Posts by ElReg!comments!Pierre

Southampton Uni slaps IP notice on FOI requests

IP?

So in common English, the info is not copyrighted, but the protected PDF document is. And they made it a protected PDF -instead of raw text- in order to ensure that the IP introduced by the fact that it's a protected PDF is not stolen. Of course. The will to threaten hapless punters into not using the info as they have the right to has not played any role, honest guv.

[rant_mode=ON] It's a bit like the signature most corporate mail system now add at the bottom of all messages, saying "if you received this email by error please delete it, rip your eyes out and go get a lobotomy or we will throw you in jail". If you goddamn spammed me, I am free to forward your poor prose to the whole universe and its dependencies if I wish to, and there's nothing you can possibly do to prevent that, you twats! [rant_mode=OFF]

Slime-powered Toyota Prius demoed

@ Nexox Enigma

"those modern, small diesel engines that are showing up lately have efficiencies in the mid 30% range"

My oh my, that must have been modern in the, like, forties or sumfin. Like, before they even *invented* the diesel engine...

"The electric motors used in a hybrid, on the other hand, can convert electrical to mechanical energy and back at nearly 100% efficiency"

You tell me. The max efficiency for a brushless electrical motor is in the 80-85 % range. in the no-load to low-load region that can be raised by a few % with the addition of brushes, but it falls down hopelessely as soon as you increase the load. sorry to burst you "100% efficiency" unicorn buble.

"It sounds like they want to grow this stuff in the desert "

Having some experience in microbiology, it sounds like they could grow the thinfg pretty well anywhere (including deserts if they wished to move sea water over there). I don't give a feck anyway. I't's stll better than people who think that rotary electrical motors operate at "nearly 100% efficiency". (Just so that you know, the max with a brushless DC motor -as used in the 'leccy cars- would be around 80-85 % max, at low load. I fells significantly under that as the load increases. That's nowhere near "100%". Unless you have access to sparkling new alien tech from outher space.)

Oi Nexox Enigma(bis)

"the average fossil fuel power plant (In the states) is normally quoted in the 30-35% range." well that makes the max theoretical poxer efficiency of a 'leccy car down from 31 to 27%. Whithout the battery losses. Looks like buying a Prius actuall *kills* mother Earth, after all...

PS (More numbers)

Attention hugely annoying rant follows

From my previous "numbers" post you could assume that a 'leccy car can (in the best theoretical case) be 50% more efficient than a gas-powered one (20% vs 30% conversion efficiency). However, the Prius does have huge batteries+a gas tank+2 engines instead of one, which makes it 50% heavier than an equivalent gas-powered car. Guess what it does to you power consumption in the traffic...

Also, just to give some perspective, an ICE diesel engine does have a conversion efficiency higher than 50%. When you take the weight factor into account, it's twice the efficiency of the Prius. Whithout that nasty huge battery.

Also, even with a gas-powered car you can significantly decrease pollution by just switching the air conditionner off (I would hazard a 10% estimation, though I must admit that I just pulled this figure out of my hat). Oh, and if you want to reduce your, erm "carbon footprint", why don't you buy a smaller car? Fiat makes this nice lil' Seiciento -wich is incidentally an awful lot of fun to drive. Or a nice small turbodiesel 5-seater with no AC to avoid the temptation. Of course you'd have to find gasoil, but it's still much more convenient than overnight charging over the mains (even in the US).

Of course, all that is assuming that car-produced CO2 is a problem to begin with, which I do not really believe to begin with (even assuming that man-made CO2 is a problem, in the US 'leccy production accounts for 40% of total man-made CO2, and various industrial processes make for the bulk of the rest). But then, better safe than sorry, limitting energy waste and pollution is bound to be a good thing in the end. Only the Prius (or any hybrid car) is really not the solution.

