Posts by Peter Hood

Brigitte Bardot demands flying donkey action

Indeed

and didn't you know that - according to their esteemed prime minister - the former Soviet Union is a multicultural paradise? They will not be very pleased with this racist's interventions I am sure, speciesist or not. ;-)

Reverse engineer extracts Skype crypto secret recipe

Alternatives

There are plenty of alternatives. I mostly prefer PC->PC contact in any case, but a brother is using them to maintain contact from Asia. He's become a little weary of security alerts from me I think, and I sometimes think that the average computer user has a similar attitude. Whenever software becomes popular (Skype, MS Office/Word) it will be the subject of attacks, for a cluster of obvious resons.

Spoof beer ad mocks England footie flops

Hunger

Overpaid 'professionals' living in luxury have no fighting urge. Time to start again, sack the team, keep the manager.

Windows 7 Backup gets users' backs up

Investment costs

@Fraser

Seems we are like minded. Every machine that I buy has more HDs, and I'm continually investing in optical/magnetic backup media, but your routine is slightly more secure than mine. A little organisation goes a long way, as long as there are continual reviews, rehearsals and upgrades. Oh what an expensive life it is.

Power surges

@Fraser

"If you 'backup' to a disk which stays attached to your machine, it's not a backup - fire, power surge and theives don't respect leaving your backup alone!"

This is indeed a good argument for a) UPS and b) backing up to optical discs, magnetic tape or using an external SSD/HD.

It may also be a good argument for off site storage.

Imaging tools

I don't backup my boot drive, but use imaging software. Following difficulties with the commercial imaging software I have - it naffs the partition slightly and Vista/7 will not tolerate it lightly - I'm looking at Drive Image XML and a couple of others.

Whatever, an image of a basic installation is a good thing. Backing up is problematic since files cannot be locked down, unless booting from a live linux/PE disc. I started doing things this way years back, simply because no MS tool has seemed even remotely adequate.

As a postscript I see there is a Drive Image XML recommendation in the responses, which nudges me closer to it.

Pakistani lawyer petitions for death of Mark Zuckerberg

Proof

"So all you can say is that there's no proof either way."

The burden of proof lies with the claimant. In addition, following thousands of years of no corroborating evidence, a variety of evidentiary and logical principles (parsimony, razor, falsification, verification) can easily be applied and material theories put in place of this gibberish supporting the notion that an immaterial entity exists and interacts with the material, in direct contradiction with the principle of the conservation of energy.

Finally, and from a somewhat more theological perspective, what psychopath rescues some victims of natural disasters but not others? What psychopath creates billions of entities, puts them in a world of pain, and then expects them to worship it?

This is risible, childish nonsnse.

Hmm

If anyone ever had any doubts about the madness of religion, here is the proof. These people ought to be locked away, since they are at risk of harming themselves or others. Bread and water for 30 years, not a day less. Or, as Duke Nukem would say whilst lobbing in a grenade, "Let god sort 'em out".

ISPs told to keep filesharer naughty list

Wifi security

ISTR reading reports that in Germany innocence is no excuse; all Wi-Fi traffic must be properly encrypted. I don't know if by that the legal system intends WPA (plus the little TKIP matter) not WEP, but I reckon the same will happen in the UK. IP numbers though. Hmm. Now for lots of technically minded people to explain the flaws in this, and in the latest technical developments in cracking WPA (not WPA2). Politicians and civil servants seem to have a touching faith in IT when it's being explained to them by someone with an agenda. Perhaps a night or two down the pub would be better than having an account with my local friendly ISP.

German net crippled by top level glitch

Oooh

Ööööh, I süppösë it dëpënds ön wëssër yöü wäntönly ümläüt or nöt. Zis pröövës wëssër yöü ärë än össi ödër ëiner wëssi.

I warned them about the problems of reintegration, but no, they would not listen to me. I'm off to Schweden now.

Secret forum reveals Oz firewall backroom dealing

Labour

They have a labour government. It has demonstrated that it is as clueless as ours. It is a fair bet that labour+stupidity is not a culturally relative phenomenon, but inbuilt.

Bribery Act passed by Parliament

Parliament too?

