Posts by lotus49

Jailed LulzSec hacker Cleary coughs to child porn images, will be freed soon

What's the matter with you lot?

I completely fail to understand why so many of you are making excuses for someone who had images of "penetrative sexual activity between children and adults" on his computer.

Given the rest of the story it is reasonable to assume that these were not planted on his computer. That being the case, I have no sympathy with him at all.

How would your opinion change if your young son or daughter had been sexually abused in order to create images for paedophiles or don't any of you actually have children?

Whitehall grants copyright pirates safe haven until 2015

Re: ?

You are spot on as section 1 of the Theft Act makes abundantly clear. Anyone who calls it theft is an idiot and a legal ignoramus.

YouTube beats off $1bn Viacom copyright case once AGAIN

YouTube vs TPB

Much as I dislike the legal attacks against TPB etc, YouTube does have substantial non-infringing uses whereas TPB doesn't. The reality is that YouTube was set up for people to share their videos. Many people but not most post infringing content. TPB, on the other hand, exists solely to facilitate piracy and has almost no non-infringing use.

I still don't think that TPB, which is really no more than a search engine, shouldn't be allowed to carry on fairly much unfettered, there is a clear distinction between the way YouTube and TPB operate.

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

Sadly, he's right

I have used various forms of Unix as my main OS almost all of my computing life. After I left uni, I briefly ran MS-DOS 3.1 on an IBM PC but as soon as I had a 286-based machine I moved back to Unix and have stuck with it through Coheren't, Minix, ESIX SYSVR4, Solaris, Linux (starting before Slackware was even thought of), OpenBSD (for a firewall) and BSD-based MacOS X. I am completely in favour of the simplicity of design of Unix and also the broad aims and ethos of open source.

I am even typing this on a Linux laptop but I cannot help but agree that the whole experience of using MacOS (I also have a MacBook Pro) is much more pleasant. I bought my non-techie wife a Mac and she loves it. I didn't even consider giving her a Linux laptop. Linux has never been driven by usability or attractiveness and it shows.

I still use a bash shell and vi almost daily but if I want a graphical OS I usually use MacOS these days.

NRA: Video games kill people, not guns. And here's our video game

Re: Curious morals

Spot on.

The brief visibility of Janet Jackson's nipple was the most complained about event ever broadcast on US TV. God forbid that children (for whom, of course, nipples were designed in the first place) should see a nipple. Regular intense violence is fine though.

This is warped beyond reason.

Linux kernel dumps 386 chip support

Re: 386?

Minix and Coherent did both support the 286. I remember them both fondly.

US drops ‘net regulation bombshell, threatens WCIT exit

US rather than Russia and China

The US is far from perfect but US control over the internet has resulted in what we have today, and I think it's pretty good.

Am I comfortable with the level of power the US has over the internet at the moment? No, I'm not.

Would I feel more comfortable if some of that power were transferred to Russia and China. Definitely not.

Kim Dotcom shows off new mega service

Re: Pseudo-random?

Radioactive decay is a good (possibly even perfect) source of randomness but not one widely available. In any event this has been largely replacement by Zener diode noise as a source of randomness but this also requires hardware.

Mouse and keyboard movements are not predictable as long as the resolution is high enough. The exact movements to the pixel measured in milliseconds are not truly random but are really almost as good as one of the above sources for all but the very highest security requirements. Linux has been using an entropy gathering daemon for at least 10 years based on these sources and I have never seen the reliability of this seriously challenged.

Most pseudo RNGs are not sufficiently cryptographically secure but the EGD is as good as any private individual is ever likely to need.

His Holiness Benedict XVI to tweet to his Catholic flock

Re: 1.2 billion followers

The difference being that, for better or for worse, most of the Pope's 1.2bn followers actually take some notice of what he says.

Re: Religion in 140 chars or less

Already done more than 7 years ago.

Not quite the literary highlight that was the KJV but each to his own.

Pirate cops bust LITTLE GIRL, take her Winnie-the-Pooh laptop

Re: Age of Criminal Responsibility?

My knowledge of Finnish Law is pretty limited but if this were in the UK then yes she would be below the age of ciminal responsibility. However, what this means is that she could not be convicted. It doesn't mean that the police wouldn't or couldn't investigate the alleged crime.

Re: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Which legal jurisdiction do you live in? Please quote the specific legislation that defines the act of theft in your jurisdiction.

If what you say is actually true (which I do not believe) then you cannot live in the UK.

The Theft Act 1968 s.1 says "A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it; and “thief” and “steal” shall be construed accordingly."

Re: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Anyone who downvoted this post (Orlowksi, I'm thinking of you) is simply wrong.

