Posts by Danny 2

Hunt: Online file-sharing is a 'direct assault on freedoms'

"a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly"

Thanks to El Reg I now need to fairly reward Scarlett Johansson for the content she has created.

GlobalSign stops issuing SSL certs, probes hacker claims

Thwarted by the CEO?

The CEO of every CA should be chained to their desks to manually verify everything until they can prove their systems security. That'd encourage them to take security more seriously.

All WikiLeaks' secret US cables are on BitTorrent in full

Not the insurance file

http://nigelparry.com/news/guardian-david-leigh-cablegate.shtml

WikiLeaks releases full searchable US secret cable files

No emailed password

The passphrase was passed on a piece of paper, according to the journalist who then published it. The Guardian have already admitted that against Wikileaks instructions they kept a copy of the unencrypted file on an internet facing PC, so it could easily have been lifted from their site given how technologically unaware they have proven themselves to be - at one point Assange had to drive across town to show them how to unzip a file!

http://nigelparry.com/news/guardian-david-leigh-cablegate.shtml

Not quite

Wikileaks were annoyed that the Guardian gave the NYT the full files against the express wishes of Assange. The Guardian did this to get access to the US spooks, and to cover their bums. You should read the books that the Guardian and NYT have written, they are confessionals of breaches of journalistic ethics dressed up as a secret squirrel adventure story.

Countries where Facebook is not, yet, king

Being able to keep in touch my friends

I have the telephone. My friends know how to use it, pseudo friends don't know my number, and it doesn't rate me in some sort of fake popularity contest like some needy wannabe. The fact most people are so moronic that an asshole like Zuckerberg is Times 'Man of the Year' only illustrates that most people are so brainwashed that Simon Cowell would be rated higher than Alexander Graham Bell in any current poll. It is especially sad to see any support for ShameBook on El Reg. Yeuch!

Internet use disrupted in Bahrain as protests turn bloody

@John RD Kidd

I speak as someone who has ruined my health and wealth by opposing US military flights to Israel through the UK, and who had friends in Gaza when the last massacre began. I disagree with your tone which seems to be the classic 'tail wagging the dog', that the innocent US is an unwitting victim of their domestic Israeli lobby.

I don't believe that. The US, or any global power, would be messing around in the Middle East whether Israel existed or not, simply because that is where the oil is.

Gaza was a war-crime supported by the US, but Fallujah was a greater crime without Israeli involvement. The UK army took part in the Fallujah massacre directly, and yet no Brit condemns that atrocity.

To demonise Israel and evil shits like Sharon is intellectually unbecoming when our own 'Middle East Peace Envoy' is Tony Blair. He remains worse than Thatcher, worse than Mugabe, worse than Ahmadinejad, worse even than Bush. We shouldn't go abroad to look for villians.

Israel has committed war crimes in my opinion, but we have done much worse more visibally.

The Doctor Who Experience

@Pavolvs dog

I'm more confused by Dr Who's love of the Brits. Didn't American children ever get so scared by a TV programme that they hid being their couches?

One of my firends is a compulsive collector who has a Dr Who room in his tiny flat. No models, videos, or other touristy nonsense, just amazingly rare literature and epsiodes. Now if any other obsessive wants a quick tour for £65 then I might just be able to arrange it.

Sun spews out massive solar flare

Pass the Smell-O-Scope

Since solar flares are really just the 'silent but deadly' hot farts of a star then science has caught up with Futurama just in time with the 'Nasal Ranger' smell-o-scope. nasalranger.com

English Defence League site pulled offline after defacement

English needs defending

"feel our wraith"

A wraith is non-corporeal portent of doom, like the spectre of past religious genocides that haunt Europe, but I assume you meant to type 'wrath' and probably don't see the irony in the awful English of the English Defence League.

"when the blow up a BUS I will have somthign against the EDL"

ygUDuh

ydoan

yunnuhstan

ydoan o

yunnuhstand dem

yguduh ged

yunnuhstan dem doidee

yguduh ged riduh

ydoan o nudn

LISN bud LISN

dem

gud

am

lidl yelluh bas

tuds weer goin

duhSIVILEYEzum

Open source to bust up Cisco Borg collective?

