Posts by RW

Vladimir Putin bitchslaps Dell-boy

Collapse of the Soviet Union: a reflection on NuLabour

I've read that the Central Committee vetted the price of everything sold in the Soviet Union and because the prices set had no relation to the costs of inputs, the entire economy eventually went south.

At the risk of incurring our Divine Moderatrix's wrath, I can't help but remark how this reminds me of NuLabour. My flabber is regularly gasted by news of some NuLab initiative aimed at some trivial aspect of society, just as the Central Committee from time to time debated the price of overcoats. It appears that neither political system (has) grasped that all-important principle, "don't sweat the small stuff."

But then, what else does the word "totalitarian" mean but political oversight of the totality of life?

IE8 Suggested Sites suggested to be snoopy

@ Sean Ellis

"Should I trust Microsoft with my data?"

"Should I trust ANY company with my data?"

No and no.

Why, in spite of protestations "we won't use it for Evil"?

Because sooner or later some professional liar (aka a marketer) will see all that lovely data sitting there: just what he/she needs in order to spam the bejesus out of you, me, him, her, them, and us. Anyone who is foolish enough to use a piece of software that plays tattle-tale deserves what they get (intrusive ads, popups, popunders, email galore).

Important Advice to Software Developers: don't snoop on the users. No one cares how lofty your reasons are, and no one believes you when you say it's innocent. It isn't innocent. Proof: you're not doing this out of the goodness of your heart. You're doing it to put money in your pocket, and everyone finally understands that business lets nothing stand in its way when there's a chance to make money. They'd sell their own grandmothers if they thought they could.

'Bart Simpson' punts Church of Scientology

"just kidding"

I've heard that line before from screwy cults after they do something especially reprehensible. IIRC, the Rajneeshees tried it after spraying bacteria on salad bars in The Dalles, Oregon to sicken people and prevent them from voting contra-Rajneesh and after dosing a bunch of hobos with Haldol to keep them under control.

[Recollections may be dim and details not as stated.]

Sorry, Nancy. You are a fail.

Why do Hollywood types fall for scientological nonsense? Because, dear people, they're only actors and actresses, a breed that isn't required to do much in the way of critical thinking. All that's required is a good memory for your lines and an ability to follow the director's instructions. In the case of Nancy, all that's required is the ability to read very simple English.

From such a milieu, no flowers of intellect can be expected to emerge.

All hail Xenu, Galactic Lord!

Paris, because I still think that under the public airhead persona she's a pretty astute businesswoman who knows how to parlay notoriety into good money.

EC will force users to pick a Windows browser, says Microsoft

A little history

Around 1997, MS embedded (or, if you prefer, deeply intertwingled) IE with Windows as a way of overcoming Netscape's dominance in the browser market. Remember that the first release of Win95 didn't even include a TCP/IP stack -- you had to use Trumpet Winsock.

It was exciting bootstrapping a non-Internet system into a state of Internet awareness. I remember logging on to a dial up bulletin board system (anybody else remember those?) in order to download Trumpet Winsock and Netscape 0.99 in 1995.

Just as with ActiveX, which was derided as a major security hazard when it made its debut, so the tight coupling of IE with Windows was viewed as a very serious mistake by commentators of the day. However, Redmond in its usual arrogant we-know-everything way blew off both of these warnings. The entire world has been paying a high price every since in the form of major insecurities in Windows due to ActiveX and IE integration.

It appears that some chickens are coming home to roost.

Gonna be funny

Since Windows Update only works with IE (prolly because WU uses ActiveX, that invention of the devil). MS will have to rework WU to work without IE and ActiveX.

I'm sure they'll make a complete hash of it. Deliberately or through sheer incompetence I can't say.

Hardy, har, har!

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss

Global warming

Doesn't necessarily mean the weather will get warmer. If we accept that increased atmospheric CO₂ levels lead to increased absorption of solar energy, instead of warming things up, that may just stir the atmosphere up so we get more storms and more violent storms than in the past.

Sadly, we have two opposing groups neither of which is dedicated to uncovering the truth: the True Believers (the earth mother brigade who seize on any bit of cockamamie environmental nonsense without any real understanding) and the Let's Make Money While We Can group, who don't give a damn that they may be fouling their nest, or anyone else's, as long as they're making money doing so.

Where is Diogenes when we need him?

PS: Let me add a third anti-truth group to piss on: the Attention Whores. Self-explanatory, I believe. Or, if you prefer, you may call them the Publicity Twats.

