Posts by LucreLout

Now you can be tracked online by your email addy. Thanks, Google!

Re: Ad Blocking....

Thanks, also to Phuzz. Upvotes all round.

Ad Blocking....

I, erm, well.... There's no easy way to say this... I might somehow have gotten through 20 years of web use without ever using an Ad Blocker. I always took the view that the ads came with the content and that kept the content free. I know, I know... and no thanks, I have all the bridges I need.

So now I'm hacked off enough with the whole shooting match to want to start blocking. I mean - movies... who the f*** thinks its ok to start downloading several ad-movies to my browser when all I'm here for is a bit of text content?! Sorry advertisers, but you've gone way too far and its time to push back a little.

So, with that in mind... Any suggestions from Commentards for ad blockers for IE & Chrome greatfully received. I'll be doing my own research but a guided shortlist might help ensure I don't miss anything I should be considering. I'm guessing AdBlock should be on my list for consideration, but what alternatives are you guys using?

Re: @Theodore, Feelings.

I don't hate advertisers...I hate advertising.

I hate morons that click on adverts, buy anything from spam, and are generally just to flamin' stoopid to be allowed out in digital public.

I vote we IQ test the internet. We can have a DMZ for farcebook and tw@tter, for the slow pokes, but we shouldn't allow them general access to everything.

Paris - Just because you're on the internet doesn't mean you should be using the internet.

Dear do-gooders, you can't get rid of child labour just by banning it

Re: free lunch

@BobRocket

Why food instead of cash? Corruption.

If you pay cash, how do you know some of that isn't bribing whoever takes the register to say the kids are there when they're out working? If you have to be there to eat, well, you have to be there, so you might as well learn a thing. If we assume all calorific needs are met by school attendence, not just a single meal, then you have to be there at the start, the middle, and the end of the school day.

SCREW YOU, FEDS! Dozen or more US libraries line up to run Tor exit nodes

Re: The numbers game.

@Westlake

In the words of Egg Shen "That was nothing. But that's how it always begins. Very small."

Man given positive pregnancy test in an Apple Watch box

Re: As a new dad myself...

@sysconfig

Absolutely! But the bit nobody can make you understand before you have them, is how much fun it is. Best decision I ever made.... even if the recockulously over-powered 2 seater will have to wait until retirement or the next life.

As regards the video... Nice to see someone taking it like a man, and crying like a baby.

Bible apps are EVIL says John McAfee as he phishes legal sysadmins in real time

Re: John McAffee.. The man, the legend..

As I said to my new boss recently: If you can't work for a genius like Gates or Jobs, then work for a genius like McAffee, at least it'd be fun.

AWS cuts cloud storage price to UNDER a cent per gig a month

Re: It doesn't make any difference

@Steve Roper

Who's to say that once you've become dependent on it and stored all your work on it, that they won't jack up the price knowing that you're now hooked? Every two-bit street drug dealer knows this gambit, and anyone who thinks that major corporations are any more ethical is deluding themselves.

An excellent and very apt description, with which I fully agree. However.....

Then there's the issue of solvency: what if the cloud hosting provider goes bust?

This can be handled with escrow contracts and corporate structuring. I'm not saying it IS, only that it can be.

Then there's security and confidentiality. Suppose someone high-up in the cloud provider decides that your new design for a solar power generator should go to profit their corporation instead of you, you little upstart?

Encryption is the answer here, surely? I have loads of confidential information stored in my dropbox, all encrypted. The worst consequences of unauthorised disclosure would be financial, which while certainly adverse, should be kept in perspective.

But as a secure archival and backup system? No bloody way. Nothing beats storage on your own machines at your own sites under your own control.

I agree, though would caveat that having a backup beyond the reach of your admins COULD be used to mitigate key person / malicious ex-employee risks. Having an online backup in a different country can also be useful.

The cloud is literally Other Peoples Computers. You can almost see the lights dim when I explain that to my business users. It is most certainly useful, and as it happens cost effective, but it is not a panacea, and it is not without risk. So we better keep our talented & experienced systems engineer, even if we're weighing in some of the old tin.

As a dev, I can fire up actual dev servers for non-confidential data tasks faster on AWS/Azure than I could raise the first item of internal paperwork to get a virt setup. And that very much is a management issue.

