Posts by Chris G 6754 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2007
I'm just about to purchase my first Android phone, having clung to my old indestructable clam shell for years.
I definitely will not be adding a profile to Google plus.
Just wiki'd it and immediately got the ad about the change terms and conditions.
I don't have any internet friends on Google, have never had the urge to plus much of anything other than the odd comment here, so bollocks to Google!
Hmm gives me an idea for my profile pic!
The one sure thing about time is the present, if you're experiencing it then you are probably alive.
The past depending on who recorded it and how far back it goes is variably dependable but the future does not yet exist and potentially may never exist.
It is reasonable to assume a prediction made, based on good facts and information about tomorrow or next week could well be accurate but the further into the future a prediction is the more unlikely it is to be accurate.
Seven years is a stab in the dark! In real and practicable terms there are so many possible alternative or sudden discoveries, disasters etc that the crap organisations like Gartner spout is meaningless.
The great thing about experts is ; before an event they will tell you precisely what is going to happen and when and why.
After it hasn't happened they will be able to tell you exactly what didn't happen, when it didn't happen and why!
Personally I think unless Omni Consumer Corp is about to take over the world that governments can't afford for large numbers of consumer/voters to be taken out of the loop either politically or economically
( Later I will tell you why they could afford it.)
In the earIy '80s I spent about six months helping a mate to lay or repair carpets at Bush House for the Beebs World Service offices and studios.
One of the lasting impressions was being told to stop working and keep quiet while a broadcast from the studio I was working in was sent out to somewhere like Chad or the upper Congo.
The subject being broadcast to Africa was not as I would have thought World News or something useful like how to make water safe to drink, it was Cordon Bleu cooking!
I thought at the time 'These idiots have no idea about their actual audience'.
I guess the same is still true!
Is it mandatory for Beeb management to have their collective heads up their collective arses before they can be appointed?
Perhaps they can divert some of their considerable gravy to the NHS and do a deal for corrective surgery (see above).
Maybe the deal they have with the UK, Singapore and the States is older than reported;
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/australian-spies-in-global-deal-to-tap-undersea-cables-20130828-2sr58.html
Oz is in a good position to tap a lot of info. They probably got a free version of Prism to play with.
Making the assumption that the spark jumped the two feet in the box, that implies a voltage of nearly two million volts at normal atmospheric pressure. The statement that metal melted also implies a fair amount of current too; how can it take six months to figure out a fuck up that big? It's nothing like feed back or stray current on a circuit board, the training a BT engineer gets would enable him to troubleshoot that.
Maybe it was Divine Lightning.
I wonder if they remembered to make a donation to the Church of Elohim?
Get these things small enough (macro molecular) and with swarming programs and dipole switching the bonds will be strong enough to form anything. You will be able to watch grey goo jump and form itself into a velociraptor.
At the moment I am stripping out the magnetron from my microwave and cobbling it together with a car battery and an invertor to make a semi portable EMP generator, not too sure it will work on these things but at least I can keep my coffee warm on the go.
I would have little problem with the NSA cracking Tor if it was to rid the world of the inevitable scum that are likely to be found on it. However, the interests of the NSA being what they are, the scum are probably safer from them than the rest of us.
Plus I can't get the niggling worry out of my mind that with all the potentially criminal abilities the security agencies have, they must be tempted to make use of things like Tor to enhance their ability to fund black ops without the need to account for the monies spent, after all, accountability is not amongst their strong points.
Mules were fundamental to Britains' conquest of the Indian sub-continent. The British were able to get their 'Screw Guns' ( a small field piece with two threaded parts to the barrel each carried by one mule as was the rest of it) into commanding positions and carry the day with deadly artillery fire. Also cheaper and easier to maintain than a helicopter gun ship as well as less radar signature.
In WWII the Germans and Soviets between them got through about 6 million horses and mules, towards the end they probably ate them.
But...
... what does it Transform into?
About 20 quid in scrap! or a lethal cloud of shrapnel with a direct hit.
You are absolutely right!
