Posts by Iamfanboy

EU mandates electronic IDs for sheep and goats

@ Rendon and the AC

Maybe if Christianity WAS about earning your way into Heaven through good works, we'd have a lot less poverty, hunger, and greedy evangelicals cluttering up our lives.

Americans can swear at toilets, judge rules

What's more important

What's more important that bully cops get a kick in the balls over this. Over and over and over.

Police launch hunt for bogus bobbies

Ah, the disadvantage of a police state....

Unconditional obedience to a uniform means that people will be able to use that uniform in malicious ways.

This is only the tip of the iceberg, particularly if the plan to have most of the policing done from massive central stations and only a few local cops who knock off at 8 PM nearby - how easy do you think it'd be to break into one of those local copshops, steal the uniforms there (because NO ONE wears their uniform home if they can help it), and abuse the uniform's authority?

German Wikipedia attacked over Nazi symbolism

German WP perfect target for neoNazis?

Hm, makes sense to me.

Invidious comparisons to the recent antics of American Wikipedia bigwigs aside, the truth is that it gives a very clear, easy to take over target that would allow neo-Nazis a chance to relentlessly propagandize while paralyzing anyone who tried to provide a 'fair and balanced' view, and the Wikipedian's knee-jerk reaction is to defend the idea of Wikipedia at all costs without looking at evidence.

Wikipedia: poster child for showing how low the common denominator of the Internet is. The truth of Web 2.0: there's a reason that most people aren't qualified to create content, because their content sucks.

The question is, what IS the evidence? Not just glorifying the Hitler Jugend, but top German Wikipedians glossing over the crimes that the Nazis committed, or obsfucating the issue in any way, would show that there is evidence here.

Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of in-game ads analysts

Dazzer, Shhh!

If you TELL them they don't get back the money they put into web advertisements and in-game advertisements, then they'll stop funding sites like the Register and other smallish websites who otherwise would be forced to shell out of pocket for ALL of their server costs, instead of (well) most of it...

It's apparent to everyone but Web 2.0 nuts and Madison Avenue types (who don't want to realize their advertising relevance is past) that webvertisements DON'T WORK, and more often than not just annoy people. But as long as they're willing to dump money into a hole to support MY browsing habits, I'm willing to let them do it.

German law smites Warhammer fan flick

Title

Or compare it to Star Trek The New Voyages - sure, TNV is a bit dodgy, but still it receives a fair amount of attention because it's created by fans and tells stories that truly does appeal to the fans!

Games Workshop does not care about their customers as fans, they care about their customers as money sources. Now, I've got nothing against paying money for fair value, but recently their business model has been "Screw the game and the players who've been around for a decade or more, we're just going to sell as many pretty models as we can to all the beginners we can."

*sigh* I'm not angry.

I'm not even surprised.

I'm just disappointed.

And I'm glad I unloaded $500 of my GW models on eBay.

Ruling allows US tech firms to dodge an immigration bullet

*sigh* Teda, Teda, Teda... re: inverted

YOU actually have it quite backwards: The US government doesn't give a rat's arse about SSNs; they're using this as a smokescreen to increase their own control over the flow of who can work in this country.

How do I know? Well, think about it... who's in a better position to tell if there's more than one person using the same SSN to work in the country illegally? Hm, could it be... maybe...

THE IRS ITSELF?!? *gasp*

It ALL goes through the same bottleneck. Ponder for a moment this fact: The IRS knows when two people with the same SSN pay their taxes. Or can cross-reference when two different employers use a stolen SSN to get their immigrants legitimate work. Now, why don't they do it as a policy?

Because that way, they can collect more taxes. If the person were working illegally with no SSN at all, the IRS would get stiffed. The reason, the real reason, that serious identity theft prevention attempts don't go through the government is because it would reduce their revenues.

Remember, taxes are just a bigger man standing over you and saying, "Pay me or I hurt you." It was true when we were all serfs under a baron, and it's true today.

This was just a blatant power grab, and thank the Maker that SOME people in this country are well-informed enough to recognize it, even if you aren't.

SanDisk subpoenaed in US antitrust probe

Voting with what now?

For years the corporate goons have been tricking us with the idea of thinking that we can "Vote with our wallets" instead of paying attention to the people we actually VOTE FOR, but now that notion is turning around and biting the music and movie cartels right in the arse.

My friend predicted it nearly ten years ago with the advent of .mp3, and now all we have to do is wait and watch.

