Posts by LucreLout

Enraged Brits demand Donald Trump UK ban

Re: There are two points of view

@Richard Altman

Well it´s fun when the censors let a troll have a run, but only up to a point. I´m out of here.

While I disagree with Big John, I'm not really sure that he's trolling. His posts seem to indicate that he believes what he's saying as opposed to only saying it to get a rise out of the commentariat.

Moderation on El Reg has been of a consistently higher standard than pretty well any other site I've visited regularly and is one of the sites strengths.... just don't tell the mods I said that.

GCHQ Christmas Card asks YOU the questions

Re: 17

Well yes, because apparently being capable of anything so simple as SQL injection at that age makes you a sophisticated hacker, according to the troughers at TalkTalk et-al.

If it still works six months from now, count yourself lucky

@HarryBI

My bruv is still using a Dell pedestal server (on NT4) that he bought 20 years ago

Is he still waiting for it to boot up?

@Jason 7

I still get 4 hours+ battery out of my 13" 2009 Dell laptop

Wow! How do you manage that please? I'm on my 3rd battery for my Dell - they only seem to survive so many duty cycles before losing power retention. Taking your statement at face value, I may be doing something wrong....

@AC

Either way Google agrees with me. Consumer grade gear is statistically amazingly reliable.

Yeah, I'm writing this on a Dell laptop which has served as my main computer since before iPads existed, and it all still works fine. I've upgraded the memory and wifi cards though.

I view 5 or 6 years as a full life for portable computers, which my Dell has met superbly. Will the Surface Pro last so long? Possibly not, but then how many people are using the iPad 1 they bought in 2010 as their main device? Not many I'd wager - most will have moved on to newer kit, with the iPad 1 being given to kids, relatives or charity, or otherwise relegated to background tasks rather than being the main event.

Revenge porn 'king' Hunter Moore sent down for 2.5 years, fined $2k

Re: Sanctimonious much?

@Suricou Raven

He doesn't, being in the US. If he were in the UK he would, under Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. But he still wouldn't get the right until four years after completion of his sentence.

The 1974 act has been replaced with one requiring significantly shorter declaration periods.

However, that only provides a time limit for how long the criminal must declare their acts; It does not require the removal of their crimes from the public domain - in fact there are many databases of such information that exist. My employer validates any declarations we make with a 3rd party data provider.

Also, as a victim of crime there is no requirement to decline to name your assailant(s) [1]. While it could be held that persistently naming and shaming them would adversely interfere with any rehabilitation they were trying to undertake, but that has to be balanced with the rights of the victim to talk openly about their experiences as part of their healing and coping processes. Running an ongoing advertising campaign may be frowned upon, but naming them from time to time when you're talking about the crime is legal. All criminals choose to commit crimes, while very few victims choose to be such, which is why it is difficult for the criminal to gag the victim for public disclosure purposes.

The 'witch hunt' problem was recognised even in the seventies, and the internet has only made it worse.

If I were to choose to name any of my assailants online it would likely cause them difficulties beyond the length of their declaration period. Unfortunately, there's not a lot they can do that will make me care about that. It's certainly not a crime for me to talk about my incident openly and with full disclosure [2]. The primary reason I've not is that none of them have yet attempted to make anything of their lives, so now is not the optimal time for disclosure.

I've tried to find a reason to show them more consideration for their well being than they showed me, but I keep coming up empty handed. They chose this outcome of their own free will, I didn't, so there's no reason for me to feel bad about any consequences that befall them, or to protect them from society. As I said in my original post, those in society that feel their debt is paid in full will disregard such information, and decide if they want to hire those people, or do business with them, or not. It's simple and it's fair.

I've hired people with convictions in the past and will do so in the future, though not those with convictions for violence or sex crimes. That is my choice and each in society must make their own.

1 - not all crimes involve an aspect of assault but I'm struggling to find the right word so I've gone with that.

2 - Even if it were, I could simply make any posts from America, to American web sites, where free speech is a constitutional right and no crime would be committed.

Re: Sanctimonious much?

@Mr Roper

even though he's trying to turn over a new leaf and start an honest business, what is he supposed to fucking do?

He has every right to turn over a new leaf and to start an honest business. He does not, however, have a right to have his record expunged; it is a matter of public record. Do you not see the irony in a man who violated so many women's right to privacy complaining that his publicly available information is now being exposed?

Perhaps if he'd spent a little time considering the impact such disclosures may have on his victims, then he would not now be reaping what he has sown?

Ok, he did a wrong thing. But now he's trying to stop doing it and do something else.

