Posts by Don Dumb

Re: responsibilities

dan1980 - "Take a restaurant found to be serving food that makes their customers ill. If it's in the handling and storing and preparation of the food then the case is clear - it's the restaurant's fault. But what if the cause was bad produce from the supplier?"

The analogy is a good one but there is a bit of a flaw when think about who the customer is in each situation.

Putting aside criminal responsibilities for a moment, the responsibility a restaurant has is between itself and those it enters into a contract with (the customers and suppliers), the supplier is merely a subcontractor in the contract to provide its customers with a meal. Therefore, if you have been given dodgy food in a restaurant, it is the restaurant that should reimburse you. The restaurant might then attempt to get those damages back from its supplier (who may then go to its supplier, etc) but that isn't the concern of the customer. The customer doesn't have any contract with the food supplier.

So yes, the restaurant should have standards about the quality of the food supplied as they are expected to deliver a standard of quality to their customers. Basic supply chain and subcontracting.

However, the problem with this is what is the contract that is being entered into? You're not paying for the website like you are a meal.

I'm sure the websites would claim that they are not delivering adverts to their readers, they are delivering news stories to the readers and eyeballs to *their* customers (advertisers). This would be like the restaurant giving you food free of charge but in return they just simply play the radio (and the radio pays them for this) and if your ears are damaged by the adverts on the radio, well that's not their responsibility its the radio station's.

I think a better lever to encourage websites to do their job properly is criminal responsibility - do websites have a legal responsibility to ensure that the Computer Misuse Act (or non-UK equivalent) is not violated by content delivered on their site? I would argue that they do and that malvertising is very much a violation of 'anti-hacking' laws. If torrent sites are considered responsible to not link to torrents that violate copyright then news websites are even more responsible for adverts that their pages direct the reader's browser to download. If Cyber is the big national security threat then why aren't police forces prosecuting websites that assist in unlawful computer hacking. A few prosecutions and I can guarantee any major website will be vetting advert agencies very closely.

Re: What's always puzzled me is, where are the fraudsters?

@Tim Worstall -

I can think of a couple of ways in which a small team (someone who actually understands the psychology of financial markets and a couple of tech heads) could wander off with a couple of $10s of millions by Christmas.

It would even, probably, be legal. And yet I can't see this being done, or at least we're not hearing about it. [emphasis mine]

If you assume that there is a small team of people, well versed in psychology and technical matters, smart enough to game (legally or otherwise) a market to make several million. Why would you assume that you *would* hear about it?

If these people are that smart they would hardly make a song and dance about it would they? Especially as soon as the cat is out of the bag they wont make any more money.

Also the relevant cryptocurrency and exchange markets would hardly want to make a big deal of how their systems can be gamed so comprehensively, so they aren't likely to be giving press releases either.

Could it not be quite possible that these 'big clearout wins' have happened and the winners have simply not advertised the fact or have deliberately kept quiet to avoid the authorities? Let's face it, someone did well out of Mt Gox and I can't imagine they are keen on anyone knowing whether legal or not.

Lottery winners with brains don't inform the press how rich they suddenly are.

Re: I feel sorry for

@Martin Summers -

What's that got to do with something beyond their control? How else are they meant to pay them, it can't be cash, cheque would clear a week after they got it and they could be paid by BACS quicker on a second attempt anyway.

Don't know who has the legal liability but speaking as someone who worked in a payroll office a decade ago. Payroll teams can pay people with same day payments using a system called 'CHAPS' (don't know what the acronym stands for). It's a relatively high level of effort required for each payment so it isn't something that can be done for too many people. Therefore a small payroll team could have sorted it for their employees this morning and the employee's bank would have the money by mid-afternoon.

However, the difficult thing would be that on Tuesday the BACS payment would hit the employee's account, so they have now been paid twice and then you then have to get the money back. This is always really hard for both the payroll droid and the employee. It's probably better for all to simply underwrite any fees or liabilities the employee has due to late salary payment rather than try and get a second payment out today.

Re: Its a miracle that the MNOs allowed SMS to be available to subscribers

@Uberseehandel - "As a tip to anybody doing this today, I'd say store all your phone numbers with the full international dialing prefix (+44 for Britain), and make sure that the contacts are stored in the handset, not on the SIM. That way when you cross from, one country to another, you simply swap SIMs and advice those who need to call you of your new number by SMS."

I agree that it's good practice to save numbers with the international dialling prefix.

My tip to save roaming costs - 3. My contract is with 3 Mobile. They cover some countries with an 'at home' provision, all calls back to the UK and all data consumed simply comes out of the contract allowance as if you are at home in the UK. I've been abroad a few times and spent very little on phone calls as mostly I'm phoning home or using data. It has eliminated one of the annoyances with travelling.