Forensic data stolen in server theft

Re: Terror

Well, of course they link it to terror; that way they get broader power persecuting - er, sorry, PROSECUTING, whomever perpetrated the crime.

Can you imagine the headlines? "HACKER TERRORIST APPREHENDED BEFORE PLOT UNFOLDS!" Two huge words in the headlines equals big readership!

Feh.

Spammers debut FDF spam

Even intelligent people will fall for it..

Provided it touches on their hopes. Remember the First Rule: "People will believe something because they want it to be true or because they fear it is."

My mother, one of the most genuinely intelligent people I know, required an hour of convincing that the "Stuff envelopes at home" mail she'd received was a fraud through and through. She doesn't want to go back to work, and it provided her with an outlet for that want - that's the way spammers work. There's always someone who will believe it.

Sigh. Really does remove all hope for humanity eh?

California e-voting machines have more holes than Swiss cheese

An "undisclosed account"?

Does anyone else find this particular part ESPECIALLY worrying?

"Testers found an undisclosed account in the Hart software that an attacker could exploit to gain unauthorized access to the election management database."

Does this mean what I think it does? That Hart INCLUDED a hidden account that just allows anyone outright access to a database, hopefully without any kind of accountability? What kind of things could a person do once they had access to this database?

And WHY was it included in the first place? It had to have been intentional and planned. What uses were they planning for this?

I do not like the idea of e-voting. It's practically designed for fraud and unaccountability, and to have something like an extra account that just la-dee-da lets someone, ANYONE, straight access to a database... could they tamper with the database? Change, say, a thousand votes for the Republicans and fifty thousand for the Democrats into fifty thousand for the Reps and one thousand for the Dems?

US denies entry to security researcher

happens all the time

This is a routine thing, actually - you need a work visa to do any work in the US, not a tourist visa.

This happened to Aurora Snow, the pornstar, if I'm not mistaken. She'd jet over to LA from Britain on a tourist visa, act in a half-dozen porns in a week, then jet back home. After a career that lasted some two years, she got busted by a porn fan and booted back to her home country.

Was it Aurora Snow? I think it was.

So aside from the fact that it was a white hat "hacker" *spits to remove taste of word* this story isn't very exceptional from anyone's standpoint.

Microsoft Windows patent will spy for advertisers

That would be the last straw

The moment they do this, I'm finally done with Microsoft.

I may have to stick to Windows because of a couple of apps I've got from way back, but the moment that happens I'm switching to Linux and taking my chances with windows emulation.

Oh, and the obligatory complaint: Just when I was getting used to every other article upon your once-fine website containing something about the iPhone or Paris Hilton or preferably both, you stop doing so and place something both serious AND IT-related upon your website! I've been reading the Register for many years now, and by far the bootnotes are the best part of your publication. How DARE you post something that has something to do with your motto, "Biting the hand that feeds IT"? You should be ashamed. I don't know if I will continue to read your website if you continue this stream of non-non-IT material.

(whoops, better watch out! If I put that tongue any farther in my cheek, I'm apt to bite it off!)

South Dakota rejoins the execution club

? I rather thought execution was about...

you know... removing a person who'd shown that he couldn't live in normal society? Kind of like how you have to shoot a rabid dog? "Oh, no, put it in a kennel until it dies a natural death..."

I'd have to agree with John Blackley. Essentially, the compact of civilization boils down to a single promise: you have to promise not to harm another member of that civilization, whether by stealing from them, beating them up, killing them, insulting them, etcetera. Once you've removed yourself from that compact by harming another, you have to be punished. Murder is the most serious of these offenses; removing another man's life is the worst thing you can do. If it's accidental, that's one thing, but if you make someone drink HYDROCHLORIC ACID after stabbing him and then laugh about it, then you cannot be considered human any more.

Incarceration should be reserved for those who can be rehabilitated to rejoin civilization, not for someone who has decided that civilization doesn't apply to them at all and can never understand what it means. Mind you, I'm in no rush to kill anyone on Death Row and take away their appeals so they don't waste taxpayer money; if they truly are innocent then it gives them the chance to at least prove it.

And if the system fails... then it fails. System failures happen all the time, and they may be sad, but that's no reason to outright reject the system without being SURE that what you're embracing instead actually works. Every time an aircraft carrier puts to sea, one man in a thousand on board will die, but is that any reason to disband the Navy? Children stick forks into electrical outlets, but is that any reason to go back to candles and open fires? Windows 3.0 crashed all the time, but was that any reason to go to OS/2 without making sure that it worked right? Might as well stop eating in case you get mad cow or e.coli. Might as well stop breathing in case you inhale an allergen or disease.

