Posts by Morely Dotes

Analysts warn of US broadband meltdown

Re: gridlock ? spam halting then ? :p

"...hopefully half the spam will get killed in the process..."

Pollyanna, meet reality: The *only* thing that will get through will be the spam.

Prince and fan sites could unite

A modest proposal...

All Web sites, reporters, journalists, bloggers, etc, should henceforth *completely* refrain from naming the artist formerly known. Full stop.

Remove any existing files referring to him and/or his (alleged) art.

Refuse to participate in any sort of event that names him (to include concerts, motion pictures, etc.).

In other words, a complete and total ban on any mention of this former person.

Perhaps that will satisfy him.

Dell prices up all-on-one XPS desktop

Vista? Forget it!

If they can't provide a decent OS, they can't sell it to me. Guess I'll get a Mac after all.

Boeing guards its right to tail employees

The law works both ways

If you think you're being stalked, in most parts of the US you have the right to use as much force as necessary to discourage the stalker. That includes deadly force; personally, I start with pepper spray and work up through Tasers to the .50 Colt Desert Eagle, but then, I'm a moderate.

It's not as if a company goon is going to *tell* you he's been hired by your boss to stalk you, after all.

Dell to pump out Ubuntu servers

@ Giles Jones

Oracle is a Fortune 1000 level DB package. Frankly, the idea that a small-to-upper-middle-sized business would be using Oracle is laughable.

MySQL is more than adequate for the small-to-middle-sized business. Saddling one's self with Microsoft's proprietary glop is foolish.

World of Warcraft spykit gets encrypted

@ Joseph

"If it's not doing anything bad, why hide it?"

For the same reason YOU get to close your curtains whenever you feel like it; if you're not doing anything bad, why hide it?

It's *their* program, which you *rent* on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

And as for Blizzard's forum discussions, I can see a good, valid reason for making the gold farmers go do their research someplace else.

If you don't trust Blizzard at least as much as you trust Microsoft (you are running Windows, aren't you? Do you have even the *slightest* clue what data is sent back to Microsoft every time you log on to the Internet? Do you know what processes are running in the kernel?), then don't play the game.

Databases still open to basic attack

More rubbish

"Another interesting revelation was that those running vulnerable versions of Oracle were evenly divided between Windows and Linux/Solaris - suggesting Windows installations are no worse at security than those using other operating systems."

This, of course, ignores that fact that Windows is itself far more vulnerable to unauthorized access.

The conclusion is no more sensible than the anecdotal reporter who allegedly asked Mrs. Lincoln, "Apart from that, how did you enjoy the play?"

Putting a vulnerable installation of Oracle onto a secure OS produces a single point of attack - not desirable, but much easier to fix than putting a vulnerable version of Oracle onto an unsecure (and probably unsecurable) Windows platform.

Start-up aims nanotube memory at iPods, phones and servers

Hell of a sales position open...

"While NRAM sounds lovely, other companies are working on competing technology such as FeRAM (ferroelectric RAM), MRAM (magnetic) and PRAM (phase-change)."

No, really. A sales position that requires you to tell people, "I have to push the PRAM a lot?"

Black leather, a little worn on the shoulders and elbows, thanks...

Half of computer users are Wi-Fi thieves

PC Plod's abilities (or lack thereof)

"do you really think that the police have the time, resources and experience to track down someone who accessed an open network?"

In my experience (in he USA), they don't have the time, resources, and experience to track down a 200kg man in an orange jumpsuit with "I am a bank robber" stenciled on it in letters 15cm tall, even if he was standing in the middle of City Hall at noon on a Tuesday.

On the other hand, they have no trouble at all tracking down people who drive cars which are incapable of going faster than 50 mph, and charge them with driving at 30 mph over the limit in a 55 mph zone, so long as the "criminal" is clearly unable to afford a competent defense attorney.

Californian sues Comcast over BitTorrent throttling

@ The Other Steve

Please describe, in simple terms, precisely what laws are violated by my use of the BitTorrent technology to download and redistribute Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu Linux ISO files.