Yes, he is. That is what the law and society is entitled to expect from him, nothing more or less.

self-righteous vigilantes who seek to hound him for the rest of his life, expose his connection to the new business

The internet is forever. Do you suppose that just because his website was taken down (by force rather than decency) that all of the intimate pictures of women he circulated ceased to exist? Are his victims not continuing to pay a price for his actions? Then why should he skate on by?

He chose to make those people his victims in the fullest knowledge that what he was doing was reprehensible at best, and would have devastating consequences for the women. He has no right to presume that any ongoing adverse impact of his actions should apply to his victims alone: he needs to dry his eyes and toughen up a bit. He's a self made man.

His corporate ownership is publicly disclosed. There is no right to privacy of this information. even those of us without convictions don't have that right.

are driving him right back into crime, because you're denying him any means to start anew

No they're not. If people find what he did distasteful and feel he should continue paying a price for that, then they are within their rights to withhold their business from him. If they feel he has paid his dues, learned his lessons, then they are free to do business with him. Quite why you feel that should be any different is beyond me.

Sysadmin's £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking

Re: James is a dick...

Professionalism is a two-way street...

No it isn't. My professionalism is my own, however lacking my current employer may or may not be in that regard, my professionalism belongs to me, not to them, and they don't get to influence that.

Having said that, I don't see this as a professionalism issue at all. Looking back with time & hindsight its easy to see what the problem was, but would it have been easy to foresee at the time? I doubt it, because there's just so many potential things that could have gone wrong. Add to that the lack of an exit interview and the purdah regarding colleagues, and how was the guy supposed to get the message across? Quite aside from probably being in a mild state of shock.

Were I to leave my current gig this very minute, there's just too many potentially destructive imminent risks to convey in an exit interview, even if my manager & hr could follow what I was saying. Would something go wrong? Quite possibly not, but if it does then that really isn't my fault, or responsibility; and it's nothing to do with professionalism.

I simply don't see that the guy did anything wrong, as he wasn't given a fair opportunity to consider any risks and identify them to the remaining staff. This episode wouldn't prevent me hiring the guy at all - but then I would expect legal to have oversight of any contracts, and I'd expect to have knowledge of them.

'Dear Daddy...' Max Zuckerberg’s Letter back to her Father

Re: How about we get them modern electricity grids and cheap reliable energy first?

@Julian

Most estimates over the last few years of deaths due to climate change (i.e. the increase in mortality today over what would have been predicted with a 1990 global climate) run at a couple of hundred thousand per year. That's quite a long way from "nobody".

Most estimates by the green lobby you mean? Well, they would say that wouldn't they.

And yet, here we are, STILL waiting for the first death certificate to feature the words "climate change" upon it, still with zero actual deaths. Does bad weather kill people? Well, yeah, but bad weather and what you perceive as climate change are - with some heroic assumptions in your favour - at best correlated, not causal.

And still we lose hundreds of thousands of people across northern Europe alone due to cold weather every single year. Factor in the losses in the 3rd world where fuel is whatever burns, and we could save more people in one single year than will ever see "climate change" upon a death certificate. Unless, of course, those poor people huddled around small yak shit fire don't count?

Re: How about we get them modern electricity grids and cheap reliable energy first?

@JeffyPooh

That'd be those 2600+ Coal Fired power stations that are planned to be built over the next decade or so, thus ensuring a nightmare 4°C global average temperature rise (if we believe the predictions).

How about we invent something better FIRST?

Yes, lets just make those poor people die in the cold & dark while we have a think about solving a problem that is decidedly below this item on the global agenda. Nobody has ever died due to climate change anywhere in the world. Even in the UK we lose xx,000's every winter due to cold, and we have electrickery.

Ignoring the very real world problems of today because it doesn't fit your personal agenda for something that might one day possibly be something of a problem if the science is right and if we halt the progress of technology, well, that just isn't even remotely credible.

IT pros are a bunch of wedding and funeral-dodging sickos

Re: Mystical creatures

I spent many an hour under the desks in summertime when ladies had computer problems - it didn't matter the problem, it was always "I'll just pop under the desk". Many happy views, er I mean days.

Probably couldn't get away with that nowadays.

Well no, it'd seem a bit odd, what with them all using latops or tablets....

Belkin's N150 router is perfect for learning hacking skills – wait, what, it's in production?

Re: Oi Belkin!!

Why did you buy a router which is dependant on the badge sticker for quality of software and timely security updates? Hopeless romantic? A moment's inattention? Drunk at the time?

