* Posts by J Bourne

27 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2015

Man sparks controversy, fined $120 for enjoying wristjob while driving

J Bourne

And here I was trying work out whether people actually believe that laws are strictly interpreted to the letter of the written statute. I believe that in Canada as in the UK law and especially the intent of the law is interpreted by the courts - The actual law is test-case law not statute. If a judge (the last one to be appealed to) of a sufficiently high stature decides that the intent olf the law would have been to cover wrist mounted devices as well if only the statute writers had crystal balls to think of it, then he'll find as if the handheld clause was breached which would set precedent for further cases. The phone part of statute is even clearer - 'Phone function' The iwatch does have a phone function albeit proxied from the owners/users actual phone. Would be much simpler if the offence was 'being an idiot in a car directly in front of a uniformed police officer/patrol'....

J Bourne

Re: Driving? PAY ATTENTION TO DRIVING!!!

" 3. Always drives with no SA and just permanently stares at the car in front of them"

All the C**ks in VAG cars have situational awareness - The situation normally being one of ; I'm not going fast enough; How fast can enter that roundabout/junction and prevent anyone else waiting from pulling out; I'm too far away from the vehicle in front - must get within a single car length; I'm late for work - but I won't be by the time I get there; I'm late getting home - and that's more important than anyone else's day; I'm late, I'm late .....

Then I'm sure there's a few that the only thing going through there heads is 'Vroooom.........parp parp' (just like toad). And all those beeps and bright flashy lights are in celebration of their awesomeness....

J Bourne

Re: What an idiot....

Rule #1 - When you see a cop car behind you - be squeaky clean!

The argument is that even knowing a cop car was behind him, even not knowing the exact rules governing writs-jobs whilst driving. The cop car observing you trumps all - Just drive and keep your hands visible on the wheel (unless you need to change gear on a manual gearbox). Don't prod any button at all!

Rule #2 - Pay attention to the most hazardous thing likely to cross your path.

Rule #2 should really be equal to rule #1 as if you fail rule #2 in front of the coppers you're gonna get pulled anyway.

Lost your shirt in the MtGox Bitcoin mess? Release the Kraken!

J Bourne
Mushroom

Get back to real distributed computing?

Any chance that 'digital currency' can be swept under the carpet for the South sea bubble that it is and all that wasted processing power can be put to some sort of good use? (like working out how the increasing population is going to survive in a world of reducing finite resources?)

Just thought perhaps melting the poles is a plan to introduce a new usable fertile continent to feed the world? Should keep us going for another 500 years or so eh?

Google to kill passwords on Android, replace 'em with 'trust scores'

J Bourne
Coat

Re: Just curious ... how many commentards here

"f you start (as I do) from the premise that the "classic" username+password authentication paradigm is broken"

MMMmm, nope?

J Bourne

Just when you might need it the most....

Just don't get your hair cut, go on holiday and get a tan in a strange land and then catch a sore throat from overdoing the Karaoke the night before.... And then have the rental car break down at night in the hills.... Just sayin like.

60 per cent of Androids exposed by new attack on mediaserver

J Bourne

Re: That's it

"FWIW enterprise Android usually means locked down with an app whitelist. Or, increasingly, their own "app stores".

So even less likely to be downloading dodgy apps from the Play store or anywhere else...

Can I have 2 minutes of my life back please?

feature request to el Reg : please attach author's name to articles in RSS feed.

A million machines enslaved by MitM Google ad fraud botnet

J Bourne
Linux

Let me fix that for you...

A million Windows machines enslaved by MitM Google ad fraud botnet

There, that's better isn't it?

'Knucklehead' Kansas bloke shoots self in foot

J Bourne

Re: +Gordon 10

Just for clarification is D**n = Darn or Damn? ..... +1 for +1 for > "And you censored yourself from saying Damn???" (quoted for the sentence beginning with 'And' : I'm staying on the fence for that debate).

J Bourne

Re: Guns can actually be quite dangerous

That'd be 63 million total of every age, USA approx 320 million. As percentage of total population :

The USA shoots 0.0008% of it's population under the age of 19.

The UK runs down 0.002% of it's population under the age of 19.

But I guess the USA also runs down it's teenagers, and the UK must shoot some of theirs..... Statistics eh?

J Bourne
Coat

1,2 , few?

Pedantic nit-pick time a 'few' i.e. 3 (centuries) or more? USA Bill of rights was December the 15th 1791 which makes it less than 300 years ago....There's another 75 to go yet before it's a few....

Australia copies UK's Google tax on 'contrived' dodges

J Bourne

Re: Th[e]re is a slight problem with this

If we can actually get a fair vote with a less apathetic turn out than usual on the whole EU referendum we'll be able to sort all of that out very soon. (wishful thinking, I know).

Learn a scripting language and play nicely: How to get a DevOps job

J Bourne

talking bollocks 2

Have an upvote

' Ruby, Python or Go' Ok, so I've heard of Ruby, can use Python - but isn't 'Go' an ancient game?

'Chef, Puppet and Ansible' Ainsley Harriot? Sooty? wtf???

'Docker, Kubernetes, Nomand' ....

The problem with IT today is finding names for things that actually mean something useful or indicative of what it is. So many names of things in IT are now so separated from the thing itself they have no useful meaning

FBI iPhone brouhaha sparks Apple Store protest in San Francisco

J Bourne

Re: The Bureau isn't asking for a back door

" if any old mass murderer was killed in their activity and the police turned up with a search warrant at his shed, the landlord would be quite right to say, "I cannot help you enter his gaff even though he might have all sorts of crap held there"?"

