Posts by Tron

Egypt loses last vestiges of connectivity

Internet over amateur radio.

http://www.echolink.org/

Simples.

Cisco promises half a billion dollars for Cameron's BIG idea

And in other news...

"Government put brakes on Bribery Act" [Reg.]

Competition closed

Ah yes.

Virtual iOS.

Reverse engineered from scratch.

Ask Compaq to code it. Those guys have form.

Google boss preps seriously 'wonky' book

It is a truth universally acknowledged...

...that ghost-written books are shite.

UK.gov 'HyperHighway' aims to 'speed up the internet by 100x'

Dear Mr. Willetts,

Thankyou for your recent order. Your order is now being processed.

Should you wish to amend your order, please log in to your Amazon account.

Your order...

Plastic Cup. Economy. x 60000000 £6800000.00

1 mile String. x 4000 £400000.00

You chose Free Economy Delivery (2-4 days).

Thankyou for your order.

UK cops arrest five in Anonymous attacks probe

Arresting kids for political protests?

Didn't they do that in the late 30s in Germany?

Peaceful digital e-protests and the law kicks down the door.

Rather saddened that so many Reg posters feel the need to put the boot in on kids who give a damn taking on large corporates. When did you guys sell your souls to the dark side and start wearing jackboots? Looking forward to seeing the idealism terrorised from them are you?

When you need the police, and you get a crime number, just remember that Mastercard didn't get a crime number. They got police raids at the taxpayers' expense.

That's Mastercard, who charged around 25% interest all the way through the credit crunch.

If this was 1939, whilst the tabloids were attacking Jewish asylum seekers as illegal immigrants, would you be supporting the arrest of kids trying to DDoS the German embassy with spam phone calls?

Shame on you for so gleefully siding with governments trying to cover up their misdeeds and their friends in large corporations.

Intel pumps $100m into university research

A good way to cherry-pick talent.

Relatively cost effective and good PR too.

Microsoft Research Cambridge kicked off in 1997. Same deal.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/cambridge/default.aspx

Israelis seize woman packing 44 iPhones

Ah yes, the global economy, free trade...

...international price differentials and import taxes.

Your government is only doublethinking of you. You should be grateful. If they weren't screwing you every which way, the sky would fall in!

UK tech retailers are rubbish

Well what do you expect?

High street shops are not there to educate the public. They are there to make as much money as they legally can. That's 'legally', not 'ethically'. What part of free market economics are you having trouble understanding?

Utilitybidder gets disconnected by developer

Jarndyce v Jarndyce.

To take anyone to court requires so much time, effort and money, that for anything less than a third of your expected annual income it is pointless and self-defeating. The legal system really doesn't give a toss about you. They don't do justice, they do due process of law. This ensures that lawyers make money, a lot of it. For the rest of us, the legal system is just butthurt, grief and aggro, and lots of it. Even if you are the good guy. Even if you have a just cause. Even if you are standing in a pool of white light from on high with a halo and wings.

You might get some relief by posting an honest account of your experiences in a blog to prevent others from falling prey to those who screwed you, but even then, there are libel lawyers out there who will happily destroy someone for publicly telling the truth. And the bad guys might take more direct action if you upset them.

The legal system and justice are two entirely separate things. You want a world of grief and a chunk out of your life and pocket? Phone a solicitor. Otherwise, just accept that you've been screwed and walk away.

Never get in so deep that you become reliant on one deal and do everything that is humanly possible to avoid the English legal system. Even if that means handing over your hard-earned money to someone who has cheated you and watching them walk away smiling. Actually going to court as the good guy is still worse than that.

It doesn't work and they have absolutely no plans to fix it because it works for them just way it is.

Beeb say sorry for Stephen Fry A-bomb quip

FFS, BBC.

Grow a pair.

W3C apologizes for HTML5 brand confusion

WHATTF? They get paid for this?

