* Posts by The Indomitable Gall

1657 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

'Hey, Tories, who knows what a nontrepreneur is?’

The Indomitable Gall

Rurwin, you too are acting under a misapprehension. You think that "filesharing" should be decriminalised, but that "distribution" should be punished. The whole point is that a filesharer *is* a distributor, and the law as it stands does indeed only punish distributors.

The problem is not with the definition of the offense, but that the assumptions of damage don't match the reality. US law in particular has high damages as it was written when pirate distribution was generally carried out in back-room mid-scale production operations punting their wares at flea markets and in pub car parks.

Water like that of Earth's oceans found in comet

The Indomitable Gall

"quite a panic"

Seeing as cosmological events occur on a scale of hundreds of thousands of years, I hardly see the need for any panic yet....

Google OUTBID on g.co.uk at auction

The Indomitable Gall

No monopoly...

Yahoo doesn't have a monopoly on Y, but it does have a trademark. Other people may have a similar mark, but none of them applied for the URL, so Yahoo got it.

Nigerians panic over killer calls

The Indomitable Gall

@AC

"Who cares what John Gray's opinion is? It's an opinion. It's no more valid than yours or mine. Arguing about whether an invisible sky fairy exists or not is not rational."

Exactly, which is presumably going to be the main point of the programme. It's not rational to say God/a god/goes exist and it's not rational to say he/they don't exist. Which is why any scientific attack on the concept of deities is "misguided".

(Not to other readers: there's a difference between "not rational" and "irrational". Being irrational means going against logic. When there's no logical path to follow, it's a non-rational matter.)

Is using your own kit at work a good thing?

The Indomitable Gall

Private browsing? Two browsers!

I always found the best way to avoid committing an accidental browser faux pas was to run two browsers. And seeing as the corporate web apps only worked on IE, it was easy. So all my personal browsing etc was in Opera (or Firefox, latterly), all my work stuff was IE.

Sony to ship VR-style 3D headset in November

The Indomitable Gall

You too can...

You too can look like Daft Punk while watching the latest films. Cool.

Couple can sue service that monitored their net sex

The Indomitable Gall

@Badvok

""just because someone is using a stolen laptop it does not automatically make them a criminal"

Err, yes it does. Unless of course you happen to live in some obscure country where possession of stolen property is not a crime. Criminal = Someone who has committed a crime."

Correction: Criminal = Someone WHO HAS BEEN CONVICTED OF a crime. It really is disappointing to see so many people trotting out the tired old line of "criminals don't deserve rights" for stuff that the police or other parties do before they've even cautioned the alleged "perp".

The Indomitable Gall

Re: in that case..

Well, if you've configured it that way for your own use and you interception of other people's email is incidental, you're probably alright, as long as you take action to sort it out if the problem ever arises in real-world use.

But if you've done it to spy on the wife/kids/whoever-else-uses-your-laptop, you're already breaking the law designedly, so the court would no doubt find against you in a dispute with a third party.

OTOH...

Most people who buy a cheap laptop off some bloke in the pub will probably be webmail users anyway....

MySociety marshals griping commuters to fix UK transport

The Indomitable Gall

Positive outcomes...?

Many companies make it difficult to find who to complain to, so people don't complain -- it's not worth the hassle. So the companies can pretend that the problem doesn't exist.

Sites like this make it easy to complain, and in a way that is tracked and audited -- no more turning a blind eye to the problem.

Sure, it won't fix everything, but it gets things started...

The Indomitable Gall

Why would the councils...

Why would the councils do anything about it? "Public" transport is private enterprise, so not the councils' problem....

Ultra-cheap HP TouchPads to hit UK at 6pm

The Indomitable Gall

The big question...

What's the hardware under the hood, and is it compatible with... Android...?

People don't want tablets, they want iPads

The Indomitable Gall

Re: RE: Hmmm

@Manu T

"You mean Apple makes a 126,27% profit"

No, the full retail mark-up includes the retailer and distributor's share too.

