Posts by chris

yuck

And another article from Mr Adam Smith Institute dressing up exploitation as empowerment and rational according to the Great God Economics.

Wow. Way to smoke out the misogynists, Register.

* prostitutes are tarts

* "feminazis"

* feminists are ugly

* feminism emasculates men (o rly?)

* illegal immigrants would lie about it to get the "benefits" of being a victim

* apparently lots of men are wrongly accused of rape (conviction rates? what's that?)

Get off my internets losers. If you have to pay for it, you're doing it wrong.

ouch

"The trains leaving for Asia is loaded with bundled back office services"

"thinner than atomic particles" - 2-dimensional, eh? There's some quantum weirdness I've not seen before.

If the Register fancies outsourcing some proofreading / copy editing, I'd be happy to oblige...

:)

Now, to get people only working the hours they're paid for....

When you get the CBI, a right-wing anti-Europe think tank and a Labour-friendly think tank all condemn a decision, you KNOW it's the right thing to do.

I don't see any of them working >48 hours for more than 17 weeks in a row. They've just got a knee-jerk dislike of being made to check that they aren't killing their workers with overwork. No wonder UK productivity is so low, we spend so long in the office that we learn that what we do in the office is either skive or panic and do unpaid overtime.

And the "choice" rhetoric makes me boak. It never feels like a choice when you're presented with the "opt-out" to sign along with your new contract of employment, does it?

Great theory, shame about the facts

"Windows for Wetgroups™ is of little importance. Let's face it, new Navy bathtoys are only there to keep the Scots in jobs and voting Labour. Life in the Faslane eh?"

And it's so successful we now have an SNP government. Of those that care about it, no-one wants Trident in Scotland and it's one of the millstones round Scottish Labour's necks.

Feed me tech knowledge, register hive mind

How would this be affected by using a mailserver:

* based abroad

* using STARTTLS

* using GPG?

What sort of information would they get? I think from the "not content" thing that GPG wouldn't make a difference (and the headers aren't ever encrypted anyway), but what about the other 2?

Are they planning to collect all mail traffic that hits a UK server? And does STARTTLS hide the headers from govt prying?

Thanks for the article

I've been meaning to write something similar for friends, practical, step-by-step and idiot-proof. Instead I think I'll just link to this one.

Do people even know how insecure email is? I think with the recent talk of a government database for everyone's email, people are more open to taking these precautions.

Even if you don't think you'll use it, it's polite, innit? If someone wants a discreet word with you, you don't loudly refuse to move from your open plan cubicle to a private room, do you?

And how on earth can you "advertise" programs that *cost* *nothing*?! GPG, Thunderbird, Enigmail are all free and make a pretty winning and easy-to-use combination, in my experience.

PS watch for a key-signing party in Glasgow early next year :)

Well not the first to say it

But worth echoing...

Oh aye. Voluntary pay cuts.

You first, Mike.

what way's the wind blowing?

Bill Ayers for President!

Daily Mail gender politics FTW

That's a pretty submissive position for a domanatrix to adopt, no?

Typical of the Daily Mail. Whip-wielding women, know your place!

Hurrah for the blackcorsets!

this is a thumb as well.

Cbsdfmpob ufumqipof fydibohf

There was me thinking that Stalin was Franco's secret weapon in the Civil War.

spendspendspend

"Also, I don't know about anyone else, but I find it *very* easy to overspend when all I'm doing is tapping in 4 numbers."

I think this is the key. You make a lot fewer impulse purchases when you've set yourself a budget by filling your wallet with real cash before leaving the house.

And of course, not making impulse purchases and refusing to add to the public debt is terroristic.

Add that to the rental income that an e-cash system could charge and the market says yes. (Apart from that people do not want it)

Separate existence

So I can see that a GPG private key might arguably have a separate existence, it's a block of gibberish.

But the _password_ that symmetrically(?) encrypts that GPG key and makes it usable - that surely fails the separate existence test?

And I think that this would be true of encrypted drives / files where you use a keyfile to access the contents.

Wise Mr Booker

The man who thinks that asbestos is not harmful and asbestosis a money-making scam cooked up by those rich and powerful ex-shipyard workers in an attempt to cripple brave industrial giants.

aka the "Wikipedia Professor of Gibberish":

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/09/23/the-patron-saint-of-charlatans/

If lead and asbestos are so safe, he should make like John Selwyn Gummer and build his kids' nursery out of it.

Do not go gently....

Fight to protect your jobs, take advantage of the fact that you can access your bosses' current account, hold equipment as security against your wages being paid.