Read the Theft Act and the definition is very clear right at the beginning of the Act and is pretty much exactly as this post says. Copying something cannot be theft in English Law.

35 US states petition for secession – on White House website

Say no to magic underwear

Like most (but I recognise not absolutely all) people outside the US, I much prefer Obama to some looney would be plutocrat who wears magic underwear so I was pleased at Obama's decisive victory.

However, what I am much more pleased about is reading the lamentations of Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh and a 1001 other Republican cry babies. You lost, tough luck. That is how the democratic process (which you all supported two weeks ago) works.

If the inaptly named GOP doesn't realise that bigotry is no longer fashionable, they will consign themselves to history. What a great shame.

Virgin Media spanked for 'we've already cabled up your house' mailshot

All ISPs are a bunch of liars but I am very happy with my VM service.

Technical support is useless but I almost never need it so I don't really care.

No GPS in the iPad Mini Wi-Fi: People are right to criticise

You are right. For some reason I thought it had because the location services seemed to work well but now I have checked, I find that I was mistaken? You live and learn.

My wifi only iPad 2 has GPS. Also, there is a reason to use it with online maps. I have a wifi 3g modem (much better than paying for a contract that I can only use on my iPad) but even if I didn't, I could use my phone as a hotspot.

Why James Bond's Aston Martin Top Trumps the rest

Re: Top Gear's Clarkson, a gentleman and a scholar ;-), on the DB5's top speed

There was an article in Autocar about 15 years ago on the original Autocar & Motor (as I think it was) test on the E Type. The test car did get to 150mph but it had been tweaked and was not standard. According to the article, Jaguar admitted this but not until many years later.

Not that it matters, it was an absolute stunner no matter how fast it went.

Skydiver Baumgartner in 128,000ft plunge from brink of space

Absolutely brilliant

This was one of the most exciting things I have watched for a long time.

It was a fantastic achievement and is one of those things I know I won't forget seeing like the moon landing, which I am just old enough to remember and certainly haven't forgotten.

Why is solid-state storage so flimsy?

Cloud backup

All drives fail and usually fail in the most inconvenient (or even disastrous) way. The only solution is proper backup and, although I do take local backups to another HDD, there is a lot to be said for a reliable cloud backup solution.

I use Crashplan and I have been very happy with it. It's reasonably cheap but operates quietly in the background with no user intervention (which is particularly useful for the rest of my family who resolutely refused to back anything up no matter how many times I warned them). It would be a pain to try to restore 1.5TB over the net but I can prioritise and at least I know it's highly unlikely to go wrong at the same time as my HDD and local backup.

Ex-HP boss Mark Hurd's $53m gold parachute approved by judge

He isn't that bad looking so he must really be a prize dick (like you needed me to point that out).

iPhone 5 adaptors goldrush begins

Re: More ideas for Apple

And even then, they fluffed it.

I'm no Apple hater (I shall refrain from listing the assortment of Apple devices we own as a family, but it's lots) but this is annoying. Come on Apple, use micro USB like everyone else.

Judge: Apple not liable for dropped, broken iPhone screens

Re: Missing the point maybe....

The way they tricked everyone by not telling them that it was made of glass was disgraceful. It must have come as a real shock to all those people who bought iPhones only to discover that they were made of glass when they got them home. How could Apple have done that to its gullible customers.

If only all those punters had known that the phone was made of glass BEFORE they bought them, how different things would have been.

Oh, wait...

Re: Frackin MORON JUDGE! WOW!!!

Actually no.

You were downvoted because your posts were stupid. Everyone knows glass shatters including you. Stop being so vacuous.

It's glass - what's wrong with you lot?

The front and back of an iPhone are made of glass. It doesn't make any bloody difference what sort of glass it is. You knew that when you bought it so don't pretend you are so stupid that you didn't know that glass breaks.

How this idiotic case ever got before a judge mystifies me. I think it's about time that contingent fees were banned in the US and this preposterous and frivolous litigation would stop overnight.

What a waste of everyone's time and money (except for the lawyers of course).

Bitcoin exchange shuts after heist

Re: think of the real world

When that bank is the Central Bank for that currency, that is precisely what happens.

No amount of security built into the actual currency will make up for the fact that the institutions that are central to the existence of Bitcoins such as the exchanges, are not reliable. If people are concerned about liquidity, Bitcoins will have a very slow take up. At the moment I would not dare to hold more than a few pounds in Bitcoins in case I got stuck with nothing but a few worthless numbers.

Re: Bitcoin

You have been downvoted for objecting to bigotry :-(.