Robots, schmobots. The Rise of the Machines won't leave humanity on the dole

Re: I'm still thinking

@Boris

what defines us as a society is how we deal with the hordes of people who become unemployed due to the increasing use of robots.

If we're to preserve a civilised society, we'll have to lower the birth rate amongst those that become unemployable. I know that sounds hearltess and awful, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Law & order would reach dystopian levels well before the tipping point of half the population being surplus [1]. The only pragmatic solution would be to invert child benefit and pay people not to have children, while taxing those of us who do for the privilege (I know, someone suggesting higher taxes on themsleves, how odd).

[1] Anyone strongly averse to this point should feel free to go visit any council estate in Ordsall and its ilk, both during the day and after dark, to see what most people choose to do with perpetual idleness/leisure.

Re: CNC supervisor

CNC lathe operators in the UK typically earn between £12-15 per hour in the South, and a little over £10 in the North. Most that I know are not on zero hours contracts due to the premium their skills fetch over minimum wage.

I take your point that had the turning still been done by hand & by eye, then it is likely they'd earn more than present. It's just not minimum wage, nor zero hours.

And before my stalker pops up again asking how many CNC lathe operators I know, the answer is three. I used to work with two of them.

Re: What floor sir?

@Brewsters Angle Grinder

The better the technology the gets, the less engineers it will need.

Tell that to the space shuttle....

Re: Our scrap dealing future

@naive

It does however not take away worries that the future of the "common" man is indeed scrap dealing, while the 1% owning >80% of the assets

Wealth has pretty much always been concentrated at one end of the spectrum. The spectrum may change, from the alpha male monkeys 'owning' the mating rights to the females, through kings & queens, and on to college dropouts who could work a compiler.

It doesn't pose a 'real' problem so long as the fraction of wealth in the "common mans" hands continues to grow such as his needs and some of his wants are met. Does it make any difference to me if Zuckerberg can afford an 80' marble ballroom on his 3rd yacht? Not really.

It also implies that in the equation labor/capital, labor loses out again after the globalization since the 90's, which will on its turn amplify the existing inequality in incomes and assets.

Given the scale of automation and offshoring, I'd say the labour end of the capital:labour ratio will forever fall. I'm not convinced that's a good thing, only that it is inevtiable. I agree this will amplify inequality between incomes and assets, but I don't see that sort of equality as an issue. Equality of opportunity, however, is very important to me, which is why I share some of your concerns.

How will the children of the "common man" have opportunity to make a better life for themselves if they cannot find an income generating occupation? How will they accrue their own assets without excess income with which to do so? If we remove all of the challenges in life, how will their childrens children develop as people?

All economic models are based on the assumption that humans have a potential to add value to the economy, when robots with an IQ of 140 and more can be utilized for manufacturing, this assumption becomes invalid

The average IQ is marginally below 100 (allowing for some of those above the median to drop below it due to illness or injury). At that level a robot is competition for us all. Lets be honest, I don't use all of my IQ at work now any more than when I worked in a factory, and the robot doesn't have a family it'd like to go spend time with, so it can stay here out producing me.

In a post robotised world we may indeed have all of our needs and desires met such that wealth in the current sense ceases to be real. My concern is how we transition from this world to that one with the minimum of harm. I can't see it being a peaceful transition, unfortunately.

Re: Satisficers rather than Maximisers

@Tim

Think of programming 50 years ago. You had to have access to a £1 million machine to be able to do it. Today a great deal of it can be done on a £1,000 machine and an internet connection.

Most can be done on a machine costing less than £500. Realistically an 8GB RAM, Intel i3 will see you off and running with pretty well any OS and coding environment you need. Sure, my works PC is a much higher spec, but then I spend 8-12 hours a day here, so it needs to be.

Better still, if you want REAL horsepower, AWS/Azure/Others, will lease you the kit for what amounts to quite a small fee.

Even beer is better now than 50 years ago.

Burn all the coal, oil – No danger of sea level rise this century from Antarctic ice melt

Re: Eh?

@AC

Yes, the only problem with your link is that SkepticalScience aren't Skeptical, and it isn't Science. Its a blog setup specifically to promote the authors belief in MMGW: Whether you agree with global warming or not, that's just a fact.

Check your sources being one of the principle rules of critical thinking.

'To read this page, please turn off your ad blocker...'

Re: So, Ad Age thinks I'm a "thief" who's "interfering with business"?

