* Posts by Turtle

1888 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2010

Sony implicates Anonymous in PlayStation Network hack

Turtle

Anonymous...

The problem with Sony's contention of Anonymous' culpability is that Anonymous is actually pretty inept; witness their Low Orbit Ion Cannon applet, which has an auto-aim feature that aims it at the users' own foot. Have they ever done anything that is above the capability of a 12-year-old?

Parliamentary committee suspends intellectual property rights inquiry

Turtle

It seems to me. . .

It seems to me that this "Orphan Works" gambit is simply a way to strip copyright protection from everyone except the largest companies, with risk of having one's copyrighted work violated by fraudulently being labeled "orphan" increasing as the size of the copyright-owning entity decreases, with individual artists, not associated with large media companies, essentially being instantly expropriated by anyone who wants to use their work for free.

But then, isn't that really why the whole so-called "Orphan Works" problem has been created? - to give Google and other kleptocratic tech companies the ability to use whatever they want, at no cost to them? Correct answer: Yes.

I would be interested to know if there are any proposed penalties for falsely declaring a work "orphaned", or did Hargreaves not think that this could possibly happen? Or even a procedure that must be gone through before a work is declared an "orphan". No? Is the omission by oversight, or design, one has to wonder.

There may be laws more open to abuse than this, but I can't think of any. . .

Is there anything to find on bin Laden's hard drive?

Turtle

Flash drive vs magnetic drive.

"flash drives are dangerously hard to purge of data, making thumb drives a good starting point"

Although I can't find it now, I am sure that I recently read an article stating that it was more difficult to extract overwritten data from a flash drive than from a standard magnetic drive. This statement and the article linked to seem to state otherwise. Which one is right?

Pakistani IT admin leaks bin Laden raid on Twitter

Turtle

At the risk of going off on a tangent...

Well, does this mean that Obama now supports the death penalty for certain cases? I hope that both Assange and Manning meet the eligibility standards. . . .

Feds move to uninstall bot that hit banks, airports, cops

Turtle

How about this instead?...

"FBI researchers have successfully used the procedure on test computers, but a waiver that infected machine owners are asked to sign releases the feds from any legal liability should things go wrong."

"At no point do federal authorities have any control over infected computers or access to personal data residing on them, and owners who want to opt out of the disinfection routine may do so."

And if they refuse?

How about this: If they refuse to let the FBI clean their machine(s), then they will be given, let's say, 24 hours, and if their machine(s) are still infected, they will then be judged complicit in the damage that the malware does, and be taken to court and be subject to whatever sanctions the law allows.

Or this: make computer owners/users legally responsible for keeping their machines clean, and give ISP's the legal right to disconnect any zombified machines.

Microsoft lobby will turn Google into Microsoft

Turtle

If it was good enough for Microsoft...

If it was good enough for MIcrosoft, it is good enough for everyone else. And if Google and Facebook and variousother actors should not be subject to government oversight, then neither should MIcrosoft have been. But of course, there will be numerous people with agendas who will claim that Microsoft is a special case of some sort. Sadly for them, the law does not rely on double-standards to quite the same extent as they do.

Hacker cops to payment card fraud worth more than $36m

Turtle

For Wales?

"2001 BMW X5 and a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes".

Typical criminal motivation. And you know, it is just so pathetically petty. Reminds me of Sir Thomas Moore in "A Man For All Seasons when he say, - don't recall exactly, sorry - "The Bible says it profits a man nothing if he sells his souls and gains the world. But for Wales, Richard? For Wales?"

And this clown will do 10 years for the sake of a BMW, a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes, and similar garbage. He deserves those 10 years ten times over.

Tim Berners-Lee: Coalition mustn't be 'lazy' on open data

Turtle

Who really cares...?

Oh, isn't this the guy who invented the web? And didn't bother put ANY security or authentication procedures in it?

I wonder who thinks that his opinion is worth listening to? After all, a person can not have less foresight than he does.

German prangs dad's £275k supercar

Turtle

Yes but...

Yes, that's all very nice but was the girl impressed?

World pays tribute to Yuri Gagarin

Turtle

Uh-huh. . .

"Since Gagarin was descended from a long long line of Russian princes, theres more than one reason for a soviet communist wanting to remove him if he was getting a little too popular..."

In keeping with the spirit of the article, let me put it this way: U tebya nyet mozgov, a ge....

Google's patents bid may prompt showdown with Microsoft

Turtle

The Mountain of Money and Maximizing Pain

It would be interesting to see Apple use that mountain of money on which they are sitting to either acquire the Nortel patents, or raise the price so much as to maximize the pain inflicted on Google if Google is so desperate that they want, and must have, those patents "at any price".

A fifth of Europeans can't work out how much a TV costs

Turtle

Gladdens my heart!

