* Posts by Steven Roper

1832 publicly visible posts • joined 10 May 2011

Condi Rice, ICANN, and millions paid to lobby the US govt for total internet control

Steven Roper

Re: Bloody Hell!

Fortensplibe's reaction likely has little to do with the fact that they are women and more to do with them both being greedy power-grubbing politicians - and in my view even more so for people hiding them behind the gender card to shield them from criticism.

Australian government hiring guardians of retained metadata

Steven Roper

"...but it's nice to think that someone's on the ball."

No it's not. What we need is for these incompetent buffoons to run around like chooks with their heads cut off, passing the buck from department to department, until the entire damnable metadata retention scheme blows out costs and problems like Krakatoa and comes down around their bloody ears!

These days basic civil liberties ride on ensuring the politicians are so busy tying each other up in knots that nothing ever gets done and the people get left alone. That's exactly why in every election I always vote for opposing parties in the Upper and Lower Houses (Liberal Senate, Labor Parliament or vice versa) - precisely so that any new bills proposed by the Lower House are more likely to get blocked by a hostile Senate, thus leaving things as they are and preserving what few fucking freedoms we have left!

Biggest problem with virtual reality: It can be a little too real for people

Steven Roper

Re: A cable connected to the brain is what is needed...

Yep. This is the real tragedy of technology.

When I was younger I used to fantasise about full-immersion VR. The worlds I'd create! I'd be like Reginald Barclay from Star Trek - I'd never come out of the holodeck! I'd be willing to spend my whole life in there, building my perfect world.

Now? No fucking way. Not with the way the likes of Google or Microsoft or Facebook will implement it, every thought, every action monitored and profiled and fed through analytics software in order to milk every last possible penny out of me, or to "treat my illness" if my fantasies stray too far from normative ideals.

It was a beautiful dream, as usual ruined by human greed and opportunism.

'I posted winning race ticket in Facebook selfie ... and someone stole it!'

Steven Roper

Re: Maybe it's for the best...

That's part of Melbourne Cup culture - the women all compete to see who can front up in the most elaborate and outlandish headgear!

PC sales will rise again, predicts Intel, but tablets are toast

Steven Roper

Re: Get real!

"Yep. That's definitely paranoia."

Yep. That's definitely arrogance.

Steven Roper

Re: Get real!

"50's paranoia. It's grrrrrrreat!"

You know, I used to hate smugness. That was until I got the joy of saying "I told you so" to all you head-burying ostriches that love using that word "paranoid" every time someone expresses concern about erosion of liberties and destruction of privacy, until the reality hits home and the chickens come in to roost. Then when the cops are turning your house upside down because a microphone in your smart TV picked up somebody saying something suspicious, I'll smile smugly and say "I told you so. You called me paranoid, but I fucking told you so. You deserve this."

Boffins: We know what KILLED the DINOS – and it wasn't just an asteroid

Steven Roper

"So what lies at the other side of the Earth of the Ontong Java Eruption"

The antipode of Java is Colombia and Venezuela, and I don't think there are any major impact craters there. However it doesn't follow that even if the Deccan super-eruption was triggered by an impact shockwave, that all super-eruptions are. If that were the case you'd also have to start wondering what was opposite the Yellowstone supervolcano (whose antipode is in the southern Indian Ocean near the French Southern & Antarctic Islands) and the New Zealand supervolcano (whose antipode is in Portugal.) So clearly while the Deccan supervolcano may have been influenced by the KT impactor, the others likely had different causes.

Anti-adblocker firm PageFair's users hit by fake Flash update

Steven Roper

Re: NoScript

"That is why I do use NoScript and get it to block 3rd party (often == advertisers) javascript."

The problem with NoScript these days though is that too many sites fetch content from fifty different domains to build the page. So you Allow for the main domain, and nothing happens except NoScript reloads with a two-screen-high list of domains the site also wants you to Allow in order to see anything at all.

What needs to happen is a campaign (the people behind NoScript would be a prime driver for this) to let these bastards know that they're losing serious traffic because of this. Whenever I see a site that refuses to show me any content unless I enable Javascript for two dozen different trackers, I simply abandon it. That site has lost my traffic and any potential future business I might have brought. It also ends up on my blocklist so I never go there again.