Icebergs measured in Manhattans: Official

The Indomitable Gall

The correct subdivision of Wales...

Waleses should be divided into individual Angleseys. The scientific symbol for Anglesey is ym, derived from the Welsh name Ynys Môn.

Stars Wars icons join Queen Elizabeth on Pacific Island coin

The Indomitable Gall

Worse...!

$8 worth of legal tender for $390.44

University rats on Sydney suburb

The Indomitable Gall

I think that's where Rentokill comes in....

I doubt Rentokill would be involved if there wasn't an element of pest elimination involved, but they'll be playing it down for fear of PETA et al trying to stop them. I suspect they'll be aiming to kill the black rats and use the local ones as a barrier to stop the black rats moving between buildings and repopulating areas they've already left.

But this leaves the question: do bushrats like sewers? Cos if they don't, this probably won't work....

New DVD discs claim 1,000 year life

The Indomitable Gall

Star Wars, last a thousand years?

Why heavens no! Then he'd never get the chance to re-edit it and sell it to you again.

The Indomitable Gall

Give me a scanner...

... and a nice contrasty backing sheet.

And there's the reason it will last: new technology will always be hackable to read old technology.

Looking at the physical burn marks, I imagine this disc won't really care what colour of laser is used to read it, which would make it more future proof than CDs and DVDs, which I'm told aren't colour-compatible with BluRay, meaning current-gen players often need two lasers.

It may be that in 1000 years (or even just 100!), you read your old discs with a general-purpose laser-scanner or electron microscope, getting a full physical image of the disc (just like scanning punchcards) and then processing this. This would also be a better solution for damaged discs anyway, as the track layout can be recreated so that one damaged block doesn't mangle a whole section of the data.

Ofcom report: Mobile operators feel the squeeze

The Indomitable Gall

Erm, no....

It's more like a postal regulator saying that the rise in internet shopping hasn't resulted in increased profits for Royal Mail and TNT.

These are figures from an industry body, not a whinge from an individual ISP. Get a grip.

Hobbyist killed by home-made hovercraft

The Indomitable Gall
Joke

Geoff Mackenzie

" It's Reliant Robin, not Robin Reliant, unless I drive a Civic Honda. "

Do you work for the mayor...?

Do you use one of the pool cars...?

HCL discloses 'email deletion' requests from News International

The Indomitable Gall

They did mention...

They did mention delivery failure notifications.

It's a while since I've seen it (2000, maybe?), but a badly configured automatic inbox can send autoresponses to autoresponses, so if their inbox "competitions@filthyrag.evilempire.uk" or whatever was on the blink, they could have ended up in a massive knot....

Virgin mulls handing out free Wi-Fi

The Indomitable Gall

Ah, so it's a strike back at BT...

So they're trying to compete with BT's "it's your wifi, take it with you" campaign then.

And they're being smart about it and working on the assumption that most VM customers will spend most of their time in VM-available areas.

BSkyB hands out £1bn, board backs James Murdoch

The Indomitable Gall

The important question....

If they've bought back shares, doesn't this change the percentage ownership? I mean, Newswhatever owns 39% of all shares, but if BSkyB owns shares in itself, then they don't have 100% of shares on the public stock market, and sure Murdoch senior effectively owns more than 40% now...?

George Lucas defeated by Stormtrooper helmet man

The Indomitable Gall

Re: long time ago, galaxy far away...

@Naughtyhorse

"nope that suggests to me bloody long long time ago (this assumes the films were shot with the mother of all zoom lenses)"

Well obviously -- that's why the text's so squint at the start. Proper alignment would have involved travelling several light-centuries due galactic north....

The Indomitable Gall

Ah, now I see.

I was wondering in what screwy world a film prop was a "functional item" rather than a piece of dubious "art". Mass production -- suddenly everything becomes clear.

Canon crossbreeds mouse with adder

The Indomitable Gall

Not pressing buttons

You're not supposed to rest your hand on a mouse, you're supposed to hold it with your fingers. Personally I think all mice should have something on top to discourage people from resting their palms on it, and numerical buttons are as good as anything, I suppose.

