Posts by Maty

moronic

As I recall, the film industry went to court to try to kill the video player, because they thought that it would hurt their revenues. They also thought TV would 'kill' cinema.

In the same way the music industry is cocking up a huge revenue opportunity because its management can't pull their heads out of their own arses. Most people don't want to fish around bit torrents to find the music they want, and then worry that someone has found a way of adding malware to whatever they have pulled down. Many people even feel uneasy downloading pirate music.

But the blasted industry gives them little choice. More than once(hrrumph!) a friend, had ended up getting a pirate version of a disk he already owns (sorry, has a license to use) because Vista + DRM makes the legal version unusable. In short, the music industry is teaching people how to become pirates so as to use material they already own.

If there was somewhere I could just go, and legally download an mp3/divx I'd happily pay to do it. I don't want special software to access it, or play it, or DRM making it unusable if I don't use it their way. And if the music industry don't like it, they can shove it. There's other ways of getting music.

come now ....

If they don't know everything about you, how can they best take care of you? If they don't know everything about everyone else, how can they best protect you? Can't you see it's for your own good?

How about ..

.. if they decide that several hundred people getting together to discuss politics in Westminster poses 'an unacceptable risk to public order'? Especially as those participating hold demonstrably different, and often seriously opposing, political views. One can probably throw 'drink-fuelled' into the closure order as well, if it would have been a late-night sitting.

two questions ..

1. Does bed-ridden mean literally unable to get out of bed? And therefore, whom, apart from himself was this guy a threat to?

2. How do you get hold of a knife immediately after heart surgery? Was one of the surgeons verrry careless?

@Frank

'Actually 'xerox' (like 'kleenex' and unlike 'hoover') is part of the AMERICAN language, not ours.'

Now now, if you are going to be xenophobic, try to be accurate. There is no American language. There are American languages - many of them - and English is one. 'Kleenex' and 'xerox' are part of a dialect of English usually called US English, and the US produces its own dictionaries, which are quite properly called English dictionaries.

If you don't believe me, google the topic :)

accident waiting to happen

Try living in Cambridge (the UK one) where every summer herds of continental kids come on school trips. Glued to their mobiles and iPods they step off the kerb in front of your vehicle, with the few who are paying attention still looking up the road in the wrong direction.

One day this will happen in front of a bus or HGV, and some French village will be a generation short.

its not about the pervs...

I do worry that all the rules and spying the gov does to make us 'safe' from child molesters and terrorists do bugger all to prevent anyone with half a mind toward actual criminal activity from taking some basic steps which easily circumvent these measures. Instead the actual effect is to allow government control over the law-abiding majority that much easier, as it sets a precedent. Need my email address to help protect the country? Here it is sir. I've nothing to fear.

Why do I think the govt makes noises about wanting to control terrorists and perverts, when in fact they really want to control the net?

Won't somebody think of the children?

I'm referring to those children who grow up to be soldiers - but are still somebody's son or daughter. Those are the people who - whether we wanted them to or not - have been putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan and Iraq. Anything that makes their lives safer I'm inclined to believe is a good thing.

And please don't argue that these people are volunteers. They volunteered to fight for their country, not to die. Until we get to the perfect world where we do not need soldiers, someone has to risk their lives to defend us. And I'm all in favour of making that job as safe as possible - I don't think anyone mourns a trashed machine in the same way as a son, sister, or spouse.

update!=install

I got this little message. Actually my computer thought it was so urgent it kicked me out of the full-screen game I was playing to display aforesaid message. As usual I said I didn't want bloody iTunes, and only wanted Quicktime because a) some programs/websites won't work without it and b) I need updates because the original Quicktime was riddled with security holes (which is why I give a hollow laugh every time a Mac fanboi tells me how much more secure his OS is).

But I only want security updates. Even Microsoft, shy retiring types that they are not, generally distinguishes between essential security patches and crapware that they want to foist on your machine. Mr Jobs has no such inhibitions apparently. Yup, microsoft can silently add patches - IF you select that option - but they don't offer totally extraneous bits of software that you have not asked for, may not want - and don'tkeep offering it at random intervals every couple of weeks ad infinitum.

cash-sucking scumbags

No, not Google, the wunderkids who try to game the adwords/adsense system for all they can get. We run a 'content' site under adsense and a small adwords campaign, and we've seen it all. Those people who scrape chunks off other sites and aggregate them into advert farms, those who design 'squeeze' pages with the back button disabled so unskilled users have to click the ads to get out, arbitragers, whose ads point to pages with more ads, and so on ad infinitum. Then there's click rings, MFA (made for adsense) sites, an entire circus of sleazy cheats.

