Posts by raving angry loony

Apple, Symantec, other tech heavies challenge anti-gay legislation

Re: Guess I'll be the bad guy

Replace "LGBT" in said law with "Jewish", "Black", or "Female" - all of which various religions have found to have reasons to discriminate against. Does it suddenly become reprehensible? Then perhaps it's a bad law, and the fundamental reason that "human rights" trump "local legislation" in most free democracies. "Freedom of religion" does not mean "freedom to infringe on the rights of others".

If you're going to offer a service to the PUBLIC, then you have take ALL the public, not just a subset. It would seem to me that the whole "it's a private business so it can do what it wants" falls apart if that business if providing services to the public.

Ghostwriter: Assange™ is NARCISSISTIC and UNTRUTHFUL

Balance...

OK, you've had this week's dig at the easy target, Assange. Where's the accompanying exposure of another bit of corporate or government malfeasance as exposed by Wikileaks? Or is that too hard for you?

Harvard student thrown off 14,000-core super ... for mining Dogecoin

Reporting fail...

so, how much did the guy make before he was caught? And did it pay for his tuition which I'm fairly sure they won't be refunding...

Microsoft's new CEO: The technology isn't his problem

Give it a rest, already.

<quote> reclaim its place among the technology innovators?</quote>

Innovators? The only thing Microsoft ever did in-house was Microsoft Word, and even then they had to resort to dirty tricks to get rid of the competition. Pretty much everything else they've bought or stolen from someone else, including their first product, DOS.

Microsoft was successful not because of their innovation, but because they ruthlessly (and illegally) used their unethically acquired dominant position to beat everyone else up and leverage their other products into the market. There's a reason that just about every company that has either "partnered" or tried to compete with Microsoft while Gates was CEO ended up broken and bloody in the ditch, and it definitely wasn't because they were "technology innovators".

More like "dirty tricks innovators", that I'd agree with.

Spam drops as legit biz dumps mass email ads: Only the dodgy remain

Bullhooey

So long as they keep counting legitimate, registered-for emails as "spam" in their stats, I'm suspicious of these self-serving, inflated claims.

So long as companies like Cloudmark, Yahoo, and others continue to ignore "this is not spam, the user registered for it in a double opt-in" corrections to their false positives so that they can then claim "hey, we only have a 0.001% false positives" (yeah, because you don't count them) then the companies claiming "we block X amount of spam" are just as slimy and underhanded as the companies that actually do send UCE. They're also costing legitimate business as much if not more than actual spam does.

Cryptocurrencies now being pooped out by cartoon cat

I disagree vehemently with the characterization of Nyan-cat being the most annoying internet meme since the Hampster Dance. Surely the "Crazy Frog" (a.k.a. Annoying Thing) could be awarded that accolade.

Sorry, there's an article?

Wow, gamers on YouTube really love the Xbox One. It's like they were paid to say that (Hint: they are)

What a surprise...

Microsoft Is Unethical! In other news, water is wet, and some English pubs put too much head on their pints.

Microsoft has been the unethical, backstabbing, slimy, creepy uncle of software since they started. This is hardly news. They've been found guilty of such behaviour in court, and it never even slowed them down. What would be news is if Microsoft actually acted honourably, or ethically. The likelihood of that happening is the same as me being declared head of the Orthodox Church.

Facebook lets Russian search czar Yandex suck on its public 'firehose'

Done deal.

Deleted all my social media accounts a few months ago now. Barely know what to do with all the free time I've got suddenly. I'm seeing more people now too, which is nice. Best part is, my conversations are mostly private now, and they don't (yet) have advertising popups on my walks.

US Department of Justice details Kim Dotcom evidence

Re: let me be the first to say ...

Timmy, not only are you not the first, you're hardly be the last. Have a beer.

Crooks target Target: 40 MILLION bank cards imperiled in cyber-heist

Re: Insider Job?

It's called "cash"

Yeah, because those of us who lived/worked in Germany, Japan, or other cash centric cultures where you needed to hit up an ATM (that closed during "non business hours") just to buy a fucking pizza would be so happy to return to a system that requires us to carry large quantities of cash with us all the time.

Rather than pushing for payments systems to actually implement resilent, reliable, secure payment options instead of the crap "cheap is good" bullshit they keep foisting on us.

Why don't you just fuck off and die instead?

Sensation: Chinese Jade Rabbit FOUND ON MOON

Hey, are they using the same sound stage that NASA used when they faked the 1969 moon landings?

yeah, yeah, do let the door hit me on the way out...

