Posts by Danny 2

Internet Society CEO: Most people don't care about the .org sell-off – and nothing short of a court order will stop it

Re: savedotorg.org

Signed yet resigned.

Re: I predict

unnecessarily high administrative costs

You mean like IT salaries? BTW, more profit for whom?

Inequality Dot Org

I applaud your wisdom, and your wit - even when aimed my way.

I just worry when I realise my nephew, dependent on the web socially and emotionally, who was born after "the great SCO v IBM/Novell battle" and he may never know about it unless we put up WWI-type monuments somewhere.

"I, for one, will testify that in 1989 I saw a legal stipulation by Tim"

This is, what we on the comedy circuit, call 'an obvious joke'.

Humour evaporates when it has to be explained so I apologise to anyone not on the spectrum. The web was provided for free, and subsequent attempts to commercialise it or monetise it are so unjust that they should be resisted by all possible methods.

There is currently a general public perception that neutrals and charities end in dot Org and companies and brands end in dot Com. This ruins that. ISoc can walk the plank.

I, for one, will testify that in 1989 I saw a legal stipulation by Tim Berners Lee that any commercial operation would have to pay CERN one cent for each use of inbound or outbound HTML ~ HTTP.

You can forget about that Black Friday deal: Brit banks crap out just in time for pay day

Re: Everyone Else Is Doing It

Thanksgiving is celebrated in most of the UK - that time we got rid of those religious extremists.

Re: I'm exposing myself as a boomer by making this comment, but ...

That is traditional, and though you probably feel sad for admitting it there is something sadder.

Nobody visited my parents this year despite them buying lots of sweets in expectation and lots of kids on their street.

They've consistently chided 'trick or treat'ers that they are guisers, and demanded a joke or whatever, so now the kids just avoid them.

If a single guiser had came by then they'd have got £20 of sweeties and a whole load of money. Not candy.

Let's learn from drone cockups: Confidential reports service opens up to unmanned fliers

Haha

Chirp's "Flying Displays & Special Events Report Form" crashes and burns!

https://www.chirp.co.uk/upload/docs/Report%20Forms/Flying%20Displays%20&%20Special%20Events%20Report%20Form%20-%202%20Pages.pdf

Server Error in '/' Application.

A potentially dangerous Request.Path value was detected from the client (&).

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

I call shenanigans

The Tory party just threatened to do away with state funding for Ch4 because their Leader's debate on the environment didn't include Boris Johnson, because he refused to turn up. All the party leaders had agreed to be interviewed by Andrew Neill, who they rate as the toughest interviewer. Boris backed out again, and then demanded to be let on the Andrew Marr show, with Marr being a wet sponge. The BBC said he had to be interviewed by Neill first, and then backed down citing the two dead in the London Bridge stabbings.

Stabbings have risen since the tories cut 20,000 police, cut social services and imposed extreme poverty on the already poorest. Using these two additional deaths to justify more of the same is clear cut political bias by the BBC. Andrew Marr is the sound of one hand clapping Johnson's fat back.

Re: QT impartiality failure

Would the person who downvoted me care to explain what I said provoked that, and maybe even debate me on it?

I get downvoted often here and never take offence, mostly I get it. This one time you don't get it.

QT impartiality failure

I'm afraid the BBC don't even have the basic maths and common sense to provide impartiality, and here is a juicy and clear example.

Question Time audiences have to be constructed to reflect current UK polling. If Labour have 30% of the polling numbers then 30% of the audience should have claimed to be Labour voters.

Now in Scotland there are next to no UKIP (or now Brexit Party) voters, yet when QT is filmed in Scotland the audience has to have an audience that reflects the British number of UKIP/Brexit Party voters.

That has led to one far-right numpty, Billy Mitchell, being on QT four times, always in an orange tracksuit, and each time he has been allowed to ask the panel a question. Not only that bias, the BBC actually asked him onto the audience three times because they couldn't find anyone else who admitted voting for that extreme.