Not drunk exactly, more just needed something to prove to my ISP/OpenReach that the intermittent fault was not in fact the router (it wasn't). Belkin was what my local shop had and I didn't have time to do any research, besides the sale of goods act suggests that anything sold in the local store should be fit for purpose, which this clear is not.

Ok, that last bit does sound a bit hopeless romantic, but I really don't have time to build all my own hardware or reflash everything I own repeatedly. I'm not even wholly sure I possess all the requisite skills to sufficient standard (hardware). I accept that will lead to risks but what the article describes are not risks, they're issues of basic competency.

I'd be ashamed to turn out such garbage as my professional output, and I'm "shouting at Belkin" because corporate silence is not the way to resolve this - humility, ownership, and effort are.

Oi Belkin!!

Thanks very much for regarding this matter with all the urgency I regard my next fart. I'm going to give you until Friday for you to have a fix produced, tested properly, and released, after which time this will be my last ever Belkin product.

In the mean time I'll revert to using an ancient PoS router that nobody has heard of - security through obscurity seems my last line of defence, so, thanks for that you incompetent and lazy morons. Seriously, if your developers can't build software properly then you need better developers - and you'll not find those at your local outsourcer, or offshorian slaughter house in Pune.

Rooting and modding a Windows Phone is now child's play

Re: Perhaps????

Well there's the Wileyfox phones

I'm right on the verge of buying the Storm, but looking about for reviews by actual owners, seems to indicate product quality issues - lots of faulty handsets. Any Commentards got one? If so, marks out of 10 pls?

My current Lumia920 is childs play to repair, and has been generally reliable over the past 3 years, but it's time for a new phone and (I'm genuinely not trolling here) Android seems to be most of the market, so if I'm going to jump ship from WinPhone, that seems like the OS to go for.

Sysadmin's former boss claims five years FREE support or off to court

Dear former boss of SetSquared....

... you should be aware that once the identity of your company leaks, the only staff you'll be able to get are box fresh graduates in India. Nobody with any level of professional expertise or competency is going to want to work for you when there are any other gigs available.

Leave the guy/gal alone, and recognize that your outright failures as a manager place no requirement on your former staff to bail out your company, least of all with you still in harness. Find a mirror, hold it up, and what you see is a clue to the origins of your predicament.

Thin-lipped chancellor tight-lipped on contractor-nudge-onto-payroll plan

Re: Thin-lipped chancellor announces death of UK contractor market.

@D3vy

We don't pay INCOME tax (until we hit the higher rate) but we pay the same % in corp tax as you do in income tax.

Only on profits, which is the main difference: a permie pays it on all incoming cash flows. There's an awful lot can and is deducted as expenses, ranging from travel & training, to lunch & laptops, via mileage allowance, and then double the whole lot down by paying the wife. [1]

The effective tax rate - total income divided by tax paid - can be significantly lower than you're implying. On the off chance you don't already know that, then you really need a better accountant. My effective tax rate is about 1.5 times what it will be when I switch to the "duty free" route, as my contractors like to call it.

[1] - Yes, its not as simple as it once was, and you can't just pony up half the balance, but you can save many thousands in taxes.

Who's right on crypto: An American prosecutor or a Lebanese coder?

Re: Nope, don't care

@AC

Why do you attack authors who makes reference to the 911 disaster

What you're doing isn't making reference to it. You're trying to leverage the dead to make some demented David Ike style political point, which is frankly disgusting.

And I'm not attacking you, simply pointing out that 9/11 had NOTHING to do with the tinfoil hat paranoid shite you would like it to have. Did I miss the lizard people from the list of things that didn't cause 9/11?

Cowardly terrorists + planes + buildings = 9/11. Nothing more, nothing less.

Is this some sort of "hot button" for you?

That would be a fair assessment, yes. You'll find that most people living in New York at that time have very little time or patience for people like you abusing that day for your own ends or amusement.

except that that event is a textbook example of protective force malfeasance.

Neither I nor Google have any clue what you think that term to mean. I know what protective force means, and I know what malfeasance means, but the term you've used seemingly means nothing. Is it something that's leaked out of your conspiracy theorist echo chamber?

Re: @teancum144 - breaking down the door

@DougS

Can they jail you if you refuse to let them in and they're unable to break down the door?

Do they need to? you've just put yourself under house arrest. All they do now is turn off your utilities and wait for you to emerge. Until then you stay under house arrest. I'm surprised you don't recognize that as being identical to what I described....

Re: Bottom line is ...

@Jake

I have hardware that will never have that issue (can't have that issue, actually), and will always have Internet connectivity. But then I'm not a consumer.

