* Posts by dave 54

22 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2009

Apple cofounder Steve Jobs is dead at 56

dave 54

I think he was at the helm, rather than the keel, as the latter is the structural element upon which the hull is built.

Never liked Apple products, but that's a matter of personal taste and in no way detracts from a completely non-grudging admission that they're very good pieces of kit. Jobs changed the entire market, and will be greatly missed.

UK Cops 'duped' into arresting wrong LulzSec suspect

dave 54
FAIL

Hyperbole

Yeah, probably better if they just leave a Post-It on his door, asking him to turn himself in if he's guilty.

Muppet.

Refusal to unveil scuppers French refusal-to-unveil trial

dave 54

I know someone who went to jail for growing a plant

can you weep some tears of impotent rage for him, too?

dave 54

Back up a moment...

What has race to do with this?

Microsoft's Google complaint not an April Fool

dave 54

pff

"omg i dun bought minesweeper even though I mostly play left4dead. how dare they force me to buy this game, when there are better ones available? if you play minesweeper, your opinion simply does not matter'.

As for someone who judges the relative worth of another's opinion by the frankly irrelevent issue of their personal browser choice.... Well, I would tentatively suggest that he's emotionally overinvested in nerdy technical trivia. It's really not his concern.

London man gets 5 years for YouTube terror videos

dave 54
Thumb Down

how's the sixth form going?

Crying into your latte about the hideous state of the legal system is all well and good, but you might want to take a few minutes to find out what the bloke actually did. Twelve men good and true decided to put him in chokey after seeing the evidence; you, however, seem to feel that ineffectual hand-wringing and generalised outrage from a position of complete ignorance is a better course of action.

I wonder why.

Anonymous pwns security firm that probed its membership

dave 54
Alert

bush/clinton since 1981?

are you not skating over ol' Ronnie there, 1981-89?

UK.gov braces for Anonymous hacklash

dave 54
Alert

"Terrorism"?

Really?

So Anonymous has been added to the list of Proscribed Terrorist Groups, has it? I did check, but I didn't see them in the list. Maybe you're privy to goings-on at a higher level than mere mortals - certainly, your self-indulgent, bombastic whining would suggest that you see yourself as so - so I'd be much obliged if you could provide some evidence, ta.

Even if you're going with the looser 'terrorists are people who cause terror' definition - well, still wrong. I might be terrified of getting blown up on a tube train, possibly, if I had any genuine reason to suspect such an event was about to occur. I would not be terrified of being temporarily unable to make a Mastercard payment. That's annoying, not terrifying. They are, if anything, 'annoyingists'.

Acer: tablets will replace netbooks

dave 54
Happy

Ah, the AAO, took of kings

Mine now has a class 10 16gb SSD, 1.5gb RAM (wish fiddle the BIOS so you could disable the 512 onboard), a 360gb 7200rpm 2.5" hdd, a 12-cell battery which runs it for 9 hours and props it into a nicer position, and runs win7 quite nicely. The netbook was 90 quid second hand, the total cost of upgrades, <80 quid, and I'd like to see a tablet that can match it.

Next, the touchscreen....

Ministry of Sound floored by Anonymous

dave 54

"f*cking for virginity"

As has been said in the past - do you know of a better way to create more virgins?

Rackspace claims credit for shushing Koran-burning 'pastor'

dave 54
Flame

if he buys it, he can burn it

as it's his property. Burning a book - any book, including the Koran - is neither a crime, nor 'hate speech'. Poor taste, certainly, but nothing more.

Somewhat hypocritically, it's actually *official policy* for Saudi Arabia to burn any bibles, crosses, or other Christian paraphenalia coming into their country? At least our 'hate speech' is restricted to the lunatic fringe, rather than being a the government's official stance.

Wikileaks falls out with human rights groups

dave 54
FAIL

trite

"I hope you pay the price for shitting on the freedoms you are so lucky to have, and which is provided to you by people you are not fit to lick the boots of"

If your average military Joe was an idealist who'd signed up to altruistically make the world a better place, rather than some exam-failing puppy-hurling mouthbreather with a consipcuous lack of more appealing options, you might have a point. Not fit to lick their boots? Don't be so egregiously stupid. These people are hired to enforce the whims of the society that pays them, whatever they might be; they do not operate on an untouchable moral highround, are not beyond criticism, and can f*cking well clean their boots with polish rather than the adoring spittle of sycophantic 'civvies'.