Now I should mention that you can feed any modern diesel engine (with its 50%+ conversion efficiency) on 1/3 colza oil (crude, just filtered. The supermarket grade will do). Some car-grade diesel engines, and all industrial-grade diesel engines (tractors, lorries, harvesters, you name it. The injection pump is the key) can run on 50% colza oil. You will lose in the acceleration department, but win a lot in the torque department (in plain English, it means "you wont race a mustang on the next traffic light, but you won't stall ever again, even with the handbrake on"). Bonus: your exhaust fumes will smell like french fries. Really. (OK, maybe that's a malus finally). And with minor modifications, you can run those on 100% colza oil (minor modifications being mostly a pre-heating system: viscosity and flashpoint are the enemies here). Of course it's illegal to drive such a modified car on a public road in most countries, and thanks to the oil lobby it will remains that way for the foreseable future.

But in any case, the Prius with its max theoretical conversion efficiency of 30%, its huge toxic super-heavy battery (and most obnoxiously, its dumb smug driver) is *not* *going* *to* *save* *mother* *earth*. Get that?

One last thing (for now)

It is perfectly safe to check the level of colza oil in your tank with an open flame - or to smoke, use a mobe, play with matches, juggle torches, etc at the colza-oil station. That should settle it. Think of the saved lives! Hollywood might lose the opportunity for some nice special effects though. Well, it's not like they were ever stopped by realism, is it?

@ Eugene Goodrich (numbers)

"I should like to see some rigorous numbers regarding losses in electricity transmission, battery charging, and motor operation before deciding if the power plants aren't a net benefit over burning the fuel directly in the internal combustion engine bolted to the wheels."

Well if memory serves the efficiency of a good ICE is 20%-ish while a fossil fuel plant has an efficiency roughly double that (40%). The loss due to power grid distribution is between 5% and 10% in the US (the last average figure I saw was 7 point something but it was out of WP so caution advised). I have no data about the loss of power in the battery itself, but at least we can safely assume that it does exist. And electric motors are bad at dealing with load (that's due to how they operate) so they are quite efficient when operating fans for example, but not so when getting 2 tons of steel from 0 to 100 km/h. In any case I seem to remember that you can expect a max efficiency of 80-85% on a very good day and under low charge.

So you have 20% efficiency for the ICE, and 40x93x85/10000=31.62% efficiency for the leccy engine. And that's taking the very best numbers and not taking into account the loss due to the battery because I don't have the numbers there. So it might be a tiny bit more efficient than ICE, but really not by much. And then the battery manufacturing and disposal kicks in, with all the heavy metals and carbon-intensive manufacturing... so as I said, all this 'leccy car thing has been a bit overhyped as far as "saving the planet" goes. Not that it couldn't be improved (non-fossil-fuel sources of 'leccy, and better, less toxic batteries spring to mind). But right now, with the tech available, we would probably be better off with rocket-powered vehicles (the power efficiency of those is 70%-ish). One can dream...

@Filippo

"So, is getting algae to produce hydrocarbons more efficient than just covering the same space in solar panels?"

I would bet so. Unless I missed some very recent development, photovoltaic panels are not terribly efficient, and yet very expensive (and not particularly rugged either). I was told that the best solar panels are the ones that heat water, but powering cars with lukewarm water is not going to be particularly easy -not impossible, just not easy. This algae thing looks quite inexpensive and low-maintenance. So if it's cheap and carbon-neutral, why would you possibly want to use expensive, frail and inefficient solar panels instead?

"and eats up C02 emitted by other industrial processes."

What is this thing you call C02 exactly? A "second C" of some kind? Or is it some discreet attempt at l33t-speak?

Anyway, that's good news for the planet: the prius is now half green... I mean, seriously, where do you think the 'leccy comes from? When you add up the coal plant emissions (times the loss in leccy transport, the poor efficiency of the motor under load etc) and the pollution caused by the huge batteries (both manufacturing and disposal), the 'leccy part of the thing was hardly as "green" as marketted to begin with...

