Posts by Frank

Most undergraduates 'show fear when asked to do maths'

@AC 11:40 re. @Liam

"You get to see how the world was designed ...."

You're treading on dangerous ground there. Be careful :)

US judge bars teen 'sexting' charges

@David Wilkinson re.Common Sense

"The laws need to be changed so that if its legal to be naked with the person its legal to have a naked pic.".

As far as I know, it's 'legal' for anyone to be naked with anyone else, provided both people are freely consenting to be naked. If this were not the case, police would raid nudist camps and gym changing rooms.

"You need a new law that covers minors sending pics to adults ... as clearly the minor should be punished, but clearly it needs to be a lessor offense."

13 year old girl tries on a nightdress in a store changing room. It's over her agreed budget but it's very good quality and very nice. She takes a pic and sends it to her mother asking 'awww, go on, can I buy it?'. Clearly, the girl should be punished.

It's very difficult to write down a law that accounts for the complexity of normal human behaviour, which is why there is this mess in Pennsylvania.

Microsoft draws fire for taxpayer handout

Trees are not too bad

The trees on the bridge would not be too much of a problem compared to the drivers. Trees move very slowly and are not stupid, nor do they get drunk or suicidal. How many car drivers will pull in for a rest stop or a picnic or drift onto the 'dirt track' section and get it horribly wrong before crashing through the wall and tumbling onto the freeway below. A bridge should be a simple mechanism that you don't hang around on, that doesn't distract or confuse you and that is easy to clean, maintain and repair.

Greenbird sail-car wafts in as future of zero-emission motoring?

Neat Idea

I think I understand how this works. Has anyone tried using a vertical wing on a boat?

What's wrong with a Twitter degree?

Lolcat?

Is the photo on page 2 that of a Lolcat? I'm not up on modern slang so need some advice here.

Google caches payment card details for 19,000 Brits

A Free Storage Service?

Does this mean that I can use Google's web cache as a free online storage facility? How long does the cache last until it is flushed or refreshed? This will need careful management but there could be an opportunity here.

DHS battles Axis of Exorbitance with software overhaul

@Dennis Healey re. W... T.... F...

Wtf is 'torcher' and 'butched english' and 'cos'? Why do you say 'Perhaps the later is some...' ,how can you use the word 'later' in that sentence? (read a dictionary for the definition of the word 'later').

IBM tries to patent offshoring

How far can you go?

Can I patent a method of determining which business processes can be patented in order to make money as a parasite on commerce and industry? If so, I'll have rights over all derivative works - woohoo!

Amazon to shutter distribution center trio

@Peter Thompson re. Suhttering??

I think that 'shuttering' may be used to imply that this is a protective act to maintain the store for future re-opening. (Shutters being a protective mechanism obviously). Then again, you'd put shutters up anyway to protect the store to maintain value for asset/property sale or because it's a condition of your lease when you close down the store. Then again, some of the shops where I live shutter their buildings every night and then re-open as normal every morning. So, 'shuttering' is not meaningless, it's just of no help or use in this case.

The use of weasel words, cotton-wool phrases and candy statements is widespread (see the quote from the Amazon spokesdroid). Only Cade can tell us if 'shuttering' was his choice of word or Amazon's choice.

Melissa anniversary marks birth of email-aware malware

@David Wiernicki re. @Onionman

Or the onion for that matter.

Game designers deconstruct their 'art'

If it works for him......

"I will go to the bathroom and try to poop and then I'll come up with a new idea."

I'm sitting with my EEE 901 carefully balanced on my knees, There's a faint echo as I type this. I can't seem to produce anything as yet. I'll send an update if anything happens.

Worm breeds botnet from home routers, modems

@Kanhef re. weak passwords

"..the name/password space is too large for a brute-force attack to be effective."

Using these two items as the 'out of the box' name/password combo is indeed a lot better than using 'admin/system' for every router sold. However, the namespace of your suggested combination is very much smaller than the english dictionary and is nicely structured to enable hackers to create a simple algorithm for a structured attack. People need to be educated to change the passwords.

Made up words with numbers in them are best for home use and can be written neatly on a piece of paper and stuck to the bottom of the router. (You make the final three characters easily remembered and leave them off the written password so the kids can't crack it). This is all you need in a domestic setup.

Kaminsky: MS security assessment tool is a 'game changer'

The Microsoft Experience

"Microsoft has taken years of difficulties with security vulnerabilities and really condensed that experience down to a repeatable tool that takes a look at a crash..."