We need to let website owners know that this practice is unacceptable. We need to show them that it is costing them customers and traffic, and that their losses will only get worse. We need to send the lazy and incompetent buffoons passing themselves off as "web developers" these days the message to do the bloody work they're paid to do and set up the site properly on a single domain, instead of just throwing together a five-minute mashup of calls to half the internet fetching libraries and frameworks to do their job for them.

What upgrade cycle? Tablet sales crater for fourth straight quarter

Steven Roper

Re: Ok, cool.

Speaking from a web development perspective I couldn't agree more.

I remember we in the industry spent years proselytising Firefox and installing it on the computers of all and sundry to force Microsoft to bring IE into line with the W3C standards, because every website had to be developed twice: once for W3C, and again for IE, which doubled the time and cost of development.

We eventually won that battle, and there were a brief, glorious few halcyon years where we could design a website ONCE under W3C and it would work everywhere. It was a truly joyous time.

And then Apple and Samsung came along and fucked it all up by shoving fondleslabs and smartphones in everyone's faces. At first it was a non-issue; but a few years ago mobile/slab traffic became significant enough to warrant being factored into the design specs.

Which took us straight back to the bad old W3C vs IE days: we went back to having to design every website twice again, this time one for desktop and one for mobiles. Grrrrrrrrr!

No wonder I have hardly any hair left, and what there is has gone gray!

Aussies' distinctive Strine down to drunk forefathers

Steven Roper

As an Australian...

I have to point out that you've neglected the vital fact that besides the dropped consonants and vowel changes, we also often run all our words together in rapid-fire machine-gun bursts of speech.

What does real "Strine" sound like?

"Ge'aahvityafikbastidanavabludygoyamug!"

= "Get out of it you thick bastard, and have a bloody go, you mug!"

Oracle's Hurd mentality: We (and one other) will own all of cloud by 2025

Steven Roper

Regardless of who owns all of cloud, they will own my data over my rotting corpse.

Preparing for IoT? Ask some old questions and plenty of new ones

Steven Roper

I decided the IoT would never have a place in my house the moment I read this Reg article about smart light bulbs and how the company selling them was climbing on the rentism/ransom business model for $10 a month.

So, three reasons why IoT will never be allowed in any house I live in:

1. Security risks of being hacked and having everything in my house turned against me.

2. Being nickel-and-dimed into bankruptcy by 350 different Ransom-as-a-Service subscriptions required every month just to keep everything going.

3. The inevitable spying, monitoring and profiling for the purposes of everything from exploitative advertising to being put on pre-crime watchlists that will go with it.

Fuck that shit and the bastards' backs it rode in on.

Snakes in the aircon, killer crocs in the river, virtualisation for apps

Steven Roper

Re: I can relate to Scott's experience

"No decent Indian Takeaways in the capitals either..."

If you're in Adelaide, Beyond India does a good arse-burning vindaloo, along with a decent range of other Indian goodies. They also do home delivery if you live within about 6 km of the city or Modbury areas for when you don't feel like going out to eat.

Court to Wikimedia: Your NSA spying evidence is inadmissable, so you can't prove NSA spying

Steven Roper

Re: Get a big broom, judge!

I did the same maths as you when I read that, and translated it into real-world terms: it comes out to about 15 20' shipping containers' worth of sand, so a fair sized convoy of semi-trailers and a bloody big hole in the beach that a great many beachgoers, not to mention the shire council responsible for its upkeep, would definitely notice!

For the maths geeks:

20' shipping container = 12.051 m x 2.34 m x 2.38 m = 67.11 m3

Assuming 1 mm3 per sand grain, 1000 mm x 1000 mm x 1000 mm = 1 m3 = 1 billion grains of sand, so 1 trillion grains of sand = 1000 m3.

1000 m3 / 67.11 m3 = 14.9 shipping containers.

Assuming a density of about 1600 kgm-3 for dry packed sand, that's about 1600 metric tonnes of sand (for our American friends, 1764 short tons.)

Sources:

Volume of a shipping container

Density of sand

If MR ROBOT was realistic, he’d be in an Iron Maiden t-shirt and SMELL of WEE

Steven Roper

"But their portrayals of female hackers as muslims or S&M lesbians was a bit much."