Let's be clear; there's no evidence that Assange's oversight/error/arrogance has thus far contributed to any civilian deaths, and there's no suggestion whatsoever that he's directly killed any. Can the same be said of the armed forces? No? Then let's maintain a little perspective here.

20 thumbs up for this peurile, sub-sixthform rant? Heavens above...

Birmingham jihad-cam network suspended

dave 54

One moment....

"I find your take on the world a little Orwellian, and terrifying. “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear?”"

Why would you put this in quotation marks, given that I did not say this, or anything that might be construed as such? I stated - twice, and perfectly clearly - that I have no problem with cameras being located *in public areas*, where anyone passing through can already be seen by anyone else passing through. The things you list, the dirty little secrets you might wish to remain private, would probably not be aired in such places anyhow. Or are your really suggesting that a crowded street is the best place to cheat on your wife?

Orwellian? Pff. Actually *read* his work, and understand it, before tossing out peppy little accusations which bear no resemblence to the matter under discussion. A few cameras in a public highway does not herald the dawn of 1984. You're making straw men, and it's painfully obvious.

I need neither your permission, nor your approval, to post as and where I please - nor do I need the approval of sub-sixthform handwringers who feel that everything would be sweetness and light if only we all just understood each other. It wouldn't be. Without rules and regulations, it would be a mess. The natural state of humanity is to be dicks to one another, and it's only the enforcement of social contract which keeps us in line.

Your view of power is tired, cliched, and false - you're mentally stocking parliament with wall-to-wall scheming Grand Vizier types who desire nothing other than to crush the common man and become enormously wealthy in the process. Seriously, did you get your political views from watching cartoon villains and James Bond films? I have no patience for such blinkered, ridiculous mendacity; if this is your one-size-fits-all genuine understanding of those in power, then you have much to learn.

dave 54

@Trevor

A well framed reply, and somewhat more considered than the 'OMG CAMERAZ' effort to which I initially responded.

You argue that the only perfectly safe computer is one with no network connections, and no hope of physical access. This is true. It does not, however prevent a sysadmin from doing everything in his power to mitigate risk to the items for which he bears responsibility; he will keep the things patched, employ a decent firewall, and so forth. It may not be perfectly secure, but it's a whole lot better than shrugging one's shoulders and concluding that because we can't prevent *all* incursions, it's futile to attempt prevention of any.

Would I have spent money on these cameras? No, probably not. Do they offend my sense of being a free man in a free country? Not really. If I'm out in public, I expect to be seen, and I don't particularly care who's doing the watching. I would be horrified if they were routinely bugging private residences of random citizens, but that's not the issue.

You question how many deaths have been prevented by the work of the intelligence agencies. I don't know. I suspect you don't either. It's impossible to say; what is concrete, and demonstrable, is that they've interrupted operations intended to cause harm, and retrieved materials capable of doing exactly that. Lacking a crystal ball, I cannot say for sure whether these planned attacks would have been successful, and I'm profoundly grateful that no innocent people were made to find out.

Lastly, I find your view of those in power depressing. I don't doubt that there are some as you describe, motivated by power alone; I assume a fair number are motivated by cash, and the desire to line their pockets. I do know, personally, one MP who's in it for good, altruistic reasons -- and I struggle to think he's the only one. It's a mixed bag, certainly - but the common factor is that none of them have anything to gain by alienating subsections of the population for no perceptible reason.

We pay the security services to do a job, and until they blatantly overstep the line, I'm happy for them to get on with it. I'm not privy to the information they have, I have no knowledge of the hints, leads, and clues which decide their strategy. I understand that if this information was made public, so the population could judge the merits of their actions from a position of full disclosure, their jobs would be made impossible, and there would be no point in employing them at all.

100% prevention would be nice - but I'll settle for mitigation. If you have failed to bury your computer, and yet use a firewall (etc), you are already doing the same. It's not a bad thing.

dave 54

Nobody might be up to no good?

Keep an aye on the newspapers, you obtuse little troll. You will be proved wrong.

You seem to think I'd personally be nervous about being seen on cameras. As it happens, so long as I'm in a public place where I can be freely seen anyhow, I couldn't care less.