Modern armies using all the hi-tech equipment as they do currently, is fine against less well equipped opponents as in Iraq or Afghanistan but in an all out war against a well trained modern and similarly equipped opponent it would all be back down to 'The last five yards' .
The most valuable (other than weapons) of modern gear is communications, using which will get you killed when fighting an equivalent enemy, one small burst of transmission is enough to detect triangulate and then have something unpleasant dropped on you.
As to the video, I was impressed by the way the Wildcat moved, it was very smooth and very interesting technically but not like any cat I ever saw.
Cats epitomise smooth economic flowing motion.
Still I think if these things ever become fully autonomous we can send them to war.
While they are wiping each other out we can spend the time usefully figuring out how to defend against them when they decide humans are obsolete!
As citizens of our wonderful free consumerist society we should welcome the data gathering that the kindly folk at companies like Amazon, Google and Farcebook do, it helps us to make wise decisions on our purchases to improve the quality of our consumerist lives.
In addition, through the considerate back doors in their data stores these companies thoughtfully provide for our governments, we can be assured that odd behaviour or purchasing practices from certain aberrant individuals will be caught early enabling the authorities to remove these individuals and maintain a safe cleansed environment for us all.
From the first when I began to hear about 'The Cloud' it occurred to me that trusting any cloud provider was a little like trusting a bank not to make money with your deposits.
If you want your data kept truly private keep it off the internet if you have something to say but don't want any chance of it being overheard; don't say it.
In response to another part of the article about 'Made in Germany' I seem to remember not so long ago the German government trying to pass ever more legislation to snoop on it's own citizens along with the UK, France and probably most other European Nations in spite of the European privacy laws.
To paraphrase you; Anybody who believes they are safe from government snooping by staying out of the US is stupid.
"There's been a grinding down of people's privacy expectations in a systematic way as part of the corporate strategy, which I saw in Microsoft," he said. "As for the secret surveillance agenda, most people in the UK do not seem to care about it, because they lack accurate information in the media about what exactly is happening." ®
I went to the UK last week to visit my father who is 90 but a keen news watcher and always interested in politics.
When I spoke to him and one of his neighbours about the the NSA and GCHQ intrusion of privacy neither of them had heard anything about it on the news channels they watch. I don't get to see British TV so have no idea of what if any coverage is given to this. Is the whole of British TV under a D notice?
I do maintain contact with a couple of Express and Mail readers in the UK who are generally unbothered by anything like this as they are of the 'If your not doing anything wrong........................ ' camp.
Spanish friends here know absolutely nothing about anybody at all spying on them or anyone else and couldn't care less anyway.
Hell in a hand basket comes to mind!
That means they will be using obsolete equipment that has been in store for years (Acorns?)
Their trainers will be end of career types who often are not very interested and they will be meeting on a Wednesday night in the village hall.
For extra money they will get the odd bit of exciting weekend training in a cold damp mosquito infested wood somewhere in Britain.
I can see great things coming of this!
Why doesn't UKGov just repurpose some of the NSA employees at Bletchley, instead?
Pore:Direct one's attention on something, from Wordweb
Democracy in it's true form has never existed anywhere since the Greeks invented it ((if then), if anyone is so naive as to believe their government is completely open, honest and above board with them then they need a reality transplant. Governments do not keep their populations fully informed.
There is no way any government with any kind of security service from the police on up, will ever be able to not snoop on it's people.
Even if a government pulls the plug on things like Prism then the people who work for it and are charged with the safety of the country and it's people will find other ways to do it and maybe not tell the people and their government what they are doing.
All types of policeman are by nature suspicious and sneaky as those things are job requirements and given that their jobs as mentioned above are dependent on being seen to catch some baddies they must do something to make it appear so.
Now the tech is out there to be used it will be.
I wonder how many readers of these comments have IPs in Langley or Washington?
I Googled NSA Headquarters because I wasn't too sure where they might be, Tried twice, twice it timed out !!
Guess I'm definitely on a list now!
Is Farcebook really so naive that they think the ads you don't block are the ones you want to see?