Frankly if I were in Google's fraud prevention team I'd feel I was swimming in a sea of sewage, and as an honest advertiser and publisher - who has done well with google on both counts - if playing their cards close to their chest helps Google keep the system viable, more power to them. Remember, Google has one major opt-in. No-one HAS to run Google ads. Most people who do, do so because it works for them.

mass market?

"Why is it acceptable to have to test in opera, safari and firefox and not in internet explorer? Given that IE has the biggest market share, should we not get it working in IE and then worry about the others?"

Ain't necessarily so. Among the geek community you will find a lot of Opera and firefox, and firefox is apparently >50% in some European countries.

If you are coding a page for the general US public then you can use the HTML One D Ten T standard (abbreviated to 1D 10 T), but some audiences are more demanding.

More history ...

Cohorts got decimated for poor performance (read dumping shield and heading for the tall timber) in battle, not for being mutinous. Most famous decimation was by Licinius Crassus as a preliminary to beating Spartacus.

Leave my coat by the door. It's got nits on it.

I recall ...

... a few years back, the daughter of some British mayor spent the night in the cells at some US airport and then was summarily deported, apparently because she was caught in possession of an arabic-sounding name.

And some poor Brit who spent a week or two in a cell in South Africa after the Americans (wrongly) decided that he was a wanted US criminal, and having got a warrant for his arrest couldn't be arsed to check who'd they'd got.

Stupidity isn't limited to Arabic airports, as anyone wrongly on a US 'no-fly' list can attest. And a couple of hours getting through a British airport (and that's a reasonable minimum) doesn't help one's views on officialdom.

how about ...?

Don't buy from spammers. Nothing would shut down spammers faster than a lack of sales from all their hard work. Should we not be stressing to our more ignorant computer-using brethren that spammers are by definition liars and thieves, and therefore not ideal people to do business with and to trust with credit card numbers?

Yet do we hear anyone promoting a 'don't buy from spammers' message? Could it be that no-one wants to push this idea too hard in case their own - totally legit, real double opt-in I swear guv - marketing messages take collateral damage?

Guilty

Checking a domain name on a website is not like going into a restaurant and looking at a menu - there is no implicit presumption that you intend to use the service simply because you looked to see what was available.

I browse books on Amazon, check out the specs of computers I can't afford, and visit Asia Carrera's website. This does not indicate an intention to read, buy or sleep with the items in question.

What netsol is doing is observing an interest in a name, and then making sure that this name is available only from them - at an above market price. 'I have a little bit of an idea of what I am doing ..' So that would be the proverbial 'a little knowledge'?

look at it the other way around ..

I understand the computer misuse act as applying to access primarily to computer, not to bandwidth. If I access someone's network, I'm talking to their router, not to their computer.

So let's assume Mr Gormless has a wireless network inadvertently offering open access. Ms Nitwit has a computer set by default to access any wireless network that is offering. Without Mr G or MS N knowing it, their machines have formed a beautiful relationship. (And this happens quite a lot). However, it is Mr G who has accessed Ms N's computer. It was his router that first broadcast the invitation, and it was his router that talked to Ms N's computer. Even if it's just a MAC number, Mr G has been extracting potentially useful data from Ms N's machine.

And if Ms N sends her emails through Mr G's router, I could make an argument that Mr G is 'intercepting' her private communications. It would be a pretty dumb argument, but just as strong as the 'bandwidth stealing' case.

don't blame the government

Those who get their news from the Reg might not have noticed that in the wider world the public are (and have been for some time) pretty hysterical on the subject of child porn and terrorism. I looked recently at a BBC comments page on 'What should be done with paedophiles?' and the general opinion was that they should be starved, tortured, castrated and then left on some remote island to die of exposure.

When the public are in that mood, the politicos have to go some distance towards accommodating them or lose their jobs. Consequently, announcing that you've banned sites linking to child porn is (from their point of view) the least they can do. Yes, it's being done in the wrong way, and totally innocent websites are getting caught in the mess. But politicians are not famed for their techno-prowess, and a number of them are not too bright in the first place.

But leave it to Jo and Jolene Public to sort things outside the political process and expect a reign of terror. In short, I'd see in this less a government effort to impose creeping dictatorship and more a ham-handed effort to appease a somewhat rabid mob.

@ night troll

>>What! I'm innocent guv! I didn't do it.<<

Ah, but what if we can produce a taped 'social conversation' with your lawyer in which you admit that you did?

A terrorist is ...

... someone with different political/religious opinions to yourself who is prepared to kill innocent people to force his opinions on the remainder.

A freedom fighter is someone who shares your political/religious beliefs and is fighting an oppressive enemy no matter how much 'collateral' damage is involved.

And someone reading about it on the internet is neither.

someone to watch over me

"I am quite glad the police actually responded to the threat."

