Posts by Matt Bryant

Snowden leak: GCHQ DDoSed Anonymous & LulzSec's chatrooms

Re: AC

The people on those chat networks are so sad and socially inadequate they really have nowhere else to go.

TFTFY.

Yes, Google can afford to lose $9bn in Motorola sale. But did it really?

Re: "why the fudge Lonovo thought..."

"If Lenovo are planning on making Android phones only, why do they need those patents?....." Unfortunately it seems the mobe wars require a little MAD to keep everyone playing nice. I'm not sure I'd want to be reliant on Google's good will in the long run.....

Re: Goldmember Re: What a mess

".....this looks like a win win win win win for Google." Indeed, but the funny thing is everyone seems to be focusing on the Google side of the deal and no-one seems to have thought to ask why the fudge Lonovo thought it was worth even $1bn without the patents?

Fancy a little kinky sex? GCHQ+NSA will know - thanks to Angry Birds

Re: John Smith IQ19 Nothing new here.

Because everyone that disagrees with you just has to be lying? How open-minded - not!

Re: John Smith IQ19 Re: Nothing new here.

"....There is no chaff." If they wanted a sure wheat-free zone it would be found between your paranoid ears.

Nothing new here.

Sorry, not a verifiable story, but one that I have heard from several different sources so probably has some grain of truth. Waaaaaaay back in the Nineties, the Mossad wanted to track coms between the PLO in Beirut and their operatives and sympathisers abroad. What they noticed was all those clean-living jihadis liked a bit of blonde pr0n, so they made a slightly-adapted version of the game Reversi (where you try to remove marbles from a board to reveal a nude lady) which included a dial-home feature if the game detected a modem. This they distributed through floppy disks sold by street vendors in the Palestinian camps in Beirut. At first it went brilliantly - they started receiving hundreds of modem callbacks from all over the Middle East. Then Europe. Then Asia and the North and South Americas. Then they realised the flaw in their strategy - pr0n has just about universal appeal, even to those that pretend it means nothing to them, and kids will trade games and pr0n with other kids even if they don't share the same ideologies.

I suspect any program to collect data via Angry Birds will run the same issue of generating massive amounts of chaff even when it does provide a little wheat, especially as this is data the users are willingly giving to the marketing companies.

Re: Siemens

"It's interesting that the NSA hacked Siemens, given that Stuxnet targets Siemens kit." The Three-Letter-Agencies (allegedly) took a big interest in many German companies after the UN inspectors after the Gulf War identified them as illegally supplying many of the chemical components and manufacturing kit Saddam used for his chemical and biological weapon programs. Of course, I suspect that interest extended to any German politicians that may have helped the embargo-busting German companies avoid justice. I expect that is how the CIA found out about Iran's SCADA kit. Now, who mentioned Angela Merkel....?

Accused fraudster Charles Shrem quits Bitcoin Foundation board

"'Prolonged legal dispute' just wouldn't look good"

That and the accusations of having been involved in criminal drug deals. He probably hopes he can buy soap-on-a-rope with his Bitcoins!

Israel defence ministry, contractors phished by mystery attacker

US C&C plus off-the-shelf Trojan

= skiddies.

Cisco quietly slips out new all-flash arrays – perhaps it doesn't want EMC, NetApp to notice

Re: Bobsbuddy Re: Agreements don't matter when you play in the channel

"....And in the channel we sell what the solution requires, and couldn't care less what the venders and their swinging d**ks agree to." I had a very amusing example of that the other week. One of the resellers we work with has suddenly got the hots for Lenovo, not because they sell lots of Lenovo laptops or desktops, but because their Lenovo agreement has a low barrieir to entry and gives them access to EMC devices they can sell into UCS deals cheaper without it infringing their CISCO partner agreement.

All credit to CISCO....

....they haven't given up, and bundling in their own AFA is a pretty ballsy statement of intent. It will be interesting to see how this works in practice, for exampe can they have a flash and disk option for autonomic tiering or does that still need an external EMC array and two sets of management tools?

Valve showers Debian Linux devs with FREE Steam games

Re: annodomini2 Re: AC Damn...

".....There are 2 things that bring the gaming houses:

1. Money

2. Money.....Bribes, such as Microsoft's exclusivity contracts." OK, just think about that for a second - suppose I'm the director of a new games company and I have Steam and MS on the phone, both wanting to sell my super duper new game. Steam offers me free games for my team if I port to Linux and sell through them, but MS offers me cold, hard cash to develop it on Windows or Xbox first and stick it on the Live Store.... Yeah, I'm really going to turn down the cash, which will help pay the costs of development and bring me closer to break-even a lot quicker - not!

Re: Vociferous Re: GabeN can afford to give away....