Borgasmatron - Think of the kids!

Lack of job security, and time to self-train, increasingly swift tech and human obsolence, mean most technology buyers behave like sheep more than most buyers of other products. The buyers tend to be obsolete sooner than their purchases so they buy by brandname.

'Nobody ever got sacked for buying [insert name of monopoly]'.

Legions of workers watch job adverts for signs of what skill is most transferable rather than which technology is best, simply to survive. The Cisco qualified network engineers tend to be the same sort of people who were Microsoft qualified engineers and Novell adminstartors in earlier age.

Any technology that becomes so ubititiuous becomes a 'lingua franca' that everyone needs to know whether they want to or not.

So how do you become a monopoly? Buy the potential opposition.

'Cisco kids - any company even slightly related to the Cisco marketplace that can be bought for large amounts of speculative investment debt, happily stripped of assets, and then disposed of'.

It is like being assimilated by Borg using orgasmatrons. They pay off handsomely to creative people creating worthwhile technology, most of whom immediately turn from creators to full-time consumers. What a waste of young lives! You actually companies prostituting themselves as 'Cisco kids', potential targets for a lucrative takeover, who have no real business plan beyond being attractive to Cisco.

No new copters for Afghanistan troops

@Mike JVX

Taking a swipe at Guardian readers is fine, but calling the grieving mother of a dead soldier a 'muppet' and misrepresenting her views is contemptible.

Mrs Gentle never said "joining the military should equate with no chance of loss", just that the risk should not be increased due to lack of equipment, like the cost-cutting that led to her sons death. She raises funds for military charities and is well respected in in army circles, even among those who disagree with her that Blair lied the UK into Iraq, and you sir should show a bit of respect.

Comparitive death rates in Afghanistan

"Besides, America is losing more lives there than we did, despite having more helicopters- they've lost 26 troops in the worst areas in 3 months, whilst we only lost 106 in 9 years in the same area." - AC 11:00

Actually, in Afghanistan overall the UK army death rate overall is double that of the US army, I presume inferior equipment and resources will contribute to that.

The UK has 350 deaths for 10,500 deployed, 1 out of 30.

The US has 1472 deaths for 98,000 delpoyed, 1 out of 66.

The increasing military death rate is surpassed by the increasing civilian death rates. Maybe we should give the children chinooks too, to reduce their death rate too. It would certainly be cheaper to end the war and buy the UK troops each a private Cessna and a year off on full pay.

Lawyer wants WikiLeaker kept off suicide watch

Even the grunts are complaining

From DAVID C. MACMICHAEL

General James F. Amos

Commandant of the Marine Corps

3000 Marine Corps Pentagon

Washington DC 20350-3000

Dear General Amos:

As a former regular Marine Corps captain, a Korean War combat veteran, now retired on Veterans Administration disability due to wounds suffered during that conflict, I write you to protest and express concern about the confinement in the Quantico Marine Corps Base brig of US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning, if the information I have is correct, is charged with having violated provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by providing to unauthorized persons, among them specifically one Julian Assange and his organization Wikileaks, classified information relating to US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and State Department communications. This seems straightforward enough and sufficient to have Manning court-martialed and if found guilty sentenced in accordance with the UCMJ.

What concerns me here, and I hasten to admit that I respect Manning’s motives, is the manner in which the legal action against him is being conducted. I wonder, in the first place, why an Army enlisted man is being held in a Marine Corps installation. Second, I question the length of confinement prior to conduct of court-martial. The sixth amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing to the accused in all criminal prosecutions the right to a speedy and public trial, extends to those being prosecuted in the military justice system. Third, I seriously doubt that the conditions of his confinement—solitary confinement, sleep interruption, denial of all but minimal physical exercise, etc.—are necessary, customary, or in accordance with law, US or international.

Indeed, I have to wonder why the Marine Corps has put itself, or allowed itself to be put, in this invidious and ambiguous situation. I can appreciate that the decision to place Manning in a Marine Corps facility may not have been one over which you had control. However, the conditions of his confinement in the Quantico brig are very clearly under your purview, and, if I may say so, these bring little credit either to you or your subordinates at the Marine Corps Base who impose these conditions.