ALL your hardware? Are you sure? And unless you plan on custom building everything you ever use, then you're shit out of luck.

Re: Bottom line is ...

@AC

Until you deploy a software countermeasure, which is much easier than deploying a (hostile) firmware counter-countermeasure.

I completely agree, but in that vein, it's easier to go to the moon than to Mars, the problem is most people aren't astronauts.

Yes, it will be much easier to do as you describe, but that will be so far beyond the capabilities of most people that it doesn't matter.

I wouldn't have a clue about deploying countermeasures into the firmware of my phone/laptop/router etc.and I don't know anyone who could. Obviously many people reading this are that person who can, but that puts them/you into a very small special case.

Re: Nope, don't care

@Ac

RE: Events of 9/11 etc, the "security services" had full access at that time and yet 9/11 still happened, either they are incompetent or they allowed it to happen.

If you don't know that you're talking rubbish then you probably need to speak to a doctor.

What is it you think they had full access to exactly? 9/11 was planned in a cave in Afghanistan. Unless you think the security services are omnipresent then your hypothesis is terminally flawed.

So the real question is simple, if the people demanding access to the public privacy "do not"/"fail to" stop events such as 9/11 then why should we give up our freedoms.

What freedom precisely is it you feel you're giving up?

You've never had a right to privacy from criminal investigation by the state, and in general terms you're not giving up your privacy except where a judge can be convinced that you need to do so - which is exactly how search warrants work.

Regardless, scope creep (which we're definitely seeing) with regard to state surveillance powers has NOTHING to do with the disgusting and empty-headed conspiracy theories around 9/11.

That you don't understand you've conflated two wholly separate issues leads me to suspect term time may have ended early where you live?

Re: Nope, don't care

I have an encrypted file on my computer, I made it years ago, it contains nothing of any interest - but - I have absolutely no idea what key I used. So would jail time be appropriate?

It's not about what is appropriate, it is about what is.

You could already find yourself in jail for several years for that file. Given your apparent inability to open it, maybe deleting it would be the smart move, no?

Re: Nope, don't care

Except if you lock your door; with a legal warrant, they can break down your door. How is this accomplished with encryption?

It can't be, because broken encryption isn't encryption. There can never be any back door permitted. So what they'd do instead is assume the worst and jail you until you unlock the device. It's much liek they do now, but it takes away the benefits of reduced tariffs for nonces etc and simultaneously closes down the governments encryption that isn't encryption magical circle-jerk.

Re: Nope, don't care

@Vic

That won't happen.

I agree, it won't.

It is magical thinking

Certainly, it is magical, but I'm not sure how much thinking of any kind they've done.

eventually the pollies will be shown that what they want is impossible, and attempting to achieve it will not only fail miserably, but will cause such fall-out that they will never get another Executive Directorship as long as they live.

Yup. which is when some devious bastard will cotton on to what I've suggested and change the law such that they achieve most of what they want but without the broken encryption. The UK already has enacted the law as I've proposed it, only with a few years penalty rather than indefinite detention. It'll come, sooner or later, it'll come.

While I WILL continue to use strong encryption in spite of any ban, I would also, when given a straight choice of unlocking the device/vob or sitting in a cell until I do.... well, I'd unlock the device. Why? I actually don't have anything to hide form the law but I do have things I'd prefer to keep private from public knowledge.... like my savings account balance/numbers, or photos of my kids.

Re: Nope, don't care

I don't think it's a great plan personally.

As opposed to having encryption banned for public use, which is very much the way the wind is blowing, I think it sounds bloody marvelous.

All I'd have to do was factory reset any phone I was finished with and I'm free and clear, quite aside from the phone not having contacted a network in forever, having no incoming or outgoing calls or data - which could be verified by the networks.

Same for mailing someone a phone and dobbing them in - it'd be easy to verify it's not their phone, just as mailing someone a kilo of coke isn't going to see them jailed.

Re: Nope, don't care

@Woodnag

Sorry, too many compliant judges, too many warrant issued without genuine PC. You need to have the right to challenge the warrant before cooperating.

You can't challenge a search warrant for your home before it is issued, so sorry, you're out of luck here too.

Re: Nope, don't care

@alain williams

I grow increasingly weary of the tinfoil hatters nonsense, for that is what it ALL is, around the events of 9/11. The one thing they all have in common is that none of them were there that day; it's just regurgitated rubbish based on shakey video footage and imperfect knowledge as the the precise cause of each little sub-event.

