Posts by Matthew Joyce 39 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
"If one club has ID scanning, it is, as the Home Office a matter of choice for individuals whether they visit that club or not."
Oh, lovely misprint! If only it were true - that the edicts of the Home Office club were truly a matter of choice for an individual. I for one, already choose not to visit...
Sarah, Jack et al:
- 'CVs' should not have an apostrophe - strictly speaking yes there are letters missing, but this does not cause the possible confusion which would necessitate a mark for clarification. In other words, it's obvious it's a plural.
I mean, I think it's allowed now to use one if you really think it's necessary, but it ain't proper, as far as I'm concerned.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Just to be pedantic for the hell of it, there are no letters considered as missing in the abbreviation CV. Otherwise, you'd have to use its correct plural form - curricula vitae - which would still have to be abbreviated as just CV. Without a letter S anywhere to be seen.
Finally, no comment would be complete without the obligatory attempt to make Sarah feel dribbled on, so should The Moderatrix ever feel the urge to visit Holland, I'll stand her an "I've Quit El Reg Hissy Fit" drink over here. The rest of you El Reg buggers are welcome too, but since you all still have your jobs, you can also pay for your own round.
All GPL restrictions are on a per-compiled code segment. All the FAT drivers are kernel modules, which can be discretely compiled. With correct use of initramfs, or even initrd it's never necessary to compile drivers directly into the kernel unless it's convenient. So all this burble about restricting code publishing is, in my opinion, absolute rubbish. They, or any other compay already operating under such deals, won't be able to publish changes only to code covered by the agreement, which is a barely noticeable amount and what MS've admitted to contesting so far has all been shown to be legacy, static, modular code. Nothing to need any changes there, so nothing to publish anyway. As for actually using FAT ... well that's already been well covered. Since all their updating is done via USB anyway, it's totally unnecessary ... but the fact that they *have* done it left them vulnerable to the case. Muppets. It's not as if Microsoft hadn't been attacking the camera manufacturers over FAT for long enough to work out what would happen eventually. Join the queue of licensees or fight; the same choice everyone else has had.
Every single one of these things already exists. Just not with VM's market share. Personally I'll just be curious to see whether they actually learn from what's currently available or whether they'll just repeat the last half-decade's learning curve.
Personally I have extreme problems with the fact that the relevant UK officials are willing to physically extradite the man despite him never having set foot out of the country at the time. I'd've asked for an online trial (with translation software) and to serve my time at home logged into a virtual jail cell ...
It also disturbs me there's been no evidence offered publically of the actual nature of the 'damages' beyond a convenient dollar figure - it's rather reminiscent of a filesharing case claiming equally massive 'damages' in lieu of something that didn't happen.
I had to reread the sentence twice more before my eyes stopped telling me that Cade wasn't talking about the 'music hall of farmer Dolly Parton'. I didn't know that buildings could join lobby groups (although it makes sense for buildings with lobbies) and I'd never heard that Ms Parton had become a farmer. Fortunately it turns out that I only either need a dyslexia test or new glasses.
"There should be only two kinds of countries in the world..."
So, everyone should be a little clone of your beliefs, should they? Perhaps you can demonstrate for us what you think a liberal democracy is? I've not seen one. While you're at it, perhaps you should tell me how I need to be thinking and acting?
"Then, there would be no wars..."
You're exactly the sort of bigoted moron I would declare war against. But then again, I have no place in your mythical world, so it's fortunate for me that I don't live there.
Why are there such lame-brained morons amongst you as to have been signing these things in the first place? We have had a succession of governments that ignore protests in excess of an extra million people physically crammed into Central London, because 'many more have agreed with us by not turning up' - the good old opt-out argument at its democratic finest and of course used in reverse by the backward G.W. 'if you're not with us you're against us' Bush. E-petitions are just a pathetic form of electronic willy-waving. You don't even get to play tag in the streets with the British Bulldogs.
If you want something done in parliament, become an MP. The odds of succeeding at something not too unreasonable are a lot better when you're one voice in under a thousand.
The Spam King and associates, perhaps? They already have the ability to get Linus' message, whatever it is, to the mailbox of millions... so:
Spammers are all Onanistic Onagers?
With the inverted icon to that suggested by Naich, because they're a bunch of backward onanists at best.
Well, at least I can take a tiny amount of comfort that John Colby's reference to Obama WTF is to a site not directly associated with him. I would be unimpressed to find that two sequential US presidents couldn't actually use language coherently. A passing grade can be achieved for the equally pithy but at least grammatically correct "What ARE the facts?" or "What're the facts" to keep the crap attempt at the WTF acronym alive.
Sticking to appalling acronymns using random letters, I personally would have seen it as Secure ideNtity Across boRders linKed - SNARK. However, when examined the actual system in use will undoubtedly be Borders Open for Obfuscation, Just Under Microsoft. A boojum if I ever saw one.