Rupert Murdoch was never Keyser Soze

The Indomitable Gall

Not racism!

"Why does the influx of immigrants being white mean it's not a racist issue?"

Because it's not racist to hate micks, krauts and day-gos; froggies and cloggies; gypsies, spicks and wops. Obviously.

(Says a "mick", before you start.)

Four illegal ways to sort out the Euro finance crisis

The Indomitable Gall

@ Mark 65: Chicken and egg

"It is a case of being between a rock and a hard place for the MPC. Given the SE of the UK and London, in general, subsidise the rest of the economy of the UK and contain the largest part of the economy it makes sense to target rates for that area."

Why does SE England subsidise the rest of the UK? Because it earns more money. But could it be that the only reason they earn more money is that the economy revolves around them? If the economy in Newcastle or Manchester or Cardiff or Belfast or Glasgow or Inverness is constantly being battered by changes made to suit London and its neighbours, then other parts of the Union aren't going to be given the opportunity to pay their way.

Except that this subsidy stuff is a bit of a myth anyway. Which makes me wonder -- is SE England actually holding back the UK? Is it actually the *least* productive part, and if we controlled the economy to suit the rest of the country, might we all be richer...? (And we wouldn't all have to emigrate to London to look for a decent job.)

Beeb to fund ad-mungous Local TV for local people

The Indomitable Gall

As a comparison: BBC Alba

BBC Alba is a channel on a shoestring budget -- and at launch this was £14 million. If I recall correctly, that 14 million paid for: satellite bandwidth; listing on the Sky EPG; listing on the Freesat EPG; 2.5 hours of news content weekly; 2.5 hours of original non-news content weekly.

The budget has now increased slightly, but only in order to pay for the Freeview bandwidth. 5 million -- I suspect that this is calculated on the market rate of bandwidth costs alone, but who receives the bandwidth cash? Her Majesty's Chancellor of the Exchequer.

So it's a zero cost that they can claim is 5mill in "opportunity cost" (from not being able to sell the whitespace), but then it will increase the value of other whitespace licenses through scarcity, and besides, most whitespace use will be unlicensed networking because the regional patchwork of frequencies makes whitespace fairly impractical for anything other than a longer-range-than-usual WLAN.

Go Daddy spokes-totty: I'm on the elephants' side

The Indomitable Gall

@Dog Faced Boy

I'm pretty sure the anonymous coward was being pedantic. Electrocution was originally a portmanteau of "execution" and "electricity" and means killing by electricity, which isn't an effect way to train circus animals....

Phone-hack backlash BBC in embarrassing headline gaffes

The Indomitable Gall

@Eponymous Bastard

What split infinitive? "I agree" is in the present tense, not the infinitive....

On counterfeits, fakes and Apple stores

The Indomitable Gall

And if...

If there's an operating theatre in the back room for the removal of kidneys, it's [redacted by legal counsel].

Gamer claims complete console collection

The Indomitable Gall

Wow!

Someone else remembers the 64GS then!!!

Superman beats up cybersquatter

The Indomitable Gall

The REAL problem with Superman on film....

Superman is a dinosaur, a relic of a more innocent age. He's a messiah in a cape and silly tights, a Big Brother Is Good figure who absolves us of responsibility for our own actions. His continued success is down to the same self-sustaining celebrity that sees talentless nobodies like the Kardashians able to generate such huge amounts of cash.

Film writing is a discipline that relies on tightly crafted stories, and Superman just doesn't give much leeway for good stories (at least, not on Earth, but Superman-in-space only works in the comics because you already know Superman from Earth, and cinema-goers would need a decent Earth-bound story or two to generate context). Alternatively, you could just commision Michael Bay and replace the plot with high-speed 3D combat/chase sequences. Superman racing against a pyroclastic flow to save a family of 4, in full 3D? After he saves the family, he could fly on, but the camera could stop and get engulfed in a cloud of flying rocks. That might confuse the audience long enough that they don't realise there's no plot until the Bluray version comes out....