It would be inappropriate, I think, to use this letter, in which I urge you to use your authority to make the conditions of Pfc. Manning’s confinement less extreme, to review my Marine Corps career except to note that my last duty prior to resigning my captain’s commission in 1959 was commanding the headquarters company at Quantico. More relevantly, during the 1980s, following a stint as a senior estimates officer in the CIA, I played a very public role as a “whistleblower “ in the Iran-contra affair. At that time, I wondered why Lt.Col. Oliver North, who very clearly violated the UCMJ—and, in my opinion, disgraced our service—was not court-martialed.

When I asked the Navy’s Judge-Advocate General’s office why neither North nor Admiral Poindexter were charged under the UCMJ, the JAG informed me that when officers were assigned to duties in the White House, NSC, or similar offices they were somehow not legally in the armed forces. To my question why, if that were the case, they continued to draw their military pay and benefits, increase their seniority, be promoted while so serving, and, spectacularly in North’s case, appear in uniform while testifying regarding violations of US law before Congress, I could get no answer beyond, “That’s our policy.”

This is not to equate North’s case with Manning. It is only to suggest that equal treatment under the law is one of those American principles that the Marine Corps exists to protect. This is something you might consider.

Sincerely,

David C. MacMichael

WikiLeaks accused of tapping P2P for secret docs

Secrecy isn't what it used to be

If a US Government website is prefaced by the word 'Secret' and I look at it, am I now a treacherous spy?

They gave 3 million people the right to look at the Cablegate documents so they must have anticpated and be hoping for a leak, or else they are criminally incompetent.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Lush website hack 'exposes credit card details'

Plain Stupid

If you foillow where the money goes then an attack on Lush is likely to be one of the Climate Change Deniers computerised 'complaints', much like the so-called 'leak' of the University of East Anglia emails. Corporate malfeasance is often the simplest explanation.

Assange bailed again

"Clearly the education system has failed you"

Ian, is that an unpublished Jared Lee Loughner quote? Please tell me you don't own an automatic weapon.

@Ina Michael Grumbling

Yeah, as a teenager I read every english Doestovesky translation, but for fun so you do your own homework pal and tell me this. Raskolnikov murdered someone in financial desperation and with a bogus intellectual justification that he later rescinded wholly. Who did Assange murder? No one. Where is Assanges remorse for his 'crime'? Nowhere. So what possible parallel do you grok? If there is any Doestoevski character that Assange compares with it is 'the Idiot', and I don't mean that pejoratively.

I've no fondness for Nietzsche so maybe you should stick to quoting him, he's obviously more your thang than Fydor. I'm surprised you even understood Judge Dredd.

Battle ye not with monsters...

@Raskolnikov

"Assange is a sociopath. He probably associates himself with the main character of 'Crime and Punishment'"

I bet Assange has read Doestoevsky, which is obviously more than you can claim. I'm no psychologist so I'm not qualified to diagnose someone who quotes stuff they don't understand inappropriately as having a Napeolon Complex and exhibiting projection, but why not post idiotic comments anonymously in future rather than embarrassing yourself publically?

Liverpool forward faces possible grilling over 'joke' Twitter pic

Secularist support for sectarians

Hugh Dallas was sacked from his job as the Scottish Head of Referee Development for resending an email showing a road sign of an adult holding a child's hand, captioned "Caution: The Pope is coming".

Now in the bigotted west coast of Scotland where refereeing decisions are made and challenged on bigotted grounds this is a serious matter that the National Sectarian Society obviously don't understand.

As a Scottish athiest, raised protestant, Celtic supporter I have mixed feelings, but it puts your English tweeters in context.

Feds subpoena Twitter for info on WikiLeaks backer

@Stoneshop - XS4ALL

XS4ALL were part of what made the Nederlands great (past-tense). If if wasn't for their support the world wouldn't have known that airliners regularly used Depleted Uranium as ballast, following the El Al crash in Amsterdam in '92.

And but for that, 911 would have been a helluva lot worse for New Yorkers.

