Posts by Andy

MoveOn tells Facebook to stop shining Beacon

Facebook is lame

I've always said it. And now that they're becoming evil I'm feeling like they're too much of a soft target and I should pick on something else.

There's a *reason* why I've lost contact with my school mates. I hated them and I have new friends. Quite why people think it's so fantastic to connect with people you haven't seen for 20 years is beyond me.

Remember what happened to Usenet when AOL made affordable internet available to the average American? The phrase "me too" still gives me a tic. It's the same with Facebook, but thankfully they're all contained on one website and they're not spilling out all over the show.

So I guess actually I'm all in favour of Facebook.

US unleashes six bloggers in assault on Islamist propaganda

Or they could stop bombing the bejeezus out of Arabic countries

How about they stop acting like the evil empire? That might work. Might even be cheaper than trying to put a positive spin on their behaviour.

They created Osama bin Laden because it suited them to have a terrorist as a pawn in their "war" in Iran. They supplied weapons to insurgents all over the world and bankrolled terrorism, all in the interest of destabilizing countries and introducing governments who were more "American friendly" (more likely to sell their oil to Halliburton).

America spies on its own citizens. They kidnap and torture foreign citizens without benefit of recourse to a court. They invaded more countries than any other nation did last century. They are also the only nation to have dropped nuclear weaponry on a civilian target. Twice.

Changing their foreign policy is the best way to stop terrorism in its tracks. I agree with Anonymous Coward - they should admit they were wrong and try to make some sort of honest reparation.

It's all spin. America and the 51st state both engage in covert operations in foreign countries. Yet somehow its not terrorism when they kidnap and torture people.

Holy pancake appears on eBay

Easily suggestible

I think one of the requirements for being religious is that you're easily suggestible. If you're able to swallow the whole "flooded earth" story then its not a far leap to believe that Almighty God manifests in holy pancakes.

At least the people who discovered it had the good sense to make some money off the deal.

What I want to know is how to write an eBay description that sounds authentic and not like I'm just trying to flog off a napkin that I have deliberately stained to look like God surrounded by angels.

Plastic police to enforce London bag ban?

Sign me up

In my city 7 kids were shot dead in gang cross fire in the same month our government decided to release army surplus weaponry to unprotected *school* armories in poor communities. Oh of course they had the intention of allowing disadvantaged youths the opportunity to engage in the sport of target shooting but they ended up putting guns into the hands of criminals.

Many of our police stations have got contracts with security companies to provide armed response. You know the "press a panic button and guys with guns show up". This started after gangs started holding up cop shops and robbing them of their weapons and bullet proof vests.

So a city where it is an offense to carry a plastic bag sounds pretty safe and damned attractive to me. Come live in South Africa before you complain about the nanny state.

Website for computer security experts hacked

Interesting site

Their non-defaced home page reads:

"Logging-in hightens your site priviliges significantly."

No doubt it does.

Camelot pulls scratchcard amid numerical anarchy

Tax

Scratchcards and lotteries are really just a tax on people not educated enough to understand statistics.

Demon satnav imprisons plucky trucky in pasty hell

Brilliant article

Quite easily the best piece of writing I've read in a long time.

Woman murdered after answering Craigslist ad

Web tracking

Sure you've given two cases where it's a good thing for the government to track you from your internet activity.

Given the way the American government illegally spies on its citizens do you really think you should be encouraging them to have *more* power of observation?

Of all those people you mention who were looking at his Myspace account, how many took the 2 minutes to call the investigating officer and give the information?

Giving the state more power so individuals can abdicate their social responsibility doesn't sound like a happy thing to me.

Cannon runs amok, kills nine fleshies

Who cares?

I live in South Africa and am ashamed of our army. I don't understand why we actually need one anyway. America is the only country that ever invades anybody nowadays and we have no oil and too many dark people for America to be interested.

We have 50 people murdered in South Africa everyday and our government repeatedly insists that there isn't a problem. They even have expos in London to encourage people to come back!

In todays news headlines there are 4 stories involving murder (and another of attempted murder), 1 of rape, 1 of police bribery, 1 of parliamentary corruption, and 1 story about our president saying something about the RWC (as if he has nothing better to do). That is 8 of 10 headlines on todays rss feed. And today isn't even a particularly bad day - the minister of health hasn't been in the news yet.

So who cares if 9 soldiers get killed because they can't listen to instructions?

Met's de Menezes photo 'manipulated', says prosecution

Racial connotations

I live in a country where discussing race is a great more free than it is in the USA and its 51st state so forgive me if I'm not 100% politically correct or whatever.

The Mets gunned him down because he was not pale enough to pass as "white". That seems to have been their biggest visual clue in making the decision to open fire with dum-dum bullets and keep firing until he stops twitching.

To confuse a Brazilian with a member of an entirely different ethnic grouping implies you are not looking past the skin colour. By arguing that they could have mistaken him for a terrorist aren't they acknowledging an inherent racist comment: "all those foreign types look the same to me"?

