Posts by Colin Millar

Rotund Mega baron Dotcom offers bounty for breaking his crypto

Good PR

And it gets the message across to crackers

"If you crack this we can negotiate up to the point you tell anyone - then its 10k if you get past the collusion accusation"

Customer service rep fired for writing game that mocks callers

Re: How to win

Well - if the call-centre staff are helpful, well informed and charming then they are not doing their job properly.

Unhelpful, cnutish script-readers is in the JD and it must be stuck to rigorously if those pesky customers are ever going to get the message - "Just give us the money and shut up"

Boffins propose satnav tracking for 'KILLER KOALAS'

Re: @AC 01:50 Calling it a drop BEAR is a clue

Actually - it's not just Tazzy tigers that aren't felines. Not even real tigers are felines.

Brussels reviews Google's plan for not being abusive and dominant

Far too subtle

You really can't expect many people to see the irony in that headline this late in the week.

Greedy Sky admits: We crippled broadband with TOO MANY users

Re: Do get real

Maybe he doesn't work for your old company.

Maybe his business (like many businesses) works on a shoestring budget and is taking advantage of modern tech to reduce costs.

Maybe £50 per month and a dongle for X staff would be way beyond its budget and make the difference between being a business and not being a business.

Maybe the answer to local traders who complain when the council reduces parking spaces for their customers is "build your own car park like Waitrose".

Do get real

He's not running a business - he's working from home - a pretty reasonable requirement in the year 2013.

Hopefully ISPs are unlikely to be shortsighted enough to think that such a jobsworth response is going to keep them in business.

Kim Dotcom's locker may be full, but the cupboard is bare

A history lesson

Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing was actually more to do with anti-privatisation than opposition to supply side economics. In fact - revealing true market value was one thing the privatisers wanted to avoid as they were keen to pump value into the private sector. One of the biggest privatisations actually deliberately undervalued the assets as a matter of policy - selling off of the Council housing stock at massive reductions.

Those who were opposed to this were mostly not the middle class airhead Trots who flit between one slogan filled bubble to the next but people with a much longer and more soundly based committment to fair and decent politics. I know it might suit some agendas to be able to apply the easy label "the left" to those who oppose them and by doing so dismiss them as mere oppositional dogmatists but that is just lazy thinking that tends to pander to the sloganeering class.

The whole issue around copyright, patents and IP is poisoned by these knee-jerk reactionary morons as much as by the stupidity of the monolithic corporate interests who want to stop progress and the bureacrats and politicians in thrall to them. The issue is further complicated by the fragmenting of what is seen as traditional political stances on such issues. There is no left/right on this issue although some traditional political analysis might serve to clarify where people should be standing.

Those opposed to globalisation and the concentration of resources into the control of large corporate interests are presumably against Google's land grab which is based on weakening of IP rights. Those on the right who want to see strong markets and reduced barriers to trade because these present choice and better value to consumers are should be opposed to corporate monpolies or cartels who want nothing other than to weaken markets and reduce access to resources because it suits their bottom line and sod everyone else.

'End of passwords' predictions are premature - Cambridge boffin

Re: Canbridge postgrads aren't what they used to be (sic)

Why should I bother - he's setting himself up to win by arguing with a position that doesn't exist. Basically he is being his own straight man. There are more and more "academics" with something to sell pulling this trick these days -

1) invent a false premise that you could knock down with a feather

2) knock it down with a sledgehammer

3) look like a smartarse bask in the adulation

It's a variation on the old hack's trick from before the days of mobile phones - invent a load of bollocks, get a no comment and an instant "XX refuses to deny YY" story.

And if you think that hitting "n" instead of "m" on a qwerty board is a Fredudian slip I would suggest you look up the meaning of "Freudian slip"

Canbridge postgrads aren't what they used to be

"since computers are getting exponentially faster, yet the human brain is constant then password crackers will eventually beat human memory …"

There's 2 evidence free assertions in there. Even were the assertions proved to be true the conclusion is not supported by them.

Listening to this guy on computer security would be like listening to an investment banker about the best place to keep your life savings.

uh oh

Entire Reg readership would fill 205 Olympic-sized swimming pools

All very well but

If they all farted* at once how far would that propel a sheep in a vacuum?

