* Posts by Michael Fremlins

186 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

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Broadband tax of £6 per year to fund rural fibre rollout

Michael Fremlins

The benefits

"The benefits we believe will be enormous," Carter said. I expect to BT they will be.

What is the real difference between this and pre-privatisation BT?

UK.gov to create central cybersecurity agency

Michael Fremlins

Another government agency

Jobs for the friends of those in government. The client state grows ever bigger.

Site news: Unique commenter handles coming

Michael Fremlins

What about anonymous coward

I've always wondered how he managed to post so many comments!

ECHR overturns Court of Appeal prisoner privacy ruling

Michael Fremlins

Privacy rights and MPs?

I thought they were nonexistent. All it takes is the word of a jumped-up policeman and anything i fair game. Plus bugging of conversations with solicitors, of course.

I have been wondering if the police have bugged jury rooms. I wonder how one would find out about this.

Police deny targeting kids for DNA

Michael Fremlins

I'm waiting for the retraction

It should only be a few days coming.

The police will then admit that they have been arresting people just to get their DNA. It was the person's fault for being arrested. The police did nothing wrong. In fact they arrested people to help them. And they'll do it again in the future.

One wonders how many of these arrests can be termed "false", in which case there should be criminal trials for the arresting officers.

Poor management hampers gov IT

Michael Fremlins

And in other news

Poor goverment hampers IT management.

BT Global Services' own Clouseau bags massive bonus

Michael Fremlins

Not a bad bonus for losing so much money.

As he's French one wonders if he was a mole all along.

Getting real about Linux on the desktop

Michael Fremlins

@Geoff Mackenzie

I completely agree about Office and Exchange. I know that some people have spent many painful days or weeks writing macros and other yarbles for their Excel spreadsheets, and moving away from that would be very painful.

Exchange is a little bit different. At my old company we had Solaris machines as the primary MXs, forwarding on to Exchange machines for the mail boxes for most people. Some preferred to have IMAP on UNIX instead. One of the things that the Exchange users liked to use was the shared calendar. But as all the staff sat in one big open plan office it was a bit unnecessary, and I suspect for many small companies it is equally unnecessary.

Most of our platform ran on UNIX, and the people who ran the platform ran UNIX. Most of the "office staff" ran Windows. It would be almost impossible to pull them away from that. Web developers - use PS, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, whatever else. Finance - use Sage. Management - er. Trying to make the techies use Windows would have made us unhappy. It's exactly the same for trying to make Windows users use Linux.

It is a bit frustrating, but I have no axe to grind.

Michael Fremlins

The old desktop Linux chestnut

There are good reasons not to move to Linux on the desktop, particularly lack of certain applications. Photoshop/Illustrator/Quark/other high end graphics? Nope. (Don't say Gimp, just don't say it). For the Mac retards, there are plenty of people who use PS on Windows. That doesn't mean that PS couldn't be built for Linux, but that it is simply not.

But there's another thing which might be skewing the desktop, and that is the number of Linux distros out there. Which one could or should be chosen? One thing you can say about XP is its longevity, 8 years old now. With service packs, of course, but basically the same desktop for the last x years. "Linux" gets a new KDE or Gnome or XFCE or whatever when a new distro is released. Sometimes change is not a good thing. Sometimes people want familiarity. I got a copy of Deneba Canvas 7 from a cover CD a couple of years ago. It was released in 2000. It runs fine on my Windows XP box. And anyone anywhere can do the same. That's a good thing.

Unless Linux can run Windows programs users might as well use dumb terminals.

Would-be Jacqui whacker told to try his hand with the Met

Michael Fremlins

As usual with the courts

Protecting the "leaders" of the country and ignoring the people. So much for justice.

Charges against London tube tourist snapper thrown out

Michael Fremlins

So why was he arrested?

Once again, the police overreacted. A mere complaint is enough to get somebody arrested. When will the police use their brains (if they have any)?

Bates: Cops to defy courts over return of indecent material

Michael Fremlins

Fucking police

As usual they think they are above the law.

How would that useless Chief Constable feel if Joe Public decided not to obey the law.

Cyber attack could bring US military response

Michael Fremlins
Unhappy

America is gun crazy

So a bit of hacking is now worthy of a B52 in return. Dust off the nukes, Gary McKinnon is after us.

Mexico? US? Just don't go there, warns EU health chief

Michael Fremlins

@Graham Marsden

You are absolutely right. My mistake.

Michael Fremlins

Sexing up?

When SARS was in the news, we had Private Jones running about telling us not to panic. Now we have some pig flu, and Jones is at it again.

