Posts by alain williams

Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU

Re: "Google's results are all Google URLs that redirect."

I have noticed that they sometimes are and sometimes are not. I'm not sure what it depends on. I surf with javascript turned off by default.

NASA shuts off Voyager 1's central heating

@ShelLuser

I agree with your main argument. The main problem is that people do not distinguish between planned and forced reboots. I like to reboot customer machines when a new kernel is installed, this takes a few minutes and is done when is convenient.

The machine at which I am typing is 10 years old, but runs an up to date kernel. I leave it on 24x7 andhave had few hardware problems over the years, just: CPU fans and hard disks.

Record numbers of readers flock to The Register

How is that measured ?

If it is by analysis of your server logs, OK - but if by counts from doubleclick.net then you don't count me -- firefox noscript blocks that.

Boffins quarrel over ridding world of leap seconds

2038

""You'll enjoy 2038 then.""

You are confusing method with implementation. The Unix problem can (will) be solved by moving to 64 bit integers.

(At Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038 GMT Unix time as a 32 bit number wraps round)

Wikipedia to shut down Wednesday in SOPA protest

El Reg darkening

''I hope El Reg will also be going dark''

The idea is to bring the issue to the attention of the great majority who have not heard what is happening or who have vaguely heard but not bothered to find out what SOPA is. El Reg readers are very likely to know what the fuss is all about - so there is little point is darkening El Reg.

However a large banner, in sympathy, would not go amiss.

NASA's ageing black hole-stalking probe switched off

Pictures please ...

or we won't believe that it happened :-)

ICANN snubs critics, opens domain extension floodgates

Idiots

John Postel must be spinning in his grave :-(

Pro-Israel hackers threaten tit for tat after credit card leak

Please children ...

just grow up and stop fighting. This sort of tit for tat reminds me of 4 year olds who are arguing over a broken biscuit - they just need their heads banging together. I am not interested who started the squabble - I want to know who will stop it.

Solicitors from hell website unplugged by libel judge

Also

http://solicitorsfromhell2.com

http://www.legaljackass.co.uk/index.php

BT's gift to Google: A patent war over ads and Android

Wrong business BT

Please concentrate on providing us with a top class telephone service rather than make money through the use of lawyers.

ICO warns: Just six months to comply with EC cookie rules

session cookies

Most of this I am happy with and accept as being on the right track. However the regulations apply to persistent and session cookies (page 4 of their guidance pdf). This has evidentially been written by some arts muppet who does not have the first clue as to how a real web site is written.

Each page refresh to a web server starts afresh, completely unrelated to any previous page served up. This is not how a user sees it: they think of it as a conversation - a session. This sort of session cookie is used to tie the page hits from a user together so that they are related. The session cookie is ONLY returned to the domain that set it, expires when the browser is closed and, generally, is not recognised by the server if unused for 1/2 hour or so.

There is also little distinction on the purpose of a cookie. A request for a larger font size is considered the same as one that record the user's name, the privacy implications of these two are worlds apart.

Much too great an emphasis on the wording of a poorly drafted law rather than what the intention is.

The ICO's own web site:

They make great show of how to do it, but when I agreed to it storing that cookie on my machine and I found:

* 2 cookies from www.ico.gov.uk

- session cookie

- ICOCookiesAccepted - permanent cookie that expires in 2 years.

* 5 cookies from ico.gov.uk ---- which is a cross site cookie -- a site that I did not agree to.

cookies that vary from being session to permanent which expire varying from 1 hour to 2 years.

HP throws WebOS to open source community

Open Source is not magic pixie dust

HP appears to be hoping that hoards of FLOSS programmers will materialise out of thin air and rescue its operating system .... make it the huge success that it could not realise.

This might very well happen. Something great and used by many, this achieved by the many hands working on it who import FLOSS code from elsewhere. What will also happen in that webOS has its best bits taken and used in other FLOSS environments.

It all depends on how useful people see it compared to other platforms out there, eg Android, and what license HP puts on its components.