@Doctor Syntax

Alternative view. If advertising gets pushed in my face I won't be paying for it. Because the only effect it will have will be to ensure I avoid whatever it's advertising.

Yes, quite. Unfortunately too many "others" don't see it that way, and mindlessly click on ads. Think about it this way, had nobody ever responded positively to spam, it would have died out more than 20 years ago.

There's just to many people out there that will click on literally anything.

Jeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership election

Re: @TheVogon - Pyhrric victory

@DaveFace

You seem blissfully ignorant of the fact there are more unemployed people than jobs available, meaning no matter what someone does to improve themselves, they cannot get a job

You'd have a point if several million eastern europeans hadn't managed to move here and find a job in spite of any language & cultural differences. As it is, not so much.

At the same time, the Conservatives have increased barriers to education and the general 'betterment' you speak of

There have always been barriers. There will always be barriers. Those that see them as an obstacle to be conquered will prosper. Those that see them as insurmountable will not. T'was ever thus.

increasing the amount of debt young people have to bear to get it (increased tuition fees, removal of grants especially for poorer students).

Only in so far as they haven't looked at all the options. A remote study degree can be had from a whole range of UK universities for around £15k and study can be completed in an evening after work - It's how I did my MSc. Working while studying certainly isn't as much fun as I remember the student bar being, but then it does alleviate the debt that would otherwise accrue.

Take your anti-poor spite elsewhere.

I'm anti-poor only in the sense that I want them to recognise the opportunities before them, which are greater than any time in history, and use them to elevate their income such that they are no longer poor. Totally spite free.

It's tiring hearing champagne socialists like you and Graham knock the young & the poor all the time. Always telling them what they can't do, what they can't achieve, what they cannot be. You need to check your prejudice, because it's showing.

Re: @TheVogon - Pyhrric victory

@Graham

I see little point in continuing with this.

You might, if you entered debates with an open mind, rather than a loudhailer.

yours is simply "it's all the fault of the unions" and "the politics of envy" and "I'm alright Jack".

Utter rubbish. Yes, Socialism and Unionism are the greatest ills carried forward from the last century, but they can hardly be blamed for Gordon Browns lack of comprehension of Keynes, or the typical greedy labour voters "me me me, give me more more more" attitude. You've still not explained why it is you feel entitled to live of the sweat of my brow, rather than your own efforts.

You also somehow think that Blair was Left Wing

Well, yes, largely because he was. As always with his ilk, judge them by their actions, not their words. Corbyn is the extreme left, and further and you get to the far left (Hitler, Nazis etc) with very little movement.

The absolute epitome of the ludicrousness of your arguments is where you say that a Minimum Wage job or a Zero Hours contract allows someone to buy a house

I've given you detailed numbers on this three times Graham, and three times you've failed to provide a single postcode where a starter home cannot be had within a shorter commute than I have, for a full time minimum wage couple. Its time to drop your pretence, no? The facts have been given you in simple enough terms for you to comprehend. If you wish to debate them then put the loudhailer down and prove them wrong. Find a post code, just one.

Your posts have a woeful lack of any supporting evidence for any of your claims, hence the lack of intellectual rigour. They seem supported only by union dogma, emotion, and rhetoric. Start again with basic tennets - first identify some facts, then use those to inform your hypothesis, then test that hypothesis to show it the best interpretation of the established facts. Its called critical thinking, and you really should have been taught it at university.

Re: @TheVogon - Pyhrric victory

@Bernard

We, I believe, are wealthy enough to share and to improve the lives of others without necessarily seeking a pecuniary profit alone.

Nobody is stopping you. By all means, feel free to share your wealth with whomever you so please. It is yours.

I donate 2% of my pre-tax income to charities each year. Its not a large percentage, and I'm ashamed to state that I gift more both in pound terms and as a percentage than anyone I know. The positive point of that, is that I choose where the money goes, not someone else with a different moral compass.

I believe that no child should starve, no illness should go untreated and no mind should be left uneducated,

As do I, but I disagree that socialism, or indeed anything other than capitalism, can provide that.

I would go further though and state that no mind or pair of hands should be left idle until old age. All must do whatever work they can best accomplish. Jeremy Kyles only audience should be his mother and her retired friends.

and I don't think that those rights should have a "subject to status" tag on them. From each according to their skills, to each according to their needs.

And that, I'm afraid is where we part company. I'm unwilling to help those who chose not to help themselves, because it is a waste of my time and money.