Shame on you commentards.

Re: Education has failed, not Bitcoin

In a way Bitcoin has failed.

There have been several (at least three to my knowledge) instances where thefts of Bitcoins have resulted in liquidity issues. All currencies have in their favour is the trust of the people who use them. If users cannot keep their Bitcoins safely or trust third parties to convert them to real money at any time and at a fair and predictable rate, they won't use them.

It is far from unlikely that the entire Bitcoins edifice will collapse with no-one trusting or wanting them.

You'll be on a list 3 hrs after you start downloading from pirates - study

Re: What a waste...

I see that you have sensibly decided to protect your reputation by posting your ill-informed bilge anonymously.

Piracy (of the copyright violation sort at least) is not a crime. Not everything that is against the law is a crime. Try reading The Idiot's Guide to the Law - you may learn something.

Let me know if some of the long words are a bit hard though, I'll help.

Re: Not hard to get around...

You are quite right but if you use something like Truecrypt, you can have two levels of protection. You hand over the password to one but not the other. It is not possible to prove that there is a second encrypted container so you cannot be done for not revealing the password because no-one will know or even have reason to believe it's there.

It's all a lot of faffing about for very little risk though. BitTorrent has always published the IP addresses of all the peers and that information is there for all to see. If it were possible/practical to use this data (which, don't forget, is just a list of IP addresses that are not personally identifiable without access to ISP records and that requires a court order) to stop piracy, the rights holders would have done so long ago.

There is only one solution to the issue of piracy and there only ever will be one solution. Offer a good service at a fair price and the public will beat a path to your door. It has worked for Apple.

Re: BitTorrent = Honeytrap

Nope, your IP address is still visible and you would be a leech into the bargain.

UKNova drops torrents after threats from FACT

Please don't mention other sites by name

FACT are a bunch of useless arseholes who probably don't know about half of the private torrent sites. Please don't assist their intelligence gathering by advertising other sites to close down.

Re: Good one, FACT

Come one Andrew O, as an Reg staffer you shouldn't be posting anonymously.

Police mistake reveals plan for Assange's Embassy capture

Porridge

The rapist can serve his porridge in Sweden or he can do it in the Ecuadorian embassy. Either way is good.

Assange is a total arse who thinks he can get away with whatever he likes by crying "freedom of speech". Bollocks to him, I'll happily see him rot on his airbed.

By the way, the Ecuadorian Ambassador has said she will not help him escape. He'll be caught sooner or later and I shall look forward to his getting what he deserves (subject to due process in Sweden and I have few doubts about the fairness of the Swedish legal system).

Carbonite disputes ASA censure of cloud storage ads

Crashplan FTW

I was interested in a Cloud backup solution and looked at Carbonite but this nonsense with throttling (which was not made clear in any of their marketing material) is what put me off. I use about 1TB of Crashplan's storage, which cost me about $400 for 4 years. I haven't had any issue with upload speeds and the service seems to work very well. It's invisible and multiplatform (not Android yet sadly but Linux, Winblows and Mac are all well-supported) with no apparent bandwidth restrictions.

I have no relationship with Crashplan other than being a satisfied customer.

Forget 'climate convert' Muller: Here's the real warming blockbuster

It's just as well for Greenpeace that it is a multi-trillion dollar organisation that can afford to support University research departments around the world then isn't it?

Er, hang on...

Build a bonkers hi-fi

Audiophiles don't like music

People who geniunely care about music and audiophiles are two distinct groups.

I have yet to meet a musician (and I know a lot of musicians) who was really all that bothered about hifi. The only two audiophiles I have known well were far less interested in what they played than what they played it on. I remember one chap playing me a silent LP at full volume and boasting that we couldn't hear anything. That was true but hardly very useful.

If you truly love music, the odd bit of imperfection in the sound reproduction is of absolutely no concern at all.

High end audio is just homeopathy for techies with more money than sense.

London cops order Julian Assange to turn himself in

This isn't a joke - rape is a serous offence

Assange is suspected of a serious offence and the Swedish justice system has a perfectly respectable record. There is no reason to believe he will not have a fair trial and extradition from Sweden would not be any easier than extradition from the UK.

Assange is a dick. Fortunately for him, being a dick isn't against the law however, having a dick and sticking it in someone without their consent is against the law and is an extremely serious offence and one that merits proper investigation.

The longer this goes on, the more this just looks like a rapist trying to avoid his just desserts.

'Unbreakable' Samsung Galaxy Note II to take on iPhone 5

Re: A word of caution

Your'e wrong and he's right.

You can read all about this on xda-developers. Closing applications does indeed increase battery usage.

