
Timeless wisdom
The first two paragraphs of this story are timeless wisdom, worthy of printing, framing and placing in a prominent position near the workspace.
Thanks for making my day by proving that I'm not the only person who thinks this way!
314 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2007
"Hellqvist is apparently a blogger. That's good enough for us."
I am shocked, *SHOCKED* I tell you, that El Reg has sunk to the level of needing to justify its content in this way, and am deeply disappointed that its esteemed journalists are now pandering to the pedantic in this manner!
An immediate return to the previously high standards enjoyed by your organ should be a priority!
;)
And of course, a Senate position would allow St Julian to preach on any issue of his choice, and pronounce on those organisations, individuals or governments he dislikes for whatever reason, whilst protected by Parliamentary immunity from being either prosecuted or from having to provide actual evidence to back up his statements....
Coincidence? I think not.
So, Wikileaks have now sunk to the level of releasing information that wasn't obtained by someone with lawful access to it... meaning that this is not in fact a LEAK at all, but the publication of deliberately (and probably maliciously) stolen material. How the mighty have fallen - and no wonder the really big publications are apparently not interested in carrying it.
Otherwise:
"Stratfor’s informants are paid either through pre-paid credit cards or via Swiss bank accounts."
Well, how else would you recompense people who might find themselves jailed (or just 'disappeared') for talking to you? Briefcases full of banknotes?
"The aim of the fund was “to use [Stratfor’s] intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments” (such as, for example, government bonds)"
So like every other bond trader, they'd attempt to predict whether bonds would be a good investment; the only difference being the range of governmental sources available? This is not at all the same thing as insider trading, unless the documents contain far more than is indicated here.
So basically DDoS, having started out as something done by folk with a grudge against others (e.g. for comments on IRC or elsewhere), was then picked up and monetised by criminal elements, but has now come back to being a tool of choice for expressing grudges because the tools for doing it (and their ready availability) make it so much easier now.
Ultimately it's all going to encourage governments, ISPs and telcos to find ways to limit or at the very least better monitor what can be done online... thereby offending more people and making it more likely to continue... and thus we go round and round in circles.
Joy.
"...and nobody is out to scam you"
Back to your GCU please, Prague's taxi drivers are notorious across Europe for their flagrant scamming... and corruption is rampant at all levels of society. With six prime ministers in eight years, it's hardly surprising that nobody's got on top of this yet.
Granted the city has a very low violent crime rate, and is reasonably cheap by Western European standards, and the country has some of the best (and best priced) lagers around :-)
YES.
This is the sort of drive and determination needed if space exploration/exploitation is to move forward at more than a snail's pace.
All such projects are of course inherently dangerous - there will inevitably be setbacks and even deaths for the private sector, just as there have been for government agencies. When they happen, we must not let these be used as an excuse to stifle this kind of work.
This has been coming for a long time; I work with many academics and scientists, often on texts that are destined for Elsevier publications, and despite the perceived prestige of many of their titles, their business practices are indeed of serious concern to a great many professionals in a range of fields.
This is perhaps a market just waiting for a bold new entrant...
"Kader Arif, resigned... saying that the EU was trying to have as little public debate on ACTA as possible, and that right-wing groups were trying to ram it into law with no oversight."
As opposed to most things the EU does, where they have as little public debate as possible and the left wingers try to ram it into law with no oversight?
How shocking.
So given the moaning and wailing about "not enough kids doing science", why aren't assorted Ministries of Education encouraging more schools to run projects like this if the budget can be brought down so far?!
Heck, taking a few tin cans around your local shops would probably get most of that together, and it could be a group effort for a class or after-hours school club. Plan, divide up workload, do the calculations, impress the governors/sponsors with the pics/vids afterwards... WIN!
"Rigging the market (whichever type of market we are talking about) is not "civilised behaviour"."
If every company has to be completely paranoid about having its staff poached every time they work with another company, because of the contact between their staffs, they will stop doing so. This will stifle innovation, stifle collaboration, and prevent the spread of standards (because managers won't be willing to allow their staffs to work together on them).