"Respondents were next presented with a scenario where two shops were selling identical flat-screen TVs. They were told that in shop A, the price is €500 but a discount of 10% is offered. In shop B, the price is €400. Consumers were asked which TV would be cheaper."

And here I thought that it was only American schools and educational establishments that churned out illiterate, innumerate idiots.

Larry Page to Google staff: Your bonus is tied to Facebook envy

Turtle

There is a reason. . .

"The memo also reportedly demands employees to adopt a kind of Amway model, pushing social media services onto family and friends..."

There is a reason why their families kept them locked in the basement, and frantic screams emanating from behind the basement door about Google social networking products is not exactly going to encourage their families to let them out.

Google may face 'broad US antitrust probe'

Turtle
Happy

Very enjoyable article!

Thanks for a very enjoyable article! I am looking forward to reading many, many more like it.

FSF to Google: Free Gmail's JavaScript now!

Turtle

Freedom. . . .

"Stallman and his followers are not concerned with the freedom of what they call "trivial" JavaScript – code that runs, say, a small animation."

What is *really* trivial here, is the kind of "freedom" for which $tallman and the F$F crusade.

Antarctic ice breakup makes ocean absorb more CO2

Turtle

Care to make a li'l wager...?

"This powerful, previously unknown "negative feedback" would seem likely to revise forecasts of future global warming significantly downwards."

Since no other studies, evidence, or theories disconfirming the Global Warming Hoax have had any impact on the believers, why would *this* be any different, eh?

HMS Ark Royal goes under the hammer

Turtle

Actually. . .

Actually, someone - or, rather, company - *did* put an aircraft carrier on eBay, quite a while back now. I do not recall the name of the vessel or any particulars, - - - scratch all that, here is link to a story on a quite-possibly-reputable site, which will inform you better than I can: http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/briefs/186472-1.html .

Why US antitrust regulators should probe Google search

Turtle

And the guy who recently ran all this. . .

And the guy who recently ran all this, Eric Schmidt, is being considered for Secretary Of Commerce, in spite of ho9w he would seem to be Anti-Competitiveness And Market Position Abuse personified. (And this is to not even mention Google profiting from systematic copyright infringement by the hundreds of millions of dollars per year.)

Busted Romanian TV star fingers Bulgarian airbags

Turtle

Looks like a streetwalker. . .

She looks like a streetwalker affecting gentility.

She also looks like she is about to fall off of the chair that she is barely sitting on. What an irritating mannerism.

Groupon worth 'as much as $25 billion'

Turtle

How do they come with these numbers?

How do they come with these numbers? Are they based on anything real, and if so, then what?

Google copyright purge leaves Android developers exposed

Turtle

Interesting Article

Very interesting article. I am looking forward to reading *many* more like it in the future. And many more there will be, because the kleptomaniacs who run Google are what they are.

Assange ambushes Australian Prime Minister on live TV

Turtle

Very Florid Symptoms

The kind of florid narcissism now being exhibited by Assange has been observed before; the symptoms can sometimes prove lethal to the sufferer.

Hopefully they will prove so in this case, because this kind of self-absorbed self-righteousness *deserves* to have fatal consequences for him.

Google guilty of copyright wrong

Turtle

Here's what to do...

Here's what to do: go to http://www.musictechpolicy.com/ and do some reading. This guy is following Google's actions and inactions very closely, and, unlike you, actually knows something about it. So you can learn something about the situation.

And incidentally, you might not be as smart as you think. Putting a robots.txt is not the stroke of genius you think it is, and doesn't take a lot of brain power. You might want to assume that maybe, just maybe, other people have thought of the idea, and that there could, possibly, be cogent reasons for not putting a robots.txt on a website. And then maybe you could, you know, "look into the matter" and find out why that is not the panacea you seem to think it is.

And how does a robots.txt help with the copyrighted content on Youtube, by the way? Or the source code that Google took from Oracle and released as Open Source? &c &c &c....

Turtle

Ooops!

Oh, and by the way, how does a robots.txt prevent Google from giving Adsense accounts to sites that offer downloads of copyrighted content,and knowingly selling keywords to them that will help these sites attract visitors who want to download copyrighted content? For some reason, I put that in my first post, and you chose to ignore it. But then again, if you think that the solution to the Google Thievery problem is a robots.txt, you are ignoring that, and plenty more besides.

Turtle

Hopefully this is just the beginning...

Hopefully this will be followed by Goggle losses in *many* other similar court cases in *many* other jurisdictions.

These people have profited too much, for too long, by copyright infringement on a massive scale. They have gone beyond resolute refusals to take meaningful action to prevent Adsense financing pirate sites, for example, and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to abridge, curtail, and generally trample on the rights of content creators.