".....There isn't a single game which requires Windows 8 to run, and since all PC games are written for console (8 years old hardware) then ported to PC, the hardware of a five year old PC can run all present titles....." Ironically, Steam actually broke that with updates to Counter Strike Global Ops which screwed audio on the old Counter Strike Condition Zero and made it impossible to run CSGO on older systems that quite happily ran both CSCZ and the initial release of CSGO. Their forums were alight with frustrated players that found Steam was effectively forcing them to upgrade to fully DirectX 10 capable systems in order to play a new game after they had paid for it, but at the same time broke an older game they still wanted to play. They even broke the workaround of the old dxlevel startup option. So, no, Steam has not retained the ability to run everything on old PCs.

Re: AC Re: Damn...

"....Uncle Gabe is going to get a lot of devs helping to port games." Well, yes and no. This kind of offer generates publicity amongst the Linux community and spurs individual contributors that are also gamers, but to attract professional coders and games software companies requires more business-like incentives. Uncle Gabe seems to have realised the correctness of Balmer's "developers, developers, developers" schpiel, he just needs to find a way to attract the companies to Steam on Linux as well as the geeks.

IBM dive-bombs into all-flash array pool

Re: ben_myers Re: What in hell is an SVC?

In this case it's an IBM appliance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_SAN_Volume_Controller) that you stick in front of your different arrays and other storage goodies and the SVC allows you to pool it and carve it up as you like (within limits). The advantages are easy moving of data between different storage devices and tiers "transparently" and centralised presentation of multiple and different storage devices, and the SVC can handle replication between totally different devices that may not even have a built-in replication capability. The downside is everything - all SAN traffic - has to go via the SVC node(s), potentially creating one mother of a bottleneck. Oh, and the fact the licenses involved ain't cheap!

Re: PowerFUD Re: Wow! FUDfest 2014!

Whatever. Shall we compare? Me - "look for the features that suit your requirement"; you - "IBM 840 is the best, ignore everyone else and only talk to your IBM rep." Yeah, just so similar.

Wow! FUDfest 2014!

Certainly a novel approach to an article - simply trawl the vendors for their PoVs and not offer any analysis.

Whilst it is fun to watch the Elmers spewing their bile, the first thing to bear in mind is all these guys (and that includes the IBM responses and Mr IBM Marketing Drone PowerMan) is that what you need to do is look at your requirement and THEN ask questions. The competition will love to compare the 840 to real arrays as then they can point out all the features they say their array gives you but the 840 does not - all fine if you actually need those features, but "feature-sell" if you do not.

I've used the TMS RamSAN devices on hp-ux RAC clusters as simple, superfast solutions, with a TMS system per node to provide direct flash. That is because the old TMS devices were "dumb" flash. They were definitely not smart arrays. The new IBM 840 seems to be more of the same - a dumb flash device - as it seems to require SVC to do anything smart. So, if your requirement is just local, superfast flash for an application, then it would seem a viable option, and IBM will probably price it competitively, but if what you actually need is a tiered array with a flash tier then the 840 does not seem to be the right option, even with SVC.

So, before you speak to IBM or the competition (and, TBH, just avoid PowerMan completely) work out what you actually NEED in your environment to make your applications work, not what the salesgrunts want to sell you.

US govt watchdog slams NSA snooping as illegal, useless against terrorism

Re: Eguro Loopy Wankinmasta Martin Gregorie Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

"....you seem to be unable to answer the main point of replies, that being why you are in a position to question the findings of the "The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board"...." No, it is you that cannot see that I do not need to answer it as their position is just an opinion (and not even an unanimous one at that). It carries no legal weight, unlike the actual judiciary that have already said the NSA's activities are COMPLETELY legal. I do not need to reply as it has already been legally settled. So, shall we review? You are trumpeting an opinion piece that happens to back your sheeple POV, whereas my argument has already been made by the actual people that sit in judgement. In short, you lose, I win.

".....And if we really are just keeping them around so their presence is somehow perceived...." LOL, you really haven't got a clue, have you? More than half of the value of the military and security services is in that they prevent our enemies from acting freely. Think of it as deterrent, if you like, just like paying for life insurance. I'd expand further on the last point but I doubt if you're old enough to buy insurance or make any similar investment.

Re: JP19 Re: The big issue in a nut shell

"....It didn't require much intelligence to figure out 3 or 4 suicidal loons armed with small knives could hijack an airliner and crash it into a building...." Actually, it did seem beyond the capabilities of certain politicians to see such a possibility. Firstly, all the scenarios the FAA and other authorities operated under assumed any hijackings inside the continental US would be domestic terrorists or criminals, i.e., not the type interested in either suicide or crashing planes into buildings. Secondly, they assumed all such hijackers would want to negotiate, hence the lack of orders to shoot down the remaining airliners even after the first impact. Everyone assumed that even Middle-Eastern terrorists operating in the States would follow the pattern of the old skyjackings - treat the passengers as valuable bargaining chips for the release of comrades in prisons. Instead, the 9/11 hijackers considered the passengers as nothing more than an inconvenience in their aim to use the airplanes as weapons.