God particle may be within our grasp

Eventual announcement

If it is announced as found I trust that el reg will not cover it in a light and frivolous manner but in a style that reflect the true gravity of the discovery.

BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps

Transmission not shown

Thank you - I was going to say just that.

I can see the value of a debugging application that had a copy of all keystrokes before they were given to the foreground application. The real question is what happens with that data ?

* Everything uploaded to somewhere occasionally. That would be very bad. Get all my ''secret data'' eg: passwords, bank account info, etc.

* If an application crashes and I am asked if I want to submit debug data. Kind of OK if 'no' really means NO except that it would also send secret data and most people would not think of saying no if they have entered secret data into the crashed app. Also: will it send just keystrokes for the failed app or everything that it has ?

* Data thrown away when an app terminates, the phone restarted, ...

* Who gets to see this uploaded data ? Developers, marketeers, google, CIA ?

* Where does this data go ? I would expect a lot of even non secret data to contain personal information (ref: data protection act). Exporting it out of the EU could be illegal.

We need much more information.

Consumer interest in Windows 8 tablets slumps

Re: "Windows" + "Tablets" = combination of words

I find it a good combination of words. On the few occasions that I need to use MS Windows I find it so user hostile and hard to use (being used to *nix - MS Windows does not work as I expect). So a couple of paracetamol at the end of it seems like a good combination.

HTC insists German 3G mobe sales ban is kaput

f**king trolls

When will these companies start becoming honest again - compete by selling a better product rather than employing more of that parasitic profession - solicitors ?

Water utility hackers destroy pump, expert says

Firewall is not the whole solution

The chances are that some malware found its way onto a PC used by one of the maintainance engineers and the attack was launched from there. This would have been deemed 'safe' by any firewall.

This is as much a MS Windows problem as a SCADA problem.

Pete Townshend condemns Apple as 'digital vampire'

Stop stropping

If he does not like iTunes then he can always remove his material from the catalogue. Will that improve his income ?

If he does not like the 30% iTunes take he can try to negotiate a better deal and when they won't budge stop selling through iTunes.

I assume that Mr Townshend also approves of Paul McCartney's efforts to help starving old rock stars by increasing the copyright term to 70 years -- thus hindering new artists from reusing some of the old material into something new and exciting -- better to allow those who already have than allow the new who have not a chance.

If he is lacking in income maybe he ought to publish something new, that people will want to buy, rather than relying on regurgitating ancient stuff -- I would like to receive royalties for code that I wrote in my youth!

I am no apple lover, but stopping like this is not the way.

Android 'stands on Microsoft's shoulders', says MS lawyer

What has Gutierrez been smoking ... ?

I want some!

I never cease to be astounded what people will say because they hope to extract cash from someone. Not unlike the bloke with an asian accent who phoned me this morning saying that he had detected a security problem on my Windows computer (news to me - since I run only Linux) ... and accused me of being a poor liar when I repeatedly asked for his 'phone number so that I could call him for future assistance.

Dell bundles Ubuntu Linux on PCs in China

Lives ruined - rubbish!

''Schubert's computer came with Open Office, a word processing software package that is compatible with Microsoft Word. She says she wasn't aware it was compatible.''

By the looks of things she did not try, if she had she would have found that it worked.

I suspect that the problem was her secondary school -- too many school teachers only know how to use MS Windows (I do use the word ''know'' lightly, many teachers who I have met don't know much) and teach pupils how to press buttons to get things done. They do not teach understanding and insight, which is what they should be doing. This is partly a result of the very successful MS marketing to make teachers believe that anything other than MS is strange and incomprehensible - except for a Mac and even they are a little odd - best left alone.

We like zombies… because we are zombies

Also called: sheeple

This is quite right, but not new, just a new way of putting it. Most people are apathetic and if they don't like things just moan and expect someone else to do something. This is why I applaud the people at St Paul's - at least they are trying to do something about what they perceive as wrong.

