Posts by Alpha Tony

UK border control can't count

@It's close

'When the unemployment figures are announced to be a 'suffusion of yellow' you know they are really screwed up.'

I think a suffusion of brown is more likely Martin.

Company wins US patent for podcasting

I have an idea..

...I am going to file a patent application for 'the practice of filing stupid, frivolous or pointless patent applications'. Then every time one of these fuckwit companies tries this bullshit I can demand some royalties.

Oz cops turn to wardriving to fight Wi-Fi 'jackers

Hmmm

Out of interest, what is the legal position when your neighbour is broadcasting their unsecurred wireless network onto your property? I mean if their apple tree overhangs my garden and there is an apple on the branch overhanging my lawn I figure that I am entitled to eat that apple..

Also - Somewhat unrelated, but it's Friday so I am having a random muse - Could I get my noisy neighbour to stop playing their horrible music by grassing them up to FACT on the grounds that they are rebroadcasting it without a license?

Music labels take (more) Irish ISPs to court

@Doug Glass

Blatant trolling Doug, but I'm bored so I'll bite...

So many issues with your post I'm not sure where to start...

You seem to think it is the job of the courts to force companies to act against private individuals on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.. Basically that a record of film company can just say 'we believe that Doug has been a naughty boy' and that should be sufficient evidence to have your internet disconnected? If they want to accuse you of something, surely there should be a requirement for them to provide proof and a chance for you to defend yourself?

You make the oft-repeated but entirely fatuous comparison between copyright infringement and physical theft. The two are obviously very different. If you walk into HMV and steal a CD you permanently deprive HMV of that physical item and the opportunity to sell it to someone else that is willing to pay for it. If you download a torrent of that cd you do not. If you had no intention of ever paying for the music then HMV and the artist have lost no revenue whatsoever. Copyright infringement does NOT equal theft, whatever the little film at the beginning of the DVD may say. It is a civil and not a criminal matter.

'And filtering the illegal stuff is no problem ... really. Just block the transmission of all file types that are music related or seem to be music related. Simple'

This made me laugh the most - Unless you are talking about simply looking at the file extensions (and if you are that daft it's not even worth me wasting my time explaining why that wouldn't work) you would need to use DPI (deep packet inspection) to effectively wiretap every piece of data a user was sending and receiving. There are serious questions about the legality of such a system and the ISP rather than the user could well find themselves in the dock. It wouldn't even work anyway - some torrent applications already employ encryption and as soon as you implemented DPI for copyright protection purposes you can be damn sure they all would.

So in conclusion... Fail on the understanding of the responsibilities of the courts in this matter... Fail on the understanding of the actual nature of the 'crime' being committed... Fail on the suggestions of how technology could be used to stop it.

Oh and for the record - I am not a 'freetard'. I don't illegally download music - ever. If I want an album I buy it (either by paid download or on CD). However I am also not crazy enough to want to allow big business to ride roughshod over the rights of the individual in their increasingly desperate attempts to justify why their flawed business model is failing.

Blears sackee nothing to do with TheyWorkForYou

'calling Hazel Blears "a disgrace" could be construed as a political statement'

Only if it wasnt so blatantly true.

She is a disgrace to politicians of ALL parties and to the country in general, therefore it is NOT a political statement. It is just a statement of the honest truth.

BT abandons Phorm

@Tim Greening-Jackson

'And presumably Google will end up doing DPI or similar to serve you targetted ads for which you and the ISP will get f--k all.'

I'm no great expert on this type of tech Tim, but as I understand things it would be impossible for Google to implement the sort of system you suggest- It could only be done with the collusion of your ISP.

Google could (and do) monitor anything that goes through their servers, but that is entirely different - You choose to go to Google and enter information or to use their free webmail etc in the understanding that this is how they make their money and you 'opt in' to their ad service by doing so.

DPI employed by an ISP is entirely different and monitors everything passing through your internet connection. You have no way to avoid it and if your ISP is operating such a system it would not be in their interests to make it on an 'opt in' basis, as no-one in their right mind would do so.