So you can have an HTML5 compliant browser that won't play HTML5 video because the codecs are not defined and some aren't open, the big guns throwing their toys out the pram and re-running the old VHS/Betamax thing.

And you can have HTML5 called HTML by WHATWG that won't work on an 'HTML compliant' browser because HTML <> WHATWG HTML.

And they couldn't even get the logo right. Have these guys ever considered a career in politics? They'd fit in so easily.

I guess we'll all have to run with HTML5ish* and hope that HTML6 will only involve entirely open standards that nobody has to pay any fees to implement in full and will work on all HTML6 browsers.

*Note that HTML5ish is not the same thing as HTML5a, HTML5.1, HTML TNG and SORTA-HTML5.

HTML5, competency zero.

Job application scam fleeces company of $150,000

Actors. They can be malicious.

JaitcH's plan only works if your local bank branch hasn't been closed.

Anti-Virus and not clicking on online adverts would seem to be a plan.

UK short 100K tech recruits this year

How many are tall, dark and handsome?

Stats like these aren't worth piss.

2.19%? I love it when the crystal balls are accurate to two decimal places.

Go back a few years, dig up some statistical forecasts and see how accurate they were.

Quango attempting to justify itself. Fail.

Shocked mum muzzles foul-mouthed toy mutt

Oh, I don't know.

*** ** *** ** **** ******* **** fuck ** **.

Pirate Party seizes Tunisian ministry

I hope he got a desk. It's no fun holding public office without a desk.

If he needs one, everyone's favourite MLF, can do him a 386 running Linux for about 227 dinars.

Apple tightens rules for iPad news delivery

Used to love Apple.

Back when they were hippies, published their ROM listings and broke the mould.

Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole now. Not nice. Avoid. They are beginning to define everything that is bad about the way tech is going.

Don't reward them with your hard earned money. Much more hinges on the success of Apple's corporate model than you looking fashionable amongst your mates.

Apple stuff: Turkish Delight from Narnia. Just say no.

BTW El Reg. Why can't we have profile pics? Every other board and forum has them.

BBC kills off WML site

I'll miss Ceefax too.

I still switch from DTV back to analogue to use Ceefax because it is quicker and nicer to use than the crappy version on digital. Later TVs managed to hold all the pages in memory, which was an improvement. I will miss it. Oracle and 4tel were awful because of the adverts.

Yeah, I remember the Teletext downloads as well. You could download stuff from Prestel too for a wider range of micros.

My old analogue TV has a picture that goes from top to bottom, can still be viewed when there is channel interference or a weaker signal, changes channels and comes on immediately, and doesn't pixellate (particularly bad with the football). It's also already lasted five times longer than my first DTV. Despite what they tell you when they want to sell you new crap, things don't automatically get better.

Check your browser settings to beat browser sniffing. Opera can disguise itself as another browser to cope with badly written, non-standards compliant or browser-sniffing websites. You can also fix Opera so that video ads are replaced by big grey play buttons. Can't remember whether I got the details on that from El Reg or Micromart. Good job then that the upgrade to v11 carried the hack over. Thanks Opera guys.

Bogus Kama Sutra presentation opens your backdoor to hackers

Dear Adobe, Mozilla, Opera, Google etc.

Next time you release an update for your software, stick an up-to-date, use-one-time anti-virus scan option in it. If the PC has no anti-virus on it, ask the user if they want a one-off system clean.

You will take every system your software updates out of any botnets it is part off. And then keep doing it, each time you release an update, to help persuade users to update.

For users, if you have no anti-virus, just download MSE and bloody use it, you spanners. It is free, it costs nothing, zero, zippo, zilch, bugger-all, nowt. Download it and run a full scan. It is no better and no worse than the one you got free with your PC six months ago and never paid the subs for. Just do it. Not having anti-virus is like leaving your front door open.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

For Microsoft. Install MSE by default with your OS/updates, do the option thing you do for browsers for other anti-virus products and do the world a favour.

FFS. It's not rocket science.