That was so overdone that it passed beyond the bounds of social-justice intrusiveness into pure, concentrated hilarity.

It was as if someone played "let's see how many token minorities we can compress into a single character!" So we end up with the ultimate political-correctness singularity: a female Muslim ethnic-Arab transsexual lesbian mute computer whiz, which just about covers every possible base - sex, religion, race, gender identity, sexuality, disability, and profession.

It was so far over the top that when this character first appeared and was introduced as such to Elliot, my friend and I were folded over on the floor in stitches!

Whoever came up with this character wasn't pandering to political correctness. They were taking the absolute piss out of it. And they pulled it off in such a way that the usual horde of habitual offence-takers didn't utter a bloody word of complaint. In this day and age, that was an undisputed masterstroke of genius!

Defeated HP will put Helion cloud out of its misery in January 2016

Steven Roper

"Still not being clear then. WTF does "sunset" mean in that context?"

It means that if you were relying on them for your data storage needs you're going to lose all your data if you don't find someone else to store it, and go through the hassle of copying it all over to your new provider - which if it is GBs or TBs worth, is going to take some time and cost quite a bit of bandwidth.

Which is one major reason why my company doesn't use cloud services, and never will, no matter how much the snake-oil salesmen push it on us.

Google's YouTube Red deal: Sign, or we'll make you disappear

Steven Roper

WTF?

" Google Play subscribers will be opted in, ..."

And that shit is exactly why I don't have any credit card or payment method associated with my Google account or my Android phone.

CISA blowup: 'Web giants sharing private info isn't about security – it's state surveillance'

Steven Roper
Big Brother

Re: @Steven Roper The US goverment is slitting its country's own throat

"Perhaps passing this bill *will* encourage "alternatives" to the Silicon Valley tech companies and so reduce their influence. Why do you have problems with that?"

I don't have any problems with it at all; actually I'm all for it. It would be much better for privacy and security if every country did have its own search and social media hosted within its own borders in addition to the global giants.

The globalism of the internet has advantages as well as disadvantages. For example, the internet have made it possible for me to find and communicate with my cousins, aunts and uncles in the UK who I hadn't seen since emigrating to Australia decades ago - I've never been great at writing letters, but email and social media means I've been able to stay in touch.

But that same globalism has concentrated unspeakable wealth and power into the hands of a few multinational players - players whose home legal jurisdictions mostly fall within the purview of what I consider to be the most dangerous regime to arise since the Third Reich. Godwin be damned, most people here including many Americans themselves know I'm right about this. History is repeating itself and the US government is spearheading the revival.

So my original statement was made from the point of view of one of those players - that the US government is undermining their global business model, not from my own point of view. I was wondering why the US government seems so hell-bent on undermining what amounts to its own global internet powerbase, because their actions seem counterproductive to their goals. Why are they doing that? What am I missing here? I apologise if my post didn't make that clearer.

In the end, I do wonder what difference it would make if intranational Google and Facebook alternatives were set up, even if people did start using them instead of the multinationals. The Australian government is every bit as intrusive and tyrannical as the US government is, not to mention the EU, and no doubt such alternatives would still be privacy nightmares, regardless of whether it's the FBI/NSA or ASIO/AFP or GCHQ/MI5 who snoops my data - they all share it among themselves anyway (look up Five Eyes if you haven't already.)

Ultimately the only way to approach this is to assume that everything you put on the Internet is visible to anyone who really wants to see it. As the venerable Orwell so aptly put it:

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Steven Roper

The US goverment is slitting its country's own throat

Senator Wyden is right on the ball. It looks to me like the US government is doing everything it possibly can to undermine global trust in American businesses. The EU is already looking to establish EU-controlled alternatives to Silicon Valley giants over data privacy and security issues; other nations are doing likewise, and this is simply going to push them away all the harder.

'Facebook for drones' Altitude Angel offers 'cloud' air traffic control

Steven Roper

That's not what I was taught "cloud" meant

Given that what used to be called a “publicly accessible database”, is now called “the Cloud”

I believe "cloud" refers to a network structure, not a database.

