Posts by Richard 120

Pro-Wikileaks hacktivistas in DDoS dustup with patriot contras

that isn't a real world?

oh gods how will I indicate a person, thing, idea, state, event, time, remark, etc., as pointed out or present, mentioned before, supposed to be understood, or by way of emphasis?

Probably

an arm and a leg given the people you'll have to deal with.

Brussels goes in to bat for beleaguered bees

Ah,

Wait and see.

Are we talking about a passive wait and see where nobody actually does anything, or the active wait and see which means scientists (who have to be paid) monitor the situation and speculate, experiment and recommend?

Because without the shouty part you end up with the former, with the shouty part you end up with the latter. As I've pointed out, without the shouty part the majority of the populace couldn't give a stuff and these are the people paying taxes, and ultimately they make the decision as to whether anything gets done about an issue or not. And by something being done I mean it being studied, with real (paid) scientists actively doing stuff (like counting bees for instance)

Should we do the same regarding climate change? I think that's been hyped and shouty. Where do you stand on that one?

How do you judge "worth" given that worthiness is a matter of opinion? Popular opinion governs worth (and you could argue vive-versa), if a cause is popular then the shoutiness gets louder.

So has the worthiness of the save the bee campaign become shouty because of popular opinion or has the issue been exaggerated from the start? My guess (and that's all it is) is that it's driven by popular opinion in this case, on account of my bias towards liking bees.

I am also not particularly keen on the resilience of species argument (humans recovering from black death etc.) if that argument was followed every time there was an outbreak of a new virus then there would most likely be very few people around today. (HIV - who cares, we've survived plagues before, we'll do it again.) It may be accurate but it doesn't actually help us evolve as a species. You could equally point to dutch elm disease, or perhaps more appropriately potato blight.

We'll survive, but at what cost? (Should we stand idly by to wait and see?)

We've already manipulated the human population to be significantly greater than would be the case if we ignored plagues, it stands to reason that we need to do the same with the species we depend upon, hence industrialised farming.

I like bees

Much like global warming and other various subjects which are hyped, people hype them because they are important and without that hype large swathes of the population couldn't give a toss.

So it is done as a social manipulation tool, to draw attention to the fact it's done, to decry it makes the assumption that everyone else on the planet is as clued up and as good at critical thinking as you are. And you're an expert, so how is that going to be true?

Just because something is hyped up to be a bigger issue than it actually is in the eyes of an expert doesn't necessarily mean that the issue should be ignored.

Feds arrest man who juiced Google's 'just be evil' search

I'd have thought the gun thing was relevant

When it comes to a threat.

It's one thing to say "I'm a gonna shoot you" when all you have is a beebee gun at most.

Another thing to say "I'm a gonna shoot you" whilst having access to an actual firearm with real bullets that go through people making lots of blood and such.

One is an empty threat, the other can be considered to be a genuine threat of real physical violence, with a gun.

And guns are bad mmm'kay

Anti-virus skulduggery - upgrade licence clock shock slammed

yeah piratebay

because you'd never pick up a virus from warez </sarcasm>

Clam-AV

Go open source

Hefty porridge for £300m VAT ring

Vodafone?

"The gang nobbled the revenue in a "complicated" fraud centred on mobile phones, SIM cards, memory and other mobile phone accessories"

Russia wins World Cup bid in parrot-sickening travesty

I count 1

That's the one where people are paying me the bribe.

Also

Is that possibly the best tactic for getting rid of the press? By attempting to "punish" England?

Won't that just make the English press hurl more accusations around? Some of the accusations might even be based in fact, I don't think that really matters much to the press though.

Google ends 'do be evil, if you want a top ranking' policy

I'd say he's

Smart for figuring it out, stupid for talking about it.

That's vanity for you.

'ALIEN' LIFE FOUND in California

Well it's quite simple maths really

You take the number of places where there are phosphorous, count them.

Then you take that same number of places and here's the critical part, you "add" the number of places where there is arsenic.

I'm no expert of course, but I reckon and I could be going out on a limb here, but the second number is bigger than the first number.

An iPad for under 200 quid*

Less interested in the iPad than "the Rules"

For my records can anyone let me know what the figure is for "a single-spouse decision"?

I may need to berate my wife over her opinion of what that figure is when it comes to buying shoes.

Or it may afford me greater freedom to expand my NAS.

Indian village bans single girls from mobile use

They're all pay as you go ones

It's just some "contracts" are more open about the cost.