Some terrorists hijacked some planes and flew them into some buildings. Lots of innocent people died. It's no more complicated than that. It wasn't the government, it wasn't the Jews, it wasn't Elvis flamin' Presley either. The person to blame was Osama Bin Laden, and he paid for that with his life.

The conspiracy theorists are all just a little bit sick, and they all do a disservice to those who died that day.

Re: Nope, don't care

@AndrewDu

Until the definition of "criminals" is expanded by the elites to include something you didn't expect, and then you're toast.

Elite is a computer game.

If the state arbitrarily decide the law doesn't apply to it, then it can just lock you up for anything or nothing anyway, thus it is no more of a risk.

Re: Nope, don't care

@Joeseph Eoff

The analogy to cryptography falls apart, though, because the police have to have a warrant and they still have to come in the door to get in your house.

That's the point I was making - having them come to your device and have you unlock it is the same thing. Don't comply, then go to jail until you do. It removes the protection criminals enjoy without violating anyone else's right to privacy.

n the case of cryptography, they are basically saying that every house has to have an additional entrance with a master key.

Master keys are broken cryptography, which as I've said, is no cryptography.

Re: Bottom line is ...

@Jake

There is absolutely nothing that worldwide.gov can do about it.

Sure there is, it's just that we won't like it.

Invade the firmware on any device sold in your territory and you can capture any keys being used and decrypt at your leisure. As I said, we won't like it, but there is plenty they can do - Snowden rendered that in brilliant clarity.

@DropBear

Others may do as they wish, I won't be waiting for others to decide for me - I insist on using it. And if they make it illegal, I'll just hide using it - steganography and hidden volumes FTW.

I won't. I'll continue using it in plain sight and let them come for me if they must. I cannot store my data securely in the cloud without encryption.

Speeding is illegal but the vast majority of people continue to do it. Drugs are illegal etc etc I don't see this being any different - people will just do as we've always done and ignore the state.

Re: Nope, don't care

@Andy Tunnah

I find the examples given deplorable, as I expect (hope?) everyone else does, but I just will never support broken encryption.

Broken encryption isn't encryption.

People suck, crime sucks, but it isn't just a phone that makes a case, and I truly believe more harm than good will come out of broken encryption.

As do I. However, I don't see it as being required at all.

You can secure your home against unwanted entry, but you cannot refuse to comply with a search warrant. Why then can the same not be held true for encrypted data? If the authorities can persuade a judge to grant them lawful access to your data, then they have the right to access it. If you decline to co-operate and open your devices, then you can stay in jail until you abide by the warrant. It removes the benefits of encryption accruing to criminals without harming the rest of us.

Obviously, careful oversight and monitoring would be required, but being innocent of that of which you are suspected and having your data searched is not radically different from being innocent and having your home searched. Fixing the law does not require breaking encryption.

Terrorists obviously won't comply, but you can't change our whole society and way of life to handle such edge cases.

Android Studio 2.0 preview gives developers instant preview of code changes

I like it....

....I know that won't sit well with the cool kids, its worth a lot more than it costs. Is it as good as Visual Studio? No, but then nothing else is.

The emulator works on my old 4GB i3 lappy, but would definitely benefit from more memory being available. And yes, it could be faster - but given the range of devices its possible to emulate, I think its a very credible product.

Fifth arrest in TalkTalk hacking probe: Now Plod cuff chap in Wales

Finally, a cybercriminal from my home town. Proof that we're not the backwater we're portrayed as.

No, no, you are still a backwater (sorry), it's just that the management of TalkTalk would be out of their depth if they pissed on the floor.

Ex-IT staff claim Disney fired them then gave their jobs H-1B peeps

@Dadmin

If you're good at what you do, you can document it and share it with others because you're just going to learn more anyway.

I agree - this is how I operate.

When you're good, you're valuable. No cheap replacements can ever threaten you, because you make the shit happen in the big boy data center. So, do fear Indian IT replacements, if you suck at IT.

Unfortunately this is wishful thinking on your part, but allow me to explain why.

In the bank I work for, I sit 6 people deep in the hierarchy. After me all the way up to the CEO, there is nobody that understands coding, at all. Nobody is qualified to determine who is good and who is not - it becomes purely a numbers game.

Now my boss, he knows I'm good because the rest of the team tell him that, but he doesn't decide who gets cut - his boss does, and it's done on a cost basis rather than competency - the assumption is that there is no key person risk.

Re: Could you give us the reason and the rebuttal for why US workers are being terminated?

@elDog

In fact my emphasis was that many people that come here with H1- B visas are better trained than their US counterparts.

Training != Competency, which has a far higher correlation with experience than it does training.

