Posts by Steve 162 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007
"Suely the Internet was originally designed to be a robust military network that would survive a conventional or nuclear attack. "
NO NO NO! BAD Kevin. The internet has no such history. Where do people get this bollocks from ?
ARPANet was designed and implemented as a scientific and research network, nuclear survivability was never one of it's design goals. Never, you hear ?
Please go away and look it up.
"Because killing one person and contaminating a couple hundred with radioactivity is considerably scarier than a plain old fire"
And thus we learn that you have never been in a burning building.
Besides which, fire is one of man's oldest fears, it would only take a few such incidents to be instigated and claimed by some Al-Q variant psychos before public meeting places were deserted.
Sounds pretty effective to me, and as the article states, much less effort.
But then, I *have* been in a burning building, something which is a damn site more frightening than some theoretical blue sky wankage like posioning the water supply with caesium.
Go China. Make NASA and ESA look like the timid little space mice they are!
Of course, now the control of future energy sources is on the table, see how quickly the USA develops an interest.
Cracking stuff ! Perhaps the space race is due to kick off again, in which case, hoorah for the Red Chinee !
Best news all week.
Well, I'm a UK voter, I've participated in conversations and get togethers with some the No2ID chaps, I've lobbied my fat, lazy, pussywhipped MP for all the good it did, I've signed the petitions, and I do occasionally even provide informal technical advice and advocacy to people working on large government IT procurement projects for the relevant departments.
So fuck off, John A Blackley, I'm plenty engaged, thanks.
Fact is, so are rather a lot of other people with far more juice than me (like the LSE for a start), and it still isn't making any difference. The great unwashed don't vote, the middle classes don't think they have anything to hide, so swing voting by the concerned isn't going to have any effect.
Which would all be fine, if this were even as analytical as some of the comments that have been posted. As it stands it's not far off just saying "Some bloke down the pub told me that AV software isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Exactly what we've come to expect from Robin Bore, but still.
... (I bet you think this post is abut you, don't you ?)
In all seriousness, so what ? I thought El Reg had given up on this fool, with vague doom laden FUDmongering.
Presumably this is in support of the previous series of 'AV is dead, long live the whitelist' FUD pieces ?
Deeply content free.
So after the IPhone and linux fanboys, we're going to get the Pearl Jam fanboys ?
For fucks sake people, get a grip.
It's just a band. Music appreciation is subjective. Oh yeah, and secondary to the story, which is about the important issue of censorship, a bit more of a concern than your playground level "My fave band are like, SO, more rockin' than your fave band" BS.
I used to believe, apparently wrongly, that El Reg's readership was mostly made up of mature IT pros, after all, thats the level the content is pitched at.
Evidently there are more readers in the teen angst demographic (and therefore a lot more crossover with slashdot's audience) than I would have imagined.
If you're a PJ fanboy, and you are about to consider hijacking what could be an interesting debate about freedom of speech and turning it into a rock band circle jerk, consider suicide.
Sad bastards.
Hey, linux jihad.
Sorry boys, you are all still well off. The 'linux desktop' , by which I mean the entire GUI subsystem(s) that runs on top of GNU/Linux, coupled with the driver issue (whoever said there are drivers for everything is a dick and either a liar or a fool, BTW), coupled with the application install issue mean that linux as a windows replacement is still not viable.
Like many of you, I have been using Linux for over a decade, and I love it, but it is still a geek toy.
And yet, I hear your unreconstructed whining ringing in my ears, "Why the f*ck would we want it to be a replacement for windows ?"
Because MS owns the desktop, that's why. Until you can provide a user (USER, not geek) experience that is comparable in ease of use through the whole spectrum of computing to MS windows, Linux will never own the desktop space.
Period.
If a non geek user has to touch a command line, compile a source file, wrap an NDIS driver, jump through hoops to install a codec to watch media that's widely available (or even installed by default) on other platforms, or to access DRM content (it exists, live with it), then, put simply, Linux is *still* not ready for the desktop as far as most people and businesses are concerned.
Quit your fucking cheerleading and listen to what you are being told by people who obviously retain a sense of objectivity which you sorely lack.
Linux, it's an OS, not an ideology, so stop projecting your infantile empowerment fantasies onto the technology, m'kay ?
Much as I worship the late lamented Alan Turing, his test for AI is possibly one of the stupidest things he ever came up with. It measures simply the ability of a machine to convincingly imitate a human being.
While a team of boffins and a gert big supercomputer may fail to convincingly imitate Alan Turing, I can probably program my 90s era palm pilot to convincingly imitate Lisa from down the chippy.
