* Posts by Steven Roper

1832 publicly visible posts • joined 10 May 2011

Branson, Berners-Lee, Google, £2m: LET'S SAVE THE WORLD

Steven Roper

Re: Am I being cynical .....

Translation of the above weaselese into common English:

Technically, you retain the copyright to your work. However, you give us the everlasting right to do whatever the fuck we want with it, including making money from it, without paying you a cent, or giving you any credit, so you may as well have given us the copyright since it's now worthless to you anyway.

isoHunt loses appeal against search ban

Steven Roper
FAIL

@ AC 14:39 Re: Nice try

So, I just typed in "walking dead torrent" into google and the first 10 results were all links to well-known torrent sites, including torrentz, kickasstorrents and piratebay, with copies of the movie. A quick follow up shows from the torrent comments on those sites that the movie torrent is the real deal.

Nice try... now please go back to your MPAA corner office, there a good little shill...

Apple share-price-off-a-cliff: Told you that would happen

Steven Roper

Re: Sound like gambling, not investing.

And the difference is...?

Google patent filing suggests Glass will be ULTIMATE REMOTE

Steven Roper

Re: How will you feel when your imaginary friends say that you're mad?

Not as bad as I would feel when my 'imaginary friends' started spouting adverts at me. They'd stop being friends, imaginary or not, real fast.

Not that I have any intention of ever using this technology, given the way things have gone. It's funny; as a kid I would have eagerly embraced computerised glasses, but then when I was a kid future technology wasn't about tracking your every act and exploiting every possible human psychological vulnerability in order to sell you something.

Wind farms make you sick … with worry and envy

Steven Roper
Coffee/keyboard

... all they way up to warp core breach.

That made me laugh, well put!

However, do you think you could tone the upper end of the scale back a bit? I don't want to be blown to my component subatomic particles because someone across the other side of town lit up one smoke too many.

I'd suggest a scale running from Christmas cracker to Mills 36M would be sufficient!

Movie, TV ads annoying? You ain't seen nothin' yet

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: My policy of avoiding any tech invented after 1849

So what did you use to post your comment then? Charles Babbage's Difference Engine?

MasterCard stings PayPal with payment fee hike

Steven Roper
Mushroom

Let me see if I have this down

Mastercard want to charge Google/Paypal more per transaction, therefore charging ME more per transaction, because Google.Paypal aren't giving them access to MY FUCKING PERSONAL INFORMATION. So I'm going to have to pay more because one greedy corporation won't give another greedy corporation purchasing-history data that BELONGS TO ME in the first place.

If this isn't outright criminal fraud, theft and embezzlement I don't know what is. If they try to do this in Australia, I WILL be contacting the police and my local MP and seeking to press fraud, theft and unauthorised access to information charges against both PayPal and Mastercard.

Vietnamese high school kids can pass Google interview

Steven Roper
Coat

Re: Nature/nurture: fight!

@Mikel: A well-known author by the name of Aldous Huxley beat you to it by about 80 years.

What you're saying is we need more Deltas because not everyone can be Alphas. I agree with his (and your) point in principle, but I'm not entirely sure I'd want to live in the brave new world Huxley described in his eponymous book. I guess the feelies would be fun though.

The only thing remaining for this world is perfecting Bokanovsky's Process and with genetic technology the way it is, that's gotta be just around the corner by now - if we can overcome the anti-eugenicists...

Coat because I'm sure I left my soma in the pocket...

NBN collapses* into chaos*

Steven Roper

Re: Brownfields? Greenfields?

As I understand it from a friend in the industry, "brownfields" refers to older, established neighbourhoods with ageing infrastructure (read: overhead phone and power lines that are due to be replaced with underground lines), while "greenfields" refers to new or relatively recently constructed housing estates with undergrounded lines. Since the companies maintaining the infrastructure are currently in the process of undergrounding the brownfields estates anyway, these estates are receiving priority for the NBN rollout, on the premise that they may as well put the fibre in while they have the trenches open.

