Posts by PT 350 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2007
"The PB's legal team should be looking to have the whole thing thrown out if the persecution, sorry, prosecution can't even decide on what they're being accused of."
Why would they do that? Once they've been tried for everything, they can't be tried again for anything. They're in no danger, and besides, they're enjoying it. So am I - best court case ever.
"..spam the machine by encrypting all messages whether they contain useless information or not"
I'm all for that, but unfortunately, the number of people I email regularly who even have GPG installed - let alone use it - is one. I can't get people to go to the trouble of installing it even when we have commercially sensitive material to exchange.
... when I lived in Portsmouth. Commander West, he was called. Our kids went to the same schools. He seemed quite rational to me, even a bit conservative. He can't possibly be related to this "Lord West of Spithead" I keep reading about in Lords Hansard, who sounds like a propaganda tape loop. Though I do recall one thing he said that I believed:
(Lord West of Spithead): ... I feel scarred by this ... there is a firm of chauffeurs that refers to a U-turn as an Admiral West, which I find rather difficult. (LH, Dec 6 2007)
Resign, Alan, while there are still have people who remember you once had integrity.
I'm a bit late to this thread, but I have to comment. I was working away hard on improving my Spider average score when the firewall popped up a warning - "SETUP.EXE is trying to access the internet". WTF?!? I killed the process. A few hours later it happened again. This time, after a bit of effort, I was able to find out what subdir the suspicious Setup was running out of, and a few minutes later Chrome was GONE.
Hint to Google - don't make your product look and behave like a fucking spyware bot. Identify its components by recognizable names, like Chrome_Setup, and prompt before updating - or at least give us the choice.
... and the tiny fonts, but most of all I resent the 33% wasted white space down the right hand side. I think Verity Stob's opinion of the new page design would be interesting.
For what it's worth, my first reaction on loading the Reg today was to check and see why Adblock wasn't working. Further research showed that it was working just fine, and you f'ed up the page format just to place some internal links. But if you lose the fixed width it won't be so bad.
You're a gormless twerp, Halko. Everyone knows who and what caused the California energy crisis. Unregulated free market capitalism, red in tooth and claw. You got your cut out of it, no doubt? Or are you just one of those red state morons voting against your own economic interests because you think you might become a millionaire tomorrow?
You have to live here to understand. Nevada is 35% bigger than England, Wales and Scotland put together, and consists mainly of trackless mountains and inaccessible desert valleys. It has a total population smaller than Manchester, of which 8 out of 10 live in two cities. It's quite possible to drive 100 miles or more in the back country without sighting a human habitation, and it can take days to hike off-road to look at something that may have been spotted from the air. There are ALL KINDS of things out there in the hills, from crashed B-52s to abandoned tanks, many having been found at one time and then lost again. So the thing that surprises me is that ONLY six other planes were found, and these may not have been "new", just forgotten.
See <http://www.aviationarchaeology.com/fossett.htm> for similar remarks.
The real crime was circumventing the quaintly-named "Banking Secrecy Act" by allowing financial transactions outside the control and watchful eye of the US Government. Regardless of whether it was used for criminal activities, its destruction was a foregone conclusion - if the Feds could not find any evidence, they would have made it up.
Clearly the UK government is soft on crime! Over here in the US, we know how to deal with people who have so-called "accidents", like this young woman who dozed off at the wheel and ran into some kids wandering around on a motorway -
http://www.courttv.com/trials/williams/background.html
What they don't tell you in the linked article is that the jury found her *not guilty* on all charges related to the actual accident, and her sentence (48 years) was based on her admission that she smoked a joint occasionally.
That's the problem, in two words. How to allow government-run state lotteries to continue to use the Internet while shutting out all the rest. Any effort to draft a proper definition would attract hoards of lobbyists and flesh-eating lawyers anxious to tear strips off these lucrative cash cows, and the necessary compromises would result in the law failing to regulate anything.
Of course, since state lotteries typically pay back around 50%, they're not really gambling at all. Even the Mafia weren't that greedy - the numbers game paid off 66%. If they could just come up with a new definition for lotteries - "racket" comes to mind - it could all be settled in a few days.
You generally don't get into trouble for reproducing money as long as it's nowhere near life size. However, modern hi-res printers and scanners can recognize bank notes by the "EURion constellation" (Google it) printed on them. They may stop processing, in some cases locking up and needing a service call, and if they have a modem or net connection they may call for help. That's enough to make a prudent man hesitate before trying it, at least on one's own equipment.
If or when a working immortality treatment is available, only the most unsuitable people will be able to afford it at first. Popes, dictators, pharma's favorite congressmen and all those people at the party in "Eyes Wide Shut". Then after a while an Indian pharmaceutical company will start producing it for 10 cents a tablet, and the entire world will become immortal except for Britain and America, who won't be allowed to import it.
Mine's the one with the receipt from the costume shop in the pocket.
I have to agree with Edward that two years in an American prison is an inappropriate punishment.
