Posts by Demosthenese

We're not saying we're living in a simulation but someone's simulated the universe in a computer

Re: Are we a simulation?

and if we are in a simulation, is it simulations all the way down?

How to nuke websites you don't like: Slam Google with millions of bogus DMCA takedowns

Verify a human has sent the request

Only allow urls to be sent one at a time, and each requires an annoying captcha-type hoop to jump through.

Police pull up van man engaged in dual carriageway sex act

I'll just leave this here...

youtube world according to garp accident

Plastic fiver: 28 years' work, saves acres of cotton... may have killed less than ONE cow*

Soylent Green

Can't they switch to using all the fat from liposuction? Who could object to that.

Dear Santa: Can gov.UK please stop outsourcing?

Re: Munich

The French Gendarmerie is another example, and is a significantly bigger deployment of Linux desktops than the oft quoted Munich example.

California cops pull over Google car for driving too SLOWLY

Re: If Google wants to limit the speed of their test cars/prototypes to 25 mph....

The Mersey tunnels have minimum speed limits.

'We can handle politicos, OUR ISSUE IS JUDGES', shout GCHQ docs

Re: QUESTION: If you were in charge of the country,

Cut its budget.

Revealed: SECRET DNA TEST SCANDAL at UN IP agency

Confused...

So why did the Swiss police get involved? Is sending an anonymous letter of complaint a criminal offence?

BlackBerry inks deal with Amazon to get Android apps on its mobes

Re: Audible?

Others report it working...

http://forums.crackberry.com/blackberry-q10-f272/audible-q10-899764/

Re: Audible?

Sideload Snap. Install Audible from Google Play. Away you go....

Spotify boasts 10 million paying subscribers ... Um, is that all?

Minority support

As a premium subscriber to spotify, I'm pleased that they support Linux with a proper native desktop client, and the Android client works well on BlackBerry too.

Fukushima radioactivity a complete non-issue on West Coast: Also for Fukushima locals, in fact

Drax

A few people have referred to Drax as a coal-fired counter-example. I believe Drax is now a wood-pellet biomass power station, and so its radioactive output will have been reduced.

Woz he talking about? Apple co-founder wants iPhones to run Android

Could...

"There’s nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market ... We could compete very well ... We could play in two arenas at the same time.”

Nothing to suggest should or would.

Staffs Police face data protection probe over 'drink drivers named' Twitter campaign

IANAL

Does this amount to preventing the possibility of a fair trial? Sub judice? Contempt of court proceedings to follow?

Block The Pirate Bay? Arrr, me hearties, new P2P client could sink that plan

Re: It's a question of trust -- @ DrXym

Are you sure those adverts aren't targeted?

US Department of Justice details Kim Dotcom evidence

DOJ and name calling

Would the prosecution in any other civilized country be aloud to constantly refer to the defendant as "Mega Conspiracy" in its depositions? Can the defence refer to the FBI as the Federal Bullshit Informants or rename the DoJ the Department of Fartypants?

Mandela memorial. Yup, let's SNAP A SELFIE, say grinning Obama, Cameron

More amazing

The more amazing photo is that of President Obama shaking the hand of President Raul Castro.

NSA spied on 'radicalisers' porn surfing so as to discredit them, reveals Snowden

Re: massive blackmail database being compiled...

Proved to happen under Hoover. Do you have any evidence that anything has changed?

Beijing hits back at US: Don't you DARE blame China for collapse of duty-free IT talks

Re: It's only irresponsible if we remove any tariffs....we should put MORE in place.

"I'll raise you unfair and unjust taxation without representation and the ensuing American Revolution."

Except this is a fantasy dreamt up after the fact. Taxes on tea were actually lowered to allow British companies to compete with Dutch tea smuggled into the colonies, by Americans. The actual rallying cry across New England was the far less wholesome, sectarian cry of "No Popery" - a response to the newly conquered French (catholic) fur traders being granted the same protections by the British army as the American fur traders, thus threatening the business interests that they had assumed would be advanced by the British victory in the French-Indian war that these same fur traders had engineered.