By that token most blokes should be inundated with Victoria's secret ads or similar since most blokes are unlikely to block luscious ladies in their undies.
I also find it unlikely that anyone should block particular ads just because that subject matter is not interesting for them, as said above; I imagine it is a case of all or nothing for most people.
Personally I am not really aware of ads in general although this morning for the first time I can remember on El Reg I clicked on an ad for Via Embedded which strangely is the banner ad on this page at the moment.
Yesterday their technology was the subject of a conversation so the ad had the desired effect and made me click on it.
" You do not have to say or do anything but anything you do say or do or you have ever done or said, transmitted or received via any medium can and will be used against you (sometimes in a court of law)."
You read you new rights here first.
Given the vast warehousing government agencies must have and the ability to collate everything more efficiently, this is what we have to look forward to.
What I find fascinating through all of this is just how quiet the FBI and other agencies and governments are while we are all looking at the NSA.
Any success is good, so both companies did well.
Despite the massive redundancy and pre-flight preparation there is always the chance of a glitch and considering both of these vehicles are still in development they did well.
Although SpaceX has a bigger vehicle there is no reason why Cygnus should not be successful as well depending on the mission bigger is not always better when the main cost of the mission is getting mass up out of a gravity well.
Anything that helps to move humanity as a race into space gets my vote!
I thought the last paragraph in the article needed a slight edit:
"This is false and misleading ; According to NSA's independent Inspector General there have been only 12 SUBSTANTIATED cases of willful violations over 10 years, essentially one per year."
Now we know what he was actually saying!
Things have gone so far, there is little the NSA or any similar organisation can say that will be believed at face value.
If it was announced that NSA operatives cooked and ate fresh babies in the name of national security I would not be surprised, providing of course they were thought to be terrorist babies and of course since all babies share similarities ( they are small, smelly and noisy) those that are not actually terrorist babies are only collateral damage (snacks).
If you read Rogue State by William Blum it is clear that ANYTHING that is considered to be in the interests of the current ideal of National Security will be given at least a hearing and probably will be given a go!
There is always the thought that knowing inside information about some transactions may also be beneficial to Black Ops budgets.
Quite surprised GCHQ were a little cagey!
Cyclonic separation is certainly not new, Dyson just came up with the idea for using it as a domestic vacuum cleaner and the marketing to go with it.
There are patents going back decades to the thirties and beyond for cyclonic separation for saw mills and other dust and fluids applications
A friend of mine has a house, parts of which were built by arabic immigrants to Ibiza 400 years ago, in the grounds is a rainwater catchment area that has a channel taking the water to a cistern, just before the water goes down into the cistern there is a kink in the channel that creates a vortex in the flow so that leaves or any foreign bodies in the water are thrown to the edge where they are trapped.
Not quite a new technology.
Try to pay attention to what you are reading:-
"Even if it is commonplace for members of the general public to connect to a neighbour's unencrypted Wi-Fi network, members of the public do not typically mistakenly intercept, store, and decode data transmitted by other devices on the network," Judge Jay Bybee said.
So rather than just happening to record a busload of incidental data, Google decoded it.
Members of the public are not required by law to encrypt anything or secure their wi-fi but Google and others are required by law not to snoop and decode and record private information no matter how poor the security is.
Peeping Toms looking through uncurtained windows are breaking the law, so is Google.
With the NSA's drive to openess; they are releasing 'properly' classified files but obviously only those that they think can be explained away without too much damage to themselves. Which begs the question what is still lurking in the NSA vaults that they don't want to admit to?
I suspect that 'openess' is currently a euphemism for damage limitation at the NSA!
It is also significant that very little of the same kind of openess is occurring at GCHQ as they probably have nothing they would like to admit to, seeing as they have always spied on everyone and anyone as much as possible since the Nazi capitulation threatened to put them out of business.
I have just been reading The Hampstead Trash and can say as a former young anarchist and current old fuddy duddy that Mr Shawaddywoddykowski ( copied from the Hampstead Trash) should be proud of the achievement shown by the good English and writing style of the Bloggers from his school.