Critical bug infests newer versions of Microsoft Windows

@me: correction

"how can you sell a frigging server OS that needs TCP [...] to be turned off [yadda yadda yadda]"

Should of course read "how can you sell a frigging server OS that needs *FTP* [...] to be turned off [yadda yadda yadda]"

Don't know what went through my mind.

Sorry

Do I get a punishment session with the Moderatrix? Not that I did it on purpose. Of course.

Re: @DT

Totally agree.

;-)

two things...

First, you say that attempts to exploit the bug will probably "only" crash the machine. As if it's a good thing. I guess DDOS attacks are OK then. After all, they will "only" at worst crash your kit.

Second (and this one is not your fault), how can you sell a frigging server OS that needs TCP -and its own proprietary network share protocole- to be off in order not to crash -or be exploited- at a whim? Surely that makes it entirely unfit for purpose? Hey look here is a server OS, it's perfectly stable and secure as long as it doesn't come close to a network! WTF?

Google Maps Monopoly board folds under server strain

Re: telling statement

> Funny,[...]

> "Keep trying if you don't get in first turn - F5 away... ".

Yep. Funny indeed, especially if they expected to be a bit short in the hardware department... I mean, if I'd expect to get more load than I can handle, the last thing I'd want would be crowds of annoyed kids getting postal on the refresh... D'uh.

Windows 7 versus Snow Leopard — The poison taste test

@ cap'n (just to keep the controversy alive)

"Windows is engineered to run on whatever hardware the user decides. Mac OSX is designed to run on whatever hardware Steve Jobs decides, which (hardly coincidentally) means his own. Kerrrrchiiiiing!!!!!!!"

I guess this should read "WIndows in engineered to run (even poorly) on whatever hardware the OEM decides, with the forced sale and huge cashback to MS that this implies. Kerrrrchiiiiing!!!!!!!. Mac OSX is designed to run (mostly smoothly) on whatever hardware Steve Jobs decides, which means his own. Kerrrrchiiiiing!!!!!!!"

Task-wise, both OSes are designed to run on overspec'd hardware. Apple is more "open" about it (by selling you very expensive machines) while MS hides behind "This machine will run the latest Windows (although you might die of old age waiting for notepad to open)" stickers. That's just a difference in the marketting strategy, not in the quality of the OS. For those willing to invest a bit of time, Linux or BSDs are hugely more efficient (it doesn't even compare), though it must be said that, from a purely technical point of view, out-of-the box fancy Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mandriva are only marginally better than Windows or OSX if you're not willing to bother with what roars under the hood (openness and cost issues notwithstanding).

@ all the passionate commentards:

You all are lusers.

That is all.

How much of the EU's data will the UK lose?

Ridiculous acronym

Secure idenTity acrOss boRders linKed... does that even make any sense in the first place? What the frigging frack is the "linKed" even there? Did they troll the dic for a word with a "k" in it, any word will do? Not to mention that there is no REASON* not to USE** SIABL as an acronym for this particular choice of words. I mean this *is* how acronyms are supposed to work after all.

*secuRe idEntity AcroSs bOrders liNked

**secUre identity acroSs borders linkEd

@ The Light of the Silvery Moon

So you want think it's a civil servant problem, really? Which would be solved by selling the access of all that very private and very valuable data to private companies? You're aware that approx half the data losses were the doing of *private* contractors, right? Also, do you *really* trust Google and the like not to try and monetize your health, tax, etc data (after "suitable anonymisation" of course, like removing the last letter of your surname or something)?