So influenza can kill. I accept that, and we all know about the 1918 pandemic (thanks to a paragraph seeming to be in every report about somebody with a runny nose). But some people appear conspicuously keen to sex up every possible outbreak into the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it event. Typically these people are WHO staffers, and their willing servants are the mis-reporters in the mass media. Ebola? We're all going to die. Flu? We're all going to die. Runny nose? You have flu and will die. Travel to Mexico? You will die. But's it's too late, cos it's here now anyway, so you will die.

For some people at the WHO and similar organisations, it seems the news is more important than the event. Their raison d'etre is to try to scare us all. They want to be first to tell us "We told you this would happen". For them, mass deaths are topical. And topicality, to quote George Smiley, is always suspect.

Windows 7 and the Linux lesson

Michael Fremlins
Happy

Perhaps Microsoft is right

An open and shut case of apples and oranges, m'lud.

Ubuntu developers did not write Linux, they wrote small parts of the Ubuntu distribution. Much, or even most, of what many people think of as Linux (e.g. ALL the GNU tools, Apache, BIND, X Windows, and so on) is separate.

I've built later versions of all-the-above on Linux (and Solaris and FreeBSD). Does that make me a Linux distro maker? No. But to varying extents that is what Linux distro makers do.

I'm not deriding Linux distro makers. But you are comparing a company, Microsoft, which builds most of its own OS, with Canonical which essentially repackages Debian into something called Ubuntu. Again, I'm not saying that is a bad thing, and Ubuntu is a very nice distribution. It's very polished. But they didn't write most of it.

A more honest comparison might be between Microsoft and Debian, and The Register has had things to say in the past about delayed Debian releases.

After the Vista debacle I'm not surprised that MS is apparently being more cautious this time. Why wouldn't they be? Who would get the blame if MS releases Windows 7 and some widely used piece of software doesn't work exactly as expected? Or some "feature" is broken?

Private ID scans leave fetish club-goers feeling exposed

Michael Fremlins

Yet again it's the police MAKING the law

The police should learn to shut up and enforce existing laws, not make it through the back door.

IBM picks open-source in Oracle database fight

Michael Fremlins
Unhappy

What Postgres needs...

is a dead simple to set up replication system, like MySQL.

All the available options for Postgres replication are ugly or cumbersome, for whatever reasons.

It's the reason why we've used MySQL for the last few years and not Postgres. The only reason.

Rail union ballots for strike over fingerprints

Michael Fremlins

For once I am on the same side as Bob Crowe

I have always considered Bob Crowe very eager to call a strike for the flimsiest of reasons. Indeed, whenever I have gone on holiday and taken the train/tube to the airport, I have woken on the day with some trepidation lest Bob Crowe had called a strike because a railway worker had cut his finger.

For once I am in agreement with Crowe.

Councils to lose some spy powers

Michael Fremlins
Unhappy

fly-tipping and rogue trading...

are not serious offences. They are a nuisance, but they are not in the same league as murder.

Take away ALL the powers to snoop from the councils. These proposals are just a sop, and no doubt an electioneering sop at that.

eBay to divorce Skype on Wall St

Michael Fremlins
Happy

The National Security Agency?

Wasn't it reported that the US NSA were prepared to spend "billions" for a Skype-tapping system? Why not buy the company, like Victor Kiam? Anonymously, of course...

Ofcom guns for Hollywood with roaming vid

Michael Fremlins
Happy

Looks like tuppence?

It must have cost £400,000 like the Olympic 2012 lump of rubbish, I mean logo.

Whitehall to train pro-West Islamic groups to game Google

Michael Fremlins

More money down the drain

Government + (anything to do with IT) = waste of time + money.

iPhone's Wi-Fi problems cause heated speculation

Michael Fremlins

Apple - it just works!

Not.

Spies hacked US electrical grid, says WSJ

Michael Fremlins
Happy

Do unto others...

as you would have them do unto you.

Well, it's a little bit rich of the USA to complain if the Russians have managed to infiltrate their electrical grid and leave a few rogue programs behind. Didn't the good old USA supply Russia with deliberately-flawed computers, technical manuals, faulty designs and so on when Reagan was in power? Is spying and sabotage only OK if it's being done by the USA to somebody else?

Of course, when things go wrong with the power grid in the USA, they can't wait to blame somebody else: "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3152451.stm".

"It was dem Canucks", said the Americans. "Nope, wasn't us", said the Canadians. And who was right? Next time, they'll be able to say "It was the Russians/Chinese/Canadians/other people".

Secret European project to battle online jihad

Michael Fremlins
Unhappy

But is the government to be trusted?

Let's think for two seconds. RIPA, which was introduced for anti-terror purposes (don't try and deny it, read Hansard), but later extended, is being misused by councils to catch parents trying to get their children into good schools, and against those who drop litter.

How do we know that the government is not now misusing the Terrorism Act 2006? Why should we trust the government? Who are the faceless and nameless bureaucrats who will be deciding that certain web sites are not for our eyes? What will be the criteria for blocking such sites? This is quite a different situation from that with the IWF, which has published guidelines on its "block" list. The words "minister" or "secretary of state" on a document does not any credibility these days.