Translation:- Microsoft has taken years of experience of writing software with security vulnerabilities and have written some more software.

Prof pooh-poohed in pig-v-whale hippo genealogy brouhaha

Save the Hippo.....etc

"..a colony of hippos imported to Latin America years ago as pets by recreational-chemicals kingpin Pablo Escobar are multiplying in fine style."

Save Endangered Species -- Do Drugs!

Online game given real-life bank permit

Too Sadville?

Or maybe Sadville II........ On the other hand, recent past experience has shown that the real world bankers were no good for us so maybe this is the way of the future for all forms of non-consumption activity. Why spend lot's of money and effort going to boring sunny Spain (say) for a week when you can hunt monsters on an asteroid for much less outlay?

Boffins sniff keystrokes with lasers, oscilloscopes

Power grid pick-up?

PC power supplies are switch mode items that are heavily filtered before the power gets to the motherboard. I am very doubtful that sending keyboard keystroke data would cause any significant or detectable variation in current taken along the mains power lead. They say that the power grid pickup works at a distance of 15 metres so this sounds like an RF pickup method rather that a mains current consumption monitoring method.

Google kicks Amazon in the Kindle

@Various re. US/Can purchases

Can anyone advise if it is possible to use a proxy server located in the US/Can to access the eBook stores there (for free ebooks). Also, I understand that in the USA you can buy pre-paid credit cards - in which case it should be possible to get a USA based friend to buy the card for you, send you the card details (a trusted friend obviously) and then you can use the pre-paid credit card to pay US/Can prices for retail ebooks.

I have the PC based Mobipocket reader on my laptop and my netbook and use Gutenberg.org to get free e-books. I did look at a major US ebook selling site and was happy with the prices that I saw there and tried to buy an ebook. The site then told me it was for US/Can sales only - damn. So, I went to a UK ebook site and quickly noticed that the prices were twice as much as in the US - double damn.

I'll stay with Gutenberg for now and try Google, for out of copyright 'classics'. I'll maybe start buying ebooks in the future - if the time ever comes when I don't get the feeling that I'm being ripped off.

Amazon cloud offers protection from falling meteors

Reserved 'Seats'

They could sell time/cycles in the reserved instances, at a cheap rate on the condition that the user accepted a random service drop out followed by a slow reestablishment on a lower tier service somewhere else. Many non critical but CPU-heavy modeling application users would accept a short halt followed by reestablishment at a lower priority if this was reflected in the lower cost of the service. If you've waited all week for your global warming climate model to produce its predictions, you wouldn't mind waiting until Monday morning for it to complete, especially if it's Friday lunchtime.

Sun banks future on multicore virtualization

Virtualbox - is it a 'good' thing?

I'd like to try virtualisation (just for fun, familiarisation, new skills, etc) and am thinking about Virtualbox, because it's free and open source. I've seen a couple of comments elsewhere that Virtualbox is not all that good, compared to other products.

I don't want to start any fanboi wars, but can anyone tell me if there is a good reason not to use Virtualbox and its xVM Server counterpart. Better still, is there an unbiased article anywhere that compares the various virtualisation offerings?

Virgin Media to battle modem hackers

How difficult can it be?

"..It added that recent network upgrades allowed it to detect modems cloned in this way .."

If a destination is getting data at 30Mb/s, and the registered user is only paying for a 4Mb/s service, then surely that's all they need to indicate fraud? It's not rocket science. Or maybe the technical department doesn't talk to the user accounts department?

Can someone from VM (posting as AC) advise on this?

Ubuntu gets pre-Koala cloud love

We are Heading for the ultimate punning release

"During the Karmic cycle we want to ...."

"Karmic Koala .......- will also embrace Eucalyptus," (was that deliberate or a happy accident?)

I think his will get even better (or worse) in future releases. In parallel with the software development, they have a team of comedy scriptwriters working on wordplay jokes.

Microsoft dumped after India PM's emails go AWOL

Webmail For Nuts

Yes, Squirrel Mail advertises itself as 'webmail for nuts', how cute and friendly. More to the point, taken from their website:-

"We are sorry to announce that we've had a security breach with our plugins system. An attacker uploaded at least four modified plugin packages, which we have since rectified. If you have downloaded any of the following plugins since January 17, 2009, you should immediately replace them (download them again): "

The Indian government techies have a strange way of choosing e-mail clients.

Health trust pushing on with record sharing

Best Practice?

"..But the Trust said it is following best practice privacy policy, and will stick with asking patients to opt out rather than opt in to the service."

