Posts by ninja squirrel

Amazon launches book gifting service

How is this bad?

I'm planning to ask all my in-laws for kindle books this Xmas. I love having friends choose books for me: it's a very personal gift, and I end up with more varied reading than if I chose them all myself.

With the new Amazon feature, I get the all the advantages of e-books (not the least important being that my spare room doesn't get filled with yet more books that I probably won't re-read, but don't want to throw away). As an extra bonus they are usually a bit cheaper than physical books, so it's better for my relatives too.

As for the neighbourhood bookstores, I don't think this really changes anything since they would probably have bought the physical books on Amazon anyway.

Microsoft's Azure cloud plan favors Java

Not secured until all content is secured?

"Azure users will be able to secure the content they deliver using SSL/TLS in 2011"

For the avoidance of doubt... you can of course already secure the content delivered directly from your Azure websites and webservices using a certificate of your choice.

It's the Azure Content Delivery Network - which lets you cache blobs of data in various locations around the world (to speed up said websites and webservices) - which doesn't yet support SSL.

Sex, lies, and botnets: the saga of Perverted Justice

Mwhooahh-ha-ha-ha haaaa

Am I the only one wondering whether Von Erck actually set up the botnet attack himself to frame Raisley - as the next stage of his Revenge??

The guy has got to be an evil genius, the name is such a give-away.

Nigerian man gets 12 years for $1.3m 419 scam

And a Fail to me for attention to detail!

Since it would be paypal in the from address rather than ebay... but you get the idea...

What now?

"Sorry to be harsh, but your wife's friend is exactly the sort of greedy fool targetted by scammers."

Using ebay to avoid paying 30% commission to an arbitrary middle-man is hardly greedy.

And to the un-initiated, a branded email - with ebay in the from address - isn't just "a note saying 'the cheque is in the mail'". It would be nice if all honest people understood not to trust email, but then peace in the middle east would also be nice.

The only thing I'd hold against Michael Shaw's friend Sarah is stopping an auction to sell direct (making use of ebay, but not paying their commission). We could be generous and assume that she was trying to help out someone trying to buy a late anniversary gift, and didn't know how to change the auction end date, but still...

However, I can't see it as auction-stopping bad karma, since my partner was subjected to a similar scam when selling a used laptop on ebay. The auction played out, but then the auction winner tried the same stunt, and followed it up with more fake emails warning of impending doom such as being thrown off ebay and having paypal accounts frozen if he didn't post the laptop immediately: laughable to techies, but enough to scare some people, I'm sure.

Britain and Israel in stand-off over Mossad officer

Confirm or deny

"If Israel say 'we will never use stolen or falsified British identity documents in any overseas operations' in what way is that an admission that they were involved in the assassination?"

The problem is, if you start making statements - especially ones which have to be quite carefully worded - then people have a habit of asking you to clarify stuff, e.g. to confirm or deny a slightly differently worded statement which does imply guilt. I'd certainly expect a journo to tweak the statement to include the words 'in the future', which obviously leads on to 'what about in the past'.

And if you start making statements, and then stop at a certain point, that's very much an admission of guilt. Which is why Israel don't confirm or deny any of these kinds of things... so that you can't infer anything from their decision not to make a statement.

Young people are lazy, think world owes them a living - prof

George Orwell said

'Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. '

and that was a couple of generations ago... and I still think he was a very clever chap!