US trade watchdog to FBI: 'You think the crims won't know about the backdoor too?' What a week it has been. We've seen dangerous dating sites, crazy gaming rigs and crooked Wikipedia mods. Now on to some of our favourite quips: FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny dropped a bit of common sense on the FBI's demands of backdoors for law enforcement. She explained her own (more rational) position thusly: Some …
... after reconsidering the ban on the user "Shadow Systems", see the comments with http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/04/nsa_explains_handling_zerodays/
Let's just say he was tired and emotional, OK?
( I could not read his message, it was already purged).
I doubt they will reconsider, but you get an upvote because I think it was probably an overreaction (though I never got to see the full message).
I've had messages in the past from people who have hit upon issues on a page when using a screen-reader. Some of them have been very angry/frustrated, but it largely seems to be because a page not being accessible is such a common problem.
> ...because a page not being accessible is such a common problem.
From what I heard from a blind coworker, a page not being accessible is close to the norm. Considering how mad I get with broken web pages, I marvel that these people are not on a constant rage.
Presumably doubly-frustrating in the case of that article, given that the Reg is normally accessible. Or, at least, I assume it is because Shadow Systems was a regular commentard.
Had a mail a while back from some guy who'd been searching for ages on how to fix an issue, and had found what might be the solution on one of my sites. Except he couldn't read it, because his screenreader didn't like a tag that iOS (at the time) insisted on, but had no apparent impact on other browsers.
You can banned for a one-off rant now? Fuck me. Time to give up commentarding or -possibly- time to look up what politeness is and how it is achieved. Nah; definitely the former, I think.
I was under the impression that you were allowed the occasional full-fat flame here on El Reg if you were generally helpful on occasion to make up for it. Plus everyone gets to take the piss for a couple of days; which is all jolly entertaining.
I do hope that this just a commentard and a mod both having simultaneous bad days and it will all be sorted out in the morning (or possibly late afternoon). Hope it's not a policy shift towards political correctness; because fuck that with a soapy nun.
In a part of the interwebs, far away from here, I work as an editor. I have to admit that there are things that make me suggest to ban an account. Personal threats is one of them (even if not directed towards me). Very strong (or persistent) insults can, at least on a bad/sad day, make me wish to kick somebody. We are all only humans.
Ho-hum, beer o'clock.
I believe I've stumbled upon some deleted accounts. In such cases, link to user's posts will not work (can't remember if it's 404 or some other message), but posts under articles are still there, albeit now anonymous. AFAIK only Eadon got all his posts deleted.
Shadow Systems seems to be quite intact. Can't determine whether his login is blocked or not, until he makes another post.
> Shadow Systems seems to be quite intact.
My (ahem, educated) guess is that disabling login will leave history and messages intact.
The only case I am aware of a "removal from history" was the user 'Eadon'. Even though I somewhat regret the chainsaw purge, I can understand that his insane repetitiveness led to him to being nuked from the orbit Reg-wise. He was a thermonuclear god-awful PITA if there ever was one.
"disabling login will leave history and messages intact"
True. But the mod explicitly said "and does not have an account now" - well, that's not the case here, account is still defined, posts are readable, haven't gone anonymous.
Maybe we'll hear something better next week.
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