Not that I've got anything against Lisa from down the chippy mind you, she always gives me extra chips.
Funny that Ray Kurzweil's name should come up, I recently found a copy of his "Age Of Spiritual Machines" gathering dust on my bookshelves. Typical AI cheerleader and a complete space cadet. Meh.
"Oh, and spend insane amounts of money on bendy buses which kill (carbon neutral) cyclists."
I read a statistic somewhere that around 90% of fatalities to cyclists involve collision with an HGV or a bus. I would hazard that most of these fatalities follow the same model, the cyclist is killed when the bus or HGV turns left across the cyclist, and runs him/her over which seems to have been the case with the bendy bus/cyclist intersections.
Since I am a cyclist (and regularly ride in combined bus/cycle lanes), I will tell you the awful truth about these accidents.
They are almost all the fault of the cyclist.
Virtually the only way to get seriously squished like this is if you are sat in the drivers blind spot, or be otherwise not visible enough in his mirror. Riding in the blind spot of an HGV is really a terrifically stupid thing to do. Usually fatally so, in fact.
Cyclists need to have excellent anticipation skills, more so than car drivers, to avoid hazards like being stuffed down the side of a bus at a busy junction[*]. Those who fail to develop such skills end up as road jam.
[*] That and the fact that 90% of ~drivers~ on the roads appear to be complete and utter idiots with all the anticipation skills of a distracted goldfish, but that's another rant.
I don't have a patio heater, but I'm off down the shops to get one right now. I was going to walk, but fuck it, think I'll take the 4x4.
Seriously, I cycle, walk, or use public transport to get around. I recycle stuff. I planted 9000 bastard trees earlier in the year, with my bare hands. My carbon footprint is bloody negative.
I am not going to be told that using a patio heater makes me some kind of criminal by a bunch of ill educated, hysterical middle class fucking hippies who think they are saving the world because they separate paper and plastic and then drive their kids to school every day.
These fuckwads should go do something positive if they want to help the environment, instead of standing around whining and trying to project their existential guilt on to everyone else. Seriously, plant some forest, get empowered, then there's no need for the weak and helpless feelings that give rise to this type of whining.
Any environmental damage I cause by using a patio heater will be well worth it just to rile these pathetic excuses for humanity and keep them out of my garden. Think of it as pest control.
... If you have photosensitive epilepsy, perhaps TV is not the most appropriate leisure time activity for you ?
@jeremy
That's aboslutely not true. The ASA will pull ads based on a single complaint provided you can show that the CAP Code has been breached. If the ad portrays anything that could be construed as dangerous or irresposible, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Honestly, it's true, give it a go next time you see ad you don't like :-)
"Unauthorized use, or attempts to circumvent or bypass the security mechanisms of an information system or network.
www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/compsecurity/glossary.html"
That's the first link that comes up from your search link.
You mentioned something about "uneducated and stupid" ?
"despite that it was technically more difficult to extract weapons-grade fissile materials from it than other kinds of reactor."
Hmm, or maybe they were actually afraid that the proliferation of such a technology would lead to a shortage of fissile material for them to manufacture WMDs out of.
Or is that just ~to~ cynical ?
I hate printers. I have always hated them. People are always asking me to fix them. I'm a software person. How the f*ck should I know how to fix a printer ? Countless code hours wasted staring into the mysterious guts of some godawful office equipment filled with springs and belts and tiny things that break off when you look at them, and then won't go back on, so you have to lie to the service engineer, when the lazy bugger actually gets around to turning up.
No, I shall no longer stand for it. Currently I do this :
Supplicant : "Hey Steve, do you know what's wrong with the printer ?"
Me : "Yes, it's shit."
Supplicant : "??!!"
I shall enjoy being able to say "Yes, it's poisoning us all slowly to death, throw the hateful thing out of the window and have done with it."
I hate printers.
I used to be really excited by space stories. Now I'm mostly not, because NASA and ESA are so worthless.
It's likely that all of this will take so long, my grandchildren will be lucky to see it.
I sincerely hope that China bangs on with it's manned space programme and maybe even starts to spout off about commercial potential in space, then maybe NASA, ESA and their respective governments will pull their collective fingers out and actually do something, instead of just spending billions of quid and countless hours drawing 'artist's impressions' of what things in space might one day look like if we could be bothered to do anything except draw stupid pictures of it.