Open source anti-Semitic as well as communist shock

"Zionazis" and @ Pete

If you think this is remarkable, check out some of the discussion forums on Craigslist, where crazed right wingers are spouting insanities like a whale or the Old Faithful geyser.

"Politics USA" and "Politics World" are especially rich in this nonsense. You have to wonder if the crackpots are posting according to scripts written by the same people who script Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and whats-his-face Hannity. If so, who's footing the bills?

The phrase "permanent Republican majority" will go down in history as one of the lamest political slogans ever devised. Sadly, some people just don't see the humor in Obama's election as Republican dreams of dominance are revealed to be the delusional fantasies they were.

@ Pete re "anti-semitism". What you say is true about Arabs being Semites, but the phrase "anti-semite" means "anti-Jew". Don't try to apply strict logic to the meanings of idioms, in English or any other language.

Deviants, perverts, 'weirdos' - who's going down?

Martin Salter

His verbal spewings remind me of the homophobic ravings of some American right wingers and televangelists -- who later turn out to be queer as all get out.

And let us not forget the proven link between homophobia and repressed homosexual urges, thanks to careful studies using a peter meter. Mr. Salter appears to be blissfully unaware that he is proving himself to have a very dirty mind indeed.

I suggest all good Britons honor Mr. Salter by sending him copies of their extreme porn for his delectation. A box of tissues for post-frenzy cleanup might also be in order.

Yowza!

Linux to spend eternity in shadow of 'little blue E'

What's wrong with Linux

1a. There is no consistency in the keyboard shortcuts from one app to the next. As some commentator has said, it's time for Linux apps to adopt the de facto standard that Windows presents: ctrl-F4 to close the current document, alt-F4 to close the program, etc.

1b. Windows apps using the alt key to activate the menu: you key alt, then (say) F to get to the file menu. Some Linux apps work that way. Others require chording: you must key alt *and* F simultaneously.

2. In OpenOffice, slavish imitation of Microsoft's poorly thought out UI. I also notice this in IBM Lotus Symphony, where changing the font for a cell or range of cells, one of the most common actions, is buried several layers deep. You want to see good UI ergonomics, check out the now 15 y.o. Lotus 1-2-3 Release 5. The old versions of WordPerfect were pretty good, too.

3. The failure to prune the Ubuntu forums and digest their contents into an MS-like knowledge base. Trying to find a solution to a problem is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It ends up being easier and faster to simply post a new question.

(Written by an otherwise happy adopter of Ubuntu)

Accusations fly as another Nominet director quits

Lawyers tell you what they think you want to hear

Of course Nominet's own lawyers supported their position!

Trying to get impartial advice from a lawyer is like trying to get a Japanese gardener to lay out a real Japanese garden instead of a dog's breakfast of every known feature of any Japanese garden anywhere.

Boffin: Lost Stradivarius violin tech reverse-engineered

Color me doubtful

This particular boffin unconsciously reveals that he lives in an overly technological world. His complex theory is no different in principle from theories that the pyramids must have been built with some mysterious, unknown assistance.

Our ancestors were just as smart as we are. They managed to do marvelous things with simple means, some of which things we cannot reproduce today because we can't see the forest of simplicity for the trees of technological gimmicks.

These wonders include, inter alia: the granulated gold jewelry created by the Etruscans; the dome of the Duomo in Florence; the portico pillars of St. Isaac's in St. Petersburg; the Great Pyramids and its companions; "Coad stone", used for exterior statuary; the printers ink used by Gutenberg; and, of course, the marvelous violins of Stradivarius and his contemporaries.

No need to invoke aliens, strange chemical mixtures and such when sheer gumption would suffice. (Let me add that some of these wonders have been fully explained. Coad stone turns out to be a form of porcelain characterized by very careful preparation of the raw materials followed by a long, slow firing. The building of the dome of the Duomo is documented in Vasari's "Lives of the Artists." The pillars of St. Isaac's are well documented in text and engravings.)

There have been hundreds of proposals about the Strad violins, but most of them, like the one at hand, are simply too far fetched to be believable.

US couple leg it with 'gift from God' bank error

@ Sarah Bee re "feminist rule of law"

"Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord"

Watch it, sister. One of these days we're going to jam a law through that requires all ladies to wear serious corsetry, complete with whalebone stays and lots of very tight lacing. You won't be allowed to appear in public with a waist larger than 18" circumference.

We'll call this "the masculinist rule of law."

(You _are_ a lady, aren't you?)

Home Office promises better personal data guards

Sorry, Ms. Smith, but you no longer have any credibility

This pronouncement is just blowing smoke. What's probably happening is the institution of seriously draconian rules against whistle blowing or revealing that a loss has taken place.