All I need do is remind you is that when Schmidt was faced with the statement that art has an intrinsic value, his response was "Prove it". Of course, the best proof of that statement that artistic creation has value, is Google's insistence on continuing to steal as much of it as possible, and its insistence on generating income by helping other websites that offer stolen, copyrighted content for download.

Hopefully Google will be shown, by more court unfavorable court decisions and massive awards, penalties, and fines that, yes, creative works *do* have an intrinsic value, and profiting by their theft is unacceptable.

Eurofighter Typhoon: It's EVEN WORSE than we thought

Turtle

No, it isn't.

"I read somewhere that the peculiarities of capitalism mean its good to pay people to dig holes and fill them in again. "

You need to read a better book. Henry Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson" would be a good place to start (and that is probably where you would finish, too.)

Turtle

So this is how they are doing it!

Well clearly the political classes in the UK have finally found a way to implement the "unilateral disarmament"-type policies that they seem to have wanted for some time and were not able to implement in a more obvious manner. It would seem to be a continuation "by other means" of the same head-in-the-sand pacifism that prevented the UK from having been able to prepare in any way to meet the threat of Hitler.

London Stock Exchange floored, again

Turtle

Uh-huh. . .

Very enjoyable article. I am looking forward to reading *many* more like it in the future.

: )

Pitiless teen burglar murders three witnesses

Turtle

Well Not Really

"They can apparently recall stuff for up to three months, making the victims in this case potential key prosecution witnesses."

There is no place in the US where a criminal will be brought to trial in three months or less. Not even Juvenile Court or Family Court (which is the courts which have jurisdiction over minors in many places.)

Obama in private confab with Jobs, Zuckerberg, Schmidt

Turtle
FAIL

Typical. . .

The "dumb fuck" at the meeting will be Obama.

Oddly, out of the three companies represented, two are in business built on using data obtained by compromising the privacy of their users, and the only one actually produces a real, physical product, makes their money almost exclusively in the United States with exports representing an insignificant share of their revenue.

And Obama should not be meeting with Schmidt. Obama should be ordering the Attorney General to put Schmidt and the other two assholes he works with, in prison for criminal copyright infringement.

Millennium bugs hit stock exchange

Turtle
Happy

Very enjoyable article

Very enjoyable article. Am looking forward to reading *many* more like it in the future.

Schmidt promises to get 'permission' before taking over our world

Turtle

Wondering. . .

Sometimes I wonder who is more sociopathic: Schmidt (and those other two assholes), or Jobs. Probably Schmidt (and those other two assholes), I think, because whereas Jobs does pay for content, Google just steals everything it can.

Pink Floyd guitarist pays McKinnon's health bills

Turtle

Oooo-kay.

Ah, according to a specialist, MacKinnon is having some problems related to being an asspie, and therefore it might be possible to convince someone or other to intervene and quash his extradition to the US.

How convenient!

First reports on XM-25 Judge Dredd smartgun in A'Stan

Turtle

Ah!

"Essentially, a soldier is very happy when the enemy stops firing at him"

One learns something new every day!

Sat-spotters find secret payload launched by giant US rocket

Turtle

Ooops! Here it is...

Okay, the Gimley Glider page actually had a link to the following page, which is pretty certainly the incident you had in mind:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Turtle

Gimley Glider

Possibly you area thinking of this incident:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimley_Glider

Pirate Party seizes Tunisian ministry

Turtle

What would have been appropriate...

It would have been more appropriate if this happened in Libya, so that he would have been a Barbary Pirate.

Israel and US fingered for Stuxnet attack on Iran

Turtle

On the other hand...

You do know, don't you, that C.O.S.I. states that the U.N.-supported sanctions again Iraq were costing the lives of 25,000 children a year, right?

When you do your arithmetic, you take that into account, right? Or does it not matter?

Turtle

Right, because...

Right. Between Israel and Iran, you can't tell which one is the terrorist because it's pretty obvious that if one nation (Iran, if you don't know) wants to destroy another nation (Israel, if you don't know) and that other nation (Israel, if you don't know) not only does not want to be destroyed, but takes energetic measures to prevent it, then there must be a moral equivalence between the two!

Or maybe not.

Palin's email snooper sent to prison

Turtle

Surprising

Well I am surprised, because he is the son of a (locally) important politician, and it seems that his father's influence did not have the effect that I am sure both father and son wanted it to have.

Even if I didn't think that accessing someone's email account and publicizing its content in order to influence an election should be punished by a prison sentence, the choice between having someone get off because of his father's influence, or serving a prison sentence even if just to show that his father was *not* able to use his influence, has only one really acceptable resolution: send him to prison.

MOSSAD SPY VULTURE seized in Saudi Arabia

Turtle

At the risk of spoiling the fun..

