Posts by Pablo

Google tweaks search results with mystery site speedometer

I'm for it.

Maybe this will get webmasters to finally give some thought to bandwidth instead of cramming all kinds of junk into their layouts.

Wikifounder reports Wikiparent to FBI over 'child porn'

Bingo

It's not real. In my experience, almost all internet savvy people know the difference. That Larry would act as if he doesn't is... interesting. It sounds to me like he's just out to get Wiki(p|m)edia.

Respect for Wikipedia +1

Respect for Citizendium -5

CEOP renews attack on Facebook

Re: Browsers

You know, I think I've hit about the perfect solution. Let CEOP publish the panic button as a browser toolbar. That way people can see it need to EVERY web page, if for some bizarre reason they want to.

'Virtual sit-in' tests line between DDoS and free speech

Huh

It seems to me the key issue is whether the protest was calibrated to actually disable the web site in question, or merely be noticed. Much like a real sit-in could either try to blockade a building or just attract attention.

On the other hand if he's calling it civil disobedience, he shouldn't exactly be surprised if it turns out to be illegal. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

RSA says it fathered orphan credential in Firefox, Mac OS

Hey!

Please do not refer to Usenet as "Google Groups".

Child abuse frame-up backfires on stalker

Thrid option

Yes. So we have 1 day to investigate how risky that green button is before we decide right? That's more than enough time to interview the kids like someone else suggested.

Cartoon Law goes live

Re: Obscenity

If I'm not mistaken, it's a different meaning of "obscene". The old obscene publication law applied to content that "tends to deprave and corrupt", the new law directs that "obscene" should be assigned the ordinary dictionary meaning, "highly offensive".

Clearly the latter is a much lower standard, considering it's doubtful that the former even exists.

Wikileaks video shows US gunfire on Reuters staff

Decrypted?

Atrocities aside, I'm curious about Wikileaks' statement they "obtained and decrypted" the video. Are they claiming they can break military encryption?

That seems unlikely, though we learned here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/17/us_drones_hacked/ that sometimes they don't even bother with encryption. But assuming they received this from a whistleblower why was it even encrypted, and how did they decrypt it? Unless they were simply given the key, but in that case it would be rather pointless to even mention.

RPG

The only thing that makes me feel even slightly sympathetic to the killers is that you can hear genuine alarm in his voice upon spotting the "RPG". But everything else about the video does a pretty good job of erasing that sympathy.

Weak passwords stored in browsers make hackers happy

So what?

The point these surveys always miss is that people nowadays have passwords for dozens of things, most of them thoroughly trivial. Sure I use stupid passwords for things I don't care about. For the rare financial stuff or anything else that seems important I use stronger passwords.

A quarter of underage children have social networking profiles

Right

And I think it may be counter-productive. They made the law too big a hassle to comply with so companies chose to bar children under 13 entirely. But predictably a great many of them sign up anyway, either with or without their parents' knowledge. And Facebook et al have neither the motivation nor the ability to actually enforce the rule.

So instead of having an open situation where younger children could have extra protection or supervision if needed, they have to hide and nobody really knows how many there are.

Met launches net café spy operation

You're right

It would be more correct to state that this appears designed to help LOSE the battle of ideas since it looks unlikely to accomplish anything other than making new enemies.

Corduroy cuffed, banged up for teaching while drunk

Hey now

This was in California, not Texas.

FBI cyber cop says 'very existence' of US under threat

Now that's 1337

So what they're saying is cyber villains could actually delete the country?

Register.com argues it can't be sued for negligence

Could go either way

If their employee failed to verify the code as the result of some kind of clerical error, or even simply forgetting to do so, that would be ordinary negligence. But if he decided he just couldn't be arsed to check the code, even though he must have known it could result in the account being stolen, that as I understand it would be an example gross negligence.

'Perpetual' software licence doesn't last forever, rules court

Re: Might be serious for contracting

If you insist on such legal shenanigans, I believe the term you want is "perpetual, irrevocable". I'm certain I've seen that before in one of those stupid software licenses.

Court bars charges against teen who posed semi-nude

That's one perspective

But the girl's mother is of the opinion (which I happen to agree with) that it wasn't wrong at all. Maybe no wise, given that there creeps like Mr. Skum and his successor out there, but not wrong. A key part of the argument for this restraining order what that she had been deprived of the right to raise her children as she sees fit.