Since when is this 'best practice' ? As defined where, by who? I thought that the Phorm experience had shown that active opt-out is not considered best privacy practice by most people.

Do they really 'ask patients to opt out'? I doubt it. They probably dump patients records into the scheme and hope that no one complains when they start getting marketing calls halfway through their evening meal.

ISS space bio-experiment freezer to return on Discovery

re. PANDORA

Is there any hope in the bottom of the freezer?

iPhone 3.0 adds cut-and-paste, search, new dev toys

Scours?

"Entering a term scours everything on the device from e-mail text to calendar dates."

I think you mean 'scans'. Then again, scouring is a guaranteed way to do a secure deletion of sensitive data.

Amazon sued by cable TV giant over Kindle ebooks

Amazingly Bad

"...Describing an "Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System," the patent was awarded in 2007,..."

OK, so it seems that Discovery patented some kind of DRM using newly developed encryption and some kind of new and clever key delivery and storage mechanism tied to a verified payment record. Great good for them. Let's have a look at the details......

"provides for secure distribution of electronic text and graphics to subscribers and secure storage."

"The home subsystem connects to a secure video distribution system or variety of alternative secure distribution systems, generates menus and stores text, and transacts through communicating mechanisms,"

""A portable book-shaped viewer is used for secure viewing of the text."

WTF?? They've patented remote sale and delivery of encryption secured digital data! They've patented reading data on an e-book!

How on earth can this be awarded in the first place? How much original research and development did they perform on ANY of the technical developments described in this entire process? - None I'd say. This stupid and surreal situation will continue to arise and hold back application development as long as the existing patent awarding mechanisms are in place. The system is long overdue for a re-think.

Web scam hoodwinks web founding father

@Pierre re. PS

"Disclaimer: no Romanian used car dealer was harmed in the making of this post."

I've contracted a Serbian hitman to deal with my Romanian used car dealer. All done by webmail via an anonymising site, 50% up front using Paypal and the rest when he e-mails a picture to prove successful contract completion. Modern technology is amazing, what will they think of next?

Pratt changes name to Bruce Willis

Sits back and waits for Pratt jokes

Come on :)

Red Hat patent app sparks open source lockdown fears

Open Source Patents?

If Red Hat truly only want the Linux 'community' to have a defense against future IP trolling, then why not publish the details of their innovation and thus establish publicly visible prior art? Since any innovation would be accessible in the source code anyway, this would merely set up advance publication.

Alternatively, why not make a formal gift of the patent rights to the OSF? This may be against the principles of operation of the OSF but there should be some way of establishing an open 'community IP' pool which is gifted to the world. Or am I just being naive and idealistic?

Upper-atmos ion drive dart sat launch delayed

Any Lift?

If it experiences drag in the upper atmosphere, then a suitable wing should give it lift. I realise the wing may need to be several kilometres wide and super thin/light, so there are some practical details to be sorted out; but this could make it even more 'aerodynamic'.

Scottish Parliament pr0n law faces angry opposition

@AC 12:58 re, A victory for morals

"...without all the disgusting deviant forcing their views on the rest of us."

If you'd bothered to read anything about this and make any attempt to understand it, you'd realise that those 'disgusting deviants' are not trying to force anything on you. They have not and never will try to get you to look at their specialist picture collection. It is you and people like you who are trying to force your views on them.

As for "...almost any street you can see disgusting images of semi-naked men and women.". You do have a valid point there. Contact the ASA and make a formal complaint.

Obama CIO on leave after cuffing of former employee

@Charles Manning re. @Brent Gardner

"....Edison, said: innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% good PR."

According to what I read/heard many years ago, Edison said "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration." I believe this may be field observation of a meme in the process of evolving to adapt to it's surroundings and the society/minds in which it is hosted (as proposed by Dawkins)

Should I write to 'Nature' or should I just add a Reference note to the Wikipedia entry?

@ Jemma re. *sigh*

"...there cant be two wacki Jackies..."

You said it; so now it will happen......sigh.

Amazon waves DMCA in Kindle channel lock-down

re. Mobile Read Grammar

We've been through this before. An organisation can take the singular or the plural depending on context.

Skinny, curvy Asus Eee inspired by MacBook Air

@Chris Haynes re. I don't get it

I and many would totally agree with you. My Eee 901 is the biggest and bulkiest thing I'd consider taking 'on the road' with me, yet I understand that it will be discontinued in favour of the 10" version.

However, the netbook market is a wonderful opportunity, so it's direction has been taken over by.....Marketing !!

