Posts by Bumpy Cat 535 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2009
@Naughtyhorse: "staging a phoney war in the south Atlantic"
That's a direct quote from you. In what way was the Falklands war (1) phoney, (2) "staged" by the UK? We were the victims of aggression by a murderous right-wing dictatorship - but somehow because Thatcher was in charge, we were in the wrong.
Some ostensibly left-wing people's hatred of Thatcher leads them to this bizarre position. They support a right-wing military dictatorship which threw opponents out of aircraft, alive - over a democratic state with a welfare system. This suggests to me that their left-wing principles are pretty flexible.
That's the problem we face - war is (unfortunately) still a threat, regardless of where you live and what you espouse. There's no point in hamstringing yourself in a war; the Hague and Geneva conventions are a big, big change from how wars were fought two hundred years ago, and to further limit yourself to give the other side a sporting chance is not going to win "Best Idea" prize. ;)
There's an interesting paper from two Chinese officers which says that Islamic terrorism and Chinese cyber-warfare are the natural response to the current situation - NATO has such overwhelming superiority in conventional war (and even WMD!) that to fight NATO you have to resort to unconventional techniques.
Anyway, I definitely agree with your last point. In fact, maybe we should just unleash the politician-hunting killbots now and save everyone a lot of trouble in future.
Hmmm. I see your point about balancing - make war costly to both sides and both sides will be more reluctant to fight.
However, would you be willing to sign up to fight? Because saying "Make me safe, and make it dangerous for the people guarding me" sounds rather ... douchey, actually.
Actually, I'm in favour of free speech and liberty FOR ALL.
So when Assange runs to Correa that's fine, but then Correa hands Barankov to Lukashenko, and shuts down Vanguardia. HYPOCRITE.
Wikileaks thinks Assange won't get a fair trial in the UK or Sweden - countries well-regarded for generally sound legal systems. But they're willing to trust the Russian legal system, which has just given two years for people being arseholes in a church. HYPOCRITE.
Wikileaks "GRRRAR! WEST BAD! OTHERS GOOD!" attitude has led them to the very odd position of defending Putin's Russia and Lukashenko's Belarus. So a free speech case where protestors are jailed for two years for "hooliganism" has Wikileaks defending the autocrats.
Meanwhile, while Ecuador offers asylum to Assange, who faces the terrifying prospect of jail in Sweden, Alexander Barankov is in jail in Ecuador facing the genuinely terrifying prospect of jail - or death - in Belarus. No asylum granted here, no. Police in Ecuador shut down the newspaper Vanguardia for "labour laws", and surely nothing to do with their criticism of the government.
What a bunch of goddamn hypocrites.
The OP is talking about Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was ousted in a US/UK-backed coup in 1953 (called Operation AJAX). This replaced a popular left-leaning government with the Shah. The Shah was a poor and unpopular leader, who managed to unite Marxists, Islamists and everyone else against him to produce the Iranian revolution in 1979.
The Islamists then turned around and murdered all the communists, trade-unionists, students, Marxists and so on and took sole power. Remember that the next time you see the UK Socialist Workers Party cheering on the Iranian government ...
It's not an ignorant question, although it is a little smug (as the OP said). The lack of a unified installer in Windows is increasingly obvious and sadly primitive. It is a litle jarring to come to set up a Windows PC and have to download and install several different apps from various different sites around the web.
I suspect the Windows Store will fill this gap. Rather than having to track down AV and Flash and Java and everything else on vendor's sites, then download the installer, then click through the installer - you can just tick each application you want, and say go. Ninite may become redundant in future.
Say what you like about the Wiki-group (subtly creepy and slightly annoying, IMHO) but they're absolutely right about our dodgy libel laws. When a Saudi businessmen sues a US publisher over his ALLEGED terrorist financing, why on earth would he choose the UK to file the case? Because our libel laws work in his favour, that's why.
There are hundreds of cases worldwide of child abuse by priests. Many of these cases were known to the senior clergy who managed the abusive priests. The cases were not reported to the authorities and the abusive priests were moved around and able to abuse more children.
If a priest advocates married clergy, or gay marriage, or contraception, he is yanked out of post so fast his pointy shoes remain behind. Why has this never been applied to abusive clergy? It is this failure of policy and heirarchy that damns the Catholic church. It really looks like child abuse is not regarded as a serious problem by the church authorities - and even now it's regarded as more of a PR problem than anything else.
Can you say "fuck" on the internet? Can you do a google search for Jean Charles de Menezes, and how the Met managed to gun down an innocent man?
Congratulations, you're freer than the average Chinese citizen.
Certainly the UK and US governments are not entirely innocent, but there is a great deal more internet freedom here than in China. Look up "grass-mud horse" or "river crabs" for some interesting information on how pervasive internet censorship is in China, and the ways that people bypass it.
You're right, and I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned. A key part of Newell's objections to Win8 is that with the Windows store, Microsoft are moving towards a walled garden approach like Apple. This will have a serious effect both on independent software makers, and on hardware resellers.
To be fair to him, he's entirely right to express concern and make a move towards other platforms like Linux. His job is to look after his own company, not boost Microsoft.
Nothing to do with these ocean seeding projects - that's a side effect of incautious agriculture, where vast amounts of fertilizer and eroded topsoil flow into the sea and provide a nutritional bonanza to algae. These algal blooms can then have all sorts of unpleasant results, like red tides.
