Posts by alain williams

Hitler ordered Luftwaffe to spare Blackpool

Brighton - surely

I cannot believe that Monty Python got it wrong when they had Hitler retired in Brighton and not Blackpool.

Microsoft asks laid-off staff to refund overpaid redundo cash

Storm in a tea cup

While I like to bash MS as any one else, this is probably just a cock up by some minion in HR, there is nothing malicious in this.

To redress the balance I shall comment that the numbers probably fell foul of the latest bug in Excell.

Facial-recognition tech now used to greet hotel guests

Jacqui Smith

The sort of thing that she would love. Maybe it is now time for us to all walk around with Ms Smith masks on .... especially when up to no good!

BBC seen to yield over website snooping

USA data protection - Huh!

''because Omniture is based in the US it satisfied EU data protection requirements.''

Rubbish - the USA data protection laws are feeble -- I would not be surprised if the CIA/... were quietly snitching a copy as part of ''terrorist prevention''.

MP wants Welsh text on ID cards

What about Gallic for the Scots, ...

Kernewek for the Cornish or even Scouse ?

Parliament probes privacy law

What about privacy from government

How about adding something that stops the ''security'' services from poking their noses in all over the place on the inflated claims of hunting terrorists and paedophiles. Also that any govt collected info must really be kept private and not readable by almost any civil servant who wants to.

Passport RFIDs cloned wholesale by $250 eBay auction spree

Release the code now

rather than wait to release the code - I would not be surprised if the US authorities stamped on him to maintain the illusion that these things are secure.

Seagate customers swamped by Barracuda drive failures

I had one of these fail in a customer machine

Although it was due to bad blocks. However it was part of a mirrored pair (Linux mdadm), so we just replaced it.

This sort of story makes me really glad that when setting up a mirror I always use disks from different manufacturers -- just in case. This also avoids getting 2 disks from the same batch that are then, maybe, prone to fail in the same week.

Royal Navy warships lose email in virus infection

Burying head in sand

The official line seems to be: ''It is only the email system, not the 'windows-for-warships command and control' so it doesn't really matter.''

It is only a matter of time before a file is transferred by hand (for perfectly good reasons) from the email to W4W system and infects that. Using MS Windows for critical miliraty systems should be considered sabotage and treason.

Experts trumpet '25 most dangerous' programming errors

Re: don't use malloc()

''If you can write the program without using Dynamic Memory Allocation then it will run for years without a reboot.''

If you can write a program without using dynamic memory allocation - then it is probably solving a simple problem - that is why it will run for years.

Hacktivist tool targets Hamas

Illegal in the UK

The use/installation of such a program on a machine in the UK would be illegal, even if the machine was your own. This is because it would be attempting to disrupt other computers.

I trust that the police will prosecute anyone who they find has installed this.

MI5 head calls for comms data access

Where is the proof ?

''the threat of an immediate attack in Britain by al-Qaida inspired extremists has diminished because a string of successful prosecutions has had a "chilling" effect.''

Easy to say, but what is the proof for this? Can he demonstrate cause and effect?

Such an assertion is good for his job security & obscene departmental budget, but is if fact or fiction ?

I assert that I don't have elephants nesting in my trees because I plant daffodils. What do you mean you want to know why ?

Norfolk children get £310,000 of free laptops

£775 per laptop

That is expensive -- what are they giving them ? Or is a large part of the money being siphoned off somewhere ?

Atom challengers poised for 2009 debut

@expand?

I am not wedded to the X86 chip, the one that really interests me is the ARM offering, low power means better battery life and/or a reduced electricity bill. Linux works on ARM.

Giant US air travel data suck fails own privacy tests

One reason that I don't go to the USA

But our gov't in Blighty (in the name of Jacqui Smith) seems to be determined to ''better'' the USA.

Software copyright inspection powers used for first time

Do you get costs if innocent ?

It sounds like that sort of inspection could be quite costly for a business, especially if they seize kit. So if you are found to be innocent can you claim your costs ?

Europe-wide emergency number is go

999 has huge advantages

Much easier to find on a phone - find the '9' and press 4 times.

Why 4 -- well, you might be in an office where you need '9' for an outside line. So with the new number you press '112' -- drat, '9112' by which time you are toast anyway.

Internet gambling mogul surrenders $300m in guilty plea

USA protectionism

Don't forget that what this is about is the USA stopping money flowing overseas through gambling. The ban was announced illegal by the WTO and sued by Antigua - but a little thing like illegality doesn't stop a big bully country like the USA from doing what it wants.