China bars WoW expansion for showing bone

Cultural?

Could this be a 'cultural thing'? i.e. is it something to do with respect for the dead, even if they're the evil dead?

MS packs yet more tweaks into 'near-ready' Windows 7

@AC 16:33 re. WAV files

You mean that while it's playing a .wav file, it can't do anything else?

Pensioner gets apology over S&M smut filesharing threat

@Nigel re. ........(Barratry)

I followed your link and then other links to old and perhaps obscure legal definitions.

It seems that many previously illegal practices, that involved misbehaviour by the legal profession, intended to line their own pockets, have now been removed from the statute books. This has happened not only in the UK but all over the world.

Can this have anything to do with the large number of lawyers in government?

ISS crew flees flying space junk

I Wonder.

All the crew got into the Soyuz escape capsule.......and stayed there. What would happen if the debris hit the Soyuz? Is it armoured and designed to withstand a worst case debris collision?

Maybe the Soyuz is positioned so the main station shields it from the flight track of most orbiting debris up there? A five inch chunk of metal traveling at 5 miles a second would punch through the ISS without stopping.

According to the article, they've had to shelter in the Soyuz five times so far. I suppose it's the 'least probable harm' option and I just have to admire them.

Ethernet — a networking protocol name for the ages

At least he knows himself :)

"I was - I still am - naive about politics," Metcalfe says. "I didn't really understand the process. ....."

""Too many of the people working on this problem are luddites and greens and Marxists and politicians and lawyers and other people who don't understand the problem...."

"...we're going to take the next thirty years to break the back of the energy monopolies.."

I'm sure I'd enjoy working with this man, on purely technical projects; but he never even found his way to Politics 101, lol. Good luck to him I say, he needs it.

Amazon's cloud adds reserved seating

@Richard Jukes re.Interesting

Quick, buy them now, get in on the ground floor. Give it 2 years and I'll short sell them from you. We'll both make a fortune :)

Wikileaked donor list shames US lawmaker

@Henry Wertz re. Well it's obvious.......

You forgot: 0) Storing confidential data on a website.

Nobody needs remote access to that donor data via the WEBSITE. It should have been held on a private office network or some other secure, remote access facility should have been arranged.

Homosexuality does for UK blue duck population

@Eddie Edwards

Yes, funny and 'insightful', well done. The best I can come up with is 'Ben and Jerry wont do Cherry', but somehow it doesn't seem crude enough.

Ben and Jerry .....Cherry........

I'm trying to think of an ice-cream joke.......I'll come back later.

A Geeks Guide₂ ...Sybex Study Guides

@greg

So did I, but I was too shy to be the first one to admit it.

No welcome in the valleys for Welsh incinerator

Why not.....?

Why not built these and other 'controversial' projects just off a main road between two towns close to a high voltage grid line?

That way, you get a good transport link for building the place and the people who will work there can be easily travel there by car or bus. The electricity generated can be easily linked into the grid and the only person who might complain would be some local farmers but they can be easily compensated as a one off measure.

Court rules airline secret security list is stupid

@Skizz re. Raspberries

"..or if there's no grenade to hand, the more dangerous airline chicken tikka masala."

That is not funny. I have experienced an airline chicken tikka masala explosion. About 12 hours after I experienced the airline chicken tikka masala. It's not funny.

Drunk sorority girls quaff booze 'to impress boys'

Practical Considerations and Safety

I would not consider any kind of relationship with a woman who had more than one small alcoholic drink in the evening. How is she supposed to drive me home if she has more than that?

YouTube blocks music videos in UK

Worse Than Kids in a Playground

"But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before," he wrote. "

"The music group claims YouTube wants to pay "significantly less than at present to the writers of the music ..."

I'm waiting for shouts of "....pants on fire"

As an aside: "In December 2008, Warner Music Group began removing its videos from YouTube ...". I assume you mean they began issuing mandatory take down notices? The sentence suggests that Warner Music posted them onto U-Bend in the first place.

The entire relationship between the music INDUSTRY and the online groups has been dysfunctional for many years. After all the time and money they have spent on lawyers they could have had world class relationship therapy from professional councilors and psychiatrists.

Feds file new felonies against alleged Palin hacker

Publicly available information?

If someone uses publicly available information (the well known fact that I keep my doorkey under the doormat) to get into my house, then it's still a crime, no matter how stupid you believe me to be.

The only defense I can think of is that the person did so in the belief that they could prevent loss of life or injury to other persons, or some kind of obvious disaster. I'll leave it up to others to complete this paragraph..... :)