Posts by Simon Lynch

The Life and Times of Lester Haines

A real original

Thanks for that John - not an easy thing to write 'right', but sure his many fans will appreciate the great job you have done in pulling together the many threads of his life and telling us about a very unique person.

Whenever I saw his name on a Reg article I knew it would be worth reading - starting a decade and a half ago. The Rockall Times was an quixotic venture that I found hilarious at the time, his attempts on the real rock equally so. His other projects were also seriously entertaining. Few of us chase our ideas properly, even fewer chase our mad ideas. No-one does Playmobil re-enactments of current affairs...

We exchanged a few emails over the years and I was very happy when he once took up a tip from me on some internet stupidity and did an article. I had never felt before sad about someone I had never met dying...

The only time I ever found him boring was the '78th' article on post-pub snacks (the previous '77' were entertaining). There should be a VC (Vulture Cross) melted in his honour for death in the line of duty.

Google says it would have a two-word answer for Feds seeking Yahoo!-style email backdoor

If they actually had worked to catch criminals with that data it 'might' have been OK. I run a website where 80% of fraud is from yahoo emails. Did they ever respond or help. NO. Do they try and assist detection of crime. NO. In terms of real impact, that is much worse than snooping.

Tesla to stop killing drivers: Software update beamed to leccy cars

Drone drivers?

Loads of people love playing video games. Seems like the US (and others) made this work with their drone programmes (just listen to the yee haas on some of the videos as a high-value target gets wiped out in a market-place - along with the definitely also-guilty bystanders).

Why not do a kinda of Tesla chat roulette where remote drivers can patch in when the car detects a lack of attention? Then the players can save them from a lithium-enhanced fireball and win points and prizes. Win-win. What could possibly go wrong ;)

Bibliotheca Alexandrina buys a Huawei superdupercomputer

Internationally funded state oppression

In a library which doesn't have any money to buy books...

Well, they can use a desktop to index what they have and then use the new box to do about the only thing it would be good for, filtering and analysing the communications of its citizens. The Chinese should be able to help out with repurposing the kit. Nice to see the internaltional community doing something positive for the country...

Biggest security update in history coming up: Google patches Android hijack bug Stagefright

SO when then?

My Nexus 5 broke in the summer (not sure, but think software not hardware), so I schelped off to a shop to get something else. Found out they had nothing recent in stock (small town in NW Spain), so got what seemed to the least worst solution on offer - an LG G2. It's still today on 4.4.2 of Android and I am very happy I just got back a Nexus 5 in working order. I am not even happy to give it to someone else... never mind the drawer full of half-dead/dying/dead androids I have already....

I understand why Google did what they did to get into the market, but they ended up with a Microsoft situation MINUS control. If they don't bring out another sensible Nexus I will have to go to Apple (and believe me that is really not something I want to do) or be really dumb and take a Ubuntu phone (big fan of desktop, but first generation anything is sh1t).

So, Google, please fix the downstream process with partners...

Bigotry posted by your Facebook account? Use this, Mister UKIP MP wannabe: 'I was hacked'

Re: As you (and we) tippie toe round the libel laws

My original comment was in response to a comment from another poster, which they then deleted by the looks of it (in shame?). My comment was meant humorously - obviously - as recycling 'swivel eyed loons' would have been a little lame. My use of a random anachronistic idiom should have been a pointer to the 'humour' element. Sorry if it passed you by (also sorry for any passerby reading this, I am now shooting for the most pretentious language I have used since I was in the education system and was meant to sound clever...)

I would obviously not be able to support the fact that any party does not have 'nutters' within their supporters. Whichever definition of 'nutter' we take where at least one party has some, this will certainly be true in general for all parties. We obviously need to say that nutter≠mentally ill; common usage of the word means we can use it without fear (whereas saying UKIP has lots or retards/spastics/mongs in the membership would not be OK with me as the potential insult to the mentally handicapped would be unfair in my eyes).

However BobRocket, you allude to the 'ratio' of 'nutters' to 'non-nutters' in your comment. Then try to draw the conclusion that all parties would have an equal ratio of 'nutters' stuffing their ''gunnals', Regardless of my opinions, it is an interesting question. If there were an agreed definition of 'nutter' with an 'nutter test', which party would have the highest proportion of nutters in the membership (NQ - Nutter Quotient)?

Field-testing this would be hard (like, impossible). So the ordinary girl or guy in the street is reduced to anecdotal evidence. I guess we could look at the number of people UKIP vs other parties who have been chucked out from the party recently? Is there a public list anywhere? Without doing more research, we are left to guess at the NQ...