Bill seeks to decriminalise pianos in pubs and schools

The Indomitable Gall

<p>

Yeah, legislation makes it very difficult for rich people to skim money from Mr Average.

Rebekah Brooks quits - Murdoch accepts this time

The Indomitable Gall

You're wrong.

@Vladimir

Guessing a password involves knowledge of the system -- to whit, system default passwords.

The cloud and the incredible shrinking office

The Indomitable Gall
Stop

Technology allowance...?

The car allowance analogy is kind of flawed. At the start of this century, the car allowance morphed into a cost-savings dodge. It was used as an alternative to pay-rises post-tech-crash-and-9/11.

In the office I worked in at the time, it didn't change anything for the people who didn't already have a company car -- they would use their own car whenever practical beforehand, and claim mileage against the project, and they continued to do so. When impractical, they'd get alternative transport and charge it against the project. But that was in a Scottish office of a London-based company. Down at HQ, it led to the situation where people who would normally have used public transport to get about were told they had to use their cars, and it took them longer to get to many places. It reduced choice, thus reducing the ability to be flexible to specific needs, and thus hampered operational efficiency.

My last employer tauted the idea of a laptop allowance a year before I left. The general feeling among the employees on the discussion boards was that it was a Bad Idea.

Having personal responsibility is all well and good, but if we're all buying individually, the company loses economies of scale, and compatibility testing becomes impossible for even the most important core business software. Does a lowly helpdesk operative have to buy a second PC out of his own pocket if the ticket-logging software crashes on his machine?

Secondly, the coverage of support. For a mobile workforce, there is really only one place you would be able to guarantee UK-wide coverage: PC World. So in order to have somewhere to go whenever your PC breaks down, you would be squeezed into buying from one of the UK's most expensive suppliers, and getting your support from a company who happens to have an notably poor reputation for quality of support.

Until computers are reliable, consistent and 100% commoditised, companies will continue to need to buy direct and in bulk.

And lets face it -- that's never going to happen

Official: Pastafarian strainer titfer is religious headgear

The Indomitable Gall

Ah, but....

This is the internet...

http://xkcd.com/386/

Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker

The Indomitable Gall
Joke

No editorial policy

The Reg is clearly ahead of the game. By maintaining no editorial policy, the editor maintains plausible deniability when it turns out one of the hacks has been reading Richard Stallman's email(*).

(*) Allegedly.

Apple patent: 'Pour' your data from iPhone to iPad

The Indomitable Gall

Why hasn't it made it's way to other OSs?

Hardware limitations.

You might as well declare that voice recognition was non-obvious in the 1960s comp sci world simply because it hadn't been done.

Doom guy: tablets, phones to be gaming platforms of the future

The Indomitable Gall

@James Hughes 1

Ok, so you can shift volume on a smartphone... IF you're one of the lucky 0.00001%

Have you seen how many also-rans there are in the smartphone world? There's a sea of casual games and it's easy to get lost in the crowd.

Also, what does Angry Birds have to do with what Carmack said? Casual games just don't need the sort of computing oomph sported by current consoles.

News of the World TO CLOSE

The Indomitable Gall

Colin Wilson Engineering?!?

It currently says "Mediaspring", but there are several companies going by that name.

In interesting move for a URL squatter...

If NI want it free, they'll get it free through a simple domain name dispute. But they might just want to keep their heads down and but it for a couple of grand just to keep things quiet.

The Indomitable Gall

Real consequences?

Oh yes, real consequences. The poor grunts at ground level are out on the street while the woman in charge of it all is still sitting in her executive post.

Oh yes, real consequences. News International gets an excuse to introduce redundancies and institute cost savings by running fewer newsrooms. There will almost certainly be a Sunday Sun in a couple of weeks' time, and it will save NI thousands.

There haven't been any consequences.

What we need to see is the editorial staff in prison.