Simples

"Girls in India are being beheaded by their own families." - olds

"Girls in India are being banned from having phones." - news

VAT fraudster gets 9 years for refusing £40m bill

Not a crime against a person?

No, it's not a crime against an individual.

It's a crime against the entire tax paying population of the UK.

Consider the services funded by 40m tax, isn't the NHS funded by the taxpayer?

I wonder if any underfunded NHS hospitals have had anybody die in them because a drug wasn't available or a neo-natal unit didn't have the equipment it needed, there'll be some individuals affected there, hope you don't end up being one of them.

re: Unfair split

Considering they've asked him to pay back £40m and two other gang members £3.8m and £4.7m.

I'd be assuming it was a very uneven split and this guy was the ringleader, directors get paid in the millions while people working for a company get less than 10% a directors salary, why do you assume that criminals do not operate on a similar sliding scale?

It's not like this was the great train robbery, there wasn't a bundle of cash with some crooks round it saying one for you, one for me, one for you, one for you etc.

And as for the did he refuse or did he simply not have the money, he's a criminal.

By what means are you going to detemine "He doesn't have the money", you can easily appear to have no money whilst having a crapload of stuff and a crapload of money, particularly if you're a criminal (which this guy is, if it wasn't clear) if he turns around and says "I'd really love to pay you back, but I don't have the money (my dog ate it)" are you going to believe him? (Just to be absolutely clear, he's a CRIMINAL)

Here's the logic in the request -

"Tell us where the fucking money is so we can take it back and we might let you out of jail"

Or would you prefer the guy to walk free and then suddenly find £40m quid (it was down the back of the sofa, never knew it was there, how lucky is that)?

So.. is that enough slapping down?

Hey kids, wanna build your own Vulture 1?

IP

I say well done for the amount of informmation you're sharing and have shared. I'm glad that you haven't tried to monetize the whole thing, which would be something I would expect from the traditional press.

Clearly from this project we can determine you are fans of the open source development model, at least as far as paper plane construction is concerned :-)

I've been following the whole thing from the start and it's been brilliant.

Thanks for the entertainment, long may it continue.

Hitachi quietly slips in new, big hardness

same here

Since I lost 2 80Gb of their drives within minutes of each other when they were in a raid 5 array, that seriously pissed me off.

Never bought Hitachi since.

Nominet forgets what the first .uk domain name was

To answer the question.

Do any Reg readers know what the first .uk domain was?

No.

Rocks, hard places and Congo minerals

er...

Slave labour tends to be unpaid.

Trucker jailed for deadly motorway gamble

Clarkson was right

enough said.

Lettuce head e-fit draws a blank

Everyone?

I personally despise aubergines far more than I dislike lettuce.

Steve Jobs chops student hack down to size

fine

I only have this to say on the matter.

meh.

Tsk?

Who actually writes "Tsk." and more to the point what does it actually mean?

Incidentally I heard to make the new iPad it takes an average of 4 orphans to produce the shattered dreams and 12 angels tears to distill the magic they put into the device.

Amazon loves LoveFilm (true)

Perfect fit?

I'm guessing that's because neither of them have anything you could call "customer service".

You buy/rent the thing(s) you want and as far as they're concerned you can fuck off after that, they'd rather not talk to you.

Still I much prefer Amazon's method which is to just refund/replace based on the input from an online form than Lovefilms Indian call centre who I'd say are probably the rejects from all the other indian call centres.

'Internet censorship is trade barrier', says Google exec

I thoroughly agree

Could the same argument not also be applied to internet gambling?

America has decided to make gambling online illegal, whilst domestic casinos are okay?

Protectionism maybe?

From what I can gather the prohibition isn't working anyway, perhaps it's time they got their own firewall to protect them from the dangers of free trade.

Scottish iSchool goes 100% iPad

Hell No

I wouldn't trust anything expensive in the hands of a 5 year old.

But then I wouldn't trust my 5 year old into the hands of a christian school either.

(the joke would probably have been better if it was described as a catholic school, but thems the breaks)

Mozilla Thunderturkey and its malcontents

Mail Client

I'd say a lot of people don't know how lucky they are. I was getting away with using Outlook at work until recently when they made up some bullshit about security policy meaning that people working on certain accounts have to use the internal servers, so I've been forced to use Lotus Notes. I say the policy is bullshit, it's not about security, the Notes servers and our laptops are all managed by people in Mumbai anyway, and as such can't be used for government restricted information anyway.

Lotus Notes is possibly the worst piece of shit email client I've ever had the misfortune to use. That's all it's used for, mail and calendar, I know it's more than all that, but who gives a crap when all you want is mail and a calendar?