Does this mean no more cash for honours, cash for questions, lobbying for cash and other parliamentary behaviours I wonder. Personally I think that we should lock 'em in the dungeons and throw away the frigging keys, and I wonder how these corrupt creatures can even think of passing legislation, without first irrevocably committing themselves to Hara-Kiri

PayPal says sorry to Cryptome

Sorry is not enough

The sooner people realise this and stop treating it as a bank the better.

Neil Greatorex Tuesday 16th March 2010 15:39 GMT

That is one of the reasons why I've never used them. I've also resisted the temptation to use them because of the consistent trickle of troubling reports about their behaviour. It would seem, IMNSVHO, that these people are unreliable, capricious and put a brick wall in between their clients and their clients' money without due explanation, on an unpredictable basis. Cryptome have a far more valued presence online than paypal, and I can say this because I have, under another name, a connection with one of their stories. They are valued. Their honest presence online is worth more than all of the money held back by paypal, and that'll be quite a bit.

Their ruse to join the UK banking ombudsman system is, well, a ruse. Never use them. Ever.

As to the Cryptome situtation; paypal need to put a full apology on their web site, explaining how and why things came to this, and detailing how they propose to effect organisational change to prevent this sort of arbitrary decision from occurring again.

As a guess; following principles in organisational psychology, if you encounter a problem with an organisation, trace that individual's presence in the organisation back to the original hiring team. You will probably find a spider's web of similarly bad decisions/bad practise. Reversing the barrel of the gun and looking down the chain, someone in paypal is evidently free to make bad decisions, and the only way it will stop is by people like us beating the drum loudly.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

Got that paypal? I will never use you, and I will always point people to my growing store of URLs about you. That includes stuff from archive.org if material is removed from the web.

In byte space no one can hear you scream, right?

Never

Irrespective of whether pay pal is a bank or not - it is a financial institution of one sort or another, since it holds funds for clients, and pays them to people specified by its clients - I will never use them, not simply because of this specimen of their behaviour, but because of their behaviour over the years.

Though the net is less of a community than it was pre web it still works as a very effective weapon against those who squirt merde at its denizens.

Remember this pay pal. You will find that it will come to haunt you over the years.

Female porn director turned pol grabs Kent by the ballots

Australian sex party

Probably this is a good idea. Perhaps someone could field another la Cicciolina, and we really could do with copying the Australian 'sex party'. Labour - with its lies and other twisting of the statistical tail until it broke - has proved to be about as backward as Victorian England, with its dislike of faces on the fabric of chair covers; curve fitting or 'bending' is not uncommon in science, but Whacky Jacqui, her descendents and some of her colleagues (e.g. Harriet Harperson) have grabbed the scientific metre, put it across their scabrous knees, and have broken it. So please, more candidates from the sex industry to take on these vile, hypocritical, lying, venal, twisted throwbacks with their personalised view of how the world should be.

Cryptome: PayPal a 'liar, cheat and a thug'

Never

Before reading this post I had already decided that I would never use PayPal - there are alternatives of course - but the article has set my attitude in concrete. Having already read reports of accounts being inexplicably frozen I took the view that I would be unwise to put my cash in the hands of such people. I've never had a problem with my bank, nor seen reports of such problems with them, and cannot fathom why PayPal feel free to deviate from this.

Theirs is the loss, and I hope that these vile creeps are reading this.

Twitter bomb threat joke man faces possible jail sentence

Policing endangered by PC legislation

The current example of stupidity is reminiscent of the one below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/01/seismic_shock_when_blogging_me.html#P

Someone with a brain really ought to be given the responsibility for a) legislation and b) policing. Either that or a machine gun policy for firing idiots, especially corrupt idiot politicians.

PC BS

The police have to grow up and outgrow the nanny state, it won't persist beyond the next election with any luck. Whomsoever perpetrated this BS ought to be carpeted an disciplined by someone with more than half a brain. This story rates at least two snowballs:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8526256.stm

Pathetic

The myth of Britain's manufacturing decline

Indeed

Of course industrial output has hardly declined. Such is the shortage of working men and women that we even have a part time sheet metal worker as a junior member of the cabinet, who does some defence in his spare time. ;->

MoD does everything right for once in Xmas shocker

Decimated?