Also explain what is unlawful about the use of the BitTorrent client provided by Blizzard Entertainment, for the purpose of using P2P to download patches and updates for the World of Warcraft game, with which it was bundled.

Those are the first two uses that come to mind; I am sure there are many, many other perfectly legitimate uses. But you would have us believe that the only purpose is to violate copyright.

Defend your position. Take your time; I'll wait.

Meanwhile, please be advised that Comcast is *not* limiting their willful, knowing, and deliberate breach of contract and fraud to people who are using BitTorrent for unlawful purposes; they are throttling *all* detected torrents, regardless of content.

B3ta served DMCA notice for Photoshop Prince challenge

Since when does US law apply to the UK?

B3TA.com is located in Bedford, GB. I would imagine most of the users are in the UK as well.

The DMCA is US law, and without a court order from a court with lawful authority, has no standing in the UK.

If I were the operator of B3TA.com, I would post the DMCA takedown notices on the site with a single response; a photo of two fingers uplifted.

It's bad enough that the RIAA has bought the whores we call "congressmen" and "senators;" they sure as Hell would like to think they own Parliament, too, but so far as I know, their bribes have not yet been large enough.

Animal rights activist hit with RIPA key decrypt demand

Get the keys from those who encrypted the files

Which would probably be Sony BMG, or possibly Microsoft, or the RIAA, or the MPAA, or IFPI, or Apple...

Here's a law that has so many glaringly obvious flaws that astronomers on distant planets will be recording an apparent Galactic first in some years - a planet going nova, instead of a star.

As for the animal rights terrorists - lock them up with the animals they claim they love. That's not a punishment (of the humans, anyway), it's just being a caring person.

Monkey butlers a step nearer as boffins clone macaques

Can't be that hard.

After all, the USA has already produced a monkey President. Well, part chimp, part jackass, apparently, but still...

Dutch teen swipes furniture from virtual hotel

Juveniles taught online to steal from parents

Yobbos in Habbos.

It all makes sense, in a macabre sort of way.

However, getting the police involved in this smacks of the Habbo people being not merely supremely lazy, but more than a bit stupid. Waht they are doing is illegal in the USA, and certainly ought to be in Europe. After all, a child under legal age can NOT enter into a valid contract without parental consent - and that's exactly what's happening when the child dials a premium-rate number to buy virtual furniture.

Had I been the admin in charge when this was discovered, I would have (1) copied the furniture back to the "rightful" owners, and (2) re-skinned the stolen furniture in the perp's "room" in bright purple, with bright green lettering spelling out "Stolen property" in whatever the local language is. Or possibly several languages.

Then I'd have locked the account so that no "property" could be transfered into nor out of the "room."

Windows update offers defence against shell bug

I should update the TURDS in my system?

"An expected update involving a flaw in the SafeDisc copy protection software from Macrovision that comes bundled with Windows XP and 2003 is missing in action. Users are advised to apply Macrovision's update."

Oh, yes, of course. And I'll just go and rip the DVD player out of my hifi system, too, while I'm at it. After all, we wouldn't want consumers actually *viewing* the content we told them we were selling them (but that we were actually only renting to them, according to the terms of the "shrink-wrap" agreement).

I don't THINK so!

DoubleClick caught supplying malware-tainted ads

ABP is not enough

You also need the MVPS.ORG hosts file.

See http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

The same file works on Windows, Linux, and (presumably) Macs.

@ W. Hower

"Who pays for the websites you enjoy?"

I do. I host my own favorite sites. Bite me.

Infamous RBN quits China

Bulletproof hosting that isn't

What's more, the people behind RBN aren't bulletproof, either. Eventually they'll step on the wrong toes, and then it's time for sleeping with the fishes.

Which is really too good for kiddie porn purveyors, but prolonged torture requires dedicating much more time than those scum are worth.

Marvel launches digicomics initiative

@ Jason Irwin

"I use FireFox - maybe it works better on IE."

Then it's not HTML, is it?

However, I guarantee I can download it. I won't bother, but the command line is less than 60 characters.

