Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Heavy VPN users are probably pirates, says BBC

Re: The BBC is really starting to piss me off.

The BBC and others ( in Europe) are actively trying to restrict their content, claiming copyright issues and this flies in the face of EU broadcasting directives.

You can read about it here and i direct you to the paragraph headed General Principle.

http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/audiovisual_and_media/l24101_en.htm

That's a common misunderstanding. There's nothing in the TV Without Frontiers directive which requires any broadcaster to make their programmes available EU-wide. It simply says that they cannot take action to restrict the availability of programmes from other member states. That is, it would be illegal of the UK to intentionally jam French TV to stop people in the UK watching it. There's no requirememt on the French to make their broadcasts available to the UK, and vice-versa.

The only legal document which carries such a requirement is the UK/Ireland "Good Friday" agreement where the two countries agreed to make certain broadcasts widely available. RTE now operates a transmitter in Belfast to carry some of the RTE channels.

Re: iPlayer overseas

I imagine iPlayer access abroad is something the Beeb has considered

You don't need to imagine it, you can read about it on the iPlayer pages. The BBC is considering expanding iPlayer services abroad where possible, they've already done it for radio.

The problem, as you rightly note, is that it isn't always their choice to make. They can only take that decision for programmes where they own the rights, and where the agreements with the cast etc. allow it at a reasonable cost.They also have to consider that BBC Worldwide has the job of raising money for the BBC by selling BBC programmes abroad, so to permit free distribution of those programmes internationally would be shooting themselves in the foot, financially speaking.

Re: The BBC is really starting to piss me off.

Feel your pain. Parts of Europe from Dubln to Lisbon set-up FTA Free-To-Air Sat Dishes and get all the UK channels for absolutely nothing... Is that fair?

Of course it's fair, people in the UK can get TV from lots of other European countries without paying them anything. Spaniards can watch German TV, the French can watch Dutch TV, and we all only have to pay our own home TV license fee. How terrible. You don't even need a satellite dish if you're close enough, it's always been like that.

It may not be convenient, but it's certainly fair, so much so that it's now enshrined in EU law, if you can receive it, you can watch it, legally.

Re: BBC Worldwide

The difference is that shoplifting is a criminal act of theft, and home copyright infringement isn't.

Drink-driving isn't a "criminal act of theft" either, does that mean it's OK?

The pointless argument about whether making an illegal copy is theft, or some other offence, is irrelevant. It's against the law, until and unless you get the law changed. Live with it and stop making specious anonymous excuses.

Re: BBC Worldwide

Organizations like the BBC already do geolocation on IP addresses to filter non-UK traffic. It surely can't be beyond the ability of their IT staff to get the ranges of IP addresses used by the major "VPN to bypass copyright" providers, and just blacklist them as well? Target the people that they know are facilitating piracy, rather than target everyone who might be doing it and require them to prove they aren't.

This is exactly the same argument that was used, and failed, to try and ban VCRs. Just because they might be used to infringe copyright doesn't mean that they don't have other, legitimate, uses, and the US courts refused to ban them because of that. The same should be true of VPN use. It might be easier for the BBC to get the ISPs to do their work for them, but their laziness doesn't justify a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude.

O2 breathes life into Amazon Fire: Mobe to hit Blighty in WEEKS

Re: Won't lose books

But if your Kindle dies? You WILL lose them if Amazon no longer exists.

Nope, I will not. Every one exists on my PC, which is where I download them to before transferring them to my Kindle. I can transfer them to any replacement device as well.

If my house burns down I'll lose all my paper books, and some are irreplaceable, but my ebook collection is far less at risk, and certainly not from one supplier failing.

Re: Won't lose books

The books I buy from Amazon aren't "cloud-based", they are on my PC, and on my Kindle. The WiFi on my Kindle is never turned on, so Amazon have no access to them.

Amazon do have the power to delete books if they have access to a Kindle, and on one well-known occasion they were forced by the courts to put deleted books back, but if they go titsup they won't be there to use that power anyway. There's absolutely no reason for anyone to worry that Amazon going bust will make any Amazon purchases disappear.

General Motors to intro hands-free driving tech by 2016

someone, say, reverses the signs on approach speeds.

Or just sends a spoofed packet to the car behind which says "I've just slammed on my brakes in full emergency mode".

Google recommends pronounceable passwords

VMS had this in the early 80s

It would produce pronounceable nonsense passwords, filtered to remove vulgarities.

Beer in SPAAAACE: Photographic PROOF

IPA was created to survive months at sea being shipped to India, not for drinking on the way.

DEATH TO TCP/IP cry Cisco, Intel, US gov and boffins galore

Re: Anyone remember the OSI protocols?

we have a horrible hack, emulating the OSI protocol.........over TCP!