No and yes... but still no

No, because the reasoning in this case was more complicated. And dealt with the fact the "education" program would have required the girls to write an essay about "why what they did was wrong", which is compelled speech. And the fact that the prosecutor threatened to retaliate if the exercised their constitution right not to speak by procecuting them for child pornography. And the fact that the prosecutor could not show probably cause(!) for the prosecution, leaving relation as the only explanation.

But yes, I think in due time it will be recognized that the law as it stands is an unacceptable restriction on young people's freedom of speach.

Except no, the way you described it is still a logical impossibility. You have to be sexual in order to sexualize something, and you have to be nonsexual to be sexualized, hence a person cannot do it to his or her self (short of timer travel).

@Richard 10

Okay, yes. Education. But for the kind of harm you describe, two conditions are necessary.

1. The existence of naked pictures.

2. The belief that said pictures are a horrible shameful thing.

We could attempt to "educate away" either condition.

Since teens exploring their sexuality has been a constant throughout history, and cultural attitudes about nudity come and go, perhaps you're going after the wrong one.

Steve Jobs and governator tout transplant reform

Say what?

I don't know if you're implying that Steve Jobs and and/or the Gubinator are planning to steal people's organs, but that is not the case. All the proposed law would do is help streamline the process of registering as an organ donor, for people who wish to do so.

Former model sues Universal over 'x-rated prop' outrage

How is it possible?

How is it possible that no one has quoted Brass Eye yet?

NZ internet filter goes live - gov forgets to tell public

Well...

At least they're upfront about it, too bad they weren't about the filter.

Suburban woman accused of using net to recruit terrorists

Conspirators

Wouldn't it be reasonable to assume the other five "conspirators" were all CIA/FBI/DHS agents?

Scareware sellers fool Google with file switch

Isn't there an easier way?

It sounds like this relies on an assumption by Google that PDF docs won't change, or won't change frequently, like HTML pages do. If so that's a good trick, but I've sometimes wondered what's to stop somebody from simply serving a different file when Google asks for it than what rest of us get.

Sexy is as sexy does: UK.gov struggles with sexualisation

Hey!

Don't blame this one on us, she was born in Canada can earned her PhD in England!

US government rescinds 'leave internet alone' policy

A title is required by US Internet Standards § 137

Freedom on the internet. It was nice while it lasted. Alright I know they're not going to be imposing global censorship any time soon, but I can't help feeling like this could be the beginning of the end.

Mostly because I am absolutely amazed the Internet has thus far been nearly free of large-scale meddling by either corporations of government. It's not perfect, but why mess with a good thing?

Google execs protest Italian guilty verdicts

Huh

You know what? That actually sounds like a reasonable compromise.

Lingerie model ran 'Charlie Angels' drug gang

She can smuggle my coke anytime...

Wait, that doesn't make sense.

Plan for top-level pornography domain gets reprieve

Idiots maybe

But the solution you describe isn't even on the table. It isn't an "everybody wins" result by any means either. What about all the owners of existing porn sites? Do they get kicked out of their old domains, or what? Sure they could go register the same name under .xxx but what about hotsex.com and hotsex.net, would they be forced to share or what? What about britishpornclips.co.uk? What right does ICANN have to tell an (ostensibly) sovereign nation what it can and can't put under its tld? Then there's situation of sites that are not primarily pornographic, but on occasion feature some mature content. Would it sounds like they would be forced to either move their whole site to xxx land, or else split it in two. Neither option sounds very attractive (or fair) to me.

Microsoft finally debuts Euro-choose-a-browser screen

@uncredited

Fair point. Acting horribly slow is better than not acting at all, I guess. So now that they've proved their serious, let's hope they apply that resolve to something that matters.

Is this nonsese STILL going on?

Geez, hasn't this browser kerfuffle been going on for over a decade now? I don't understand how, of all the many anticompetitive, anti-consumer acts perpetrated by Microsoft and other tech companies every day, something as trivial as browser choice was selected as the important thing to focus on.

Council backs down on CRB checking grown-up lecturers

What happens?

Don't you think that has happened already? Of course it has.

Feds open school spycam probe

Maybe.

But if that were true:

1. You would think the school would be very quick to point this out.

2. They still showed terrible judgment by acting on any information gleaned in their snooping that didn't directly relate to finding the laptop.

US judges leave definition of obscenity to Amish, Kansas

Flame you? Of course not.