Dell outsourcer lifts US woman's saucy pix from PC

loose

The guy goes all txt speaky and then chooses to add an additional letter to a word.

I really hate that typo.

Other than that it's clear monumental stupidity is still prevalent in some sectors of the populace

Malaysia bans 'satanic' Man Utd kit

Well

I'm calling them all nutjobs.

Although the French less so, how is the banning of this symbol not religious suppression? It's suppression by a religious organisation. They believe the symbol to be one of religious significance otherwise they wouldn't be trying to SUPPRESS it.

The subtle difference is one's the suppression OF religion and the other is suppression BY religion. In my opinion the latter justifies the former.

I am not particularly religiously tolerant, I'd prefer a world where there were no believers in spaghetti monsters from space. Where people didn't threaten to kill people for drawing cartoons of fictitious or real people. A world free from the my god's better than your god crap.

An educated world where people don't need to believe, they're allowed to think for themselves.

There have been a lot of good things done in the name of various religions, there have also been a vast number of atrocities done in the name of religions too. It's time to stop that sort of rubbish.

Science isn't a religion.

religious

nutjobs

Zuckerberg: I'm 'quite sure' I own Facebook

Be careful

Developers own the copyright to software unless the developer is the client's employee or the software is part of a larger work made for hire under a written agreement. In order to own the copyright, the client must have an agreement transferring ownership from the developer to the client.

verbatim from http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29584.html

I'm not sure that this is what's involved here though. I'd say it's to do with the investment of $1000 and the contract surrounding that investment (as TFA states in the last paragraph)

The replacement of "I" with "We" is a common indicator of a lie being told though.

Zuckerberg admits working for man claiming Facebook ownership

I love to see the mighty fall

Mainly because the mighty are a bunch of self obsessed wankers who lie cheat and steal to profit themselves.

There is an opinion that this by definition means they are "clever", my opinion is different.

Reg reader tweaks Jobs with Judasphone.com

I thought

the official Reg phrase was "Jesus phone" and Judas phone was just another part of the parody.

Did I get that wrong?

Jesus was the good guy, Judas the bad guy and all that...

iParody

iCall fair use

though I don't suppose that'll stop the iThreats

Martha Lane Fox to clone 10m copies of self

I'll bite...

Who is she then?

UK.gov scraps stop'n'search terror power

They may say that

But now they will have to answer the follow up question of...

"Why did you think the person was a terrorist?"

I somehow doubt that an answer of

"because he was taking photos of the houses of parliament"

would actually be considered reasonable grounds for suspicion, so plod would get a rap on the wrists and told not to do it again.

That's an altogether better outcome than not actually having the question asked in the first place.

Plus the more people who are aware of their rights the less likely people are going to hand over their cameras when plod demands they do so.

It may not stop them

but at least they'll have to answer for their actions.

George Lucas rattles lightsabre at Jedi laser firm

But

I've had a look at the thing, and also had a look at replica lightsabers. I've also seen the movies so I'm eminently qualified to make a judgement here.

The similarity is that it's a tube that is about the right size to fit in a hand with a light that comes out of the end. So are torches potentially going to come under copyright scrutiny from Mr Lucas?

it doesn't really look like a lightsaber when examined.

(at least those replicas you can buy)

also ... each lightsaber is as unique as the one who built it so what's to copyright?

I think in fact the laser looks cooler than the toy replica lightsabers....

NSA setting up secret 'Perfect Citizen' spy system

I remember...

When I first tried to read and comprehend one of his/her/it's postings. I'm pretty sure my eyes began to bleed and my brain started to seep out of my ears.

Long live amanfrommars1

Women would rather be on Facebook than on the toilet

Does that mean

I can live a "Shut the F*ck Up" lifestyle?

Blizzard exposes real names on WoW forums

Interesting

I think you may be missing the subtle point that the reg hack is alluding to there, where your anonymity is an illusion.

One of the best things about the internets is the audit trails and loggings.

Of course I could be wrong and it could be petty vindictive behaviour as you suggest.

1984 because while big brother may not be watching you, your activities are probably being logged somewhere.

Fanbois love sex toys: Official

ROFL

New keyboard now please

Penguin chief: Linux must 'out fabulous' Apple's iPhone

But...

Where's the competition?

Apple will just take anything decent open source, slap a shiny GUI on it and pass it off as their own, the credit only needs to be in the small print after all.

That's not competition, that's parasitic, unless of course there's some feedback resulting in a symbiosis, I doubt it though, not profitable to just give things away.