You say the Tornado force in Iraq WI was subjected to "decimation"; I'd like to see some data please. So far I have found out that a total of 7 British aircraft of all types were downed in the first Iraq war, so this claim would appear to be misinformation. One of the major points about cuts to already substantially damaged defence defence forces is that we are now wading deep into Chamberlain territory. Cutting back forces (particularly airfields) at the critical level already reached will be hard to offset when we need them in the future, and war is inevitable. Defence is not like exotic food that can be cut back in hard times, it is an investment. Without proper investment in the most vital of core state functions a nation can fall. It only needs an unexpected war, and we are caught in a difficult situation. It will happen again, just not as any of us think that it will and we therefore need a wide spread of preparedness, or investment.

Catholics slam PETA nude adopt-a-mutt poster

Faith vs puppiez

Well now, 'faiths' are nutty - face it, knowing is safer than believing, or we'd all go comet hunting - but Peta have proved themselves equally nutty... ...selling animal welfare with sex. Now wait a minute, I have a representative from the British government here, says she is sick and tired of being used as 'window dressing', name of Caroline Flint, with her friends Harman, Jowell et al... ...can they have a word about this page Zeee gurl?

What a fscked up world.

Paris, 'cos she was in a movie like this once.

MS honeypot research sheds light on brute-force hacks

Insecure facilities

Using insecure facilities to test passwords, WTH?

Do MS give a damn at all? I'd be a little more convinced if a) altering a password by adding one digit did not have such a significant effect on the test result (as already observed) and b) they cared enough to use https.

Disappointed, very, I am, Yoda.

MS store staff in spontaneous electric boogie

Puppiez

Americans are like puppies, particularly these children, who demonstrate quite clearly that the employment policies and personalities of CEOs and other senior personnel are shown in the quality and behaviour of their staff.

Paris, because she is, like, soooooo american.

Missing you already.

Latest Navy carrier madness: 'Sell 'em to India'

Attrition

Since WWII it's been a process of attrition; the forces have been used in pointless exercises, like Suez, Iraq; they have simultaneously been run down and under equipped, equipped with poor expensive equipment that either has to be modernised (e.g. the SA80, Nimrod) or replaced again (the radio system that was deployed in Afghanistan). (Let's note that the SA80 lacks the punch of the 7.62 FN FAL, which could knock a hole through brick walls, and the SA80 is proving a disappointment in Afghanistan) On the face of it your suggestion appears to make sense, but sense is not often found in politicians. It certainly will not be found in the current incumbents, whose knowledge of of the classic qualifications for citizenship does not seem to include 'military service', even though Woolas was actually taught this on his course. (I know, I read the same degree.)

Don't expect too much of the Tories either, though the luxury of not being under fire does give time to work in focus groups and think tanks.

FWIW Labour is a busted flush and probably ought to be consigned to the 3rd rank/naughty step, with the Liberals moving into opposition, under the clear understanding that they can only consider PI *after* a referendum, whose design and aims have been publicly debated, clearly understood and specified. Do not forget this. PI is dangerous in almost all of its forms. I'd say all of them, but one or two examples appear to work.

Kill Labour, save defence.

Beeb gets grief for Humpty Dumpty rewrite

Cannons

Yes, the original Humpty Dumpty rhyme was about a cannon:

http://www.rhymes.org.uk/humpty_dumpty.htm

That it is now something else does not mean that political correctness should be allowed to intervene. Life is tough, hard, it is about survival not some PC idiot's idea of cotton wool. Off with their bloody heads I say.

iRiver e-book reader spied online?

Pricing and author payments

Nigel, yes, yes, yes.

The sooner every one on the planet has one the better - and this will require a standard format to obviate many problems - it will save a lot of living wood. The downside is the tendency of publishers to emulate the stupidity and greed of the music industry. I'll except Naxos here.

Argumentum ad hominem

Tsk monkey boi, I am not a teacher; I am an ex soldier, and a scientist who also has a philosophy degree and cannot stand bravo sierra mixed in with p*ss poor attempts at flaming. You did not even properly address the points that I made, as I enumerated the errata in your argumenta. (That's a non latin speakers' pun for you), you merely resorted again to the argumentum ad hominem. As the military saying goes, 'bloody civvies'.