At the risk of spoiling the fun, *someone* has to note that this story illustrates an important contributory factor for the fact that there is no peace in the Mid-East, and that there will be no peace in the Mid-East, and that the only real question is how much radiation the rest of the world will absorb.

Enraged wives hand Pakistani polygamist vicious shoeing

Turtle

Dandy....

I recall the sage advice of Ray Davies, who opined that "Two girls are too many, three's a crowd, and four - you're dead."

Groupon to raise $950m in massive funding round

Turtle

An unanswered question.

It is not possible for me to believe that the actual value of Groupon based on the income it generates, even comes close to justifying a price of even a tenth of Google's offer. And not even a tenth of the $950 million that Groupon wants to raise.

What I don't understand, is how all these stupid people managed to get all this money that they're throwing away.

UK Man cops to £500,000 iTunes royalty scam

Turtle

Something's wrong here...

6000 downloads producing 500,000 pounds equals 83.3 pounds per download.

Where can *I* get that kind of royalty rate?

Grand jury meets to decide fate of WikiLeaks founder

Turtle

It could get worse for Assange,,, a lot worse.

As I understand it, if that 1.4 gigabyte "insurance file" has its password released, and if as a consequence any US agent or ally is killed because of it, then Assange - and probably his cohorts too - will be eligible for the death penalty.

Also, out of all the governments in the world, which of of them would like to see Assange put away for decades? If you answered "Any government that can imagine its own secret documents being released to the public" then right you are!

WikiLeaks' Assange to be indicted for spying 'soon'

Turtle

For what we *must* be grateful.

All I can say is, that we should all be grateful that these learned legal minds are taking some time from their thriving and lucrative legal practices to explain the law to us.

Turtle

About time, too.

Good. And if they can't imprison him, they can examine his finances and where the money comes from and where it goes, and what else he's doing that does not make the news.

Dutch police arrest 16-year-old WikiLeaks avenger

Turtle

Something else that is stupid...

Here is something else that is stupid: your post, and your failure to read the link which I pasted into my previous post.

Let me repeat the salient points:

1) Cryptome calls WIkiLeaks a "criminal organization".

2) WikiLeaks is funded by George Soros, using intermediaries.

3) Soros would not fund WikiLeaks unless he was receiving a return on his investment.

4) According to Cryptome, WikiLeaks is a commercial organization, selling "leaked" material to whoever can afford it. (I would attempt to explain the difference between WikiLeaks and Rupert Murdoch to you, but it seems that you are not capable of understanding it.)

5) WikiLeaks put what must be assumed to be the unedited Iraq files on their server, and threaten to release the password, thereby making any Iraqi who cooperated with the US a hostage. And no one knows how many people have the password to the file, or the circumstances under which someone will release that password.

6) We have been told that the password is a "common phrase". Cleverly, this would tend to mean that the password is weaker than it might otherwise be, thereby putting the lives of the Iraqis mentioned in the files even more at risk.

7) The *clever* course of action for any Moslem fundamentalist or any anti-American group, or intelligence agencies from Pakistan or Iran, would be to assassinate whatever WikiLeak insider(s) they can find. If they can disguise their involvement (not too hard to do, I should think!) this would cause the release of the the password, and permit free access to the identities of the Iraqis, enabling them to be persecuted and killed whenever it would be either convenient or expedient.

YOU might find this entertaining. *I* don't.

MY feeling is, that if WikiLeaks is going to act as an anti-American intelligence agency, then I want them executed. And if they are going to endanger the lives of Iraqis who think that a US-supported government is either the best, or simply least-bad option, and who, for having had the courage to act on this, and as a consequence must now fear for exposure for possibly the rest of their lives, then *I* want everyone involved in running WikiLeaks executed, either judicially or extra-judicially - I really don't care which.

Turtle

Not everyone read the story...

Well, judging by some of the positive comments here, not everyone read the earlier story where Cryptome operator John Young called Wikileaks a "criminal organization", and noted that they were funded indirectly by George Soros, the principal owner of the Democratic Party (bet you didn't know that, now did you?) He further pointed at the obvious fact that Soros expects a good return on his investment. (As an aside, after Soros was unsuccessful in aborting the invasion of Iraq, he invested in Halliburton.) To quote the article, "Young believes Wikileaks is selling its secrets for commercial gain".

For those who missed it, the article is here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/07/cryptome_on_wikileaks/

Personally, I *still* want these people executed.

Wikileaks exposes Clinton's cyberspy wish-list

Turtle

Time's Up!

Okay, as long as Wikileaks is acting as an intelligence organization, conducting espionage against the United States on behalf of any foreign government, I am even more desirous of seeing them killed. Sadly, that probably won't happen.