Interestingly though, nothing you've described has used the word "equality" in any sense. A safety net doesn't have to be brought into being via socialism or even by government. It can exist simply due to the desire of people to have one. None of the charities I support receive government funding, despite being extremely worthy causes.

ETA: Not sure why you got downvoted. I couldn't see anything objectionable in what you wrote.

Re: @TheVogon - Pyhrric victory

@Bernard

Socialism is about understanding how humanity, as a whole, can have their lives improved. Capitalism is about securing wealth and power for the individual at the cost of the greater whole.

And yet in any place & any time they've been applied, capitalism has improved the lives of humainty as a whole, while socialism has brought only misery and poverty.

The true use of wealth is in its wise deployment, not in its accrual.

The problem you have with that hypothesis, is that your view of wise deployment will be different to mine, which is different to grahams, which is different to... and so it goes. The left often mistake their view as being "good" and all other perspectives as "evil", which is simplistic nonsense.

Re: @LucreLout - Pyhrric victory

@Graham

And what do Zero Hours contract and Minimum Wage jobs with no prospect of advancement do for him?

They allow him to buy a house, a car, and have foreign holidays. They provide medical care and education for him and his whole family. They provide him a pension when he gets old.

Just how much do you think the person with the least skills, experience, intelligence, and application in the country should be able to afford relative to the smartest, the hardest working, and the most experienced?

And when the message about hard work is "you work all hours of the day and *still* end up with sod all", something has gone seriously wrong.

Yes, what has gone wrong is your message. It does not reflect reality. £7.20 minimum wage next year, for no skills or experience required. Stress free work, and literally an endless choice of vocations to persue, and locations in which to live, for if you are to remain on minimum wage there is no mandate to specialise.

Now, please Graham, stop abusing the Degree Level Icon for your school boy playground rhetoric.

Re: @TheVogon - Pyhrric victory

@Graham

Err, just off the top of my head, shoot me down if you want to, but, as a wild idea, how about EDUCATING CHILDREN BETTER

We've been trying to do that for generations but the NUT always end up stood in the way. We're paying top flight terms & conditions for teachers, and getting the performance of backwards monkeys from them. The only way to change that is bring in a 20/70/10 system. The best 20% get a pay rise, the next 70% don't, and the last 10% get sacked for poor performance.

Oh, but of course, that's not a failure of the schools, is it? As you say "How can I make you educate yourself better?" since clearly it's the pupils' fault for not "educating themselves better"...

Schools can and do fail. My primary & secondary school certainly did. They failed hard enough to become academies. I took ownership of my education, and attended a couple of universities and a great many professional certifications since then. You own your educational attainment, nobody else.

How about paying people a decent rate for the job they're doing, rather than giving them a pittance.

What get then is an expensive monkey. Some jobs don't take a great deal of skill, experience, or intelligence to do. If you want the income from one that does, you first need to meet the requirements of the role, and then attain one.

BUZZ! Oops, wrong again. I have no problem with people being successful, wealthy or happy, but, unlike you, I think that society works better when the rewards are spread around, rather than concentrated in the hands of a greedy few who think they're entitled(!) to live off the sweat of others' brows. (Ironic, isn't it? Same words, different meaning...)

Oh dear. The bitterness of the politics on envy again.

If you and I had the same level of intelligence, and applied ourselves in the same way, making the same efforts, in the same field, you'd find very little earnings differential to bunch your panties over. I live off the sweat of my own brow, and I'm quite honestly puzzled why you feel entitled to live off it also. Why do you think you should be entitled to claim a share of my rewards? What have you ever done to deserve them?

The paucity of intellectual rigor in your position is showing Graham. Think it through again. This time use logic, not emotion.

Re: @LucreLout - Pyhrric victory

The last thing that the Tories want is for people to have enough money to be able to pick and choose jobs, that's why their aim is to keep sufficient people unemployed (and, if possible, sanctioned), so they have a large supply of obedient serfs who are so desperate for any work that they'll take whatever jobs are on offer for a pittance.

Arf arf - Your tin foil hat is over there fella -->

Labour did more to destroy social mobility than any party in history. Forcing everyone into their local substandard comp by closing grammar schools is not the way to help bright working class people into a better job.

Jacking up taxes doesn't help the working man get ahead - it keeps him in debt. Overly generous welfare make it ever more difficult for him to teach his children about the benefits of hard work and the application of their abilities.