Not that much of a hack, probably RFC 1006 "ISO Transport Service on top of the TCP", it dates from the late 80s (OSI is much older than 1990's)

Data entry REAR-END SNAFU: Weighty ballsup leads to plane take-off flap

Could they put an automatic weighing machine under the passengers queuing for that security check?

They do on flights with tiny planes, checking in for an Aer Arann flight to the Aran islands (6 passengers + pilot) we were all weighed with our hand luggage, and then told where to sit.

4th Century GOBLET could REVIVE CORPSE of holographic storage

Re: Forget the article for a moment...

I'm just blown away that someone created something that amazing 17+ centuries ago, and that it's survived all these years intact!

I can't help but wonder if (s)he actually made 2000 of them, and this is the only one that hasn't been dropped?

It's a bit like those amazing Roman viaducts and aquaducts that we're so impressed by, assuming that their creators really understood engineering. Isn't it also possible that if you make 1000 bridges with what you have lying around, based on guesswork, at least one of them will last?

OK, I'll get my tunicas...

Ballmer PERSONALLY wrote Windows 3.1's blue screen text

Re: Give rhe devil his due .,,

Just yesterday I was trying to debug:

"An unexpected error ocurred while uploading the file".

Oh no, an unexpected error! Well, I wasn't expecting that.

I'm still wondering what the error actually was.

Oracle's MySQL buy a 'fiasco' says Dovecot man Mikko Linnanmäki

Re: Oracle's acquisition of MySQL???

What official histories? The ones authored by Larry?

There were some interesting articles in the IEEE "Annals of the history of Computing" in late 2013 and eraly 2014. They looked at the DB industry as a whole, and had articles on Oracle (written by an early Oracle employee) and IBM by an IBM employee. They make interesting reading.

Security rEsrchRs find nu way 2 spot TXT spam

clustered substring tokens

What, like "PPI" ?

SHARE 'N' SINK: OneDrive corrupting Office 2013 files

Re: lol, "tight integration."

content is replaced by gibberish and hexadecimal codes.

Sounds like a character encoding problem. UTF-8/UTF-16 or some similar misconversion? Does Win8 have a different default to previous releases?

Singapore slings £18k fine at text-spam-spaffing biz owner

Re: Going large

364 valid complaints? Should have been £18k per complaint

Twitter: La la la, we haven't heard of NUDE JLaw, Upton SELFIES

Re: Polaroids FTW

Ricky Gervais caught a lot of flak for tweeting "well don't have nudes on your phone" then

Why? What sort of narcissistic twit keeps nude pictures of themself anywhere? What do they do with them, show them to their mates in the pub "hey, look at this one, you can hardly see my breast enlargement scar".

Boiling point: Tech and the perfect cuppa

Re: Quick boil - until the EU bans them.

Nah, they'll make boilers that come in under the power regs, and sell quick-boil add-ons that also come in under the regs, but when used together give you a 2kW heater. At 50% more cost, of course,

Ofcom will not probe lesbian lizard snog in new Dr Who series

What the feck will they think if they watch an episode of Eastenders?

They'll be too busy hiding behind the sofa.

Reg man looks through a Glass, darkly: Google's toy ploy or killer tech specs?

Re: Let's see...

I'll be doing brain surgery in less than a week.

"Align the cross marks with the patient's subdural hemiotrophic epicyclic complex.

Confirm that you are standing on the patient's left, looking towards their feet.

Make a shallow incision along the green dotted line.

Be ready to quickly... Buffering 10% 20%..."

Office space outfit Regus suffers 'UK-wide' network outage

Re: Backup is not necessarily desirable...

there are lots of places that don't warrant it.

Absolutely. It's a cost/benefit situation, you need to do the analysis first and make an informed decision about which solution is appropriate. I back up my home systems every month or two, to an offsite location (a disk in my office drawer) and accept that I could lose a few weeks of data if there's a problem, which is OK for my use pattern. I know that if my ADSL goes down I can use my mobile data plan. Not seamless, and it comes with restrictions on performance. I certainly don't need to have dual links, hot standbies and live realtime replication with the related costs (although come to think of it I could setup a cron job & use my ISP's free "cloud" storage allowance).

As always, it's the people who just assume they'll get a gold-plated solution when they are only paying for brass, and haven't worked out what their needs really are, who get the unpleasant surprise.

"We learn today that Regus UK has NO DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN for us"

And they signed up without asking that question first? Who's fault is that, then?

Boffins attempt to prove the universe is just a hologram

Re: Gotta love physicists

If we're all holograms, are we still there when it's dark?

For that matter, is that why we're afraid of the dark at an instinctual level?

Re: My cat's breath smells of cat food

See, Quantum Transmogrification occurs everywhere.

Cats? Transmoggiefication, surely?