As for the mark for enthusiasm, it clearly went over your head, and 5 was being damned generous since enthusiasm only has significance in an argument (that's in the classic Greek sense) is that it acts as a motivational force. IOW, more light less heat, more cognition, less testosterone, think before you flame, use your sodding brain.

Bloody civvy.

Costs

So kind of you to allow that "people are entitled to your opinions", and to thereafter offer yours.

Your comment contains a non sequitur, one on which much of your argument is founded; you have to prove that the view that "digital formats mean 'free', or at a fraction of the cost" is prevalent and, moreover, the extent to which it is in percentage terms. Further, you necessarily have to show what this means in marketing terms to anyone offering a product of this nature. Would there be any point, for example, in persuading a market significantly (notice the empirical term here, it is placed not by coincidence but by design) populated by people "foaming at the mouth" over prices that they must pay them?

Moreover, comments about cost and such miss the point; if it is not cheaper than books it is not going to attract the purchasing power of many people; paying a large sum for the reader *and* high prices for books will result in people not buying them. Not buying the reader due to cost has damn all to do with piracy, it has to do with the cost of electronics at a time when consumers are cutting back their expenditures, when (e.g.) back to school shopping levels have dropped 'alarmingly'. Indeed, a time when people are supposedly not buying as many books as has been the case.

The cost of this product will come down, either because it is selling and the development costs are recovered, or because it is not selling and the manufacturers do not want to lose their costs. It certainly is the case that lazy people prefer to watch candy on their screens - not the HD candy they are unable to afford during a recession at a time when debts are at 1.4 trillion (20,000 per person in the country), and from which they probably would not benefit due to a mixture of eyesight problems and ownership of screens on which HD would not demonstrate any improvement.

We have to take the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. Failing to do so will result only in grief, especially at a time when most people have cut their spending habits by a considerable amount. This means that arguments to the effect that people will have to pay large sums are doomed to failure, and the product too. Where the market goes there goes the product, or it dies.

As far as your comments about blue ray are concerned, whether or not there are people "foaming at the mouth" about costs (and you have to prove your anecdotal experience can be generalised to the population as a whole by means of a soundly designed piece of empirical research, not your personal experience and use of florid language), it certainly is the case that people are not buying, isn't it? Perhaps that has something to do with our current fiscal difficulties, perhaps you could learn something from that, and thus unlearn your legislative temper.

Then there is your use of the straw man argument, namely comparing your interlocutor with a participant in the One show, when there is as yet no basis for such a comparison. It is in fact a non sequitur. You plucked it from nowhere, it has nothing to do with the data that have so far been presented.

As to your arguments about costs and payment of authors; few authors make more than a few coppers from their work. If you had not noticed, there is a tendency for some authors to be vastly rich. One author who writes badly about fairy tales is a billionaire, and it is obscene.

I've not even touched on the reduced costs of transporting digital files vs large clunky pieces of paper and card, the benefit to that thing of which we are a part, the environment, and the spin offs this would bring. I'll let you do that.

To review; because of your techniques in argument, which include non sequiturs, argumentum ad hominem and generalising from the particular (your personal anecdotal experience rather than extrapolating from soundly designed empirical research, by means of statistical tests that were selected during the design phase) most of what you argue falls to the ground. It seems more to be an exercise in puffing your chest out to tell us about your anecdotal experience.

So you *are* talking tosh. I don't think so, I know so. From the benefit of my position of having one arts degree and three science degrees (2 postgrad) I give you the mark of 5/10 for enthusiasm. Must try harder.

I expect you'll want to follow up but, as you do, just mouth the words one point four trillion pounds of debt, twenty thousand to each adult in the country. It may help you to understand why people are showing no interest in new market ventures.

Personally, I can't wait for a decently powered one with sufficient facilities to become available. Then I'll watch http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page for the conversions of old philosophical and scientific tracts. I won't watch for your comments. They'll be but culturally relative steam in the morning air.

