Posts by Andrew Bright

California is America's Cyberia

So they kill penguins too do they?

Typical. Bloody Californians have a lot to answer for.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/23/google_penguins/

Yahoo! China! sued! in! US!

And of course our share holders insist we exploit every market possible

Absolutely. I sympathise 100% with Yahoo, after all it's just a few guys trying to make a little extra cash to help pay the rent.

If they didn't operate in China, who knows what they'd do - probably all lose their homes, have to prostitute their wives and sell their children to Thailand.

Not to mention the poor, unfortunate and underprivileged shareholders whose very livelihoods are tied to Yahoo's success overseas.

And of course we have the issue of discrimination. Despots, dictators and totalitarian regimes have the right to search for porn too. If we discriminated against these minorities where would it stop?

So while it may seem the obvious answer is to simply leave, you have to remember all the good they're doing by staying put. After all they're helping to spread the GW brand of democracy (every telecommunications and internet corporate should do it's duty and help spy and detain those making excessive use of their human rights - it's sort of like broadband downloads - those that overuse their rights will have them throttled back).

What would the people of China do if decent American companies like Yahoo didn't exploit their market? In the war on communism there has to be some casualties, and unfortunately the odd bit of friendly fire.

So keep up the good work Yahoo, we understand your situation and sympathise with the difficult position you're put in when you have to balance a person's human rights against the overwhelming need to extract as much profit as you can for the sake of your families lifestyles and your shareholders dividends.

Spanish flag flies over Gibraltar

Why don't we

just give them Scotland in return for an extended lease..

Asbo-breach OAP jailed

In my day

All old people acted this way, it was expected of them.. we had a name for it.. oh yes Teacher Training College.

ahh the good ol' days.. the smell of the clean cut grass on a summer day, the thwunk of the cricket bat on the school field, the thwack of a teacher's walking stick on teenage witches and their prostitute mothers..

ISP ejects whistle-blowing student

Someone smack this muppet hard

"I knew that some companies treated security researchers very badly but I had no idea companies like that included major ISPs," he says

Let me see, you didn't realise that publishing the exact method, along with the necessary passwords, to attack their network on a public forum would result in you being treated "badly".

In my mind they not only did they exercise considerable restraint by not prosecuting you, but also you're a bit of a muppet if you believe your actions are in any way related to the security industry.. unless by security researcher you mean someone who buggers up other people's systems.

Security researchers are in the business to make things more safe for everyone, not to undermine everyone's security.

Hopefully other ISPs will take note of your name and blacklist it.

I certainly wouldn't want to share an ISP with someone who publishes the exact details on how to hack into the cable modems on my network, and I'm pretty sure that this ISP's customers are less than impressed with your stupidity if they've heard what you've done.

Anteater kills zookeeper

Will she be awarded

A Steve Irwin medal of valour?

Sorry..

DXG dishes out 5Mp camcorder with games

Memory Card Camcorders

Are pretty common in the US, I suppose this must be true of Britain too - but this is a curious mixture, although a tad expensive.

But you get what you pay for - and they are usually priced well below $100 or 50 quid, so the quality is often pretty bad.

Also you nearly always need to buy an SD card, if there is one provided or it has on-board memory it usually isn't much - certainly not enough to record more than a few minutes of video in low resolutions.

But the specs seem good, and it would be interesting to see if it really can produce frame rates of 30fps at 640 x 480.

As for recording TV and video - that's not particularly new on camcorders, but recording composite TV signals to SD is. I believe the only similar device is something that can do the same for the memory stick (but that's all it can do - it's not a camcorder).

P2P pinball lawyers say ignorance is no defence

Just say no

Just write back and say no, it is not my responsibility to prevent other people from breaking the law.

You are no more liable for failing to prevent criminals breaking into your computer than you are if they break into your house.

Also you don't own an internet connection, you rent a connection, and that connection is frequently changed by the owners, your ISP.

Even if you allow that you did at some point use the IP address they claim you "owned" - the ease of falsifying such data makes it impossible to claim with any certainty that you were involved in file sharing.

As these lawyers appear to have no qualms in breaking extortion laws, you can hardly trust their "evidence" as being anything other than manufactured in order to intimidate you into giving them money.

Inform them that extortion is a crime, and you will be reporting their crime to the police - and actually do report their crime.

Making up laws and threatening you with them is not legal, particularly when these threats are accompanied by demands for payment.

Nothing will come of it, no one will be charged, but if you do end up in court you will be able to say you tried to protect yourself from the unlawful activities of their lawyers.

You can demand that the letters you've sent are read as part of your defense, hopefully convincing the court their belief in magic IP addresses, and the promise from a lawyer that you did it, should no longer be regarded as evidence of wrong doing.

Blu-Ray disks hacked by sweet talking teenagers

Please

keep posting Political diatribe..

and yes we hate GW because we didn't think returning respectability to the White House involved lying, tearing up the Constitution, starting wars for no apparent reason whatsoever, using terrorist tragedies to enrich his friends and family, lying again, watching a city sink then telling us what a great job his friend from horse judging committee is doing to fix it all, spying on Americans, torturing people because they might be terrorists, revoking the right to challenge imprisonment, spying on Europeans, lying some more, firing attorney generals because they aren't focusing on prosecuting left wing opponents, breaking international treaties because they don't fit in with his fanatical religious beliefs, revealing the identity of a CIA agent in charge of tracking loose nukes (and consequently every agent working with her) because he's pissed her husband found and then told the truth, thinks that red phone in his office connects him to God, nearly died of eating snacks and believes that history will vindicate all his crimes - including treason.. oh yes and LYING TO CONGRESS which apparently is why all you righties hate Bill C.