ISTR from my college IT course in networking that "cloud" simply referred to an unknown network - that is, any part of a network topology outside of your direct administrative influence, ergo not under your control. Generally that was taken to mean the internet.

For example, if your network existed in multiple physical locations connected by lines not owned or exclusively leased by your organisation, then the links between the locations were shown as passing through an "internet cloud" to indicate that any network traffic through that section was passing through unknown or undefined infrastructure not under your control, therefore not secure. The "cloud" symbol thus illustrated areas where a VPN or SSL was needed to secure data passing though the unknown network.

That's why the symbol was a cloud, to indicate a nebulous, chaotic entity in your network topology to be considered a weakness or vulnerability requiring resolution from a security auditing perspective. The cloud symbolised an issue of data and network control, not public accessibility.

As far as I'm concerned, that's still what the cloud represents.

'Traditional' forms of thuggery decline in UK, cybercrime on the rise

Steven Roper

"There's the potential there for a severe rise in tension and a rapid discharge."

Oh, it's a lot worse than that. According to the latest XKCD WhatIf, our bank robber here is well on his way to destroying the entire universe!

Junk your IT. Now. Before it drags you under

Steven Roper

Re: You've got it backwards

"...now you can recode it using nothing more than HTML5 and CSS3...everybody still writes new pages every year or two using 16 Javascript includes and a complex, bloated framework..."

This philosophy is the backbone of our business at work. Our websites are more expensive than those of our competitors, but that's because we custom-build them for each client from our own codebase, the old-fashioned way. No Wordpress or Joomla, no jQuery, no huge clunky libraries or frameworks or cross-calls to 15 different CDNs to turn the site into a lumbering, bandwidth-hogging oil tanker.

As a NoScript/Adblock user, I designed our development practices with that in mind. One way to guarantee I will abandon your site without even bothering to look at it is to show me nothing but a useless "you need to enable Javascript to view this site" message. Bonus brickbats if I do decide to enable it and still nothing happens because NoScript has suddenly informed me that I also need to enable it for 35 different domains just to look at a fucking picture. Goodbye, and good riddance.

Our websites do often use Javascript for client-side functionality, but all of our sites at least display content without it and provide a box with a concise explanation as to why Javascript is needed for some functions; e.g. shopping cart, real-time update of picture gallery, etc. Our custom picture gallery works without Javascript but it does a full page load for each image, so we explain that enabling Javascript will speed things up. In short, we give the user a reason to enable Javascript. Not only that, we never fetch scripts or anything else from external domains, so once you enable Javascript for the main domain, NoScript goes away and you need not do any more.

Our team designs websites the old fashioned way, with little overhead, minimising graphics and avoiding things like Java and Flash entirely. We also do very little in the way of analytics. Other than visitors-per-page-per-month and straightforward sales data, most clients don't need or want a blow-by-blow account of each user's actions on each and every page. Only what is needed to make the site work is included, with no bloat or unnecessary crap.

Simplicity is our main selling point. This means our sites load blisteringly fast and are easy and cheap to maintain. When we show our clients that, most of the time they're willing to fork out the extra upfront dough!

Dry those eyes, ad blockers are unlikely to kill the internet

Steven Roper

"Those cookies that track you from site to site allow advertisers to know..."

What those tracking cookies also allow advertisers to know is what your interests are. The same advertising agency will place ads on multiple sites. Google, of course, has its tentacles into just about every site on the internet, but others turn up on a very regular basis, as a glance at NoScript's Options list will tell you whenever you visit a site.

Every time you visit a site with an ad by that ad agency, its builds a list tied to a unique ID linked to you. They might not know your name and address, but they know every site you visited that has their stuff embedded in it - in effect, what they have is at least a partial duplicate of your browser history. In fact more than your browser history because if you're browsing in privacy mode your browser isn't storing your history but those ad trackers certainly are. Furthermore, those trackers not only store what pages you visit and when, but how long you spend on each one and some of them even track where your mouse goes and what parts of the page you scroll to. With Google Analytics being nearly universally deployed that means Google have your complete browser history whether you're using Chrome, or in privacy mode, or not.