And as for us brits, students at our leading universities think that 'space research' involves tying cameras to dirty great balloons and letting go of them. The best we can come up with is Dr Colin "well, we think we know what went wrong" Pillinger.
Still, at least the beagle contretemps had a positive outcome, e.g one piece of Damien Hirst 'artwork' was destroyed before it could pollute the solar system with it's asinine wankyness. But that's a different rant altogether.
And as for the yanks, you lot built, at massive expense, a spaceship so manifestly arse that it gets damaged by hailstones, can't fly if the weather is even slightly inclement, and regularly falls to bits or explodes on takeoff/landing. It's made of fucking foam, FFS !
No wonder the NASA astronauts take the opportunity to get thoroughly shitfaced before boarding.
McKinnon, bumbling tosser though he may be, lame skript kiddie that he most certainly is, may not have had to go to a great deal of effort to penetrate DoD systems.
But he *did* do it, and has admitted it.
Get that ? He committed a crime, and admits doing so.
Commit crime + caught/fess up = Jail time.
So for gods sake, put down that copy of the Gospel of St Levy, switch off that 'Hackers' DVD and start to interface with the real world a bit. Information does *NOT* want to be free, It never did, never will. Curiosity might not be a crime, but unauthorised entry into a computer system is a breach of (at least) Section 1 of the Computer Misuse Act. End of story.
I've said it endlessley to 'hackers' of my acquaintance, but it bears repeating. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
McKinnon pretty much deserves what ever he gets, quite seperate to any issues of the UK, once again, spinelessly bending over and taking it up the Gary Glitter from Uncle Sam.
I mean, seriously, WTF did he think was going to hapen ?
...is why the Bushies suddenly want to have this veneer of legal legitimacy. I mean, it's hardly as though NSA, GCHQ et al aren't collecting this intel anyway. It's not like they're really sat inside those super high tech bunkers playing scrabble and computing anagrams of their names all day, is it ?
"You obviously don't follow international politics at all if you think that the UK Government's response was over the top; what comparisons are using to come to this conclusion?"
Well, you know, a fairly simple before and after type of comparison. Like, before, I could expect that if I were to be arrested, then I would be charged within 28 days (still a life destroying amount of time in the case a wrongful arrest, of which there have recently been plenty.). After, looks like it's going to be 56. Thats twice as oppressive, see ?
Changing the law so that you can bang someone up without charging them or allowing them access to legal representation for the best part of two months, in response to exactly zero deaths, one serious injury (to the perp), and some mild property damage seems fucking disproportionate to me.
The wannabombers could have caused more destruction just by running people over, even assuming their stupid 'bombs' had detonated (or rather, ignited), and even had they done so, the numbers involved probably wouldn't have added significantly to the statistical likelihood of my being run over tomorrow.
When I'm more likely to get blown up than run over, then you can be a cheerleader for the dismantling of the framework of laws that protect ordinary citizens aganist the excesses of over zealous officers of state without me pitying you. (Although I'll still disagree)
Until then, quit your pathetic whining, put down that Daily Mail, and get yourself a spine.
"The reaction to the attempted bombings in London and Glasgow was very muted by the Government, "
It appeared to be muted at first, yes. But what actually hapened was that they used the incidents to push the removal of haebus corpus (or at least, whats left of it) and widely extend the use of ANPR technology. They did it quietly, but they still did it, and they were able to do so because of the FUD generated by the ridiculous 'carnage' headlines.
"and as you'd expect it would be from the mainstream media."
Well yes, it was exactly what we've come to expect, e.g complete and utter toss, wrapped in sensastionalism and labeled as facts.
Just because we can no longer expect better from the press doesn't mean we ought to be happy with the situation.
Convergence, it's the future, and you will have it weather you like it or not.
I for one look forward to the day when I can carry a device the size of (say) a phone that will fulfill ALL of my computational, communication and entertainment needs.
Although I'm not buying one until the first service pack of the second gen, onbviously :-)
BTW, no one mentioned business presentations. My current phone (now several years old) already has a TV out and can run Powerpoint presentations. A genuinely useful feature, although I have never used it. I hate powerpoint.
You couldn't be further removed from the truth if you tried. I don't know what media you've been watching, but certainy the British media don't represent bush that way. As a complete twat, yes. But so what, he is, get over it.
As for where we get off criticising US politics, again, get the fuck over it. The US needs crtiticising, and we're happy to do it. I don't mind if you criticise my government, (frankly, they're shite). In any case, ISTR that TCG is a US citizen.
This is called 'free speech', by the way, a right, like legal trials (to name but one of many), that the US now extends only to it's own citizens, and then only if it likes the look of them.