He wears an orange tracksuit because he is a sectarian protestant in the "Livingston True Blues Flute Band". This is trivial dig but none of the "Livingston True Blues Flute Band" live in Livingston or can play a flute - Billy is frae Motherwell. Yet due to BBC sifting this numpty fraud has had more BBC TV time than any other 'ordinary' Scot.

I'm no Media Studies expert but it seems to me that the BBC is biased towards whichever party is in power.

Stirling Uni Media Studies analysed TV news coverage in the run up to the Iraq war. Sky TV news had 60% pro-war opinion, 40% anti-war. The BBC News had 80% pro-war opinion, 20% anti-war.

As a pro-independence Scot it was at least as bad in the run up to IndyRef, though I haven't seen any media studies on it. If you are English then you probably don't notice how much of BBC news is English sports coverage including frigging cricket.

James Robertson's 'The news where you are'

Brian Eno's latest composition: A giant Christmas card with Julian Assange on it

I can't believe he's not a nutter

In context, and with respect to the two dead yesterday, Usman Khan always seemed like a better candidate for a prison cell or deportation.

I don't ever quote Twitter or the Telegraph here but this is worth mentioning. The guy who took the knife from the wannabe terrorist was off duty British Transport Police, but the "ordinary Londoners" who first tackled him and were last to let go of him were also prisoners or ex-prisoners attending the same Cambridge University conference. This is from Tim Stanley of the Telegraph:

Story of the London Bridge attack is incredible. He was a convicted terrorist, out on a tag, attending a "Learning Together criminal justice conference". Before you judge: ex-cons helped wrestle him to the ground, including "a killer on day release".

I think there is a dispute about that that.

I am paraphrasing from far distant memory but Edward Snowden said something like Assange offered advice on how to guess a password and the attempt failed.

The Register regularly tells us to try 123456 and if that fails try 12345678. Does that mean all the El REg staff should face 50 years in a US prison?

Re: I am very disappointed El Reg failed to mention Enos greatest achievement..

Pippa. There are susans of dwarf planets named all over this messiverse.

Re: Assange != Journalism

No Gods, and Precious Few Heroes - Dick Gaughan

Assange was never my hero. You are admitting he did a lot of good at one point, and I knew back then anyone high profile needed to keep it in their pants.

Re: I am very disappointed El Reg failed to mention Enos greatest achievement..

Eno does have an asteroid named after him. I slagged my ex off by pointing out she shared her name with a dwarf planet. Unfortunately she correctly retorted I share my name with a disturbed asteroid.

Re: Assange != Journalism

Journalists everywhere disagree with you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_of_WikiLeaks#Awards_and_nominations

Go champion retires after losing to AI, Richard Nixon deepfake gives a different kind of Moon-landing speech...

Re: AI Go.

I gave up being civilised when Civilization 3 beat me.

'Ethical' hackers say: It's just hacker. To be one is no longer a bad thing

Re: Grey hat hackers

Both are true.

Grey hat hackers

I never saw a coder wearing a hat. In the 1980s I was the only child at my school who wore a hoodie. I still do, because bad hair, not bad intentions.

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

This has all happened before and it will happen again

(Sorry, I'm still watching Battlestar Galactica.)

The district council I worked for in the early '90s had a print room. It was a huge effing thing in a basement, far bigger than the computer room with the mainframes, and frankly more interesting to me although I was only in it a couple of times. I don't know how they got those machines in there. It was smaller than the print room of a local newspaper I'd visited as a school child, but roughly the same layout.

They also employed a team of three PR folk, three pretty females, the youngest of which was specifically employed to scan actual newspapers for any mention of our council. She'd cut out any newspaper article mentioning us, paste them to a sheet and then pass it to the councillors. Social media didn't start with social media.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: A quirky investigation into why AI does not always work

Re: This Anti Intelligence thing has gone too far, AI is too unreliable

"AI is marching inexorably towards us. We need to learn about it, learn how to accommodate"

Any human who collaborates with the Cylon occupiers is a valid target for resistance retribution.