Oz couple get jiggy in pharmacy in 'banned' condom ad

Australia's CAD (Commercials Advice) - which classifies ads for TV broadcast - "knocked it [the spot] back asking for the removal of all sexual references"

I like that. I guess the Puritans (wait, I thought they all went to the Americas? Were some transported to Australia?) who staff this pile of puerile shite department don't want condom commercials at all then? Which makes sense - the kind of people who staff these things (or worse, make the asinine rules they follow) would probably have been better off caught in a condom tip, not eventually growing up into who they became.

If you want an IT job you'll need more than a degree, say top techies

Re: The first hurdle....

Head of IT for a medium sized organisation with 5000 staff here.

First don't ever lie on a CV about qualifications, HR (the automated systems that are used for recruitment nowadays)

By the way, your automated systems are broken. They search for buzzwords, not actual knowledge. Good luck getting qualified help with that kind of half-arsed system between you and people who actually know what they're doing. Most of the people I know who really know what they're doing were too fucking busy to get a bunch of jerkwad "certifications', 90% of which are obsolete by the time you get it. Yet that's all your automated systems check for.

Bitter? Me? fucking right.

One-minute Koch-blocking earns attacker two years, massive fine

Fascism for the win!

America - home of the corporation, land of the oppressed. Hasn't been "land of the free" since the 1950's at least.

Two of the hallmarks of fascism are suppression of opposition through terror and control, and government for the benefit of the corporations. That's what the USA has today. Hitler and Hirohito won the war after all, just nobody fucking noticed. Two years and $183,000k fine for causing at most a few hundred dollars in "damage"? Terror and control indeed.

Microsoft bans XXXXBOX gamers for CURSING in online combat

History

Just remember, these decisions are being made by people from a country where Europe dumped its Puritans and other such groups. It's not surprising that the culture is still very much "we can kill people, we can rape them, we can slice them up, but we can't swear about it". It sort of defines the culture of that country right there - where telling someone they're a cunt is worse than shooting them in a game.

Microsoft: fuckwads, the lot of them.

CIOs, IT chiefs: ARRGH! What do you MEAN, HR just bought 400 iPads and didn't tell us

Blame game

These are the same groups that then lobby to fire even more tech staff when their shiny new toys don't actually work. Yet again, instead of firing those actually (ir)responsible for the dodgy purchases in the first place.

Revealed: How Microsoft DNS went titsup globally on Xbox One launch day

Ouch.

I'm guessing that they'll probably blame the sysadmins. Again. Rather than blaming poorly designed software, or cheap-arse management, or any of the other dozens of real causes. Because sysadmins are easy targets. Just ask El Reg, they've done so recently themselves.

Hey! You! Get outta my cloud says Google with balloon broadband patent

And they expect to get it?

So I guess this 2002 article http://www.spacedata.net/news071902.htm (amongst others) won't be counted as "prior art". What a bunch of tossers. No doubt the patent will be granted, after which it will cost someone millions to get it thrown out again. USPTO, costing the US billions since they got converted from a service to a profit centre.

'I'm BIG, I'm BALD and I'm LOUD!' Blubbering Ballmer admits HE was Microsoft's problem

Hmm.

Assuming the quotes are accurate, anyone who can admit that

(a) they're part of the problem and

(b) quit because they're part of the problem

has, in my opinion, more going for them than what I thought. He may be big, bald, and loud, but he seems to also be at the point where he can now be a little bit honest. At least now that he doesn't run one of I.T.'s most infamously unethical companies.

World's first 3D-printed metal gun 'more accurate' than factory-built cousin

Re: Biological Printer

"I have a biological printer"

Have you checked if your printer can print sharks too then? I suggest a reasonable distance when asking said question.

Re: Frickin Laser

They'd need a biological printer to print the sharks first, so the lasers would have something to attach to.

SECRET draft copyright treaty LEAKED: Meet the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Re: Wikileaks

I quite it's time for El Reg and others to stop flogging the character assassination of Assange angle and start paying more attention to what Wikileaks and other such organizations have been leaking.

This is an excellent start. Start, I say.

It's the tag team of East India Company and London Company of Stationers back with their fondest wish list - and it looks like they'll be getting it.

KRAKOOM! iPad Air explose in fireball, terrified fanbois flee Apple store

It's a hoax

Has to be. Store full of fanbois and other cell-phone carrying junkies and not ONE live video of the event? People take video of the buildings burning around them, there's no excuse for there not being a live video of this. Except if it's a hoax. Q.E.D.

That or El Reg is slipping and didn't link to said live video?

Please, PLEASE, Skype... Don't kill our apps and headsets, plead devs

Re: Same old, same old

Pick something:

https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=all+the+alternatives+to+skype

Same old, same old

Oh look, Microsoft shafting partners again. Admittedly the poor bastards didn't realize they were going to be Microsoft partners when they started, but it's the same old song with the same old refrain.