Deadly planet-smash asteroid was actually Euro probe

Press: [bgcolor="yellow"]

"The MPC passed the word among astronomers that a deadly celestial object"

Liar. The MPC did NOT use the word "deadly."

I thought this was The Register, not The Weekly World News. Where's the story about Bat Boy?

Court date for challenge to 'new' patent rules

Patenting Software is Idiotic and Evil

Copyright certainly *does* protect software. Allowing software to be patented stifles innovation, because it is usually possible to write software that is significantly (in copyright terms, "significant" means "at least 85%") different to achieve the same end result. Different software which achieves the same result may be more efficient, faster, compile to smaller executables, or be better than the "original" in other ways without infringing copyright.

Thus we see that the *purpose* of software patents is to stifle innovation.

Bebo courts big media with 'we're different' plea

They're all the same

Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendfinder, Linkedin, and probably thousands less-well-known; every single one of them has one product and one product only - the stupid consumers who visit those pages to view advertising.

Eurostar cancels 29 Feb 2008

@ Simon Reed

"as a career IT bod, I find it beyond belief that such a trivially simple bug could be released into the live environment."

I don't. I used to get "gold" code from Microsoft (you know, pre-release set-in-stone software) when I was testing network products for the World's Largest Chipmaker(tm) that had such glaringly obvious mistakes that even Steve Ballmer could have seen them.

Sozzled Oz footie fan tattoed with 'gay' team tribute

No doubt the inked one is a breeder.

Darwinism: Just say, "Faster, please!"

Toyota ponders plug-in hybrids

electric coal?

"With electric, you've got to dig the coal out of the ground,"

Funny, I don't remember seeign any coal at any of the hydroelectric plants I've visited. I didn't see any at the wind farms, either. No coal at the nuke plant I visited.

Who burns valuable raw materials like coal to make electricity? Sounds distinctly Third-World. to me. Must be a Turkish idea.

(Let the flames begin!)

21st century travel: building your own warp drive

No shortage of negative energy

The boffins aren't looking in the right place if they think negative energy in nearly infinite amounts is unobtainable.

Try Washington, DC or Whitehall Street.

Mass. firm sues Google over 1997 patent

@ dave

It's not a new trick. $DAY_JOB is currently being by our biggest competitor (using patents, of course) in an attempt to get us to disgorge our sales and support methods.

Microsoft sells Windows twice

Re: That's funny.

"Maybe I'll begin loading linux on the machines out of spite."

Don't do it out of spite. Do it to prove that the hardware is fully functional. After all, it's no skin off your back if the new owner prefers a stable, free OS with massive amounts of free applications over a bloated, untrustworthy, unstable proprietary house of cards that will BSOD if you happen to blink at the wrong moment, and chooses to keep Linux instead of buying Windows.

Ballmerized Nigerian PCs might run Mandriva after all

These aren't the laws we've broken. Move along!

"Microsoft operates its business in accordance both with the laws of the countries in which it operates and with international law."

Of course it does. That's why Microsoft has been convicted of illegal monopolistic and anti-competitive behavior twice in the USA and at least once in Europe.

BitTorrent site Demonoid.com downed by Canadian record industry

@ Will Rubin

"Come on, this isn't difficult. It's just business trying to maximize profits."

So was Lucky Luciano. He wasn't all that popular with the general public, either.

Orbital tourism industry holds spacewear fashion show

OK, I have to ask...

IT angle?

And I'd add that there's not one of those.. women... who would be welcome to be seen out with me. They all remind me of Twiggy (and Naomi Campbell, who's like Twiggy with an attitude and a small electronic device to throw).

Now, what I want to know is - what would Cameron Mannheim wear in space.. during her space shower... You know, just as a matter of technical interest.

BOFH: How dangerous are your users?

Title? Title!? We don't need no steenking title!

"Your users are so feeble minded you're lucky they can manage a keyboard without filling it with dribble."

That's a very charitable assessment of my lusers. I'd have said they're all perfect donors for a Soylent Green factory. And those are the clever ones.