We need very heavy fines, amounting to the entire profit of the paper for as long as they were hacking phones.

And we need a court order banning News International from *any* expansion for a substantial time period. No new newspapers, no new Sunday editions, and certainly no new acquisitions. For at least 5 years.

Anything less isn't punishment, because NI will still be up on the deal....

El Reg to unleash rocket-powered spaceplane

The Indomitable Gall

LOHAN

Low Oxygen High Altitude.. NNNNnnnthingie.

Anti-PowerPoint Party vows end to death by slides

The Indomitable Gall
FAIL

Re: yes it's true.

"Schools are actually teaching kids to write their talk out in condensed bullet point, 'PowerPoint', format *first*, and then extrapolate the details out *later*, 'on the fly', when they present the talk.

You only need half a brain to know that's backwards. "

Well, I'm doing an Open University degree, and I did another degree ten years ago, and I went to school in the 80s and 90s, and that's basically what I was always told to do -- they called it "writing a plan". The open secret is that no-one writes a plan and no-one writes pseudo-code, and if the teacher demands to see it, we write it *after* finishing the body of the assignment.

My current degree is in languages, and for our spoken assignments, we're asked to write in notes only, and there's no discussion about writing the full speech then summarising it in notes. But everyone on the course writes the full script -- another open secret.

So it would appear that PowerPoint is worse than I thought: it implements the worst flaws of the UK education system in software....

The Indomitable Gall

"99 out of 100"

The vast majority of PowerPoint presentations are delivered to small groups in small rooms, so 200+ people isn't relevant in 99% of cases.

That said, interactive whiteboard software can be used to replicate the flipchart experience in larger rooms....

The Indomitable Gall
Stop

Accountants shouldn't use spreadsheets.

@AC,

Accounts are the very last place we should be seeing spreadsheets, because you are effectively writing a database.

You are coding a database:

A) without documentation

and

B) without any data constraints

and

C) without automated backup strategies.

Spreadsheets give users enough rope to hang themselves... from the moon.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: I can't believe I'm about to defend PowerPoint...

AC,

You might want to get a hold of the essay "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" by Edward Tufte. He demonstrates how PowerPoint itself encourages certain behaviours on the part of the presenter.

If it's a hammer, it's a hammer that comes with the instruction: "also functions as a screwdriver. Hit screwhead several times to drive screws into wood, plastic, rubber or cows."

Top level domain explosion could wreak MAYHEM on NET

The Indomitable Gall

It's not a name, it's an identifier.

It's not a name, it's an identifier, and that distinction is more important than it may sound.

The initial plan was for a descriptive identifier -- jones.co.uk = UK Company called Jones.

In China, there's a problem because too many people have the same name. There aren't enough names in the world to go round, so we need identifiers (eg National Insurance number) for official purposes.

Lots and lots of companies have the same "name", so treating URLs as names causes a massive problem.

The Indomitable Gall

Reread article

The article points out the high volume of single-word internal names that leak out of corporate LANs and onto the internet every day.

A significant part of the problem (not explicitly mentioned in the article) will be corporate laptops, because a lot of software isn't set up to check whether it's on your WAN or not before attempting to do anything -- it just fires off a request to the server and sees if it gets a response.

While the most common examples won't be sold, that doesn't prevent more targetted attacks.

Imagine you're in a major crime syndicate and you find out that a major global bank uses the name "piggybank" for its main accounts server. What do you do next? You set up a dummy financial services company called "PiggyBank Global Services" and just harvest all the data you can, then pass it on to your black hat IT department who start transferring funds out. And you just so happen to have a financial services company set up and ready to launder that cash. A defaulted loan here, an insurance payout there et voilà, you're several million better off.

The Indomitable Gall

Not a "daft" idea...

It's a daft idea, but an inequitable one.

One internet for the rich, with any name you choose, and another for us plebs. It favours the big companies over small ones, the haves over the have nots. It also reaches into the future and sticks its fingers up at nations not yet in existence, because what's going to be left for them as their national TLDs?