The possibilities for revenge are endless. Just don't expect solidarity (and less sympathy) from your cleaners who you never paid a living wage to, or those of us who got canned first.

Enough with the "bint"

There's enough things to slate Palin for without resorting to misogyny. You're making yourselves look like, er, bored IT workers that don't meet enough women.

@Stuart Harrison

The story reads to me like the No2id guy was phoned up by the EEN hack:

"anythting to say about this?"

"we don't have a position on..."

"go on give us a quote"

"...." etc.

"this happened. they threatened us"

"That is an extraordinary situation,.."

Not involved at all, IMO, just tapped for a quote and took the opportunity to give general points about organisations...

@pctechxp

IANAL but if you weren't paid then I think you'd be within your rights to, as well. Sure I read a similar case, too lazy to gogol it though.

The one with the hardware in it.

hahahahahhahahahahahaha @AC 23:26

So we've got Lehman Bros to thank for Doubleclick, Phorm, every other advertising / malware peddler turning the inernet into an ad-infested cesspool? Wicked.

Granted, they've gone out of business, but it's capitalism. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, it's just in this case the gander has fucked off with a stash of golden eggs that he stole from the goose. Nevertheless he wants our sympathy because he once gave an egg to a callow chicken, in return for a year's supply of omlettes. Naw, mate.

Choose your window! Who's next?

Back to the 20th century, woohoo.

Beauty contests. Not adolescent sexist crap if you pretend it's not actually based on shallow, arbitrary and demeaning criteria, then.

But don't judge people on their looks alone, or they'll kick you off the panel.

Can't have it both ways.

@AC 9:54

You're a Cock.

Oink was the best-designed and most efficient source on the web for music. Better quality and more range than the commercial services. What's this "scene" you talk of? Backscratching egomaniacs torn between "look at me" and "i'm a 133t secret ninja ftw".

Oink by contrast was about MUSIC. All the range, all the quality. In a sane world the admin would get medals not handcuffs and artists would work out how to get paid from this efficient and effective distribution system.

&Pat: Aren't all downloaders in a bitorrent network also uploaders? Certainly can't see how you could maintain a decent ratio on Oink without also uploading something unique...

Evidence integrity FAIL

Anyone who's wise will send their footage to i-witness video or a similar organisation that can be trusted to not edit out the middle bit between "walking down the street being black" and "lying in a pool of blood having fallen up some stairs".

Hell, judging from that cop who attacked the cyclist in New York, even *YouTube* would be a better place to put your video evidence.

If anyone actually cares about the real reason Scotland has different immigration criteria

We have a declining population and different skill shortages to England. This has the fortunate side effect of reducing the numbers of xenophobic fuckwits whining about overcrowding and so we actually _want_ people to move here.

You could probably say the same about Wales but a couple of years ago people got pissed off that the Westminster government was raiding and deporting people who'd grown up here because immigration rules were being defined by the Daily Mail via the Home Office. Cue large protests and disruption & occupation of Home Office buildings, followed by pressure on the (then) Labour Holyrood government to do something.

No, you probably didn't hear much of it in London. Wouldn't want to give people ideas.

What they (Labour in Scotland) then did was make hollow promises about ending dawn raids on families and win this small concession that Scottish needs should be taken into account when defining these kind of immigration hurdles.

So we have rules that suit our circumstances rather than London's.

Direct Action Gets Satisfaction, once again.

(When will IT people realise that they've got the power to cause enough disruption to bring down governments and all the shitty bosses they've ever had to deal with? Much more satisfying than bitter rants against "fat chav scum" and "social parasites"...)

reading fail

Article: "Ogg or WAV,"

Lazy troll is lazy: "mp3 is rubbish compared to .ogg or .flac"

Thumbs up for the Jeff Noon reference earlier though.

@RK

"Modern large cars are designed with modern large car driving habits in mind :)"

Like breaking the speed limit and then complaining about speed cameras?

Target market fail.

You try to produce an easy-to-use Linux system and what's the first thing folk are told to do? Run xterm.

er, AC

It's not clear but I think you think I was advocating a return to ancient Greece. Whereas I think you've bolstered my point that there is no debate devoid of social context, whether that is acknowledged or not.

Next week on The Onion...

Great column. Sprayed tea all over the laptop.

die die die experian

If the council is going to profit from my name & address, they'd have to be a hell of a lot more democratically accountable than they currently are.

Given that they've sewed up everything into a small set of executive committees and given away all of the city's art and leisure facilities to a "charity" whose only link to democratic accountability is that its run by relatives of connected politicians and businessmen....

well they can tittle.