US manned spaceflight after Shuttle could be delayed

Three Laws of Engineering

You can have it done:

1. On time.

2. On budget.

3. It works.

Pick any two.

And lest we forget, the Shuttle is only *half* of the original reusable spaceship design. The lifter vehicle, which would have flow the shuttle to high altitude and suborbital speed, was cut - due to budget constraints. The SRBs and external fuel tank were tacked on so that the Shuttle would be something a bit more useful than a 100-ton cargo glider. It should be noted that both of the Shuttle losses were caused by factors related to the SRBs and the external fuel tank.

Hospital radio station struggles with Yahoo! email 'blockade'

Lies! And possible explanations.

"Yahoo person thought" is such an obvious falsehood!

And one problem that should be obvious: "mail.adsl.radiohaslar.co.uk" contains the string ".adsl." which is about 99% certain to indicate it's a source of spam.

Furthermore, hostgator.com is hosted by ThePlanet (aka "ThePlanet of spam" among those of us who've had to deal with their effluvia for years) and I see that radiohaslar.co.uk is associated with hostgator.

Security researcher cuffed in Telecom Italia spying probe

Ah, that explains it...

"He is a regular on the security conference circuit and noted as a strong defender of civil liberties in the post 9/11 world."

Well, no *wonder* he was arrested.

Vint Cerf and Co. sic the world on Comcast

It's about time

Do they have a Web site yet? Can it be reached from a Verizon customer's Web browser?

Website for computer security experts hacked

Honeypots are great, aren't they?

Secure your Web site; then deliberately open a single page to certain exploits, and wait to see which flies blunder into your Web...

Defacing a security firm's site is about as smart as vandalizing a panda car in the local cop shop's garage. Too bad we'll never be told the juicy details of what happens to the rather stupid vandal who did this.

In other news, DARPA is consulting with Paris Hilton to learn what technology she uses to make her panties disappear...

Music DRM 'dead by next summer'

@ John Lettice

I don't want AO sacked; he covers some interesting topics, and factually hsi coverage is good. On the other hand I won't be responding to anything he has to say directly again; the last exchange was adequate demonstration that his entire purpose was to demonstrate that he is all-knowing and that I am too ignorant to allowed to waste his valuable time.

As for DRM aka Digital Rights Management: It's not, in the same way that "friendly fire" isn't. It's Technology Users' Rights Denial systems, which would be abbreviated TURDS.

The real shocker is that the CD publishing industry took seven years to figure out that most people don't want to buy things with TURDS in.

Babbling net software sparks international incident

@ Anonymous Coward

Would you like to go to my room, bouncy bouncy?

John Cleese is a god.

Man wrongly detained for 50 days has ISP to thank

"Freedom of Speech? Oh, that's been obsolete for 7 years!"

"if you live in a country where freedom of speech is not protected"

Would you care to name such a country, Dan? Preferably one that isn't covered with ice more than 50% of the year.

I live in the USA, and we sure aren't protected from our own government any more. You're only free to say whatever doesn't offend the the Fuehrer in the White House.

Writers' strike hits US talk shows hard

Perhaps they could write something worth reading...

Oh, no. What am I thinking? If they could actually *write* then they wouldn't be in Television, would they.

Sorry. Momentary loss of reality when I thought TV writers could actually do anything more useful than leap from a very tall building.

AOL spammer gets two years in the slammer

@ Bobby: Sentence too harsh?

Those of us who run Internet mail servers would prefer that spammers were sent not to jail, but to the slaughterhouse, where their heads would be pounded flat with wooden mallets.

When these motherf*ckers spend all day stealing from millions of other people (and bragging about it on a regular basis), jail is too good for them. Unfortunately, bleeding hearts like you have convinced the Government to offer them mercy.

Samsung samples SATA II 2.5in SSD

@ Nexox Enigma

"And everyone that I know that owns a Dell laptop hasn't had it last more than 18 months without a backlight, battery, power supply, motherboard, keyboard, or touchpad going dead."