They have clearly received an education in English from somewhere are are using it to express themselves clearly and amusingly with satire ( a respected British tradition).
Rather than trying to censure and censor Kinnan Zaloom Mr Shawaddywoddykowski as an apparently passionate educator should have made efforts to educate Zaloom and his colleagues in what he percieves as correct behaviour and politics and not gone running off like a school snitch to the university and the police and acting the cunt!
The voting stats so far show a definite swing......
and a comment about the psychology of Reg commentards, incidentally I voted for Brastrap along with 202 other people with a penchant for juvenile humour, my excuse is being old enough to be approaching my second childhood ( not that I really need one).
Well at least the Beardy One and El Reg are doing something to keep interest in British Space pioneering, Though Branson is not quite a garden shed engineer he does wear the right kind of jumpers for it.
What is amazing is; at €190.000 a pop he has sold 625 tickets so he is keeping the dream of space flight alive.
I have watched that video twice and am fairly sure he didn't even bother to do up a seat belt, then flew around no hands and feet like a young spitfire pilot.
I would like to know how long ago that video was made?
Clearly he was no youngster but certainly full of life and a genuine British garden shed inventor!
RIP Ken the world will miss you!
It is truly amazing how social sciences studies just go round and round in circles trying to justify their jobs as 'scientists'.
So they have discovered that young people who interact socially with other young people are influenced by their peers?
I knew that when I was a young person a looong time ago and I'm not a social 'scientist'!
Perhaps they should get out a bit more and maybe talk to a few parents.
Do those who suggested cables even humorously; realise the moon orbits the Earth?
As it goes round and round it will wind itself in and collide with us!
Beaming Gigawatts of power back here is going to need more than a tinfoil hat to stop your brains frying, you'll have to have a mirror on your head and a Faraday suit.
Sign me up for a guided tour given by a 3 foot Grey but I would like to opt out of the probing please.
I really begin to wonder if the (Un)Civil Service wouldn't be better off (and cheaper for the Nation) if they all went back to department memos, books of guidelines and rubber stamps.
They could also use snailmail to inform everyone of the results of their claims too.
Maybe the old way would be cheaper and more efficient than constantly coming up with monlithic IT systems that no matter how well designed initially,only the designers can use.
The so called users seem to have no grasp of security if they can't lock it in a fire safe each night ( no password required) and a fire safe is much harder to leave behind on a bus or train than a CD in a carrier bag.
Having lived in California and had the dubious pleasure of tasting a Hershey Bar I realised why you always see American soldiers in films and on the News around the world giving them to the local children!
Also helps to explain the growth of terrorism,the effect it must have on any poor kid who has felt obliged to eat a whole Hershey in front of the large scary soldier that is democratising his country.
Given that Lohan is viewed almost exclusively by professional techies world wide of one kind or another many of whom probably have the power to recommend or purchase, I would have thought there would be a manufacturer out there who would jump at the chance to place a piece or two of their kit on this ground(air?)breaking project.
Class 2 BlueTooth has a range of 5-10 metres, if enough of these get into use it will be worth somebody's time to figure out a way of hacking and cloning these devices.
Unlike RFID smart cards and passports as mentioned above your biometrics are not renewable.
As with designing any product, looking at/for it's downsides and addressing those is as important as it's potential benefits, I'm sure MS could give some advice on that score.
Clearly, regardless of the technical issues which are not the concern of the cabinet, what the Government wants is an end to Customer Service. The customers being those that vote in and pay for the government.
If they really want to streamline and reduce costs how about:-
Closing down the NHS and removing all those money wasting social services along with pensions, then they can improve HMRC, preferably arm the enforcement office and just collect money.
That way they can save billions and not have to worry so much about how it is spent, after all the people don't need all of those services they just need to be told what to do.
To simplify identity everyone should have a coded chip embedded under the skin somewhere and a barcode tattooed on their forehead, then treat them like produce in a supermarket.
Which party is in has no effect on the fact that the population is only valuable when it is voting.
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