I learned a whole raft of languages, then moved on to classic ASP & COM+, before retraining and working with .NET. I'm now adding in Python and Java to my skills by doing a few training courses on the train.

The training will take a few weeks at most, after which I'll be able to build systems in Java using all the same coding techniques that produce proper systems, such as SOLID, design patterns, limiting method size & qty of parameters before refactoring etc etc Those latter skills take rather longer to master than another language syntax and framework.

Training is cheap and quick to acquire. 20 years experience is not. Importing cheap labour or offshoring the job to cheap jurisdictions is done solely to cut cost. It's not about quality, because the quality isn't there. It's not about training, because that can be had onshore in a matter of days. It's just about cost.

Thai women drugged punters 'with Xanax-spiked nipples' – cops

Re: No straight man

@NanoMeter

Having been to Thailand with the wife, I can safely say that it is possible to say no to boobs provided your Mrs is in earshot, lest you find yourself with fewer knackers than some of the local ladies.

Re: "I wonder if it's actually possible to administer an effective dose"

I'm not at liberty to check El Reg's source right now, but they may have been tricked into reporting legend as fact.

I'm happy to go investigate on behalf of El Reg. You know, in case their own guys are too well known in Pattaya.

Cyber-terror: How real is the threat? Squirrels are more of a danger

Re: Cyber attacks are demonstrated.

Cutting power to Liverpool would lead to sensational blood letting - especially if there is a league game that day.

Tinned beer and battery radios to the rescue. Liverpool has disaster recovery in place!

Arf Arf Arf

Anti-malware firm BitDefender last week implausibly warned that an “IS cyber-attack on the UK could cripple all forms of communication and infrastructure.”

Well, yes it could. Just as I could go home from work early and find my wife in bed with Nicole Kidman. Or BitCoin could have been originated by one of The Orange County Is Essex cast. Or we could have a minister in charge of technology that actually understands technology. It's not looking likely though, is it?

Paris, because she could be the next President of those United States.

Blocking out the Sun won't fix climate change – but it could buy us time

Re: @Hugh hunt

@sisk

I would agree if economics were the only consideration. However it's not even in the top five most important considerations in this particular debate

Economics is always the most important consideration in every debate. All the good ideas, all the deeply held beliefs, all the proposed solutions are worth nothing what-so-ever if you cannot afford to fund them.

I believe no child should be born to starve to death, and that the world has sufficient agri-land to ensure they don't. But as I lack the economic means to implement a solution, however worthwhile, it doesn't happen.

such an approach fails to explain how earlier periods that were much hotter than even the wildest estimates for man's impact over the next 50 years got that way. On the other hand those denying man's influence on the environment fail to explain why global warming correlates so closely with human activity.

Environmental science fails to explain away the min-ice age where the Thames froze up year after year, during a period of human activity off the scale compared to a few hundred years earlier when it didn't because it was a lot warmer. So it ignores it. Goose, gander, sauce.

Things like the CRU debacle, for that IS what it was, do nothing to enhance the warmists standing. You simply cannot take seriously people who fear the release of their data and method because they worry about contradictory hypothesis. That's not science, it isn't even as valid as religion, because at least those people have faith in their beliefs.

Acceptance of the damage they have done themselves, and the release of the zealot/worshipper/believer mindset would do the warmist movement no end of good. Endlessly shouting out guff like "one year to save the environment" or "UK to be hotter than Portugal" just makes them look ridiculous when of course they fail to happen, over and over again.

We know for a fact that the models don't work; it is indisputable. We therefore can expect with a 99.9% certainty, that conclusions drawn from those models will also be wrong; they carry no greater scientific weight than the reading of runes. The models always overshoot by a considerable way, so the only sensible thing to do is assume that reality will be a lot more pleasant than environmentalists want you to believe. And oddly enough, it always has been.

Basically my thought on it is this: global warming or no global warming we need something more sustainable than fossil fuels. Fossil fuels WILL run out eventually.

I agree, but that doesn't mean we need junk solutions today, it simply means that by the time the fossils are gone we have to have something else. And we do, in spades. Nuclear energy for starters.

Most environmentalists dislike nuclear because it takes the heat out of the debate. It buys thousands of years worth of breathing space in terms of energy usage. No requirement for less, you see.

Probably not in our lifetimes (with the possible exception of oil, which super pessimistic estimates claim will be gone by 2050)

That is simply not possible at all. Peak oil, the bit where we've used half of it, is approximately 250 years away from now. Thanks to fracking there is zero possibility of running out of oil in anything less than several centuries, assuming we don't locate anymore within that time frame, which of course, we will. Peak oil is, for all practical purposes, dead and buried: Science & technology killed it.