Attack of the quarter-ton, 'fridge-sized' killer jellyfish

Global warming to blame ....

presumably because we don't have enough ice cream to fight the jelly monsters.

Crap article: it didn't say if they were raspberry, strawberry or lime flavoured!

Doctor Who heads iPlayer hit list

Time shifting

Of course Dr Who would be top, I can't always catch it when it is on air and not having a tardis of my own I need to use iplayer to be able to watch it at a different time.

I wish that they would put all the old series up for viewing again.

Microsoft to embed RSA data cop in Windows

Another lock in ?

''RSA's DLP Suite 6.5 will be "integrated tightly" with its Active Directory rights management services''

So if you are running a different LDAP server will things still work, or is this an attempt to shut out other (non MS) file/... servers?

London hospitals back online after PC virus infection

What was the cost ?

So: are we going to be told how much this cost to clear up ? Why do people still use MS s/ware in mission critical situations ?

I think that we need to be grateful that no one died through the use of inadequate s/ware.

Nominet fingers governance scrutineer

Look at BERR as well

Why not get the good professor to look at the governance structures of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and see which comes up best. I suspect that staying the way that it is would become a no-brainer.

DVLA under scrutiny over penalty notice dating game

Gas & others do this as well

When I get the gas bill it offers a prompt payment reduction if I pay within 10 days or something. However the date that I get the bill is often a week after the date printed on it.

Home Office team continue work on net snooping masterplan

@Fiddling while Rome burns

Well said. It is a lot of money spent that will not result in much extra employment - and a lot of the kit will presumably be ultimately bought from overseas. The government has lost touch with reality.

Social workers sacked over Gary Glitter email

Distateful - but not a sacking offense

Many get/send stuff like this, I hear worse on the radio. So why is it a sacking offense ?

It sounds like a spineless council that is afraid to stand up for common sense - sacking people for not being politically correct.

The picture will not put children at risk today - or increase the risk to children tomorrow.

What this does is to put divisions between people, make them afraid to comment on things in case they become sacked. This will cause all sorts of problems.

Employees sue for unpaid Windows Vista overtime

Look at Fedora Linux

Maybe they ought to upgrade to Fedora Linux, the upcoming version will boot in 10 seconds

The madness of 'king cores

It is not for the desktop

I agree that you can't use 80 cores on a typical desktop, however a server that is dishing up web pages, DNS results, ... might be able to use them. The big problem is going to be memory bandwidth.

PC virus forces three London hospitals into computer shutdown

The muppets who put up MS Windows should be named

just to ensure that no other organisation suffers the misfortune of employing them. Add Peter Jones above to the list - he is touting MS inspired FUD. Just how anyone could put something that is life critical on top of MS Windows beggars belief - it is not fit for anything critical.

This sort of thing is entirely predictable, pretending that it is unfortunate is not an acceptable excuse.

Do you think that they will have a case for financial redress from Redmond ? - Not a chance!

Leicester nursery loses memory stick with children's details

Did anyone ever loose anything in years gone by ?

Of course they did, so why the fuss when it happens now ? I do remember a few stories of paper files on the council tip, etc.

Partly because this sort of loss has become a popular press meme and also the amount that can be lost is so much greater -- to have lost what you can put on one memory stick you would have had to have lost a barrow load of paper (at least).

Don't get me wrong: it is right that we should castigate those who are careless with data and everyone needs to learn to be more careful.

CRB database wrongly labels thousands as criminals

@ Good stuff

"0.085%", I make it 0.31% which is 3.6 times your number. If we assume that complaints were about new records added to the database, in 2007-2008 there were 900,000 records added of which 2,785 were in error.

Why do you post as AC - perhaps you work for a govt spin agency ?

Nominet director quits over boardroom rift

Whitehall would wreck nominet

A Whitehall takeover would be the worst thing that could happen to it.

The resignation of Angus Hanton sounds like a good thing, we don't want a domainer on the board. Jim Davies should go as well. We want people who who will champion the interests of the typical domain name owner - by and large honest people who don't want to scam others by gaming domain names.

Half of Brits abuse apostrophe's

They should be Trussed up

for making mistakes like that - or perhaps eaten, shot and left :-)

Asus to phase out sub-10in Eee PCs, says CEO

Why did I buy my asus ?

4 reasons:

1) it was small - does not fill my brief case

2) It runs Linux

3) It was cheap

4) It had SSDs and would thus be robust

Well, the market being what it is - I expect someone else to fill the niche -- until Ballmer's cheque educates them about the errors of their ways!