But how the hell did Credit Reference Agencies manage to get their loan sharking hands on the right to the full official register?! I have a list of people less suitable than them to have it and one of the few names there is Gary Glitter.

@Roger Pearse

"a privileged racial group responsible for repeated attempts at mass murder feel upset."

Would this be the "privelege" of risking being shot in the arm at 5am then smeared as a paedophile on the word of 1 individual with a dubious motivation? (Forest Gate Met FTW!)

You're a fucking moron.

Enron, California, blackout

"Given that the companies (...) are operating in a competitive market these prices aren't being caused by either collusion or gouging:"

Because deregulated energy markets are perfect and don't include:

* collusion of companies on the supply and demand side

* being gamed by speculators

* natural monopolies

* a vast imbalance of power over the end users

Just like when Enron was involved in the deregulation of California's electricity market and played the system till it caused constant brownouts. That would *never* happen in the country where the people who invented this absurd ideological pursuit have had more time to play the market.

More power to the noble freemarketeers who brought us the everlasting prosperity of securitised collateral mortgage debt!

We could be heroes....

"We have no intention of releasing details that would allow someone to replicate the attacks that can be done."

Why the hell not? Public transport *should* be free. Don't see cartards directly paying for the use of the roads.

Big Brother

...not just a TV programme but a maker of TV programmes

Scraping the bottom of the barrel

For benefit of Lewis, here's the Royal Navy's temperature estimating methodology in full.

(Shiver / Timbers) * SQRT (y0-h0)+BTL(rum) = PROFIT

Conclusive proof that it is our God / Adam Smith given right to burn poor peoples' food sitting in rows of metal boxes for four hours a day so as we can exchange paper for plastic and bright lights to make us feel less miserable.

The greens do indeed hate your freedoms you rugged individualist, 4x4-driving, gadget-stimulating, fearless iconoclasts you. It is all a conspiracy, of course. Those pesky scientists and their published papers and discussions.

I'm trying to coin an appropriate "tard"ism but can't decide on Libtards, Nettards, Marketards, Smithtards, Randtards, Exxotards or just plain wilfully ignorant selfish cunts. (Which I guess takes us back to Libtards)

File under WTF

"the automotive industry saw a major transition to energy-efficient products beginning in the late 1970s".

Do they now all make bikes or what?

Anyway, bollocks. Adapt or die. If storage companies can't find ways to add value to their services beyond gigantism then they can build their own fucking power stations for their Hummer-branded data stores. I think organisations would find that by managing their data better they wouldn't really need the terabytes of multiple redundant email backups of kitten videos sent around accounts.

Work smarter, not harder and that.

Optimum Population Trust in "talking mince" shock.

The only folk who take the OPT seriously are the journalists and op-ed writers who are the target of their press releases.

Its significant that they bring out the anti-immigration fuckwits, too. By focussing on numbers of people rather anything meaningful like western consumption levels, they enable people to point the figure at those nasty swarthy-looking types and say "see - too many of *them* more like!"

At which point those with a vested interest in the ever-increasing tat-production economy and its associated ecological collapse can breathe a sigh of relief as they not only get let off the hook but start investing in flammable crosses, golliwog dolls and pitchforks.

Always the same response to OPT types: you first, then. I'm off to bring up a brood of class-conscious eco-anarchist kids.

Booooooooooooored of this spinning

So the lovely neutral and not-having-an-agenda-at-all BERR are being all sensible and rational in saying that they won't anger the great god of the market.

While those oh-so-unreasonable-"hardline"-pressure-group-oh-they-have-an-agenda folk at Greenpeace are being all stubborn and hardline and inflexible.

Way to convey a balanced story Lewis. I spend more time mining the meaning from your layers of perjorative language than getting information from it.

It's at the point where if certain authors' names appear at the top of a story I don't bother to read on, because I know I won't get anything of value from it.

My thought

Was that the current suggested replacements for those words come up with "amusing" alternatives.

So:

Obama --> Osama

Nazr --> Nazi

Dunno who Nazr is but the first example would keep Fox News in copy till way past November.

@jonb

> >a massive protest outside a power station

> How are they going to get there?

I'm going by bike from Scotland, smartarse. Don't you think the "oh but you all are breathing CO2 / that apple came here on a truck / look your shoelaces were airfreighted" line is a bit childish?

Fact remains, the Register's found a renewable source of word fodder and pageviews, making lots of PR agencies and rightwing "think" tanks very happy. Efficiency and synergies and all that.

I think the anti-AGW line is its attempt to diversify into the more-profitable US market, myself. That way if London floods they'll still have readers.