Google Chrome: Extensions now ONLY from the Company Store

<quote>The amount of time I have to remove crap like...</quote>

So what particular reality are you where just because something is hosted only on Google's servers means it won't be crap? The only criteria will probably be "don't interfere with our ad stream", meaning anything resembling AdBlock will likely never make it, but that won't stop the "fart apps" from stinking up the browser.

For that matter, Wajam is ALREADY in the Chrome store. Meaning your Hallelujah is very misplaced.

Crowdfunded audit of 'NSA-proof' encryption suite TrueCrypt is GO

Marketing again.

Call me paranoid, but what's to then guarantee that the source code they're auditing is the same code they'll be actually using? Or that the auditing company isn't bound by secret orders to ignore certain back doors - something that seems quite possible in the USA today.

Sounds like a marketing exercise rather than anything that might do what they claim it will do. Oh well, moving along.

How the W3C met its Waterloo at the Do Not Track vote showdown

I will stop blocking ads when I can be certain that when I do I will not be assaulted by jittery, moving, annoying, cross-site tracking pieces of trash written by trolls. I'd LOVE to let certain websites get remunerated for their work, and if having them display ads on my screen does this, I'm OK with that. But each and every time I've disabled my ad blockers (NoScript / AdBlock+ / Ghostery) on a site, I keep getting those jittery, moving, annoying, and above all privacy destroying cross-site behaviour tracking pieces of trash. So the blocks stay on.

If sites can't find ways to monetize without aiding and abetting anti-privacy behaviour tracking organizations, too bad. Maybe you should fire your marketing group for being a lazy c... bastards and completely outsourcing your ad stream while selling your viewers to 3rd parties.

As for phones, I certainly can't visit most sites using that as there's no room on the screen left for what I came for. So I never use my phone for browsing.

That said, I've already turned off AdBlock and NoScript for El Reg. But I'll not turn off Ghostery, you DoubleClick loving monsters.

Assange anounces candidacy for possible WA Senate by-election

Two Questions

1) why is this in hardware -> tablets? This has nothing to do with computers, and everything to do with El Reg continuing anti-Assange bullshit.

2) how about El Reg devote at LEAST one article on leaked evidence of corporate or government malfeasance (maybe from, say, Wikileaks?) for every article they spend doing character assassinations on Assange? They could probably even tie it in to computing, unlike their Daily Mail style attacks on the guy.

iPad Air not very hot: Apple fanbois SHUN London fondleslab launch

Re: entropy...

Whoa! Fanboi much? Frankly, comparing a company to Microsoft's hardware group to show off its success is kind of like comparing a live slug to a dead goat to proudly boast how one is much faster than the other.

What part of "biting the hand that feeds IT" did you miss, fanboi? In my opinion they aren't doing that often enough, or hard enough. To me, today, the adage I first heard about 34 years ago is still true: all hardware sucks, all software sucks, the rest is strictly personal preference. El Reg is fairly good at showing that adage to be true (now and again, wouldn't do for them to get a swelled head).

entropy...

So El Reg trashes Apple when they have huge lineups and possibly deliberately induced shortages.

Then trashes Apple when they have lots of stock and no lineups.

Good work. I approve. Never give the suckers an even break.

Shiny doodad blog Engadget clubbed with Reddit banhammer

Re: Don’t try to game the system...

<quote>It is cheating. It is lying. It is fraud.</quote>

Only if you're a tech. Economists, politicians, marketing, sales, CEOs, and a host of others would call it "if I wasn't physically prevented from doing it then it's allowed. The only actual issue is getting caught, which just means you have to do it a different way next time." Also known as the "if it's not nailed down it's mine. If I can pry it up it wasn't nailed down" approach to life.

Yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful, so "gaming the system" is probably a good approximation.

Forrester to Facebook: you're SHALLOW and a BAD FRIEND

Time!

Lying to the product (the "members") is fine and dandy. It's not only expected, but required so that too many of them don't catch on they're the product.

But get caught lying to the ones paying you money? Time for... a spanking!

The Colosseum, Hagia Sophia, Tower of London... and, er, Steve Jobs' GARAGE

Amusing

Here were were just discussing how west-European settlers in North America had barely any history and were desperate to declare anything "history", and then there's this "news".

The significance of Steve Jobs, and whether he has any or not, will like all history be decided by future generations. Not by people who were alive in the same time period. The desperation of North Americans (Canadian and American) to declare something "historical" when it's not even old enough to draw a pension is laughable.

US indicts Brit bloke over backdoor blagging of US troops' data

Disappointed. Here I thought it was ever so British to believe that turnabout was fair play.

Anonymity is the enemy of privacy, says RSA grand fromage

Headline says: "There's only one letter between RSA and NSA, after all"

I count 3...

N - O - P - Q - R

NSA.gov goes down after ‘error during scheduled update’

Blame game

Blame the sysadmins? Oh, you mean all the ones you fired because obviously some paper-pushing spook with a degree in political science and a masters in butt-kissing can keep those servers running? Yeah, that'll work.