You can only lie and mislead and distort for so long before everyone waves off everything you say as just another pack of lies.

ISPs slam CEOP bid to rewrite RIPA

@ Dennis

Quite correct!

If the ISP's aren't reimbursed, you can be sure they will deploy minimal resources and take minimal care in handling these requests. Even with reimbursement, it's only via the ISPs' good will that reasonable care is taken today

One would be tempted to wire up a fast printer and divert all logging to that, so when the plods appear, they're handed a pallet full of paper to search through. By hand, using a magnifier to read minuscule 4 pt tpe. What, the toner cartridge failed and it wasn't noticed for three days? Oh, dear, how very, very sad. [Apologies to the Register readership for lapsing into sarcasm.]

At a slightly deeper level, this proposal is simply totalitarian. (As is typical of everything NuLabour proposes.) The concept behind it is "we are the state, you *will* do what we say".

Sounds a little like the old Soviet Union squeezing internal enemies.

Chaotic Coroners and Justice Bill reels into view

"get that Home Secretary some treatment for her mental problem."

A waste of time. You can't cure the stupidity of a former schoolteacher.

Has anyone else noticed how very schoolmarmish so many of NuLabour's initiatives are?

Drop a candy wrapper on the street, and be charged, convicted, and fined. Have your front door broken down by a home invasion and the plods never even bother to show up.

Something is rotten, very rotten --- and it isn't in the state of Denmark.

eBay revenue shrinks for first time in history

It's the MS syndrome

"Now we is a monopoly so we can bum-fuck our customers any way we want."

For me, the last straw was about a year ago. A carefully crafted search string to look for specific articles of clothing (brand, style, size, etc) suddenly started returning all sorts of other crap I was NOT interested in.

Did it ever occur to the dimbulbs at Ebay that if someone has a long, complex search string, they're probably looking for something very specific and are profoundly disinterested in "similar" items????

Evidently not.

The decline and fall of Ebay will become a textbook case of how not to manage a business. Here a natural monopoly has so badly screwed over its customer base that they're leaving in droves and the business is beginning to implode.

Reasons? Greed and, I suspect, the usual brain-dead approach of marketers and beancounters.

Alas.

Conficker Autoplay ruse gets teeth into Windows 7

Ubuntu repositories

One difference from Microsoft.com: the Ubuntu repositories contain not just the OS, but most of the applications as well.

EU says Microsoft violated law with IE on Windows

Keep your focus, folks

The real issue isn't that IE is bundled with Windows; it's that IE doesn't conform to web standards. It's a very clever strategy to help maintain the Windows monopoly, and it works this way:

1. IE bundled with Windows, unavailable for other platforms

2. IE doesn't follow standards

3. Web sites implement for IE, not according to standards

4. Plethora of non-standard IE-centric websites force use of IE

5. Hence use of Windows is enforced.

Since most El Reg readers seem to be young whipper-snappers, a bit of history might also be in order. In ancient days of Big Iron, IBM fought a long drawn out court case over their own bundling practices. Every installation of OS/360 and its descendants included a suite of compilers: Fortran, Cobol, Algol (yes, Algol), PL/I. Just like IE and its idiosyncratic disregard of Web standards, these compilers played free and loose with the language standards, mostly by including "extensions". Much the same scenario played out as outlined above.

Footnote: in point of fact, compilers were very poorly standardized. Every manufacturer of Big Iron bundled compilers with their OS, and every one of those compilers supported a clutch of "extensions". Incompatibility ruled the day.

Online advertisers team up on privacy principles

@ Sarah Bee

Google "zap annoying media" for a half-way house between all ads and no ads. It gets rid of all the annoying animated gifs, flashlets, etc.

But I admit that Firefox with Adblock-Plus is simpler to use and gives a cleaner result.

IWF confirms Wayback Machine porn blacklisting

Judge, jury, and executioner, all rolled up in one lovely NuLabour quango

"The IWF can confirm it has taken action in relation to content on www.archive.org involving indecent images of children which contravenes UK law (Protection of Children Act 1978)."

They left out the word "allegedly". Wha' hoppen to the legal principle "innocent until proven guilty"?

No, wait, I know: NuLabour's social engineering team found it an impediment to the creation of The New British (Wo)Man and got rid of it. Bunch of archaic old legal fol-de-rol, anyhow, an embarrassment to any progressive nation in this cybernetic age.

From all I've read on El Reg the last few years, it sounds like Britain is overdue for an far-reaching revision of "separation of powers": just what powers police, councils, central govt, and various quangos have. Too many have far too much power. And they sure don't hesitate to abuse their power whenever it suits their fancy.