Unfortunately, that preconception extended to the flight crews who DID have doors with locks. When the hijackers started killing people the crews unlocked the cabin doors in the hope of stopping the killing, thinking that would then lead to the type of negotiated scenario they had been told to expect. No-one expected the hijackers to be able to fly so the pilots thought they would be safe to negotiate, nor that the hijackers would be happy to slaughter their captives anyway. 9/11 was new, it went completely against the expected scenarios, and door locks made SFA difference. In the case of one of the planes, the passengers heard the news, guessed what the hijackers planned for their flight, and rallied to smash the locked door to get into the cockpit, forcing the hijackers to crash in the countryside.

Hindsight is always 20-20, it is foresight that is rarely so.

Re: Eguro Re: Loopy Wankinmasta Martin Gregorie Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

"Well if it hadn't been for incompetent terrorists there would have been a few attacks that were not prevented by the NSA...." So why do you think the AQ actions in the US currently consist of the largely ineffective actions of lone-wolves? 9/11 showed AQ has the will, planning capability, monetary means and dedicated, capable personnel, to mount large attacks in the US, why do you think they have been unable to replicate their success since? Do you seriously think they decided one was enough? Oh, sorry, I just asked you to think, something very, very obviously beyond your capabilities.

Re: ObnoxiousTwit Re: ObnoxiousLyingTwit ObnoxiousTwit Anon Cluetard Boston...

"....and citing terrorist bombings as proof that we need it....." And citing terrorist bombings that are HAPPENING in areas where our security services are NOT in the same position to operate effectively, and where the indigenous sympathetic population does not feel as constrained as the sympathisers in the West do. Why do you think the GCHQ wanted to tap cables for the Middle East - because the locals aren't keen on sharing. Your problem is you cannot see the difference. In the areas with high bombings the Allies either do not have control or have given over control to newly rebuilt local security services. In the case of Iraq, all the careful work of the Allies in Anbar is being rapidly reversed by the Shia administration in pursuance of their anti-Sunni agenda. The CIA reportedly refuses to share intelligence on former Sunni friends in Anbar with the new Iraqi administrationa as they know most of it goes straight to Tehran, Syria and Lebanon (Hezbollah) and is used for bloody reprisals against the Sunni clans that straddle those countries.

In Afghanistan it is almost as bad, with an imminent withdrawal of Allied forces being politically played by Kharzai trying to big himself up as an anti-Imperialist. You may think that quite pointless as the new Afghan constitution says Kharzai cannot stand for a third term anyway, not unless he intends to extend his rule by using the failure of negotiations with the Taliban as an excuse to invoke emergency powers. Kharzai's stance is devious as it insists the US and Pakistan have to negotiate a solution with with the Taliban before he will sign the post-war security agreement, which is effectively stopping the Pakistani Army mounting a proper offensive in Waziristan. The Pakistanis seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place - the Yanks no longer trust the ISI and seem to share very little intelligence with them, preferring to drone the Taliban and AQ leaders they find, and the Taliban can act up as much as they like as they know the Pakistani government needs to negotiate to appease Kharzai and the Yanks. The current anti-Shia ethnic cleansing going on in Northern Waziristan is the result, keeping all parties from the negotiating table and - as us cynics might suggest - Kharzai in power.

I'd suggest you go read some real news but your head is probably on the verge of exploding.

Re: ObnoxiousLyingTwit Re: ObnoxiousTwit Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

"Yes, yes I do...." Pull the other one, it has bells on! It is VERY obvious your reality filter does not allow you to see beyond you baaaah-lieve. You most obviously did NOT have a clue as to the bombings in Iraq on 15th April 2013, just as you seem completely unable to register the actions of AQ and their chums in any other part of the World not appearing on the children's editions of the TV news. I suggest you go away and do a lot more reading before you try again.

Re: Loopy Wankinmasta Re: Martin Gregorie Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

".....That explains the collection of Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone data...." That was diplomatic spying, something that predates the creation of the USA. I'd try and explain the difference but I suspect you're too busy self-abusing to be able to pay the required level of attention (and please note I am generously suggesting you are capable of the required level of attention, something definitely not suggested by your posts).

".....and I'm sure the NSA will be only too happy to look the other way....." As a signatory to the OSA I am already on more than one list, but I have no problems with the NSA or GCHQ monitoring. Maybe that's because - unlike you - I have a clue.