I can easily see this being misused by the government to block any site they disagree with, or that offers an alternative view or opinion on things they consider important. Would Al Jazeera be blocked? This is not a farfetched notion.

The very suggestion that is a (poorly kept) secret plan does not bode well.

Wi-Fi Beeb viewing may break law

Michael Fremlins

Abolish the licence

What are they afraid of? The BBC love to tell us that BBC is fantastic television. In which case people will pay for it, won't they? Or is the BBC actually a load of rubbish? Does it live in cloud-cuckoo bbcland, where everything is peachy?

I watch the television about once a month now, and that's only when I really can't find anything else to do. Soon I will get rid of my TV and save myself the licence fee. No doubt some jack-booted licence enforcers will knock at my door and I will have to prove I don't have a TV.

Report: Legalising drugs would save UK plc huge packet

Michael Fremlins

@Joe K

Wrong, utterly wrong about heroin. You've been listening to too many ill-informed and lies-spreading panic-monkeys. One snort/shot/puff does not a heroin addict make.

Michael Fremlins

Re-legalise drugs now!

Naturally there is not a snowball's chance in hell of this happening. The "powers that be" won't listen to either reason or scientific evidence. They have made up their minds and will not change them.

Take the recent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommendation that ecstasy be downgraded to class B. Cue the ham acting of government ministers: gnashing of teeth, hands being flung into the air, shock and horror on the look on their faces. "The government firmly believes ecstasy should remain a class A drug," a Home Office spokesman said.

What is this "belief" based on? What other things does this spokesman "believe" in? Which religion has it written down in some holy book that ecstasy should be classified as a class A drug?

It's time to remove the shackles and give us back our liberty.

Gnome answers Linux critics with 'big' vision plan

Michael Fremlins

What I would like to see from Gnome and KDE

is something innovative and new, and not just *nix knockoff versions of Windows or Mac apps.

G20 police demand ID as train staff ordered to spy on passengers

Michael Fremlins

How can the police use a law which does not exist?

Which law is being used to demand two forms of identification from members of the public? How are the police able to get away with this?

LibDems uncover over 10,000 RIPA yarns

Michael Fremlins
Heart

Secretgreek - you are the one who is wrong, wrong, wrong

Go and look up the parliamentary debates in Hansard. At the time the legislation was passed, 9 organisations were allowed to use RIPA. The purpose when it introduced was to fight terrorism and serious crime. There is no mention in the original debates about it being used by local councils at all. RIPA was later extended to councils and hundreds of other organisations.

There are (supposed to be) safeguards in RIPA, and a very useful FOI request would be to see how many RIPA orders have been turned down. I suspect the number would be very low.

Lawyer-client privilege no bar to surveillance, say Lords

Michael Fremlins
Unhappy

Why do we have courts? Why do we have parliament?

It seems that absolutely none of the rights that we have taken for granted are either safe nor sacred.

In the name of anti-crime or anti-terror measures, i.e. at the behest of a policeman, privileged conversations can be bugged! Whatever happened to the "fruit from the forbidden tree"? Our MPs are a very sorry lot, intent only on filling their pockets with our money, yet not protecting our rights.

The message is clear: if one is arrested, speak quietly directly into your lawyer's ear, and ask him to do the same. It won't be long before the "serious" cases where this is used includes minor motoring or littering, if it hasn't already.

Who in this country actually wants to live like this? Who voted for it?

Still more Tasers for plods - but still not in London

Michael Fremlins

The police federation

I really don't care tuppence what they say or think. The first duty of the police should be to protect the public, not themselves.

Let's face it, the police knew that tasers were not an issue item when they joined. Too bad if they can't do the job without them, find somebody else who will.

Police law-interpretation: What next?

Michael Fremlins

It's not just CCTV the police want in pubs

It's unfettered police access without a warrant to the recordings of those CCTV cameras, without a warrant and on demand. Whether or not a crime has been committed or alleged...

All licensed premises would thus become yet another part of the country where people are under surveillance.

Indefinite liability for online libel must end

Michael Fremlins

Sounds like a case of sour grapes

I understand the point of this author's complaint, but I'm not sure I agree with it al all. As he has rightly pointed out, recourse to law is often extremely expensive. If I am defamed I may not have the funds to use wealthy lawyers like him, but two years later I may well do.

Texting peer released from prison

Michael Fremlins

"exceptional circumstances"

He's a politician.

Royal Mail disses runaway post van man

Michael Fremlins

Reward

Couldn't the Royal Mail sent him a book of stamps as a token reward?