I lost pretty much any respect for the general body of UK law when they passed the pile of rubbish that makes possible the following conversation:
"Good morning, sir. I'm afraid we'd like you to accompany us to the station."
"Oh? Why, may I ask, officer?"
"Well, sir, you can *ask* - but we're not obliged to tell you. In fact, we're not obliged to have a reason. Suspicion is enough now - and I've been feeling suspicious ever since I started wondering about the freshness of my lunch."
"Ah. Well, in that case, happy as I am to help you, I'm afraid that I must decline, officer."
"In that case, sir, we shall simply have to arrest you and bring you anyway. Really, it's so much simpler if you just come along voluntarily."
"Sorry, officer, I'm afraid I'm just not feeling very cooperative towards this New Lawyer approach."
"Very well, sir. Handcuffs and into the back seat it is."
"Under what charge am I being detained, officer?"
"Today we've chosen 'suspicion of being a terrorist', sir. That's why all I need is to feel suspicious. And since you declined to come along without paperwork, I've been feeling much more suspicious about you."
"Tell me, officer, how long will it be before I can speak to a lawyer? To my wife? Or try to arrange to have someone else meet my children two hours from now?"
"Couldn't say, sir. It depends upon the mood of the officers at the station. Could be right away ... could be days. Or even weeks. I suppose it revolves around how cooperative you choose to become. Either way, you're a criminal now, because you've got an arrest warrant against you. Even if we let you go without further charges."
This latest lot of rubbish is just yet another way to get an actual prosecution they can take to court afterwards no matter what evidence fails to exist. The fact that it can be successfully argued that this law *can* prosecute anyone with a postcard of a typical Renaissance cherub is proof enough that it isn't competent to be used as toilet paper, while its proposers either aren't competent to hold so much as a conversation, or that their intent was to subvert the process of law in the first place.
I must remember to instruct a solicitor to answer each and every question that way should the current legal farce invent an excuse to "detain" me: "He notes your interest in these matters but does not think it appropriate to answer your questions. I am sorry I cannot be more helpful."
"... said that the possible violation of <legal barrier not yet buried> would only be authorised by the police if they thought they had excellent reason."
A pity it wasn't attributable to one of the ministers. It perfectly sums up this pile of self-adulation in government- and police- related legislation.
Suggesting the bleedin' obvious is one thing, Mr Sutton - given that the council are already using it and Mr Bayly undoubtedly has some clue or he'd not be dishing the sarcasm. But really, anyone reading this organ who doesn't already know what NAT is isn't going to be impressed by a fiddler link. Or be unable to type NAT into the search engine of their choice instead of being guided to your choice of pre-digested pap. Stop boring me into flame in between compiler-runs.
Still not the point - they advertise this as a secure device per se. If no-one can reach your 'network' - i.e. your own supposedly isolated bubble of power lines - then you don't need the security; you already have isolation security. If you do need it then a device which has no concept of key privacy is no security at all. Changing keys is not the issue; exchanging keys with any 'suitable' device is the issue.
A device that negotiates with *every* device it can reach when you 'press the button'? That can only manage to be secure if nobody else is around whenever you set/reset the little darlings. All your 'snoopy neighbour' needs to do is buy one, plug it in and wait. If they can hear your traffic, your marvellous little bottle of snake-oil will just as happily securely comminucate with their listening device as well as your own.
I remember interviewing there many years ago ... back in the era when UCAS entries were in preferential order on the form. The usual three interviews, and each one acted mightily offended by the fact that I'd placed them second. And then even more offended when I pointed out that all my research showed that their BSc appeared in all respects to be inferior for me to the well-sponsored MEng I'd placed above their fairly new and poorly-written-up course. Their grade offer turned out to be inferior, too.
The reason that the pedestrian still has total right of way - note that please, all the twats who are going on about sprogs walking in the road - on any road type short of a dual carriageway is really simple: You're driving an armoured, ton-weight tank, and they're not. Grow up and look to your own responsibilities. Jaywalking is an American law. We don't have it.
"A policeman advised me to curb my speed. I did as they suggested but now I'm running over pedestrians all the time."
A colleague of my brother-in-law (who has been for 30-odd years a commercial pilot) in the heady days of 2002 made an incautious choice of comments to a checkpoint guard. He had some pointlessly forbidden item - a nail file, or razor, or some such - while passing through the pilot's check, and made the mistake of arguing with the jobsworth in question by pointing out that if he was interested in terrorism, not only did the pilot's cabin contain a large fire axe but that, as the pilot, he didn't need sharp objects to crash the plane. He was arrested and sacked without any form of appeal.
