Posts by Gav

The difference is....

The difference is, and this is very important, neither of them own a pint.

It's *your* pint.

Decompiled Definite

The Android version is nasty because it was either written by a decompiler, or by a programmer who was was slavishly copying the Oracle source code, but hated legible code and variable naming that explained itself. My money is on the decompiler.

It does the same steps in the same order, when there's no need for them be done in that exact order. Too much of a coincy-dink, I think.

It's also notable that the Oracle version had comments (removed), but the Android had none. Decompilers don't comment on what the code is doing because they really have no idea.

Where the code came from, or whether it was open source or not aside, no-one can seriously claim this isn't a copy.

He was an unwanted child

He circulated the leaflet because above all else he craves, like all trolls, attention. If you lack any real talent that might gain you attention, trolling is ideal. What makes him uniquely stupid is that he went real-life. Most talentless attention seekers would have switched to X-Factor auditions at that point.

He wasn't so stupid as to go around local graveyards trolling funeral parties (too much risk of getting a well deserved kicking), but he still needed the attention. He's a loon, but he had his own logic. If trolling is the only thing you're good at, why hide it? So leafleting probably seemed a good idea at the time.

As to *why* he needed the attention; I'm sure there's some sob story in the background there.

What the website likes to know is not the point

When I walk into a shop, does the show owner have a right to know how I got there? Do they even have a right to know why I chose to enter their shop? Of course not.

Naturally they may ask, and I may tell them. But sometimes I may have good reason to withhold that information. I may not want them to know before hand what I intend to buy, or what I have previously considered, as they may use that information to "optimize" their sales pitch. Optimizing to their advantage, not mine. This is even more likely if the shop owner has this information already without me even being aware of it.

It's quite clear that what is happening here is that the search engines are divulging information to the end site that the user may reasonably believe to have been a matter between them and the search engine only. Again, if I walk into a shop, I'd be rather peeved to find my taxi driver having a whispered conversation with the owner about where I came from and how I got there. It may not be "private information", but that doesn't stop it looking like collusion against my best interests.

IT Nerds > Bus Nerds

Isn't it always comforting to know there's always someone you can look down on, no matter how sad your own life may be, or may be regarded?

Each to their own. In the scale of things I'd say bus spotting is better than being couch-bound victim glued to the latest TV/Football/Celeb drama-fodder, as millions are. At least it's got some basis in real life and getting you out the house.

Vigilantes

All this illustrates is that more often than not, self-appointed vigilantes are people with several 'issues' of their own. It's these personal issues that are doing the driving, not a zeal to bring criminals to justice.

Miraculously small

"for those disinclined to believe in divine aid but inclined to take the Old Testament as an accurate record,"

Just how big a cross-section of people are we talking about here??

You may think that...

That is very much what this story would like you to infer. Without exactly saying it, of course.

Otherwise what we have here is a rather dull story of some trashy website picking up some malware banner ads. Not exactly earth-shattering.

But the hint of maybe the suggestion that just possibly Google was involved in suppressing hot trashy celeb gossip? Pure gold...

Avoid MAC address spoofing

The youngster doesn't care if shielded from WiFi or not. They're still using physical cabling for all their comms requirements.

Oh that's smart

"Or maybe just burn a few bibles across the street."

Yeah, cos upsetting all Christians is a logical protest about the actions of one non-representative nutter. Just like upsetting all Muslims is a logical protest about the actions of a few non-representative maniacs.

You are missing the common factor in all of this is. People. They're all people. It's people you need to be taking a stand against. You need to find some way of upsetting all people on the planet. That'll show them. Once this is done, it'll bring all people to their senses and peace and harmony will reign throughout the world. It's so simple and brilliant it can't fail!

I'm stuck for how you'd do this though. Perhaps setting fire to kittens?

The vital detail

Thanks for this. Your email includes one vital detail that is totally missing from the Reg article and the Symantec & McAffee articles it references. viz; **Outlook**.

Talk of "the recipient's address book" is totally uninformative. What needs to said is "their Outlook address book on their Windows computer". If the recipient has neither then nothing will happen to their email.

I'm not Microsoft bashing. My point is that the assumption there is such a thing as "the" address book is the kind of thing you'd get from mainstream press, not an IT website. Kind of like when they say "the internet", when what they mean is Internet Explorer.

Still fools, whatever the motivation

Who mentioned anything about greed? These scams are only new variants on cons that are as old as the hills. If you are foolish enough to fall for them then you are a fool, whatever the motivation.

And the "Work from Home scams" are not scams. They're money laundering. If you genuinely believe that cashing cheques for someone else into your personal bank account is a real legitimate job, then you are indeed a fool.

Of course, being a fool isn't illegal, and the smartest of people can occasionally be fools. But that doesn't make them not fools...