That is a very poor analogy - The landlord has a key for the shed in question (presumably), he's not being asked to make a skeleton key that could open any (everyone's) shed. In the analogy, even if the landlord didn't have key and precluding breaking in by force then just about any locksmith ('skilled in the art') would be able to unlock the shed for them (manufacturer assistance not required). Let's go one step further and assume this shed is secured with the most secure locke from acme locks. The police ask Acme locks to open it for them, they do so, it take 3 days - they haven't made any of their other locks of the same model any less secure than they were before.

In the case of the court ordering Apple to come up with a software hack 'that will only assist in the unlocking of the phone in question' isn't possible. As soon as a solution is created in source code then changing it to open any phone is only a very small step away; opening the doors to further requests/orders from law enforcement/the courts - and the increased potential to leak that hack into the public domain.

At least 10 major loyalty card schemes compromised in industry-wide scam

J Bourne

Re: I feel left out (@Tromos)

But what you forget is this: those customer's without loyalty cards don't pay a lower price for the same goods that I buy. They just get the goods, I get the goods plus a percentage of my spend back to spend again. Effectively giving me a lower price (yes, I take the monetary value of my points once a year at the checkout) I effectively get a free large weekly shop once a year. All the non-card holders help to subsidise that.

Taylor Swift snaps up EVEN MORE pr0n domain names

J Bourne

Money for nothing....

'The advance sale will likely be viewed as a pre-emptive opportunity for brands to stop trolls claiming their trademarked names'

I thought all this had been dealt with without the need for trademark owners having to 'buy'/rent/lease their own trademark back, effectively bringing an end to domain squatting.

As others have already observed, there's more controversial or pr0n domain names to be made up however many you (Taylor Swift) can imagine and pre-register (pay for).

Do you think if I registered Itaughttaylorswifthowtogivehead.co.uk I'd make a profit? (that ones easy and for free, I could think of loads more...)

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

J Bourne
Coat

215,000 users - 2 weeks - one prosecution

2 weeks of distributing child pornography by a US govt agency to 215,000 pervs - and only ONE prosecution???? walks away shaking head....

Google robo-car suffers brain freeze after seeing hipster cyclist

J Bourne

There are four way junctions in the UK, and will have either four give ways, four stops or no road markings at all. The rules of precedence of arrival apply first then give way to the right. Where two vehicles are facing each other across the junction and one is indicating to turn across the others path then I'm not sure who has right of way (if anyone). similarly there would be a deadlock to resolve if all 4 approaches were to be occupied simultaneously (unlikely, these sort of junctions are never in busy locations).

J Bourne
Mushroom

Re: Maybe you "Entitled" cyclists....

"The roads are designed for Autos. They pay the taxes that provide upkeep for the roadways. YOU DON'T!"

Really? May be true for the USA. But If the roads in London were designed for cars, then they'd be quite different. 'Autos' I drive a manual - or do you mean 'automobile' how quaint. In the UK at least the vehicle excise duty doesn't pay for roads maintenance - there isn't any except for widening the whole of every motorway all at once. (need to give the european workers something to do).

"The larger vessel has the right of way."

Since when? to take your analogy of water craft in actual fact paddle/oar has priority over sail over motor - size doesn't come into it: it's not a case of my ***** is bigger than yours.

Susan Sheridan, voice of Hitchhiker's Trillian, dies aged 68

J Bourne

Video of the radio show?? think on....

Jeep hackers broke DMCA, says EFF, and that's stupid

J Bourne

Re: It's already happening...

And I guess the big OS companies spend pennies then, cos they are getting their software pwned monthly.

Driverless cars banished to fake Michigan 'town' until they learn to read

J Bourne

Re: Fantastic projets

Because it should be 'Reliant Robin' ....

while I'm here I fail to notice anything other than level roads, no hills in driverless car world? How will they handle blind summits with parked cars either side or angled junctions at the bottom of a hill? How about getting confused on an overpass and trying to turn onto the road below? ouch!

Maybe however these won't be able to use the 'Sorry I mate I didn't see you' (SMIDSY) method of 'apologising' for maiming cyclists and motorcyclists....

My top three IT SNAFUs - and how I fixed them

J Bourne
Facepalm

After being asked to check the security of the company web site (remote hosted) I Enabled 'Hot link' protection on the company website through the hosting admin console. A feature intended to preventmedia from the site from being embedded on any other sites apart from approved ones, i.e. our own. Tested the site and all was working well at 3:15pm went home at 5pm. Arrived next morning to find that at 5:15 all the images on the website had 'inexplicably disappeared off the sites web pages.

The hosting control panel could have mentioned the small fact that it takes (for some unknown reason) 2 hours to apply the setting and another 2 hours to remove it and that it might actually break the site. :doh and this was just last week!

Google: Our self-driving cars would be tip-top if you meatheads didn’t crash into them

J Bourne

When all else fails, and whatever you do you're going to hit something. try to hit something soft.

There you go fixed that.

One USB plug to rule them all? That's sensible, but no...

J Bourne

Cable spaghetti

Good luck rewiring that mess of servers after the intern pulls all the cables without labelling anything. With all cables looking the same not only will you not know where to plug it in you won't be able to tell from which peripheral it comes from on the other side of the room.

Nope. That's not our FAKE BOMB say Oz spooks and cops

J Bourne
Coat

Isn't the point of an exercise of this nature to test the response of the various services? Not sure how you're going to achieve that if you tell them it's a fake......