Here in SA, default undergrounding of phone and power services in new estates began in the mid-1970s (my parents moved into one of the first estates with no Stobie poles - our local term for overhead power/phone poles - at the time) and proceeded from there. So estates established since the 1970s will be among the last to get the NBN, excepting those which are currently under construction, as the installation is presently focused on the older suburbs and country towns where they are in the process of replacing the old Stobie poles with underground cabling.

Space probe spies MYSTERY 'Cold Spot' in very fabric of cosmos itself

Steven Roper

Re: Soup, from the microwave?

I guess the enormous mutant star goat must have been really hungry...

Brit web biz waves white flag in Python trademark bout

Steven Roper
Trollface

So the message is clear

DDoS attacks, email bombings and death threats get results.

"Terrorists Win!"

Nvidia's skirt-chasing chips ogle babes, eyeball Twitter and YouTube

Steven Roper
Coat

Re: Don't careabout dresses

Maybe it produces no results because there's a worldwide shortage of unattached women who look like Jessica Alba...?

Amazon boss salvages Apollo engines from watery grave

Steven Roper
Pint

Re: Ahem, numbers...

"Sorry, I was born days after Apollo 11 and I'm not that close to 50"

Come on, don't kid yourself about how the years have flown, mate! I was a toddler when Armstrong mentioned steps and leaps, and I turn 47 this year. If you were born then, that means you turn 44 this year. So there's 44 years behind you and 6 years until you're 50, so you're 88% of the way there bud...

Here, have a pint on me and let's reminisce about the good old days like the old farts we are! ;)

I remember thinking when Dad dug me out of bed to watch the historic moment (it's my earliest childhood memory), as a child would, that the "funny man" bouncing around on TV in the big suit was talking about the fun of jumping down stairs. I had only recently started walking (or toddling I should say) and had just discovered how to jump. Armstrong said small step and giant leap, so I assumed he meant that it was OK to jump off of the bottom steps of the hall staircase - an enjoyable pursuit I had just discovered and from which Mum quickly did her best to dissuade me, in absolute terror of me breaking my silly little neck doing it!

Of course, given my very tender age at the the time, the significance of the "funny man" actually being on the moon was completely lost on me...

Software bug halts Curiosity: Nuke lab bot in safe mode

Steven Roper

Re: $500/hr

75 cents the mile? Jeeze, you're cheap.

A friend of mine is a tradie - actually a cable installer - and he charges $1.20 the kilometre to do callouts. That covers not only the cost of petrol, currently around $1.60 AUD per litre here in Adelaide, but also his time in driving out to the site. Given that much of his work is country town jobs where he has to drive upward of 400+ kms there and back (yes, Australia is big and it's a long drive to anywhere!) it can get quite expensive quite quickly.

Bottomless, unsatisfied Xbox widow cuffed after boyf flees nookie

Steven Roper
Flame

Re: What's the problem?

Sounds like fucking sexual assault to me.

As someone who was assaulted in that manner way back in high school, I can tell you that having your balls grabbed and twisted like that IS REALLY FUCKING PAINFUL. Then add the ignominy of being subsequently punished and ridiculed for attempting to defend myself against the female offenders in question.

Maybe you'd like me to make some jokes about your other half being raped? I didn't fucking think so.

Starlight-sifting boffins can now spot ALIEN LIFE LIGHT YEARS AWAY

Steven Roper
Stop

Re: No. No. No. No.

You're right, of course, I do know about the differential passage of time in different locations, due to gravity.

That's why I specified at some point in time. At some point in time, everywhere in the universe will pass through a moment of t seconds since the Big Bang where t is the number of seconds that has elapsed since the Big Bang here on Earth right now. For us that time t in a different planet in a different galaxy may be a million years ago, or a million years in the future, but at some point in time that planet will pass through t seconds since the Big Bang. Sooner or later, everywhere in the universe will. That is your benchmark for interstellar travel.

Follow my reasoning now?