Verizon chief exec pnked in privacy prank

A problem for everyone

For example, http://www.118800.co.uk/.

The CEO of Verizon deserves a lot more than that small kick to the shins, as do many other organisations and companies. Failure to encrypt, failure to password protect, exacerbated by storage loss, weak security and vetting systems, these things threaten us all more intimately and thoroughly than ever before.

It would seem that only militant behaviour will make these creeps respect our property, our data.

Oz comms minister cops Internet Villain jibe

Missing name

Stephen Timms is absent from this list. How disappointing.

iPhone owners are superior beings, says survey

Source material?

I look no further than the source of these data, AppleInsider. If the data had been generated by an external and impartial source I'd have a look at them. I'd be interested to know how the comparison samples were selected, and a vast number of other design variables.

As it is... ...I'll stick to being smart, not paying excessive, silly sums to slick marketing operations, and continue to spread my money amongst a variety of other things than the latest marketing version of 'digital watches' (http://www.hhgttgonline.com/).

Education, education, education

>I have actually two iphone's. This research is so funny. Us iPhone owners already knew this

I found myself wondering; does the research have anything to say about iPhone users and their use of the apostophe? Not that I am mistaking education for intelligence.....

Texas cop tasers gobby granny

Sod the granny?

I'm a biker too Alex, I've even had people admit they were putting my life at risk whilst working as a despatch rider, but that is another thing. Of course if you want to extrapolate from your experiences of life threatening circumstances and threaten the life of an elderly woman with an excess of electrochemical stimulation, thereby running the risk of stopping her heart, you go boy; to the USA, join up, knock yourself out.

If the copper had any sense he would not have invited the situation by placing himself on the white line. Had he made his approach more cautiously she would not have been in a position to make him feel disposed to use the taser, but you just can't get the staff these days, can you?

Poor body language, poor placement, poor voice modulation. Poor copper. Marks 1/10 for policing skills. Send him for CPD.

Uhuh

Brought to you by the very country that also delights in capital punishment (while smacking the PRC across the wrist), no matter how many times demonstrably innocent people are killed, and so many other bizarre phenomena. When Americans wonder why we regard them with such distaste I have a list of things to bring to the attention of their ritalin riddled 'consciousness'.

Beeb invites net comments from unconnected

The power of thought

Ideas, or opposition to them, die out with their holders. At some point the number of people who do not want to be connected will be minimal. Children will be indoctrinated from school onward and will be incredulous when asked if they could do without. As it is I cannot imagine life without a connection. At very least it's an academic and private research tool.

As for me, I'm using my telepathic powers to use someone's poorly encrypted wireless link. Fortunately the church police are not doing exorcisms today.

The Great Spotify Mystery

Splorf

There you go again, spoiling my fun. How long will my account live after this devastating deconstruction of them?

Phorm director advises UK.gov broadband minister

Gosh

Who'd have thought that another new Labour scandal would rear its head? After all, they have only had one or two bad moments in their history, and the Poulson scandal was 37 years ago. It would be unfair to point out that, like most mortals, an extended period at the trough leads to fat piggies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poulson

Retro piracy - Should the Royal Navy kick arse?

Littoral combat ships, more precise, less waste

Littoral combat ships with at least dual heli decks might be a better idea. Ocean is the biggest ship in the fleet, cumbersome, ill suited and a massive resource, suited to significant invading forces not hoovering up the odd pirate. Like cracking a walnut with a nuclear warhead.

Serial troll bitchslaps Reg hack

Faux gang bang?

How many voices were there in those mails? Perhaps the poster could quietly decide which of his alters is to respond before touching the keyboard, and thus not seem like a gang bang commentard.

BTW, I didn't read the article. Must go and see what jump started the neurones in this instance. Well done.

I'm very sorry, says gay health warning clergyman

Parity

It's good to see the good old C of E (aka Catholic lite) flex its muscles and demonstrate that it is every bit as hypocritical, ignorant and deserving of contempt as its siblings in the Abrahamic stable of religious stupidity.

Teaching scepticism from birth would be a smart move. Hobbling all mullahs and priests also. Stupid fsckers.

Malicious gossip could cost you your job

Quack, quack.

