* Posts by Gordon 10

3872 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

UK.gov spied on human rights warriors at Amnesty International

Gordon 10

Re: More police state

For certain values of oppression... First they came for the foreigners, then they came for the NGO's.

Gordon 10

Re: Disgusting

@Wolfclaw. Downvoted for unnecessary Godwin-ing.

Teaching people to speak English? You just need Chatroulette without the dick pics

Gordon 10

Txt Message Synonym-iser

Just suggest alternatives to txt-speak and slang.

Gordon 10
FAIL

What makes you think the two are related? Illiterate <> stupid or naïve.

Europol and Barclays shack up for steamy security shenanigans

Gordon 10
WTF?

So Barclays

Does that mean you'll be syphoning my data to the euroFeds without my permission or a warrant?

BBC (sort of) sorry for Grant Shapps Wikipedia smear reportage

Gordon 10

Not that he probably didn't do something to deserve it

But how would you feel if you lost your job due to at best sloppy practises and at worse absolute lies on the behalf of 2 media organisations?

If I had his cash and influence I'd be suing for libel. Especially the been after that mealy mouthed "apology".

It will be amusing if Shapps ever gets a job in the ministry of fun (culture, media, sport)

Crowdfunded beg-a-thon to bail out Greece raises 0.003% of target

Gordon 10
Mushroom

Re: Ignorance of the issue

Pretty much. Greece shouldn't have been lent the money they needed as their current system is still f*cked, better to let them out and fix themselves.

Greece is a spendaholic and we are their enablers.

In the interests of balance though - letting Greece goto the wall earlier would have resulting in the Eurozone imploding - Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland all would have gone in a massive mega implosion and a significant destruction of the Eurozone economy. So by that measure even if we get nothing back from Greece (and we'll probably get something eventually) its a bit of a bargain.

Revive the Nathan Barley Quango – former Downing Street wonk

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Made a wrong turning somewhere

Indeed you fool! Has El Reg's very own Steven Bong! taught you nothing.

US hospital boffins demo cancer-busting smartphone kit

Gordon 10

That was my first thought. Surely the big innovation is the microbeads themselves, but I presume they were pre-existing?

GCHQ heard you liked spying, so spied on itself spying on you

Gordon 10
Pirate

Re: Damn, cleaning the coffee off the table again

The fact even with a cursory inspection that they found 30% more than were originally reported suggests to be that there may be a few icebergs in that there sea..... Arrr!

Beyond the Grave: US Navy pays peanuts for Windows XP support

Gordon 10

Windows for Warships

I highly doubt Win4War was part of the XP EOL agreement. No-one in the military would have gone anywhere near if it didn't have a cast iron 40 year operating life.

Samsung caught disabling Windows Update to run its own bloatware

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Re: There is a problem though!

Intel drivers seem particularly prone to this problem - I don't think I ever had an oem set work perfectly installed over vendor wifi or graphics drivers.

Whilst I don't condone what Sammy did sometimes the settings ui's need rewriting so a normal human can use them.

Raising a stink in court: Innocent poo banditry warehousers win $2.2m

Gordon 10

Re: 2.2 meelion dollars

But Im baffled as to why its a discrimination law thing? Is it just one of these silly Americanisms where 50 things were passed under the same bill or something a bit more subtle?

WikiLeaks spaffs files showing NSA spied on French presidents

Gordon 10
Joke

But why? The Americans have always been more interested in force feeding themselves than force feeding geese.

Gordon 10

Indeed gotta keep an eye on those French terrorists, er I mean Government.

It is legitimate to spy on allies (e.g. Falklands Exocet crisis). One would think that there should be a gentlemans agreement to not to spy on heads of state though, but then who said the NSA were ever gentlemen?

It begins: Time Warner Cable first ISP accused of breaking America's net neutrality rules

Gordon 10
Joke

Re: "Thru" ?

that should be grinds thee'

June 30, 2016: The day the US will hand over control of the internet

Gordon 10
WTF?

I'm interested to know

If there is a particular subspecies of Yank who thinks the UN is a force for Evil or if it's all of them.

Talk about one of the greatest lies ever sold, whilst it's light years beyond perfect I would trust the UN far above the U.S. gotv, the UK Govt, and the EU. Compared to the long since stopped being funny show that is Congress it's a model of enlightened decision making.

What's the motive for the FUD? Who gains? Look very close to home Mr Yank.

Ps do you have a large gun collection and a compound cabin in the hills?

Ecobee3: If you're crazy enough to want a smart thermostat – but not too crazy – this is for you

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Not for brits

firstly I don't shower at the time someone is doing the washing up.

Secondly most modern high flo combi's solved that problem years ago.

Gordon 10

I suspect you will find that most people just leave their thermostat (in the uk at least) to a constant temperature regardless of whether they are in or out. Especially if someone is not working and in and out all day.

Your point stands in that it just requires some discipline to manage your heating - but most people don't have / or want to develop that discipline even when its costing them money.