Re: Welcome to the 19th century

@Wzrd1 - "El Reg realizes that it has an audience in the US"

I get that El Reg has a US audience to cater for but surely that still is largely a tech and scientific audience, which even in the US, I would expect to understand and use metric. Considering this is about space and even NASA uses metric, you would have thought that El Reg wouldn't have seemingly gone out of its way to use Imperial (which I have just realised the US calls 'English').

Only this?

@DougS - "If he said something like that, he'd look stupid"

Because otherwise, everything else he says makes him look like a real genius!

Re: "We are learning that chaos may be a common trait of binary systems,"

@Betacam - "The 3 body problem is why physicists rarely indulge in threesomes." - Well, that's what they would say.

Like many problems physicists deal with, finding reasons to reject threesomes is very much a theoretical exercise.

@AC - >>"And a good thing it is too. It's an essential part of the balance, to have some power in the hands of a group that doesn't need to care about getting re-elected and can genuinely do what they think is best for the country. Neither side has total power."

If you're happy with that, then fine, no system is perfect. But then you can't criticise the EU for being in many ways no different. We (the British) often complain about the lack of democratic accountability in the EU, while completely ignoring the same thing here.

My point wasn't to say that we neccessarily change everything, or even perhaps anything, but that we have to be consistent in what we ask for.

>>"Also a good thing. Can you imagine the shambolic Italian-style results if we had a coalition government"?

Nothing like Cherry-picking an example is there? What about the "shambles" in Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, and so many others?

It's amazing how insular the British can be in their knowledge (yet we still feel justified poking fun at the US for their knowledge of the world). The British seem to think that we would be inventing Coalition governments in the UK for the first time. They've been going fine in many places for decades, even in places we look up to for good governance. The reason we think of coalition as chaotic is we only ever hear about the chaotic ones, the rest "just work" so don't become newsworthy.

From the Anonymous Coward

@AC - "Nothing to hide nothing to fear" - from someone posting anonymously!

Naturally, I must wonder what it is you are hiding, clearly something to fear.

Re: Biological accuracy

@Dr Dan Holdsworth - Sauropods were most emphatically NOT aquatic in any sense of the word; they would have done their best to avoid water, since they were strongly adapted towards walking on land.

That can't be true, how do you explain Nessy then?

Re: YouTube video link no use for UK readers

@Richard Lloyd - I just get my weekly John Oliver fix via the letter "T",

If you are not already aware John is one half of the superb cross-atlantic satire and bullshit podcast 'The Bugle'. Certainly worth listening to, especially as it gives clues on why John would have used dick pics to underline his point.

Re: So it's got to the stage....

@Kristain Walsh - In the absence of a big-screen and laptop, could the home team not have just dragged in a flip-chart or hastily got a marker and forty sheets of A4 (0-9 x 4 = two two-digit scores) to show the score

But the point I was trying to make in my earlier post is that it isn't just the score that the scoreboard has to display, the game clock is still very important and that has to be accurate and clear to all (plays can still be made with tenths of a second left on the clock). There are many things the scoreboard is expected to display.

In any case, the league the team plays in has standards reflecting the level of competition, that will state what the minimum for the scoreboard must be.

Re: This makes me so happy

@Phuq Witt - " I think you mean "posterity""

Yes, well spotted. Cheerfully withdrawn.

"(with the disclaimer that I've not actually read Going Postal*) I feel 'compelled' to point out that, everything I've read about 'The Clacks' (including the above quote) suggests that, far from being an original, genius, Pratchett invention, he's pretty much just copied the concept of the 'Guild of Signallers' from Keith Roberts "Pavane", published over thirty years earlier.

[*I've tried a couple of his books and they didn't do anything for me.]"

I would disagree with your assertion, as someone who didn't get Pratchett (and there's nothing wrong with that) and therefore didn't read much of his work, it may not have been apparent how much well researched satire (both recent and historical) and parody Pratchett put into his books. Such as the passage I included where he clearly understood enough about the workings of the net. There are so many references, parodies and pisstakes that I got a whole load of new jokes when re-reading them as an adult and still probably missed hundreds (much like The Simpsons).

He may well have taken up the idea from Roberts (I have no idea) but The Clacks became an integral part of the world in several of the later Discworld books (it was introduced before Going Postal) and certainly took on a life of its own but it was never the plot of any books, just a plot device and a part of the evolving environment.

Side point - Even if you didn't like his books, I would suggest that you might find love for him in his fight for rights such as the right of people in terminal illness to die and defending atheism/humanism*

*I always thought it was funny that he was knighted despite having displaying a dislike for Monarchy in much of his books.

Re: Sad

Seconded

Re: Why would you even fix this?