(Sorry, but I'm watching Battlestar Galactica for the first time)

Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk

You could only fit a 3.5" in one orientation. A 1.44MB 3.5" disk would work in a single-sided 720KB drive, but only at 720KB - you had to buy a dual head 'High Density' (‽) drive to get the full 1.44MB.

A short note to say I'm off: Vulture taps claws on Reg keyboard for last time

Note to Self

Bookmark the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Re: Tea Kettle

I can top that. My mum attended a self-catered civil service union meeting in London. Nobody had a big enough pot for the event meal except serial killer Dennis Nilsen. He had a huge pot.

From July, you better be Putin these Kremlin-approved apps on gadgets sold in Russia

Re: will the user be able to uninstall Russian made software

@https://forums.theregister.co.uk/user/1881/

Most people wouldn't even think to disable them.

Disabling them or removing them just makes you look suspicious to the average police state cop.

We noticed in 2002 that we were getting intercepted on peace actions, and decided to leave our phones turned off outside the room when we were planning one. The very fact a bunch of known activists phones were in the one place and simultaneously turned off was an obvious alert to the police.

This is in a democracy, nobody was killed, just a few careers blacklisted.

Questions hang over Gatwick Airport after low level drone near-miss report

You should be able to post links, I'm sure you can because I used to do.

Anyway, here's your link embedded and quoted. 2019205

The A320 pilot reports in the late stages of a manual ILS approach into Gatwick. They had taken on extra fuel due to reports of drone activity in the London TMA and had also been warned on ATIS and by the controller. There had been no reports of sightings recently. Passing about 350ft, slightly right of the centreline, the Captain exclaimed "drone". The F/O looked out and also saw a drone, directly in front of the aircraft, slightly to the left at a range of about 100m. Visual contact was maintained with the drone as it passed down the left side of the aircraft at the same level. The F/O is a drone enthusiast and identified the drone as a DJI Inspire. The crew were unable to perform an evasive manoeuvre due to the speed of the event. The F/O reported the drone sighting to ATC and the crew made a statement to the police after landing. The crew believed that if the autopilot had still been engaged, and they were on the centreline, there was a very high probability that they would have struck the drone.

Aldi drone

I bought a £50 drone from Aldi to better investigate how to down police drones surveilling protestors. I used to be a protestor and the technology stirred interest, especially when it was used against us but also what use it could be for us. I can definitively reveal a £50 drone is no use to anyone except a bored child. I got a lot of footage of me running after it after it reached 50m high and crashed 200m away. If you tether it with dental floss then you can run a cable across a steep height. Dental floss certainly makes finding it easier.

It will carry a mobile phone if you are prepared to lose that phone, you can block it fairly easily, but it is great as a fan in summer, and for scaring mice indoors.

I live near a field where people with expensive drones play. They have dogfights, and scare the bejesus out of me.

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

Re: The 1980s called but British Telecom still hadn't connected your phone yet

Weird, you don't want us to become independent and yet you do claim we are living off you.

Think it through and take a rational stand. For once.

Re: I'll be voting for...

I knew a guy who tried to register a party named "None of the Above". Apparently that phrase is specifically and uniquely banned in electoral law. I suggested trying "None of these fuckers".

Re: For a given value of "free"

@Dave314159ggggdffsdds

Because they don't pay corporate income tax, they don't respect worker's rights.

I see from your other comments here you are accusing left-wingers of being nazis since April. The only wannabe nazi I see here is you.

Henry Ford was a Fascist

Re: Free broadband you say?

Brexit nothing burger, ftfy.

Re: The 1980s called but British Telecom still hadn't connected your phone yet

Sure, we'll pay you back your subsidies if you give us back our Oil Fund investment ala Norway.