Malware thrown on California bush fires

"Mac malware, specifically Jahlav-C"

There is no such fecking thing as Mac malware. Macs are awesome and unbreakable and secure by design and even the buffer overflow attack cower in fear of the mighty Macs. Everyone knows that, especially the frigging bladdy marroon who had the ho-so brilliant idea to replace all the old iMacs runnins OS9 by spanking new Slow Leper machines. In the labs. Were people were running nothing but their loved and customized OS9 apps (most of which had never been ported to Leopard in the first place). By specialized I mean "my Oh-so-very customized PCR primer design app which was fine-tuned for years to take full advantage of the NCBI Genebank API", and by "replace" I mean Howwwwdy-Howww! This morning your good old machine is not there anymore, but this one is better! (which is probably true, btw, but it's totally irrelevant). Oh, and there are a lot of hardware issues, too. So thanks to some genial Apple fanboy, all the good old trusted machines have been replaced with boxes with an untested, unsupported OS on them. A good two-third of the labgeek pool is unable to work because of course, most of our specialized apps won't be ported to Slow Leper before next year, and half of the keyboards won't reliably work untill next month. Who the frigging frack replaces a trusted production OS by a 2-days-old shiny pixy-juice-powered unstable "upgrade"? Without any frigging kid of notice? Certainly not someone who has to bother about real work being done, or about keeping the lusers quiet, for that matter. Seriously, I used to be kinda neutral in the "Apple vs the Rest of The World" war, but that does it. Apple Fanbuoys need to die. Now. All of them. For the sake of the people who actually do some work. (no, checking the internet for updates on S. Jobs health does *not* count as an IT diploma, despite most Apple Lusers seem to believe*)

End of rant.

* To be honest, it's only marginally worst than thinking that a MCSE is of any worth, but the current rant is focussed at Apple so STFU.

Boffins fail to detect Moon's strangeness

Of course they didn't find it

How could you find 10x-overweight quarks on the moon when there is not a single McDonald's nearby?

Brit inventor wants prison for patent crims

A patent is worth *nothing*

My car is not worth 10 grands either. But a patent is worth exactly zero pounds per se. Now the product that uses one or several patents is worth something, and according to the (dimwitted as it is) patent system some of this money should go to the patent holder (who is not necessarily -and actually in most cases, isn't- the inventor).

Also, the people claiming that patents promote innovation or protect the colloquial "little guy" should have a look at the real world. In the real world, patents only protect you if you're willing to spend more cash than your opponent. Tough luck for the "little guy". And the very fact that you don't necessarily have to have the first clue about a possible implementation to get a patent has led to the current state of affair where the patent system is actually one of the major burdens slowing innovation down. If you think of something original and useful, and implement your idea, you'll most likely get screwed because chances are that some big corp. with a lot of cash already owns a generally-worded "blanket" patent that their lawyers will present as covering your invention as soon as you show the will to make some cash. Oh, and they will probably steal your implementation, too. So why bother?

In the US this has led to a permanent "mexican stand-off" where all the big guys hold each other by the nuts because everyone has patents covering everyone else's products. The chances of any real innovation -especially by the "little guy"- in this mess are really, really slim.

And to those who say "the system is good at heart, only currently being badly applied", may I remember you of the very honorable (not) B. Franklin, the most prolific inventor of all times (not)? The fact that this guy has a semi-god status in the American IP system is quite revealing...

Lad from Lagos makes YouTube pitch

Nice name.

Obi 1 Kenobi or sumfin. Sure sounds serious to me.

SMBs unimpressed by netbooks

I do use one for work stuff

But I might be an exception...

I do have an EEEPC 900, which has plenty of screen space as compared to the 901 (for the same screen size... go figure) and is very nice for basic things such as office work (text, spreadsheets, presentations), email, skype and whatnot, but also moderate image processing duties.This suits my needs quite well while being much less cumbersome than my 15" laptop.

On the other hand, the Windows version feels really cramped and makes any kind of work a painful experience, you'd have to get a 11" screen to get an acceptable "experience" for anything else than e-mail. And at this size, you will probably go for a real laptop instead, while getting a smartphone for email.

As far as I can see, when running Windows the small netbooks offer barely more functionality than smartphones -except for the storage space, but that's not what SMBs get a netbook for- while being considerably larger and having a pityful battery life. MS kinda managed to kill the netbook market. For now. It will be interesting to see what happens with the latest Sony.