Brit PM raps Facebook for allowing GORY beheading vids

Social Network

Disclaimer: I've never Facebooked.

Isn't the point of a social networking site to communicate with your social circle? If someone is posting stuff that upsets you, ask them to stop, or drop them from your social circle. I don't see a need to tell people in other social circles what they should be posting.

Apple's top bean counter: New spaceship HQ won't emit 'one atom of carbon'

Re: Green eh?

I did read the bit about electricity sources ... 30% from 'green suppliers'. This is where an electricity supplier that has multiple sources, some green and mostly non-green, pretends that you are only supplied by the green electricity when in reality it is all fed into and out of a single grid. There is no way to transmit just the 'green' energy to a particular consumer.

Even with a notional supply of the green stuff to apple, just means the other customers, get a greater proportion of their supply notionally from non-green. This sort of smoke and mirrors does not really constitute real green energy any more than carbon offsetting does.

However thumbs up to apple for at least generating much of its own power by renewable means, even if the carbon free claims are pr bullshit.

Google's boffins branded 'unacceptably ineffective' at tackling web piracy

Future Prosperity

"We are deeply concerned ... could cause irreversible damage to the creative sector on which the United Kingdom’s future prosperity will significantly depend," the MPs warn.

If our future prosperity significantly depends on Harry Potter and the latest X-Factor pop, then we are indeed truly fucked.

ISPs set to install network-level smut filters despite Lib Dem opposition

3

I recently switched from o2 to 3 for my mobile internet. I was SHOCKED, shocked I tell you, to discover that the nanny filter was off by default. Won't somebody think of the children?

London Underground cleaners to refuse fingerprint clock-on

Faces

The negative association of fingerprint id with crime detection is at the root of the opposition to this scheme. A facial recognition system would avoid this and do the same job.

Re: Its kind of pointless really

You cite a 5% failure rate - and yet may schools operate these scanners for canteen payments without a problem.

Happy Friday the 13th! It's Programmers' Day

Counting...

"But as any good programmer knows, this ignores the use of zero as a value."

But

day[0] = 'Jan 1st'

So day[255] will be the 256th element, afterall.

Sponsored Stories ruck: Zuck chucks 15 bucks at ad photo suck schmucks

Re: The Cost of "Business"?

If what they are doing is wrong then they should be punished ... so the fine should be bigger than the profit, regardless of the size of the profit. Otherwise crime pays.

Engineer's $30m windfall from Nintendo 3DS patent spat SLASHED by beak

Confused

A Japanese engineer sues a Japanese company over a Japanese product in an American court. One of these things is not like the others...

Osama Bin Pwned: Al Qaeda mocked in Twitter counter-jihad

Lame

But none of these tweets are in any way clever or amusing.

Microsoft to fund Blake's 7 return as Xbox Live exclusive

Re: Was B7 a Fluke?...

While I was wondering when Blake would return to the show, I went on a school trip to the RSC to see Twelfth Night. Disappointed to realise that Gareth Thomas was unlikely to give up his RSC gig to go back to a sci fi show. Cherie Lunghi was in the performance too, so it wasn't all bad.

Brits: We can stop trolling if we know where they live - poll

Re: slight problem

You have convinced me. I'm now in favour of compulsory real names. It will make my stalking habit so much easier. Oops, I've said too much.

<---- that is not my real name.

Re: Overcrowded housing

When either pandora or spotify started and was US only (can't remember which), they required a US ZIP code to be entered to 'prove' that you were USian. I wonder how many other people joined me in residence at the White House.

OWN GOAL! 100s of websites blocked after UK Premier League drops ball

Re: Basic tort law ?

The ISPs would have no obligation to third parties to provide access to their websites, and can filter whatever they like, with no duty to those sites.

