* Posts by Stephen Jones

28 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2007

The tech jobs headhunters just can't fill

Stephen Jones

They want people to look at problems "holistically" and are not tied to a single vendor. That means you're going to need people with years of experience in several technologies. No wonder such people are expensive.

Rogue admin waits for verdict

Stephen Jones
Stop

This is just incorrect

He handed over admin passwords as soon as he was in a room alone with his boss. He refused to hand them over in full view of a bunch of HR people and a couple of regular cops. Would you want HR to have the admin passes to your cities critical infrastructure?

Epic Fail: How the photographers won, while digital rights failed

Stephen Jones
Pirate

No

The teenager downloading music (which is not illegal) is only perceived as wrong because of what the music industry has stolen from our culture. The music industry has served it's purpose and is now obsolete, it is scrabbling for life and doesn't care who it has to stand on to do it.

The reason this bill passed is that it was not even wrong. It is founded on such a nonsensical argument that it would take several hours to explain it. No MP would bother wading into anything that complex.

Google grabs Indian cricket coverage

Stephen Jones
WTF?

Nonsense

Who are you? Orlowski?

Perhaps you're just a TV middle manager in which case, sorry for your loss.

Integrated tube tickets not on the Olympic menu

Stephen Jones
Headmaster

Illegal?

I'm pretty sure taking photos of the games and sharing them isn't illegal. It might contravene the T&Cs, but that's a civil matter.

What does sound flaky is whether restrictions on legal tender are legal. I know there is a crazy notion that cash is the only legal tender, but all it takes is one judge to state that "a Mastercard should be reasonably expected to be accepted as payment" and the Olympic Committee are screwed.

Google (still) pocketing dollars for free clicks

Stephen Jones
FAIL

Fault

Well it is Microsoft's browser with the scummy malware installed. They are easily as much at fault as Google here. Probably more, have MS ever handed out compensation to anyone for the problems their shitty software causes?

Why the Advocate General got Google AdWords wrong

Stephen Jones
Alert

As the saying goes

When the law is against you, hammer the facts. When the facts are against you, hammer the law. When both are against you, put out a press release.

The flaw in the argument is the established case law takes precedence over the statute.

When ISPs hijack your rights to NXDOMAIN

Stephen Jones
FAIL

Of course...

... when you type "google.cmo" into your browser what you really want is links to bing.com and a whole bunch of domain squatters.

I'll stick with my browser sticking things it doesn't understand into google, rather than have my ISP recommend its "trusted partners" to me.

protip: DNS is de-centralised, if they're hijacking packets it's a RIP Act violation, if they're not you can just resolve direct from the root servers.

Kit makers trash New York e-waste recycling

Stephen Jones
Happy

WaaWaa more corporate whinging

Not only is it more environmentally friendly for a few trucks to drive around and pick goods up rather than for everyone to drive to the dump individually, this might encourage them to make things that last a bit longer. They're just whining that disposing of their crap is no longer an externality.

Botched judge threat probe downs Fathers 4 Justice website

Stephen Jones
FAIL

It's worse than that

How on earth was the injunction to take down the F4J website going to do anything? This is the internet, the information could have been posted in any one of thousands of places. Words cannot express the sheer level of incompetence shown by the civil service or the courts here.

Broadband for all soundbite trumps content, quality

Stephen Jones
Badgers

Awwww

poor "content" producers. I wonder if there's a correlation between being online and being able to recognise that most of the content being produced by the media is tripe. It seems the issues raised were:

1) I don't want money being spent to get the internet to work, I want that money given to me, just for being on the internet.

2) OMG GOOGLE ARE STEALING OUR DATA!!!

3) DAB

The later is worth bringing up for comedy value. I mean transmitting digital signals through the air is clearly not beyond the wit of man, just the wit of government.

E-cars are a dangerous myth, says top boffin

Stephen Jones
Thumb Down

Hope they paid you well for this

36% is the lower end of the efficiency scale for power plants, 35-48% is normal. New gas powered plants can hit 60%. A regular internal combustion engine will maybe get 20%.

As for cost, electricity doesn't require oil tankers, depots or filling stations, just nice cheap wires (compare to the costs of maintaining a fleet of tankers). Less people involved, less time and money wasted. Of course it will mean less jobs if you only have a Daily Mail level of understanding of economics.

Oh well, can't let the facts get in the way of a good troll. Wait, it wasn't even a good troll, frankly it was lackluster, 3/10.

Meet Phorm's PR genius

Stephen Jones

@Andy S

The hidden agenda of the anti-brown campaign is that we vote Lib Dem?