Disconsolate Spanish smokers driven out into blizzard

Smokers...

More likely to die early from (really) unpleasant diseases, until they gasp for their last breath and it doesn't come. Don't you want to see your kids grow up and get married? Enjoy a retirement with your partner?

More likely to have kids that smoke (they grow up used to the stink and don't think of it as just weird). Look upon it as your bequest to them, the same suffering you'll go through and the same early death.

Smell unpleasant (body, clothes, hair) and absolutely foul to snog.

Their kids smell unpleasant at school too. Which is hard on them.

Can't go 20, then 10, then 5, then a few minutes without coughing.

Hypocrites when they tell their kids not to take drugs. What's nicotine eh?

Donating a large chunk of their income to the government and unethical corporates. So stop whining about taxes-you're voluntarily paying more.

Responsible for large tracts of land in poor countries being used for nicotine production rather than food production.

Pollute the environment with every fag they smoke.

Switch to patches or use hypnotherapy to get off. Consume fruit, gum or even sweets (in moderation) for mouth feel, and do yourselves, your wallet, your family and the planet a favour.

Is your life so horrible that you are happy to pay, day in, day out, to end it sooner?

Seriously, it's disgusting. Chuck the habit for 2011 and have a longer, higher quality life.

MS warns over zero-day IE bug

Perfect timing...

Opera 11 having just been launched.

Go on, give it a whirl.

It's non-Google, non-Apple, non-MS, European and free.

The least you can do is try it.

FBI 'planted backdoor' in OpenBSD

Hardly a surprise.

Do you really think the creators of Stuxnet stumbled over those four zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows?

Brussels quizzes UK on school kiddyprinting

"scool canteen"

Let's hope El Reg hacks can use biometrics to log in, as they may well have problems typing their passwords accurately.

C-. Must try harder.

Flash is not that reliable

Unscientific.

I'm guessing quite a few people don't bother returning a dead drive, either because of the hassle or because their data is on it. They just swear a bit and get a replacement. Returns would also only be within the guarantee period. I've had drives work for ten years quite happily. If they suddenly start dying a month after the guarantee period is up, that would be a serious issue that wouldn't show up in data like this.

Given that this is tech, you'd expect a more scientific approach to failure data. It would be more useful if it came from a large organisation that logged all its drive failures.

NASA sells PC with restricted Space Shuttle data

Hmmm.

Did they still have the post-it notes on them, with the passwords?

Lose the Opinion Central pop-ups, guys. Not good.

Prince Wills and Cameron push England World Cup bid

No one likes us, we don't care.

The Russian people would, no doubt, like to extend their thanks to the Panorama team for not keeping quiet until after the voting and (after last night) to the people of Birmingham. Impeccable timing.

Maybe we should return the favour and not flush millions in public money down the lavvy on that proposed waste-of-money rail route, so Brummie yobs can get to London half an hour quicker to chuck seats at away games. Spend it on snow clearance locos and winter-proofing for the rest of the network instead. It certainly needs it.

'Smear agricultural land with human poo'

The hint of sneering in articles on the environment...

...is becoming a pain. The Reg might know what it's talking about regarding IT, but when they cover environmental stories, they are out of their comfort zone and it shows. Take environmental issues seriously and lose the Clarksonism or one day you might open the curtains and find that the shit really has hit the fan. There are worse things in life than a blue screen of death, and 'long term' doesn't mean the time between versions of Windows.

Humanity has used its own crap as a fertiliser for centuries. There are issues, especially with all the other stuff that goes down the waste pipes. Why use pesticides (which pollute) and over-produce at the same time? That's insane.

It's not just a food problem. All cotton used to be grown organically. Now most of it is grown with really dangerous pesticides that kill the soil as a living system, poison farmers, can leave residues that damage people already suffering in the slave economies of sweat shops and make large corporates rich at everyone's expense, so you can have cheap, fashionable, throw-away tat.