I think anybody who doesn't look at beautiful as Paris Hilton should be shot in the streets. This would encourage Darwinian evolution of the species and give the Mets a fair excuse for their racist target selections.

US demands air passengers ask its permission to fly

Can't visit, Won't visit

I am a university graduate, self-employed, fairly well off, intelligent, law-abiding and a positive member of society. I'm even white and know enough of the Bible to pass as Christian (these are apparently valuable traits in America).

But I won't even bother asking America for entrance.

More importantly though, how will alien species continue to explore the anal cavities of American farmers? This important research is being threatened by the xenophobic policies of the American government. I strongly suspect that aliens will simply choose to investigate the backsides of Europeans and America will lose valuable trade revenue.

Britney's wares exposed online

Good lord

I don't blame pirates for the simple reason that a p2p network implies that there is more than one person interested in the file.

Yahoo! hopes Mash will be a monster

where are all the bangs!

This is really slipshod reporting of el reg to forget to put a bang! after each word in a Yahoo! title! One wonders if the rest of the article can be trusted or if it is also subject to the same level of gross oversight!

Connoisseurs go mad for £1,000 ham

Feed the world

Speaking as an African I can say that I still don't want to eat your broccoli. Tell your mothers to stop sending it.

If there weren't somebody to buy dead pig at 80 pounds a pound (or whatever) there wouldn't be a job for Ibernian swineherds. Although that sounds like Reaganomics I firmly believe that an upper-class is a by-product of capitalism and a necessary one. The fact that I am not in that upper-class makes me angry and so I want to be a socialist to make them give some to me. But that's not going to happen so I eat normal pig and dream of being a fat cat.

And anyway a great deal of the money Europe sends to Africa gets stolen by people like Allen Boesak or turned into AK-47's. Europeans are viewed as legitimate targets because hundreds of years ago you guys invaded Africa. Hence, a presidential pardon and a continued political career for the convicted fraudster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Boesak

PS: I am really the uncle of the governor of the reserve bank of South Africa and I know of a secret bank account of a dead politician that I need to get out of the country.... etc etc

NASA boffins resist intrusive security probe

US will find out anyway

We already know that the Bush administration engages in wiretapping without warrants and torture without trials. Do these JPL employees really think that them refusing to sign a piece of paper is going to stop the American government from probing them?

If I try and relate their position to my own it become really quite absurd. The American government has already most likely been through my financial details (I regularly perform international transfers through Swift when I buy stuff online with my credit card).

Do I care that America might have snooped on me? A little bit I suppose, but objecting and refusing to submit is just plain silly. America would just accuse me of being a terrorist, kidnap me, and torture me in some black ops camp until I confess that I am Hitler's love child and have weapons of mass destruction hidden in my car boot (I'm not and I don't, but sleep deprivation and dog bites do funny things to the mind).

It doesn't really bother me if the American government finds out I bought some cat food yesterday. Fighting them about my right to keep my cat food secret is disproportionate and futile. America has lots of guns and weapons of mass destruction, and has been quite happy to use them in the last hundred years. America's history of bombing civilian targets with nuclear armaments, setting civilians on fire with napalm, and their current regime of kidnap and torture gives them my respect and prevents me from having any quibble with them checking my credit card purchases. They're the good guys anyway.

Yahoo! tops! Google! on! customer! satisfaction! survey!

Yahoo! Must! Be! Mocked!

Companies that make up silly neologisms for their names, or use pointless punctuation deserve everything coming to them.

Except Google, whose name is now a verb synonymous with 'search'.

eBay seller nabs $1500 for Jesus-like garage stain

I also have a Jesus stain!

That smudge doesn't look very Jesus like to me at all. In all the pictures I've seen at my church Jesus is a handsome white male with flowing hair (and definitely not Jewish or smudgy). Nope, somebody got ripped off with a cheap knockoff Jesus.

Why buy second rate Jesus merchandise when you can shop at my house and get only top quality Jesus iconography?

I invite the guys quoting scripture above to come and have a look at the pattern the leak in my roof has made. It looks just like Jesus looking down on the room from heaven! For a limited time only if you cart it away, replace my roof, and pay me $1500 I'll let you keep the stain.

Call me today and get a free lollipop in the shape of the pope!

Tomorrow: I saw Jesus hiding in my compost heap! Spread it out over the garden and I'll let you keep any bits that look like the Almighty.

'Wild West' internet needs a sheriff

Wild wild west?

I like the idea of telling my grandchildren that I was a cowboy in the days of the Wild Internet. I can see their eyes as wide as saucers as I describe how I "used common sense and installed a firewall and stopped clicking on links in emails". Oh wait, my grandchildren aren't going to be retarded and so that's not going to impress them. *sigh*.