Preventing *any* hiring of others' staff would indeed be a market fixing measure, and is something to stop dead in its tracks. But an agreement not to *ACTIVELY* headhunt others' employees simply makes it easier for companies to work together. That's why they have such agreements - not because they're ueber-capitalists out to grind down the working masses.
Agreeing not to actively poach (i.e. go after) your rivals' staff is a way to keep things civilised, and stop the relationship between companies nosediving into accusations of bad faith, bad behaviour, outright theft and suchlike.
I honestly cannot see how you can force a company to agree that it WILL seek to poach staff from other companies in its sphere.
But that's a very different thing to saying you will never hire any applicant who comes from a rival company, of course - that would be very underhanded and unfair on workers in the sector concerned.
So... By its own admission the US lost a spy drone over Iran.... but continues to make the Iranians out to be technologically incompetent despite their recognised successes in satellite launching, stem cell research etc etc.
Might be good enough for people who don't want to think, but it's not an attitude that will be very helpful going forwards.
Amid all the propaganda originating on both sides, it's easy to overlook the fact that the Iranians are actually pretty good at doing science, despite (or perhaps because of?) the restrictions placed upon the country.
This is, after all, only the 9th country to get a domestically-built satellite into orbit, makes its own bio-implants, is apparently pretty cued up on stem cell research etc etc etc.... before we consider the talents of their few remaining friends. And being within striking range of nuclear-armed Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and China, not to mention the USA, it's also no surprise that they have an interest in acquiring a nuclear deterrent of their own.
Underestimating one's (potential or real) enemies because of their perceived cultural, religious or technical inferiority is the classic route to cock-ups like losing this drone, and ultimately to messing up an asymmetric war - as the Israelis found when they wandered into Lebanon last time.
Iran's adversaries need to raise their game if they want to avoid being made to look like idiots again in future.
The allegedly Zeta armoured Mack dump truck known as “El Monstruo,” found in Tamaulipas state in June 2010, had four cell-signal boosters/repeaters mounted on the mirror brackets - possibly one for each of the four main cellular providers in Mexico. If this was a Zeta network, then, it seems to be a fairly young one...
"We're seeing increasingly wholesale monitoring of entire populations with no suspicion of wrongdoing – the data is being monitored and stored in the hope that it might one day be useful."
Well YES... what do they think GCHQ and the NRO have been doing all these years?
These are just new methods for the same old thing.
Sad but true.
To be fair, in 2005, the King said during his birthday address: ""Actually, I must also be criticized. I am not afraid if the criticism concerns what I do wrong, because then I know.... the King can do wrong.".
Equally, since the Thai Constitution doesn't provide the right for the royal family to defend themselves, they also cannot file charges on their own behalf - and in fact, no member of the Thai royal family has ever done so.
The King has also regularly pardoned those foreigners who have been convicted for lèse majesté - e.g. Oliver Jufer (sentenced March 2007, pardoned April 2007), Harry Nicolaides (Septemeber 2008),
The Thais are currently on the 17th version of their Constitution since 1932, but successive governments have declined to review the clause that says that "The King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action" and that " - including those who drew up the post-coup 2007 Constitution.
One reason for this is that the habit of believing in the divine ancestry of the monarch is quite hard to shake off. It's not just the lawyers and government who get upset by nasty comments about the monarchy - a lot of Thais-in-the-street do, too.
@havin_it:
30 St Mary Axe, known as 'The Gherkin' in London, the triangulated perimeter structure of which makes this 40-storey building sway (wind) resistant without any extra reinforcements - and which despite its overall curved shape, doesn't make extensive use of curved glass except at the cap. Small wonder an international survey of major architectural practices in 2006 rated it the "world's most admired new building".
But let's face it, space frame construction - which is what the new material's form seems to be most reminiscent of - was arrived at as early as 1900 by Alexander Graham Bell, before being thought up again by Buckminster Fuller in the 1950s... plenty of examples of that around, try Stansted Airport for a well-known example.
... would be managing the necessary database(s) of Internet users?
Surely not governments, who famously can't keep hold of data?
Or major corporations, who famously want it for their own commercial ends?
Or idealistic IT types, who have trouble even on agreeing what kind of domain suffixes should be allowed?
So... who?
And even if we can understand who, how would THEY be secured, why should we trust them, and how (and by whom) would they be selected?