@Chronigan

"The subpoena is to enter who she is and what she said in a public forum into the record of the court. In the US if you say or do something in public you have no expectation of privacy or anonymity"

Actually they are after her private tweets which aren't part of the public record, and which she may easily argue she has an expectatiion of being, well, private. Also they are after the IP addresses she used to access the account, many of which may not be from her own PC and perhaps even Icelandic Parliamentary computers. This will allow them to investigate those links through data-mining especially on sites that didn't have the decency to inform her that they too had been subpoenaed.

Ignore the tech angle, would you be happy if US agents intercepted all the letters, telephone calls and family or casual conversations of an independent foriegn state representative? Oh wait, according to Wikileaks they already do that too as a matter of course...

Assange to be released

Joke comments

The UK and Sweden are equally open to US pressure, and Assange is no safer from trumped up US espionage charges on bail than he was in prison. The priority of believers in freedom of speech and transparency in government should be setting up a defence force worthy of the name rather than trusting in the dubious independence of our legal system or the half-arsed shenanigans of Anonymous.

Dutch police arrest 16-year-old WikiLeaks avenger

Age of Criminal Responsibility

The Dutch age of criminal responsibility is 16. If this 'mafia/terrorist' had been just a year younger then he would've been 'bullet-proof'. It would be interesting to see how the Dutch judiciary handle a few hundred thousand tweenagers taking similar actions in solidarity. There are far more important financial targets in the Netherlands, as the genuine hackers there know.

Nick Cave smashes speed camera with Jag

Mistaken identity?

He probably saw the flash and thought it was a paparazzi judging from his heartfelt tribute to Princess Diana. "If there is ever an opportunity to put into exercise the much-needed practice of lynching journalists and paparazzi--you know, hanging them by the neck from trees until they are dead, then burning their bodies--then that time is now."

Pro-Wikileaks hacktivistas in DDoS dustup with patriot contras

Angels of death

Put it in context, Wikileaks showed the video of US Chopper pilots executing civilians. Those pilots are unpunished, probably promoted, while Assange is spending a week in prison without being charged with any crime.

Charlotte Anne

The speeling of charloten proves this is Anonymous, jumping on a bandwagon to muddy the waters. Assange could do with a bit less Anonymous 'help' and a bit more names like Naomi Wolf stepping up:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/interpol-the-worlds-datin_b_793033.html

Popular sites caught sniffing user browser history

Tech question

"YouPorn encodes its JavaScript to hide the sites it searches for and decodes it only when used. Other websites dynamically generate the snoop code to prevent detection by simple inspection. Still others rely on third-party history-stealing libraries from services that include interclick.com and meaningtool.com. The scientists detected the history stealing by concocting their own version of Google's Chrome browser with a JavaScript information flow engine"

Can anyone expand on whether this compiled code or just encoded in the sc ript, and how the technique helped expose it?

White House forbids feds from reading WikiLeaked cables

DO NOT post links nor make comments

DemocracyNow.org report this email from the State Dept Office of Career Services to Columbia University students at the School of International and Public Affairs:

"The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government"

Reading the NYT criminalised

Threatening penalties against any employee who has read a newspaper in the past week is beyond pastiche. It is more embarrassing than any of the leaks.

I don't find circus clowns funny but I don't find then scary, but it is terrifying to learn that they run the White House

WikiLeaks dubs Amazon 'The Cowardly Liar'

@Jarrad - Free speech Double think

"just as the First Amendment doesn't grant the right to yell 'fire!' in a crowded cinema when there isn't one"

We are in a burning cinema and the arsonists are trying to prosecute the people who warned us. Millions have died thanks to the machinations of self-enriching US politicos over the past decade, and cheerleaders like you are either shameless or brainless.

Gates: Nothing really new in Wikileaks Bradley Manning leak storm

Democracy defiled

I posted Gates comment yesterday under the John Oates article "DDoS attack, sex warrant won't stop Assange's leaky discharge".

However I also pointed out Gates comment is most noteworthy as a juxtaposition to the hysterical hyperbole of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin et al. The most obvious explanation is that Gates is a cross-administration appointed official as opposed to a rabble-rousing elected politician desperate for every right-wing vote.

