Posts by Stew Wilson

Skewing statistics: Booze, money and sex

Bad Science

The value in enjoyment argument only makes sense if both sides are free from coercion.

Addiction is coercion.

The rest of the article unravels rather neatly once this particular bit of preposterous reasoning is dealt with.

The state of desktop support

Remove all users from the picture

With a shotgun. And napalm.

Scotch lovers asked to cough up £10,000 per bottle

@Rasczak

I don't know, kids today...

El Reg writes something a little bit not serious, mebbe taking a bit of piss out of the Americans, you laugh. It's called a "Joke", son.

Oz cops turn to wardriving to fight Wi-Fi 'jackers

Ahh, the "anti-piracy" lobby...

This is nothing to do with security.

If you have an unsecured wireless network and don't feel like putting money into the hands of the wankers in the MPAA and RIAA, you can just state that someone else must have been using your connection (if you're not a complete moron, IP logs will be all the evidence they have).

If it's got WEP, even though WEP is as secure as a bundle of £20 notes with a "Please nick this" sign in the middle of Chav Central, you lose this defence; you didn't secure it *enough* so they're coming for you anyway.

US woman says Ubuntu can't access internet

@simon

If you claim to ever have seen Right-click->Repair work, then you're a liar. It only prolongs the torment by making lusers think that there's a one-click solution.

Then again, you're either a liar about Linux, or you've not looked at it at all in the last 10 years.

BNP races to get membership list off the net

Good to See

Good to see the BNP out in force in these 'ere comments.

It's out there now, the British Nazi Party has no hope of hiding it.

BNP leaked list claims first victims

Yet More Astroturfing by the BNP

Oh for fuck's sake.

Policemen and teachers need to be able to deal with people of all backgrounds and nationalities equally. Membership in the BNP is quite blatantly stating that you are incapable of doing that.

And to all the BNP shitbags climbing out of the woodwork with your thinly-veilled "I find them detestable, but..." tripe, I suggest ten seconds of doing some bloody research. You Nazi bastards.

Thus spake the Moderatrix

@Dave Harris

Guidance was given. More, the Moderatrix will not allow me to say.

Life a mess? The Moderatrix can help

The Rules

Every male knows the One Rule of the Gents:

Thou Shalt Not Speak To Another Man While You Both Are In The Bog.

For this is true and right and good. Most of the people I know who were brought up in civilized society, and even some Americans, know the rule.

A co worker doesn't. Upon seeing me engaged in the favoured pass-time of Dr. James Riddle he had the bare-faced cheek to address me by name! I didn't answer, but my observance of the rules didn't enlighten him. He continued, delving into some horribly boring technical support problem. I finished and brushed past the incompetent in a hurry to exit (men aware of the rules know better than to wash their hands), and he *carried on speaking*.

So, my question is thus: Just what revenge should I take for this gross breach of human decency?

Hollywood awarded $110m against TorrentSpy

Standards are Slippin

"Motion Picture <em>Association</em> of America"

What is this strange beast? Is it any relation to the foul tentacles that El Reg readers know as the Motion Picture Ass. of America? If so, why was it not named as such, and if not, why were we not warned?

No sense of humour? Avoid Bootnotes

Headline

New Reg readers in no-sense-of-humour shocker! Youtube videos of people *not having fun* within!

As the old saying goes, "Fuck'em if they can't take a joke."

Religious MPs get free vote on hybrid embryos

@ Richard Kay

"Where do you imagine current laws on murder and theft first come from anyway? Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal - both are from the 10 commandments.""

Don't talk such utter tripe.

The biblical "commandments" are nothing more than a simplified retelling of the more obvious parts of the Law Codes in use at the dawn of civilization, dressed up with a lot of threats to keep people worshipping a latecomer sky-beard even through the slow development of bicameral thinking (at which point Gods became an external construct, rather than a necessary face on human intuition). That they're a plagarism of the Code of Hammurabi (1760BC) would be good enough to disprove them being the first codified sets of laws against murder or theft, I can do you one better.

The first recorded laws against murder and theft (and even GBH and perjury) date back to the Code of Ur-Nammu, a Sumerian law tablet dating to between 2100BC and 2050BC. Hell, the Code of Ur-Nammu was a damn sight more advanced than the Babylonian (and later Abrahamic) idea of Lex Talionis (an eye for an eye)---bodily harm was repaid with monetary compensation, rather than mutilating the offender. That said, murder, theft, adultery, and rape were all punishable by death.

We've got records of the existence of the even *earlier* Code of Urukagina, though nobody's yet recovered the actual tablets. The bible's a latecomer, based on less-advanced Babylonian laws, and thus has no relevance.

Facts trump religious fairy-tales *once again*

Nokia N810 internet tablet

To all the iPhoneys

You really don't get it.

When mummy lets your shiny little toy talk to real Bluetooth peripherals (no HID is a dealbreaker), or lets you install real programs rather than just ones she's vetted (that she's going to allow *any day now*!) or even lets you write your own programs to do more than she wants to let you with it, we'll talk.

Until then, you have a shiny pebble. I have a portable computer running Linux, with a full word processor, real Bluetooth stack, and access to vi, perl, and any other tools I need. And when Nokia updates the OS, my computer isn't a brick because I've used it for something other than what Nokia intended.

Network Solutions games net domain biz

Worse than the article states

These domains don't show up on Whois until they're registered. NS have made it *easier* for front-runners. All they have to do is scrape Whois for domains registered with Network Solutions for four days, and then register those domains immediately as they expire.

Domain hijackers are going to love NS for this.

How HMRC gave away the UK's national identity

Title

> Apparently people will pay 30-200 USD for the details of a bank account,

> considerably more than for credit card details. If that is true, then someone

> somewhere is sitting on a potential 217,500,000 USD at the bottom end of the

> scale based on 7.25 million accounts. One way ticket to South America

> anyone?

One-way to Clackton-on-Sea more like.

I can grumble. I live in Blighty but get paid in the worthless Yanqui peso. Try using a real currency next time you want people to care.

B3ta served DMCA notice for Photoshop Prince challenge

Cry Havoc!

And let slip the magenta knobs of war!