In a civilized country, the power vested in the IWF would be in the hands of an accountable government department independent of the cops (not staffed with retread plods) that carried out its work in full public view. Instead we get another NuLabour slyness that is, frankly, shameful to see in the country housing "the mother of parliaments."

Would that more ISPs would say "show us your credentials to pronounce upon the legality of a given image." I suspect that the IWF actually has no more legal standing than any random troll standing at a bus stop.

Librarians redubbed 'audience development officers'

Time to form an Anti-euphemism Society

We'll call developmentally retarded children "retarded", we'll use the verb "to fuck", and (gasp!) we'll call librarians "librarians". The adjectives "good", "bad", and "fucking awful" ("bloody awful" in the UK & colonies) will be deployed with regularity, as well asthe pejorative word "stupid".

This kind of nonsense always amuses me: some brain dead functionary thinks that changing "what we call it" makes "it" better. Or conjures up some imaginary scenario in which someone (just who is never specified) is "offended" or something is "inappropriate" and thereby justifies re-rigging the language.

It's true that libraries have changed, but they've been changing for a long time yet were still always called libraries. From the clay tablets of Babylonia to the papyrus scrolls of Alexandria to the hand written codices chained to the shelves of medieval Europe right through to modern libraries full of cheap editions of bodice rippers and DVDs of practical sex techniques: they were/are all still libraries.

And the professionals who run them are librarians.

Organisations still don't know much about data protection

Legacy systems

Then there are the organizations running legacy software for which documentation, source code, and in-house understanding have all been lost. (The last via retirements and downsizing.) They run programs they don't know the function of, and aren't sure what their inputs and outputs are, but they can't risk not running them by virtue of the very same ignorance: no one knows what happens if you stop.

Naturally, no one knows what data is stored where and in what format by such software.

There's a physical analogy too: at one time, a crew of environmental activists methodically traversed the Chicago River (a notoriously polluted waterway) hammering wooden plugs into all the small, undocumented outfall pipes dripping filth into the river. Days or weeks later, something somewhere in an industrial plant would back up, causing rage and consternation.

Bill Gates, in view of the obvious lack of Windows documentation within Microsoft.

'Lord of the Universe' disciple exits Wikipedia

Actually, Wikipedia is extremely good

I've gotten interested in the Caucasus, its languages, peoples, and history, and I've found information on Wikipedia that you'd be very hard pressed to extract from any conventional library, even the greatest (LOS, Harvard, British). Some of the information may not even be available in English other than on Wikipedia.

The fly in the wiki ointment lies with controversial topics: living people and religions seem to be the particularly outstanding in this regard.

There are some curious anomalies relating to such topics. I accessed the article on Stalin, and it displayed a Wiki-warning that it might be biased. Well, yes, it was biased in Stalin's favor, but as a basic biography it wasn't bad. The bias was very easy to discount.

WRT the Church of Xenu, they'll never give up, having the tenacity of a mindless animal that clamps itself to one of your limbs and chews away ferociously no matter what you do.

Clearly, articles relating to the Church of Xenu need to be locked so as to prevent anonymous editing. Why the people in charge at Wikipedia can't see this, I do not know.

I've only shagged two blokes, insists Paris Hilton

@ raving angry loony

Don't you realize that the El Reg comments are the property of a private club of pimply faced youths (and their aged wannabe congeners), with senses of humor at about the 4 y.o. level?

All presided over by that formidable matriarch Sarah who don't take no guff from nobody.

If sexism is the worst criticism that can be levelled at this cabal of the callow and uncaring, I think Ms. Bee needs to break out that black leather bustier she bought at Folsom last fall and put it to some use. Surely there is a higher form of expression for so much concentrated juvenility.

Online crime maps go live

@ Simon Ward

"the definition of what constitutes a crime is in a seemingly constant state of flux."

My understanding is that under the benign leadership of She-who-shall-not-be-named, HM Gov are going to trash all existing criminal legislation and replace it with a new, all-encompassing Criminal Act: "Sec 1. Everything you do is a crime. Sec. 2. Citizens are required to maintain a log of all crimes they commit and provide it to law enforcement officers, council snoops, and assorted busybodies whenever demanded."

N.B. "Demanded", not "requested." If it's going to be a jack-booted police state, let's make sure there are hobnails involved.

Council to crack down on Cracknuts Lane

It's good old-fashioned prudery, that's all

And is a symptom of minds utterly obsessed with sex and elimination: what are usually called "dirty minds."

