Posts by Martin Nicholls

Software outfit keeps Vulcan airborne

Lets hope...

Will be at Waddington this weekend (weather permitting), will be great to see it flying if it's given permission.

OpenSolaris still has some Linux copying to do

Easy answer...

Ever heard of Nexenta? GNU userland marinated in an OpenSolaris kernel, with a side order of Ubuntu repos.

Might be the answer that people are looking for. We're seriously considering testing it with a view to rolling it out on at least a percentage of our boxen.

Virgin Media collects customer banking details on CD, then loses it

Conspiricy theories..

"The Wayne Madsen Report in the USA, available only on subscription, is compiling a list of all the instances of lost data, CDs and laptops in the US. The problem there is huge, with thousands of people having their data taken. Madsen suggests that this is a government scheme to populate their database of citizens surreptitiously. Looks as if the same method is being used here in the UK."

Erm?

"Madsen is a member of the 9/11 Truth Movement in that he subscribes to the opinion that elements within the Bush administration either let the September 11 attacks happen, or made them happen on purpose." (wikipedia)

Crazy wackjob consipiricy theorists are /not/ reliable sources for anything.

The idea that all of a sudden loosing 3k random customer's data here, 10k there and 300 somewhere else is a sensible way of getting data on 66 million people in the UK into a database when they could just ask the IR, the NHS, the DSA or just about any other government agency with useful levels of coverage for the same data and more, or even take it from them, is completely absurd.

This kind of loss has always happened, I've seen it before and they just sit on the information or at best contact the people involved. These days they publicise it or somebody leaks it out.

E-food crisis abates as Sainsbury's online sparks into life

Prices

"I put in my first Sainsburys' online order last week. It did turn up (prior to the server crash) - but a goodly number of the prices were wrong. They overcharged to the tune of nearly 10%."

Heh interesting, I walked around an old-school Sainsbury's the other day (usually order online, though I had no idea they were down) and noticed the price of just about everything had gone up - wonder if that's related.

T5 Transformers t-shirt bust: Shock snap

Oops.

Why would al-Qaeda be flying plutonium to Iran?

Bournemouth floats UK's first 100Mbps sewer broadband network

Beh..

Don't think anymore fibre in shitter jokes are needed, they've all been done.

Btw if anybody thinks this service is going to be cheap - you're off your rocker. Well, either you are or h2o are.

Virgin Media in talks to trial three strikes regime against P2P

Uhm

"I didn't see anything about virgin actually inspecting traffic though" - no because that r illegal, they are not law enforcement and they don't have a warrant. Falls right smack-bang in the middle of a bunch of very strongly-worded laws.

"Cough *Peerguardian* cough cough"

*cough* SSH Tunnel *cough*

"That resulted in 4 disconnections...and that pushed the costs too high? What was the budget, one packet of first class stamps and a postman pat writing set?" - heh <3

"Bugger I hear that the BPI have asked the Post Office to scan all mail for DVD content – now your friendly postman will know what sort of porn you are interested in." - that's a good way for the Post Office to get themselves in all kinds of legal hot water with the govt sending all those bank details around. What exactly is it that they do one they find this perfectly legal media? And worse what happens when all the data is on their is encrypted, not in the clear like how our retarded govt send data?

"If they argue that they aren't in breach of copyright because they have the permission of the rights holder, they are admitting that anyone downloading the file from them is also legal as it has been legally made available by the rigths holder. As they will be offering the file to all of the IP addresses that they collect (they'll want to make sure that they can prove the file is being downloaded), there could be an embarrassing loophole in this." - Arguably, that would possibly be my defence in court, they gave up rights to the material the second they transferred a block of data to another peer. But, when you don't take people to court and you get the ISP to do your dirty work for you, and that's the real problem - there's no real legal process when your ISP dumps you, it's also the problem - by not taking people to court, there's so many ISPs around these days it takes minutes to sign up with another one.

Somebody was talking about privacy and the human rights act and somebody else mentioned that using encrypted headers would cure what ails you. The problem here is that they are not intercepting your data, they are acting as a peer in the swarm, when you connect to a torrent swarm for example, you connect from your IP to other peers & seeds, it's actually solid evidence and not illegal - remember you connected to them, it's like arguing privacy for something you did in a city street, you gave up that right to privacy the second you left your home and other people could see you in plain sight.

But the real issue here is simple, and some have touched on it when discussing downloading of Lost episodes, due to unavailability. All we want is our media in the format we want it, what we want is to be able to download our music, movies and TV shows rather than being forced to watch it at an insanely scheduled time, in a format of our choosing (if I want a 1080p movie why does it have to be on BLU-RAY and not x264 @ 8.5GB for example?), if I want music why most I install the iTunes malware on my PC? If I want to watch a US TV show why must I wait 6 months, when all my online 'friends' are discussing what's happening in the next series, then be forced to watch it when some scheduler thinks I should in a format I don't want, then be forced to pay a license fee for TV when I should be able to just download it as a video, as much liable to TV licensing as watching a

Youtube video. Why should I be forced to pay for a broadcast network I have no interest in using, and channels I have no interest in watching? Why can't I watch live streams of the football matches I want to watch, at a bandwidth I want via a medium of my choice (the internet) and not have to pay for matches I'm not interested in, and why must I also pay for all those other channels with nothing but crap on?

Solve all the above and then we can talk about piracy and illegal downloading.

El Reg decimates English language

English - A Decimated Language?

Hate it when people get all pissy about how English is going to hell because blah blah.

Anybody that knows anything about anything knows full well that the language was intended since birth to evolve such that it's always relevant. Yes we really care about Roman armies, seriously, because that has plenty of modern relevance.

This guy is probably one of the people that bitched/winged when the OED removed hyphenation from a bunch of words. These people always try to show off their linguistic skills by complaining about word usage - even though the fact they are complaining about changes in the OED clearly shows that they don't have the slightest clue what they are talking about.

The language isn't being decimated by anybody other than the people that think they know better than a dictionary.

The sooner these people become extinct the better.

Hilton icon because even she probably knows the true meaning of decimated.

Smith plugs into wired police plans

judges actually see what happens on the street...

"cops with cameras sounds good too. About time judges actually see what happens on the street after closing time."

Funny that, not long back they got a chance to do that round here.

CCTV caught an interchange between some police and a guy at the door of a bar.

Next thing the judge launches into a scathing attack on the behaviour of the police.

The deny doing anything wrong (naturally).

Funnily enough though I've had some good experiences with the police, but some of them can be nasty vindictive bastards and the entire force and unions will back them up all the way and naturally you're screwed.

</slightly offtopic>

WARF raiders slap Intel with Core patent suit

Er, Non-profit?

"The University of Wisconsin is a *publicly funded* organization. As such, they should have no right to any of the privileges of a private citizen or corporation such as intellectual property. After all, if the public funded the research (even if only in part), the results of that research should be available for the general public to use free and clear."

No, their purpose is to make money for the university to teach stuff not a profit-making exercise. The patents organisations like this hold make the University better at it does not pay for new Ferraris.