The John Oates article singled out Palin for being an obvious nutter but I find the fact that Secretary of State Clinton also mislabels people terrorists currently more worrying. If the next US presidential election is between Clinton and Palin then I hope Gates considers leading a military coup.

DDoS attack, sex warrant won't stop Assange's leaky discharge

@CADmonkey - Gates comment

"I've heard the impact of these releases on our foriegn policy as a meltdown, as a game-changer and so on. I think those descriptions are significantly over-wrought. The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest. Not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us" - Robert Gates

Which is an arrogant but relatively accurate summary free of the hysterical hyperbole of Clinton and Palin. It also explains why the Iraq Inquiry was nobbled to protect US interests, as revealed by the leak.

A monster of depravity

It's not just Palin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Peter King, the ranking Republican Congressman on Homeland Security have also stated Assange is a terrorist. For senior US politicians to cry terrorism is hopefully self-defeating as more people will start to question their 'War On Terrorism'. The only sense came from Robert Gates who basically said 'everyone hates us and we don 't care'.

Assange was a bit naive to act as the lightening conductor for the releases +and+ still have a normal social life. If he is just outside London then he'll soon be blamed for the student protests and the snow.

Iran admits cyberattack hit nuke programme

Isn't terrorism meant to be condemned?

It is notable that Ahmadinejad shares Andrew Orlowski's view that the latest Wikileaks releases are rubbish - btw is Orlowski Shia or Sunni? And where is Lewis Page, and does he normally drive motorcycles?

This is just the first tranche of the diplomatic cables and they already do carry significance. For instance, how the general Yemeni population will react to US drone strikes being disguised as Yemeni, or how the Shia minority in Arabia will react to their despots goading US invasions in the region. War in the Gulf isn't something to be encouraged.

WikiLeaked US cables link China to Google hack

wiki whacky

It was hilarious to see Adam Bolton interviewing Jimmy Wales yesterday, he obviously booked the wrong man. .Most of the questions were about Wikileaks and Assange, including why Wikipedia didn't sue Wikileaks for using the word wiki.

As for state cybercrime, I bet it's not the Chinese government who is blocking Wikileaks.org just now.

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

The real reason for tanks

Six tanks rolled into Glasgow to crush the local strikers on 27th of January 1919, so given the social cuts just announced it is no surprise Cameron wants three battalions of them.

Germans develop sleepy-driver car 'warning' system

Germany 1 - Britain 0

Perhaps a more interesting nationalist angle is why the UK still has speed limits on motorways when German autobahns have fewer fatalities. Are Germans just innately more sensible drivers? I drove a Merc at 140mph there and the only risk was my failure to check my rear view mirror, causing a Porche to brake to halve its speed. The German somehow refrained from flashing or gesticulating when he did pass me. In comparison your average Brit feels justified in occupying the overtaking lane at 60mph for twenty minutes because there is a lorry somewhere on the horizon.

'We Want Two' Navy carrier plan pondered by Cabinet

Play the World

Some of the IT posters here must've put a lot of effort into customising their 'Civ3' units. The most realistic naval threat to the UK in the near future is hundreds of thousands of tiny boats carrying starving refugees. Maybe our own security would be better enhanced by ploughing this expenditure into farming more subsidised export crops?

Germans radio tag ID cards and phones

Lebensraum

"If you had ever tried to run IT environments in Germany from outside of Germany, you'll know exactly what I mean..."

Ha, ya. I was sent to implement a Europe-wide domain on a Bavarian subsidiary out of hours. When the senior engineer escorting me suddenly found he couldn't log in, due to the necessary password change, he highlighted the problem to me by smashing his laptop into pieces. I waited until he was finished and then told him 'Try it now'. Seemingly they are not known for their sense of humour either.

Boston firefighters get oxygen masks for cats and dogs

Ta, Lewis

I realise this is a 'light' article but I am grateful. When I was 11 "a regular helmeted hero" pulled my pet dog from a housefire, and it died while I watched although he tried to feed it oxygen via a human face mask. I wouldn't wish that on any other child so I think this is an excellent idea. I've emailed the Massachusetts Vetinary Medical Association for the manufacturers contact details, and I hope to donate a few sets to my local fire-brigade. I wish I'd thought of it first but I am genuinely grateful to be shown this innovative piece of lateral thinking.