Grange Hill firm's website exposed thousands of CVs

This would never happen

If Tucker was still there..

'Cops help kill 32 Students', claims furious blogger

err what?

Good ol' Nazi Radio and The Wingnuts (right wing nutters) have already begun their assault on the left, suggesting that

1/If every student had a gun, no one would ever get killed in a school or university - after all the sort of people that do this are obviously rational and would never shoot anyone if they knew their victims were armed.

2/We arm all the teachers, and force them to pledge to protecting their students with their lives. Apparently this is more important than knowing stuff, after all this is America and we're suspicious of anyone that knows how to read. If the teacher was armed this would never happen because his gun would protect him from being shot first, without warning - and help matters by allowing students to scrabble around in a panic looking for it.

3/Protect the Constitution at all costs - except for freedom of speech, protection from illegal search and seizures, cruel and unreasonable punishment... ok, cross through line one and tear off after line 2, keep the rest.

4/Make sure everyone knows that only criminals shoot people. Law abiding gun owners don't kill anyone except by accident on hunting trips.

5/Blame Hilary Clinton.

6/Blame Bill Clinton.

7/Blame the University and the victims for not voting correctly last November. If Republicans had control of Congress this would never happen, after all Republican controlled government spends all its time trying to resolve the problems plaguing America, and none of its time trying to divvy up tax collections between themselves, their friends and their family.

Still trying to see how these ideas are helping, no doubt someone can explain it all to me.

Europe wants to civilise US terror war

Russia, Home of the Brave, Land of the Free

Perhaps we should all move to Russia.. and China's sounding pretty reasonable too these days.

UK kids' table manners a national disgrace

Hilarious

One of things that surprised me when I reached the US was finding that no one under the age of 13 know how to use a knife and fork, and those older barely.

Most sort do this weird thing of using their fork for both job, quite an accomplishment when you consider how difficult it is to cut bacon with a fork.

Eating with your mouth shut? Apparently no one is supposed to talk in the US unless they have their mouths stuffed with food.

I suppose they are so in love with food here, that they find it sexy to see it spewing from the mouths of those around them.

Anyone who's been here from England will have been through the truly odd experience of having Americans unable to understand half of what you are saying. Simple words take four or five attempts to get through.

It's not stupidity - although not many are blessed in the brain department - it's simply they can't understand words that aren't spluttered with mashed potatoes, burgers or crisps.

Accused Pentagon hacker prosecution could backfire

Send him to Australia

Seems to me that the attitude here is not much different from the time when we used to round up the homeless and destitute, accuse them of some random crime and ship them thousands of miles away.

I still don't understand why breaking a computer is worse than murder, rape and child molestation.

I don't think this guy should be getting off without being punished for breaking the law, but no matter how artificially high the dollar amount of damage is, surely a first offense for breaking some computers ought to be punished with a fine (exactly how many $4000 servers and $2000 workstations is he supposed to have destroyed in order to total $700,000 of damage - or are they suggesting that it would take 10,000 man hours to restore tape backups?).

So they were military computers? He's not a US citizen, not even a resident, so he hasn't committed treason against his country - the only possible excuse for seeking a prison sentence or worse.

No it has always puzzled me that while I may think script kiddies, malware authors and the like are arseholes who deserve a good slapping - if they haven't actually stolen anyone's money, haven't actually raped, killed or otherwise injured an actual person - why should they go to jail?

Next we'll be sending people to prison for not paying their debts, and shipping them off to the colonies for not owning a home.

US nailguns itself towards extinction

Notice

that they're only talking about idiots who use these things at home - the number of work place incidents has actually remained steady since 1998.

I love this country, always have since I moved here from England 8 years ago.

Why? Because the people here are lemmings.. not muppets.. lemmings.

It's frighteningly true how stupid Americans are.

Basically it's because of High School - which are mostly very good by the way, if you take away the guns.

Anyone who knows stuff, reads, can add up, etc is generally regarded as a nerd. This means they're ostricated from society, and first in line to be investigated anytime something very nasty happens.

Given this environment of suspicion and hatred towards anyone who shows the slightest aptitude with computing skills, mathematics or science in general, is it surprising how hard the average American kid tries to appear to be very, very, stupid?

My theory is they try so hard and for so long it becomes second nature.

It's also my theory that this is the reason they have so many red light runners in the US. They aren't deliberately running red lights, they're just too stupid to have the reaction time necessary to stop.

Doesn't mean I don't love them, not unlike my puppy, who's also stupid, but very cute and lovable.

No mostly Americans are just morons, with the odd exception of the particularly brave person that sticks with being knowledgeable and is able to trick the rest of America into giving them tax free grants to do studies on the gayness of squirrels and sheep - or a billion dollars to create a website about whatever the person thinks is a good idea that day, hence Silicon Valley.

But stupidity alone should be no hinderence to owning either firearms or a nail gun. Both are requisite possessions for the "look at me, I'm a real man with a gun and a tool belt and a pickup and a hound dog" American.

EFF takes up arms against Euro copyright move

Legitimate P2P affected

The real threat here is to legitimate businesses that use P2P applications to push updates to client workstations prior to the implementation of major upgrades.

Even some gaming developers do this - I believe Blizzard use this method of distribution so their online World of Warcraft customers don't have to download huge files when their servers switch over to new versions of their software.

Making the production of business software illegal is obviously not something the EC wants to do - and a concerted effort to educate them with the facts as opposed to RIAA and Hollywood rhetoric ought to be something the EFF can do successfully.