Steven Roper
Mushroom

All these people saying FTL is impossible

I'm getting really tired of all these offhand dismissals of any possibility of real-time interstellar travel. If we listened to every naysayer who said "that can't be done" we'd still be living in caves hunting wild pigs and being eaten by leopards.

I know that the difficulties imposed by relativity and physics seem insuperable now, but so did going to the moon 100 years ago, and so did flying for thousands of years before that. If we give up now, if we toss in the towel and say "relativity means there will NEVER be FTL travel and that's that, end of discussion", then our civilisation deserves to die. Because we will have turned our backs on every principle that has brought us to where we are.

Consider this: there IS a concept of absolute time, regardless of the relativity of time and space. The one absolute clock, applicable everywhere in the Universe, is seconds elapsed since the Big Bang. At some point in time, on the planets orbiting Alpha Centauri, it is the same number of seconds since the Big Bang as it is here right now. We might not see that moment for another 4.5 years, but it's happening now, or has happened, or will happen. So if FTL is possible, say with an Alcubierre drive or some other functional equivalent, and if the ship does go back in time as a result, then it could be put in stasis (brought as close to 0 Kelvin as possible) and released when the number of seconds since the Big Bang reaches the same as when it left Earth. Thus, zero effective time has passed, both for Earth and for the ship. Repeat again on the return journey, and what you have is essentially instantaneous interstellar travel, for both Earth and ship.

Look, I'm no boffin, and there's likely countless flaws with my ideas that could be brought up. But if we give up, if we just throw our hands in the air and say "that can't be done, because Einstein...", then we have abrogated our right to be called intelligent, and we may as well start heading back for the caves right now.

I will leave you with the words of the great poet Tennyson:

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Samsung Galaxy S 4: A slim stripper with palms hovering over its body

Steven Roper

@Ali on the Reg

Yes, please do keep the tiresome political correctness coming. It is very funny and doesn't make you sound sanctimonious or judgmental.

Steven Roper
Trollface

@ribosome

Thanks for making my head assplode ;)

I can't decide whether to downvote you for raising the political correctness or upvote you for taking the piss out of it!

I'll assume from the tenor of your post that you're opposed to that brand of anti-sexual PC tripe and give you an upvote along with the benefit of the doubt...

We shall CRUSH you, puny ROBOT... with CHESS

Steven Roper
Headmaster

Re: Clever stuff!

The problem with that approach is that it would exclude more human beings than the current distorted-text CAPTCHA currently does...

Police accuse Reuters hack of helping Anonymous hackers

Steven Roper

Jesus!

conspiracy to transmit information to damage a protected computer, transmitting information to damage a protected computer, and attempted transmission of information to damage a protected computer.

Holy shit, talk about throwing the bloody book at the poor sod!

SimCity 4

Steven Roper

Re: I miss this!

For some reason it doesn't seem to play nicely with my install of Win7-64 though.

Build yourself an old Win98 or XP gaming box just for these old games. You can get the parts dirt cheap from computer recyclers or just look on ebay for old boxen if you don't want to build it yourself. Then stick it under your desk with a KVM switch and all your modern-machine incompatibility woes are gone!

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

@I ain't Spartacus: to agree with you about 3D. I remember loving the first couple of versions of Civilization.

Likewise here, where RTS games are concerned. A couple of friends of mine and I have been playing Age of Empires II: Conquerors ever since it first came out, about 13 years now. Every Wednesday night, almost without fail, is our Age of Empires II LAN session. I don't think there's any other game in my life that I've played for so many years. It just has all the right elements, in all the right places.

We've tried others: Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, The Settlers IV, Age of Mythology, even Age of Empires III. None of them last; none quite have what Age of Empires II has. It's simple, it's fast, and it's fun.

Oz Senator says Google Glass could 'end privacy as we know it'

Steven Roper
Flame

Good grief!