Quite how the Brits hope to wrestle control from the Americans would be an interesting story. The Brits haven't been very assertive in dealing with the Americans in the past and I can't imagine how a sternly worded letter to the Times will convince the Americans to release this strategic asset.

And for anybody who is brown (or Muslim) having Americans or British Lords governing the internet cannot be a good thing. Why would the rest of the world support continued Anglo-American hegemony? What's in it for us?

Spammer gets 30 years in the slammer

Delivery companies just as guilty

I actually followed a link that one of the spammers sent (I suppose I have a small penis and was hoping a good dose of \/14gr4 would make all the girls love me).

They use world class courier companies to deliver their drugs. The UPS logo was emblazoned on the (illegal?) drug company website.

Surely these companies should also be pursued as they can reasonably be expected to know that they are involved in the illegal transportation of drugs?

I contacted our regional UPS division but they declined to comment.

The return of the ransom-ware Trojan

Identity theft is not just for mobsters

Quote:

Sad to say that this is the utopian world of anonymous surfing that seemed so attractive to naive geeks 15 years ago. Is it clear yet that anonymity facilitates anarchy, not freedom?

---

I am one of those geeks from 15 years ago and still believe that the internet should not be regulated. I'm not naive, I just like being able to criticize governments.

I feel more comfortable with Russian mobsters knowing my name than I do with the American government obtaining my credit card reports without a warrant *just in case* I might be a terrorist. Russian mobsters are currently not known for holding hundreds of people hostage on an island and torturing them. I have yet to see photographs of Russian mobsters forcing innocent Arabian gentlemen to engage in sex acts.

Regulation results in loss of freedom and having your private bits exposed to the world by a US army sergeant. I'm sure you wouldn't want your dangly bits being displayed to all and sundry in the interests of the "war against terror"?

The government is not your friend.

Common sense is a much better prophylactic to disaster. If you see a dark alley with Russian mobsters in it, just walk past it. If you use a computer, install a firewall. If you see an American, it's probably too late anyway.

China aims artillery for a blue-sky Olympics

Dubya is going to love that

What happens when the Americans see thousands of Chinese people rolling out weaponry? They'll be there quicker than you can say "Chinese oil supply".

'Dettol Man' cleans himself to death

Taking the p****

That 18 year old guy really sounds like he's taking the p*ss when speaking about talking to old people.

Dell offers XP again amidst Vista complaints

At last a fanboy appears

Thanks Steven,

Two things:

1) Google for what Joanna Rutkowska demonstrated at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. Okay, so it was on a Beta kernel and has likely been patched. But Microsoft had been touting -that- kernel as secure and stable (just as they are now touting their current one). It was part of their hyping to say the kernel was stable. When XP was released they hyped it's security features too (or have you forgotten that).

2) The ANI exploit allowed hackers to install arbitrary code. I think you're sweeping this under the carpet by saying it won't cause harm. What was Microsoft's own ranking for the exploit?

XP is faster than Vista. Your strawman argument comparing XP to FreeDOS isn't really valid or useful. It's rather childish really.

Why should I upgrade my memory, video card, and spend a few thousand rand to get Vista? A cheap computer will run XP faster than Vista without losing any vital features. You can't seriously expect me to believe that upgrading is financially sound?

Using a Microsoft 1st release has always been like being a Beta tester. Buying a new computer with Vista on it means that you have to spend more money on hardware and are likely to be exposed to all of the bugs that build up until the first service pack.

There is nothing that Vista offers me, as a businessman, that I don't have in XP. I don't want to spend all my money on buying the "latest and greatest" when I have something that works already.

I'm also skeptical about disposing of new hardware I buy. The Vista license seems horribly restrictive when selling or upgrading pieces of a computer.

Calling other people clueless also makes me suspect that you're just a troll.

Vista hardware is more expensive to buy

Vista is also hardware hungry, which will raise the price of the machine. You can get more bang for your buck using an old OS like XP.

The reviews I've read of Vista are that although it is nicer than XP it is not enough to make you think "how did I ever get along without it".

I'm not going to spend half of my monthly disposable income to buy a product just because Steve Ballmer says it looks cool. Aero is hardware hungry - and does it really improve productivity? It's got to pay for itself somehow.

Upgrading XP to Vista is a waste of time, according to the reviews I've read. I haven't even seen Microsoft fanboys defending it... am I not reading the write blogs?

So what's the incentive Microsoft? The OS is not so brilliantly different that it doesn't look like XP service pack 3. The safety features have already been cracked and IE has holes in it too. XP can be patched up with free AV and firewalls (and Firefox) to be stable enough; I've never had a virus infection and suspect that most virus infections are a problem encouraged in the region between keyboard and chair.

Their only hope is to stop selling XP and *force* consumers to "choose" Vista. Hopefully by then the hardware sellers will have rolled out Linux boxes as a factory pre-installed option so we can choose "second hand XP license please".