Feds break Apple's code of App Store silence

Re: "Apple, who own the iPhone"

Missing "s" appart, I kinda thought that once they had taken my hard-earned, the precioussss was mine, all mine? Or are they just licencing the darn thing?

Actually the whole "Apple store-only" policy is already very much on the borderline to illegalland, they got off the hook by saying "it's only to ensure maximum smoothness and shininess" -which was bollocks from the start, they should have said, like "installing any non-approved app will void the warranty" or sumfin, instead-, but then they started rejecting apps for entirely different reasons (such as "we don't approve of boobs or anything distantly related to sex". They do seem to like farts very much though. Apparently the Turtle-Necked One is asexual, but does have an arsehole). So they should darn well be spanked. Imagine what would happen if the Big Bad MS prevented people from running OpenOffice or FF/Opera/whatever on windows? MS didn't do that, they just used bundling, and even then they are being spanked (and rightfully so). Now time for Jobs and co to learn that their pixie-juice-powered business is not entirely above the law, either.

Snow Leopard security - The good, the bad and the missing

@ Mectron

"the poor rehash of linux Apple call MacOS."

FreeBSD users officially hate you now. Yes, the both of them.

Breakfast cereal freebie CD dishes up hard-core smut

Easy to explain shirley

I think you'll find that the CD did not contain pr0n itself, but merely punted a link to a pr0n website... easy explanation there: in a short-sighted move, some monkey at Nestlé adds a couple links under the "related material" section of the CD (or whatever). Very stupidly, he includes a link pointing to www.shakethatass.com (or something) which features some gym-related material but is not under his control. 2 weeks later, registration of shakethatass.com expires and the domain is bought by a hardcore porn business.

That's all folks. Happens all the time, really. The interwebs are versatile thinggies..

Snow Leopard arrives with meow, not a roar

Oy! (females?)

So as it appears, there ARE wiminz on the interwebs, and they do NOT use macs. Watch your world crumble before your sorry eyes guize...

Sharp intros 5in ARM-based netbook

Ho crap crap crap crap

Just when I gave up the long wait for exactly that and bought an EEEPC 900 instead. I guess I'll have a couple month to hype up the Asus to my sister or SO so that I can give it to them and buy this lil beauty!

Too bad it's Ubuntu though. There goes 1G of otherwise much valuable Flash memory...

@ small screen, webcam et al. comments

Well it's still an usable definition. And it's not Windows. I have a EEEPC 900*, and one of my friend has a 1001. Even with the larger screen, the 1001 is a pain in the ass to use whereas my 900's screen feels roomy. Amazing what difference a real OS can make...

Agreed, there is quite a difference between 5 an 9 inches, but the resolution being the same I'm not really afraid. And these touchscreens tend to become very pricey when you increase size, so that's a good trade-off. And most of the software I use is console-based anyway, so I for one don't give a crap about screen size. Provided I can install mutt, lout, w3m, tin, aft, midnight commander (yes, I do indulge in a bit of NCurses eyecandy from time to time. But I'm ashamed of it.) and of course nethack, adventure and overkill for some much-needed relief, it's good enough for my everyday work and leizure. I have a high-end workstation for my graphics needs anyway (no netbook could possibly cope with my 4-D 12 bits 500-megs-each** images...).

Same for the cam. If you really need one, you can get an almost disposable one pretty much everywhere now, whereas a decent-quality tiny embedded one would considerably increase the price.