Nokia's Brave New World is (almost) Finn-free

Re: colours

I suspect that the case will be coloured blue - to match the colour frequently seen on the screen :-)

Apple gets patent for ‘unlock gesture’

A gesture for Apple ...

In response to that I have a gesture for Apple:

http://sunheadlines.blogspot.com/2008/11/classics-up-yours-delors.html

Microsoft trousers yet more royalties from Android gear

234 silences

I am still waiting to hear what these supposed patents are. The only one that I have heard about is to do with FAT file systems .... but what about the rest ?

World's stealthiest rootkit gets a makeover

Would work on Linux ?

"a good Trojan can still trick the user into installing it."

Only if the user was logged in as root while reading email/whatever.

Just because something is ''possible'' does not say much about how likely it is to happen, for that you need to look at the other links in the chain that make it possible. We are fortunate that these links are much tougher on Unix based systems than they ever have been on MS Windows.

Domain registry touts dot-surnames for $500k

This is all about making money

and nothing to do with good structure of the Internet. The naming system has got to be something that will survive & grow over the centuries to come. Instead some get-rich-quick Del boys have dreamed up a scheme for a fast buck. I would be much happier if they registered one top level domain & put all of these under there ... something like .plonker would seem about right.

'Mental act' computerisations no longer automatically unpatentable

What does Justice Birss QC understand ?

What worried me is that what a judge considers to be "sufficiently technical to be considered patentable" is probably much simpler than a technical person may consider "sufficiently technical". I doubt that Colin Birss is a technical person.

I also see a conflict of interest since his ruling is likely to bring more business to Three New Square chambers that he used to work for:

http://www.3newsquare.co.uk/html/formermembers.html

Blow for McKinnon as extradition treaty ruled 'not biased'

But the USA never ratified it ...

so how can it be anything other than one sided, ie biased. ''Baffled'' is putting it mildly!

Would you let your car insurer snoop on you for a better deal?

Most people prob will

Most of the facebook generation don't care about privacy until it is too late. The insurance companies will sell the information in some way (just as they currently pass on your details to car repair garages, etc) to make a few bob. Once most people do this then they can rack up the prices for the few who don't -- on the basis that those who think for themselves are probably trouble makers anyway.

US rocketeer thunders to 121,000ft

Will el-reg take up the challenge ?

Vulture 1 is now well and truely beaten ... how is project LOHAN coming along ?

Android Marketplace blocked by Great Firewall of China

Shoot the messenger

It means that they don't like him since he acts as a focus for dissent and will not shut up about how they have tried to destroy Tibettan culture. The Chinese leadership acts like a school play ground bully (and they do now have a lot of [financial] muscle) who cannot stand anyone else pointing out that they are less than 100% perfect.

Yes: some people see what is going on, but they are good enough at what they do so that many don't realise and those who do understand that they will get hurt if they talk about it.

Also most outside China, unfortunately, do not care.

Email and compliance: How not to blow the storage budget?

What the hell is IDM ?

Wikipedia gives several suggestions, what are you talking about:

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

Google breaks South African embargo on Dalai Lama

sky god fantasies

I agree that they are fantasists but that is completely missing the point. We have two friends (the reason for their friendship is completely irrelevant) who want to get together for a celebration. The S A government does not have the balls to stand up to the Chinese because there is a lot of Chinese investment going into S A.

They do not understand that each time that they give in to a bully they make it harder to stand up to them the next time.

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

What data has been copied

From what I gather the objection is to the inclusion of certain historic data. A century ago different cities often had their own clocks that depended on their longitude and could be, say, 35 minutes out from the next big city. This sort of data has been collected by the astrologers since, to them, the exact time of your birth is important.

What I find odd is that the first thing that David Olson knew of it was a court order. Any reasonable person would have sent a letter first before taking action. This suggests that Astrolabe are either after extracting loads of money from *NIX people or that it is another MS initiative designed to nobble the opposition.

Premier League loses footie decoder case

What about grey imports ?