Feh. How many of you "no capitol punishment" types ever spent five minutes with some of the people on Death Row? Or with hardened criminals who WOULD kill you for your sneakers, and haven't landed on Death Row... yet? It might be barbaric (I dunno about that, really) but until you're sure the new system is better, don't kick the old one to the curb. And lifetime incarceration is NOT better than execution: it costs a lot more, and is in my mind much more of a "cruel and unusual punishment" than simply ending their life in exchange for the one they took.

How vicious and vindictive are YOU to want to spend YOUR money in exchange for keeping these humans who have decided to not be human alive but without any hope for as long as they live, with complete medical benefits to make sure that life is a long, long one?

Feds fiddle as cybertopia burns

Title

They can't arrest you for thoughtcrime, so they arrest you for sexcrime? Just like the Aussie woman and her 'underage' paramour?

Why WERE these people arrested? Why were they targeted so specifically? Why did it take 9 months in order to bring everything together?

What were they REALLY guilty of?

Fuck. Time to get out of this country. Canada's starting to sound better and better.... Or maybe New Zealand... or maybe Antarctica. Something's sick at the core of this country, and I don't want any part of it.

The decline of antivirus and the rise of whitelisting

I'm not an expert, just a user, but even I'm leery of whitelisting.

At first, it seemed like the perfect solution to me - hell, I remember reading an article some FIVE YEARS ago about how the current AV programs were flawed, and how there were no programs whatsoever that would simply block executables that you did not want to run.

I was enchanted by the idea! It seemed so simple, but so elegant!

Then I got to thinking, and what I thought of I didn't like. There would have to be some central database listing all of the known good programs. Good programs are created all the time. And what happens if the people in charge of this database take some cash from, say, Microsoft to prevent older versions of software from running in order to maximise their own profits?

I run Office 2003 because it came with my laptop of the time and because it suits my needs. I feel no urge to buy 2028 or whatever the hell the latest version is because that would be extortion - I don't NEED it, so why should I BUY it?

But if Microsoft could force me to buy their programs? If any software vendor could force you to upgrade to the latest and greatest simply by removing older versions from the whitelist?

And what about competition? "Hey, man, I'll slip you 500k if you take Open Office off of your whitelist..."

And what about all my Japanese ecchi games? Do you seriously think THEY'LL get whitelisted? Hah!

Something DOES need to be done about computer security. But whitelisting isn't the answer; it's just fascism, a "Father-Knows-Best-Dear" policy that imposes a rule from the top-down without regard for what we may want. Fascism sounds good to fearful people, but it's never an answer; what you lose is more important than what you gain.

Or in the words of Ben Franklin, "Those who give up a little essential freedom in exchange for security deserve neither."

US gov in Bill Gates inspired robot probe

Bender sez,

"STAY AWAY FROM OUR WOMEN! YOU GOT METAL FEVER, BOY! METAL FEVER!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKZx0DJM9wo

Congress chops economy-class nuke programme

negative proof -

You'd have to prove it doesn't work. When hasn't nuclear deterrence worked, again? *shrug* scientific method states that we look at the real world and draw observations from that, not project our beliefs onto the real world.

I can observe that Pakistan and India, who exist in an uneasy but still war-free peace and have done so for the past forty years because they know they could destroy each other. I cannot forsee a future where they have a bloody war, which means that both sides of the border will gradually grow used to having the other as a neighbor - and once that goes on long enough, it will become the status quo, rather than something uneasy.

I can look and see that the human race has not had a war on a worldwide scale with a significant percentage of the human population dead or dying for the past sixty years, because such a war would be too destructive - it would end up with the globe being smashed like a kid with a toy screaming, "if I can't have it, no one can!"

If you'd want to pretty it up, you'd call it "Peace through mutual respect for another's power", not "nuclear deterrence." Is using the phrase 'mutual respect' PC enough for you?

(I'm toying with the idea of an alternate history novel without nukes where the SSSR invades Europe in the mid-60's because they WOULD have, but that's neither here nor there.)

Peace through mutual respect for another's power may be not be easy, but I prefer it to one strong man stepping on the necks of everyone else and making sure that peace sticks around because no one else will ever get strong enough to challenge him - because eventually someone else DOES try to challenge him, and everyone else suffers because of their fight.