Fully half of the article is nothing more than an ad-hominem attack on Bernardi for being opposed to gay marriage. Quite what this has to do with Google Glass being an invasion of privacy, or the validity of Bernardi's arguments thereto, I fail to see. Unless the author is a PC bigot who thinks that because Bernardi is against gay marriage, all his opinions about anything else are equally invalid.

Now I support gay marriage absolutely, in keeping with my belief in freedom of choice and minding one's own business. And I think Bernardi is a dickhead for wanting to reach into people's lives and say who can get married or not; it's none of his damn business. But that doesn't invalidate his knowledge or values or opinions on any other subject. It certainly has nothing at all to do with Google Glass and its privacy implications.

The reason I despise political correctness and it's wailing supporters is precisely because of the kind of vicious ad-hominem smear tactics used by the author of this article. "He's racist/sexist/homophobic/un-PC, therefore his opinions on everything else are irrelevant, because he's not 'civilised' or 'enlightened'" (or whatever buzzword has been appropriated by the PC do-gooders to justify their sanctimonious worldview this month.) It is these same tactics that have filled our workplaces with fear, that if you dare express any un-PC opinion, or look at someone the wrong way, or offend anyone for any reason, you can possibly lose your job and your life could be ruined, regardless of how competent or valuable you may be.

I'd have expected more from Murdoch's media empire than this. To see it in the pages of El Reg is nothing short of disgusting.

Curiosity's MYSTERY MARS find: NASA reveals THE TRUTH

Steven Roper
Coat

How do you inappropriately touch a planet? Shove a finger into its south pole?

Steven Roper

And how much did they pay you to post that little advert?

Rise Of The Machines: What will become of box-watchers, delivery drivers?

Steven Roper
Thumb Down

Re: Won't somebody think of

>talk a load of non-PC drivel

I'd far rather listen to a taxi driver express his honest opinion about how fucked up things are, than listen to some sanctimonous PC bigot spouting off about how everyone is still racist/sexist/X-ist like he's some kind of guardian angel of everyone's morals.

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

@Oninoshiko re: no self-check

I'm the same. I also have stood in line while self-service kiosks stood empty. Part of my shopping experience is talking to the checkout chick (or sometimes guy), catching up on what the yoof of today are into (as I have no kids of my own, talking to the young people in shops is pretty much the only chance I get to catch up with the doings of the young). Even when I've been asked to use the kiosks, I've refused, saying I would rather be served by a person, thank you. The day they remove the choice and force me to use a kiosk will be the last day I ever shop there.

One thing I've also noticed is that my local greengrocers, butchers, bakers and the like are doing a roaring trade. It's not unusual of a Saturday morning to see a crowd spilling out the doorways of the local strip-shops. More and more people are shunning the dehumanising impersonality of the supermarkets, even if the prices are cheaper, because there's nothing like good old-fashioned friendly service from your local butcher, baker or greengrocer. The meat, bread, and fruit & veg is much fresher and better quality, too.

I do sometimes order my groceries online and get it delivered, but this is actually becoming rarer. I'd much rather take the time to go into my local butcher and have him fresh-cut a decent steak for me, with the rind of fat still on, rather than accept whatever stripped, fat-free, processed crap the warehouse-picker grabs off the shelf and shoves into a foam box to drop on my doorstep.

And I agree, like you, that I'd far rather my money went to gainfully employing someone who is willing to work, rather than filling the coffers of wealthy shareholders who do no work for a living and wax fat on the labour of others.

As would a lot of other people. Remember, the fact that there's a line for the manned checkout while self-service kiosks are empty means that all those people in line would also rather be served by a human being than by a computer. And they want it badly enough that they're prepared to spend time waiting to get that service. We're far from alone alone, friend.

On Amazon, cloud service companies put themselves at risk

Steven Roper

And this shit

is exactly what patent law is supposed to PREVENT. If Apple can patent round-cornered rectangles, why can't these startups patent their cloud applications and be rewarded for their innovation? Oh, that's right; the law only exists to serve the interests of mega-corporations and the super-rich that run them. Silly me, I forgot how this world really works for a moment there.