Tell your mates to stop buying the Inspiron "consumer grade" crap, then. At $DAY_JOB we get the Lattitude models, and out of roughly 30 of them in the field for the past 3 years, fewer than 10% have had even one of the problems you name. One of them had every single piece of plastic on the case broken, and the metal shell behind the screen badly dented, but continued to work until my luser managed to crash the hard drive. He'd probably still be using the original drive had it been an SSD.

Mind you, there's nothing wrong with the Toshibas, nor the Panasonic Toughbooks (nor the Acers, for that matter). I just don't think it's right to judge all Dells based on a sample of their cheapest, meant-to-be-disposable craptops.

Google's gives the world (another) Linux phone OS

Joy! A phone that can give me a BSOD!

"Schmidt hinted at bringing the PC experience to mobile devices."

Verizon, LG, Nokia, AT&T, and Apple have done that. We now have phones that perform more poorly as phones year over year (e.g., the model replacing my old LG sounds like the audio is filtered through a couple of gallons of raw sewage), crash more-or-less regularly, have to be rebooted after adding a ringtone through any method other than the buy-and-download-from-the-signal-provider route, cost outrageous amounts to do anything at all (and even worse if you want to do anything other than receive SMS messages telling you your bill is ready to be paid), and are frustrating and aggravating to use.

So how about someone brings consumers the "customer service" experience on mobile devices? Oh, sorry, I forgot - customers are no longer important, since now the Government has made it legal to shaft them any way the Corporation wants to.

No email privacy rights under Constitution, US gov claims

@ William

"Whatever happened to the Common Carrier concept?"

ISPs are not common carriers. Period.

Security site knocks spots off Mac OS X Leopard firewall

Come on, people! It's not a firewall!

The software industry has perpetrated yet another falsehood, and tech reporters have (in their mad rush to get down the pub and guzzle a few pints before late-morning traffic makes it difficult to drive to the suburbs before lunch) simplt rearranged a few paragraphs and published the press releases as if they were news.

A firewall is a device which sits *between* your valued systems and the threats. A piece of software which is running on the same hardware that holds your OS and treasured data is, at best, a burglar alarm; it can tell you if a break-in attempt is made, but it can't keep the burglars from "seeing" your computer(s) altogether.

Windows, Mac, Linux, Amiga, Acorn, ZX-64... If you want a firewall (and you should, for much the same reason you want a mac and wellies in Winter), buy or build one. I've seen them sold for as little US$30 brand-new. But if what you bought runs o nthe same computer you're trying to protect, you didn't bu ya firewall, no matter what it says on the package.

Macs seized by porn Trojan

@ Abdul Omar

"Boot Cap, Boot Crap whatever... the point is that yet again Microsoft is able to provide an effective solution that addresses Apple's myriad failings."

Whatever you're smoking, mate, it's some serious ganga. Give some to Osama, and he could recruit Virginians to be suicide bombers for Al Queda.

I'll stay with Ubuntu for my personal systems, thanks. Can't seem to find a current virus *or* Trojan that attacks it.

Royal Navy presses IT Crowd for nuclear missile 'servers'

Not to worry.

The switch is made by Lucas.

Yahoo! says! sorry! to! Senate!

@ Nick Palmer

It's OK as long as a US company makes a profit from it. It's also OK to help corrupt Nigerian government officials skim millions off of a deal to replace a nicely-working Linux installation (x 17,000) with a crappy, crawling Windows installation (also x 17,000), as long as a US company makes a profit. And it's OK destroy the Alaskan wilderness environment, as long as a US company makes a profit.

I'm just happy there is no commercial US firm making "unbranded" ICBMs with nuclear warheads. It's scary enough having them under the control of Kaiser Bush, without giving, er, selling them to North Korea, Iran, Burma, Indonesia... And Paris Hilton.

Domino's pizza prices may rise

@ Anonymous Coward

"you arnt entitles to offers such as BOGOF"

Let me help. The fellow you spoke with on the telephone was telling you to "BOG OFF." If you speak like you type, I can understand why.