*Aaaaarrrrrggh! Can't believe I bought it only a few weeks before this sony came out. <bang><bang><bang>

** No typo here, that's half a gig apiece. Some weight in at more than 800 Mo actually. Though I have a high-end workstation to deal with that WYSIWYG style, I sometimes do some bulk prefiltering on an old Celeron box with 512M of RAM and integrated Intel graphics -not that it would matter anyway, the filtering is done without display obviously-. Guess what OS it is running. For the sake of comparison -read proselytism-, the box also bears a copy of Windows XP Pro wasting a good 2/3 of the 10 gigs hard drive. The box has huuuge trouble just keeping up with the OS when running XP whereas it does some really heavy work under Debian, even with some basic point-and click rubbish running (obviously a nicely tweaked install to be honest, but only by trimming. No watered-down "embedded system" apps, only standard full-fledged stuff. It even has full Java, Python -with NumPy and co- R and Scilab developpment capabilities. Has to, as I obviously won't feed my valuable stuff into someone else's rubbish code. I reserve the right to misinterprete my own data ;-) ).

Dell and HP sing Microsoft tune on Word injunction

Old tactics

HP and Dell would probably not even have noticed the change. MS have either strongarmed or bribed them to write these letters (and the cut n paste bits are probably taken directly from the template MS certainly helpfully provided). This is quite common tactics. It is used by supermarket chains to silence their opposition for example: if you attack them, you will be sued by the company *and* by all its partners (you're looking at a few hundred separate lawsuits in some cases) so of course no-one can afford to speak up...

Fire at Google UK

Ballmer has been practising

Did we find the debris of the incoming flying office chair?

Also, nice article, though I'm pretty sure that your use of the term "Burning Man" (twice) infringe their copyright. They're touchy like that. Total freedom in a triple-reinforced armoured cocoon surrounded by barbed wires. But nicely padded and soft inside.

Apple and Snow Leopard take-downs - just say no

Snow Leopard?

I heard an interview of Jobs the other day, and I had trouble understanding why Apple would name an OS "Slow Leper"*. I get it now...

*Why not Vista2?

Mininova flattened by Dutch court

Can the trolls please stop?

Can we please decide that anyone referring to copyright infringers as "pirates" needs to be repeatedly kicked in the nads? It's a tad irritating. Why not "rapists" while you're at it? Or "mass murderers"? Pirates are awesome anyway. And totally kicking the ninjas collective ass should a confrontation occur.

Meanwhile in Canuckland...

In an ad for Bell's internet offer, the long boring evening is saved by a youngster happily spouting "Look, I just downloaded a movie!". Much joy ensues. That is not incitation shirley, because the ad's been running for a couple month on all major TV channels, but there has been no comment from the MAFIAA yet... talk about hypocrisy.

Bookie lays odds on next Microsoft head transplant

White, but Afro-American?

Shirley that would be "white, black" or "caucasian-amerian, afro-american"?

How to run Mac OS X on a generic PC

@ AC 27th August 2009 12:36 GMT

"The collective ignorance masked by pseudo-geek talk in this list is extraordinary."

You're right, and your post is a perfect example. Thank you for setting the UNIX/not UNIX thinggie straight though, it always annoys me too. Not that it is of any importance in the desktop realm, but still. Some other points are pure bullshit though. And OS-X is nowhere near as good as most real Linux distros (NOT talking about Ubuntu here). And if you want full UNIX compat*, install a real BSD FFS, not this bastardized overbloated stuff from Apple. And if you want real dependability, go check that: http://h71000.www7.hp.com/ 'cause UNIX was never good anyway.

*not that it would be of any use in the real world unless you're a bank stuck with tons of legacy stuff, be hey, I heard that some people like the badge, and it's a free world we're living in.

MS phishing filter blacklists everything

@ frymaster

"Microsoft have this little thing called "backwards compatibility""

That's a joke, right? They do have the "backwards" part covered, twice or thrice, but they're still looking for the "compatibility" part. That's why chairs sometimes get airborne in Ballmer's office: he's searching *very* thouroughly.

"most of said tat/bling is from css3. css3 is not a standard (yet)."

Maybe you should re-read my comment. I'm not saying that this bling is good or standard or anything. I'm just saying that stripping the bling out won't make the page display correctly in IE. If it's written in standard *ML, it most likely won't display correctly in IE. For a website to work correctly with IE, it basically has to be written specifically for IE.