Buy with your head, drive with your heart: Alfa Romeo 4C Coupe

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: What's with car reviews on an IT site?

There has been a car section every week since the reg started its weekend edition some months ago. Do wake up at the back.

At last, switching between rubbish broadband providers now easier

Gordon 10

Its getting close the the time

That all the phone/bb providers (yes including virgin as they have even less excuse) should be mandated to provide same day turnaround on transfers, or even a constant service provision like Gas and Electric.

Im not saying its as important as those but its certainly going that way....

Ubuntu daddy Mark Shuttleworth loses fight to cancel $20m bank fee

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Consumer Banking is gonna die

if you dont actually get why your statement is completely irrelevant I pity you. Hint none of them are above the laws of the countries they operate in, especially when most countries require you to have a banking license before being able to touch consumers money. They all caved when it was merely about censorship what on earth makes you think it will be different when moolah is involved.

Even Paypal has US, EU and OZ banking licenses.

#BIGBAGOFFAIL

WikiLeaks slips out YET MORE Sony SECRETS

Gordon 10

Re: Still blaming the Norks?

Out of interest - has Wikileaks made any statement as to why they are publishing this stuff? Is it just sticking it to the Sony man or is there some genuine public interest, or are they just courting the publicity?

Farewell then, Mr Elop: It wasn't actually your fault

Gordon 10

I tend to think

I do feel some sympathy for Elop - there were definitely no good choices left when he arrived.

Having said that history shows us of all the options he had - he chose the worst, everyone else from Blackberry to Sony are bleeding red ink but still in the game - unlike Nokia.

Maybe time will show that the survival of Nokia the parent company was far more important than Nokia phone company - but the jury is still out on that one. Sony's fate in particular is worth watching.

Burning platforms was a cockup of Gerald Ratner proportions though.

NatWest IT cock-up sees 600,000 transactions go 'missing'

Gordon 10

Whats the betting

The project to fix this based on the last cockup is still in the initiation phase?

Belgium privacy commish ambushes Facebook with lawsuit

Gordon 10

Interesting

If the Belgians are correct and facebook are breaching european law doesn't matter so much even if Facebook are correct in that they don't have jurisdiction as I would think it would force the Irish to take (grudging) action.

Sunday Times fires off copyright complaint at Snowden story critics

Gordon 10
FAIL

correct me if Im wrong

But since that front page was tweeted surely its either owned by Twitter or public domain, but certainly not copyright the SundayTimes......

(Mostly trolling but hoping it is true)

Fire, fire! Just move your data centre onto my lawn ... Oh rats!

Gordon 10

Re: I'm wondering

The police also have a duty to investigate anything suspicious. Since they didn't nick him I hardly think this is worthy of complaint.

I'd rather trust a bobby with direct actionable intelligence than someone whose been data mining connection and might be's.

Why is that idiot Osbo continuing with austerity when we know it doesn't work?

Gordon 10
WTF?

wtf

Tim a leftie luvvie? You b'aint from round ere are ye boi?

Entertaining prospect: Amazon Fire TV Stick

Gordon 10

Re: Its all about the SP Factor (Shiny and Pointless)

Depends on what get them for. I've just moved house and currently have nothing feeding me a TV signal. One Roku streaming stick later I have great quality iPlayer and Game of Thrones from sky with a free 3 month Now TV trial that will keep me tided over til I install the freesat Satellite dish and kit. Then it will probably go into the office as a backup TV source for those rooms without a satellite feed.

Bit of a bargain really.

Germany drops probe into NSA's Merkel phone-hacking

Gordon 10
FAIL

Well Duh

The Traditional way of dealing with spying is to expel a diplomat or 2. If the Germans were not actually prepared to do this any purely legal avenue was sure to be a waste of effort.

Uber app expands in France despite govt opposition ... and laws

Gordon 10
Flame

Uber should thank themselves lucky

That they have no livestock containing lorries that can be put to the torch.

NSA slapdown prompts Privacy Int'l to file new lawsuit against GCHQ

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Talking thru their arses

Moron. Do you realise how infinitesimal the likelihood of getting killed by a terrorist is? Hint even at the height of the IRA campaign it was tiny. They could drop their budget by 50% and it barely change the odds. On the other hand those few beellions might appreciably bring a cure for cancer or heart disease a little closer. For sure it would extend the lives of thousands who currently get no access to drugs or new treatments coz the NHS can't afford them.

If its about saving lives (I think its actually about control) then give the budget to the NHS, Ministry of Transport (road safety), hell even the MOD before GCHQ and their ilk.

A pause in global warming? What pause?There was no pause

Gordon 10

Re: 2 alarm bells from Ross McKitrick

Perhaps because the two points I mentioned are trivially easy to check?

Gordon 10

2 alarm bells from Ross McKitrick

Assuming Ross' analysis is accurate. There are 2 really worrying parts of the NOAA data that any science or maths grad should be able to see.

1) Some of the NOAA data uses a 90% confidence interval. Real scientists consider p=0.95/95% a good rule of thumb for the start of talking about something statistically significant. In contrast the Higgs Boson results at Cern were not announced until they were at 99.9999% confidence.