Curiosity succeeds – Mars was wet enough for life!

Steven Roper

Silicon-based life

is an interesting fantasy, but because of chemistry, silicon life cannot exist. Silicon, while in the same period as carbon, cannot form the huge molecule chains required to establish and sustain life. A common example is the silicon equivalent of the alkane series: methane -> silane, ethane -> disilane, propane -> [does not exist]. Attempts to create a silicon equivalent of propane, butane and so on inevitably result in the silicon-based molecules instantly breaking down into silane and disilane, even in any conceivable conditions such as high pressures or cryogenic temperatures.. Since silicon cannot form even these simple molecules, it obviously cannot even begin to form the huge protein chains required to establish a living organism.,

Carbon is the only element on the entire periodic table that can form such huge and complex molecule chains. As a result, all life in the universe is either carbon-based, or is artificial 'life' (e.g. sentient robots/computers) originally created by carbon-based life.

On International Woman's Day we remember Grace Hopper

Steven Roper

Re: "insisting on special treatment"

"I dont think feminism demands 'special treatment'."

What do you think affirmative action is, if not 'special treatment'?

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

Steven Roper

One of my favourites

is a little-known 1985 movie called The Quiet Earth (IMDB link). Its stark minimalism (there are only 3 people in the entire movie) sets an eerie background for the complex story and the science behind it, and for it's small budget it's a seriously underrated piece of hard SF.

Steven Roper

Chronicles of Riddick?

You mean they made a sequel to Pitch Black? Whatever next - you'll be wanting me to believe they made a sequel to Highlander as well? Yeah, right.

Farewell, Reg: This hack is hanging up her Apple jacket

Steven Roper
Joke

Re: Ashamed

You need to wash your brain out with soap for thinking that even for a nanosecond.

My immediate, instinctive reaction - from the instant the photons from that picture hit my retinas - was that I would not be seen dead and rotting with that jacket anywhere in the vicinity of my office, let alone actually on the back of my chair, or - [suppress gag reflex] - in actual contact with my person!

Pirate Bay to world: We're not really off to NORKS

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: Yo Dawg

"Yo Dawg... I heard u like jokes about jokes so I put a hoax in ur hoax so u can prank while u prank!"

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

"Wow: Back-handed buuuurrrnnn."

As Wanda from Corner Gas would say: "Scorch - Pow!"

Boffins implant almost-cellphone in the BRAIN

Steven Roper

Re: The original for this tech dates from the late 1960s

Michael Crichton wrote a sci-fi novel, The Terminal Man about the same time, about this very topic. In the story, a temporal-lobe epileptic was fitted with a set of brain electrodes that stimulated the pleasure centres of his brain whenever the implanted computer detected the onset of a seizure. The problems began when the patient, called Benson, started subsconsciously triggering repeated seizures to get the pleasure rush, doing it more and more often until he entered a constant fugue state - at which point he then goes on a murderous rampage.

I remember reading this story back in the late 70s, and it had particular relevance to be because I was also diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, and I wondered then if they were going to plant electrodes into my brain too, but they never did.

But it's weird seeing something from so long ago becoming current technology. I guess for me The Terminal Man joins Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact in the list of sci-fi books about the future, that has now passed.

Carrie Fisher dusts off THAT bikini for Star Wars VII

Steven Roper
Childcatcher

Re: I read the book ...

"Strange morals they have in a galaxy, far far away."

Funny, that, considering the movie was made in a time when moral and political ramifications weren't the be-all-and-end-all of what should be in a movie. Things were simpler then. You had good guys and you had bad guys. Bad guys do bad things, good guys get together and fight them, bad guys die, flee, or repent, and everyone lives happily ever after, or at least until the sequel.

These days a movie maker has to consider all the moral and political implications of every little thing, because otherwise some nitpicker somewhere will be offended and make a huge song and dance about it...

Torvalds asks 'Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more?'