Oh, so are all of us, mate. The issue is what the cops did after they found that there was a perfectly innocent explanation for the misunderstanding. That was bloody well taking liberties in every sense of the phrase.

When this gets interesting ...

... is when someone investigating, or even complaining, about misbehaviour by an MP suddenly finds that they are hit by 'anti-terrorist' measures. If, oh, a home secretary for example, has some career-threatening issue to cover up, (which would never happen, would it?) said home secretary now has powers to make life very hard for said investigator.

Is taping an MPs conversations terrorism? Prolly will be soon.

culture not guns

I believe that till recently the Swiss were as well armed as the Americans - every male was in the army and kept a gun at home. However, gun crime and killings were and are not a feature of Swiss life. It's a cultural thing - the same reason perhaps that the Europeans can hold their drink while the Brits make tosspots of themselves.

It's not that something is available, its the culture and type of person who avails themselves of it.

his money ...

And of course, everyone here whingeing about the starving third world thinks carefully about whether the money for their latest tech toy could not be better spent on a few (hundred) bowls of rice in Laos or wherever.

How do we know that this guy did not know how the money for his plate was going to be spent? Then its the same as being asked 'Fancy giving 300k for a scheme to encourage young drivers to drive safely? Oh, and we'll give you this F1 plate in return.'

You guys seriously have a problem with that?

@luther blisset

"But people with less curiosity about the natural world but with the same values of self-adulation have already mapped that semiotic structure onto their own bodies"

I'm just guessing that your education was more sociological than scientific?

Your weltansanchauung discloses logical and verbal convolution and thereby a mode of cogiatation which is more phrenology-related than contemporary science-based, unless aforesaid science is contemporary with a pre-diluvian era. And the hippopotami wearing pink tutus in Disney's Fantasia also provide an equally striking and relevant metaphor, so this is worth including in the semantic and logical melange of mental regurgitation we are indulging in.

Aren't we clever?

@kirstian

Re your updates that won't install. Run sfcscan from the DOS prompt. (Remember to change to admin privileges first) Reboot, and try again.

.doc, docx, .wks wtf

I used to have a misquote from 'The Sixth Sense' on my office wall. It said 'I see dumb people all the time. Most don't even know they are dumb. But they all save their files in .doc format.'

Unless there is a particular reason for not doing so (e.g. extra-complex formatting), files should be saved in flexible, ultra-compatible .rtf. In a rational world this would be the default format for all documents. I've wasted hours because ignorant users save their letters in microsoft's various progs - works, word X- all with mutually incompatible default formats. I then have to translate these into .rtf, even though the original text was so basic it could easily have been saved as .txt in the first place.

It's a sad situation with Microsoft churning out generally unnecessary document formats on the one side, gullible and ignorant users on the other, and poor IT staff in between.

its a tool

wikipedia is a tool - no more. Know its limitations and its incredibly useful. I find information all the time on wikipedia, and use it in my work. Do I trust it? Not a bit. Every item I find on wikipedia I verify in a 'real' reference source. But - and this is the point - without wikipedia I'd never have known that information exists.

Like most users, I don't give a sh*t about the internal politics, and find the Reg's campaign against the site a bit bizarre, but the web would be a lot poorer without wikipedia. As someone previously remarked - wikipedia is about as trustworthy as what some person tells you in a bar, but I have often got good ideas and suggestions while having drinks with experts in my field.

Moral - wikipedia is great. It's just not an encyclopedia

its not the users ...

it's the sysadmins. (And I'm including those who set up the computer for dear old aunt Doris here) If you are going to allow some IT illiterate an account which allows installing .exe progs on the machine, you shouldn't have the job. Come on, ladies & gents. Even win2k had the facility of protecting users from themselves. I'm writing this on a Vista box (blush) and I make sure that even I have restricted user privileges for general use - why in this day and age are people setting up accounts for the IT incompetent any other way?

dangerous

I don't quite get how - as some people seem to think - that the cops might have suspected this guy was on drugs or had a 'dangerous needle' in his pocket. He was coming off an international flight. Generally speaking even a nail file isn't going to make it onto the plane. If someone in an international arrivals area is going to be automatically considered 'armed and dangerous' by the police, then, frankly anyone on the planet at any time should be so considered.

This is one of the side effects of 'airport security' - those charged with protecting us manage it to such good effect that people can get so angry and frustrated that they become a danger to themselves and others. I've been stuck in airport queues for literally hours, and made to stand through it all with a bad hip. Somehow those 'its for your own good and we apologize for the inconvenience' signs become less relevant after 60 min or so.

a long-term view

How about this idea - accept patents in the broadest sense possible while the law is in its present form? For example let a patent for 'a program that does stuff' be submitted to the EU patent office now.

In fifteen years time when the 'program that does stuff's' patent has expired, all conceivable future software programs will be covered by the prior art of an expired patent that was never enforced while it was valid.