A far more fitting penalty would be to tie him to a stake in a stadium full of average email users with a sign round his neck reading "SPAMMER". All persons entering the stadium would be given a stick of wood and a box of matches.
Not anonymous, pctechxp? Hmm, for some reason I can't find you under that name in the phone book.
Your sentiments are your own, and you're entitled to them because, after all, we live in a nominally free country. But I fear this will lead not to an increase in convictions for the crimes you named but to an increase in doors being kicked down in the middle of the night, followed by weeks or months held without charge, for such crimes as getting a wrong-number call from someone who's name is on some "Persons of Interest" list. I presume you're all for that too.
Getting back to your "not anonymously" posting ID, perhaps your phone is in an assumed name such as Richard Knopf. I think we should be told! We'd better get Special Branch on it right away because, after all, you might do or say something in the future that you could be questioned about. if they hurry, they could be at your house tonight to check your XP cache for pictures of Miley Cyrus. Since you're all for it, you can be first.
"The word "and" should never follow immediately after a comma."
But you have to admit that the comma-bearing version, with its implied pause, sounds more natural than the grammatically correct version.
Perhaps, to satisfy both criteria, we could agree on something like "That combination led to an insufficient number of customers, followed by bankruptcy".
Mine's the leather greatcoat with the wide lapels.
Surely the reason you pay so much tax in Europe is because you joined an organization with a bureaucracy designed by the French. VAT is the XML of the financial world, a scheme of staggering waste and inefficiency that keeps billions of Euros uselessly circulating through the banking system without actually benefiting anyone at all, because apart from the unfortunate end user, everyone in the line gets their money back. If you switched back to a simple sales tax on the US model, there would be more contributors - a business can't claim back its sales tax on office supplies, as they do with VAT - and the rate could drop back to a more modest 10% or so.
The American "boffinry community" at Los Alamos in 1945 were genuinely worried that the atomic bomb test at Trinity would ignite the atmosphere in a runaway fusion reaction. They did the calculations more than once and kept getting different results. It didn't stop them pushing the button, though. Ah, wait a moment - hardly any of them were actually Americans. Damned irresponsible Europeans, again!
For clarification, the story on KCTV5 says he was inside the house firing out, not outside firing in, so the telly wasn't endangered.
"Her husband, Ronald Long, fired the shot from the inside of their home after several unsuccessful efforts to punch a hole through the exterior wall using other means."
I'm glad I wasn't walking past at the time. It's worth a visit to KCTV5.com just to see what kind of house he lived in; puts things in better perspective.
There's a far more tragic story on KCTV5 today, though - "Cheerleader Dies after Breast Surgery". She was a pretty little thing.
If only Tasers and bean bags were all we had to fear. 'SWAT' stands for Special Weapons And Tactics. The Tasers and bean bags are for community plods - SWAT teams use military shotguns, assault rifles, grenades and occasionally an armored car, and they never knock before shooting the door off its hinges. Mostly all they ever do is serve warrants, so busting a potential nonce is an exciting upgrade in responsibility for them.
Mine's the full-body Kevlar suit - the black one.
Doesn't anybody read these days? Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Fed, explained the H1B program succinctly in his recent memoir.
"As awesomely productive as market capitalism has proved to be, its Achilles' heel is a growing perception that its rewards, increasingly skewed to the skilled, are not distributed justly. ... A dysfunctional US ... education system has failed to ... prevent a shortage of skilled workers and a surfeit of lesser skilled ones, expanding the pay gap between the two groups. Unless America's education system can raise skill levels as quickly as technology requires, skilled workers will continue to earn greater wage increases, leading to ever more disturbing extremes of income concentration. ... we need to address increasing income equality now. ... BY OPENING OUR BORDERS TO LARGE NUMBERS OF HIGHLY SKILLED IMMIGRANT WORKERS WE WOULD ... PROVIDE A NEW SOURCE OF COMPETITION FOR HIGHLY EARNING EMPLOYEES, THUS DRIVING DOWN THEIR WAGES".
@ Michael J Welker Jr: Your comment that someone you disagree with is a "liberal" succinctly classifies you. This is a great time-saver, as I could fill in the rest of your comment without reading it. "Won't somebody think of the children? US government good."
It's nothing to do with the children - what bullshit. It's everything to do with taxes. The US government is the only government in the civilized world that taxes gambling winnings as income. Shoot, the country founded on a stand against taxation without representation makes a special point of taxing unrepresented foreigners. If a British Reg reader should come to Vegas and win a substantial jackpot, 30% will be withheld for Uncle Sam "just in case" it might be found that he was liable for US taxes. Now in theory, after he gets home the lucky punter can apply to the British tax collectors who, it is alleged, have a reciprocal arrangement with the IRS and will make good the deduction. Yeah, right. With compound interest for the delay, no doubt.
As bloated as the US government might be, it doesn't quite have the manpower to monitor all the credit card transactions in the world, and so lacks the power to loot winnings paid in the Isle of Man. That's the real problem.