Labour depend on welfare wallers and their public sector client state such that they are really only ever interested in increasing the size of both of them, whatever adverse affect that has on the real economy.

Labour, as a party, just don't understand economics. They never did. The biggest single improvement that could be made to Britains fortunes for the next 100 years would be to educate the labour party on living within your means.

If Maggie had any sense, she would have *invested* the money from North Sea Oil, instead of using it

Maggie invested the revenue in paying off some of the debts of the preceding labour government. In basic economic terms, paying off debt == saving.

Re: Pyhrric victory

@amanfromarse

Know a lot of labour party members, do you?

Yup.

I know 1 Conservative party member, and somewhere around 100 Labour party members, most enrolled when joining their union or because their parents are/were members. Working class lad from the North East you see, pretty well everyone I know was raised "Red until dead".

Of everyone I've asked in the run up, very few wanted Corbyn as leader, and most were dismayed by the lack of real choice in candidates, and their obvious lack of talent. Oddly enough, that's actually a view the Conservative party member I know has of his parties leadership too.

The Blairs are a truly horrible family, but Tony and his backers understood very well how politics works, and could sway the electorate. Only Alex Salmond was a better politician of that generation.

Re: Goodbye Labour Party

@Bob

Since him and his party are no threat whatsoever, they'll do anything to keep him there. Watch how gentle they will be at PMQ's, TV debates etc.

I don't think they will be. I think they'll try to split the party down the middle now, while the gaping cracks are showing. Go in for the kill, as it were. That will leave us without any opposition at all, never mind a credible one. And that won't be good for the country, the conservatives, or the people.

Re: @TheVogon - Pyhrric victory

@Graham

Let me guess, you're not on a Minimum Wage job, let alone a Zero Hours contract.

Again we see the "Screw you, I'm alright Jack!" attitude.

Ok, so tell me this.... How can I make you smarter such that you can get a better job? How can I make you educate yourself better? How can I make you work harder? Seems to me the answer to the problem here is "you", as opposed to anything I can buy for you, no?

If you want more money, then you have to work harder for it. If you want a better job then you'll have to educate yourself better. Life isn't about what I can do for you - that'll never make you successful or happy. Take responsibility for your life man, you're not a child anymore.

Yet again we see the attitude of "I'm not successful, wealthy, or happy, so I don't want anyone else to be". Or, to give it the name by which it is best know, socialist spite & envy.

Re: Pyhrric victory

@Mr Fuzzy

People are emotionally disturbed if they have political views that don't line up with yours?

I think you're being a little unfair there. Even the parliamentary labour party don't want Corbyn as leader because they're afraid that his ill thought out world view would destroy both their party and their country.

I'm not sure I can ever remember a party leader so openly maligned by the grandees of their own party, before ever they took office. Or a party where so many of its luminaries declined to serve even in a Shadow Cabinet.

The only labour party members I know celebrating Corbyns win are those too young to remember the 70s - Generation Y and the Millenials.

Personally speaking, I want a labour party I can believe in, that I could vote for, but this isn't it. This could never be it. And I'm a little upset about that.

Re: Pyhrric victory

@The Axe

You're thinking 200,000 votes in a limited election can translate to the whole population in a general election. No way. These are 200,000 emotionally disturbed people

Agreed, they are. However....

which is not the same as the general population

That bit I wish I could be more confident about. While Britain has always been a capitalist country, all of my life it has had a deep under current of socialist spite & envy against anyone perceived as having been more successful in accruing wealth - unless they are also largely talentless nonentities from big brother, x-factor, or football.

Don't write Corbyn off as unelectable just yet - idiots get to vote, and having watched Gordon Brown systematically destroy the country, almost enough of those useful idiots still wanted more!

Re: Pyhrric victory

@Graham Marsden

it's good to see that we might *finally* get some balance back in UK politics, rather than "Let the Rich get richer, I'm alright Jack, screw the little people".

The only problem with your little rant, is that the Conservatives hate the poor enough to want to make them rich, while labour, the real nasty party, hate the rich enough to want to make them poor. Rather sad, no?

Corbyns econimic policies, if implemented, would destroy the economy the same way they did last time they were used, in the 1970s. The defining difference though, is that there will be no North Sea Oil to bail us out this time. You'd be looking at generation upon generation trapped in poverty, real poverty, not just some silly metric based around how much your neighbour earns.