But, alas, no one has the balls to stand up and say don't be so silly. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder -- and so is smut, dirtiness, and obscenity.

It's sad to see small-minded councils destroying England's history for such specious reasons.

Windows for Warships™ reaches Royal Navy frigates

Issues

Is IE part of this special version of Windows? If so, where does that leave Microsoft's claim that IE is an essential part of Windows that cannot be removed?

What happens when some horny sailor plugs his laptop into the shipboard network so he can look at smutty videos?

If the design doesn't include ethernet outlets in random places, how does it prevent horny sailors from adding one on the QT?

If MS can create a bullet-proof version of Windows for this use, why not for desktop use?

HMRC gets it wrong on one in ten personal records

Causative factors?

Off the top of my head, I can point to several probable causes of this incredible ineptitude:

1. Hiring the cheapest possible labor to input data. Guess what? If you don't pay people a decent salary, they're going to think of you just what you think of them. Secondary analysis: the pay rates are so poor that intelligent, literate, responsible people don't have any interest in these jobs. Data entry may not look like it requires brains, but it's difficult, tedious, fatiguing work, and for that reason alone deserves reasonable pay.

2. Hiring PC types as managers. This seems endemic under NuLabour: maybe I'm just expressing my misogynism, but all too often when there's a major cockup in the NHS or social services, there's a woman at the head of the organization. In addition to sex, other PC characteristics are probably also used, rather than "is the person competent to do the job?" I'm thinking of skin color, ethnicity, place of residence, total contributed to the Labour Party and so on. [Actually, that's not hiring for PC reasons. It's just good old fashioned corruption.]

3. The Blairite fixation on statistics, targets, goals, graphs, databases, etc, as though these are ends in themselves instead of merely indicators (and not necessarily good ones) of how well the job is being done. Sometimes I wonder if the Scientologists have infiltrated Whitehall and introduced Hubbardistic management methods.

4. The sheer stupidity of the people in charge. They love government by tabloid headline, and never think beyond some superficial solution to a problem. Result: side effects and unexpected consequences. I am flabbergasted how often HM Government comes up with some stupid, cockamamie idea to solve some trivial problem in society. I would have thought that the ministers of the Crown had more important fish to fry than worrying about people's waistlines. Not only stupid, but shallow and badly educated: so much is clear.

[Please note that per my promise of a few weeks ago, I have named no names.]

Just as Barack Obama is going to have his hands full trying to undo the mess that Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld have created, so whoever forms the next government in the UK is going to have little time for anything but sorting out the administrative problems resulting from NuLabour's idiocy.

Terry Pratchett knighted for services to literature

@ iamapizza

Come, come, now. Maybe *you* don't like Terry Pratchett's writings but a lot of us think very highly of them. Not only for their sheer corny entertainment value, but for the sly commentary they make on modern times.

To contrast Pratchett-fantasy with Tokien-fantasy: who cleans the sewers in Gondor? Is there a garbage dump in Rivendell or in The Shire? Do elves and hobbits use condoms to control their fertility and if so, who makes them? The dwarves? Or are they gray-market imports from Mordor?

I admit that the same criticism applies to every other fantasy writer I can think of, bar Sir Terry of Ankh-Morpork. Let's have three cheers for infrastructure fantasy.

Icon of Gates-with-halo: is that the one ring to rule us all?

Zavvi goes titsup

I shed a tear for bricks and mortar

I've always been a classical music lover, and over the years of gradually accumulating a large library of classical CD's, I've many times bought something I chanced across while just browsing the stock in our local A&B Sound (now, alas! a thing of the past).

Had I been shopping online, I would have remained blissfully unaware of many of these gems. Yes, sometimes I bought complete turkeys: the string quartets of Ernst Krenek come to mind. But nonetheless, online isn't the same as bricks and mortar stores where you can scan huge numbers of titles far more easily than you can on a monitor.

UK.gov to push Obama for tougher rules online

Everybody's got it backwards

Instead of "making the net safe for precious snowflakes", let's start the discussion by declaring "unless otherwise specified, no part of the net is safe for kiddies."

Then we institute a system whereby web pages can indicate that they are safe for children, with a filter that blocks all other web pages when Junior is logged on. Notice: no centralized white- (or black-) list. When kids are logged on, it's global, automatic censorship. Don't ask me if the filtering should be client-side or server-side.

Unfortunately, this requires a consistent system of categorizing users by age, a process more easily said than done.

All of a sudden, all those adult sites that have a "yes, I am over 18", "no, I am an underage precious snowflake" flash page can get rid of that function. Simply doing nothing at all means (in theory) kiddies can't look at your page.