As for all the "The reg shouldn't publish stories like this" whining, I would have thought that the presence of rational journalism should be applauded WHEREVER it occurs.
All you tossers that keep posting 'I only want to see tech news' have your heads so firmly up your arses that it's frightening. If you want to hide from the real world, fuck off and read slashdot with all the other fanboys. Haven't you got the hang of the Reg yet ? It's a news site with a tech bias, not just a tech news site.
I for one would like messrs Page, Green, et al to continue unabashed with their insightful articles, which show less bias and more actual rationality than the average op-ed piece in the UK paper press, or even the once mighty and now totaly braindead BBC.
Coverage and opinion of this quality is becoming increasingly hard to come by in this new age of government approved FUD.
Congrats to the register, as usual, color me a die hard reg fanboy.
So, the London/Glasgow wannabombers were nothing to do with Al Qaida at all, they were simply crazed Apple fanboys trying to martyr themselves to the One True Way, Jobs' Jihadis!
That would explain why they couldn't muster the tech skills to make a decent bomb then.
"Hey Abdul, it looks shiny, so it must be the best bomb ever, (InshJobs)!"
And maybe the guy who caught fire at Glasgow was just trying to recharge his iBook off the lighter socket, eh ?
"Today, the opposite is true; a vehicle is a necessity and almost everyone has one."
Bollocks. This is petrolhead propaganda at it's most idiotic. I have never owned a car, nor been licensed to drive one, and I have no problem getting around.
If you have orgnanised your life around your access to a vehicle, that's your problem, and I refuse to pony up for your sad dependence.
"Or, you may suffer from a crippling social condition where it's simply too terrifying to ask someone for directions. Or you may have no friends and simply like playing with toys."
I'd guess that pretty much describes the whole population of Jobs' drooling legions of fanboys, really.
I don't think anyone *is* having a go at 'Mac fans', rather at the 'fanboys', who are a different species of drooling zealot altogether.
As for the whole patch update malarky, I personaly have never seen a machine get zorched by MS update and I've worked with pretty large orgs.
There isn't anything that makes Macs, Windows or linux boxes intrinsically better than each other, just dfferent strokes for different folks.
Wilful blindness to this hapy fact is part of what defines a 'fanboy', IMHO.
And for the record, I also dislike MS and linux fanboys, methodology zealots, and the whole spectrum of drooling loonies that believe they have found the One True Way and anyone who disagrees with them must therefore be wrong.
"The information security community is a small, almost exclusively male clique"
In all fairness, that should probably read "The small number of self aggrandizing egomaniacs who dub themselves security researchers and spend most of their time engaged in mastubatory self publicising via the medium of the interent and humping each others legs, is a small, almost exclusively male clique"
There are plenty of people involved in security research around and about the place who just quietly get on with it without all the 'I'm a leet hax0r, but yet oh so respectable' bullshit.
I've still got a 365XD which I got second hand about eight years ago. It's had a hard hard life but still goes strong, and I've seen it take abuse that would have killed most modern laptops.
I love the form factor, the sturdiness and the reliability, and the keyboard is leagues ahead of any other laptop I've used to this day for touch typing.
The next laptop I buy will almost certainly be another Thinkpad, I have never seen anything I like anywhere near as much. I reccomend them to friends and clients alike.
Mine runs a customised GNU/Linux OS that I bootstraped up especially to suit the TPs hardware and capacity, and it never, ever craps out on me.
Color me a fanboy.
"But I find it hard to believe that they can uncover passwords from your iPhone just by you visiting a web site."
Did you read the same article as me ? Because I don't see that mentioned at all. Dodgy URLs yes, ability to reveal passwords by same, not there.
The password thing is mentioned in a paragraph near the end, which is by way of being what we call 'a summary'. This is like the "previously, on [your favourite TV show, probably Buffy]" bits on television, only in the form of writing.
That 80's pop band 'Ah Ha', to whom I presumptiously presume you are referring in the title of the article, had not one, but indeed two hits.
The first being "Take on Me", and the second (from which the 'Touch Me' reference is surely drawn) "The Sun Always Shines On TV"
You, Sir, stand corrected, and ... I'll fetch my coat.
In order to get space travel cracked (which is, as has been pointed out, essential for the survival of humans and whatever species turn out to be handy for terraforming), I have developed a policy of not recycling and in fact spewing as much crap into the environment as is humanly possible.