If you honestly believe, as you seem to, that the country is populated with wholly nice and peaceful people, and that the only fundamentalists worth any concern are of teh Christian variety, then your opinion is utterly without merit. History proves you wrong. The future will prove you wrong. There are a great deal of naughty people, and I've no problem with The Man doing his best to weed them out.

dave 54

Oh, grow up

The society you describe - that of oppressed minorities suffering nobly under the boot of callous, uncaring Fundamental Christians (and other boogeymen) simply does not exist.

Fact is, if you're a part of a group whose fringe members have repeatedly and unequivocally expressed an interest in causeing real, violent harm to the country, that country's security services are going to take more of an interest in that group - and unfortunately, some perfectly sane, reasonably and innocent people might be inconvenienced. I'm well aware that a great many attrocities have been prevented through infomartion sourced within the Muslim community - it seems that Joe Muslim is no happier with the lunatic fringe than anyone else. Hopefully, they can appreciate tht they are not being targetted by this.

It's a few cameras, which can (presumably) be removed if they don't assist in their stated purpose. If they do assist in their stated purpose - detecting and preventing acts of violence - excellent. Let's have more.

Oh - the irony (and hypocrisy) of people whinging about photographers not being allowed to photograph anything and everything they please, whilst simultaenously claiming that the state itself has no right to caputre images, is not lost on me.

Bullfighter cuffed for lack of cojones

dave 54

'Julio Aparicio'....

That's a mouthful.

City Police still using Terror Act to bother photographers

dave 54
FAIL

@ac...

You are conflating a policeman potentially over-stepping the mark in a largely-harmless fashion with a robbery/mugging of 'you phone' [sic], suggesting (falsely) that 'its [sic] only borrowing' in the latter case, simply because it is in the first. The two are not equivalent, and any suggestion otherwise relegates you to the status of 'intellectually absent'.

Nice signoff, by the way - really shows you up as an unimaginative troll without the wit to form an argument, or even a decent insult.

dave 54
FAIL

Pff

The story: 'Man searched in street, phone taken and returned'.

The Commentard response: 'OMG POLICE STATEz!111!!1one!!1'

Every time the police do anything, at all, to anyone, the ineffectual fury is sure to follow. Nevermind they do a tough - and largely good - job, nevermind the fact that they're constantly hassled by people who think they're 'pigs' (see first few comments - 30-something 'thumbs up', none down - and let's not start on the idiot who reckons he has a 9/10 chance of being arrested for taking pictures) rather than officers of the law. They offended one bloke, RESTRAINED AND SEARCHED him, no less - leaivng no marks, taking very little of his time, and borrowing his 'phone - which is essentially tantamount to murder, ain't it? Or so you'd think from the ensuing nerdrage.

Fortunately, the world is a saner place under actualy, functioning human beings than it would be under you hand-wringing failures. Try living in an actual 'police state', then compare it to here. Even better, try living in lawless anarchy, and see how pleasant your whiney little lives are there.

Cameron aims to bring LibDems into government

dave 54
FAIL

Adam 10

Is that your age, or your IQ? I'd beleive either. See many riots on the streets against Brown, and Brown's policies? No? Undertaken any studies to gain a measure of his popularity, compared to Thatcher? Thought not.

I'm no fan of the man, or a voter for his party, but to claim that he's universally-hated, and that you know of no-one who approves of his premiership, is laughably retarded. He was PM because the party chose him as its leader - all above board. Move along, nothing to see (or whine about) here.

Met terror squad beats all complaints

dave 54
WTF?

Has it occurred to any of you blubbering lefties

having not seen the charges filed, that this might actualy might be all above-board?

If roughly half have been handled in-house, as it were, that's a tacit acknowledgement of wrongdoing in 50% of cases. What more do you want? A self-flagellating security service, afraid of its own shadow? Or replace them altogether with bearded hippies brining peace nad harmony through yogic flying?

These are armed, trained men, sent only into the most difficult situations. Sometimes, sh... things happen. Get over it, and stop pouring the whine.

Man posed as teen lesbian to snare girl's nude photos

dave 54
Thumb Down

Pierre...

Did your attention drift before the end of the article, when the ten videos of prepubescent girls were mentioned? That isn't ephebophilia, that's straight-out paedophilia - and whilst I concur that the parents should not be permitting unfettered internet access, to conclude that the fact they did somehow excuses the middle-ages scumbags in question is... bizarre.

Anyway, kids aren't expected to display the same judgement as adults. This is why they can't drink, vote, drive, marry, or - crucially in this case - GIVE CONSENT.

Return to your list of 'fings wot pierre finks is paffetic', and kindly add yourself.