A steam punk VDU ?

OK, I've always thought of "steampunk" as "modern world without the electricity to drive it". It's not "victorian", it's "no electricity but all the gadgets..."

So....

A display unit that shows various shades of "grey" could be constructed by stretching a rubber sheet across a series of (very small) actuator arms (named "pixels"). Each arm would drive into the sheet, creating a point of "lighter colour" where it presses into the sheet. Very much like a steam-powered typewriter but with 320x200 "keys" (initially, possibly growing to 1024 x 763 some day?)

So yeah, your VDU would weigh several hundred kilos... but it would display monochromatic images.

Pac-Man GHOST nebula is literally the coolest thing in the universe – boffins

Who is careless now?

Hmm, lots of (well, several anyway) folks commenting on the careless use of "coldest in the universe". Yet the article states "it's the coldest place in our known universe", and the abstract of the paper it's based on states "coldest known object in the universe".

So either there's a bunch of commentards who really need to double-check their reading and comprehension skills, or both the article AND the abstract of the paper were corrected between the time the comments were posted and I read the article (about 15 minutes before this comment was posted - see posting date...).

How to spot a coders comment

Comments? I bloody wish...

The programmers I've been dealing with don't comment. They even go to the trouble of removing comments that support staff put in to guide them. (because "they aren't required"). All code is self-documenting, and if you want to find out what it does, just read the code. Commits (when they have them - most of the code isn't in a repository) have things like smiley faces or "fixed" as the comment. After all, it will be obvious what they intended for the code to do, as opposed to what it actually does.

No, I'm not fond of the programmers I've been dealing with lately.

Google burns promise of 'no big banner ads'. Don't Be Evil next?

Evil?

"Don't be evil" was only a suggestion - and THEY got to define what "evil" was. In other words, another lie by marketing. If you believed it, I have expensive ocean-front property to sell you. In Derbyshire. (or Arizona, take your pick...)

Lone sysadmin fingered for $462m Wall Street crash

No surprise...

So, lack of redundancy, probably because some accountant thought it cost too much.

Lack of testing, because a manager listened to the accountant.

Lack of training, because it detracts from profits.

But it's always the sysadmin's fault. Not the fault of the person who made the choice to not have someone double-check mission critical work. Not the fault of the person who made the decision to not test mission critical work. Not the fault of the company who saw no need to either train or pay enough for better trained people.

No, it's the sysadmin's fault. Of course.

Can you spell "s-c-a-p-e-g-o-a-t"? Shame on El Reg for not biting the hands that feeds you, but instead biting the hand of those who deliver the food.

MEGA ASTEROID could 'BLOW UP EARTH' - Russian space boss

Wrong date?

You sure it's not 19 January 2038 at 03:14:07 GMT? Pity really. Now THERE'S a timestamp worthy of a Mayan-level apocalypse. Oh well, maybe they'll try to take the Northern Line and be delayed a few years.

NHS preps spammy mailshots advertising 'BIGGEST medical data grab in HISTORY'

Doesn't seem to be a way to opt out if you're currently in the UK.

Meanwhile, some of us have moved out of the UK leaving somewhat extensive records in the UK health databases. Because of the way they're doing it, I'm not being given any chance to opt out. All emails and snail mail letters to the appropriate agencies have been met with a resounding silence (apart from the one auto-response a while ago saying they'll let me know).

The legacy IE survivor's guide: Firefox, Chrome... more IE?

There's no excuse for IE6, I agree with that. So many alternatives. Windows XP? Meh, if it works, let it keep working. Fuck Microsoft's profit margin.

EasyJet website crashes and burns

EasyCrash

Any bets they have a trademark, or would try to argue the point, if anyone tried to call it "EasyCrash"?

Wikileaks FAILS to start Twitter bitchfight with Guardian hack

Sour grapes perhaps?

Because the press, including El Reg, has spent all its time slagging and performing character assassinations on Assange while *completely* ignoring the data that Wikileaks is presenting?

I can see that making a few people less than enamoured with said press, and especially the folks who stand to profit from someone elses actions.

Facebook RIPS away your veil of privacy, declares NO MORE HIDING

End of the line.

My account was disabled - and I've been so much more productive since doing so three months ago! All this news has done is prompted me to request the account be deleted. Of course, I have to *reactivate* my deactivated account so that I could ask for it to be deactivated and removed, but that's Facebook for you.

So just from a productivity standpoint, I'd say deleting my Facebook account was a huge win there. If they hadn't been such scum about balancing profit vs privacy I might not have done so. So all I can say is that these policies may just be a good idea really. Those who don't value any form of privacy probably deserve everything they're about to receive.