Home Office death list 'stops ID fraud'

The usual lack of perspective

I am reminded of a project conducted jointly by Ohio and Pennsylvania, roughly 30 years ago, and glowingly lauded at the time by its director in the weekly IT paper "Computer World". Lists of welfare recipients in the two states were matched in order to catch double-dippers collecting welfare in both states.

They found a vanishingly small number; sorry but I don't remember, but it may even have been a big fat zero.

A letter to the editor set matters straight: what kind of project is called a success when it costs a $million or so, but yields no useful results? Far more was spent on trying to find malefactors than the money saved by catching them.

As then in the US, so now in the UK.

It seems obvious to me that if you have a social safety net of any description, it _will_ be abused. The trick is not to use draconian methods to drive the abuse level down to zero and thereby almost certainly screw over some innocent people. The trick is to recognize that the abuse is just a cost of doing business, and try to keep it under reasonable control without going to extremes. Not too different from retail businesses in relation to shoplifting.

Moreover, the more finely meshed your safety net—that is, the greater the number of people and conditions it attempts to deal with—the higher your abuse level.

Somehow this project smells of another attempt to zero an abuse rate, without regard for the innocents who will inevitably be swept up into a bureaucratic nightmare. It is an example of the "perfectionist" attitude in the Home Office that ignores human nature in matters large and small. (I won't name names, having sworn not to mention a certain loathsome female in charge there.)

Someone needs to ask the question in public, preferably in Parliament: when someone is wrongly included on this list, what mechanisms are in place for _rapidly_ correcting the error? If someone's pension gets wrongfully cut off, is there an emergency source of funds for them until the error is resolved? Or will they be left to starve in the dark and cold, a frozen, desiccated monument to the arrogance of you-know-who and her heartless minions?

PS: for some reason, this little rant reminds me of the Monty Python "Dead Parrot" skit.

American Express web bug exposes card holders

Reporting web site malfunctions

American Express has lots of company.

A surprising number of BIG websites go to great lengths to block anyone from submitting notification of an error. Ever tried to find an email address on the Ebay site about a problem with one of their webpages? Good luck! I think there's one there, but buried a long ways below the home page and very hard to find.

Google's another. They seem to have recently been tinkering with their system, changing Streetview's operation in particular, and for at least a while Google Maps was not working as it should.

Fuck 'em.

Nine in ten emails now spam

Billion & spum

Is that "bn" 10^9 or 10^12?

"Billion" has different connotations is different countries, you know.

Since it's Cisco, I'm putting my money on 10^9, but I'd like confirmation.

If you enter population numbers and turn the crank a couple of times, some interesting figures emerge. Canada turns out to be far and away the single worst offender, cranking out 282 spams per person per annum. Turkey is next worse at 259.

Further: South Korea, 135; US, 114; Russia, 113; UK, 95, Germany, 70; Brazil, 46; India, 6.

As for "spum", sounds like a synonym for "santorum", q.v. (Actually, qui Wikit)

Junk science and booze tax - a study in spin

@ AC 16:17 GMT

> ...the "Business Guru" who insists group hug-ins will improve office efficiency.

Only those with blanc mange in lieu of brains thinks this, even in the Excited Snakes (aka the Benighted States). However, simple logic has never stopped the management caste from pushing forward such inane ideas.

I used to be viewed as the office grinch because I opted out of the annual round of birthday celebrations. My reasoning? "Because I think it's inappropriate in the workplace, where we are thrown together out of necessity and some of us can fire and hire others of us."

As the most scathing condemnation management had was the accusation that one had done something "inappropriate" (without ever telling us where to find the list of appropriate and inappropriate actions), my use in the aforementioned context had an element of true piquancy.

This nonsense really has to stop. Where is the small boy to cry out loudly "the emperor has no clothes!"?

Sony sued for collecting kids' data

Sony: are they doing a Microsoft?

In their own way, of course.

I'm thinking here of, first, their disastrous DRMed CDs from a few years ago, now this, with a few other dimly documented faux pas along the way.

What's the common thread? The view that customers' computers are there for the corporation's benefit, not the customers'. I won't even hazard a guess whether this is some evil, deliberate corporate ploy, or merely a sign of stupidity and disorganization within the corporation.

Or is it that everything is run from Tokyo and the bigwigs there don't bother to inform themselves about lowly gaijin laws and customs?

The Mother of All Demos — 150 years ahead of its time

"to grok"

Now there's a formerly trendy verbalism you don't see much anymore.