@Christian Berger - "Why would you even fix this?Yeah, why would people who pay for Netflix want to connect to the internet?"

Oh FFS - is it too difficult to understand that some of us have TVs with native iPlayer and Netflix apps (which, by the way has no microphone or camera) which we might actually want to use.

I'll be honest, I don't mind my TV knowing which iPlayer programme I've watched as amazingly, iPlayer already knows that too! (and they know no more about me than the TV)

I know privacy is a big issue but not everything is a privacy issue - this is about a TV seemingly so badly made that to watch YouTube, the TV has to know that it can reach an ip address that has nothing to do with YouTube.

Re: Blank box

@Francis Vaughan - "Or perhaps all the local friendly corner computer shops should start promoting reinstall as as it as a service as well as a really good idea."

But then it begins to depend on how much you trust the local shop doesn't it?

This could easily extend the adware market. All adware makers have to do is to pay the local shop to include the adware software (or worse) in the 'clean reinstall'.

BBC Documentary

@James 51 - I think that there was such a documentary, it may have been an edition of Horizon, a few years back certainly so my mind is hazy on details.

I seem to remember Prof Cox, guiding the viewer around some of the bits of the LHC and also a documentary on the search for the Higgs-Boson that went around the LHC and talked to some of the academics working there. These may have been different documentaries they may have been the same single one, I reckon both were Horizons or similamp possibly still available on iPlayer.

Re: I think ... Beyonce deserves that gTLD more than he does.

@ADC -

I believe it's a reference to Kanye West pushing himself on stage at the Grammy awards and telling everyone that Beyonce should get the award instead of Beck.

This, as many may remember, is on the back of him doing it even more infamously a few years before. - At the 2009 MTV VMA's he did the same thing to Taylor Swift, jumping up on stage and gatecrashing Taylor's award speech for best video, taking the mike and claiming that it should have gone to Beyonce.

This was such a classless and ungracious display that even Barack Obama was overheard declaring Kanye to be "a jackass". The Kanye quote "I'mma let you finish" became it's own meme mocking his stupid rant.

It seems that whenever Beyonce loses out to someone else at the Grammy's Kanye simply can't understand and tells everyone that Beyonce should have won the award.

Re: Spotted what's missing?

@Stuart 22 - Have another look, the 'North Weirs Walk' map in the article does have contour lines. Guessing that as the other images don't have contouring, it would seem to be a selectable option.

Agree with your point about how useful 3D is and the ability to clearly understand significant landmarks (like Church steeples). Google Maps is only really good at roads navigable by car, it is terrible at footpaths and other routes off from public roads.

@Andy Christ - "eh, nuke Mecca."

It's not the mothership*

* (C) Dara O'Briain

Re: Well..

But that means it's homeopathic shit, it's super powerful poo.

Online contact form

@Phil Kingston - Would you be able to put up a link please?

amanfromMars1

@amanfromMars1 - You're back, I for one have missed your incomprehensible (to me) ramblings. Glad to see you posting again.

Re: Make your minds up...

@Fluffy Bunny - "Neither of these are proper uses of the word patent. They are registered designs, which can be protected in a similar way to a patent. But a patent has to have some sort of intellectual content.

Only Americans could confuse the two issues"

Only someone who is being annoyingly ignorant (while disparaging others) could not realise that in the USA a 'Registered Design' is called a 'Design Patent'. It's not as if this is the first time it has been pointed out here.

Re: Dunno What They're Spending £55m On...

"It's like Channel 4 for teens"

So like Channel 4 then?

Re: Not strange to me...

@Wade Burchette - "I know someone who actually saw the planes fly into the twin towers. Saw with his own two eyes."

So they got to him too.

I must say that having read the The Physcopath Test by Jon Ronson, I now find this conspiracy nonsense quite objectionable, I imagine your friend would probably agree. The book features an account of a 7/7 London Tube bombing survior and her distressing harrassment by deniers, ironically including an actual conspiracy whistleblower, David Shayler. The account shows just how vile this can get. Imagine having to go through the experience of thinking you had died underground in a bombing only to be told later by people who weren't there that it couldn't possibly have happened and you must be lying about the whole thing.

Re: The human body will decide the winner (if any)

BULLSHIT ALERT!*

I'm guessing these 'studies' (remember kids a study is not a peer reviewed publication) are on your own website Dr Charlatan. I make this conclusion because you clearly haven't understood what the article is talking about and furthermore you are someone who publishes papers in a web journal for which you are on the advisory panel - and unsuprisingly none of the publications made in your online journal have ever been accepted for publication in PubMed, the officially recognised database.

Why don't you go share ethics lessons with Andrew Wakefield?

* - dear El Reg, please can we have a Bullshit icon.