I'm sure most thieves are sick of being reminded of their thefts.

Re: Political self-obsession and onanism

Venice built a great empire? With mercenary armies? You might want to read The Prince by Machiavelli, and compare that to the ironically named Erik Prince.

The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were.

Irregardless, you've misunderestimated how different it is to fight and die compared to fight and kill.

Re: LOL's

Again, I'd like a link to your monopoly claim. This proposal wouldn't be a monopoly though. People could still pay for a faster or better service, perhaps bundled with a phone or TV package. It's akin to saying the NHS has a monopoly on healthcare in the UK just because it is free at the point of service (in Scotland at least).

Would it damage private providers? Maybe. Would it benefit the well-off disproportionally? Arguably. It's mainly a subsidy for rural voters. My dirt-poor neighbours can already get 150Mb/s because we live in a city - and those who can't afford it can piggy-back off my 50Mb/s.

Yet again I'm defending a policy I don't agree with from a party I won't be voting for because the EU has been smeared even though I voted for Brexit. `It's very hard to cling to the facts during the political posturing of the most divisive general election since 1979, and the first to be subject to blatant foreign interference.

Re: For a given value of "free"

I'd like Amazon charged for each mile their delivery drivers have used on British taxpayer funded roads.

I'm holding off posting this because Corbyn has just been asked about internet porn, which is frankly what we are all talking about. It's been (un)answered for him - apparently we will have digital rights. Our five digits have their rights.

Re: The 1980s called but British Telecom still hadn't connected your phone yet

2008 called and the economic catastrophe already happened. It happened in Scotland too, but our government helped protect our population more than the British government helped the English and Welsh population.

I've read many reports in left wing journals like the FT that a new economic catastrophe is likely because banking regulations are still inadequate.

I can't get glasses or my teeth fixed, but that is because benefits haven't been devolved to Scotland. In general though it is much better to be poor in Scotland than poor in England. We have free education here, free prescriptions, like you used to, and the place hasn't went to hell.

Re: Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land

the likes of Amazon who sure as hell are not going to absorb the extra tax

Extra tax? They don't pay any tax!

There's a few issues mixed up here, but I hope we can all agree that Amazon should pay a fair rate of tax. The debate is about how it should be spent by the state.

Re: LOL's

In the EU, it is illegal to nationalise anything. This rule is in the treaties and all member states must follow it.

Then you'll have no problem linking to it then? There are plenty of nationalised / subsidised public services in the EU so I'm dubious.

The 1980s called but British Telecom still hadn't connected your phone yet

The DWP is the only place that uses Vivaldi as a call-waiting tune. Corbyn used that in his speech as a dog-whistle for a generation pissed off by the DWP.

To recreate the 1980s then tax from Amazon and Google should be used to provide free business rates for small business high street stores. It's they who have been slaughtered most from the tech companies tax free status, and the high streets of the 1980s were vibrant and worth visiting, if only in memory. Free porn for all faster could be replaced with a topless woman in every newspaper and nude magazines being recycled in woods. And the Milky Bar kid never came through on his promise, "The Milky Bars are on me!"

In short, silly stuff and I won't be voting for it.

I'd prefer free dental care and free glasses for all. I need both urgently and can't get either because I'm not on Universal Credit, because I don't want to lose my flat. If I vote, and I may not for the first time, it'll be for the SNP.

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

Filthy Lucre

My friend's sister's husband has worked there as a temporary contractor since 2001. He earns four times what the regular employees earn doing the same job, or so he boasted. I'm not one to grudge anyone else's income, especially since I like his wife, but he's not as techie as me and during the banking crisis it began to become wearisome that he was still employed and royally over paid while I lost my bank account.

There is a lot of lingering hatred for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Scotland across the political spectrum, and presumably in the rest of the UK too. Utter shysters, dastards, and one King Cnut, Sir Fred the Shred. It's not just what they did to the tax payers, they had a policy of driving small business owners into bankruptcy for their profit.

