Posts by Bob

ECHR overturns Court of Appeal prisoner privacy ruling

A victory

until all his medical info ends up on the NHS IT system.

Watchdog bans Natasha Richardson ski helmet ad

@Anthony Cartmell

So, even if helmets only helped in 10% of accidents, is that a reason not to wear them? Seatbelts don't help car drivers in a rear-end shunt so should we take them out?

Anyway, they keep the tree branches from messing up my hair.

Big boost for Aussie firewall

Stupid bloody politicians

Again the conflation of "web" and "internet". I don't know, but I'd guess that the vast majority of really nasty stuff that's going around the internet isn't going by HTTP(S).

New non-volatile memory promises 'instant-on' computing

For the paranoid

That means the security services can take the nv RAM out of your machine, copy it and put it back without you knowing. All those passwords and alleged "incognito" browsing history will stil be hanging around ...

Smear site leads back to Commons

They are all scum

Have you seen who is Cameron's director of communications? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Coulson

Police bail sysadmin in animal rights extremism probe

Plod and the bad SLA

Plod is measured on "sanctioned detections" - i.e. arresting someone for a crime. Doesn't matter if it has no hope of going to court, let alone a conviction, they still get a point for an arrest. Finding the person who posted the comment is a lot of work to get one point. Looking up the server guy on whois and going and hassling him is dead easy. What would you do?

This is the same thing that causes plod to arrest you if you twat a burglar with a baseball bat. No jury in the land will convict, but that's not the point - it all helps the stats.

So yeah, while you're being questioned and having your equipment confiscated and your life ruined on a charge that will never stick, look on the bright side - at least it makes the police look good.

I am glad they arrested this bastard

I feel safer knowing that the police are taking action against people who run servers on behalf of other people who let general members of the public post comments discussing the theoretical harassment someone else.

Microsoft expands languages with ESP

Don't panic

It's just the New Zealan localized version of Active Server Pages

Confusion reigns ahead of comms überdatabase debate

Intercepted e-mail

Our intelligence indicates that Mr. Kalid intended to develop a penis of devastating proportions.

Oracle tripped up by 'leap second'

The reason for the earth slowing

Americans get fat and move south to Florida. Conservation of angular momentum means that the earth's rotation slows as a result.

Private firm may run UK spy über-database

It'll be fine

From: Bob

To: [e-mail]

Subject: Wibble'); DROP TABLE PEOPLE;

Health minister promises Rate-My-Doc! service

Policy by the stupid for the stupid

I see. At the moment, when Mrs. Mailreader drags Little Johnny to the docs demanding antibiotics for his (viral) cold, the doc can tell them to sod off (politely). With the online rating system, he could do that and risk his career, or he could hand out pills to make people feel better, increase the prevelance of antibiotic resistant infections and increase the cost to the taxpayer.

And will the doctor be afraid to tell someone that Stella, Kebabs and Fags do not make a balanced diet? (Tasty though)

UK.gov to push Obama for tougher rules online

The man is clearly very stupid,

But just consider: a badly implemented scheme (like a whitelist/certification setup) wouldn't affect the tech-savvy or the determined kiddy porn fan, but it would raise a barriers to entry for any small internet startup/voluntary group/charity that wanted to get a web presence.

(I, for one, welcome this as having the Chipping Sodbury Space Hopper society site is just using valuable bandwidth that really belongs to large corporations.)