Ad agencies use this information to "tailor" ads to what they think you're most likely to click on. So if you've been browsing sites that review and/or sell things like RealDolls, sex toys, fetish gadgets and so on, you can expect ads for those things to start appearing even on sites that have nothing to do with them. Depending on your computer-sharing situation, this can lead to some really awkward questions.

Not only that, but insurance companies also pay ad companies for this data. When they correlate it with other identifying information they most certainly can find out who you are. And if you've been browsing health sites looking for ways to stop smoking or asking questions about why you keep waking up at 3AM with a screaming gutsache, you'll suddenly find you're paying rather more for your premiums than most people.

It is this sort of thing that concerns me the most with online ads. I don't want to be tracked and profiled and have a map of my likes and dislikes methodically built up by people I've never met and don't know. I find the very idea of being pried on and a dossier being worked up about me for the purpose of being milked and exploited in this fashion intolerably odious.

And before anyone gives me that worn-out bullshit about "nobody cares about your likes and dislikes and shit," YES THEY FUCKING DO. They don't care on a personal level, no, but they still collect the information and use analytics software to draw conclusions about it. Some of those conclusions will be erroneous, but may potentially lead to problems for me down the track, say when I want to travel or buy insurance or apply for credit, for instance.

That is my primary reason for using adblockers.

Google's .bro file format changed to .br after gender bother

Steven Roper

Re: @ Steven Roper

Ah, yes, the usual boring descent into the familiar ad hominem stereotyping hypocrisy of the modern progressive-liberal. Disagree with someone who doesn't support your agenda? Just abuse the fuck out of them, that'll do the trick. Amazing cerebration you have there.

Frankly I'm amazed you didn't manage to work the words "neckbeard", "autistic", "virgin", "mansplaining", or "manchild" into your diatribe. I can appreciate why you didn't resort to "misogynist", "sexist", "redneck" or "bigot" though. I mean, those ones have really been thrashed to death now haven't they?

But anyway, thank you for demonstrating to us all the blind reflexive abusiveness that characterises the modern progressive mentality.

Steven Roper

Re: this really is nothing compared to what's coming.

"Go on then, enlighten us. What's coming?"

I'll tell you what I see coming within the next decade or so, based on my own experiences, those of people I've spoken to, and the general trend of legislation and social policy:

A ban on men sitting next to children on airline flights because all men are potential paedophiles. Oh, wait, that's already happened.

A ban on men using cameras in public places because all men are perverts trying take pictures of kids or up women's dresses or of cleavage.

A curfew for men so that women can feel safe walking around by themselves at night because all men are rapists.

A ban on men entering childcare or early-learning professions because, you know, all men are paedophiles.

No-go zones for men near schools and some shopping centres so that women can take their kids to / collect them from school and go shopping without having to worry about men perving on them.

Prohibitions on men entering STEM fields at universities to force-level the gender disparity in those professions.

Companies forced by law to ensure their workplaces are minimum 50% female (more is even better) and that all women must be paid 30% gender loading on top of their salaries to address the "gender pay gap".

Automatic guilt on any and all accusations against men of domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape, without trial, to spare the "victim" the trauma of testifying.

Don't think any of this will happen? I've got AUD1000 cash on the barrelhead thats says most, if not all, of these will be in place in at least some areas in Western nations within the next 15 years. Within the next 5 if Hilary Clinton gets elected President of the USA.

Hey, Facebook – these are the new Like buttons you should have used

Steven Roper

Oh yes, this one.

I'm sure my Facebook activity log contains more links to Snopes than to all other web sites combined.

I'm rapidly getting to the point where if I see one more long-debunked "Muslims want to ban Christmas in <insert town name here>" image I'm going to print it out 50 times and shove it down the poster's throat.

If Islamic immigration to the West is that big a problem at least get your fucking facts straight first. You aren't doing your cause any favours by constantly posting debunked bullshit!

Steven Roper

Re: UMMM

"On the subject of El Reg post icons, there are several that I don't even understand: what is the purpose of "Your foster parents are dead", for instance?"

"Your foster parents are dead" is what the T-800 (Arnie) in Terminator 2: Judgement Day says to the young John Connor, when Connor phones his foster parents; Arnie takes the phone off him and listens to Connor's "foster mother" (actually the T-1000, which has just killed her), and identifies its voice.