Where is Tim when you need him? #BBW

That could change with a major breakthrough in solar power

Solar & wind power are sideshows and always will be. The post oil future of energy is nuclear, with a bit of hydrogen thrown in for portability. It might not be the kind of nuclear we have now, but the future is not going to be a couple of windmills in your garden and a brace of solar cells on your roof.

I like the R&D side of environmentalism - it'd do the world no harm to continue investing in future energy supplies, because running our really would be bad - but the vast majority of it amounts to nothing more than a religion for atheists, and communism in an amusing mask. The endless parading of the communist mantra of less isn't advancing their cause.

If you want to regress to an agricultural lifestyle and 1970's standard of living, by all means feel free to do so, just understand that you have no moral, legal, intellectual or scientific right to insist anyone else does.

Climate change has never killed anyone and it never will. However, ocean acidification, IF it can be proven to be the problem it is suggested as being and have the causes it is suggested to have, and we're a pretty long way away from that, then it is something we should seek to rectify. That may well not mean "less" though, it may simply have a technical, chemical, or some other type of solution.

@Hugh hunt

Lets assume for most of this post that the whole global warming shebang is actually real and attributable to the causes commonly suggested....

Could we directly engineer the climate and refreeze the poles? The answer is probably yes, and it could be a cheap thing to achieve – maybe costing only a few billion dollars a year. But doing this – or even just talking about it – is controversial.

So, less that we already raise in green taxes and waste on things already shown not to work. Seems worth a try, if only on economic grounds...

Some have suggested there is a good business case to be made. We could carefully engineer the climate for a few decades while we work out how to reduce our dependency on carbon, and by taking our time we can protect the global economy and avoid financial crises. I don’t believe this argument for a minute, but you can see it’s a tempting prospect.

If we could re-engineer the climate as you suggest then why would we need to reduce carbon output? Or are we only re-engineering one aspect of the proposed effects?

Oh, I see later on you clarify that there's still acidification to deal with, but you've made no mention on how that could be re-engineered.

There are so many problems with climate engineering. The main one is that we have only one planet to work with (we have no Planet B) and if we screw this one up then what do we do? Say “sorry” I guess. But we’re already screwing it up by burning more than 10 billion tonnes of fossil fuels a year. We have to stop this carbon madness immediately.

Equally, there is no second life - we only have this one to live and if we spend it adhering to one hypothesis which later turns out to be wholly incorrect, we can't get the time back to live better lives.

You must realise that progressively more families are spread further over the globe now than at any other time in history? without car / air travel, they simply can't visit each other. Any proposed solution that fails to take account of that, fails.

We must work fast to cut our carbon emissions and at the same time we should explore as many climate engineering options as possible, simultaneously. However while reflecting sunlight may be an idea that buys us some time it is absolutely not a solution for climate change and it is still vital that we cut our emissions – we can’t use climate engineering as a get-out clause.

First you need to prove the science - identify the cause and specific effects. You've made the classic mistake of jumping to a conclusion based on incomplete knowledge and research, and hopped straight onto the "something must be done and that something means less" bandwagon. I can almost hear Al Gore laughing from here.

It's understandable, given you've made a significant commitment in terms of your time and resources into studying environmentalism, in much the same way as others have with homeopathy, but that places no requirement on the rest of us to live our lives by, or to fund, your beliefs.

Your article shows an astounding lack of critical thinking for someone studying at Cambridge. Are there no other interpretations of the facts you present? Are there not other bodies of relevant evidence that give different conclusions?

Want to defend your network? Profile the person attacking it

Re: Work as a cleaner. I did!

They will give you the keys and the codes to the whole shop. They don't want to see menial people like you around so you get in off-hours. Everybody knows that all cleaners are stupid and retarded people so no-one will talk to you or check what you are doing or even suspect any threat

Ah, the Wall Street approach... Don't bank on that working with everyone though. I talk to our cleaners and coffee staff, etc, as I have more in common with them than I do most of those I work with or for. I'm certainly not alone in that.

#BBW

A really good hack can be months or even years in the recon stage. It probably involves building a duplicate network in your own lab at which you can make dry runs.

That would need to be a spectacular hack, because otherwise it'd be way more efficient just to get a job there and access the data legitimately before putting it to whatever nefarious use you wish.

This is why bulk data theft is so much rarer than simple compromises to mine bitcoin, pump out spam or encrypt everything and demand ransom. Getting in is easy. Getting out is hard.

Only if you don't understand what you're doing.

