking that gamble. I suspect many others, were they aware of the risks, would not wish to take it either.

handleoclast

Re: Facts

@scrubber

The UK used to allow cartoons or adults who looked younger. Then somebody pointed out that those images could be used to normalize such activities: "Look at these pictures, these young girls/boys enjoy doing this. It's normal." That was also one of the reasons they banned the redistribution of existing photos: not just copyright, not just that the victim might suffer mental harm knowing the images were being used, but that they could be used to normalize those activities.

On the one hand, having the images (real, posed adults or cartoon) may prevent harm to children because the possessor will use them for a hand shandy. On the other hand, having the images may facilitate harm to children because the possessor will use them to normalize that behaviour. Parliament decided the harm outweighed the good. Whether they were actually right or wrong I don't know, but that's what they decided.

handleoclast
Unhappy

Re: Use hidden partitions

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Do not use Truecrypt. Probably don't use its replacement Veracrypt (I've not checked if it has the same flaw).

I'll go through this carefully... For brevity, when I say that it's illegal to forget your password I'm assuming the situation where the police demand your password and you cannot give it or refuse to give it.

1) Forget your password and earn a lifetime in prison. That's how it is. In the US it's contempt of court, in the UK we originally used contempt of court, now we've made it illegal to forget your password. This is fact. Forget double jeopardy. Each time you finish your sentence, they ask you for your password again and you commit a new offence if you refuse to give it. The offence isn't having encrypted material (double jeopardy might apply to that) but not giving your password when requested. New offence every time.

2) Hidden partitions have the big problem that few people need them so few people use them. You're not a terrarist paedophile, you're just complying with your statutory duty under the DPA to keep personal info about your employees/customers private (or hiding infidelities from the spouse). So you don't bother with a hidden partition. Then plod (or HMRC, or MI5, or whatever) happen to take a look at your computer. Ask for your password, which you give them. Then ask for the password to the hidden partition, which you don't have because you didn't create a hidden partition. You are fucked. They can't prove you're using a hidden partition but you cannot prove that you are not. You are fucked. So if you use an encryption system that permits hidden partitions, you must use them to avoid a lifetime in prison.

3) Truecrypt (and quite probably Veracrypt) had a third-party patch that was linked to on the Truecrypt site itself, that allowed nested hidden partitions to any depth (limited only by running out of disk space to hold all the info defining those partitions). So you give them the password. Then you give them the password to the hidden partition. Then you can't give them the password to the hidden partition within the hidden partition because you never applied that patch, so never created the nested hidden partition. Plod responds that you probably kept the patched executable on a memory stick that you've concealed somewhere, so hand over the password. You are fucked.

So be very careful with hidden partition encryption. Always use the hidden partition. If there's support or a third-party patch for nested hidden partitions to any depth then avoid it like the plague. And don't forget your password. Ever.

What's that? You don't do anything naughty so you'll never be asked? Welcome to seven degrees of "you're fucked." You occasionally phone the local curry house with an order that they deliver. One of the guys working at the curry house occasionally phones his uncle in another town. That uncle goes to a mosque with a dodgy Imam. So you're under investigation. Oh, you have encrypted material on your computer... Or you took photos of your spouse on the beach and there are kids in the background, so somebody gets suspicious. Or HMRC get it into their heads that your figures look a little iffy so they insist on doing an audit. Or...

Google Cloud rolls back changes after 18-hour load balancer brownout

handleoclast

Counter

Time to reset the “Days since last self-inflicted cloud crash” counter to zero, guys.

Hmmmm, do I detect a subtle reference to this?

How the CIA, Comcast can snoop on your sleep patterns, sex toy usage

handleoclast
Paris Hilton

Re: Not Surprised

Yeah, a simple traffic analysis gives a lot away. If my computer is receiving packets from pornhub, I'm probably masturbating.

Chrome wants to remember which Websites to silence

handleoclast

Re: BBC?

Regarding licences, I asked both the BBC web site and the TV Licensing about the video clips on the BBC news site.

The answer from both was that the canned clips are OK. The only time a licence is required is if the video is streaming live.

So if you ever get a live stream on your RSS feed and you watch it, technically you're fucked.

Also, you shouldn't take my word for this. Ask both those authorities yourself, and save the e-mail responses. Firstly, this gives you some level of legal defence even if they misinformed you (which could be interpreted by a court as entrapment). Secondly, if enough people ask they'll add it to their web site somewhere, making it clear to anybody who cares to look.

handleoclast
Flame

Re: No text

Ah, but the BBC can get far more annoying than that. And do.

Go to a video page and there's often a sentence or two of text (that doesn't really add anything). And a More clicky thing. Oh, you think, that's going to give me a full article. That's very handy for those who don't want to waste bandwidth on video when there's a textual article to read.

So you click on the clicky thing and get another (short) sentence that adds nothing worth reading. What is the fucking point? They could have displayed that extra shitty little sentence by default.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Where's the fucking cluebat?

KVM plans big boosts to storage and nested virtualization

handleoclast
Coat

Re: RLY?

virtualisation is inherently kinky since it involves putting things into places they were never designed to go

Which is referred to as sodomy. However, that generally only applies to anal and oral sex.

Titty fucks are referred to as gomorrahy. They're like sodomy, but in a different place.

Google routing blunder sent Japan's Internet dark on Friday

handleoclast
Coat

Re: Easy to do...

I assumed it was intentional. Google Gateway Protocol.

San Franciscans unite to smite alt-right with minefield of doggy shite

handleoclast

White dog egg

Contrary to what is stated in the article, it is not ageing that turns dog eggs white.

There are some exotic medical conditions that can result in the white stuff, but the most usual reason for it is a diet rich in calcium. Which is what happens when dogs are given bones to gnaw on.

So the reason you don't see so many white dog eggs these days is that most dog owners feed their dogs canned food or dried biscuity things rather than giving them bones to gnaw on.

Incidentally, am I the only one who views EDF's "Zingy" mascot as being composed of one dog egg laid on top of another dog egg, with the upper egg being artfully crimped off by the dog's arse?

Samsung heir does not pass Go, does not collect $200

handleoclast
Coat

Brand loyalty?

I wonder if he'll retain any brand loyalty towards Samsung when faced with having to secrete his (not permitted in jail) mobile phone in a bodily orifice. There are no good places for a mobile phone to burn violently but one of the worst I can think of for an exploding phone is up your arse.

Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!

handleoclast

Re: So much for digital

@Joe Harrison

You are using ternary (or trinary) digits. Confusingly abbreviated as "tits."

handleoclast
Coat

Re: Copyright

@Antron Argaiv

With puns like that, don't be surprised if somebody hits you with a COSH. Then you'll end up in a hospital COT.

BTW, what's a nortna? The second part of your name is obvious, but not the first (not to me, anyway, I expect about 200 replies pointing out what I've missed).

A blast from the past: Mobile trojans abusing WAP-billing services

handleoclast

Re: WAP?

I remember when WAP was the much-hyped coming thing (which never really arrived).

I wondered why use an old term like "wireless" for it, when it's carried over what we now call radio. In fact, it's carried over something that is, more specifically, cellular radio.

So why not call it cellular radio access protocol?

Seems like a much-needed improvement in clarity, and far closer to the truth.