Did GCHQ illegally spy on you? Now you can find out – from this page

Re: Have you thought about resurrecting your project?

@AC

My worry would be someone else already has.

Harold, is that you?

Re: My spook experience (mid 1980s)

@AC

A very intriguing post. I'd love to ask you to provide further details of your project, but that would rather give the game away as to your identity. I've a reasonable understanding of big data, and whatever it is you think everyone else has missed, well, I'm most certainly missing it too.

Have you thought about resurrecting your project? The world has moved on a lot from the 80s, so you may find the powers that be more receptive?

Swooning MEPs go all Directioner over Edward Snowden

....a report approved last week called for him to be given asylum.

Anyone with a legal skillset care to explain how that could work?

My legally uneducated take, almost certain to be wrong, is that the EU arrest warrant would force his extradition to Britain should we so request it. Britains extradition arrangements with the use may perhaps best be desrcibed as being both streamlined, and one-sided.

How then could Snowden accept asylum anywhere in the EU, and be safe from extradition? I'm assuming America will want Snowden the second he comes within reach.

Given the choices facing Ed, I'd choose the freedom and quality of life in Russia over a small dark cell or potential patriot induced pine box in America. And I love America (sorry, I know its not the "in" thing to say, but I love the place, not their /our foreign policy).

Re: With any luck...

That seems excessive to me.

As far as anyone has divulged, there was no loss of life due to Snowdens actions, however just or unjust we might each perceive them to be. Radiation sickness seems like an awful way to die, and I'm at a loss as to what possible thought process has brought you to believe it acceptable in this instance?

Care to enlighten me, as I'm genuinely interested?

WinPhone community descends into CANNIBALISM and WOE

Re: Angst

and people generally don't worship tools.

In a world where Kanye West wants to run for President, I feel I must disagree with your hypothesis.

Half the Fanbois in your office are unpatched ATTACK VECTORS

Re: In other news

At El Reg the glass is ALWAYS half empty.

At El Reg the glass is neither half full nor half empty; the glass is incorrectly specified. Probably by a user.

Anti-peeping-tom drone law nixed in California

Or

Chief Cans Californian Creep 'Copter Cancellation. Chicks conceal c-cups. Children Cower. Criminals carbines cocked.

Cheers.

Financial Conduct Authority wastes £3.2m on unnecessary Oracle licences

Re: No general taxpayers money was wasted

@Andy Bell

I too work for a large foreign owned bank. We too spend £BNs here every year. We also make magnitudes more revenue than our costs, which we lovingly term Our Profit.

Some of that profit, more than was used to fund the FCA, is from our profits made in Britain. We're not a charity and we'd not be here were it not profitable for us to be so: in short, we make money for and from our British clients, and they make their money from British tax payers (their customers).

All of our FCA fee and a lot more profit besides, comes indirectly from British people. Any waste by the FCA is indirectly wasting money taken from them. How could it be otherwise?

Re: No general taxpayers money was wasted

@Mayhem

Unfortunately, while we in the financial sector do fund the FCA (and others) rather than the general tax payer, from where is it you think we are funded?

Either from corporates, who are funded by the tax payer, or in the case of retail banks, from the tax payer directly. Tax payers being the public, who are either our customer or our customers customers.

This wasted money has come from all of our pockets via one route or another.

As McAfee runs for US President – we ask a crucial question: Will Reg readers back him?

Re: American Politics

..a well balance intelligent leader, especially if they have a socialist outlook.

Hahahahahaha! I see what you did there.

Batteries on wheels are about to reshape our cities and lives

Think the author got carried away with the hype.

When an insurer looks at the liability profile of an autonomous vehicle - versus a human who can be tired, distracted, drunk, or just plain angry - it’s looking quite likely that autonomous vehicles will cost next to nothing to insure, while the cost of insuring human drivers will skyrocket.

Why is that then?

Some of the premium is theft risk, which will remain as much a risk with these cars as any other.

Some of the premium is fire risk - repairing and cleaning up the roads, which will remain.

Some of the premium covers accidents due to mechanical defect, which will remain a risk - probably more so as people relax about being in them and start treating it as an office/bedroom/lounge rather than car.