2) Most of the argument seems to centre around how NOAA have added 0.12 degrees to some of those readings. Regardless of where the actual addition is made the margin of error according to Ross is 1.7 degrees. i.e. the average change may be 0.12 degrees but the entire range of changes would be on a distribution between 1.82 and -1.58 degrees.

Or to put it a much simpler way, the margins of error on most of their plots would be much much wider than most of the trend seen to date.

It really does make you want to spend some time looking at the raw data sources and some of the assumptions being made.

Gordon 10

Re: What we really need

we dont lack terminology - we lack comparable datasets over the range of more than a couple of decades or so.

Life in prison not appealing to Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht – appeal filed

Gordon 10

I would love to know

if his Lawyer has ever successfully defended anyone coz from the outside looking in he seems about a good a lawyer as Mr Bean.

Wikileaks publishes TiSA: A secret trade pact between US, Europe and others for big biz pals

Gordon 10

Article 6 sounds shitty

I worked at 1 company whose ass was saved by having a failed vendors code in escrow. Its less important when its the big boys, but its useful projection against SME's and potential cowboys.

Intel adopts 40Gb per SECOND USB-C plug for Thunderbolt 3.0

Gordon 10

Re: This sounds like the port on the new MacBook

@Davidmb the usb-c on the current macbook doesn't support thunderbolt and won't unless a Firmware update of some sort is released.

Its blindingly obvious that Apple knew this was coming though and maybe the next macbook refreshes in Oct will get it across the range.

GCHQ gros fromage stays schtum on Snowden and snooping

Gordon 10

The real answer being

We dont give a shit about the collateral damage to personal liberties and business interests as long as it gives our bosses and politcal masters the illusion of control.

The rare metals debate: Only trace elements of sanity found

Gordon 10

Like it. Not entire sure why it was necessary to do it Underground style but I like it :)

Gordon 10
Megaphone

Does the same apply to oil?

Just wondering coz you get the frequent peak oil rumour that the Saudi's say they have X reserves but are really lying and we are going to have Oil-o-geddon any minute now.

Assuming

a) it's not true.

b) it's not deliberate panic mongering.

Does it maybe come from a variant of the Fridge analogy? Ie the Saudi's have very little Reserves, but they are reasonably confident they have a metric fuckton or 2 of oil resources.

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV: The new common-as-muck hybrid

Gordon 10

Re: SUV obsession

Firstly Euro SUV's are generally smaller than their US counterparts, particularly in Width which is the most important.

Secondly most of Britian and Europe have roads that are wide enough tiny historic towns are quite few and far between.

Thirdly SUV's have a huge Psychological draw that appeals to families - they look fashionable (mostly), they look safer (bigger = safer), they look like they can swallow a family and luggage, and the high driving position inspires confidence.

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: "If you make lots of short journeys then it makes sense..."

Still makes sense if you want 1 new car and you need a mile eater for 300 mile trips to the in laws. At least until StreetCar do estates for the weekends.

NASA hands Boeing first commercial crew contract for SPAAAACE

Gordon 10

Re: Boeing certainly has its feet under the door...

Correct me if Im wrong but has the CST flown in any real capacity? Contrast that with SpaceX who have been flying regular flights of the cargo version, and have been testing the escape system on the real thing.

Thats without mentioning the fact that Boeing are being paid almost twice as much....

Wearable fitness tech: Exercising your self-motivation skills

Gordon 10

Re: On yer bike!

I would say that sort of mileage makes you an exceptional commuter, and probably very healthy when compared to the average blob.

The 'echo chamber' effect misleading people on climate change

Gordon 10

Why oh Why

Did Lewis have to bias an otherwise interesting news piece with his particular perspective on climate change?

Split decision: Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi convertible

Gordon 10
WTF?

2 chargers WTF?

Is it even legal to sell a non micro USB charger in the EU now? Or do they do "an apple" and provide an adapter?

Bag of Fail.

Elon Musk's SpaceX: Now we help do SURVEILLANCE for the SPOOKS

Gordon 10

The real reason SpaceX got the gig

WhiteKitty

Queen's Speech: Snoopers' Charter RETURNS amid 'modernisation' push

Gordon 10

Re: Well...

In this particular respect David Davis is a Tory with some conscience around Civil liberties. There are a few others as well.

Infact there were 10 Tory MP's who voted against the last time, 20 odd labour and the whole of the SNP.

Plus the lords have kicked it into touch on numerous occasions inspite of a large Tory majority.

There's plenty of fight in the dog yet....

We need to write to our MP's saying we will track and remember how they voted on this issue when the next election comes round.

Donate money and time to Liberty, Privacy International, Big Brother Watch and any political party who comes out against it. Then tell your MP about that too.

It can be fought if we are passionate and articulate enough.

As techies we need to educate (but not lecture or hector) the rest of our society on why this is such a bad idea, something we do badly currently - because we know it so instinctively that we dont provide good examples to that the general public care about.