So that icon relates to the Terminator, and by extension, that aspect of El Reg culture concerned with the Rise of the Machines and robots/cyborgs taking over the world.

Steven Roper

Re: UMMM

Well, as to the "fresh air" ones - we hardly need those for El Reg, since the Reg doesn't take over people's lives the way Facebook does. And the other emojis I think are adequately covered by the existing icons - Fail/Facepalm for Idiot and Umm, for example.

That said, we do need a Click Bait icon because this is something El Reg is occasionally guilty of, and as to the Privacy icon - the ability to put certain commentards on ignore could be worthwhile, although I personally think that doing so would reduce the liveliness of some the arguments we have here. So I'm none too sure where I stand on that one.

Playmobil cops broadside for 'racist' pirate slave

Steven Roper

Re: Common Lego !!

"Please don't pull product."

Sadly, they probably will, because these fucking whining fools will now raise a huge fuss, the media will be all over it with their familiar plethora of self-righteous neo-liberal buzzwords, and the usual pile of sanctimonious PC maggots will come crawling out of the woodwork to add their bellyaching to the mix.

Those of us not cowed by these hand-wringing nutjobs need to form an opposing force and let Playmobil know in no uncertain terms that they'll make more money telling the PC whingers to fuck off, and selling to the far larger, albeit less noisy, market that is sick and tired of these do-gooders taking offence at everything.

Especially if we make it clear to the likes of Walmart and Amazon that if they pull this product if Playmobil don't, they'll be the target of a boycott and complaint deluge far greater than anything the PC brigade can raise. I personally will be emailing Playmobil to this effect, and I will email the same to any retailer that pulls it as well.

It only needs to happen once, and these whining bastards will forever lose their power.

Miss Brittany dethroned for posting 'nude' Facebook pics

Steven Roper

Re: A mystery

For the same reason that political-correctness crusaders get into positions of power.

People who are convinced they know best what's good for everyone else and how everyone should live, are the ones who pursue power in order to be able to realise their vision of shoving their political agendas down everyone else's throats. They push their causes, gather vocal followers, and get themselves elected (or promoted in the private sector) to positions where they can dictate their morals to all from their high horses.

This is exactly why Douglas Adams rightly pointed out that anyone capable of getting themselves elected President of the Galaxy should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Factory settings FAIL: Data easily recovered from eBayed smartphones, disks

Steven Roper

Re: Shops even worse

I told her I was concerned about storing my contacts in the cloud to which she replied: "It's alright, you can have as many clouds as you want."

Holy shit. I think my response to that would have been something like a moment of stunned incredulity, followed immediately by my putting the phone smartly down and marching stiffly out the door without a word.

Webcam spyware voyeur sentenced to community service

Steven Roper

"(actually thought he received a light sentence) "

In today's sociopolitical climate, I wouldn't call 7 years on the SOR a "light sentence." The social media vigilante squads will make sure it isn't.

Steven Roper

Re: "Popularity"

Agreed, but when the "smart" things replace the "normal" things so you no longer have a choice, what do you do? Try and buy a TV set that isn't a "smart" TV these days. Eventually, this "smart" shit will encompass everything from your lightbulbs to your washing machine, and you won't be able to avoid it.

PGP Zimmermann: 'You want privacy? Well privacy costs MONEY'

Steven Roper

Re: What you pays for...

Pretty much what I was going to say, except you got there first.

My statement to Mr Zimmerman is that there are these things called RIGHTS. Nobody pays for rights. Ever. We have a right not to be enslaved. We have a right not to be assaulted. And we have a right not to be unaccountably spied on. Those are RIGHTS, Mr Zimmerman. They are not commodities to be bought or sold, they are inalienable properties of the human condition. That means they apply equally to everyone, not just those who can afford your price for them.

Tiny Robot Smartphone: Invasion Earth 2016 – prepare to be facially recognised humans

Steven Roper
Devil

Re: It's an awkward shape

Which makes it all the better for doing so.

Swedish govt appeals court decision guarding thepiratebay.se domain

Steven Roper

Re: Wake up!!

"...in 2 hours?"

The justice system works swiftly in the future now that they've abolished all lawyers!

Steven Roper

What about countries that hate the USA?