My premium is about £250 per year, which reflects my lack of at fault accidents for the past 20 years. There's simply not a lot of that money they can cut. I'll be even less likely to have an accident if the morons are in Johnny cabs which will make them significantly more predictable on the roads, and since the premium is risk based, I should end up paying less too.

Already, you can buy a Ford that parallel parks.

Yes, you can... the question is why would you? Parallel parking is one of the easiest tasks on the driving test and consists of a very short sequence of simple steps. I've tried these Fords a number of times in the past and while they do a good job of parking, they're very slow about doing it.

Sure, autonomous vehicles will be fantastic for us, freeing up leisure time as they make traveling safer, more comfortable and convenient

That is certainly my hope for them. I'd love to be able to 'drive' into work while actually doing some work/training/CoD/Sleeping. I'm about 20 years away from retirement, and I simply don't see these things getting off the ground substantially during my working lifetime. I do hope to be wrong though!

As US$12bn is wiped off Apple's value in one day, iOS 9, OS X 10.11 and Watch OS 2 dates set

Re: Come out of your bubble

@Sirius Lee

Or there are better/as good products that cost a lot less.

I'm struggling to see how new customers, rather than existing fanbois, could look at something like the Wiley Fox Storm for £200 and then decide to buy the new iPhone for £600. Existing customers are pretty much a given, but growth needs new markets, new products, or new customers for what you already have.

Where's the innovation? Apple seem to have dusted off the right click context menus the rest of the world have had since the 1980s and just added that as the main selling point.

While not owning many Apple products, they've driven markets that have made my life more convenient & productive than it used to be. I want them to innovate and keep pushing new markets. I get that without the genius of Steve Jobs that will be extremely difficult, but I had hoped the Jobsian product pipeline would have ran for a few more years yet.

Well, what d'you know: Raising e-book prices doesn't raise sales

Re: Sample of 1

@Scrubber

If you buy the book second-hand neither the author not the publisher receives a penny

Yes...

you might as well pirate the ebook.

..and no.

Residual value factors at some level in peoples purchasing decisions - If I buy this Ford Focus for £xx,000 and use it for five years, how much can I sell if for? People don't buy it assuming the resale value is zero. All those treebook's were bought new by someone. Residual value is still a feature of any equation modelling that spending.

Piracy has no residual value - it simply takes away the value of the lost sale, much like but not quite the same as theft.

Re: It's really simple

@Pete H

... but are they likely to sell twice as many books? Selling the same number of books at half the price is a kind of business suicide.

It can be, but lets look at the alternatives, if ebook prices go higher than I'm happy to pay.

I could buy the dead tree version which will compress their profit margin somewhat more than the leccy one.

I could buy a used copy of the dead tree version from Amazon, thus eliminating all of their profit. Sure, other retailers are available; I use them only because having the "new & used" best price immediately below whatever you're looking at is facilitating zero effort alternatives to the publishers ebook price.

They seem to think the sale is a conclusion and all they're doing is making the ebook more profitable than it already is. In reality, they're just increasing the size of the used treebook market.

Is John McAfee running for US president? 'My campaign manager told me not to comment'

Re: I hope he wins

@FozzyBear

It would make the nightly news the most entertaining thing to watch on TV.

It would indeed, but my only reservation about that, and you'll have to forgive me for raising such a dull trivilaity, is that they have metric fucktonnes of nuclear weapons. McAfee would be deeply funny as President, right up until he wasn't....

Even commies buy iPhones, so if we're going watch America elect the joker, I'd rather said joker was Trump. He'd be averse to nuking his customers for shits & giggles. Frankly, the world has earned a rest from the Bushes and the Clintons playing at Hatfields & McCoys.

Attention sysadmins! Here’s how to dodge bullets in a post-Ashley Madison world

@Chris

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

If, as you say, you check the certification path and it all looks valid, including a Verisign (or other major CA) at the top of the tree, it sounds to me like there's no spoofing going on. It's possible that the root CA is fake, but has been carefully made to resemble a valid one, but I can't see any reason (other than pure devilment) why anyone would bother!

Yeah, I checked it, and it looks ok. They quite probably have carefully assembled a fake cert, as much as an intellectual challenge as for any need to convince me they haven't. It's a very big company with a huge Ops presence. It's what I'd do in their shoes.