Mandelson's dept mulls UK internet power grab

Noooooo !

Nominet works well enough! We don't want politicians in charge, they will only screw it up, make it cost more, introduce extra red tape, ... I'm not happy at the thought.

Portsmouth seeks ISP - no net access required

What if no 'phone

I mean ... not everyone has one of those new fangled ringing things, they don't give a postal address that one can write to with your quill ...

Jacqui Smith resurrects 42-days after Lords rejection

''the severe end of severe''

Yes - severely at risk of ending up as a fascist state. Let us be thankful for the Lords.

NSA spied on US aid workers, officers, and journalists in Baghdad

So: will any other govt snooping be different ?

With out own govt: going to start keeping all email/text/...; keeping records of car journeys; DNA; ... how many of these are going to be used for: entertainment; personal profit; snooping on neighbour/lover/ex-lover/partners business rival/... ?

This is ''what we have got to hide'' and why we must stop govt snooping.

US teen cuffed for sending nude phone pics

Prosecute those who received the pics ?

So you get a text, possibly unwanted, and get prosecuted ? Maybe she should have sent on to GW Bush and it would have been interesting to see if they nab Dubya.

IBM, Sun, Microsoft sink differences on VMs

What about using Perl's Parrot ?

See: http://www.parrotcode.org/

'I can see dinosaurs from my back porch'

One heartbeat

that is how far away she will be from bring president should McCain win.

Worried yet ?

Marketing body condemns 'draconian' Olympic law

Olympic bully boys are just in it for the money

Sport is just an excuse for a whole crowd of spivs to enrich themselves. The government, enamoured of grand jestures, encouraged this. They knew that the bid of £2.5Bn was low and would have to rise. Many of the so called benefits will not happen or could have been done more cheaply - look at how many unused sports facilities there are in Athens and Sydney. I object to them filling their pockets at my expense.

Under the law: many Greek restaurants in London are going to have to change their name, why should they when they have been called something like ''The Olympic Tavern'' for years.

It is the UK common man who has been ambushed by the Olympic money machine.

US blogger to enjoy Singapore jail

Shoot the messenger!

and bury the news. Always a good strategy for the powerful corrupt to adopt.

New Yorkers to pay for RFID in driving licences

Only an ID number ?

''The tag will only include an identification number - to allay privacy fears''

What else do we need to identify a car ? I doubt that it will be that hard to find the ID of your mark's car ... then you put up a sensor or two.

Norway sends entire citizenry's ID info to media

Shhh! Don't tell UK Govt

otherwise it will try to out do Norway and send out CDs of personal info and share lots with the USA ... Oh, wait, damn - they beat me to it!

No pr0n surfing for Qantas A380 passengers

ssh access

So no outgoing ssh access ... useless!

Pope watched over by flying robots during Lourdes visit

new toy

Oh, bless - the little boys in the French police just wanted an excuse to play with their new toy.

Yes, there was a viable liquid bomb plot

But how powerfull would the bang be ?

I still remain to be convinced that a mixture of hydrogen peroxide & a soft drink would explode violently enough to do much serious damage. It might generate a lot of froth but how much more? It is only contained in a flimsy plastic bottle.

I would really like to see this properly demonstrated.

The Hadron Collider: What's it all about, then?

@Alastair Smith

"Did you know that the chamber containing the ATLAS detector is so massive (35m high) that it actually has buoyancy in the Earth's crust?!"

Errrm, massive means that it has a lot of mass, ie it is very heavy. The reason that the chamber is buoyant is because it weighs less per volume (ie is less dense) than the surrounding earth/rock -- ie it is NOT masssive.

I assume that rather than "massive" you meant "big". Nitpicking ? Maybe: but we are talking about a physics experiment.

Brit trio convicted for liquid bomb terror plot

Disposal of bomb making kits

Having recently been on holiday I have been through the stupid airport checks a few times. Seeing them remove a bottle of sun lotion from a friend into a big wheelie bin, I asked them how they disposed of the contents of the bin.

I got a blank look. I explained that the wheelie bin contained potential bomb making material, was it suitably disposed of ? Nah - it is just picked up by the local corporation dust cart.

The whole lot is rhubarb dreamed up by the security industry, keeps them all in jobs.

In terms of potential lives saved, the money would be better spent on the NHS or improving road safety.

The politicians are either ingnorant or afraid of being labelled the person who allowed the terrorists in.