I'm surprised no pirate site operators have looked at countries like Iran (.ir) or North Korea (.kp), since both of these countries would love a chance to hoist a middle finger to the US and its globalist copyright regime. Iran in particular openly pirates Windows in its government offices and its universities and schools have proudly declared their use of infringing copies of Western textbooks and software.

And while both regimes are highly censorious, they could readily block access to the pirate domains to their own citizens while giving the rest of the world free access to them. If the pirates spin it as enabling corruption and decadence to undermine the "Great Satan" as well as highlighting the damage it would do to Western economies these countries would be on board like a shot.

If you wanted Windows 10, it looks like you've already installed it

Steven Roper

"please publish!!!!!"

Not mine, because I haven't refined mine enough for public release, but if you want a kill script that does the same job try this one.

Steven Roper

I've removed the Windows 10 malware from at least two dozen computers in the last month. All my friends and relatives who come to me when their computers play up have complained "my computer keeps telling me to install Windows 10, make it go away!" - and I've put together a kill script that rips out all the unwanted KB updates and removes the Windows 10 install folders on the C drives.

The problem is, all these people have their computers on automatic updates and every so often Microsoft simply sneaks in more Windows 10 shit and puts it back again. And I can't put their computers on manual update and tell them to only select and install updates marked as "Security Updates" since some of these people can just about manage to turn the computer on and click things with the mouse. I'm beginning to think about writing an application for them to run on their desktops and laptops that connects to my server and fetches the list of KBs and other shit to be killed every so often, so I can update it as needed and get them to run it once a week or so.

I feel like I'm going to be condemned to fight this fucking war for the rest of my damned life. At least once 2020 rolls around they'll have to choose between Windows 10 or Linux Mint. When that happens anyone who goes with Windows 10 won't have me looking after their computers from that point on.

Holy litigation, Batman! Custom Batmobile cars nixed by copyright

Steven Roper

@Someone_Somewhere

If your mentality prevailed in the general economy you would be paying royalty fees:

- to your mechanic every time you start your car;

- to the architect and builder of your house every time you unlatch your front door;

- to the plumber who fitted your toilet every time you flush;

- to the electrician who wired your house every time you turn on a light or an appliance;

- to the textile manufacturer who wove your carpet every time you walk on it;

- to the vendor of your computer every time you use it. Oh, wait, Microsoft have now seen to that.

Look, I'd be overjoyed if I thought that work I did for companies back when I left school meant they had to keep on paying me for the rest of my life and my heirs and assigns for 70 years thereafter, but unfortunately I don't get that privilege. I could have retired at 22 and lived off the royalties for all those car dashboard facias I once die-cut in the factory I worked in. But I work once and get paid once, which has been the basis of trade since the Stone Age, until people figured out this neat trick of Work Once Reap Many called "copyright."

Yes, artists should be paid for their work. Once, at a fair salary, for the hours they put into making it, just like the rest of us.

Scary Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty signed off

Steven Roper

Any politician signatory to this sham has intentionally and knowingly sold his country's sovereignty to foreign corporate powers and should be charged and tried for high treason.

Beard transplants up 600% for men 'lacking length elsewhere'

Steven Roper

That question is why reading that article gave me the shivers. I now have Pythonesque visions in my head of two burly blokes hammering on my door in white coats going "Hallo sir, can we have your beard? Come on sir, don't muck us about!"

AdBlock blocker biz bought

Steven Roper

One thing that people seem to be missing

All these adblockers use standard blocklists. Whether it's Adblock, Adblock Plus, Adblock Edge, UBlock, UBlock Origin or whatever, they are only as good as the blocklists they employ. Without a blocklist, an ablocker is useless.

Most adblockers use lists like the EasyList, ABPindo list, Fanboy's Ultimate Block List, etc. EasyList is the most commonly deployed one and the first one to come up when you set your filter subscription. These lists are updated whenever the ad companies set up new domains and servers, to keep those servers blocked. But the bottom line is, it is the list, not the adblocker, that controls the actual blocking.