Now that's FIRE WIRE: HP recalls 6 MILLION burn-risk laptop cables

Re: HP Cables Here In The UK Have A Fault To

BS-1363 is the standard for UK-style 13A plugs, unfortunately many of them just say something like "built to" BS-1363. If they don't also have the BSI Kite Mark they they haven't been tested as conforming to BS-1363.

Why has the web gone to hell? Market chaos and HUMAN NATURE

How very "Guardian"

To protest the "global spread of misogyny", yet to ignore that the web is also used to spread misandry or that thanks to the web, many women, in many parts of the world, now have a far greater access to useful information, and far greater control over their own lives, than ever before.

Oh, and be careful about those ball bearings. Pack them round some semtex in a backpack and they have a whole different use. Will the Guardian be campaigning to control washing machines next?

China building SUPERSONIC SUBMARINE that travels in a BUBBLE

Re: colour me cynical...

unlikely to be able to move fast enough to intercept.

Would they need to intercept? Just create a big enough underwater shockwave to collapse the cavitation bubble, and the torpedos would self-destruct as they hit a wall of water at speed.

A small battlefield nuke at 20 fathoms might be sufficient...

Our LOHAN spaceplane ballocket Kickstarter climbs through £8000

Re: I once met a young lady in Kiev

short-term negotiable affection

I think kickstarter has rules about that, as well...

Intelligence blunder: You wanna be Australia's spyboss? No problem, just walk right in

Can happen at other entry points

I remember some years back when Prez. Clinton hadn't got round to signing the US Visa Waiver legislation renewal, so the waiver scheme expired. Did that stop people without visas entering the US? Of course not, the border officials just kept right on letting people in on their own recognizance. Shows how vitally important it is to comply with Iimmigration law...

NIST to sysadmins: clean up your SSH mess

proper monitoring of (unusual) activity remains key in my opinion.

Very true. No matter how modern and bug-free the security code may be, no sysadmin should assume that all the users are using it correctly and sensibly. You may lock your office each night, but I'll bet you still have a burglar alarm.

Bright lights, affordable motor: Ford puts LED headlights onto Mondeo

It may not matter

I'm not sure it will make that much difference. Most of the costs of accident repairs these days are labour, since cars are designed to crumple, so everything will need to be replaced anyway. The cost of a new LED unit should be comparable to that of a plain halogen one (and probably less than a Xenon one, with all its support electronics).

At least long-life LEDs may* end the ludicrous situation where we're required by law to carry spare bulbs, yet many modern cars are designed so that you can't change a headlight bulb without considerable dismantling which isn't a DIY roadside effort. I had a Mazda 6 where the official procedure for changing a headlight bulb began with unbolting the whole front bumper (you could do it without, if you had sufficiently nimble fingers and didn't mind getting your hands ripped on sharp metal edges).

*I say may since I wouldn't put it past our EU overlords to forget to change the law, and still require us to carry spare LEDs in the glove box...

BT customers face broadband and landline price hikes

@SkepticScott

You seem to be assuming that when BT increase their prices they will not allow customers to end their contracts, despite admitting that UK law has required this for 15 years?

Do you have any proof that, with this 6% increase (which BT have announced 3 months ahead, so hardly trying to sneak it though), customers will be prevented from cancelling? As you say, under EU and UK law customers must be able to end contracts in such cases, so why all this palaver about signing up for vouchers then taking BT to court? Other than trying to show how clever you are at finding a way to "stick it" to BT (and hence to BT's customers) what's the point of your rant?

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

Re: I'm a Nespresso fan

Even better, a Nespresso machine but don't use Nespresso coffee. I buy Illy beans, grind them and put them into pattern-part Nespresso capsules. Best of both worlds, and cheaper because you're only paying for good coffee, not to imitate the Nespresso/Clooney lifestyle.

LOHAN packs bags for SPACEPORT AMERICA!

Re: **** the European badge

No, you can have as many pointless obstructive little local laws as you like, that's called subsidiarity. It's only the big, important, laws that are made by Brusselbourg, because obviously the provincials can't be trusted with them. Divide and Conquer, it's a very old principle.

Need a green traffic light all the way home? Easy with insecure street signals, say researchers

Re: Uhh flashing red would not be safe

Confusing, maybe, but why unsafe? If you arrived at a light that was displaying an odd sequence I'd like to think you'd treat it as a stop signal, at least until you'd looked around you very carefully.

Brother, can you spare a DIME for holy grail of secure webmail?

Re: What about for business?

You'd need to get Alice to place her secure key in escrow somewhere, where it could be released by some agreed-on procedure. That can be done electronically.

It's just a modern version of the problem with a locked desk. You lock your desk when you go on vacation, and leave a key in a sealed envelope with someone you can trust. If you don't return, your boss can rip open the envelope and get at your papers. If you do return, if the envelope is still sealed you're OK, if it's not still sealed you raise hell.