Now go stand in the corner of the cockpit and face the wall

You are quite right. Imminent death and a cold and watery grave is no excuse for incorrect grammar. If we tolerate this kind of sloppiness we are no better than beasts in the field.

I trust if and when this ever happens, the black box recording will end with the captain being given a sharp talking to by a conscientious traveller. There must be at least one person on every plane who feels that proper English is worth storming the cockpit for.

obvious indeed

That's what they want you to think.

Unless Assange arranged it, so that you'd think that the FBI had arranged it, so that it would look like Assange arranged it to look like the FBI had arranged it..

Or maybe that's what *he* wants you to think....

Aren't conspiracy theories great? They telescope down a recursive hole that dwindles into ever increasing realms of ludicrous detail.... but it's all still possible!

Not just Yahoo

This is true. There are more than a few websites that behave in this way and they are all in the wrong and they all need to quit this.

The argument that email addresses are public knowledge, so it doesn't matter, is also wrong.

First of all, I sometimes use email addresses on websites that are not public knowledge and not used for anything else.

Secondly, just because the email address is public knowledge does not mean that the every website account that uses it should also be public knowledge.

And thirdly, there are different levels of 'public knowledge'. Yes, you should not rely on security through obscurity. But just because I have shared my email address with friends does not mean I am also happy to share it with a screen-scraping bot operated by spammers & phishers.

I call Godwin

Watching someone in plain view in a public place is not "spying".

Nor is asking someone who sees a crime taking place to report it anything like Nazi Germany. Most people would see it as part of being a responsible and social citizen.

You may disagree with the fact that this particular act is a crime, but 'spying' and 'Nazi' it is not.

Make some effort

"Matthew, so you think democratic representation should be restricted to those who can present a coherent argument?"

Actually I think it should be restricted to those who can be bothered in the first place to make some effort themselves, no matter how incoherent the result is.

Emails from constituents should be treated with the same amount of effort that it took to compose them. If someone is firing off a pre-prepared template email with a mouse-click off a website, then that's exactly what they should get back. If the issue in question isn't worth more of their personal time and attention, then it obviously can't be that important to them, they probably haven't thought it through to any great degree, and their MP shouldn't waste their time on it.

Not doing his job

Any network administrator who thinks he's irreplaceable, is the only one who can administer the network and is the only one with the access passwords, is most certainly not doing his job. He is recklessly exposing his organisation to the enormous risk of a single point of failure.

It's all relative, isn't it?

Not to mention the problem with the entire landscape, what with it rushing by him at a speed clearly in excess to the speed he was travelling.

Why, he must have thought reality itself was irredeemably broken!

They did arrest him

But that's exactly what they did. That's why his life was so effectively screwed up.

Fortunately there's still a difference between being arrested and being charged, and yet another difference with being convicted.

Prime Asset

Or Google employees using Windows. No, wait...

But fair point. High ranking tech staff do not secure their prime company asset through a free throw-away email address hosted by their competition. It's maybe not impossible, but very, very unlikely. Combine that with every other aspect of this screw-up and you'd think anyone competent would have started to smell a rat.

Normality be damned!

You are too generous, sir. I was rather fed up with the human race getting wiped out every time this happened, and it's well past time the government did something about it.

Why, I have letters written by my grandfather to The Times over 70 years ago on this very matter, and it's taken until now to remedy the matter? It doesn't bear thinking about the number of times life on Earth has been eradicated, whilst the fat cats in government have been sitting on their fat behinds doing nothing. For shame!

Stop that!

Stop confusing people with accuracy and facts!!! Every forum poster has a basic right to browse the news story, fail to follow what is said in plain black 'n' white, and thereafter rant in a total misunderstanding of what is being discussed.

It's what's made the interweb the force for evil and confusion that it is today, and we wouldn't want it any other way!

So old, he's dead now

Bobby Fischer = chess nut.

Species of tree = chestnut

That old chestnut = expression you were looking for.

Really educational

To be fair, Manic Miner played a not insignificant part in setting me off in the career that supports me & my family..

So yeah, in my case it really was educational. But that just proves the point. It's how you use the computer that counts, just giving someone one is not going to make them any smarter.

Didn't do a whole lot for my homework though. Those were the days indeed.

That would be an ecumenical matter

Yes!

dumb in-joke nicknames

Here's a crazy idea; get more readers on your news website by calling organisations/products/people by the name people may actually know them by, rather than some dumb in-joke nickname that leaves them mystified.

Sorry for this rant, but it's happening more and more on The Register and it's getting annoying. In this particular example I started off by guessing it was talking about "Farmville". It would be nice to have an idea what's being discussed from the start of the article.

If you want to run a clique club that's only understood by those who can be bothered keeping up with the secret code then you're doing just fine.