So my thought is, when an adblocker company sells out to advertisers, they must set up a hidden "counter-blocklist" that disregards whatever blocklist is subscribed when it comes to certain ad servers (in much the same way Windows 10 ignores the hosts file for certain Microsoft telemetry servers.) It can't be the blocklist itself that's compromised, otherwise it would be impossible to turn on total blocking of all ads in the adblocker.

Which leads inevitably to the conclusion that sooner or later the ad companies will approach the blocklist maintainers, rather than the adblocker makers, and dangle some cash. If they can compromise a major blocklist like EasyList and get their ad server taken off it, that would affect ALL adblockers that use that list, Adblock and UBlock alike - for the price of one bribe instead of several to different adblocker makers, and at the same time remove the ability to turn on total blocking of all ads in any adblocker.

Of course, the moment EasyList sells out it opens the door for an alternative list to take over. But even if it did, this would mark the beginning of yet another endless update war that we'll have to fight to keep control of our computers and internet experience.

Mars water discovery is a liberal-muslim plot, cry moist conspiracy theorists

Steven Roper

Re: "it lost most of its atmosphere for reasons not yet discovered"

I thought the major cause was Mars' lack of a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind from ablating the atmosphere.

Apple CEO Tim Cook: Email keyword sniffing? We'd NEVER do that!

Steven Roper
Thumb Up

THANK YOU!

"they use all of those data to ensure I pay the highest price they can calculate I will pay, using all those data against me, and showing me skewed search result to ensure I won't access lower rates."

Mind if I steal that, mate?

That argument is the perfect response to all these people who want or accept profiling and tracking because "I don't want to see ads for shit I'm not interested in," and aren't convinced by the info-selling or psychological-manipulation aspect.

Now I can tell them, "Yes, OK, you'll see ads for shit you want, but they'll also use your data to work out the top price you'll pay for it and hide cheaper options from you!" Arguing from the hip pocket will be a lot more convincing than arguing from mind-bendery.

Oh man, I am so going to rip some people I know a new arsehole with this!

Woman makes app that lets people rate and review you, Yelp-style. Now SHE'S upset people are 'reviewing' her

Steven Roper
Devil

Uh-oh... we've been spotted, guys!

The phantom El Reg SJW downvoter is on the prowl!

Steven Roper

Re: It's not real

" It's like we live in a society where misandry is just background radiation and men are disposable!"

I wish I could upvote you a thousand times just for that line. I've personally encountered that "background radiation" on multiple occasions while out and about, despite supposedly having this putative "privilege" which apparently renders me, as a white male, both immune and blind to all forms of discrimination - which is exactly why I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about feminism and political correctness!

Further to your comment, I'd agree that it is now probably too late for them to play the sexism card. If they were going to do that, they should have done it right off the bat the moment the shitstorm started. But yes, too late now.

What surprises me though is that pop-culture feminists like Anita Sarkeesian didn't immediately jump on the opportunity in their behalf. Someone like Sarkeesian could easily have blown this up like a H-bomb and gained a pile of publicity for her Feminist Frequency as well as for the Peeple app makers!

Steven Roper

Re: It's not real

"Before you know it they'll be on documentaries talking about their experiences being "women in tech""

Exactly what I'd been thinking - I'm completely staggered they haven't thought to play the sexism / institutionalised-misogyny / patriarchy card to counter all the abuse they've been copping. Even if it's overplayed these days, it would still start a Gamergate-like shitstorm that would drown out the original issue in a welter of feminist / antifeminist screaming. This would then leave them free to release their app with the full backing of the media and the powers-that-be that inevitably pander to the feminists in these sorts of cases.

Bezos' BAN-HAMMER batters Chromecast, Apple TV

Steven Roper

Re: Toucan play

Except that Amazon probably have a million different patents on every possible online shopping method and the resulting sueball would benefit nobody but the usual parasitic IP lawyers.

FBI: We unmasked and collared child porn creep on Tor with spy tool

Steven Roper

Re: Could someone let Director James R. Clapper know...

Hmm, that is weird. I never noticed the icon, I suppose I've seen them all so many times on here that they no longer register (fnarr fnarr!)

Just tested it and El Reg still have icon selection locked out if you select AC. And you can't call your account Anonymous Coward either. Must be a bug as you say...

Edit: Also just noticed the AC has removed his post. So now I guess we'll never know!