* a medium curry and two guinness brew

FAA grounds Boeing's 787 after battery fires on plastic planes

Re: Not for flight

"...might burst into flames while the plane is flying. That's not very likely"

Hmm - "not very likely" is a bit weak - myself I would be looking for words and phrases like "inconceivable", "statistically insignificant probability"

Re: Never

You do know that the fabric of spacetime isn't made of statistics?

"Statistically it's only a matter of time"is a meaningless concept

Wireless performance will collapse, prices rise: Deloitte

Re: We are the network.

Great idea - then I can get rid of my wifi box and just leech off everyone elses.

Tech giants don't invent the future, they package it

Is there a point?

What is this article about? Big companies act conservatively? Well knock me down and colour me stupid - I hadn't realised that until this pile of drivel insightful article came along and stated the bleedin' obvious helpfully expanded the boundaries of my knowledge.

And apple making mobile computing real? That's the biggest made up thing that Matt has made up yet (and he knows how to make up real big things).

Where's the laughing my bollox off icon?

Google pulls 'racist' Make Me Asian app

Re: More PC over-over-reaction@ LarsG

Festivalmas - you just made that up - it never happened.

Tell Facebook who's the greatest: YOU are!

A new type of peg

The internets have learned that bashing square pegs into round holes wasn't working too well - it annoys users too much. The answer appears to be that they will remove awareness of other shaped holes.

BT's 'six-month free broadband' offer is a big fat FIB - ads watchdog

Re: All broadband is mis-sold like this @ M Mouse

It's worse than that

The rate would be the cash rate which is higher than new purchases because it also includes the handling fee on which interest is also charged from the date of the advance.

And do not ever fail to complete the pay-off by the end of the period cos you will get the handling fee charged on the whole amount from the date of the advance (i.e. the date you made the transfer) and interest on the fee calculated from that date. - For a transfer of £5000 that would be £150 for the 3% transfer plus interest on the £150 from the date of transfer - at that point you would probably be better off with a personal loan.

Bubble baron treats Space Station crew to blowup model

Nice try but

That's surely a HozeLock connector at the left

Facebook testing $100 fee to mail Mark Zuckerberg

Re: I can see where this goes.

So that would be self-abuse emails then?

Reuters rubbishes report rubbishing cheap iPhone rumor

"cheaper, low-end product"

As opposed to the expensive, low-end product that is currently available

CIOs: Don't listen to tech vendors on ICT skills, listen to US

yeah - but

It's much easier to listen to those nice salesmen people - the things they say sound just like the things I want to hear.

All those so-called experts - they just make my head hurt with their three and four (and sometimes more) syllable words.

I said to that nice salesman - "I need the idiots guide to this stuff" and he was most helpful saying that they had already prepared just such a thing and it was called - "Computers and other shiney things - a guide for gumint people (KS2)"

So Mr so-called technical expert - when you can get everything I need to now about computers in a single glossy brochure no more than 4 pages long and made up mostly of pictures of swoopy red lines then maybe I might listen to you too (if you make it worth my while).

Yours

Mr A Moeba - Minister for sums and long words

Why mergers LOSE money, but are GOOD for the economy

Oh how things change

I remember the days when companies would get taken over for their surplus cash, or their pension fund actuarial surplus.

That was back when making actual profits was an important thing.

Stockholders seem to be treated with absolute contempt by management these days and pisspoor CEOs and CFOs play leapfrog with each other while dodging the responsibility for the messes that they keep leaving on the carpet. They can only do this cos lots of corporate fund managers are so stupid they blindly follow gambling tips from the house underwriters' IPO valuations and follow each other like sheep laying all their eggs in the same basket.

As for killng firms off the usual way would be that they get picked to bits and flogged off or they get shelled and filled with something completely new - I would have thought that actual bankruptcy of a public quoted company would be relatively rare.

Its the one with the P11D in the pocket.

Mozilla to Adobe: PDFs don't need no more steenking plugins

Re: Fine for Static PDFs @ Gerald Krupa

No third party support for PDF Forms - that's a good thing - lets not encourage the bastards.

PDF Forms - has there ever been anything more pointless - lets collect some information and lock it away so we can't use it.

Burn Adobe, burn in hell.

EU floats growth plan: Aim power hose of cash at oldsters, web start-ups

Horse before cart

As usual for the EU. They think that economic recovery wil come from having more online cake sites.