"I urge one of you to lie under a sheet and jump up when she is wheeling your trolley along"
Risky business. A friend of mine once tried that, but instead of wheeling him into the morgue his co-conspirators thought it would be much funnier to wheel him outside into the street, where they left him on the wrong side of a locked door naked except for a sheet and toe-tag.
It looks to me as if Chris C is attracting unwarranted attacks from both left and right, and his detractors appear to be under the illusion that they're on the same side.
Perhaps everyone is tired and emotional this week.
In any case, NOBODY in this administration will EVER be brought to justice for ANYTHING. Get real, folk. Truth, Justice and the American Way is so *September 10th*.
.. is that the only ones who get promoted to management are the ones who can be SPARED. When a vacancy comes up and two people apply for it internally, the weaker one usually gets the job - and the raise - because the stronger one is more valuable where he is. The loser could be consoled with a matching raise, but this never happens because it would upset the differentials, so he quits. It takes at least three months to replace him and the new guy comes in at a substantially higher salary than it would have taken to retain the old one. After seeing this happen once or twice, nobody takes a chance on internal promotions - they bring in an outsider, who is probably on the market because he's f*ing useless. Being anxious to shine, he will immediately set himself a visible goal that's easily measured, like making sure none of his people are two minutes late.
Did anyone notice in that other article, on which commenting is not allowed, that the photo from Gerard's page shows the Wiki commissars using Apple laptops?
Everyone who's ever watched a movie knows that only the good guys use Apples - villains always have Windows machines. What a nice piece of subliminal propaganda from the Wikitbureau.
I lived in Florida for several years and I'm afraid I agree with offing the gator. Gators are everywhere, even in urban areas, where they travel through the storm drains and large roadside ditches provided to handle the 500 inch annual rainfall. They're very strong and they can run very fast on land. There's plenty of other stuff for them to eat so human casualties are rare - children used to play and jet-ski by day in the lake next to my apartment, and at night we'd sit on the dock and pick out the alligator eyes with a flashlight - but the last thing anyone wants is a gator loose in town with a taste for long pig.
There are worse fears in Florida than man-eating reptiles. If you want to see someone's life shredded, just make an anonymous tip to local law enforcement that he/she owns a piranha.
I mean, seriously - banker types pretending to be interested in equality? isn't that, like, communism or something? Crook's sarcasm has got it exactly right - their idea of equality is cutting everyone down to the level of the unskilled. The reason, obviously, being that envy of the skilled leads to inflationary wage pressures. The former Chairman actually put it in black and white in his recent memoir "The Age of Turbulence". I quote - "...by opening our borders to large numbers of highly skilled immigrant workers, we would both enhance the skill level of the overall workforce and provide a new source of competition for higher-earning employees, THUS DRIVING DOWN THEIR WAGES". (my caps)
I'm really surprised this has been overlooked by the US technical community. I'd have thought it would provoke a torch-wielding mob marching on the Federal Reserve.
Brits should not be so self-righteous about this. You have your own fundies, the "Restoration" or house-church movement, whose authoritarian leaders have had equal trouble keeping their zippers up. They've been able to keep the shame and resignations very quiet - even if you know the names, Google doesn't return many salacious details - mainly because they're completely bloody irrelevant in Britain, thanks to your great wisdom in shutting them out of television and politics.
Ian Michael Gumby said:
"Online ticketing for movies charge a service fee of $1.00 per ticket. Its a convenience fee of not having to wait in line to buy tickets..."
Actually if you ever tried it, you'd find you STILL have to wait in line to buy your tickets. The only difference is you pay at the box office with your Fandango receipt instead of with cash. All you get for the extra buck is a reservation, and a chance to lose your money if you can't make it. Some convenience.
@RRRoamer - what the hell are you talking about?
No European company registered for VAT pays any VAT - EVER. They just lend money to the Government and get it back off the next guy up the chain. They do, on the other hand, pay corporate income taxes on a much more lavish scale than American corporate welfare layabouts.
Regarding state gambling laws, the main concern for most states is the fear of competition with their own corrupt gambling scams, aka lotteries, which offer paybacks so unfavorable that that they make the old Mafia numbers racket seem extraordinarily generous by comparison. If they have a moral problem with gambling they have a clean-up opportunity close to home.
And ah yes, the "right to work" laws. Somehow you erroneously inserted the word "union" in your diatribe. In "right to work" states, only union workers have any rights. Everyone else can be walked out the door at any moment, for any reason or none, with no compensation nor any recourse whatsoever.
Dumbass.
It wasn't driving it that was the problem, but starting it. An automatic won't start (ie the starter won't turn) unless you put your foot on the brake. A manual (in the US, anyway) won't start unless you put your foot on the CLUTCH. Since both cars have a stick on the floor it's not immediately obvious to a stranger what kind it is, and when you're in a hurry and nothing happens when you turn the key, feeling for a left-foot pedal isn't likely to be the first thing that occurs to you.
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