Uncle Sam prepping order to extradite ex-Autonomy boss Mike Lynch from the UK

Void the 1 sided extradition treaty

If I commit a crime in Hong Kong, then I should be prosecuted in Hong Kong and not extradited to China.

People get upset about that

Yet in the UK we kowtow to Washington and extradite our citizens to their inhumane rape prisons. This guy seems like a terrible person and it seems he is rightly in court, but he is rightly in a British court facing a British prison.

Welcome to cultured meat – not pigs reading Proust but a viable alternative to slaughter

Re: Cold turkey veggie

Well, if they are a younger and hotter vegan then I'm sure they'll be positive about my comment.

For the record when such a relationship sours then the refuge is a bacon sarnie.

Cold turkey veggie

I gave up meat 30 years ago for about two weeks when there were no substitutes where I lived and I had no knowledge on how to transition. I just boiled pot loads of vegetables until the goodness was gone then slurp it down like fuel. It was like giving up booze when I gave up booze abruptly, I started to dream about it. I had one dream I was eating a sausage and onion roll that was more powerful than any sexual dream I've ever had, so I went downstairs and made myself a fried onion roll. More pacifying than satisfying.

It is so much easier now. Even cheap burgers can seem like cheap meat burgers. And Quorn, while not vegan, can pass for various cheap meats. Like alcohol, the trick is to transition slowly to consuming less meat.

And if I can recommend one aid to a vegan diet, it's a hot younger vegan lover.

What a boar! Wild pigs snort and snuffle €20k worth of marching powder stashed in Tuscan forest

Re: Coke, as a sombulescent

The first time I thought it was a coincidence. The second time I thought I'd been MickeyFinned. After the the third time I looked it up on the internet.

Coke, as a sombulescent

I've been given, and tried, cocaine three times at parties, and each time I passed out and pished myself after one line. Apparently for a few people theirs livers produce cocaethylene if they've been drinking. Apparently I'm luck to be alive because at parties I always have alcohol in my system before getting offered cocaine.

It's ruined a few friendships, pishing on their floors for no apparent reason after taking their stimulants and passing out when everyone else was fine.

I had to choose between alcohol or cocaine, and I'm Scottish and poor so not much of a choice.

Judge shoots down Trump admin's efforts to allow folks to post shoddy 3D printer gun blueprints online

Re: Well...

I do also have to question the assertion that a department within the executive branch has to consult Congress (legislative branch) before making policy changes

You mean liking declaring war? Congress has always been the only branch that can declare war legally except in an existential threat, yet numerous Presidents have, mostly with disastrous consequences.

In a global, internet world it is is also about your nation imposing your arbitary and dubious and disrespected legal system upon the rest of the world, which is the definition of empire.

"The Anarchist Cookbook" is a good analogy. I downloaded it in the '80s, before it had been so modified to be so dangerous to the reader, and it was still extremely dangerous to the reader.

That is now illegal to have owned anywhere, apparently even in the UK, yet it is sold in a bastardised, honey trapped form on Amazon UK against the wishes of the writer.

I actually learned more useful and reliable information from the 1980s "Nuclear Survival Handbook".

And you can learn better information online today. Blueprint plastic printed guns isn't a credible or reliable thing. You can learn more from watching the coverage of the Hong Kong protests today.

Re: More guns = safer for everyone

We had our first school massacre in Scotland in 1996, and then we tightened gun control laws in the UK and since then we haven't had another.

Imagine being able to send your children to school and expect them to come home safely.

CNN is praising US schools for teaching how to survive a gun massacre. Apparently the US is a world leader in that, congratulations. None of our children learn that, we focus on English and Geography and History and Maths and Physics.

If you stop shooting your school children then they'll have more time to study other things.

'Sophisticated' cyber attack on UK Labour Party platforms was probably just a DDoS, says official

BBC website was down today

From about 10am to about 11am. Never seen that before.