The point of all this is not so the BOFH can read all your billets-doux to your mistress

With working full time, a lengthy commute, a wife & small kids to keep happy, and a million other things going on, I've not got the time, the energy, or the inclination for one of those. I blame middle age.

but (mainly) so encrypted malware can't sneak past the virus checker, and (secondarily) to make it more difficult for sensitive information (maybe simply personal data) to be sent outside the corporate boundary.

The first one I'll give them, the second one is the stated intention, but there's a mile wide hole in the remote connectivity process that means I could circumvent much of their checking. There's a second not so wide hole in the setup that I've used only for wholly legitimate purposes (sending training notes home after courses, for further study).

I've no problem with any of it. The company own the kit and they own the data, the code, and all my other output. Plus, I've always viewed moving employers as an opportunity to ditch my older code and rebuild it with the knowledge I acquired first time out. I just have an interest in how things work, so thanks again for your input.

British killer robot takes out two Britons in Syria strike

Re: where is the proof ?

@Zolko

yeah, exactly here lies the problem: what is the proof for that ?

Well, it could be they video they made holding the ISIS flag, while claiming to be members of ISIS, and all the messages they released stating they had joined ISIS, or the fact they were openly recruiting for ISIS. Seriously, there's less evidence they were human than there is for their being ISIS. FFS.

Re: How would they have hurt anyone in the UK ?

These people don't enjoy any support in the UK communities where they are based

It'd be wonderful were that true, but it's not.

Pretty well any survey of attitudes I can find with google shows nearly 45% thinking 9/11 was a setup by the USA, with circa 16% thinking suicide bombing in Israel is just peachy. Now no mulsim I know voices such ridiculous notions, but then they can't speak for their community any more than I can speak for mine.

Trying to gloss over this issue is making the problem worse not better, and its time to tackle it head on and out in the open, however many Guardian readers that may upset.

Re: Victims?

@Voland's right hand

We just reinstated the death penalty and we executed two men without trial.

You've got this very wrong.

They chose to go out there and join an army, for that is what they are and how they view themselves, that rapes, tortures, and murders its way across the middle east, destroying everything in its path. Over absolutely nothing.

They were actively involved in encouraging fellow emptyheads to target British citizens on the mainland. They made it a simple proposition - if they were not killed they would eventually coax an emptyhead into killing some of us. That was not our choice, it was theirs. A targetted drone attack is a civilised way to prevent their planned attoricities. Lets face it, there probably aren't many innocent civillians left in Raqqa, only the terrorists and their supporters and financiers, so we could just have dropped a bloody great bomb.

reinstate the death penalty for grand treason and try the "victims" (quotes intended) in abstentia in open court. If convicted, execute by whatever means necessary.

These two were terrorist scum. Nothing more. While you're busy gathering evidence, they're busy gathering support. While you're busy planning a trial, they're busy planning an attrocity. And while you're busy executing a show trial with an empty dock, they're busy executing British civilians. No thanks. They had it coming.

Icon seems appropriate.....

US gov to Apple: COUGH UP iMessages or FEEL our FEDERAL FROWN

@AC

The fact that governments employ code breakers suggests that they must provide some value to the government. They must be able to decrypt some of the messages that the government is interested in reading. Otherwise there would be no point in employing them.

Given the number of people designing their own encryption (Some terrorists got busted on this a couple of years back), or buggering up rolling their own implementing of strong encryption, I'd imagine they decrypt plenty of things.

GCHQ, NSA etc can play a very long game; Not just in terms of finances, but also in terms of multi-generational projects. You want to achieve something as soon as possible, fine, but that may take 50 years to figure out, maybe 100+. That's ok from their perspective because the agency lives forever, even if the staff don't.

Further to that, I imagine they can do a lot of clever things around message repetition and big data analysis. "I'm on the train" must be one of the most sent SMS messages of all time, and even encrypted, it would have certain characteristics in common - time and location sent from and to - they can disgard the message from further analysis once they've established it'll just be me texting my wife. The more noise they can eliminate will make the signal side of the ratio stronger.

URRGH! Evil app WATCHES YOU WATCHING PORN, snaps your grimace

Re: A better headline...

P0rn purveyors pernicious program publishes punters private pen1s pumping pictures.

Are you avoiding tax, big tech firm? Not any more you won't, growl MEPs

Re: Other ways for countries to make money

charging all of the migrants 1000eu for a ... passport

That already happens, its just the price that differs. Seriously, several EU states will hawk a passport for the right price, they just dress up the terms a small amount.