Pentagon out to 'destroy' Wikileaks, founder says

Occupation cases terrorism

Charles 9,

"The Taliban are domestically motivated. By and large they are conservative Pashtun people who want to take control of bits of Afghan territory and implement their own social and religious codes in Afghan territory, but do not have a primary interest in launching terrorist attacks in the United States. The kinds of intelligence operations, police operations, special forces operations which targetted people who have an international terrorist agenda whose objective was to mount terrorist attacks against the United States seems perfectly justifiable and achievable, it's within our gift. Let's continue by all means to focus on defensive counter terrorism operations, which are really not all that different from the kind of disruption operations that you'd undertake against a criminal group in your own country, but not get involved in trying to occupy large swathes of Afghanistan in the vain hope that you can win a counter-insurgency".

-Rory Stewart

More sinned against than sinning

Charles9,

In 2002 Al Qaeda had fled Afghanistan and the Taliban had evaporated. If the invasion had been justified in your opinion then the justification was gone by then. Instead of supporting democratic Afghans Bush put corrupt, mysoginst warlords in charge, averted his gaze to Iraq and ravaged the country with mercenaries and serial killers in uniform. The risk of the Wikipedia leak does not compare to the real massacres and criminal negligence that it has helped expose.

huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/10/petraeus-alqaida-not-oper_n_201310.html

Wikileaks publishes encrypted 'insurance' file

In support of peace

There are thousands of unprosecuted murders listed in these files, like the Poles who mortared a wedding party in 'retaliation' for a nearby IED. Even those of you who don't give a damn about Afghan civilians must acknowledge these create more insurgents and terrorists and therefore more Western deaths, what McChrystal called 'insurgent math'.. It is stupid to think that these informers are on our side or well motivated, often they have proven to be using ISAF forces to settle petty disputes, or simply for profit. If these leaks help end this bloody senseless war a single day earlier then they will have saved more lives than they risk.

Wikileaks creaks under demand for Afghan war logs

@Dan 10 - Polish Air Crash

I was interested too so I tracked the source down, I don't know how credible it is.

http://www.tvn24.pl/0,1664953,0,1,jak-nie-wyladujemy--to-mnie-zabijeja,wiadomosc.html

Facebook gives you the clap: Official

Safe wanking for two or more

@Craig28

There are no countries in the world that have a death penalty for either RSI or jerking off. You are lucky that the Telegraph didn't pick up on your comment, or like their last story it would've went viral.

Saying that, I don't believe self-masturbation is the only form of safe sex. Mutual masturbation, when preceded by mutual hand-washing, has killed nobody and is a hell of a lot more pleasurable.

Pirate Party UK launches manifesto

Rats on a sinking ship

Maybe El Reg should run candidates in the same consituencies? Candidates seem to be chosen for the Pirate Party according to how many times they have posted on their forum, and that that could be the same criteria for The Register candidates. Can't you just picture 'The Man From Mars' holding the balance of power in the next parliament?

Aussie smoko-proofing drug prevents ill effects of cigs

ffnicotine.com

Thanks for the book tip, I'll read it. Terrible cover though, as one thing that has stymied my previous attempts at quitting is the far worse hayfever I suffer. Coating the inside of my nasal passages with tar isn't sensible, but it beats Piriton. It's bad enough quitting in winter but grumpy, sweaty, tearful and snotty is less than life-enhancing. Are there any IT jobs going in Antartica that I can apply for?

BAE cops to arms-deal violation, pays $400m US fine

Bent As Ever

Danny Aston, you think companies that employ 106,000 should be above the law? Your payslip is showing.

Funny how only Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith tried to defend this corruption in government, given their shared complicity over Iraq. Now that Tanzania has this out-of-date radar to retrospectively protect it from Idi Amins airforce, perhaps their airforce will expand it's formidable fleet of er, Cessnas?

Teen attacks father in Fifa 2009 fight

In a scene reminiscent...

It's unfair to criticise him for cleaning his knife in his kitchen, that is just good hygiene. Plus, it should be taken into account that his father was Italian and therefore someone obviously getting in between a son and his true love.