And the weird thing is that for once I nearly grokked what amanfromMars had to say. No other word would would fit this unprecedented and astonishing situation as well. I'm not sure if I've fallen through a hole in the space-time nexus into 1960-something, or ascended to an advanced level of enlightenment and illumination. Will someone throw me a cyber-rope so I can crawl back to my normal reality?

PS: Does Heinlein's "grok" have anything to do with Piet Hein's "grook"?

Digital delinquents thrive on IE6 exploits

Motherhood and apple pie

"IE6 has lots of vulnerabilities, so if it's not patched you're gonna get hit," Erasmus said.

It's gonna get hit even if it is patched!

Isn't it time for whoever's in charge at MS to say "there's something seriously wrong with the way this company develops software" and then do something about it?

Here's a question for the el Reg crowd to chew on: what fraction of these insecurities could be found via code reviews? Is the underlying issue that the code base for Windows and the related apps is now so big, and in parts so old, that it's no longer possible to review it effectively?

Paris because I haven't used her icon lately and she's getting lonely.

Government plans emergency extranet

"Government plans ... "

My immediate reaction to the first two words in the headline was "the UK govt couldn't plan its way out of a wet paper bag if it had to."

Take this as hard evidence that the worldwide opinion of NuLabour is a bunch of total incompetents, incompetent at everything, fit for nothing, and ruining anything they touch. A sort of anti-Midas government that converts gold to cack.

Perhaps el Reg can keep a special eye on these plans and give us a blow by blow account as they morph into the usual NuLab IT debacle?

Leeds Council loses kids details

More lies and empty apologies

As the old adages have it, "words are cheap", and "actions speak louder than words."

Clearly Leeds council has people in charge who don't know what they are doing (aka "muppets"), which seems to be a common problem in the UK today. But instead of letting the buck stop on someone's desk (and thereby cause their firing tout le suite), all they do is issue mealy-mouthed apologies which do little other than anger the people affected by this lackadaisical approach to data security.

The thing I wonder about: are these ridiculous data losses a specialty of the UK, or is it just that in other countries they are more successfully kept under wraps? Somehow, I suspect the former, and somehow I have a funny feeling that it's intimately tied up with NuLabour's insane fixation on creating databases. Somebody (lots of somebodies) simply hasn't awakened to the fact that the more data you hoard, the more will be lost.

For added piquancy, there's a suspicion that way too many management types in the UK public sector are hired for their political connections or for reasons of political correctness.

Is Leeds council in the grip of NuLabour, by any chance?

Flame because, yes, I'm ranting.

Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over 'child porn' album cover

Nekkid kiddies

Anyone who thinks depictions of naked people are inherently pornographic has at least two problems: a dirty mind and too much time on their hands. They are dirty-minded busybodies, in a word. In the case of apparatchiks, a further problem: a willingness to seize any excuse to diminish personal freedoms in the name of Correct Thought.

In fact, maybe the complainers in this case are the ones needing police investigation. Their unease with an innocent picture of a naked child strongly suggests a seriously screwed up sexual impulse.

Further, my sensitive nose for hidden ideology detects whiffs of the "radical feminist" p.o.v. that all men are monsters, all intercourse is rape, and similar nonsense that can be laid at the door of the late and unlamented Andrea Dworkin. I spit on her memory, though I can feel sorry for someone who so obviously never had a happy sexual experience in her sad life.

What ever happened to the concept that naked children romping around are a symbol of carefree innocence? Freud's comment "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" is, with generous lashings of mutatis mutandis, applicable here.

Jacqui promotes police handhelds

That's it!

Unarguable, definitive proof that Jacqui Smith is stupid. "Stupid as all get-out", as my sainted mother would have said. "Stupid as a bump on a log" according to some others. "Stupider than the common garden slug", from the horticultural crowd.

How else can her fixation on IT solutions to all problems, even non-existent ones, be explained?

I'd say something nasty about her background being "school teacher", but that would unduly cast the teaching profession into disrepute.

Incredible. Government by fad, government by tabloid hysteria, government by outright lies, government by methods suitable only for the classroom.

I'm going to try to restrain myself from any further comments on Ms. Smith's obviously being unfit for Home Secretary.

MIT boffins crack fusion plasma snag

The end is not yet in sight

As long as I've been an adult (no, don't ask!), the fusion energy research community have claimed that net production of energy from fusion is a decade away. That's what they said in the 1960s and that's what they're saying today. Why does the lack of progress make me a disbeliever in the fairy tale of fusion power?

It seems like within the key problem is another problem, and within that problem yet another, and so on ad infinitum.