Taking any form of legal action against anyone,on the basis of malicious gossip, is wrong and lowers the legal bar to the level of Saem.

On the same level, 'facilitated communication' is as bogus as witchunting.

http://www.skepdic.com/facilcom.html

Jacobson, John W.; Mulick, James A.; Schwartz, Allen A. A history of facilitated communication: Science, pseudoscience, and antiscience science working group on facilitated communication. American Psychologist, 1995 Sep, v50 (n9):750-765.

Jacobson, John W.; Mulick, James A. Facilitated communication: Better education through applied ideology. Journal of Behavioral Education, 1994 Mar, v4 (n1):93-105.

Jacobson, John W.; Mulick, James A.; Schwartz, Allen A. If a tree falls in the woods . . . American Psychologist, 1996 Sep, v51 (n9):988-989.

Sailor, Wayne. Science, ideology, and facilitated communication. American Psychologist, 1996 Sep, v51 (n9):984-985.

Allen, Brad; Allen, Stephanie. Can the scientific method be applied to human interaction? American Psychologist, 1996 Sep, v51 (n9):986.

Fernald, Dodge. Tapping too softly. American Psychologist, 1996 Sep, v51 (n9):988.

Dillion, Kathleen M. Facilitated communication, autism, and ouija. (includes related articles) Skeptical Inquirer v17, n3 (Spring, 1993):281 (7 pages).

Abstract:

Facilitated communication is a treatment technique used for people with limited communication skills. It is widely used for autistic children and has reported miraculous cures. Other experts however, consider the technique as similar to the Ouija board because of common physical characteristics. Issues are raised about the facilitators, the technique of both the procedures and the influence of the operators. The messages obtained from both are also analyzed. The wrong use of facilitated communication could produce deleterious effects in some families.

(With thanks to J.M. Price, Ph.D.)

Gordon Brown claims a Brit invented the iPod

English-English.

>It's "Scots", not "Scotch". The former are a nation of people in Scotland. The

>latter is a famous drink from said nation. I will happily drink a Scotch,

>because I am a Scot. This is not hard to get right

*Wrong*, and YMLT read this:

http://www.tongs.org.uk/wiki.pl?AJP_Taylor

[Search key; Scotch]

I have the source material to hand, and my memory of it informed both my search and impulse to respond to your inaccurate remark.

In their native tongue the Scots can call themselves what the heck they like, but don't have rights on the English Queen's English.

HTH. HAND.

What's the best way to digitise VHS tapes?

What's the best way to digitise VHS tapes?

This is for audio cassettes, not VHS. To make the point this comment appears in the original Reg article "you can switch between regular, chrome-dioxide and metal tapes".

HTH

Plastic bag campaign falls apart at the seams

Silly twits

If supermarket plastic bags are outlawed then people like me will be forced to use thicker (one-time function specific) bin liners in their kitchen waste units (thereby choking up landfill even more and consuming more hydrocarbons in their manufacture), will be forced to use a variety of of purchased function specific items for storing bread and other foods in their freezers, wrapping things for transportation, and so on.

Yes, let's have some more unthought out, unresearched legislation, and let's have a good go at screwing up environment and humanoids within.

O' Labour, Labour, what has become of you? Will you have another 17 years in the wilderness?

UK.gov New Year resolution: must build nuke powerplants

March or die.

Ever since Fred Hoyle wrote 'Energy or Extinction' there has not been very much in the way of change. Sure, renewable sources of energy can be exploited more efficiently, but they are not a constant source of supply.

So, if we choose not to use nuclear energy we choose to be cold and quite possibly to die. From a scientific perspective, no amount of hopping, skipping, spinning or other politically correct tra-la-la will change the data. Those who say we can do without must by definition produce clear evidence/data to support their contentions, data that are publicly verifiable, replicable and beyond dispute.

I doubt this will happen, and expect to hear blaring noisy arguments, but these will not change the evidence. Not even my plans to as far as possible go off grid will change the facts, which include the massive demands humans make for energy, aside from their domestic use, through social services, emergency services, medical services, government departments, commerce, travel and so on. The 'carbon footprint' of a football match is an example of the contribution from entertainment.