The problem here is that the application he's espousing is not just asking people to give up their own personal information. It's primarily asking them to give away other people's. It seems to be an endemic and rather unpleasant feature of the way facebook has been constructed, claiming that someone known to you has signed you up for a given piece of garbage.
Snickering and sniggering are two different words describing two different, if related, sounds. None of which is in the least bit relevant; it's the fact that the obvious El Reg goldmine has gone begging throughout all these comments. Surely the quote should not have been:
... there were several snickers from the ...
but
... there was tittering from the ...
Time perhaps to begin creating some RIAA honey-trap machines. Logged, audited and sharing 'files' between one another with RIAA-provocative names. Come the court cases, there'll be a few short, sharp legal shocks about evidentiary procedure. Racketeering laws should enable the countersuit to better than match the intended RIAA gouging.
That way they might at least have to do some work to prove future court cases contain someone they can actually label a 'criminal' rather than just 'some bod off the street wot used P2P, must be guilty, eh?'.
Sorry to burst the Blockbuster/library bubble, but they are in fact licensed to lend out the media. They pay for this ability. If you lend a CD to a friend, you're using the fair-use area of copyright law to do so. If you've made a copy to play in order to preserve the disc from damage, you're again attempting to employ fair-use, but in an area some copyright holders don't seem to believe in. If you do both at the same time, you've contravened any option of fair use; the original item can't be played in two places at once except by broadcast, which you also aren't licensed for with a standard purchase.
That's the area this case was won on; the allegedly available media could only be copied by third parties, not borrowed, and the third-party copying is not licensed. Making the things available for (only) copying is an identical fault. However, I do feel that this needed absolutely to be proved for each song brought to trial - that they had obtained from that system the song in question. As Chris has already said, names are meaningless. Proven content is the only thing they should be able to mount an attack with. A serious band fanatic may own or be able to find dozens of different recordings of a single song, which can all have different rights attached to them. Montages, parodies, samples, and so on all even have different applicable laws ... including the 'creation' of a 'new', self-copyrighted work made up almost exclusively of bits of others' copyrighted works with a bit of allegedly creative cutting and pasting applied. Chart songs have been sold in this way. Without knowing the content, it is simply not possible to say what rights have been abrogated.
The case wasn't tried on her *claiming* to have (copyrighted) works for download, it was tried on the premise that she *did* have them. Yet this doesn't seem to have been shown in the court. Without proven content this case has to be viewed as a joke verdict delivered on hearsay only. Either that or everything the Sunday Sport has ever printed must in fact be true, because an RIAA lawyer can apparently stand up in court with a page thereof to be used as an unimpeachable witness.
Oh, yes. And do you have the faintest idea how much power loss would be garnered trying to transmit power from across the length of the country? There's a damn good reason why low-power generators are only useful locally, and your green hat is considerably less efficient as an insulator than a few hundred miles of wire. Only give lectures in a subject you have knowledge of, if you please. Unless of course you're going to tell me you've invented a stable, ductile, room-temperature superconductor. In which case I will be the first to applaud.
Ah, the modern software industry approach. "Our terms and conditions are on this webpage, which may or may not exist and that we can change at any time and that you have pre-agreed to any changes we make unless you actually catch us doing it in time and even then only if you can succeed in a long-drawn-out legal complaint?"
Good grief. A techie's news site and here you are, a poster so technically backward you couldn't even ask a search engine for an explanation of 'popping clogs', but felt impelled to blither about your incompetence by posting? Research sharpens the mind, oh anonymous one; take the blunted object you currently possess and go forth... While you're at it, read Monty Python's 'Parrot Sketch' so that you'll have passing familiarity with some other euphemisms for dying quite likely to be used here.
To use another phrase with which you may need to look up, I thank you for laying yourself open to the sharpening of my claws.
Voshkin: "Even torturing a sister, of a successful suicide bomber may bring intelligence about the people who talked him into it." ... "Clear, irrefutable evidence is needed that the person is so beyond the law that the law no longer applies to that person."
Even if I accepted your latter position, which I don't, the former cannot be reconciled with it. The sister, on the off-chance that she knows something, can be tortured for the bomber's actions by your logic? If you truly believe that then you really can't be in a position to argue that the bomber has done anything wrong, since they attacked those who they feel have committed just as grievious a wrong by cultural definition ... or some of their relatives ... of some remote degree.
Do I get to judge that someone's actions have placed them outside the law? Do you? The law currently does not give that ability to anyone. Even high treason is punished within the law.
Goodair: "... Gus Grisson, Roger Chaffee and Ed White ..."
Which part of "1969 - 72 Moon landings" were you unable to read? The three men in question died in 1967 firmly attached to this planet. If you must start whining at posts rather than discussing the article, please have the courtesy to read the posts rather than making them up. Especially such short posts.
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