Google money machine defies common sense

Stephen Jones
Black Helicopters

Breaking news: Google Ads Still Exist

How much do they pay you to keep mentioning them?

Or is this a plug for AdGooroo? Google ads are really complicated, perhaps this company you've never heard of can help.

Busted! Conficker's tell-tale heart uncovered

Stephen Jones
Boffin

Changing the clock

Confliker is much better at this game than you guys. It checks a whole bunch of websites to confirm the time, it doesn't rely on the system clock. As for AV detection, it disables AV.

Pro-filesharing Swedish party hopes for seat in Brussels

Stephen Jones
Boffin

@ Richard Kay

No, the original point of copyright law was to prevent artists loosing prestige by having other copy their work without attribution. The money stuff came later.

Facebook nemesis sues Google (and wins)

Stephen Jones
Paris Hilton

Urgh

He's blowing it well out of proportion. Google owed him money for services rendered. This has nothing to do with the rights of the little guy, Google transparency are anything like that. He was right to sue for it, but the self congratulatory tone is grating.

UFO damages Lincolnshire wind turbine

Stephen Jones

What really happened

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=58RWi3m4Law

China and Russia still piracy hotbeds, says US gov

Stephen Jones

@BKB

You'll often see news reports about counterfeit medicines, with all kinds of scary warnings about how they kill people. Then in the same article you'll see a story about medicines killing people. The formula is the same in many publications and gets repeated over and over. When you look a little deeper you'll see that the latter story always involves licensed medical production, and has nothing to do with fake medicine.

What exactly is a 'fake' medicine anyway?

Google cheers anti-Comcast legislation

Stephen Jones
Boffin

@Paul M

Richard Bennet is an idiot at best or shill at worst. Every one of his arguments starts on the presumption that there isn't enough bandwidth to go around and anyone using the bandwidth they've been promised is evil. I bet he's never set up a proper traffic shaping system in his life, whereas any Linux geek worth his salt can make quake packets < 20ms while maximising BitTorrent's bandwidth utility. Yes Comcast has a lot more tubes to manage, but they also have high end hardware, and highly paid engineers. Perhaps if they shifted some of their lobbying budget into engineering this would never have happened...

Military industrial complex aims to revamp email

Stephen Jones

*cough*

PGP/GPG?

Can anyone tell me what all this PKI nonsense does that it doesn't? Digital Signatures, check. Encryption, check. You just have to add a public key fingerprint to your business card next to the email address and you're all done. And it works fine over the existing infrastructure.

Crocodile tears for under-fire Microsoft MVP

Stephen Jones

Ahem...

"Oh, and the bit where he actually removed the features for express, but left in a registry key to enable them again, not very bright."

He didn't publish that information, Microsoft reverse engineered/hacked his product to find that out.

Google Checkout downchecked by UK users

Stephen Jones

Just another "it worked for me"

...twice.

Perhaps a reg reader survey is in order:

Have you used google checkout?

Was it with eBuyer?

Did it work without a hitch?

Endemol in 'win a kidney' TV show rumpus

Stephen Jones

Oh no, not necrophilla

I'm quite happy for my body after I die do be harvested for organs, screwed senseless and the remainder composted. In fact I believe it's selfish to not want this. I think it'd be totally acceptable to have an opt out scheme, so members of me-me-$DEITY-loves-me religions can have their selfish wishes respected.

o/ It's the circle of liiiiife o/

University moves to hush Facebook criticism

Stephen Jones

Because of course students are there to work....

... not to learn.

Listen up banks: women are worth IT

Stephen Jones

Is Jizz...

...the word you meant to use?

Chemical weapons are not WMDs

Stephen Jones

Wow, people really do have their heads up their arses on this one

Chemical weapons are as bad as people think because they'll create mass panic because people think they're bad? Seriously people, calm down, take a breath and switch your brain on.

A chemical weapon going off in your face will kill you, a stick of dynamite going off in your face will kill you. Neither will kill you from a mile away. Dirty bombs won't either so you can forget that fantasy. As for 1.1 million deaths in WWII, if the terrorists herd you into a big room for 'a shower', it might be time to worry. Until then, sleep well, there are no terrorists under your bed.

Jedi denounce UK sabre ban plan

Stephen Jones

So just imitation 'samurai' swords?

Would that be Katanas, Wakizashi, or some other type of weapon carried by samurai? What about fencers, with their sabres and foils? What about the most commonly used weapon in Britain, the carving knife?

And I find the points on kitchen knives invaluable for digging bad bits out of potatoes.