Posts by Ketlan 399 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jan 2008
'John Lyons, former crime reduction coordinator at the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, said the Get Safe Online project had done "little to change attitudes".'
That's because their emails were only sent out occasionally and contained such gems as warning you not to give your passwords to passing strangers and not giving your bank details to any stray Nigerian princesses.
'But we don't have monopoly capitalism: we have capitalism combined with free markets.'
That, frankly, is bollocks. What we have is the "appearance" of a free market, nothing more. Shop around a bit (particularly in utilities) and the monopolies become obvious. Wherever one shops for rail travel, gas, electricity or water supply, telephone lines, mobile phone deals and, to a large extent, access to the internet, costs to the consumer are remarkably similar over the whole country - manipulated that way in the same way that oil cartels back in the States used to co-operate and manipulate the price of oil so they all got to maximise their profits at the expense of the customers. Exploitative scum, the lot of them.
'Nonetheless, China's Education Ministry is poised to launch another Mandarin unification drive, with a spokeswoman saying it would be "focusing on the countryside and areas with ethnic minorities".'
No doubt concentrating on the Uighurs and their like who, despite there only being around eight million of them, continue to speak their own dialect, much to the fury of the Central Committee, who love homogeneity in all things - or at least among the masses.
'Of course, it stopped short of suggesting a ministerial reshuffle as such a recommendation is outside of its remit. But one can't help but think that Duncan Smith will be the latest and most high-profile victim of the Universal Credit catastrophe.'
Bliss if it happens but if it didn't after he was found to have blatantly lied about his educational attainments and repeatedly 'misled' the country over the costs of fraud within the benefits system, it's not likely to happen just because he's flushed a large amount of public money down the pan.
On the other hand, if he IS booted out, let's hope he takes that other fraud, Lord Freud, with him.
Nostalgia - dont'cha love it.
Worth remembering that sugar was rationed until 1957 and farthings we're still very much legal tender (and amazingly, there were sweets that could be bought for a farthing then).
An interesting time and made a lot more interesting by such things as Quatermass and the Goon Show.
Showing my age? Rubbish. :-)
"In Europe, people remember a time when you could be killed for having the wrong political beliefs or religion. The people who run Facebook and other big social media companies don't have that baggage, so privacy can be something of an abstract concept to them in a way it isn't in Germany, for instance, with memories of the Stazi and Nazis."
In many places, you can STILL be killed for having the wrong political beliefs or religion. A good enough reason on its own for having a bit of privacy when using the net in whatever form.
The comment about Facebook and privacy issues being a tad abstract compared to those who had clearer memories of the Nazis is strange, given that Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish. Not many people have a clearer memory of the Nazis than the average Jew. Not being snarky, by the way - I'm Jewish, too.
"Government sources reveal 'one dole to rule them all' in 'total disarray'"
Is anyone surprised? Anyone at all?
"Our second source warned that the Universal Credit was in such poor shape that it could cost Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith his job."
Good. Fucking good riddance.
Two slight inaccuracies. This isn't the first Bitcoin-related IPO. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/jul/01/bitcoin-virtual-fortune-crypto-currency for just one example. Also, Bitcoins today were worth nearly $85 this morning and are now $85.61, not $89.
That aside, trading in a virtual currency is no different from trading in a 'real' currency and there are fortunes to be made and lost, which means some chancers (or Winklevossi) will come along to hoover up the cash that some other sucker loses.
"Associations were examined using χ2 tests of independence with φ and Cramer's V as effect size measures and eta or Pearson's correlation. Group differences were tested using analysis of covariance, with partial η2 as effect size measure. A priori contrasts were tested using α = 0.01 to correct for multiple testing; for all other tests we used α = 0.05, two tailed."
Okay, I'm still interested but does someone want to explain what all that shit means?
'Eh, there are only so many characters in Toy Story, don't you know?'
Toy Story? Sorry, never seen it.
'I certainly don't agree with shooting the writers just because you don't like it as an OS release name.'
A figure of speech, nothing more. The choice of name is still tragic though.
'I think ketlan is under the mistaken impression that she was walking around with porwigle in her mouth, (like some sort of brooding cichlid), and that the bottle contained just water.'
Precisely. Right, and thank you, Danny14. Got it now.
I'm not always this dense you know. Only on Wednesdays (geddit).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