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Agreed

I'm with you streaky, have an upvote. What the hell is with 6 downvotes on streaky's post? He's absolutely right: many of us use desktops for work and play, and while I do have a Sammy Slate and it's very useful, I also find my desktop PC just as useful. And there's obviously a market still there, otherwise they wouldn't still be making motherboards, graphics cards and hard drives.

I really don't get this "tablets are the ONLY thing now, PCs are so dead" craze. You'd think owning a desktop is like smoking in public, the way people are carrying on! Tablets are great, yes - as an adjunct to the desktop workstation. But they don't replace the workstation. Try using Photoshop or Cinema 4D on a tablet sometime. Or playing games. Sometimes you just need a keyboard, mouse and a big fat monitor in front of you, and that isn't going to change.

Apple: OK, we tracked your every move... but let's call it a caching bug, m'kay?

Steven Roper
Meh

Re: So in The Register comments Apple - Is assumed guilty etc.

So that'll be pretty standard 21st century democratic jurisprudence then.

If Apple have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear, right?

Report: Danish government hits Microsoft with $1bn tax bill

Steven Roper

Ballmer might want to read his history

This one time, there were these monks at Lindisfarne...

US lawmaker blames bicycle breath for global warming gas

Steven Roper
WTF?

This guy redefines the term "oxygen thief"!

And if we're going to talk about oxygen thieves, maybe this guy should set the example and stop breathing my air first.

Australia ratifies cybercrime convention

Steven Roper

The UNDHR, like its counterpart the US Constitution, is a piece of toilet paper written up in a more idealistic age for the sole purpose of quietening the proles. It doesn't actually mean anything; it isn't a law, because there's no means of enforcing its ideals.

The only rights you have are what you can a) take by force and b) retain by concealment from those who would take them by force - either alone or in concert with others. It's called "the law of the jungle", and it's the only absolute law, enforced by physics, that applies universally to all life, intelligent or not. You either hunt or hide. Everything else is window dressing.

I've noticed that when I've posted these sentiments before, I seem to attract a few downvotes. I probably will this time, too. But it does make me wonder; do the downvoters not understand basic physics or something? A stronger force will overpower a weaker force. A force will take the path of least resistance. It's not something you can argue with. It's just the way this universe works.

Banged-up Brit hacker hacks into his OWN PRISON'S 'MAINFRAME'

Steven Roper

Re: I am conflicted...

"One the one hand, the point of prison is surely the rehabilitation. He deserves as much chance to make good as anyone else."

Well, he's not showing much likelihood of that is he? Banged up for computer fraud, and he can't stop himself hacking the prison system as well? That looks to me like somebody who doesn't give a fuck and will simply re-offend as soon as he gets out.

I believe these kinds of sociopaths who don't give a fuck that their activities ruin people's lives cannot be rehabilitated. You can't force someone to have a conscience if they don't have one. A psychologist of my acquaintance described a victim reparation meeting between a home invader and the family he robbed, and when confronted firsthand with the trauma he'd inflicted, he showed no emotion or remorse whatsoever. This hacker is probably similar - he doesn't give a fuck whose lives he ruins, as long as he gets what he wants.

I'm strongly opposed to the death penalty, but at the same time I don't believe these sociopathic creatures can ever be returned to society, no matter how long they are "rehabilitated." We don't let lions run around loose in our streets for much the same reasons as these fraudsters and scammers shouldn't be let loose. You can't stop a lion acting like a lion, and you can't stop a sociopath acting like a sociopath. They are what they are, and what they are is incompatible with the behaviours required to function in civilisation.

So what I advocate is a kind of "Coventry", or gulag, like that described in the second part of Robert Heinlein's Revolt in 2100. This is not like transporting convicts to Australia, that still functioned as a regulated prison. Instead, you simply drop these sociopaths into the "Coventry" area, and leave them to fend for themselves, no guards, no cells, no rules. They have the absolute freedom to do as they want, limited only by their capacity to take it from each other. Like a lion safari park. I'd sterilise them first though. You don't want Darwinian selection breeding for the perfect sociopath...