Your argument about the ISPs needing to do something like this to support their (frankly dumb) business model is about as sensible as saying that your bank should be allowed to sell your credit card details to Russian gangsters as otherwise they will have to increase their charges.

In both cases I would rather be charged more and retain control of my own confidential information, thankyou very much.

Twitter profile hack pwns Mormons

O'rly

'suggested Smith had fabricated translations of sacred texts'

You mean the translation of the sacred texts from the mystical metal plates that no-one apart from him ever saw?

How could anyone suggest such a thing!

Next you'll be saying that he just made up that Jesus visited America.

Pressure group demands UK apes China net filter plan

Pffft

They seem to have two separate and mostly unconnected agendas here, to which I will respond individualy-

1) 'Won't somebody please think of the children'. Yes. Somebody should think of the children - The parents. Why not make the person providing net access to children legally responsible for what they do online? I'm not suggesting that a technologically-impaired parent would be able to keep a l33t kiddy-hacker from circumventing controls, but they should at least TRY. A properly secured PC with profiles configured correctly and parental control software installed would keep the vast majority of the little darlings from getting anywhere near germanmarmiteminers.com or those other sites Ms Suit hates so much (but seems to know a surprising amount about).

If you allow a child unsupervised access to a PC with no parental controls you should be held accountable if they find stuff they shouldn't. Most tech-illiterate people buy their pcs from big retailers like PC World. They should be required to remind the purchaser of this legal obligation and offer parental control software. They would be happy to do it as they would make some extra income from selling said software. Schools should already have such controls and internet cafes should be required to do the same for machines that will be used by the under 18s if they don't already. Job done.

2) 'Consenting adults look at too much porn and it is bad for them'. Fuck off and die. Seriously. Fuck. Off. And. Die. What possible right do you have to impose your subjective morality on the rest of the population? You don't like porn. We get it. We really do. I'm not a big consumer of grumbleware myself. The difference is that I recognise that other people like it and as they are adults and aren't hurting anyone else I have no bloody right to stop them. Get a life.. And maybe a dildo - You obviously have a lot of repressed energy you need to work off.

That is all.

Futurama back from dead again

@Ben 42

Agreed on Serenity. I think the problem is that the show was cancelled after just one 'trial' half season, then when Wheedon got the chance to make the movie he tried to cram too much into it, so it was all penetration with no foreplay. The characters in firefly were very good and at the point it was cancelled we had barely begun to explore them and their backstories (but what we had seen was great). The movie just felt incoherrant as there was no time to continue gradually building the characters, they had to try to finish a story in a couple of hours when the entriety of the first season we had seen was basically just a prologue.

The result was that people that had not watched the series did not really care about the characters and for those that had it was far too abrupt an ending.

I'm not sure if the COULD bring Firefly back without ruining it further... The movie has effectively buggerred up all the plotlines that were being carefully woven in the first series.

Venezuela spits out Coke Zero

Why would anyone want it?

I steer clear of artifically sweetened products like the plague.

Yes - in large quantities sugar is bad for you and rots your teeth, but at least it's natural and has been a part of our diet for thousands of years in one form or another. I think anyone that would prefer to fill their system with something synthesised in a lab is just plain crazy. Better the devil you know.

I also dislike the dual standards that governments display regarding such things. For example if you look at the illegal drug Ecstasy, the standard fallback argument against relaxing laws on it is always 'we don't know what the long term effects are'... Which sounds fair enough.

However MDMA (the principle ingredient of ecstasy) was first synthesised in 1912. Asparatame (the main sweetener in Coke zero and pretty much all other 'diet' drinks and foods) was first synthesised in 1965 and was approved for widespread use by the FDA less than 10 years later, following some distincty controvercial trials. No-one seems bothered about what the long term effects of that will be - it's ok for everyone to ingest as much as they like of the stuff and give it to their children.

Mars projected to collide with Earth

What's the betting

..That Darpa are already working on a plan to blow up mars?