Title

>>we listen to all you self appointed civil-rights watchdogs point fingers and blame as soon as you find out someone they had in custody kills people in a terrorist act.<<

There's a few drunken drivers doing time who were arrested more than once before they killed somebody. Fact is, if we are going to start locking people up for what we think they might do based on their past record, we are going to need an awful lot more prisons. Which brings us to ...

>>Just because you're not important enough to be told every little bit of the case file, not trustworthy enough to be allowed to see what evidence or methods of collection were used to bring these folks in, doesn't mean that there isn't a damn good reason to lock these people away.<<

Well, that's the point, isn't it? We don't know if there is a damn good reason if no-one is telling us. Remember weapons of mass destruction and forest gate? Damn good reasons that, er, weren't. Do you really think that the government or intelligence services never cock up? They are human, and being human, would certainly be tempted to bury their mistakes under the name of national security if they could.

That's why arrests and the reasons for them need to be scrutinized, particularly given the 'arrest anyone who looks like a threat' mentality of the police - who know they WILL be blamed when the next terrorist strike comes, despite the fact that this is almost impossible to prevent.

The only protection we have against the police doing their job too enthusiastically is an open and free process of government. Following any other course of action, I respectfully submit, requires a degree of innocent credulity which the British government just has not earned.

banned

Isn't it time that we were actually given a list of banned books, websites, and domestic cleaning materials with 'explosive potential' so no-one gets themselves into trouble accidentally? While they are at it, how about a list of expressions which might be seen as 'promoting terrorism'. How would a website commemorating the heroics, tactics, and weapons of the French Resistance be viewed?

It might also help if it is explained which of the above would get you prosecuted only if you are a Muslim.

the end of the world

/cynic mode on

I'm thinking of forming a political organization and calling it 'The end of the world party'. It's platform is that nothing is going to stop humans wrecking the plant because they are too greedy and irresponsible. So let's stop breeding, consume the rest of the world's resources in one huge blowout, and leave the planet with a billion years of so to come up with a better idea than humans.

After all, I've no kids, so why should I care? And after watching all the mummies every day taking their little darlings to school in their SUVs it's pretty evident they don't care either.

what the hell ... /leave cynic mode on

l am the law

During IT induction of new employees I would explain that Britain uses Magna Carta (the legal principle that one can do whatever is not forbidden). I explain that our IT uses Code Napoleon (whatever is not explicitly allowed is forbidden).

After that all it takes is a quick description of the different between a benevolent dictatorship (the status quo) and a malevolent dictatorship (when I get pissed off) and the groundwork for a happy relationship is set.

terrorist material

Fortunately the autumn nights are drawing in ... I've just used as fuel on my wood stove my personal collection of bomb-making instructions, details of how to ambush convoys, camoflage, and improvised explosive devices. These are, after all, documents that could have got me arrested for terrorism.

The organization which supplied me with these deadly items? um ... actually the British army, 20 years ago. Praise the lord (not allah!) that my name and appearance are not middle eastern. I'm slightly worried about my beard though ...

racist?

Is it some form of racist comment to say that journos who selectively quote in order to create a false impression are either intellectually or ethically challenged?

It is a scientific fact that male and female brains work differently - and it would be interesting to see what these differences might be (if any) among racial groups. As far as I can see, this was the gist of Watson's point.

let's see...

Barnes & Noble fought this in court, and their (presumably expensive) lawyers did not manage to unearth the prior art that some guy in New Zealand dug up in his spare time?

Either a.) The lawyers did find this info, which is why they were able to settle with Amazon to some extent

or b.) Barnes & Noble should be asking aforesaid lawyers some serious questions.

@ir

Just guessing here, starving student, but I assume your degree is not in a technology-based subject?

I cannot say ...

that I have received a section 49 order. But if you had asked me yesterday, the answer would have been 'no'.

Given that Brits have a built-in genius in reading the sub-context in any conversation, you can easily 'tell' something without doing so.

Incidentally, I am writing this while looking thoughtfully at a 1GB SD card. You can put a heck of a lot of illegal stuff on that. Given that its about twice the size of a thumbnail its easy enough to hide. Hell, stick it in a lump of beef and give it to the dog when the police come calling. Even if they find it, THEN you can discuss encryption.

Or, how about a wireless connection to an NDAS drive hidden in the attic? Or ...

Actually, this law is so impractical, that there is hardly any point to it. But add it to the removal of the right to remain silent, the DNA/fingerprint database, the monitoring of our telephone and internet communications, the survelliance of our bank records, the survelliance cameras on every streetcorner, the power to detain people indefinitely without charge ...

and suddenly 'protecting our children' becomes very important indeed. But the British people need to think very hard what the next generation needs protection from.