They do however have a contract with their customers - whether this contract requires them to provide access any particular sites or category of sites depends on the details of those contacts.

Evernote hobbles third-party apps... but is it pulling a Twitter?

Nixnote (formerly Nevernote) works well as a native Linux client. Hope this doesn't bork it.

It's now or never for old sysadmins to learn new tricks

Re: Great time for a morality(?) question, Mr Pott.

Yes, you are crazy.

The advantage to the client of buying both hardware and software from a single source is that there is no opportunity for the hardware and software suppliers to blame each other for a problem and neither be willing to fix the mess.

Manning's max sentence cut, may only spend up to 90 years in the cooler

Re: 136 years to 90 years...

" if it didn't work that way what would be the reasoning for committing one crime vs. many?"

A counter argument might be - I've committed several minor offences, but the total sentence is now so big I have nothing to lose, so from here on in kill any witnesses.

Terror cops swoop on couple who Googled 'backpacks' and 'pressure cooker'

"they do this about 100 times a week. And that 99 of those visits turn out to be nothing."

... and the other 1 time turns out to be nothing too.

Apple kept us waiting while it searched our packages every day, claim shop staff

Re: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

@Stuart,

ITYM Who watches the iWatches.

We're losing the battle with a government seduced by surveillance

Re: pedant

Prove, v. i.

1. To make trial; to essay.

[1913 Webster]

Linux in 2013: 'Freakishly awesome' – and who needs a fork?

Re: Servers

Including vulture central - debian web servers.

Report says #Facebook #to #adopt #hashtags

Shift-3?

That would be £

Tech firms face massive tax bill if Dutch vote to end loopholes

Re: We are not doing anything illegal or immoral

"Give to caesar what is caesar's"

Commonly misunderstood. The pharisees' question was designed to elicit a response that was either seditious or look bad to the jewish nationalist audience. The reply would be understood by the audience - Caesar should be given what is rightfully his - i.e. nothing, without actually saying anything that would land Jesus in hot water with the Roman authorities.

Oracle, Dell, CSC, Xerox, Symantec accused of paying ZERO UK tax

Morals and the Law

The moral person requires no laws, for he knows what is right and acts acordingly. Laws are put in place for the immoral and the wicked to force them to behave in a minimally acceptable manner. Those bleating that they obeyed the letter of the law and thus have done no wrong are clearly members of the latter groups rather than the former.

It is time to reach for a bigger legal stick with which to beat the wicked back on to the right path.

Eric Schmidt's Norks outing poorly timed, tuts US govt

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

Winston Churchill

Anonymous hacks Westboro Baptists over Sandy Hook protests

Re: "Protest the funerals"?

... for He makes His sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and makes the rain fall upon the upright and the wrongdoers.

(Matthew 5:45)

New laws to shackle and fine the Press? We've got PLENTY already

red herring

Yes the press is already governed by laws - those laws that apply to everybody. What Cameron is arguing against is laws specifically to regulate the press.

What we have here is a first. A PM who hasn't responded to a situation where the existing laws are not being enforced with a "We need more laws." I find myself in agreement with Mr Cameron - and that too is a first.

Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag

Re: OTT

Just get your friend to carry your lanyard/rfid to all those lessons when you have better things to do.

Telcos react coldly to renewed UK.gov smut-censoring push

Re: Tiscali will rue the day...

"I'm still trying to get my head around the reason why Talk Talk have jumped at the chance of implementing the "filter thingy"."

Well there will be savings resulting from any reduction in data download, and less need to respond to law-suits against copyright claims which will reduce admin costs.

Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs

Huh?

I always pronounced it 'jiff' - if anyone uses a hard 'g', I've not met them.

Verizon staff arrested for stealing customer's nude pics

Re: Not theft

@Velv

reprehensible

adj 1: bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure

I'm not sure how you stretched my meaning to include condoning and then extended your error by stooping to personal insults.