All of the main parties have had problems with people (they always will), but the NQ score of the following stuff kind of stands out:

- Tory MPs defecting to UKIP, like Reckless, "He said that, as a Tory, he could not keep a promise to "cut immigration while treating people fairly"". High NQ?

- Tort MEP defecting to UKIP , one commented when caught going to a massage parlour, "MEPs are entitled to a private life. I work extremely hard and when I do occasionally have time off I enjoy a massage." High NQ?

- 'Meet the Ukippers' - Mensa level NQ!

- Labour supporter Natasha Bolter, turned PPC for UKIP claimed sexual harassment from UKIP General Secretary - a truly weird story - 178 NQ

- The fact that UKIP has attracted far-right support (based on polling studies) and stuff like this: "the EDL leadership said: “All nationalist parties should stand aside in areas that Ukip have a good chance of winning. Let’s not split their vote. We might take a couple or a few hundred votes of them, we don’t come no where and we’ve cost UKIP the win because they come 50, 60 votes behind Labour.” Gulp NQ!

Small things, but as the UKIP membership is very small (not talking about the people who may vote for it, but the members) it is pretty much sure there is a higher NQ for UKIP than the three mainstream parties. Analyzing the Scots and Welsh nationalists is a little tricky as they are mostly 'nutters' anyway, won't mention Northern Ireland as the NQ there on both sides meant 50 years of rubbish. The Greens probably have a high NQ, but at least they mean well to all people, so if they are not going to be in contention we should leave them alone to be mostly confused.

I do have some time for the central argument of UKIP - that the EU isn't 'right'. Their approach to fixing it, by ignoring the problem and saying 'we leave' is not really that useful.

Based on my careful analysis - as presented above - I can confidently say it is the party with the highest ratio of nutters to gunnels out of all of the relevant parties is UKIP.

in he debate (not sure if the Monster Raving would have a higher NQ than UKIP if analysed properly... in the same way we can ignore the rest)

As you (and we) tippie toe round the libel laws

What I find completely astonishing is the complete lack of awareness of some candidates. If you are pushing yourself into the public arena you would think making sure what's on the Internet about or connnected to them is as clean as possible. On balance is it probably a good thing for the world that the complete maniacs don't, as at least they can be weeded out.

@keithpeter - 'a few skeletons' - more like 'Revenge of killer zombie skeletons III'. Not sure there is any way of dealing with the fact UKIP is stuffed the gunnals with nutters. You must be very happy that these evil hackers - with the preternatural foresight to both identify the future candidate and slide in their hack to remain undetected until it could be uncovered at a time of maximum political damage - have been uncovered and we must all hope they are brought to justice soon. I hope Mr. Harris has already contacted the Police and they are already making a request to Facebook for the account access history; then makes this fact public and shares the results with the world. If not, wouldn't the only logical conclusion be that he is soft on crime? I couldn't bear to think this poor victim of a smear campaign wasn't able to get justice. We must all hope he has taken action and doesn't leave any niggling doubts in the minds of anyone about the veracity of his statement, "I’m absolutely disgusted. My account has been hacked – again. You know what Facebook is like,"

;)

Spanish election site in security cert warning screwup snafu

This was mostly covered above in comments above.

To make one thing clear - pretty much all of the government https sites operated in Spain throw scary warnings in the browser about the certs not being valid. In this case, it is lucky most users ignore then and just click on, but it is a pathetic state of affairs.

In addition, most online services require an installed cert on the computer to actually be able to access them. Although this is not a bad idea in principle, it does involve a lot of faffing around and a physical visit to authorize the digital cert. And if you don't have it backed up and an HDD dies, start from square one (yes, stupid, I know). Banks abandoned this approach in the 90s and seem to have survived. Spain in basically still in last century; lots of big companies on fat IT contracts producing 'mierda'.

@John - happy to push over examples if you would like to have look.

Our irony meter exploded: Apple moans ebook price-fixing watchdog is too EXPENSIVE

Money-go-round

I would imagine the lawyers is out of the country setting up an offshore shell to stash the cash in - Apple will then be able to make the transfers direct from one of their tax-free shells and they can then save a few bob.

The American system of making the infringing party pay for their oversight, does have some natural justice embedded in it. Just need to make the lawyer pay for their own oversight and everything will be alright then... Obviously you would think governments are there do to the 'regulation' thing, not over-priced lawyers. Then again, even at €16m a go this would probably be cheaper than the same job in the EU.

Polish man mistakes hot iron for mobe

You've been linkbaited so bad...

...that it hurts more than a hot iron pressed the side of my face.

Google (finally) releases antidote to Google ad webpage drag

Eating too much PR

This is not ready for primetime as they have not finished making sure it works in all of the browsers. Have no idea why they are publicising it or you are recycling their PR without a disclaimer on there.