Re: the aptly named Idiot Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

"No. I didn't...." So why did you try to claim there had been no such attacks?

".....Any more than I missed extensive bombings in the UK, carried out by Irish activists largely, publicly and unashamedly funded by North American money....." The IRA's campaigns, whilst dreadful for us Brits (yeah, suck on that you preconceiving moron), was relatively minor compared to AQ's campaigns in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh, and BTW, the GCHQ was listening for IRA coms back in those days too, you numpty. How else do you think we knew about the Gibraltar three, do you think the fairies told us? So I take it you support the GCHQ efforts to track the IRA but somehow don't support their efforts to find AQ sympathisers and operatives? How selective.

".....or that the gathering they were carrying out, to whatever degree, was ineffective...." The gathering was partially effective, it was the analysis and sharing of the data that was ineffective. This has since been very carefully overhauled (remember that whole Patriot Act, it had quite a bit on data-sharing?). As with any such operation it is continually evolving and improving. Oh, what - your inexperience of these matters (and lack of imagination) led you to baaah-lieve was a design-once affair? Boy, you really do like embarrassing yourself in public!

Re: ObnoxiousTwit Re: Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

".....You really think Americans being killed by bombs being detonated in America didn't deserve airtime...." <Sigh> Look, it's obvious you have serious comprehension problems, but even a cretinous sheep like yourself should be able to understand that the point being made was what we consider horrific (three people killed) simply does not make the news here when it happens in other parts of the World. Take Iraq, for instance, where daily bombings kill many more - do you ever read about those events? Do you consider American lives to be more newsworthy, somehow more valuable, than Iraqi lives? The Boston bombings were on April 15th 2013 and got massive coverage in the West for weeks, yet that very same day there were ten fatal bombings reported in Iraq, killing a total of 42 people (and it's not known how many of the injured died since) - none made the Western news. Of those ten bombings four have subsequently been shown to be the work of AQ and as many as three others are thought to be AQ-linked. Those four known AQ attacks alone killed 22 people that same day, but you will never have known about them because you were too busy bleating in tune with the rest of your flock and only following your sheeple-approved news sources. Congratulations on demonstrating exactly how blinkered a moron you are.

The Boston bombings got such airtime BECAUSE the activities of the security services have ensured such events are very rare in the West, whilst they are daily happenings in countries AQ and chums are able to operate in.

Re: AC Re: the aptly named Idiot Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

"Okay, That's two...." That's after your fellow sheeple insisted there hadn't been any attacks (presumably because he has the memory retention of a goldfish). And yet you still want to argue the point? LOL, you sheep really want to baaaah-lieve!

Re: Invidious Aardvark Re: Martin Gregorie Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

".....How the hell do they work out which pattern of calls is me calling my friend with a joke ...." Well, in your case they probably look at your scholastic records and realise you're too stupid to tie shoelaces, let alone make a bomb. But I suspect the NSA and FBI do spend a lot of time sifting out the wheat from the chaff, it's called analysis, go look it up.

Re: ObnoxiousTwit Re: Cubical Drone The big issue in a nut shell

"....an organisation which was created by the people your American three letter agencies trained to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan." Another myth that the sheeple perpetuate. The CIA funded the mujahideen, mainly the Northern Alliance, although they did also indirectly arm and train some people like the Southern drug lords (such as the Hekmatyar clan) to fight the Soviets that have since become allies of the Taliban. They did not directly fund, arm or train Al Quaeda, they sent funds for groups outside the Northern Alliance to the Pakistani ISI as part of Operation Cyclone. NONE of those organisations was created by the CIA, not the tribal groups that formed the Northern Alliance, the drug lords or AQ, they ALL pre-dated US involvement. Bin Laden formed his group which was later renamed Al Quaeda with Saudi money. He always received the majority of his funding from Saudi sources, and all linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (who ran the "services office" for AQ in Peshawar), he simply did not rename his organisation Al Quaeda until August 1988.