As for the article's bald assertion "Indeed, most of the world's troubles actually boil down to energy in the end", a loud bronx cheer. Most of the world's troubles (if not all of them) boil down to overpopulation. Energy shortages are only a symptom of this.

Flame icon in honor of fusion, even though it's never worked and quite likely never will.

EDS carpeted for struggling prison project

@ AC 15:41 GMT

"I keep trying to think of how [a database of 120,000 ish active records at any one time] could cost 500 Million or more and I'm sorry, I can't do it."

Here's a likely cause: on the gubmint side, there's a committee, and they keep thinking of new bells and whistles to add to the project and never take into account the cost of unnecessary system complexity. And the chair of the committee is some NuLab hack who has neither the balls to say "Enough!" nor any useful insight into system design issues.

Such committees fall in love with the concept "oh, someone may have [this or that unlikely situation] and we have to accommodate them." The database designs arising from this kind of loose thinking tend to be extremely rigid, lacking (for example) lots of free-form text fields for entering miscellaneous commentary.

Got it?

UK ramps up health über-database

Self-selected statistical samples

Real statisticians go to great lengths to use true random samples of the population under study. Otherwise, unknown biases will make any conclusions you draw of doubtful validity.

Sounds to me like they didn't have any statisticians involved in the design, at least not in a meaningful way. Betcha some bean-counter or management wonk designed the data capture without regard to such niceties.

Fragula the Furry has it right in calling this "a masterpiece of mis-engineering."

PS: I wouldn't be surprised if they intend to use some piece of cheap, crap, copy-cat software to carry out the statistical analysis: there are stat packages out there that generate very wrong answers because the calculations aren't right down inside.

Jacqui Smith denies any knowledge of police search

But what's significant...

It isn't that dear Jackie is probably lying through her teeth. It's that everyone who's paid attention to that dimwit's actions since she became Home Secretary has come to that conclusion. The woman has a very bad reputation for lying, a reputation unbefitting a minister of the Crown, and for that reason alone should be purged. How can the country continue to have someone as Home Secretary whom everyone assumes to lie whenever convenient?

This is definitely a case where the optics outweigh the reality, but in a manner NuLabour's spinmeisters probably didn't anticipate.

Question: is it better to actually lie all the time or to have a reputation as someone who does so?

Besides, the twit is nothing more than a former schoolteacher! Of what, one wonders?

Human rights court rules UK DNA grab illegal

Jacqui-thought once again prevails

Everyone with reasonable intelligence is always prepared to entertain the notion "I am wrong." Unfortunately, in the face of indisputable evidence that her plans violate human rights, Ms. Smith clings to her demonstrable error.

Someone needs to ask Ms. Smith the question, is it better for an innocent man to be punished or a guilty man to escape punishment? Her actions make it clear that as far as she's concerned, punishment of the innocent is a non-issue. Or maybe she takes the truly Bolshevist p.o.v. that no one is totally innocent, and therefore all punishments are deserved, even if not for the reasons stated.

Here in British Columbia, we used to have a populist right-wing government headed by one W.A.C. Bennett. He was widely despised in his day (now over 35 years past), but he had one shining virtue: whenever there was an outcry over some ill-conceived scheme, he would "take a second look" at the proposal. And, indeed, would cancel or revise plans accordingly.

He was no saint. He was as crooked as the day is long. But I'm sure I'm not the only person who yearns for similar behavior on the part of modern politicians.

Plod punishes PC-reliant businesses

Always demand a written, detailed receipt for seized evidence

Otherwise, you can claim "someone purporting to be a cop took it away and refused to give me a receipt.Here's a video recording of the incident. I filed a police report of this impersonation and theft."

You guys need a political party with a platform plank "purge police forces nationwide of Stasi types."

Just like management types, you would do better hiring random people from the nearest bus stop than using the current incumbents.

Bot-wielding hackers crash eBay holiday giveaway

Ebay: "they just don't care"

That's not news at all.

EU flags up wrinkly nuke-boffin knowhow loss threat

Training? Or Education?

You can train a monkey, but you can't educate him.

This article inspires me with a nasty sense of schadenfreude. Dear, dear NuLabour and its idea that real education is filthy anti-egalitarian elitist nonsense improper in a truly proletarian society...well, they've sown the wind and in not much longer will be reaping the whirlwind.

You can't even design a decent sewage treatment plant without suitably educated boffins — and they need lots of post-educaction experience to properly ripen.

Sometimes I'm glad I'm inching into old-fart-hood, and won't be around when things start to get truly dire.