'Eco Chic' by Matilda Lee. Worth a read. The author probably can't code in Java, but maybe you could still respect her knowledge and arguments and you might even be shocked enough to change what you do as a consumer to make a difference. And the same goes for food shopping.

Buy organic food, and you give farmers the chance to farm without coming into daily contact with chemicals that poison them and the environment. Distributing the difference in cost amongst consumers actually works. The Soil Association are widely respected for their work, although many politicians and multinational GM food corporates don't like them, which is something of a badge of honour, and should tell you whose side they are on.

Neither the supermarkets nor the pesticide manufacturers have your best interests at heart. The farmers are doing the work and the environment is taking the hit. Only altering consumption patterns can change this. That's you, when you do your shopping. Pay a little more and make a difference. The alternative to organic isn't 'conventional' or 'normal' it is 'grown with the use of pesticides at the expense of the environment and your childrens' future'.

Becta agrees £400m ICT framework

Erm...

One of the most basic ways to cut costs is to centralise purchasing. Bulk discounts for buyers and fewer overheads for those touting for business.

So they axed Becta and fragmented the market 'to save money'.

You have to be a politician for that to make sense.

Ofcom mulls popular number charge

'More popular area codes'?

Is there really anyone out there so shallow as to be impressed by an area code?

Pass puberty and put away childish things.

Police to get greater web censorship powers

Silly me.

Thinking that a court room was the place where criminality was determined, rather than upon the whim of the police.

Interesting concept: the judiciary as an option, perhaps even an annoying quango.

MP wants age verification for net smut

MPs.

They do not have a clue how the internet works and yet they want to legislate on every aspect of it.

It's embarrassing, depressing and bodes ill for the future.

Shouldn't these people be forced to pass some sort of general competency test before they can run for election?

Giffgaff shudders to a halt

How unlike my own dear ISP.

Which has 'latest news' dated 2 December 2008, 'latest service status' dated 14 November 2008, never mentions outages, as if it would be a social faux pas, and appears to throttle everything that streams, right down to YouTube.

I'm not feeling the love, folks.

China-inspired charity aims to sex-down society

Bestiality. It was 1978. I was 11...

...Vivid memories of that man with his arm up the animal's bottom.

BBC1. 'All Creatures Great and Small'

I survived mentally unsullied.

Ms. Suit and her fellow cronies bring legitimate child protection movements into disrepute and should be ashamed of themselves. No, we don't want to be more like China. If she likes it so much, maybe she should move there.

Can't wait for the official government warning. 'Wanking over this can seriously...' Any suggestions?

Berners-Lee: Facebook 'threatens' web future

Irony.

Berners-Lee (you call him Berner-Lee at one point) appears to be accusing Facebook of giving your data added privacy (from the level of privacy you would have on a standard webpage that isn't within a social networking system). Given the incessant complaints about FB not catering to users' needs for privacy, that is somewhat ironic.

Social networking sites also offer a degree of protection from hacking and DDoS attacks, that bog-standard websites might not get.

They silo and re-use your data the way other sites do, but because they are social networking and not Amazon or Tesco, they have access to more of it.

Are cable companies censoring the internet, or are they just delivering data and streams using internet protocols, separate to your standard internet feed? Maybe we need two pipes, one fast and one slow, for the same reason we have motorways and ordinary roads.

There are more serious threats, most of which come from governments intent on watching everything, recording everything and censoring whatever they want, usually with less than surgical precision. This will reduce us to lowest-common denominator access based on what is acceptable to politicians, who 'block for votes', pandering to religious groups or tabloid scares. In the commercial arena, we have the threat of proprietary technology and the bizarre vagaries of Apple's chief inquisitor, Steve Jobs, banning at whim as the mood takes him.

Entropy will affect the net, increasingly, whatever we do. Expect a multinet future.

And discrimination is a given, globally. Many of us in the 'affluent west' can't afford a fast connection, whilst caps will block services for others. Privatised telecoms providers will only roll out the fastest tech in the most lucrative areas.

Wireless may not be able to handle high capacity feed for a good long while, for technological reasons, not ideological ones.

Phormware is a definite threat. We may have already lost the concept of an ISP as purely a data faucet, and that is a bad thing which we, and the ISPs themselves, may come to regret.

Technological development is most threatened by patents and patent trolls. It is becoming impossible to innovate at many levels, as everything you do has so many patents attached to every tiny feature.

The goal of the web isn't to serve humanity. It is a technology and has no goals, although those that use, develop and control it all have their own agendas. The goal of governments and corporates who directly and indirectly control the web is not to serve humanity. They intend to serve themselves and we have very little power to prevent that.

Do not expect the future to be bright. We may well look back on the early years of the web, for all the viruses and slow connection rates, as a golden age.

Why Microsoft is Acorn and Symbian is the new CP/M

But...

In the 80s, an over-competitive overcrowded market ensured that nobody could make any money and almost everyone went bust.

Yeah. That's a plan. Let's do that.

A young and pretty Linux server OS that takes a bit of work

Context is everything, clearly.

If 4chan posted that photo with a 'young and pretty' tag, I'm sure they'd kop some flak.

Speak geek: The world of made-up language

Historically...

Languages don't cause wars. Religion and politics do.

So a duff founding premise there, and a lot of wasted effort.

Ironically, the newly invented languages were becoming popular as Latin was being phased out in English schools as not being terribly relevant.

Leet, being written rather than written and spoken, is interesting, not least because it developed largely through use rather than being consciously created by committee.

Brazil would be better off with Welsh than Esperanto. If only for the higher quality hymn singing.

Exposed: leaked body scans published online

Leaky bursts.

One of those scans appears to capture an image of someone standing a good way off. Exactly how much stuff are these things pumping out all over the place? Working near one might have unfortunate effects. Passive smoking TNG?

Will folk have to stand inside a Faraday cage to be irradiated? That'll scare the kids, but they can always be groped by officials instead.

BOGOF irradiation offer.

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/giz-scans/?pid=5>

Just don't fly.

Baidu boss: Google don't know China

Doing well in a totalitarian regime...

...is not a badge of honour.

It means you joined the dark side.

Calls for US nudie perv scanner 'opt-out day'

How's about this then, guys and gals?

Let the train take the strain when you can. A marked reduction in flying and organised no-fly days would be good for the environment and leave lots of vested interests needing new underwear whilst applying pressure to junk the 'security' farce. Flying is a commercial enterprise. Tesco wouldn't do this when you walked into their stores because people wouldn't shop there. If you all blindly continue, like migrating animals, regardless of what they do, they will continue to treat you that way.

If your company wants to force you to fly, remind them of their financial liability when you get groped or irradiated at their behest. This is the age of the net. Video-conference whenever you can. That's what it's there for. Why make savings all over the place, impacting upon your operations, and then burn so much money and carbon flying people around the world? You need staff regularly in another country? Hire them there.

Google: Oracle doctored that 'copied Java code'

Interesting.

Almost everything in tech is covered by so many patents that putting something on the market will inevitably lead to you being sued, if only by trolls.

Maybe Google looked at the risk issue with Linux (one of the reasons many folk don't use it, fearing they could be the target of litigation as there is no central, rich corporate to sue-the users are more attractive targets) and decided to go with safety in numbers. The OHA reads like a who's who of several sections of the industry.

Oracle would like to get a big chunk of money out of Google, but do they really want to try to sue that many people?

In theory, this could be a way forward in tech that defeats the patent trolling blockade of new tech developments, on the basis that you can't sue everyone. Whilst it might seem to impact upon the little guy who comes up with an original idea, the little guy already has no chance of justice anyway because the cost of defending a patent against any single large corporate is too high.

There may be implications all over the place if this goes to a ruling, but it may end, as these things usually do, in an out of court settlement.

Fanbois howl as OS X update bricks PGPed Macs

A shocker.

Two big arrogant companies happier to piss on their users than do the basic checks.

Lots of grief thinking that you had lost your data, and how do you know about the fix if it is your only computer, unless you wipe it, rebuild from scratch and then go online...to see there was an easy fix.

Any other environment than tech there would be compensation, but tech companies just get away with it.

Most encryption software is more trouble than it's worth. You are more likely to forget the password or lose everything in a crash (encrypted data being largely unrecoverable) than have your PC nicked.

Keep your confidential data off your PC, certainly off your laptop. Carry it on an SD card or a USB stick. Don't let your browser on your laptop store your passwords. A little DIY with a sewing kit can get you a reasonably secure pouch in your jacket or trousers for a storage device. You'd think clothing manufacturers would have thought of that by now. You can never have too many pockets, and muggers rarely steal your trousers.

[A second wallet with £20, a fake ID with a fake address and a couple of out of date credit cards is also handy. If you have an expensive smartphone, carry a small, cheap PAYG as well. Look terrified and rapidly hand over the cheap phone and second wallet.]

The government will simply bang you up if you don't tell them your password (or can't remember it) should they want to see your data. Then they will hammer away until they break your encryption. Post 9/11, you haven't got any civil rights, so why spend the money on encryption?

And of course, commandment 1, b*ck up. Because Apple, Microsoft and most other tech companies regularly f*ck up.

Gov and telcos in Aussie wiretap death match

But we did tell you...

...didn't you get our letter? Darned postal system.

Ideally, ISPs would do absolutely nothing but act as a conduit for their customers' net feed. The old AOL model was hardly a rampant success.

Still, a timely reminder. Do you really want to store your private or commercially sensitive data in the cloud, where other peoples' governments (or your own) can read it. If you do have anything of value stored, it would be in a foreign nation's interest to demand it be decrypted and shown to them, and passed on to commercial interests in their country to exploit, or for that matter, to anyone they want to sell it to. The 'national interest' isn't just about opposing terrorism.

And you really think the cloud is the future?

Security major strops over MS free scanner auto-downloads

An OS should come with free AV on by default.

It's basic to a modern OS. Not including it makes the web less safe for all of us and increases spam.

Screw the anti-virus companies. They are parasites.

Force Microsoft to include it by law.

Volunteer biker gang foils Westminster CCTV car fleet

But...

...if they did generate revenue, they could be reducing local council tax bills at the expense of the people who are holding you up by driving and parking badly.

The mantra that 'all road use law enforcement is bad' is ridiculous. The whole point of this is to make life a little easier and safer for those who can be naffed to drive legally at the expense of those who can't tell the difference between reality and their Playstation.

Nobody minds when burglars get fined, but a guy breaking the law in a car is more likely to kill or injure you or a member of your family than a guy breaking the law by nicking your telly when you are out.

Grow up, pass puberty and lose the 'Top Gear' mentality.

Google man slings mud at Facebooked Bing

Pot.

Kettle. Black.

Murder victim-mocking troll jailed

Troubling.

Why are we wasting money keeping an unpleasant but hardly dangerous individual in prison at the public expense? There are a lot of dangerous, violent types out there who don't get prison sentences when they physically attack people. The guy is an internet troll, not someone who is going to club you over the head with a hammer. Sticks and stones etc.

With a history of mental illness, chucking him in bog-standard prison is absolutely shameful. The magistrate should be thrown out of the legal system. There are guidelines on this.

I'm amazed his neighbours knew what an internet troll was. I suspect someone thought it was something to do with kiddie porn and phoned the old bill for that. I'm absolutely stunned that the police actually went round and nicked him for it. Usually the most you can get out of them is a crime number or the promise to send a PCSO round a week next Thursday. Again, did they not actually have a clue and had a check on his PC just to see?

Is it illegal to be nasty? Or just a bit offensive? Or maybe abrasive, because one man's abrasive is another man's pointedly sarcastic and sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Maybe low enough to merit a prison sentence? Slippery slope. Are we going to have to start being nice about the Government, Apple users and the French? Is that the sort of world you want to live in?

If they imprison everyone who posts something offensive, then they aren't going to have enough lawyers or prison cells for all the copyright cases. And that's just when they've been through the comments on YouTube and the jokes on Sickipedia. By the time they hit the forums, they'll have to start releasing the lifers to make more space.

For varying reasons some folk post things online that aren't very nice and might upset the delicate of sensibility. That's what moderators are for. Deal with it. Preferably without spending a sack load of public money and setting a precedent for abolishing online freedom of speech in the UK.

Some of the opinion articles on El Reg might be deemed to be pretty offensive to the point of being trollish. Do you want to start vigorously self-censoring? Publishing a pro-Apple piece for every critical one, so you can't be accused of repeatedly being nasty to Steve?

You have 'House Rules' and you moderate. It works for you. It should have worked in the cases the guy was posting in. He posts something nasty, it gets deleted, the process repeats, eventually he gets bored and gives up. It isn't a police/court/prison issue.

The foundations of free speech are only secure when you defend people who you don't like and don't agree with, for saying things that piss you off, because you believe that society needs to have a bit of give and take built in. That a bit of abuse, some comments that are deleted and a few off-colour jokes are a small price to pay to keep speech free.

You might just think that it serves him right. But a few years down the line, you may well find out what the phrase 'thin end of the wedge' means, when you, or your child, or an elderly relative with non-progressive views on multiculturalism, posts something online that upsets someone with money, contacts and a desire to make an example of someone who has annoyed them. They now have a precedent to work with, and that's all lawyers need to get stuck in.

Scottish police IT sorely lacking, audit finds

Yeah right.

They say 'lessons have been learned' as they have done in every official report since the year dot, and yet whenever public funds are involved, it still all goes rapidly pear-shaped, costs more than it should and never works properly. The same happens in the private sector but the costs are covered up, jobs cut and the fees we are charged hiked to cover it. And in service provision, there is much shaking of heads, more paperwork, more rules and a reorganisation, only for the same thing to happen again.

Slow learners, I guess.

Competency. Just basic competency would go a long way to improving British business and administration across the board.

Google's 'copied Java code' disowned by Apache

There are only so many ways to say 'Hello World'.

If these guys got their heads together, grew up and played nicely, think how much they could save in lawyers' fees, and think how many lawyers might become unemployed as a consequence.

Two good things and all they have to do is get along.

Fate of porn domain left in government hands

Politicians eh? Tch.

>GAC states its concern that domains such as .xxx, which may end up being blocked by some censorious regimes, could eventually lead to alternate domain name systems being set up, fragmenting the internet.

As opposed to the block lists that all nations have, usually produced without any form of legal intervention.

And the filters.

And the snooping.

And the Big Brother recording, as planned by, amongst others, that most censorious of regimes, our own duffers. No change from £10bn there on setting up, and millions a year to keep it going. Still, they have an almost unlimited amount of money to screw from public spending and tax revenue, so the costs won't bother them.

As for alternate DNSs. They are inevitable anyway, but for political and religious reasons rather than to avoid the shock of seeing naked people. Maybe an Islamic or Chinese one first. You could argue that bit torrent acts as an alternate mechanism for online distribution, and that gets blocked and throttled.

It's probably too late for .xxx to actually do the job it was intended to as the internet equivalent of the TV watershed, in theory easy enough for the dumbest parents to block, although their kids would probably find a way round it. Maybe ten or fifteen years ago it could have moved mainstream porn from the mainstream domains, but asking politicians to be less than a decade behind public use of technology is asking too much.

Depends on how much the White House feels the need to suck up to the repulsive religious right this term.

Of course we could just all stop being such bloody prudes.

Naked people: Not that big a deal really.