@ Stevie on Firefox zealot

"Webmasters! If your website has a problem rendering in a browser, perhaps it's time to consider trimming Teh Bling (aka the Tat) from the bloody pages."

You're kinda right in the principle. In the real world however, there is no need for any bling nor tat for a website not to render in IE. It just needs to be standard compliant. There is less and less of a common denominator between the 2 clans of webpages: either your page renders well in all browsers but IE, or your page renders well in IE but nowhere else. Most big guys avoid the problem by having two separate sets of pages and serving one or the other depending on the useragent, but you'll admit that it's less than optimal. So yes, webmasters can grow a bit annoyed over the issue, and try to pull visitors away from the half-baked PITA that IE is. It might be annoying for you, but it's hardly _their_ fault. Actually, it's more _your_ fault, for using a browser that deliberately breaks the standards in an effort to maintain some kind of market share despite being utter crap, and annoys everyone else in the process.

US music publishers sue online lyrics sites

@ The Indomitable Gall

"Basically, it's someone's work and fair dos -- they want paid."

Yes it's someone's work, and yes they *should* be paid, but hey, it ain't gonna happen. The MAFIAA and related entities are NOT involved in any part of the creative process, antd they mostly do NOT redistribute the money they make to the artists. They're the patent scammers of art, a huge overfed leech that is about to kill its host.

I'm not saying that unlicensed distribution is good, I'm just saying that both sides here are just profiteering from the work of others without due retribution, so Mr Israelite and consorts don't make me cry. Hear that sound? It's the world tiniest violin playing for them...

Office 2010 to come loaded with WGA's bastard child

Yarrrrh!

"Of course, piracy puts a dent in Redmond’s pockets too."

Erm, No, No, No and No. First, I think you really mean "copyright infringement", as I don't recall seeing Malaysians or Somalians in speedboats with AK47s busy looting Redmond's wealthy flagship. And this thing you dimwittedly call "piracy" is what actually _fills_ Microsoft's pockets. Yes m'lud. If not for the wide availability of free copies of MSOffice, no-one but a couple corporate fatcats with more money than sense would be using the POS. Most moderately wealthy people who _buy_ office only do it because the wide availability of free "pirated" copies has made is so widespread that it is almost a /de facto/ standard. No-one would bother with such bad and unusable software it it wasn't for that "piracy".

That's why unauthorised use of the legit software is so widespread, with MS doing very little to prevent it: it helps them send more copies in the end. They are just bothered by the idea of someone else making money out of the process (and they might even be genuinely bothered by the bad image that the use of rooted counterfeit software can bring to their OS. After all, making windows unusable is _their_ reserved business...)

YouTube to share ad money with viral videos

Great...

So now when you see a link to YouTube, you know that not only you'll waste precious minutes looking at some unfunny montage of whatever the kidz0r find kewt or kewl these days (poorly synchronized with music that would make even an elevator throw up), but the tasteless, humorless brat will be *paid* for that too? Really, really god idea. What could possibly go wrong? I can't possibly see any tidal wave of linkspam coming. No m'lud. Yet another to NEVER follow a link to youtube (or any of the minilink-like obscuring craplink).

Incompetence a bigger IT security threat than malign insiders

"conventional wisdom"?

"conventional wisdom that malicious insiders are the greatest single threat to an organisation."

That would be the "conventional wisdom" of anti-intrusion vendors then. And maybe this of the clueless managers dumb enough to listen to them. Everyone else knows very well that the only significant threat comes from legit users making a small mistake, then breaking their whole system trying to fix it "headless duck" style*, and then get the self-dubbed "wizz" in the next cubicle to bring half the department down trying to fix their computer.

The first step is usually some utterly minor change in some unimportant display setting, but the subsequent "headless duck" syndrome can break things pretty deep in the system, and the last "self-dubbed wizz" step usually spread the FUD. that's you end up with half a department whinning at your door for what was initially a change in Word's display of non-printable characters...