Wraps come off UK super-snooper draft plans

Re: VPN?

No it's not a fail.

We are talking about routine storage of communications data by ISPs here not what the security services can do if they really care. I am a Virgin customer. Virgin is not about to start doing man in the middle attacks on my VPN connection and if this stupid law is enacted, I shall indeed be passing all my traffic through a VPN and I shall be safe from snoopers as a result.

If MI6 decides that it's interested in me, they will break into my house and put a key logger/screen logger on my computer or network. There is nothing I can realistically do about that but I don't think MI6 cares about me.

Over 40 Magnifier

Some of you are short-sighted (but only metaphorically)

Everyone over 50 has presbyopia. In general my eyesight is excellent but as I approach 50 I do struggle sometimes to read very small text in poor light or if it's red on black. I do not need glasses other than about 5 minutes a month so spending hundreds of pounds on them would be a stupid waste of money.

I don't own a magnifying glass and if I did, it wouldn't help with poor light. Even if I had one of the those illuminated ones, it would weight three times what my phone (which I never stray more than a metre from unless I'm in the shower and even then it's only about 2m) weighs so I'd hardly want to carry that around.

Taking a picture and magnifying it is a shag and far less convenient than an app like this which provides a blown-up illuminated live picture.

I have a similar app on my SGS2 (UltraMagnifier) and, while I have only used it about five times, it has been invaluable on those occasions and would be worth every penny of £1.49.

Apple's Retina Macs: A little too elite?

What's the point of a DVD drive?

I haven't used one for some time and the last time I did was just to rip the contents so I wouldn't have to use the stupid thing again.

4.7GB (or 8.7 for an unreliable dual layer disk) really isn't that much (and nothing at all to the video editors to whom the article refers) so what's the point? Perhaps there are still uses for DVDs/CDs but I'm struggling to think what they might be.

Samsung's projector phone beamed up to Blighty

Being suspicious of children says more about you than them

I have three children of my own and the more time I spend with children (not just my own), the more I realise that the vast majority of them are far more pleasant than most of the adults I know.

Children are more open, honest and fun than adults and they never boast about how much their house is worth. Children are noisy and usually rather sticky but in general, they are charming and likeable. By contrast, most adults I come across suck. I like my wife though.

Ultrabooks: objects of desire but just too darn expensive

Yup - £900 is too much

I have read many reviews of Ultrabooks here and elsewhere and some of them are indeed very nice machines but I wouldn't pay £900 for one. That's £50 more than the cheapest MacBook Air and only £100 less than the cheapest MacBook Pro.

I'm no Apple fanboi but I'd rather have the Apple laptops at that price.

UK man to spend year in the clink for Facebook account hack

Re: Digital equivalent of breaking and entering.

Also, the Computer Misuse Act prohibits using computer systems without authorisation regardless of whether you had to crack/guess a password. Even if there were no password at all but you knew you were not authorised to access something, it would be a breach of the Act (quite rightly in my view).

Re: Digital equivalent of breaking and entering.

That is not correct.

Trespass is merely wandering onto property without permission. Breaking and entering involves the use of force (which may only be sufficient to push open an unlocked door) to enter a property without permission with the intention of committing a further offence, usually theft.

Consequently, it's still breaking and entering (and therefore criminal) rather than trespass (which, as you rightly point out, is a civil offense) even if the door is unlocked if you do so with the intention of stealing something.

Study reveals high price of porn addiction

Lame

The fact that a fifth preferred porn to real sex surprised me. They clearly aren't very good at it.

My father once opined to me that he would rather do it than watch pictures of other people doing it. That sentiment runs in the family.

Samsung unwraps 17in Ivy Bridge beast

Re: Why would I want to do that?

That's a very easy question to answer and the answer is that I might want to compute in more than one place.

I might want to sit on the floor by the fire. I might want to show my daughter a video in her bedroom. I might want to read my emails while I'm eating my breakfast. I might want to watch a video in bed. Very occasionally I may even wish to sit at my desk, but I don't do that very often.

I may also take my laptop on holiday. Have fun getting that 24" monitor into your suitcase.

BT missing from Pirate Bay High Court slap-down

Dutch Pirate Party

The Pirate Party already has a dedicated TPB proxy. A quick search for "piratenpartij pirate bay proxy" will lead you to a big list of proxies. There you go High Court, fixed that for you.

Google G-drive app leak sparks 5GB file vault riddle

box.com useless file size limit

I was just about to sign up for box.com after reading the discussion here until I saw the 25MB file size limit on free accounts - pathetic and useless.

I'll stick with dropbox thank you very much.