The saddest thing about this world, I think, is that might DOES make right. If you're rich enough, you can buy your way out of almost anything. If you're strong enough, you can beat up on anyone who isn't as strong as you. If you're smart and charismatic enough, you can trick everyone into following you.

The world is intrinsically unfair, and it sucks, but there are only two answers to that: Make everyone equally weak, or make everyone equally strong. Laws handed down by governments tend to work in the first way, which is just fine for most cases (though it grates on me personally), but there eventually reaches a point where law simply doesn't work - it might be the Old West with guns, it might be on the internet with trojans and botnets, or it might be in international dealings between nations. If the law doesn't apply, if not everyone can be equally weak, then I'd much rather be equally strong.

Think about it this way: Would you rather Microsoft be the only game in town, with the power to utterly destroy Macintosh and Linux? Or would you rather see Macs and Linux pushing Microsoft harder? If you're in favor of one scenario, logically it's hard to see how you couldn't be in favor of the other. What, just because one could involve the brutal and agonizing death of millions and the other only involves money? It's just a different application, not a different function.

Hmm,

f(respect for another's strength) = (personal power + personal insanity) / opponent potential power if no laws exist

f(respect for another's strength)= (personal power + personal insanity) / (Strength of laws+opponent potential power) if laws exist

Sorry, just went through a refresher on basic functions, and it seemed to apply here. Though you could probably never apply actual numeric values to any of those variables, it can be applied to almost any situation where respect for another's strength is important.

Gah, I messed up.

I had the equation upside down, it should be

f(r) = opponent's perceived strength / (personal power + personal insanity) if no laws apply

f(r) = (opponent's perceived strength + strength of laws) / (personal power + personal insanity) if laws exist

the higher the number, the more you respect your opponents. The smaller the number...

The reason that military deterrence failed in the past is because of either insanity, or because military leaders always overestimate their own strength and underestimate their opponent's. "Oh, our tanks are superior, our guns are superior, we train more, so what does it matter if they have 3 men to our 1?" That's just hubris, simple arrogance, thinking that "I'll beat 'em just because I'm ME" but we're all guilty of it constantly.

But it's hard to argue that your opponent isn't powerful if he can vaporize a city, especially if it might be the hometown you grew up in. If we say that 1=nuclear weapons, then if you're not batshit crazy and know how powerful the things are the equation would look like f(r) = 1/(1+0) = 1/1 = 1. 1 is a perfectly respectful number, there: represents that you may not like them, but you know they're just as strong as you are and getting involved would only mean your mutual destruction.

No vision at all, Neil?

Just because you can't see past the end of your own nose doesn't mean that other people are so afflicted, Neil. Right now, large scale nuclear deterrence is a policy of the past... that doesn't mean it won't be necessary in the future. Times change, the world changes, but it all stays the same in the end.

Even now, nuclear deterrence isn't a thing of the past - it's alive and well. India and Pakistan, anyone? Also, when the nuclear program of North Korea advances (I don't for a second believe they're going to stop, no matter what platitudes they sprout), the only effective deterrent is going to be America's very credible threat that, "If you use a single nuclear weapon on either South Korea or Japan, we'll turn your whole country into fucking glazed craters."

I'm hardly a fan of nuclear war. I learned a little too much about it when I was quite young, and yeah, I did have rather bad nightmares about it for years. But it's so horrible that even the THREAT of it is enough to steer people away from the big red button and towards negotiation. Ignorant fools on both sides who just don't KNOW, or don't want to know, keep forgetting the important point that policy makers KNOW if they decide to destroy a city and the other guy has nukes too, your own city could be next.

I firmly believe that it takes only one strong person to make a war, but two strong people to make peace. In terms of international strength, nuclear weapons are quite possibly the strongest threat anyone can have, but that's all it really is: a threat, a bluff, because if World War III is fought with nukes, World War IV will be fought with stones, and who'd want that (but Islamic extremists)?

But it's a necessary bluff, until that day comes when "We ain't'a gunna study war no more" which just don't seem likely, considering the nature of humanity.

Hacking WoW and the pursuit of knowledge

they're not hackers, they're CHEATERS!!

You don't call someone using a Game Genie on an old Nintendo game a 'hacker' - you call them cheaters. Why do you give them the dignity of the title, 'hacker' just because it's in a online game? There's a huge difference.

Gawd, I hate how often I have to say this, over and over again, but here goes...