You'll get nothing but sympathy from me. No one should be subjected to that. I'm curious though, did Max Hardcore secretly replace your Bambi DVD with one of his his movies, or actually chain you to a chair and force you to watch that filth? But in either case, I think it's just reprehensible, and I hope he gets what's coming to him.

Sony seeks 'universal console controller' patent

Interesting

But it seems to me the only real use for this would be in in combination with a console emulator. If Sony is considering something like that (at least idly) that might explain why the mentioned those obsolete consoles.

77% of domain registrations stuffed with rubbish

Not surprising

The whole system seem anachronistic to me. I guess it made sense to publish contact details in the early days when only governments, universities and large companies had domains, but that hasn't been true for well over a decade. Now that small businesses and private individuals regularly have one, it doesn't seem reasonable to require everybody to put their name address and phone number out there.

Street View catches Finn with his pants down

No it isn't

He's clearly behind a fence. Presumably it's tall enough that passer's-by can't normally see in. Google's streetview camera is mounted much higher than eye-level (I checked the view of my own neighborhood to confirm this). I admit I'm no expert on Finnish law either, but in the US the general rule is that you have an expectation of privacy if you can't be seen by a person on the sidewalk.

Aussie anti-censor attacks strafe gov websites

It's a good question actually

Why IS Google willing to censor the internet in China but not Australia exactly? Surely all the usual excuses still apply in Oz. (e.g. "It's the LAW", "It's the price of doing business in a foreign country", etc.)

Safer Internet Day fights online foolhardiness

About that law

That would be COPPA, it doesn't actually prohibit sites like Twitter from allowing children under 13, but it imposes fairly onerous requirements for getting parental permission before collecting any personal information from them, including an email address. So many web sites decided it was easier to just ban preteens entirely.

Stats boss slams Tory use of crime figures

I disagree

I think it's perfectly logical to consider "negative trust" in this case. Zero trust merely means that when a anyone attempts to persuade you with official statistics, it has no effect. If you had negative trust, then you would be inclined to believe the opposite of whatever the statistics were purported to show.

Do Google's search warrant police run IE6?

Wow

So Google has a system specifically designed for looting user data, and then they use it conjunction with the least secure browser available?

Warez backdoor allows hackers to pwn Twitter accounts

Huh

I worked on a project that counters this quite effectively too. Basically it was a rod composed of blended aluminium phyllosilicates and graphite used to encode passwords on a cellulose substrate. This allowed a user to easily retain multiple login credentials for future reference, thereby enabling the use of unique passwords for each site.

Amazon deletes a 6th of its catalogue in book price barney

Humph! You're mean. We're not selling ANY of your books.

The whole thing is stupid. Amazon is only proving that they too are a monopoly. What makes them think they have a right to decide how much publishers get paid? If the publishers ask too much they just don't get sales. That's how it's always worked. And if anything, with ebooks it should be less of a problem, due to quicker feedback.

Hong Kong Taoist masters still hard at it

Sleezebags

The other guy came off sounding like a relatively harmless perv, but these two are genuine predatory creeps.

EU damns scanners, Facebook, MySpace and Phorm

Neat!

This respecting privacy idea, do you suppose it will catch on?

Aussie censor balks at bijou boobs

Umm

Senator Barnaby Joyce is a guy. Pronouns aside, the rest of your post still stands.

Tesco store bans shopping in pyjamas

Only on restaurants

It's a health code thing. As far as I know it's perfectly alright to go barefoot or shirtless in a grocery store, not that I can recall seeing it very often.

iPhone OS update sticks customers with premium call bills

Yes, yes it is.

Yes, it's Apple's fault. Why? Because they voluntarily took on the responsibility of policing what software people point on their iPhones. If I install malware on my computer, it's my own damn fault for not checking it out first. If I install software on my (jailed) iPhone than it must be software that Apple reviewed and found acceptable, so if it turns out to contain malware anyway, yes it's their fault.

Home Office says 'no decision' yet on sex offender disclosure

re: fair point

Alright then. If we were talking about some imaginary hypothetical law that actually worked that way I might agree with you. But that's not what it actually is. Even if it were only for offenses proved in court, "sex offender" does not equal "repeat child molester".

Airships can defeat roadside bombers, says ex-US officer

Clouds

Could be a problem, but I imagine that's not as big a deal in Afghanistan as it would be many places.