Your business will work if it is based on a good idea that you can sell to people. Adding a web interface will make no difference whatsoever to a crap idea that no-one wants.

What is it with these eurocrats that they still think that IT = magic wand. The failure rate for web startups suggests that this area should be left to the margins and not become mainstream economic growth policy.

And if they really want to boost small businesses in the UK the best thing they could do would be to get HMRC off their backs.

Japanese cops cuff cat carrying remote control virus

Well it's fairly obvious who the crim is

It's Macavity

Toy train company bids for West Coast Mainline

The competition is looking good though

Plus this one will help George with his sums

http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Number-Train-10558

Apple appeals judge's decision to boot out its Moto patent suit

Re: follow the court unless we don't like the outcome

and no-one else better try this tactic or we'll sue them

Have you seen the latest application to the USPTO? Apple have applied for a patent on a document (called the "institution") setting out the supreme laws and governing principles of the USA (and therefore the world) and for a methodolgy of changing said document (called "imendments"). Someone objected that there's prior art but Apple claimed that hardly anyone could read that old scrubby bit of paper on the Library of Congress and anyway - it wasn't created in iBooks so it is an illegal infringement of their right to everything.

Oh - and the first ten of the imendments are to be know as the Steve of Rights.

John McAfee the Belize spymaster uncovers 'ricin, terrorist plots'

John Le Carre plot?

Reads more like a Dirk Diggler movie plot

Brazilian slammer guards nab mobe-smuggling CAT

Re: If the cat _could_ talk, it would say ...

Whaddaya mean "if the cat could talk"?

Of course the cat can talk - as any fule no all cats can talk.

They just haven't yet thought of anything that needs saying.

Maybe

It was fish in the jailhouse night

But then of course the drills etc wouldn't be needed

Feeling poor? WHO took all your money? NOT capitalist bastards?

Re: Stick to tech

No no no - lets have more like this - techies are not immune from the rest of the stuff in the world.

I don't agree with much that TW says on economics stuff but at least there is a political basis and rationale for most of it which can be discussed. Simply saying - stay away we're all lefties here is really pathetic and part of the problem of modern politics - every one gets into their entrenched position and nothing useful is ever said.

Plus - the level and standard of comment on ElReg is actually pretty good. If you think iWars are bad go and see just about any CIF discussion.

Re: tl;dr

That is not the definition of progressive taxation.

A progressive system increases the rate as the taxable base amount increases.

As the £15k isn't in the taxable base amount (clue - it isn't taxed) your proposal is proportional - not progressive.

Proportionate taxation as a theory certainly has its merits and many proponents - the main one for me is that it is politically more stable. Maybe you should read some stuff from the Adam Smith institute to provide you with some pretty good ammo for your position rather than trying to pass it off as something else.

Re: Doesn't add up

It is worth noting that about the only thing that article in wikipedia gets right is a small mention of the point of intervention in Keynesian theory - to work towards increasing employment levels during a recession.

It is not about fiscal stimulus for the sake of it or about increasing economic volumes per se - it is about keeping your economy and your people in a state to take advantage of the cyclical upswing.

The rest of it tends to swallow the "New classical economics"* orthodoxy that Keynesian theory is about an ever increasing state control of the economy.

* That thought free zone which is most attractive to politicians because it absolves policy makers of any responsibility for anything whatsoever - remember all those nice charts about M1 and inflation - wonder what happened to them? They got conveniently forgotten when politicians saw that NOT controlling the money supply was the real vote winner and got them off the hook for all kinds of shit.

Re: Doesn't add up

Your understanding of keynesian theory is deeply flawed as is your assertion that the western nations have followed a keynesian model in recenty decades. You would have to go back to the sixties to see anything like a keynesian policy in Europe - the UK hasn't had a whiff of it since Wilson. There has never been any implementation of a keynesian based policy in the US - it has relentlessly pursued the Hamiltonian policy since for ever and continues to do so. Japan may have exerted closer control over its banks and done lots of public spending since the 80s but not to follow any discernible keynesian theory - it's policy appears to be "throw lots of money at things - after all - how much worse can it get" - the Japanese policy has actually equated more closely to early Leninism than anything else. To equate public spending with Keynesian theory is drivel - public spending forms part of the full range of economic approaches from rule the world Hamiltonianism to despot in trouble printing of monopoly money.