It's only when we finaly manage to FUBAR this planet by our activities that stupid hippies will finaly get the point, and realise that since they don't want to die suffocating in the vast toxic wasteland of polythene bags we will create, they actually quite like the idea of space exploration.
"Poison The Earth, Live In Space" is my new motto, and I encourage others to take up the cry.
Unfortunately, I am ~2000 trees to the credit in my carbon footprint, due to some planting work I did earlier this year in a rare foray away from the keyboard (really true, and more than you've done, you lazy hippy ;-), so I'm looking to offset this with some serious intercontinental travel later.
Maybe someone could set up a different kind of offseting scheme, you know, "Been environmentally friendly this year? Send us five pounds and we'll bury 6000 Tesco carrier bags in a lake", that would do the trick.
Poison The Earth, Live In Space, you know it makes sense.
"Is there any aspect of human life that they don't consider to be a target for surveillance?"
Answer : Yes. Those aspects of human life which involve members of parliament.
And possibly there were supposed to be some exceptions for celebrities and the wealthy.
Other than that, no. Please return to your places of work and continue to conform. Because if you don't, we'll notice.
Because with all that surveilance data flowing in, the only way we're going to be even remotely able to stay on top of the processing of suspects is to flag behaviour that is atypical.
What ? No, I'm afraid I can't tell you what that's measured against, National Security, sorry.
"Third, you guys really do have this obsession with making sneering remarks about the misguided people who attempted to create mayhem. We all know they failed. We all know their idea was pretty rubbish too. But do you really have to mock these people quite so off-handidly?"
Why the hell not, it was pretty laughable after all. And gentle mocking laughter is sure as hell a better way of dealing with such muppetry than instigating a police state, especially given that it's impossible to legislate against suicide bombers.
WGA, Vista, Adware, it's like MS is literally trying to alienate as many of it's customers as possible.
Even if this is 'just a patent', the fallout from MS even being seen to consider an idea like this is massive. It's certainly going to be enough to push fence sitting home and business users over the edge.
It doesn't make sense in terms of a free, ad supported stable of doze products either, because these would compete directly with free, non ad supported, and increasingly usable F/OSS.
I've been an MS user and developer since I moved to PCs from Sir Clive's little miracles (although I use a variety of linux boxen as well, for play), and it's always been a very cynical relationship, I mean, you can never kid yourself that MS isn't just a money hoover, but you can live with that. But this is so far beyond the pale it's surreal. I always thought Gates was the megolomaniac, but Ballmer is even bloody worse !
Oh yeah, @Christian Berger : Bollocks, many people who use windows have no choice. You get what your IT department gives you at work and until recently you couldn't install *nix without serious geek clueage. Also no high street retailers would supply you a preinstaled box. The issue of 'choice' is somewhat illusory in the context of ordinary users (e.g the vast majority of PC users). Thats the whole point of a monopoly, doncha know.
"This is another argument for another day, and (hopefully) not on IT site, however, the ‘children’ to whom you refer are most likely first/second generation immigrants from uninvolved, and uneducated countries"
No they aren't, they are home grown hooligans, thank you very much. And you are a wanker of the first order. Pathetic small minded deluded bigot, so you are.
"So one spotter arranged with the local police whereby we can register who we are, what car we drive, where we live etc."
Oh great, so now all the lunatic Jihadis have to do is nick *your* car, which they can drive right up to the airport boundary without fear of being challenged because your plate is marked as 'clean' by the police/airport authorities.
I feel safer already.
Or hell, they could just feign an interest in plane spotting and have themselves added to the list. Though somehow I suspect Durham plod will be enaging in some off the books racial profiling, so only light skinned nutters need apply.
While I personally detest the draconian restrictions being forced on the UK populace in the name of our freedom, I can't help but point out that there's no point whatsoever having a system of protection (e.g stop people hanging around airport boundaries) and then riddling it with holes.
Not that it would make much difference either way, I mean I don't know what the range of a modern shoulder launched SAM is, but I imagine it's a deal further than the airport CCTV can see, especially if it can't see through, e.g, bushes, making all efforts to prevent it's use pretty futile. But still, I am mildly offended by the stupidity of this kind of logic.
"I will continue to read your website and will no doubt continue to be disgusted by the way in which such an international zine can be orchestrated in such a 'university newsletter' way." "
Well, y'know, like, why ? If I don't like the taste of something, I'm not going to keep eating it am I ? Unless you are some kind of masochist, why not piss off and read something more bland and innofensive ?
"Buy a suit and get organised."
OK, you are that kind of masochist, fair enough, carry on.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