Pirate Bay 'seeks asylum' in, er, 'North Korea'

Steven Roper
Pirate

If copyright enforcement is TPB's problem

then they would be a lot better off hosting their servers in Iran. Iran has good connectivity (a hell of a lot better than the DPRK) and they've made it perfectly clear that they will not respect or enforce US or western copyright laws or interests in any way, now or in the foreseaable future. In fact, they're actively encouraging infringing activity in their country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-United_States_copyright_relations

So now your piracy really can support terrorism! ;-)

Health pros: Alcohol is EVIL – raise its price, ban its ads

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: In other news...

" and the overpowering urge to strangle the living shit out of yet another do-gooder incapable of minding their own fucking business."

-and-

"The PC, we-know-better-than-you, can't-ever-offend-anyone, want-to-rule-your life brigade need to be rounded up and taken somewhere far away. May I suggest Antartica."

You two are unbelievably generous and kind-hearted to these sorts of do-gooder fuckwits. I prefer a much harsher remedy.

With regard to moralising busybody PC do-gooders, I have a fantasy.

I like to imagine that there's this international organisation of vigilantes called IDEA (International Do-gooder Extermination Agency), which is made of up ex-SAS, SEALs and other paramilitary-trained problem-removal specialists, spread around the globe. No country is safe from them. Every time one of these fucking moralising busybodies publicly calls for something enjoyable or popular to be banned or restricted, the IDEA team swings into action, hunts down the bastards, and blows their fucking houses up.

After a few years of this reign of fire, the numbers of busybody do-gooders has been thinned enough that the world gradually becomes a more pleasant place. Things like road rage, shop rage, general public anger and lack of respect for others largely disappear, because a large part of the (but not the only) reason people are so angry all the time is because of the constant erosion of our freedoms by these fuckers. Kill them all off, and everyone else would start to calm down...

Nominet tosses plan for shorter .uk domains in the bin (for now)

Steven Roper

Re: Why?

SLDs provide important information about the nature of the site. For example, .co.uk is a for-profit business, .ac.uk is an educational institution, .org.uk is a non-profit, .gov.uk is a government department. It gives me some idea of the intentions and identity of the site I'm visiting.

In Australia, our equivalent SLDs are .com.au, .org.au, .net.au, .edu.au, and .gov.au. All these SLDs give vital information about the nature of the site. .gov.au, for example, is a secure guarantee that the site I'm visiting is owned and maintained by the Australian government, since only government departments can register them.

Likewise, our government has quite stringent controls on who can register what; only accredited schools and universities can register .edu.au domains, you have to have a non-profit tax exemption to register a .org.au, and you have to have an ABN (Australian Business Number) to register a .com.au. You also have to assert that your business has a substantive relationship to the domain; so if I were to try to register, say, sydneyplumbing.com.au for a bookstore in Adelaide I'd most likely get knocked back.

So with a .SLD.uk or SLD.au site you know exactly what you're dealing with. Removing that would create a lot of unnecessary uncertainty and in many cases could undermine and compromise security. That is why SLDs are important.

Australian Bureau of Meteorology apps to map future rain

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Thank fuck for Adblock indeed

My first thought on reading the article was that I probably wouldn't notice that they'd introduced ads. It does a very good job not only of blocking ads, but also of not leaving any evidence (like white spaces) that there were any ads to be blocked!

Chinese Army: US hacks us so much, I'm amazed you can read this

Steven Roper
Go

The more things change...

Rattle those sabres a bit louder, lads. We're having trouble hearing it down here at the back.

Stargazers spot first-ever planet forming in dusty disc

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

Re: Aussie names

Also Mount Lofty in Adelaide. Although I'd say we were being ironic with that one, since at only 727 m (2385 ft) it's barely deserving of the title of "mount", let alone "lofty"!

But at least we call a spade a spade...