The core element of keynesian theory is not public spending - it is balance. It acknowledges that public spending can have a role (for example during economic downturns) but insists on balance - public spending should be reduced during periods of economic growth - whereas western politicians have used periods of growth and prosperity to skyrocket public spending on their pet projects. The guy practically invented the economic medum term.

It is this element of balance that is also missing from international economic relations. Keynes begged the IMF to create mechanisms to balance deficits and surpluses between nations before they became so imbalanced that they endangered the whole system. Everyone knew it made sense but the US said no so it didn't happen. The balancing mechanism we got instead is dumping a country's currency in the toilet and lauging at all the poor starving people.

In the 90s we jumped straight from the Friedman/Waters notion that control of money supply was the key to controlling your economy via suppression of inflation (without acknowledging that those inflationary pressures were there for a reason) to the even dafter notion dreamed up by (it seems to me) a six year old explaining how money works that you could have constant economic growth by monetising more and more activities and creating free credit for all. The fact that inflation was remarkably easy to control during this period of credit fuelled "growth" should have had alarm bells ringing all over the place - yes - we were using the despot's method of economic control - printing lots of monopoly money and the only reason we weren't seeing horrifying inflation rates was that we were storing it all up on credit cards.

And the solution is - "quantitative easing" - i.e. people stopped believing that the monopoly money is real so we need to keep printing more till they start believing it again.

Happy new year

Re: The Blame

You can hardly blame Thatcher for "the late 70s" as she only took over in May '79.

If you want to know why inflation went through the roof in the late seventies you are going to have to settle for something a bit more complicated than "it was {name your boogie man politician}'s fault". If not - you need to learn how to look up the dates in office of your favourite boogie man politician.

Re: Starting figures are well out

"how much debt would have been signed for if they knew at the time it was completely unsustainable"

A bit naive that.

By "they" I take it you mean the government of the day. If they didn't know that their borrowing was completely unsustainable it was because they didn't want to know.

Anyone see William Hurt in that sycophantic pile of dogshite "Too Big to Fail"? That was typical of the government attitude - "How could we be expected to know what the banks were doing?" Er - maybe cos you were at Goldman Sachs before you were Treasury Sec you dickhead. And then surprise, surprise a load of ex bankers regulating a load of current bankers gave the current bankers shed loads of tax money with no strings attached. And Dick Fuld portrayed as the bloke who got screwed over? Really - the CEO of Lehmans as a sympathetic character?

As for this author suggesting that the tax burden is the fault of public sector employees is laughable. Sure there are some problems in the public sector but it isn't their employees.

The biggest public sector problem is the way it is used these days simply to channel money and assets to crap private sector companies who couldn't make any money if their government mates didn't give it to them. PFI has already transferred billions to private interests and we are just at the start of the programme. In twenty years time we will have given them the NHS and all our schools together with paying a large chunk of our taxes to those same companies as compensation for the maintenance of those assets. PFI is like a guy nicking your car but you have to continue to pay for the petrol/tax/servicing and MOT - and if he knocks someone over you will have to cover the insurance claim. As for wanting to use the asset in future - stand in line in descending order of wallet size.

Hm, nice idea that. But somebody's already doing it less well

Re: So you fell uncertain? Step this side, please. May I see your tax returns, sir?

I think Higgs overplays the effect of poltical uncertainty to a degree - but a lot of it does comes back to that. US isolationist tendencies were not completely based on fear of the political instability of most of mainland Europe but they were certainly exacerbated by the perception that Europe's inability to deal with these questions was going to drag everyone into another "european war" as most americans would certainly have classified WW1 and likely saw WW2 even after Pearl Harbor.

Another main influence was the disastrous effect on the European economies of the treaty of Versailles which amounted to cutting of your nose to spite your face.

The Mississipi Valley drought (coming precisely when it did) was also an often underestimated kick in the pants for the US economy at exactly the wrong time.

All of these things contributed to the depression but there is little doubt that the shamefully unregulated explosion of unsustainable credit leading to the stock market bubble and crash, the subsequent failure of the banks and the destruction of confidence in the capitalist system at the very time that it was being challenged politically around the world was by far and away the leading cause of the depression.