Compress the crap out of the data and you'd be amazed how much that 2TB shrinks. Then you have all sorts of opportunities to move it - why send it all to one place? Why not move different parts to different drop boxes (note, not dropboxes)? Take your time - make the transfers look legitimate and not constant rate, and go for a couple of MB here, a couple of MB there. It'll soon add up. And if you've already got the sysadmin & their monitoring tools beat, what's your hurry?

How much could you post to some prearrange websites "comments" sections? If you own enough of the network, can you have a legitimate transfer made beyond the firewall? companies send data to suppliers/clients all the time.

Getting data out without arousing suspicion is all about diversity of transfer mechanism, destination, rate, and the accounts used to do so, and the rest is a function of time & data volume.

ICO fines PPI claims firm £80,000 over 1.3m spam SMS deluge

Re: Good

@Alain Williams

Fine the company directors personally, not the companies.

Fine them, then bar them from further directorships for 10 years. The powers already exist, and there's no reason to allow them to repeat the trick at their next gig - otherwise they'll just factor in an approximate level of fines into their compensation expectations.

US 'swatting' Bill will jail crank callers for five years to life

Re: @LucreLout - @Bob Dole (tm) @Pascal Monett

@GM

If you understood the message of your quote you'd not still be getting the same things wrong ad-finitum. Think before you post.

Re: @LucreLout - @Bob Dole (tm) @Pascal Monett

@GM

That was based on the same, short-sighted, idea that you support that "making the punishment more severe will stop this happening!" and it must have worked because we still have all those penalties on the statute books since they were so effective...

Take someone hard of thinking and have them make a swatting call. How many of their friends do you think will line up to copy the genius when he's doing 20+ years? Exactly, none of them.

Take the same genius and give him the tea & biscuits you're proposing, and the number of his mates that copy him can be expected to be greater than zero. It's going to look like fun and lead to tit for tat reprisals.

The reason they're increasing the penalty is precisely because the soft touch approach hasn't worked. Repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results etc etc. You can complain about that all you want, but your approach has been shown not to work, so they're trying something else which might. Lets see what the stats say in a few years.

Re: @LucreLout

@Intractable Potsherd

There is indeed a moral requirement that agents of the State do not kill anyone who is not actively a threat to someone else.

At best this may be corrected as:

There is indeed a moral requirement that agents of the State do not kill anyone who THEY REASONABLY BELIEVE is not actively a threat to someone else.

That edit is critical to the whole situation. Nobody is advocating the state kicking down doors and whacking everyone involved, but sooner or later someone innocent always ends up shot. On balance that saves more lives than waiting to see if the guys inside with the guns are just having jolly japes or if they really do mean to kill the hostages, which is why the police operate in this way.

The police are (or should be) adequately trained to look and assess first before shooting.

And they are, but humans are not infallible and they don't become so because their paycheck says "Police" on it any more than they are with "NHS" written on it; and as we know, the NHS kills thousands of people every year due to errors.

Any time a police officer fires a gun, they should be immediately suspended from duty and a criminal investigation commenced - just the same as would happen with anyone else who isn't in the police.

That's a nice idea, but you'll find a few issues. Firstly it would require the arrest of the officer to convey the requisite powers and rights to both parties. You'll not find a very long queue for people wanting to be arrested for doing their job correctly. Perhaps we extend this idea to doctors and nurses where a patient dies int heir care? ultimately, the state doesn't have the resources, and those in applicable roles aren't going to enjoy arrest records when trying to use visa waiver programs or emigrating abroad.

They are far more frightening than any criminal/terrorist.

From that I can only conclude that you've never met a serving member of the force with a firearms cert, or been involved in a significant terrorist incident. Had you done both, you'd already know why you're wrong.

Re: @LucreLout - @Bob Dole (tm) @Pascal Monett

And [insert some other ridiculously draconian law here] will stop SOME people from doing [insert particular activity here], but history has shown time and again that's never a proper, nor adequate, solution.

No, you're quite right, silly me. Of course sending heavily armed men into what they think is a conflict situation in someones home is all just a barrel of laughs isn't it? Right up until it isn't, of course.

I'm genuinely amazed at how consistently wrong you can be about almost everything. Forget this Matt chap you bang on about, I'm starting to wonder if you're not the troll.

Re: Two birds

The penalty is changing, not the burden of proof or the investigation required before charging someone.

There's nothing to stop you doing as you suggest already, but the consequences for you in doing so will be a lot more severe IF you get caught. It's quite likely "Person 2" is going to protest their innocence and some sort of investigation will follow.