A hacker would muck about with the internals of the game, try to figure out why X item drops at a certain rate or how you could improve that rate, maybe even alter some code to see if in fact he was right.

A cheater would say, "Hey, I can use that knowledge to make sure I get tons of X item, and make sure that I'm the most powerful player in the game world!"

Now, using a Game Genie isn't a good or a bad thing - maybe you just want to really mess up the game, and it doesn't affect anyone else, so that's OK on your own time. But cheating in an online game is morally wrong; you're stating, "I don't care about rules. I don't care about the other people in the game. I'm going to do what I want to do, hell with the rest of you fuckers."

I play in a pretty small online game (I think the active community numbers something like maybe, MAYBE 2k players a day) and it can be said conclusively that cheaters helped to ruin the game, because nearly 3/4ths of players left in a single month's span when the cheating was impossible to get away from.

The effects were magnified because such a significant part of the population, as compared to say WoW, were cheating; I'd wager that there aren't more than a tiny fraction of one percent that have the ability to cheat on WoW, whereas at the height of PSU I'd wager 2-3% were cheating constantly, and another 30% at least were benefiting from those cheaters. If that many could cheat on WoW, then the game would be dead in short order.

Anyone who thinks that cheatin' is just fine needs to have another think. It's not a Single Player Online Role-Playing Game, after all (SPORPG?) It's a Massively MULTI-Player Online Role Playing Game, meaning that the game's about more than just you. I actually think that the EULAs which are so strictly enforced, and the programs that are slapped on to prevent cheating, aren't so much about the company's revenue stream (hey, if the cheater is paying for the game and you ban him, that means you won't get any more money!) but about protecting the OTHER players in the community.

And that's worth a little runtime on the CPU instead of killing the process out of hand.

Manhunt 2 banned

Anyone else here played the first Manhunt?

I have.

All of this reminds me of a funny scene that took place when GTA San Andreas came out. I was in line to buy a copy of Xenogears (fifth freakin' copy I've owned of the game), and ahead of me was a woman with her son, who looked perhaps 11 years old, and his friend.

His hands were clenched around a copy of GTA SA, and he was talking eagerly with his friend about it. "Anything you find is a vehicle you can use! You can even pedal a bicycle around! And there are tons of weapons, too!"

The mother reached back and plucked the game from her son's hands, but he continued talking. "Yeah, guns, knives, baseball bats, your bare fists..."

Just as she was reaching for the money to pay for it, the kid made the fatal mistake of adding, "You can even find a double-headed dildo and beat people to death with it!"

At that point, she shoved the game at the store clerk, gathered up her money, and dragged her protesting son from the store. My eyes met the clerk's, and it was all we could do to keep from laughing until they'd fully departed the store.

Funny story? Yes. But it highlights an important point - that parents are, more often than not, idiots. Would it have been so hard (so GODDAMNED hard) for that woman to do even a little bit of research, maybe asked the clerk, "Do you think this game is appropriate?" And why was the mention of a sex toy just too much for her delicate sensibilities?

But because she, and so many like her, can't be bothered to do even the slightest bit of questioning, the rest of us have to pay for it.

Now, me, I didn't mind the first Manhunt. It was packed with the blackest of dark humour. I got bored with it about 3/4ths of the way through (there are only so many times that the director pants in your ear, "Oooh, you really got me off with that last one" before the humour starts to fade) and I certainly wouldn't let a kid play it.

Still, though, as long as there are parents like the ones in my story, there will always be an outcry for someone to do the parenting that they can't.

DHS calls in sci-fi writers as consultants

Actually, the first time was in the 1940's....

At the end of World War II, there was a group of scifi writers in Princeton called together by Robert Heinlein at the behest of the Navy. They never came up with much, because the war ended quickly enough, but it's a precedent.

Here's the relevant paragraphs from Barefaced Messiah, the most definitely NOT official biography of Lafayette Ron Hubbard:

While he was at Princeton, Ron was invited to join a group of science-fiction writers who met every weekend at Robert Heinlein's apartment in Philadelphia to discuss possible ways of countering the Kamikaze menace in the Pacific. They were semi-official, brainstorming sessions that Heinlein had been asked to organize by the Navy, in the faint hope of coming up with a defence against young Japanese pilots on suicide missions. 'I had been ordered to round up science fiction writers for this crash project,' Heinlein recalled, 'the wildest brains I could find.'

The whole book (and it's actually a good read) is here:

http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm