Posts by Jeff Deacon

US to cede control of ICANN?

Wholly unexpected, not!

In this completely expected move, we see another step on the way to global governance. Things like this must be wrested from the control of national governments who might know what to do to make it work, and how to go about it. Instead it must be vested in a toothless and inadequate multinational committee that is designed to fail. When they have delivered their fail, then the UN will step in with a "solution", the one they already have up their sleeve but don't want to declare yet. This is just like the EU, only bigger and even more perilous to the ordinary citizens of the world.

US researchers demand cell phone safety tax

re: Here we go again

Weren't CRT VDUs supposed to bring about all sort of harm as well? Just another health scare that faded into oblivion once they found something else to be scared about!

Pint, because alcohol is the only medication that cures scary fears.

Microsoft harries XP-loving biz customers on to Windows 7

Welcome to those who refuse to upgrade from XP

I am happily working on a mixture of Win2K and Win98 PCs doing all that I need them to do (and it must be confessed sufficient play value too). No need to upgrade to Microsoft's next. As some will realise there are enthusiasts who continue to advance Win98, sorting out bugs and restrictions that MS left behind in their continuing rush to fleece their customers. Doubtless other enthusiasts will continue to support Win2K and WinXP when necessary.

Police drop case against admin over animal rights comments

re: Did he get his kit back?

Sam Liddicott Posted on Friday 4th September 2009 @ 15:58 GMT:

"Did he get his "raided" computers back, or are they kept as a punishment to him and his kind?

The Register needs to report on these kinds of details."

Also of great interest to the self employed will be the effect on his work, and I suspect that he cannot bring any action for recovery of lost turnover.

Minister attacks drunken topless lovelies with tangler-bazooka

@ How so? By h 6 Posted Friday 14th August 2009 16:52 GMT

"How are there not any comments on this story? Are the Brits on holiday?"

Of course not. At that time on a Friday afternoon, the editorial staff were all having a "Forward Planning Meeting" in the public bar of the "Admiral Nelson", or was it the "Painted Parrot".

Martha Lane-Fox: No broadband, no citizenship

Re: "I don't think you can be a proper citizen in our society in the future if you're not online,"

Graham said: "And it doesn't really matter a whole lot if you *are* online because using the internet to contact our allegely democratic Government just gives them another opportunity to ignore us..."

Being on line also gives our guvvermint another opportunity to fill a database from monitoring our activities!

But there is hope! If I become a refusenik, does that mean that they will throw me out?

Image spam: the threat returns

Another alternative solution to the spam question

The problem with solutions such as Symantec Message Labs or the alternatives is that everyone's definition of spam is subtly different. Which means that they never get it completely right.

My solution is to use email suppliers who understand the email process, and how to defeat spam. Suppliers such as Fastmail.fm or Lavabit.com. Because they make effective use of techniques such as grey listing, spam is rare anyway. Then use an email client with built in Bayesian filters, such as Pegasus Mail. The way you train the filter will ensure that spam removal is tailored to your own tastes, and not that of some large Merkin company.

Works very well for me.

Comcast trials Domain Helper service DNS hijacker

Anyone making a typo in OpenDNS

will find that they do exactly the same thing.

Are there any good guys left?

DHS chief accused of using no-fly list for political payback

I'd love to travel to the States ...

... but this sort of lunacy means that I will never risk it.

By the way what is the organisation in US airports with black shirts as their uniform. It wouldn't be the DHS would it?

Trading Standards calls for online knife sale ban

Bit more function creep for IWF?

Still, it makes a change for a subservient bit of government (local authorities) to be reading Big Brother's script from Westminster for new laws. Usually it is fake charities who have been given the script by Westminster.

In the end, knives will be as illegal as guns. Chefs will be required to have a professional knife users license!

UK police chiefs mull regional cybercrime squads

Re: ACPO just don't get it

1. As ACPO Ltd is composed of fully politicised left wing fast tracked officers who don't understand what their response officers actually do, of course they don't get it.

2. ACPO Ltd are proud, on their website, of being in "EQUAL AND ACTIVE PARTNERSHIP" with our elected government. They formulate policy so that the Home Office minister has an escape clause (apart from "I don't understand my brief"). [www.acpo.police.uk/]

3. This is all part of delivering the Brussels agenda - regional everything, reporting directly to Brussels. Once the Irish have been bludgeoned into voting for the same treaty as they rejected last time, then England is abolished.

Beer because there isn't a bread and circuses icon.

Rail union ballots for strike over fingerprints

Now this is a surprise!

I never, ever thought that I could agree on anything with Bob "Any excuse for a bit of industrial sabotage" Crowe. But here it is.

We both agree that the fingerprinting of staff is abhorrent.

For the first time in my life I agree with the RMT suggesting a strike!

Its a strange world that we live in!

Mozilla considers dumping Firefox support for Win2k, early XP

Firefox lost me a while ago too

I have a mixture of Win98SE and Win2K boxes. (For reasons of the "phone home" behaviour of WinXP and later, I will not touch them with the proverbial barge pole). So I have stuck with Firefox 2.0.0.20 firstly for reasons of compatibility across all the boxes, and secondly because of the rumour, or fact - I don't care, that Mozilla were planning to sell users' browsing habits with version 3. I believe that version 2 does not have that capability, and will stick with it.

Alas, I've never got on with Opera. Actually now considering put DOS back onto a box and using Arachne instead!

Microsoft sues GPS maker TomTom

Others have tried something similar

Isn't this a straight pinch from the playbook of the corporation formerly known as SCO (or Caldera or something)? Perhaps they should be suing Microsoft for stealing their technology!

Hertfordshire drivers endure 200-year roadworks

Which water company?

Don't be too surprised to learn that Three Valleys Water is a subsidiary of Veolia, the company formerly known as Connex.

Texting peer gets prison

Why only 12 weeks?

Wouldn't have anything to do with his self proclaimed ability to organise a protest by 10,000 supporters, would it?

One law for the "Righteous" and another for the rest of us!

Proxy server bug exposes websites' private parts

Re: Common?

And I believe it is routinely used by most/all ISPs to implement the IWF censorship list.

Judges: Don't know the law? It's understandable

This is one database we won't ever get

We won't ever see this proposal for a database giving the consolidated legal position. "They" wish to hide it. It is part of the EU's way of doing things. If nothing else, it is handy for making sure that the "powers that be" can prosecute anyone they want to whenever they want to, because we will all have inadvertantly broken some law or other. If you donned your tin-foil hat for fear of a police state, this will do nothing to allay those fears!

SCO auctions Unix and mobile assets to continue fight

Did they never read Dickens?

Have they never heard of Jarndyce v Jarndyce?

UK.gov funds web video product placement venture

Surely it will work the other way ... ... ?

As soon as this technology looks as though it works, there is the opportunity to spot logos, placed or otherwise, and obliterate them. I can imagine the project registration at Sourceforge already!

And if it works for advertising (placing it or removing it), why not all other content within the video. I think that this would be a technology that Winston Smith could have found most useful. Am I being a little too cynical in thinking that this might be the real reason behind the Government's backing of this venture??

Microsoft squeezes out Oxite 'open source' blogger platform

MS - no change to its spots

How does it go now? Ah yes ...

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!

Couldn't be easier when you have more money than sense.

UK ramps up health über-database

Re: Is there a betting pool?

Christoph asked: "Can we place bets on how long it will be before the police get access to this data? But of course only to combat terrorists/paedophiles/drug dealers/witches/whatever the latest scare story is."

It really would be unfair to take bets on this. Legislative powers are about to be taken to ignore data protection and all other inhibitions to Government using data provided for one purpose for whatever other purposes they can dream up. It will be included in the Coroners and Justice Bill that was announced by Her Majesty the other day.

Plod pioneers painless data collection

Re: Principles of Policing

I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that to compare current UK Police practice with Sir Robert Peel's "Principles of Policing" will be an arrestable offence within the next two years. They are nowhere mentioned on the website of ANY UK Police Farce except Warwickshire, and then only in the copy of their official history.

Perhaps we should be comparing them to the Soviet Militia.

What if computers went back to the '70s too?

But you haven't mentioned ...

But you haven't mentioned the other time sharing phenomenon, that of dialling up the provider in another city from a dumb terminal. I remember doing manufacturing process statistics by dialling a remote computer (on one of those new fangled Subscriber Trunk Dialling phone lines) and spending half an hour or more feeding preprepared paper tape into a dumb terminal, with the answers coming back to be printed on a device similar to a Creed teleprinter (but 7-hole tape not the 5-hole beloved of the telex system)! Despite the trunk call charges, and the bureau charges it was still said to be economic.

Portsmouth gets crime-predicting CCTV

Re: South West England

Don't be too hard on the hacks at ElReg. It takes a bit of getting used to, this EU Regions lark instead of the former English counties.

As it happens the boundary between South East and South West runs up the western edge of the area formerly known as Hampshire, and then western edge of what was known as Oxfordshire. But Mike is right, the areas formerly known as Wiltshire and Dorset are now part of South West.

Just as a quiz for those who think its easy, which region has the area formerly known as Essex within its borders? Just as a clue, London is an EU Region to itself.

Wireless comms and the end of civilisation

Food!

I too remember watching the original series in my younger days. The thing that struck me was how little they knew about growing food. If the early Pilgrims in the USA had the same problems, I'm not surprised they invented Thanksgiving!

Government finally names the day for porn ban

Enforcement?

Just remember that the German province of our brave new European nation is in the process of granting its Polizei permission to plant Trojans on the PCs of those it wishes to surveil. How much longer before that idea is washed through the EU's policy laundry, and comes out as a Directive, or even worse a Regulation? (The difference is that Regulations don't even need to be rubber stamped by the provincial parliaments).

How long will it be before it is illegal to connect a PC to the Internet unless one has some government approved "Safety Software" to mediate (and report on) the use of the connection and the contents of the PC behind it. After all, the Vista EULA gives Microsoft the authority to remove any software from the user's PC that Microsoft in their wisdom do not like! And nobody can stop a "Critical Upgrade" can they? One just has to think of the Windows Genuine Advantage fiascos.

... But of course, "No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition"! (Monty Python).

Online identity card scheme aims to remove password headaches

Equifax and Privacy don't mix

I acquired an advertising CD from Equifax some years ago from a stand at a security related exhibition. Even then it was scary, just how much information they bragged about having on every UK citizen. About how they could find anyone inside 6 months, just from the normal traces that they leave in the course of buying and selling and working and breathing. [OK the last one might be an exaggeration!]

I agree with the others that the last thing they should be trusted with is even more pieces of the same jigsaw.

A quick comment on OpenID. I suspect that one of the reasons that it "does not work" is that it is not in the pocket of the big internet giants as firmly as they want it to be. That we are not yet sufficiently subservient to MicroGooghoo! as they think we should be. For anyone can issue their own OpenID. See http://openid.net/get/ and scroll down to "Roll Your Own" or http://wiki.openid.net/Run_your_own_identity_server . Of course my own phpMyID script doesn't work any more as it gets trapped by PlusNet's transparent Squid proxy, forcing a time out. The proxy that is used to enforce the IWF prohibition list. No they won't do anything about it, because I do not host the script on their servers, but on a free one elsewhere. I wonder ...

UK puts £55m into disabled parking reform

Re: My guess is

Chris G said: "... some time in the recent past, some genius in Nullabour has figured out what Excel is for ... "

Slightly OT, I thought Barclays Capital were doing that at present, having bitten off more from the carcase of Lehman's than they intended!

PayPal top-up card is titsup

Have any local authorities used this facility?

If local authorities have used this facility, then quite clearly it is an act of terrorism by the Luxembourg Bank called PayPal. And so it should immediately be impounded by the UK under the 2000 terrorism legislation and sold on 18 hours later to someone that Darling likes.

Not quite sure that it is a joke, but that will be my plea when the black helicopters come.

US teen cuffed for sending nude phone pics

re: rant & rave

Whether you get anywhere with your lawsuit depends amongst other things on the law relating to vicarious liability. I don't know about the US, but in the UK the doctrine of Vicarious Liability can be roughly summed up as "The Employer (usually the body corporate) is liable for the sins of the Employee". You would have to dodge the counter argument of Contributory Negligence, but I could see it becoming quite an entertaining case when it gets to court. Especially as the US legal system does seem to have taken leave of its senses!

Let us all know when you get a court date, and I'm sure we could arrange for a band of supporters to take ringside seats in the public gallery!

Skype admits Chinese privacy breach

Re: This is what worries me about Phorm

And that dear AC is precisely why the UK Government were 6 weeks late replying to the EU enquiries, and why they assure all comers that Phorm is entirely legal and that the users should be pleased to have the opportunity to be "protected" by it.

Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Move along please, nothing see.

Microsoft taints open source CodePlex well

Re: In other news...

I have been beaten to it, but all the way through the article I too was thinking "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". MS never change.

Not really a joke, but undoubtedly that is the way Redmond will see it.

Vehicle spy-cam data to be held for five years

Re: So it's wholesale surveillance then

No, we can't throw them out now. That is why the army is in Iraq and Afghanistan, to prevent them kicking the door of No 10 down.

This isn't a problem. Its part of the solution, the final solution.

OMFG, what have you done?

Nothing lasts!

Yes, I suppose you can be excused for restyling the vulture, commended for some of the new style icons, but let me award you a new style flame for going to fixed width pages.

One of the great advantages of HTML formatting as it was first set out has been the control the reader gets over the width, typesize and font face in use. I suppose that you are not entirely to blame, for you could not have used it if someone else had not provided it. But just because you could turn El Reg into an impression of a pdf didn't mean that you had to! Please find some excuse to go back to variable width in a few days.

In the mean time, does anyone know how to get Firefox and/or Proxomitron to change fixed width to variable width pages?

German court bans VoiP on iPhone

Sipgate 2

I too have been a fan of Sipgate since they launched their VoIP service in the UK. Now, I rarely use the switched circuit and if I could get a price reduction from BT would do without the "land" line altogether.

This exercise looks like Sipgate's attempt to keep up with Truphone.

I suspect the difference is that Sipgate is a German company (like T-Mobile/Deutsche Telekom), and so maybe should not be upsetting the nice orderly German applecart.

EU plans cross border database of rogue motorists

And they already have the proto-police force

The organisation in question is TISPOL. Their web site is at https://www.tispol.org/ where you will notice that their slogan is (and has been for quite a while): "Crossing Borders to Save Lives". TISPOL seems to be run as a branch of ACPO. UK Officers appear to be in all the positions of control. And like ACPO it's setup keeps it out of the scope of Freedom of Information. So shortly we will have a fully fledged and fully unaccountable EU Traffic Police Farce. Of course they will deny it at present, but you KNOW that the EU has form on lying about the introduction of things like this.

Equally of course we will shortly have a EU wide Gendarmerie, that is EuroGendFor. Alas, although the treaty has been signed and various photo opportunities been given, the body's web site at http://www.eurogendfor.eu/ is playing coy at present and is resolving to http://www.eurogendfor.org which has gone AWOL. So for a bit of information I refer the reader to a pretty reliable blog: http://englandexpects.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-would-eu-do-with-one-of-these.html

With both of these things up and running soon after the full introduction of the EU's Notaconstitution Treaty in 2009, we will then know all about trial in absentia and imprisonment in a foreign country after being picked up on a EU Arrest Warrant.

I believe that the proposals in the article and the cross border policing to which I refer above are the thin end of a very thick wedge that is about to be hammered all the way in.

Council clamps down on 'man on the street'

Re: I think you'll find..

Anonymous Coward wrote: 'the correct term is "per-offspring". As "son" is gender specific. Human therefore becomes Huperoffspring.'

So "Harriet Harperson" becomes "Harriet Harpperoffspring". Yes, that has a suitable ring to it, especially the "off" in the middle.

Lag log leaks - Home Office contractor loses entire prison population

Update please ...

We need the story updating! Where is the Home Office comment that if we all had biometrically secured ID Cards, this sort of data loss would be completely immaterial, and could be allowed to become commonplace without inconveniencing the government in the slightest?

We also need a "biometric ID solves everything" icon, so it will have to be helicopters instead.

Gordo returns to website in crisis

That is not all ...

Now Dizzy and Guido are reporting that the web site has outed an undercover copper!

Microsoft to protect furtive web searches

index.dat

Does this meant that index.dat, those files that are so essential to Windows operating systems that it is almost impossible to delete them, are in fact not so essential after all?

Net shoppers bullied into being Verified by Visa

Obviously on an IT site ...

Obviously on an IT site, most of the issues raised have been about the various IT (in)security issues. But the WHY behind it has not had too much of an airing. Given the similarity with Chip & Pin, it is quite clear that the banks are, yet again, absolving themselves of any liability. When signatures were used for verification, then the person who accepted the fraudulent signature was liable for the loss, as set out by law (in the UK anyway). Now that PIN is the verification, that law no longer applies, and the cardholder is completely at the mercy of the issuing bank. How on earth can you PROVE that you have not inadvertently let slip your PIN? To the kangaroo court that is the bank's security department. Bank fraud is not a police issue any more.

This trick is so similar to Chip & Spin that it is unbelievable! How can those who were automatically signed up by the Co-op/smile prove that they did not tell anyone else their mother's maiden name? It just takes a couple of enquiries to Somerset House to find that out! As Ross Anderson's crew at Cambridge keep pointing out:- Until the banks are financially responsible for the consequences of their poor security, there will continue to be poor bank security. Just for background reading try:

http://www.chipandspin.co.uk/

http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2008/08/05/card-wars-the-phantom-menace/

http://www.phantomwithdrawals.com/

Of course the banks are doing their best to eliminate cheques. For the person who enquired above about arrangements before plastic, we used cheques and cash. So cash will have a resurgence for a while. How long before it is forbidden and then TIA/Matrix will have all the transaction information in the Government's hands?

MS products just too cool to comprehend, say MS geeks

Modest Microsoft - reality strikes?

Article reads: "Microsoft's normally bombastic marketing has begun blaming Windows Vista's poor uptake on the modesty of its own message"

Perhaps we should plagiarise the statement about some poor politico many years ago to read: "A modest message - with much to be modest about".

The return of Killer Chlorine

DHMO, DDT, and MRI

Firstly, I too would like to welcome John Brignell to the team. Another sane author when other publications seem to pride themselves on their insanity.

I am sad that others have beaten me to the truth about DHMO. It is so closely linked with all sorts of harm that it really must be taken seriously by the UN :p)

To add to the serious point raised above about DDT. In the best of all possible worlds it is a problem because it accumulates in the fat of animals and birds high up the predatory food chain. But we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, and as others have already indicated its absence is causing humans to die of malaria and other insect borne diseases, let alone starvation because of insect damage to food crops. What is needed is a rational cost - benefit analysis. And that is the very thing that our limited attention span media are incapable of doing. Yes, there is a downside to DDT, but it has an very great upside too. But all we hear are the scares based on the wishful thinking that if only we do as we are told, then the world will be perfect in a few short years. Perfect mess maybe!

Fred made reference to the safety of MRI scans. Of course they are, but that didn't worry the EU when they were drawing up the Physical Agents Directive. Had its implementation not been delayed, most MRI scans would be illegal and would have ceased by now!

Police told: Delete old criminal records

Re: Wow is ACPO like a shadow government now?

The short answer to ACs question above is "Not yet". They have currently promoted themselves to being the National Police Force, to whom all other police forces are subservient. They got to that position, it would seem, by doing all the things that the hard line Home Office control freaks wanted, and the politicos chose not to stop. These same Home Office people have been pressing for the re-introduction of ID Cards ever since they were abolished after the 39-45 war!

Japan kicks off electric car format war

Re: Do smug Prius owners

if only!

Re: RE: Re: I call Bullshiite!

Tim Spence said: "He's got a point though - in real-world tests (not manufacturer specified figures) the Prius actually gets about 40mpg *if* driven carefully."

I drive one of the first edition Prius, and I am exceedingly disappointed with the fuel consumption. Especially after the highly trained Toyota technicians have serviced the car. And we all know that manufacturer accredited service agents are the best in the world. I achieve about 51 mpg, mostly on long journeys, mostly (only just) sticking to the speed limit.

The car has a higher self opinion than is justified. It consistently reports that it is doing over 53 mpg. But I know how much I feed it!

I got it just to see if the technology was worth the hype. The answer is NO, big time. As others have said, a modern diesel will deliver the performance for a lot less capital outlay. If Volvo have got their "Recharge" project into gear by the time my piggy bank has been recharged with enough pennies to permit a car replacement, then a Volvo Recharge is next. Otherwise its a diesel, and stuff the greenies and their fuss about PM10s.

Dangerous mobe chargers flood UK

CE Marks

Let us not forget that most CE marks are applied quite legitimately by the manufacturer, after their own tests. There are quite specific tests and standards for all the instances in which a CE mark is appropriate.

That is how it came to mean "China Exempt".

UK gov announces Road Pricing 2.0 - Managed Motorway

Re: too easy? By Sam

"Improve communications to the point where we don't have to commute? Why drive x miles to talk down a phone and tap at a keyboard when you don't have to? How many people really have to have a physical presence in a particular location for their job?"

You might be surprised to know that there is still some manufacturing industry left in the Province formerly known as England. It requires people to get their hands dirty so that others can have a supply of the things they need. As bankers are finding out at present, pushing figures around on a screen many times when it really only needs to be done once is a huge cost saver waiting to happen.

I don't know about the vulture, but this country's had it!

Caution - Sub Editor at Work

Lewis is quoted as writing: "In all fairness, the government does seem willing to have a two-tier motorway system, not a compulsory e-surveillance panopticon."

It is quite clear that the sub editor has removed the word "yet" from the sentence. After the comma it should surely read: "not YET a compulsory ... "

Please can we have an icon for "Don't believe anything until it has been denied twice by the government or their sock puppets"?