MPs vote to keep addresses private (theirs, not yours)

Michael Fremlins

I hope you don't mind me posting twice

I think that "our" MPs are becoming very afraid of US, the electorate and tax payers. This measure is not aimed at would-be terrorists who would plant a bomb on the Tube. It is aimed solely at the electorate.

There was a headline on Sunday Express that MI5/police are becoming worried about serious disturbances in the summer, not from the usual ban-the-bomb-and-do-F-all (thanks, Quadrophenia) brigade, but from "ordinary" people who have had more than enough of this nonsense. The tax payers, who have bailed out the banks without a proper debate in the useless parliament, while losing their jobs, while seeing their assets dwindle, while seeing failed bankers getting £615k pensions, and ever encroaching surveillance under the false guise of anti-terrorism measures, are the ones who will rise up. Or that is the fear.

Yes, MPs should be afraid. Because they have let it happen. Because they are responsible. Because they will still get their perks and payoffs. They have become rubber stamps for the government, that is when things are debated and Acts passed, and legislation not just reduced to statutory instruments at the whim of a minister.

If there are serious disturbances/riots/insurrections this summer, there will be two sides: THEM and US. Indeed, not having THEIR addresses will not save them for long from US.

Michael Fremlins

It won't be long...

before the names of "our" MPs are secret. Please vote for either A, B, or C.

Parliament is a pointless institution. Its members have forgotten that they are there to keep a check on the government.

BT wins pricing control over faster broadband

Michael Fremlins

Ofcom allows BT to milk the competition

Ofcom is a joke.

Brit nuke subs exposed on Google Earth

Michael Fremlins
Stop

Lot of hot air about nothing

The would-be "terrorists" already know where the base is. They wouldn't need to lob mortar bombs at any specific building, any one would do.

This is just being used as an attempt at web censorship.

Google's email service goes down

Michael Fremlins
Happy

Moaning minnies

Did you pay for Google mail?

Anyone who thinks they can do better should have a go!

New in-the-wild attack targets fully-patched Adobe Reader

Michael Fremlins
Thumb Down

Isn't it time...

that Adobe Reader went back to the basics of rendering PDFs? Or at least have a click box that enables such a mode and nothing else?

It is now such a nasty piece of bloatware, performing like a snail with a fricking wheel clamp, that I only use it if Foxit doesn't work properly.

There are even tools to make Reader faster (by disabling all the very-rarely used plugins). If somebody has written a tool it is because a lot of people want it. Adobe should take note.

Navy glovepuppets minister in carrier battle against RAF

Michael Fremlins
Go

sausages

The Royal Navy was around long before the RAF. Maybe it was about time the RAF was merged into the Navy.

'Lenny': Debian for the masses?

Michael Fremlins
Stop

Lies? No, the truth...

David Hicks, prove me wrong.

Install VPC or xVM, then try and install Debian Lenny. See what happens. I have several versions of Linux and FreeBSD installed in VPC 2007. They all work fine. The latest Debian does not.

As usual, the Linux fan boys can't stand a little criticism. I don't need to check any compatibility list for VPC. It is Debian Lenny that does not work on it.

I know Linux is not a supported guest OS. So what. That doesn't mean anything.

I haven't said that Linux is broken. I have said that Debian Lenny does not work in VPC or xVm. So instead of trying to spread some FUD, go and see for yourself.

Michael Fremlins
Unhappy

Tried it in Virtual PC 2007...

Debian crashes during installation.

I know Virtual PC is not a real PC, stop whining at me. But it is a widely used program so I would expect it to work.

Don't bleat at me that it's Microsoft's fault either. Virtual PC existed before Debian Lenny, so a 1 minute test would have shown that it crashes. So now I'm having going out of my way to try it.

Imagine for two seconds that I haven't been using UNIX and Linux for the last 12 years, instead I've been brought up on Windows. My first impression as Bob the User is: Debian/Linux doesn't work. It doesn't matter too much why not. All the reasons and excuses in the world are meaningless. First impressions count. I would go back to my XP box and forget about Linux, refusing to believe the (not inconsiderable) hype, the year of the Linux desktop and so on. And I would probably tell my XP-using mates that Linux doesn't work. And we would make ourselves feel a little better by playing a few Windows games.

Oh boy. I went the extra mile and tried Debian in Sun's xVM. Debian installed. I rebooted. Guess what? Kernel panic. Yep, there's a lot to be said for Windows, I would be saying to myself.

Photography rights: Snappers to descend on Scotland Yard

Michael Fremlins
Go

More offences...

Soon it will be illegal to even think in a "wrong" way.

People should do exactly what the police have done - ignore the law and snap away as often as possible.

Police bail sysadmin in animal rights extremism probe

Michael Fremlins
Stop

Offence, offence, offence

Everything is an offence these days.

Man arrested in Indymedia animal extremism probe

Michael Fremlins
Thumb Up

If the judge has done nothing to hide...

surely he should not mind having his details spread about!

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