KeepassX (which I always read as keep-ass, xkcd style). Runs on everything - I use it on Linux, Windows, and Samsung Bada (Java version).
I have a password database which I store somewhere cloudy, with a very strong but memorable password. I can update it at work or at home, and then put the latest version on my online storage and my phone (Samsung Wave). It really is the answer to your points above, and it's 100% under your control.
I was going to upvote you until I saw you dissing the Reg in the last line.
While Andrew Orlowski apparently has a Stockholm Syndrome attachment to big media, the rest of the Reg strikes a fairly even note on IP law.
Your comments on China are spot-on, though. In Russia now there is a merging of state and business, with the police just another tool used to shut down opposing business (and jail the owners). Likewise in China - although the top of US government is wealthy (the top 660 members are collectively worth $7.5billion) the top of the Chinese government is *ludicrously* wealthy (the top 70 members are worth $89.8 billion - ie 100 times as wealthy per person). And the US has been capitalist for two centuries, while China has been capitalist for two decades.
Did you ... did you just say bribe-taking is part of their culture, and it's an old tradition, so it's all good?
On the whole, countries with low corruption do better, and are nicer places to live. Unless you *like* your wealthy elite living by different rules. And don't even try to suggest that's the case in the UK - try countries where a powerful businessman can send a mob of gangsters to beat you up, and then have the police arrest you for objecting.
Now is the ideal time to send out vast amounts of phishing spam with links to your "Linkedin" password change page. Even if you haven't even looked at the password leak yourself, you can skim passwords from people who've heard about the Linkedin security breach and gladly click on the proffered link to change their password.
It is definitely the case that a large portion of the population of Greece simply doesn't pay its way - tax avoidance/evasion is a common and accepted practice, so of course the government can't pay for basic functions. This is interesting and scary reading:
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010?printable=true
You might fancy a trip to Cuba or Venezuela, but you probably wouldn't want to live there ...
http://hurryupharry.org/2012/05/19/mad-max-conditions-in-venezuelas-prisons/
http://hurryupharry.org/2012/05/12/pro-chavez-tv-host-loses-his-mind-on-the-air/
http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/?p=2874
Always appropriate is Churchill's quote - "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried". By what standard is Cuba, or Venezuela, or ANY communist country, better than the UK? Living standards? Environmental care? Justice? Personal freedom? Disposable income? No, nope, nyet, nein.
And if you think France is communist, you have a very limited understanding of France, communism or both.
The missiles in question are Rapier and HVM, both of which are surface-to-air missiles with relatively small warheads. They are designed to knock a plane out of the sky by damaging/destroying engines and flight surfaces - planes are fragile enough that you don't need a huge warhead to shoot them down.
- You cannot target a ground target very easily with it
- Even if you did, it would have less effect than almost any other missile
- If you have the resources/firepower to overpower a group of soldiers and steal a relatively feeble missile, you may as well just do a Mumbai and shoot lots of people in a train station
God forbid we have to use these missiles - it's going to be a split-second decision between killing everyone on the plane, and letting the pilot/hijacker kill everyone on the plane and lots of people on the ground. This is an absolute last resort, after jet fighter intercepts and helicopter-mounted snipers have failed.
That's nothing - there are plenty of cases in the US of children under the age of ten being arrested for what is really just bad behaviour.
Even worse! In some parts of the US, breaking the school dress code or behaviour policy is a criminal offence. Kids go to court - and jail - for dressing wrong.
"Democracy and capitalism - causing human misery and environmental damage for the last century :-/"
As opposed to those states which are non-democratic and non-capitalist - they are such shining paragons of human happiness and freedom, and their environmental record is spotless, like the land itself. And anyone who disagrees will be shot!
I'm really not sure if you're joking or not - but I think Winston Churchill said it best "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Unless there's a compelling reason to find an AWOL soldier (eg, he left in a tank) the US Army doesn't go to extreme lengths to track down the guy. Usually when they're caught, they'll get a dishonourable discharge and loss of pay/pension. I think the logic is that if someone is that keen to leave that they'll break the law, (1) why try and keep him around, and (2) why waste money finding/prosecuting/punishing him.
I take it you think anyone who takes a salary from the government is a welfare queen, then? Does that include police, firefighters, doctors and nurses? Have you said this to their faces ... or do you hide as anonymous coward on the internet? Bear in mind that all of these "welfare queens" have signed up to protect YOU. Even if you don't like that.
If civilians are killed by a soldier, then the soldier is prosecuted. The latest case in Kandahar should, hopefully, see the perpetrator sentenced to death. It is a disgrace and a mark of shame to everyone who wears a uniform.
If said civilians are guerillas, they can be killed legitimately by the soldier under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions ... then, well, that's legal and an act of war.
I read a similar article a few days ago. This HAS happened, but it's at places like security/prisons in the US. The US has few protections for (prospective) employees, and working for places like that is even worse. Also, if you're applying for a job like that, you are likely unskilled or semi-skilled, and so won't have a lot of options.
Apparently of the 500 or so people screened by one prison, several had photos on Facebook showing gang tattoos or gang signs, and were ditched from the employment process.
Sorry, really can't remember where I saw the article.
A DDOS attack from N compromised machines can be maintained indefinitely. However, the effect will drop as the target blocks traffic from the compromised machines, and as those machines are rebooted/fixed.
To maintain an effective DDOS attack over any period of time requires a lot of work by the attacker, to compromise new machines to attack with.
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