Re: Key management

Isn't that just the old secure RPC AUTH_DES/AUTH_DH model?

It works well, but your approach still presumes you can trust Alice's server not to send Bob *it's* key (claiming it's from Alice) whereupon it can then decrypt Bob's mail, stuff a copy out the GCHQ pipe, re-encrypt it using Alice's real public key, and pass it to Alice. Unless Bob knows for certain the the public key he has is really from Alice, it can't be trusted.

Dark?

Since the press are now happily associating "dark internet" with "pædophiles and perverts" it seems just a little foolish to call this the "Dark Internet Mail Environment", no?

And will the truly paranoid ever believe that any service which depends on systems you don't own is secure? Secure webmail is an oxymoron, the points made in the article are valid. If you're relying on an app downloaded on the fly from a server to handle your security, you may well have no security.

'Leccy racer whacks petrols in Oz race

Come back

when a leccycar wins the Le Mans 24hours

Cryptolocker flogged on YouTube

Disappointed

When I saw the headlines I thought we'd be treated to video of a virus-writing script kiddie being introduced to a cat-o'-nine-tails.

Cops baffled by riddle of CHICKEN who crossed ROAD

Re: 20 foot high tower of feathers

Years ago on holiday, on a remote country road, my Dad's car hit a chicken just as we passed a small cottage. Feathers everywhere, indeed, and an irate old country woman ranting "You've kilt ma chicken". It took a fresh £5 note (it was a while ago) to pacify her, but for ages afterward my Dad was convinced that she spent her days sitting behind the hedge with a bag of dead chickens, thowing them out in front of passing tourists...

Microsoft: Azure isn't ready for biz-critical apps … yet

Re: Eh?

Yes, but they'll be somebody else's servers. Servers as a Service. It's recursive, or incestuous, or something.

Steve Jobs had BETTER BALLS than Atari, says Apple mouse designer

Re: Patent ?

SRI had a mouse patent but it expired before mice really became usable.

Germany 'accidentally' snooped on John Kerry and Hillary Clinton

All part of the great game

Spying on foreign leaders is, of course, a core part of the job of signals intelligence agencies worldwide.

And "accidentally" using an open line is a core part of political disinformation worldwide...

Assange™: Hey world, I'M STILL HERE, ignore that Snowden guy

Re: Does the court case matter?

A competent and uncorrupt court can only come to its decision based on the evidence presented.

Indeed so, and that decision could well be "this evidence isn't convincing".

Well crafted fake evidence looks just like the real thing.

Evidence doesn't come in neat boxes. It consists of objects, timelines, witness testimony, and much more. In Assange's case the primary evidence is the testimony of the two girls that he continued to have sex without a condom when they had refused consent for that. Are you suggesting that the girls will be paid or threatened to lie sufficiently well that they'll convince a judge, without being uncovered by a competent defence team?

We can assume (oops I know that is dangerous) there is enough evidence (real or fake) at face value to convict Assange.

So you're prejudging the court? I would make no such assumption.

You assume that all fake evidence will be rooted out Rumpole like. When it is done by professionals that is an unsafe assumption.

And you assume that it can be crafted in such a way that it cannot be rooted out. That, I suggest, is an even more unsafe assumption. You appear to be assuming that Assange must prove himself innocent, which isn't the case. It's also why courts rely on the principle of "beyond reasonable doubt" to prove guilt.

Assange may be a narcissitic, self-aggrandizing asshole, but I've seen nothing to suggest that he won't get a fair trial in Sweden, nor any good reason that the Swedes wouldn't want him to have one.

Re: Please

I have no opinion on this person as regards his character, motives, or his legal position

Why not?

He's wanted on charges of sexual assault, which he denies but refuses to stand trial. When released on bail his first action was to jump bail, thus sticking his erstwhile friends with the bail costs. He has since spent two years hiding out in a foreign embassy with which he has no connection, at their expense, simply to avoid the risk of extradition. Every so often he pops up to make sure that people don't completely forget about him.

I'd say that gives a pretty clear view of his character, motives, and legal position. None of which looks very pleasant.

Re: Does the court case matter?

How are we - or any court or judge - be able to tell the difference between a well crafted set up and a genuine case of rape?

That's why we have courts and legal systems in the first place. If you're assuming that they are all incompetent or corrupt (which is a considerable insult to the millions of people who work in them) then perhaps you should just get a bigger tinfoil hat and go back to hiding under the bed?

Twitter displays our 'Favorites'. That is, like, PRIVATE, huff naive users

"what you favorite"

Can twitter users get any more dumb? Favorite is a noun, the verb is favo(u)r. Things that you favo(u)r are your favo(u)rites.

I suppose we should be grateful that they don't "favoritize" stuff :( What next, friendifying pepple on farcebook?