No-one needs an intruder when they have users.

Of course in some high-profile targets the intrusion risk is real, but that would be what, one millionth of the cases?

* hit every single button and change every option in a frantic manner

Microsoft goes Darwinian with evolutionary tree patent

@ SteveK about patenting the US patent system

"Has anyone actually patented the US patent service?"

Patent are usually filed for things that could be somehow useful, even remotely so. I think the "US patent service" stands totally clear to this regard....

Corollary

From my previous post it derives that software should never be patentable (being essentially methods that put together pre-existing technical processes). That's what _copyright_ is for. You wouldn't patent a novel, why would you patent a piece of code?

Aussie birds 'desperate to copulate with brainy males'

Surprising conclusion....

Using a factor that drastically influences the attractiveness of the male as a intelligence test is a bad idea, shirley... It's akin to embedding the males in concrete and coming up with "females specifically look for the males that are intelligent enough to get rid of 3 kg of concrete". Or you could just kill them. Females specifically look for the males which are intelligent enough to resurect!

MS and Sophos incompatible over Win 7 XP Mode

@northern monkey

>>You shouldn't need an MCP/MCSE to run your home computer.

>I thought that's all you needed to be able to do to get MCSE certified :P

My cat told me you actually just need to send the money. It's to keep the "motivational and achievement basis".

Seeking web security, exploit operators prefer Firefox

Bear hygiene and Vatican religious habits

A particular sub-population of tech-savvy people don't fall for the blue e.

Erm.

Rather obvious aint it?

In other news, " most firefighters don't throw lit matches in the paper bin"

Tourist magnet blows off Speedo-wearing men

@ 30 sphincters

"the way I see it, a pool with 30 people in it is a pool with 30 sphincters in it."

The way I see it, a pool with 30 people in it is a pool with quite a lot more than 30 sphincters in it. I would think more in the 1000 to 2000 range. Most of which might prove quite difficult to wash.

EU court rules 11-word snippets can violate copyright

In other words...

... the DDF just admitted that each of its articles can be reduced to a 11 words-extract whithout loss of useful information. I think I can believe that, seeing what most newspapers now look like...

Wildcard certificate spoofs web authentication

@DNSSEC AC

¨DNSSEC has a lot to do with this, if DNS addresses are authenticated (well signed) it means some of these silly man-in-the-middle attacks would be harder to pull off. Well, at least until someone works out how to spoof that too!¨

So you´ve got apps that don´t handle certificates correctly, creating a security hole... that you intend to plug by implementing a whole new layer which sole result will be to throw more certificates at the same, flawed apps? How does that work, exactly? Surely that´s the most bothersome, inefficient and guaranteed-to-fail approach ever. Unless I´m missing something obvious, it sounds like ¨hey, there´s smoke coming from my car, I´ll fix the fire risk by dousing it in petrol! And if it doesn´t work, I´ll use more petrol!¨

Can we get the same without the "agenda-pushing attentionwhore" part, please?

OK, so what we have is a clever exploit taking advantage of the (flawed) way some apps (but not all, and notably not Firefox) handles certificates. What the fracking frack does DNNSEC have to fracking do with that? That's ridiculous agenda-pushing, from someone unable to secure his own domain, after having predicted the end of the world (repeteadly, on such ridiculously evident non-issues as the conficker update) to no avail. I believe the word is "attentionwhore".

Hey, some apps are unable to handle certs correctly, we should overhaul the current system and roll it into some measures which would prevent dark-skinned people from flying with more than 100 mL of fluid? That ought to solve it. Shirley. I mean, fixing the apps so that they correctly handle the certificates doesn't make sense. Or does it?

Pitiful.

Sortcuts removed etc...

Translation services used to pump out polyglot spam

Time to boot the US out of the web?

Nuff said