The US's involvement began after the Soviets backed the Karmal regime in the Afghan civil war. The US strategic view was to stopping Soviet expansion into Pakistan (the USSR had a long term strategic goal of gaining a port on the Indian Ocean). The POTUS that started it all was not Reagan, despite what the sheeple like to pretend, but their second fave Dummicrat POTUS, Jimmy Carter, in 1979. Reagan subsequently expanded Carter's program after the Soviet invasion, bringing in the CIA's "special advisers" (including British ex-SAS mercenaries), which worked with parties approved by the Pakistani ISI. Amusingly, the ISI was also receiving funding for the mujahideen not only from other Western countries but also China, but you never hear the sheeple trying to claim the Chinese funded AQ. No CIA funds went to AQ unless they were secretly diverted by the ISI, and seeing as AQ was receiving about $600m per year in Saudi funding it is extremely unlikely the ISI saw a need to. But by then the CIA and FBI were already investigating AQ, especially their recruitment operations in the States and their links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another myth is that AQ played some major part in the war against the Soviets, but this is again more propaganda and fantasy. At any one time there were approximately 250,000 Afghans being armed and trained with CIA money to fight the Soviets, but there were never more than 2000 non-Aghans involved (mainly Arabs) at any time, and that includes other Islamist groups as well as AQ. AQ spent more of their time assassinating anyone they perceived as not supporting their desire for a "pure" Islamic caliphate in Afghanistan (such as Ahmed Shah Massood, who led the Northern Alliance and fought against the Soviets and then the Taliban). The majority of the estimated 35,000 AQ-trained men did not even enter Afghanistan until after the Soviet withdrawal, with most of AQ's efforts being in fighting those that opposed the Taliban after the Soviets had left.

So, no, WilmerHale are not operating under any moral obligation whatsoever, probably just fat Saudi cheques. Now, do you see how a little actual reading and understanding of the subject could help you avoid looking so stupid again?

Re: the aptly named Idiot Re: Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

".....Which was, um, when?" So you missed the Twin Towers bombing and 9/11?

Re: Martin Gregorie Re: Anon Cluetard Boston Marathon Bombing

"....The NSA and their bosses have said that the mass grab of CDRs (Call Data Records) is aimed at "preventing terrorism" pure and simple..." Not true. The collection of metadata is aimed at the disruption and tracking of GROUPS such as AQ, by finding the communication BETWEEN members of the group. The Boston nutters were just that, lone-wolf nutters and NOT members of a terrorist group. They are exactly what al-Zwahiri has been asking for BECAUSE the NSA and CIA and FBI have made it almost impossible for AQ cells to operate in the US without being detected. The best way to stop lone-wolf nutters is exactly the same best way as to stop the type of nutters that like shooting up schools - make communities and families take more attention of their own and keep the psychos under observation. Oh, but then I suppose you'll start bleating about nutters' rights then.

Re: Oh Homer Re: "if there was another major terrorist attack"

"....maybe if the US dropped its invasive foreign policy...." ROFL! One day the dictators at the UN are complaining about the US policy, the next they are begging the US to provide forces and money and to be the World police they complained about the day before. One day the sheeple are delighted with Obambi making speeches in Cairo, the next they are bleating about how the Arab Spring hasn't brought the World peace, love and understanding. Here's a clue - the problems in the World, especially the problems in the Middle East, long pre-date the creation of the United States, let alone US foreign policy.

Re: Anon Cluetard Re: Boston Marathon Bombing

"That happened at the full height of covert surveillance...." The Marathon Bombing wasn't an AQ-co-ordinated plot and only got airtime because of the LACK of real AQ attacks in the US (BEACUSE of the surveillance systems in place). In places like Iraq or Syria or most of Africa it wouldn't even make the news.

Re: Cubical Drone Re: The big issue in a nut shell

".... if there is a major attack the the chants will be "why didn't you do something to stop this" and "we want security, we want security"." In the case of the Pee-CLOB, also known as the WilmerHale Plan B, it seems they are quite happy to play it both ways, making money on such boards whilst also representing AQ members in Gitmo. I assume an attack to them just means more opportunities.

http://www.pclob.gov/about-us/leadership

Achtung NIMBYs! BT splurges extra £50m on fibre broadband rollout

Re: Jim 59 Re: Nimby here

".... why not put it down a side alley....." If it upsets you that much why don't you and the rest of the Rotary Club hold a whist drive and plant some hedges round the cabinet.

Microsoft loses cash on each Surface slab – but core biz strong as ever

Re: Pottie

So you missed the bit where M$'s cloud revs grew better than expected? Even ignoring Azure (which seems to have quite capably denied the continual reports of its imminent demise), M$ can afford to have traditional desktop app sales drop off if they are matched (or exceeded) by cloud subscriptions to services like Office 365. And the good news for M$ on the cloud model is it is virtually pirate-proof, and is a continual revenue stream that will usually provide more income over the years than a one-off software license sale. Which is why they're probably not too fussed about making a loss on Surface as everyone seems to go for an Office 365 subscription with the tablet. I even know plenty of iPad owners that are using Office 365, and I'm told I can use it with Android devices too, which probably makes Google and Apple rage as M$ piggybacks them and increases M$'s revenues!

Those NSA 'reforms' in full: El Reg translates US Prez Obama's pledges

Re: Bong Sucker Re: Bong Puffer Aim Off Due to Parallax

Your whole post just amount to more of the usual anti-military bleating the sheeple have been dishing out since the Sixties, and it was yawntastic then when your mom was putting flowers in her hair and acid down her throat.