Anyone in any doubt that it was naked greed which led to this should spend an hour or so reading the Great Crash 1929 by JK Galbraith.

Or -

How about not regulating cars and drivers to give lifts to people.

Yes - I know - won't someone think of the children etc etc ad nauseam but

It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of market that could easily become self-regulating in a C21 western economy and would actually be a good use of crowd wisdom and other internet abilities.

It's JUST possible, but Apple MIGHT not make an iWatch in 2013

Re: Winding watches daily

Only on cheap bits of crap.

Any decent mechanical watch made in the last 50 years would be self winding.

Goldman Sachs: Windows' true market share is just 20%

Outplayed at their own game

MS success was built on allowing people to do stuff. It tied itself to the seemingly endless possibilties of the PC and blew the competition away because it enabled lots of stuff to be done in lots of ways. What do you want to do today?

Those endless possibilities and doing stuff in lots of different ways is now seen as being driven more and more by the mobile market which particular train MS failed to board for whatever reason.

The vast majority of people spending domestic market money don't care about maker - they just want to do what others are doing - smartphones and tablets is the current shiny market and MS are not in it.

The more technically minded will not hold a torch for MS (or Apple or Samsung or Google) - if they are pro's in systems or support they have way to many calls on their priority list to waste time bigging up a software house (or fruit supplier).

Corporates are influenced by many factors, price and technical effectiveness being just a couple of those factors. MS hasn't been cheap for many years and their reputation for tech effectiveness is being hurt by them being unable to compete in the mobile market, the Vista legacy and it looks like Metro is lining up nicely as Vista 2.

MS are probably going to continue as a major player for many years to come - servers, desktops and laptops are not going away anytime soon, Libre Office is so painful to use that more than an hour or so every few days is likely to have workers going postal.

What they have shown us here though is their inability to diversify into the more esoteric areas of tech. What do you want to do today? has become here's what we will let you do today

Internet Explorer tracks cursor even when minimised

Re: Ah but....

You shouldn't be running any other windows or tabs when you go to a banking logon page.

Your bank's initial page shouldn't contain any uncontrolled links.

The logon page should allow you to close the initial page behind it and should not contain any links at all other than those needed to actually log on.

If your banking pages contain off-site links get a different bank - they are not serious about security.

Extended screen

It doesn't appear to track to the extended screen

Also - loved this piece of advice

"NB If you're not currently using Internet Explorer, then we suggest you view this page again with Internet Explorer"

Londoners can bonk their way to work without Oyster cards TODAY

Re: I have an idea

Well - you could always let the people on to the bus in one go and then collect the fares once they are inside - you could have an additional member of staff to do this while the bus is on its way thus delivering the passengers more quickly to their destinations - a customer service improvement that customers actually want.

Jokes of no more than 2 lines

Man "So how long have I got then?" Doctor "about ten"

Man "Ten what? Years? months? days?" Doctor " Nine, eight, seven......."

A study recently concluded that licking the sweat from frogs can cure depression,

The bad news is that when you stop licking the frog gets depressed again.

Valve chief confirms Steam-centric console-killing PC

Re: final blow for Windows

Final blows for windows - they are a bit like final farewell concerts for Status Quo - they seem to have one every few months.

Parliament to unleash barrage of criticism on Snoopers' Charter

New crime would be needed

"Acting in a way that deviates from standard by a statistically significant degree"

Last line in the Act would then be

The Secretary of State will by regulation determine from time to time the meaning of "siginificant degree"

I always wondered why someone who clearly struggles with the concept of abstract thought was put in charge of the Home Office. Now all is clear - May is simply an automatised stonewall.

Dutch army digs in on spare spectrum rest of Europe could use

Re: The Dutch have an army? @ Graeme

Have one on me

Re: The Dutch have an army?

Ah - an underwater army. That makes sense.

Dozen more cities to get ultrafast broadband cash in gloomy UK budget

Meanwhile - somewhere that isn't Noddy land

Public services don't move to online. They copy to online. Sure the savings can be big but it is usually at the expense of stripping out the "public" part of public services and increasing exclusion.

Of course - when that happens the services are deemed no longer effective as they are failing to reach those who need them most so they get dumped and replaced with a couple of platitudes from a minister and a committee (on full expenses) looking at why the poor are so feckless.