Good news indeed, does this mean that Tesco can try to overturn the High Court ruling that stopped it importing jeans from cheaper parts of Europe. The two cases seem somewhat at odds with each other.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2163561.stm

What annoys me is that big companies seem to be allowed to use globalisation to their benefit but individuals/small_business cannot.

Microsoft's Android patent ransom to 'total $444m' next year

Patents for what technology exactly ?

I don't think that MS has yet said what the patents are in spite of having been asked over many years. The only one that we know about is for the FAT file system. If they don't say what the others are then how does this differ from bully boy extortion ?

Boffins invent miracle pill that counteracts effects of booze

Get drunk or catch a cold ?

Interesting choice -- could you take a pill to knock out the TLR4s when you leave the pub to dive home ? I wonder what PC Plod will have to say about this ?

Boffins prove Queen ballad 'world's most catchy song'

Why all so recent ?

The oldest song listed is Brown Eyed Girl of 1967. There are huge numbers of catchy songs from before then, eg: 'Land of hope and glory', 'Happy Birthday', 'Rudolph the red nose reindeer' (& similar), 'Hello Dolly', 'My old man's a dustman', lots of music hall stuff,... quite appart from being entirely English language biased!

Average sozzled Brit sinks 5,800 pints during life

What is the comparison cost on food ?

I get annoyed with this sort of shock statistic, it is not meaningful unless compared to the other costs that we have in normal living. So how much does the average Brit spend on: food, fuel, housing, getting divorced, ... ? Unless we have a comparison we cannot judge if it might be excessive!

Man reveals secret recipe behind undeletable cookies

ETAGs are useful

as a way of not continuously downloading the same image/... but getting a new version if it changes. So disabling ETAGs effectively makes the Internet run more slowly for you since your browser won't cache so well.

What I really dislike about this is the cross site tracking. I can accept a site remembering me while I visit it but don't want the next site to know anything about what I did elsewhere.

Google told to delete people from search results

Wrong target

In that case they should be chasing these other sites. If it were not appearing there then google would not index it.

Boffins deduce chip's crypto just by looking at it

This can only be a good thing ...

hiding bad algorithms in hardware is an attempted form of security by obscurity -- this is seductive by misguided. If the good guys can do it - then the bad guys & governments will do so as well; we need better algorithms, not secret ones that are flawed.

Two solicitors fined and suspended for file-sharer letters

Family law solicitors next ?

That would be nice - this particular bunch of parasites regularly wind up both sides with the result of earing themselves more money and to everyone else's worst interests.

HTC sues Apple in the UK

Why control key

''Am I missing something ? - I SSH into my Linux systems all the time without a control key.''

Control & Escape are really useful if you want to use emacs.

Time to go & buy ...

that HTC that I have been thinking of getting for some time...

Actually any Android will do - but I want a keyboard with a control key since I will be wanting to ssh into Linux systems -- recommendations anyone ?

Acer turns to trains for imports

Vibration ?

I don't know about the effects of ''climatic variation'' but the shaking in almost 7,000 miles of rail journey is going to test many a PC to destruction.

Survey scams exploit Winehouse's death, Oslo massacre

Why ...

is this sort of scam news ? -- unfortunately parasitic bastards are only interested in themselves.

Acer to deliver ARM notebook within nine days

Blame the journalists

Most people don't need vast horsepower on a laptop, but the journalists who review these things seem obsessed with how fast they are. As long as it is fast enough to: browse the web; run a word processor & other such tasks then I would much rather have the extra battery life than useless speed.

Please can we have real people review these things in future.

19,000 papers leaked to protest 'war against knowledge'

Hundreds of years old ...

then surely they are out of copyright and so should be available to everyone for free (in all senses of the word). Am I missing something other than the Royal Society trying to pull a fast one ?

Sunday Times accused of blagging Gordon Brown's records

Hopefully Murdoch is dead meat

I get the impression that politicians of all colours hate having to kow tow to the man & agree to help his business interests. They now smell blood and seem to be united enough to rid themselves of the Murdoch yoke. The country will be the better for it - as long as they don't allow someone else to wear the mantle.