* Posts by Toby 2

15 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Nov 2010

Dot-Amazon spat latest: Brazil tells ICANN to go fsck itself, only 'govts control the internet'

Toby 2
Coat

Just waiting for the following ".swallows" TLD kerfuffle between Arthur Ransome's estate and the porn industry...

Norman Conquest, King Edward, cyber pathogen and illegal gambling all emerge in Apple v FBI

Toby 2
Terminator

Bigger picture

Frighteningly, most discussion of this case is being discussed in a national frame. But you can be sure as eggs that if they don't already, once the FBI has such a tool then the NSA, CIA and any other acronym, will also have it and use it with impunity within and without US borders.

While a lot of privacy discussion at the moment focusses on matters internal to the US, it's intelligence gathering agencies that operate outside of its borders have to date demonstrated **much** less restriction or moral qualms about foreign citizens information sovereignty.

As a US citizen you might say "Well that's because we need to know what those dangerous muslims/torrorists/Iraqis/Afghanis/commies/Chinese/Japs/North Koreans/zombies (take your pick of the new Hollywood bad guys) are at for our own safety!". But then also imagine that is just as likely that the same argument may be made in other countries. As the US is often held up as a shining example of democracy, then if the argument wins there surely other countries wanting to emulate such great governance will also follow suit - indeed how could one hold them to blame?

Furthermore, in this age of global intelligence community it is likely that such a tool would be willingly shared or bartered with other nation's police and intelligence agencies making such a scenario extremely likely. Once beyond the marvellously stringently laws of use of US jurisdiction who's to say that it wouldn't just be used for this, at best, morally gray area of policing and intelligence? The Us and its allies have often allied with countries that have since gone on to become near totalitarian, using every tool in their arsenal, including invasion of their own citizens privacy and free speech, to control their people, Egypt, Afghanistan, Libya - the list goes on. In such a case the US - self-appointed purveyor of democracy, equality and justice across the globe thus provides the means to oppress the same 3 qualities just mentioned.

"Our intelligence agencies would never share such a tool with foreign powers!" you cry. To which I laugh my arse off.

Taking an artsy selfie in Stockholm? You might need to pay royalities

Toby 2

The council is the people

The council, being a *public* body, just like any public body acts on behalf of, is funded by and exists solely at the behest of 'the people'.

Commercial use therefore is charged generally on the basis that a private business entity should not profit unfairly from the effort of the people expended for the benefit of the collective people.

Non-commercial use, of which the copyright laws generally cover with something equivalent to public domain categorisation, is normally given freely and by default because it is in a public space, i.e. a space belonging to the public - belonging to the people. If an artist has seen fit to have his work permanently placed within the public space, the space for the public, then that is exactly what they have - artwork in public for the public.

How many people that walk by the installation everyday see the work for free? Where is the difference when seeing it online? It is still seen for free in the public space, by the public.

Take an example: A man lives in a building beside a public square. As was puzzlingly popular sometime ago this fellow takes a picture of the same view out of his window every day and adds the still image to a video which is posted to, for example, YouTube (in this scenario the video never generates revenue). After sometime an artist paints one of the walls of the square that is within view of the photographers window. The man has not changed his actions he is still taking a picture of a publicly accessible, owned and funded space. The artist has imposed their art into the space either based on their artistic opinion or at the behest of a public body.

If the photographer continues without change who is at fault that the artwork is now in his YouTube video? The artist, the photographer, the public body or the public? If it is any of the latter three then if the photographer is charged it will effectively be the public charging the public to use a space already paid for by the public - which sounds pretty silly to me. If the fault lies with the former then would we have the artist remunerate the photographer? That would sound equally silly!

Corollary: This would only apply to fully public and permanent works and depend on the country's legal definition of 'non-commercial'

Working with Asperger's in tech: We're in this together

Toby 2

Re: Introversion is orthogonal to Asperger's

I Identify with most of what you've said here, though I also have not been diagnosed as on the scale, some close friends have suggested things like I can be very particular at taking things at face value and not getting subtext a lot of the time along with some other few similarities.

I have counted myself as some class of ambivert. I do really enjoy socialising, especially as part of a group if its with people I know less well, but I feel tired and my mind wanders after a certain period of this and need time to do my own thing for nearly equally as long. Socialising one-on-one with people that I don't know or outside of certain fixed perspectives, e.g. work hierarchy, team roles, etc, borders on prohibitively difficult.

Strangely, the thing that has recently helped me most in this regard is Tinder!! I can connect to random new people, that I may never ever see or hear from again (I live in a large city) and I can practice small talk over and over again. It doesn't matter if I make a mistake, if the other person is OK they take it in their stride, if not I can move on to the next random person. When I need down-time I can ignore the message alerts, claim I'm busy atm or put off a date. On the plus side I might also end up with a decent romantic relationship ;)

HTC Desire Eye: The Android superior selfie shooter

Toby 2

I've yet to find any decent real-world use for NFC...

KFC, maybe.

Watch this Aussie infosec bod open car doors from afar

Toby 2
Gimp

Painful stream

That video stream was just painful to load! Painful I tell you!

Facebook goes down, people dial 911

Toby 2

3pm on a Friday? Don't think office productivity would actually have changed much ;)

Microsoft's Euro cloud darkens: US FEDS can dig into foreign servers

Toby 2

Re: And Google's and Apple's

The Us does currently make tonnes of requests to Ireland for data stored there. However Irelands laws on this conform to EU regulations. This means the US has to submit a full application for each request then wait for responses etc. To follow this new avenue would allow the US administration to simply bypass such regulations and trawl the data en masse, or at least with much less oversight, similar to the access they currently enjoy to their own citizens data.

You are ALL Americans now: Europeans offered same rights as US folks in data slurp leaks

Toby 2

Altogether now, can you say 'hegemony'?

I wonder if, for example, this has anything to do with the EU suddenly deciding it actually *will* allow the US much more leniency in importing GMO products? I notice there has been very little media coverage of that... tit-for-tat-for-political-capital...

Why on Earth is Microsoft moving to Euro pricing now?

Toby 2
Boffin

"I find it quite amusing that a company would decide to have uniform pricing right across a continent "... that bar one country uses said currency. Strange that.

Microsoft ejects DVD playback from Windows 8

Toby 2

Did they ever?

Still using XP, but DVD codecs are didnt come with WMP11 here, had to get FFDShow or VLC or some such...meh, why would they continue to shovel development dollars into an area that has so many competing, free options already without any hope of ROI?

Google to join Wednesday's anti-SOPA protest

Toby 2
Mushroom

PIPA & ICANN = dead internet

Nobody seems to have realised that (unless I've got it wrong) PIPA will effectively give MPAA the reins to ICANN, seeing as it is HQ'd in the US, so basically any site anywhere ever, not just in the US or hosted there, is at threat from DNS shenanigans

Man reveals secret recipe behind undeletable cookies

Toby 2
Coat

Its just adverts...

surely weather they are more targeted or not you can just ignore them? the technique only has effect if multiple sites are using the same technique (obv.) so information obtained (unless your buying WMDs or something, then you should use TOR) would only ever be relevant to advertisers... Just ignore the adverts, targeted or otherwise!!

Wikipedia: It's not for girls

Toby 2
Paris Hilton

Ladies that are interested in SATC...

are in the main, I would hazard the guess, less likely to be interested in adding to Wikipedia.

(BTW the SATC page is actually quite detailed and structured).

To generalise (ie not to be sexist) most of this section of the female populace would rather be reading "Now!"

Rethinking the iPhone

Toby 2
Heart

MiFi in shirt pocket...

Probably soon have a wireless heart too. A cooked one.