Posts by Sceptical Bastard 566 publicly visible posts • joined 16 May 2007
I know, I know. Everybody's already said it. But indulge me, Sarah, before the steam from my ears boils my hair grey.*
ONE uptight dipstick complains about an ad that requires a user action to reveal a BLACK RECTANGLE and the ASA pull it?
Nut? Sledgehammer?
* I lied about having any hair left.
"Ullulation" huh? Nice one, you erudite commentard :)
And to those who shriek it's only her that's the dog, aren't you being a bit unfair? Her sub-Bruce Willis gorilla of a hubby isn't exactly eye candy is he? They're as pig ugly as one another but if they can get it on despite that, good luck to 'em.
If they are fucking each other's brains out, good luck to 'em. Hauling them before the beak for getting down'n'dirty seems rather OTT. That said, you'd think they'd have the good manners to keep the windows shut and I can sympathise with the neighbours too.
I've just seen the photo of 'em on the BBC news site - jeeze aitch, it's stomach-churning! What the hell do they see in one another?
Po-faced gits and hypocrites! I thought the shipshape ice cube was mildly funny - y'now, like fart jokes are funny when you're pissed.
Besides, what could possibly be more offensive to the memory of the 1,517 people who drowned in 1912 than Leonardo De Crappio and Kate Winceyette hamming it up in front of unconvincing CGI? Am I the only one who thought that film was a tedious and overlong fest of sentimental meretricious trash? My excuse for watching it is that it was on telly one Christmas and I didn't want to provoke a row with the missus.
As to "...ice cubes of the Twin Towers..." surely that marketing opportunity goes to candle-makers or fireworks manufactures? We don't hear an outcry against 'Mount Vesuvias' and 'Roman Candle' fireworks because they show disrespect to the citizens of Pompeii.
So let's have some commemorative trinkets of the WTC - I'd buy 'em if only to say "fuck you" to Al Quaeda. On which thought, "Firestorm Over Tora Bora" fireworks, anyone?
A man who hits little balls with a hooked stick has a minor RTA. Who cares?
Man crashes car because he's been caught playing away from home. Who cares?
A multi-national sharkpool of over-priced parasites dumps him. Who cares?
The world faces climate disaster (or the biggest con in history depending on your outlook); British troops are being killed in Afghanistan; the web is becoming a cesspit of fraud; Britons are reeling under the most incompetent, bossy and repressive government in recent history; Google is turning into Microsoft; and what are we obsessed with? Some dull little bore who plays one of the dullest games ever invented. Who cares?
There is a pretty lackadaisical attitude to security in evidence in the comments above.
Several commentards seem to think the issue of metadata in files is a not a security and privacy issue. "Oh, big deal" they sneer.
Of course it is a security issue. And one, as has been pinted out, that applies to the most common filetypes - including those generated by OO and MSO files - and not a PDF-specific thing.
Regarding the point about revealing OS and app vers, I'd be equally concerned about browser headers - for users of Firefox I suggest a look at the ModifyHeaders add-on here:
http://modifyheaders.mozdev.org/no_wrap/help/en/index.html
Quote:
"Apart from EXIF info, that's actually useful ... "
It can be useful, of course. But, equally, it can be very revealing. I tend to strip it if I send photos anywhere. For a start, it's easier to remove EXIF data from an image file than the metadata from a Word Doc or a PDF.
A good starting point is to ask "Does world+dog *need* this or that information?" If the answer is "no", then strip out the information. Simples.
Our gorblimey home secretary has shown stunning misjudgement and one would hope his hasty over-reaction results in a precipitous descent of the greasy pole. But in the dying days of this accident-prone government, that seems unlikely - Brown needs all the friends he can hang on to.
The debate - if you can call it that - about illicit drug use has always been clouded with ill-informed FUD and driven by fear of the press. So not much new here - move along, please.
Alan "I'm a jolly Cockney" Johnson earns a massive FAIL for this latest example.
A Brazilian attracting attention? In London, our brave boys in blue would have pumped seven shots into her head.
As others have said, her skirt wouldn't have excited any comment in the UK. But we got rid of Catholicism's warped sexual 'morality' 400 years ago. (That said, I've seen shorter skirts on a Saturday night in Dublin.)
... before Brown and his gobshite home secretary Alan 'Sack Dissenters' Johnson pick up on the Spanish scheme and outlaw anonymous pay-as-you-go mobes here in the UK. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't done so already on the spurious basis that "only the guilty have anything to hide", a policy dear to the hearts of the commuter fascists who read the Daily Mail.
Oh save us from Mail readers trotting out "I've got nothing to hide", that most pernicious and spurious of slogans.
Nothing to hide? Post under your real name in that case. Tell us every detail of your sex life in that case. What are your innermost fantasies? Have you ever had an affair? Do you masturbate and if so how often? And while you're in a revelatory mood, how often do you take a dump and what consistency is it? What is your health record? How much do you earn?
You are the sort of complacent idiot who let Hitler hijack Germany - ever read "First they came..."? So don't come crying to us when you find yourself living in a westernised version of North Korea.
Gratuitous abuse is rarely called for in serious debate but in the case of brain-dead crypto-fascist morons like you it is fully justified.
Quote: "...jealous resentment of another nation having a successful, dynamic and respected politician?"
Eh? Which nation? Which politician?
You can't mean... ? No... ? Sarko! Now I know you're having a larf.
We don't take the piss because he's the runt of the litter. We take the piss because he's a strutting, self-regarding, trophy-marrying, pompous, hubristic, smirking smug prick!
BTW, the reason we don't take the piss out of Brown is he's so inept, so risible and such an abject failure that it would be cruel to laugh. We English are kind like that (but not to Frenchmen of course).
.. or, rather, a Gamble.
Yes, Jim Gamble, head of CEOP. He's found a menacing new windmill to tilt at and is willing to take the chance his latest thesis - that online social networking is a cesspit of kiddie-fiddling perverts - won't prove to be just smoke and mirrors. Remember, people, this is the man who brought you Operation Ore. Does that inspire confidence? No, thought not.
I heard Jim, the self-appointed PaedoFinder General, peddling his FUD on the 'Today' programme this morning. He sounded both ill-informed and a zealot - not a combination one usually seeks in senior police officers. (He also sounded thick as pigshit but that was probably more a matter of his Ulster accent* and Prescott-ian use of English than of intellect per se.)
* Readers from Northern Ireland are free to take offence.
Hi, I am a cat. My servant, Sceptical Bastard (or SB as I call him when I deign to address him at all) is taking a shower so I've commandeered his keyboard to defend us felines.
To all you humantard commentators dissing us cats, I say FOAD. Do you want to be over-run with mice and birds? No? Then shut the fuck up.
Do you two-legged furless fuckwits seriously think we'd be interested in looking at pictures of you abusing your kittens? No. It is quite obvious that my brother in America was exacting revenge for some insult or neglect. And good luck to him!
Any more whingeing from you lot and there'll be fur flying! And - if you read this - the same goes for you SB. Now get out of that bathroom and open that sachet of catfood before I shit under your pillow and spray your freshly-laundered shirts.
Britain tries to drag its telecoms infrastructure up from third-world status and what happens?
Some bunch of poncey monied NIMBYs (who probably think dial-up is fast enough as they only use the internet for petitioning their local council) deny their neighbours a vital step in faster online access.
Come the (technological) revolution, those bastards will be lined up in front of their bloody Chelsea tractors and gunned down like the selfish scum they are.
Quote: "... scandalous photos showing an unidentified chap receiving intimate oral favours from the (married) Duchess of Argyll."
Where are the pictures?
Failing that, where is the Playmobile re-enactment?
Mine's the one with the smudged copy of Burke's Peerage in the pocket.
Beano buys Friends Reunited - says it all really, doesn't it? I bet ITV would love to be reunited with some of the £100m it wasted on FR.
But every cloud... now the Bash Street Kids can reunite!
Turns out that Smithy became a bouncer but was stabbed to death by a lager lout in the 1970s disco boom. In heaven, he was reunited with Plug who had been convicted of paedophilia in the 1990s and subsequently beaten to death by a mob of underclass unmarried mothers in Portsmouth.
Cuthbert became a barrister practising at the criminal bar and has already been reunited with Danny - he successfully defended him on coke-smuggling charges. His instructing solicitor was Wilfred.
Sidney's ambitions to be a vet were ruined by that unpleasant business involving a sheep and a tub of vaseline. He now runs an unlicensed animal sanctuary - he is under investigation by the RSPCA. His sister Toots did well for herself - after a spell on the game, she ran the mules for Danny's coke-smuggling ring and is now a presenter on a daytime shopping channel.
No-one wants to be reunited with Fatty after his diabetes and morbid obesity led to him being pilloried on a reality TV show.
Teacher died years ago. His widow became an alcoholic and is now so pickled that if they cremate her the fire will burn for months.
Of course, kids from the rival Posh Street School are already reunited and will probably form the next government under their leader Lord 'Dave' Snooty.
Quote: "Yahoo! Mail is actually home to one of the largest online photo repositories in the world."
Yeah. Right. And 99% of the images are rubbish. Let's hear it for the world's greatest repository of blurry camera-phone snaps of Uncle Darren falling over dead drunk at our Sharon's wedding. And a billion images of cute little puppies - awww, bless - and cats stuck up trees.
Quote: "... millions of you use Yahoo! Mail as your primary way to share the photos of important moments in your lives..."
Like that important moment when Karen was watching 'Two Pints' and laughed so much she pissed herself. Oh how we laughed! Luckily we caught the whole incident, stained jeans and all, on our mobes. It was nearly as important as the time our toddler, Wayne Jnr, fell off the swing - we had a right laugh and recorded it on our mobes too before he was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. We'll be sharing photos of the important moment when his little coffin is lowered into the ground, of course.
Bah. Humbug.
A mate of mine has been using the Win7 RC for a week or two. It looks promising (and I say that as a habitual MS-basher).
I think I'll wait for SP1 however. I see no justification in being an early adopter on the basis of a lot of hype and looking over a mate's shoulder for an hour.
Once Vista-ed, twice shy!
David asks: "They really want us to hate them don't they?"
It's not that they actively want us to hate them - it's that they don't give a fuck what we think because they have the power to make our lives a misery.
Several commentards (above) blame increasingly repressive policing on politicians, on the Home Office, on anti-terrorism FUD, and on senier officers - their point being that it's not the fault of the ordinary cop, dear old Dixon of Dock Green.
What bollocks! It is ordinary coppers who are hassling photographers just as it is ordinary coppers who routinely hector, harrass and bully anyone they don't like the look of.
I am old enough to remember ranked hordes of these George Dixons charging the miners, batons swinging. I am old enough to remember their horsey colleagues - the Orgreave Cavalry - riding down striking pitmen. I remember the brutality with which the Met policed the demonstrations against the poll tax. I remember, too, the images on television earlier this year when innocent people were corralled without water, food, or loos at the G20. And, of course, I remember the images of the Met - dear old George again - murdering Ian Tomlinson at the G20.
And they wonder why we call them the filth?
"The one thing you can count on in our industry is that things change," says Redmond's ranting sweat-monster.
Too true - Microsoft seems wedded to the "if it aint broke, fix it anyway" school of software architecture - pile on the bells and whistles that nobody has asked for or wants - anything that adds bloat to over-featured products, MS Office and Vista being the most obvious examples.
How ironic. The video takes 2minutes 27seconds to show the 'one second boot' .
Ah, whatever happened to the happy minutes it took to insert the two 5.25in floppies, power up the machine, wait for the tiny screen to flicker into its green-on-black glory, DOS to colonise the wide expanses of that 640KB memory, Locoscript to struggle into life... time to brew coffee, time to roll a fag*, time to reflect on life's electronic wonders.
* Note to US readers: "rolling a fag" has nothing to do with street robbery committed against homosexuals.
Vulnerabilities in IE exploiting ActiveX? Really? Surely not?
As so many times in the past, a partial solution (as your story points out) is to use one of the many free alternatives to Internet Explorer (plus, of course, patching and hardening the hell out of WinXP).
Or, of course, a better solution is to use one of the alternatives to Windows such as a Mac or Linux.
Great video, El Reg. The love-child of Ilie Năstase and Lara Croft in bouncing puppies action! Better than all the usual dull stuff about IT, Redmond versus Mountain View, science, government cock-ups, hardware, software ...
Talking of God's Own Sport, I watched virtually all the second week on BBC TV (when I should've been working) and I'm proud to admit it! So FOAD, all you tennis-hating commentards.
I've been away from El Reg (or, more accurately, from Comments) for a few weeks - yeah, real life intervened - and what do I find?
A new set of icons for a start.
Which do I choose for Chrome OS? WTF? Fail? Big Brother? (I particularly like the "Suck on this" hand grenade but it's not really relevant to my comment).
To my mind, there's virtually nothing to choose in corporatism and ethos between Redmond and Mountain View. Google free? Yeah. Right.
If I want to use Linux (and, actually, I do) I can have one of half-a-hundred more viable distros, large or small, without Google's imprimatur on them.
On a slightly-related topic (OS), I wrote in comments some while ago that I wasn't initially impressed by Vista but qualified my opinion with the admission I had limited experience of using it. Well, now I have day-to-day Vista experience - several months' worth - and I can say from experience that Vista is a complete dog, a WinME pour nos jours.
Bah. Humbug. A curse on all their houses. Where's my abacus....
I recently read a very astute quote about the king twatter: "Stephen Fry is a stupid person's idea of what a clever person is like"
Exactly! There is a difference between, on the one hand, a ready wit and a pub-quiz-like ability to remember trivia and, on the other, genuine cleverness and erudition.
The thing that really gave Fry away (apart from his incomprehensible lust for the assinine and plug-ugly Alan Davies) was his moronic and gushing encomium to Saint Jade when Britain's favourite slut-chav-bitch shuffled off the coil in a blaze of toe-curlingly tacky hysteria. Christ, even Ol' Mother Kray's funeral had more style and dignity!
Let me summarise my thesis in just 82 characters:
Twatter away, you smug posh fat twat - and may your tweets come back to haunt you.
I return to the ranks of commentards after a couple of months' absence (Hi Sarah, did you think I'd abandoned you?) with the pleasant task of saying 'very well done, El Reg, another really good well-balanced article'.
Less nobly, I also want a smidgen of "toldja so". Since my experiences of single-issue political campaigning and lobbying in the 1980s, I've consistently opined in this and (many) other forums* that by and large professional politicians (both in parliament and in town halls) are greedy, venal, arrogant, hypocritical, bossy, repressive, authoritarian, duplicious, rebarbitive scum-shite.
Now it turns out that - though it's hardly a surprise - they are benefit cheats as well.
Never mind public outcry, never mind the ballot box, never mind protests and demos - what is desperately needed is a long brick wall, a crate of cartridges and a dozen AK47s.
* OK, 'fora' if you prefer your nits ready-picked.
It's very easy - if you have no knowledge of a subject - to rubbish research. Especially when you haven't read the report itself (as opposed to a brief synopsis in a news item).
I think the article would've been much more interesting if it had given more details of the evidence and - crucially - if it had provided an explanation of the link between age-difference and STD transmission.
To everyone praising the brave new dawn of Google's uninvited snooping, you don't have to be Luddite, reactionary or a Daily Mail reader to object to a huge and increasingly-powerful 'Murcann corporation adding its lenses to the mass of surveillance we already suffer under.
We should take a stand against intrusion into privacy wherever it occurs and whoever the intruder. Supporting Google's 'right' to prostitute us on StreetView is akin to welcoming ID cards, something El Reg commentards seem rather less enthusiastic about. Wake up! If information about you (and your home) can be collected and collated, it can also be misused against you and your best interest - and, given time, history shows it will be.
So to anyone who offers the dangerous but seductive "nothing-to-hide, nothing-to-fear" argument, think of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Pol Pot's Kampuchea or, much nearer home, Mister Jacqui Smith's films and his missus's expense sheet.
Google, like Phorm, seems to think 'all your privacy are belong to us'. SteetView is one invasion too many. Phuck off, Google - do not want.
Thank you, AC, for your in-depth analysis of the current global economic situation - if only the G20 leaders shared your insight and wisdom they could ensure a return to high growth rates by simply dismantling the internet (or, rather, the web). You twat.
Were it not for my forays into El Reg (and, need I add, my unwholesome fantasies about our beloved and voluptuous Moderatrix), my days would consist of unremitting paid employment. And that would never do!
With no higher authority to turn to for advice, I will ask Sarah - am I showing signs of internet addiction?
And while you are in agony aunt mode, Ms Bee, pray tell what is a 'normal' amount of time online? Surely that depends on one's job, one's reliance on email, one's hobbies, and a host of other variables? Am I normal? Are you? What is the meaning of it all?
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