Oh, and I see how you completely avoided answering the question about what you think has stopped AQ launching more spectacular attacks in the UK and US if not the work of our security services. I guess you just don't like thinking too much about that one, it probably makes your head hurt. Just better if you take another drag on the pipe and repeat some more canned bleats you think are "smart'n'cool". Enjoy your ignorance.

Re: Bong Puffer Aim Off Due to Parallax

"The lack of terror attacks is no more indicative of effective anti-terror policies...." Wow, you are so determined to baaaah-lieve you simply refuse to acknowledge the evidence right in front of you. I bet you're one of those loons that insist seatbelts don't actually make anyone safer, or that brushing your teeth doesn't actually help dental hygiene. What a sad little sheeple you are. 9/11, 7/7 and the Madrid bombings all showed AQ had not just the commitment, the planning ability and money to make such attacks, but sympathisers in the West willing to work for them. You can pretend all you like but sticking your fingers in your ears and bleating is not going to change those simple facts. If you want to pretend it is not the actions of the security services, including the eavesdropping activities of the NSA and GCHQ, then please do explain why you think AQ has been unable to mount another spectacular in either the US or UK?

".... I do salute you for not waking up every morning and deleting the intellectual graffiti you sprayed all over the Internet the night before...." You sheeple do so hate a dissenting voice, it really gets your flock agitated, doesn't it?

".....US and UK military actions have killed AQ's second in command 76 times in the last 13 years...." Male bovine manure. Al Zwahiri has always been the AQ #2 right up until Bin Liner got sent to sleep with the fishes (very apt given the POTUS's Chicago background). If you can't even get basic facts like that correct then maybe you should just give up now, it will only make others laugh at you even harder.

"....But as a rule, replacing the #2 position several times a year and still have the operational cohesion to be considered a threat....". And ther's those big blinkers in action again! Even the Arab press have been noting how Al Zwahiri is unable to control his organisation due to his inability to communicate with them securely and quickly, which is due to the NSA/CIA-and-chums tearing his organistaion to shreds.

".....generally aren't considered signs of a weakened organization..." You really don't have a clue, do you? Consider that if I have a thousand terrorists, a small number of that thousand will be smarter and better terrorists and will get the top jobs. If I have to keep replacing the smart and better ones every time they get killed, pretty soon I'm having to fill top slots with mediocre or even sloppy terrorists. That is exactly what has happened to AQ - their experienced fighters have been killed or captured and now they're scraping the barrel. They still present a threat - even a sloppy terrorist with enough money and weaponry can kill when faced with mediocre security services and a population riddled with sympathisers, as seen in Pakistan. But their chances of mounting an operation in the West to rival 9/11 are massively reduced. Not eliminated, but not reduced to the point where we want to stop the NSA and co from looking for them. Now hurry back to school, you have a lot of learning to catch up on.

Re: Bong Puffer Re: Aim Off Due to Parallax

"....Current 'anti-terror' policies are being negatively affected by parallax...." Nice to see you understand the visual physics of parallax, even if you are wilfully blind to the effectiveness of our secret services. The ongoing lack of large attacks in either the US or UK, the fact that AQ is currently begging lone-wolf nutters to do their bidding because AQ can't mount effective operations in the West, all would seem to suggest the current policies are being much more effective than you want to give them credit for. Please do try and pretend AQ and chums would not dearly like to be setting off bombs in our countries with the regularity that they do in Pakistan or Iraq.

".....That will never, ever be effective....." There's a long list of Taliban, AQ and other assorted Islamist terrorists that would love to cheer you on, only they can't because the targeting put a bomb or a missile on their heads. Which kind of implies the offence team is working as well as the defence team, and that you are talking out of your rectum.

Re: T.F.M. Reader Brief summary of the (very good) summary

".....However we, the public, do assume that the spying is targetted at the nations' enemies and those that could potentially be enemies....." Merkel is the leader of a foreign nation that competes with US (and the UK) economically and in World politics. When Merkel makes a speech that could impact foreign policy of the US (or UK), such as on the replacement of NATO with a "European Army", or Turkish integration into the EU, or trade with India or China, it is of invaluable worth for Obambi and Cameron to know as much about her decision in advance. This is diplomatic spying and is and always has been actually MORE prevalent than traditional spying on "bad guys". Anyone that thinks the members of the EU don't spy (diplomatically and commercially) on each other is laughably naive.

".....The NSA seems to be spying on pretty much everyone, even their own people and indiscriminately so....." As the article (and even Snowdope) points out, all the NSA's activities are very tightly targeted. The idea that anyone has enough processing power and analytical staff to monitor the whole Internet, plus eavesdrop telecoms, is simply to vacuous for words. Even the NSA and GCHQ have budget limits, which means the spies have to target what they resources they have on what their political masters, Obambi and Cameron (and in the BND's case, Merkel), tell them to spy on. To think that the politicians would allow their spy services to run rampant and unchecked is to fail to understand that the politicians are usually the most paranoid about their secrets and control. To think the politicians let the spies do anything other than advise on policy is amusing. Obambi may stand up and pretend the NSA business is news to him but he is just playing politics, he will have been very sure to make himself very aware of EXACTLY what his spy agencies get up to the minute he got into the Whitehouse.

".....Clearly this cannot be justified under any circumstances." Clearly you were too busy wringing your hands to think it through. I have no problem whatsoever with the GCHQ or NSA activities in exactly the same way as I have no problem with a beat Bobbie walking down my street, but that maybe because I'm not subject to fits of paranoid-induced fantasies of self-importance. Get over yourself, you are of zero importance to anyone.

Re: AC Re: Wow.... I accept your challenge sir. This is no place for consensus

".....Many other countries can provide examples of this approach such as Canada and the European Union....." Ah, I see you're one of those that swallowed the myth that Europe (usually meaning "Old Europe") is blessed with a Nirvana of a legal system, with a judiciary held accountable to the people, and complete and open control of their security services compared to the Evil States. It might interest you to know many countries in Europe do not have jury trials for anything other than the most serious of crimes. In the supposed Liberal wonderland of Sweden they rarely have any form of trial by jury. Which means actions against the government in most of Europe depend on you getting the judiciary on your side, not a jury of peers.

And the EU already has some of the strongest retention laws imposed on their telecoms industries in the World. The NSA is on record as saying they envy what they see as the more shielded and hidden operating environment the European spooks have (especially the GCHQ).

Re: T.F.M. Reader Re: Brief summary of the (very good) summary

"....Foreign heads of state should have means to ensure security of their comms, regardless of US promises to behave....." Don't be silly. The Germans, along with every other country in the World, will have spent a small-to-large fortune on trying to secure their leader's coms. They do so not just against the NSA but against other states like Russia and China, commercial spies, hackers, reporters, and just plain nutters. The fact the German counter-SIGINT failed means either they weren't as effective as they thought or Merkel ignored their advice (possibly like how Obambi did with his insistence on keeping his commercial Blackberry when he was elected). The German team will review their processes, possibly make some changes (which Merkel may not ignore this time round), and the great chess game of Spy-vs-Spy will continue.

BTW, please note that no EU leader is saying they will never spy on others, or that they would not spy on the POTUS. In that department, MI6 and MI5 have alleged history, having spied on (amongst others) the US Ambassador to the UK in the run up to WW2 (due to his anti-British, suspected pro-IRA and known pro-Nazi leanings). Us Brits allegedly continued surveillance of the Ambassador's family post-War, including his son in his political career, one John F. Kennedy....

Top Microsoft bod: ARM servers right now smell like Intel's (doomed) Itanic

Re: Lennart Sorensen Re: Dinosaur MS

In the server area, most people really don't really care about anything but Windows. Serious business users run Windows on x86 just fine already.

There, fixed it for you by adding a bit more Worldly perspective and a lot less geekboi invective. You may choose to believe otherwise, but maybe you should try reading a few IDC or Gartner reports before you pretend "real server users" are not using Windows. Or you could just peruse a few El Reg articles on the market, such as TPM's review of the analysts figures, which show how M$ is still the business platform of choice and growing in share. Enjoy!

NSA: It's TRUE, we grab 200 MILLION of your text messages A DAY globally

Re: lambda-beta Re: Jon Callas, CTO of secure messaging biz Silent Circle

".....But it wasn't "thrown together for convenience", it was thrown together to make money - lots of money! And the public, like all things they don't understand, were duped into thinking it was the greatest thing since sliced bread." Actually, the telecoms were largely caught out by the success of SMS. I was contracting in the telecoms industry when SMS came out and the telecoms were all betting on WAP as "the next big thing", SMS was largely forgotten child when it came to budgeting, especially advertising. It was the market, the people, that decided SMS was the killer feature, not some devious scheme of the telecoms. Sorry, the people have to take the blame for "duping themselves" into mass usage of what actually turned out to be a popular service.

Re: nsld Re: @Matt

"Please explain how many targetted individuals the NSA are following if they need tap into 200 million texts per day....." Please try and borrow a clue from a responsible adult - they are gathering metadata so they can quickly map the people terrorists communicate with when they discover a new or potential terrorist. This was shown with the Boston Marathon bombers - whilst it was almost impossible to have found them beforehand, the quick access to their coms patterns meant the FBI could start checking on their acquaintances to see if they were also suspects. If they had of been part of a larger cell rather than lone-wolf nutjobs then the larger cell would probably have been detected. You are assuming the lack of success of people like AQ means they do not have sympathisers constrained from acting in the States or Europe. An example of sympathisers that ignore the monitoring is Jihad Jane, who wasn't too smart about her coms.

Re: Adam 1

"> This sounds a lot, but bear in mind US mobile users alone send an estimated six billion texts a day.

Oh ok. Well that is fine and dandy then."

Yes, it's actually around the 3% mark if it only counted US SMS traffic. But the sheeple can't see that, they insist the NSA is stopping and reading every SMS, every email, every Twatter, and all the emails too, all whilst watching and recording every single click the sheeple make on their compoohtahs - a baaaah-lief simply too stupid for words. There's an Intel slide (http://scoop.intel.com/what-happens-in-an-internet-minute/) that sums it all up nicely when it talks about the growth in the Internet, and it talks about the average traffic flowing across the 'net every minute. Just in video alone, if you were to sit and watch ALL the video uploaded across the 'net in that one minute it would take you thrity hours, and that's before you try tracking the 1.3 million video viewings going on concurrently. Email is worse with 204 million emails - even if they could read every sngle one, it would take years to do any form of actual information gathering on that size of a data pool without very selective targeting, and that's just one minute's worth! Oh, and the data on the slide is two years out of date - it points out that the number of devices feeding the Internet will have doubled over those when the measure was made by next year. But I suspect the real problem is that the sheeple have a counting problem - "one, two, many, panic!"

Clink! Terrorist jailed for refusing to tell police his encryption password

Re: Ben Norris Re: Not "complying" is the crime, not the results of complying.

"What is wrong with this law is that if you happen to have an encrypted file which you genuinely can't remember or never knew the password of, you can be sent to jail....." IF you are arrested in conjunction with a very narrow list of crimes, so Joe Public losing his password has nothing to fear. Just paedophiles, drug dealers, people smugglers and terrorists. Oh, and sheeple.

Re: Lamb0 Re: Perhaps...

"....y willfully incriminating himself for the credit card fraud investigation; his next batch with 25 to 50+ years of consecutive sentences will be reduced by, maybe, four months?" IMHO, hopefully they'll sentence him to a long enough sentence the four months will be about ten years after he dies.

Re: nsld Re: The problem is

"That you are viewing the law from an incredibly narrow perspective....." Reallly? I suspect you want us to see it from your incredibly brain-dead, paranoid-induced perpsective, yes?

".....Given how inept our police are what happens if Constable Savage decides that your screenname "nuked" suggests you might be a dodgy bomb wielding terrorist and he raids your house and takes all your IT kit and lots of USB keys. Included in this is a USB memory stick that isn't yours that a friend must have dropped, its encrypted and you don't have the password. But the USB stick was recovered in a search of your home and therefore its your responsibility and thanks to RIPA you get some jail time for failing to provide the key....." And this has happened when? Surely, by your insistance this must be happening five times a day in every town in the land, right? Except it is not, outside of your fevered imagintaion. Please grow up.

"......Welcome to our brave new UK police state world." Sorry, but that just came across as "baaaah, baaaah, baaaah."

Re: Richard Barnes Re: The Golden Thread

".....his waxing lyrical over the Golden Thread that ran through British justice....." Yeah, well that are a lot of old laws that people used to wax lyrical over - like being able to beat your servant, employ children to clean chimneys and work down mines, or shoot Welshmen with a longbow if they enter Chester after midnight (oops! that one's still legal! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6204511.stm). Laws change and develop as the society we live in develops and faces new challenges.

".....The right to silence......" The Section 49 bit does not remove his right to silence, it merely allows him to be prosecuted for obstructing the Police investigation in a very narrow set of circumstances.

"....The presumption of innocence and the fact that the burden of proof rests with the prosecution....." He was already found guilty of the terrorism charges which meant the Police were free to insist he decrypted the drive in the interest of protecting others. The fact it turned out to be related to a different crime (fraud( is neither here nor there as these twits were trying to use the stolen credit card numbers to fund their terror plans.

"....The right not to be tried twice for the same offence...." Where does it say he was tried a second time for the same offence? First charge for terrorism, second for not answering a Section 49.

Hosting outfit goes PERMANENTLY TITSUP after 'lifetime' plans kill biz

Hmmmm.....

Did they "expire" before or after the senior management and shareholders all extracted copious amounts from the company? After all, it sounds like a great scam - start a "lifetime" service, get loads of punters/marks to sign up, pay select staff and shareholders a fat wedge, then wind up the company. Since they haven't declared themselves bankrupt I doubt there will be any legal investigation of where the money went, especially if they covered themselves with the "sustainable" clause and no refunds.