Posts by Gav 682 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2007
What's funniest here is the idea that a nuclear reactor would be built anywhere near civil servant desks and suburb abodes in the outskirts of London. Think what it would do to the property values!
But of course, they used London because that's the only place the average dupe is likely to have heard of.
Don't know why everyone's having a pop at Northern local papers. They're all like that, it's their job to be. I read the London Evening Standard once. It was full of stuff about London! It was like the rest of the country didn't exist!
As for this story; anyone who registers with a newspaper website and supplies accurate and confidential information.. well, I'll not say they deserve it, but what exactly are they thinking? Just because a newspaper has the nerve to ask for your home address and mobile number doesn't mean you have to give them it.
... precisely zero.
Seriously, I can't imagine an open source spat over attribution even managing a pixel blip on the graph of general voting public intentions. No-one cares.
And as for the pathetic Clarkson video. I estimate this took one copy of Microsoft Movie Maker and one civil servant one lunch hour. Hardly likely to drain the public purse of funds.
Everyone knows it, and this just proves it. 49,447 email addresses mean nothing.
If people really want Clarkson as PM then they are idiots. However, if he also happened to lose his mind and put a party up for election, with him at its head, I would take great pleasure in watching his humiliation. Unfortunately, whatever else Clarkson is, he's not an idiot.
”It is OK to ‘monitor’ pupils – but not to ‘spy on’ the grown ups.”
Well, not to say that CCTV is all hunky-dory, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it's OK to do a lot to pupils that's not OK for grown-ups. The pupils are obliged to be there by legal requirement. The grown-ups aren't.
Half the problems in schools are to do with the ridiculous idea that pupils should be treated as adults, with the rights of adults. They're not adults, they are children. They don't have the rights of adults because they don't have the responsibilities of adults and no-one expects that they should behave like adults. Because they are children.
Pretending otherwise doesn't help their education and development, and certainly doesn't help their teachers.
They make the game + You have the game = You owe them money.
The quality of the game is not the point. Pirates are very good at claiming that what they share and download is worthless crap they wouldn't have bought anyway, a matter of opinion which strangely doesn't stop them wasting their time sharing it and downloading it. How much worthless crap does it take for the average illegal filesharer to get the message? Or is it, as we always suspected, that this excuse is utter BS attempting to defend what can't otherwise be justified? No other industry is expected to conform to this strange idea that if the product (in someone's personal opinion) is poor then it's ok to take one for free, thank you very much. Hey, Kia make crap cars; so I'll just drive this one away without paying as it's totally unreasonable for them to expect payment for their rubbish work.
If you don't want to owe the company that made the software money then don't illegally download their work. What's hard about this to follow? If you are concerned about paying money for bad software then read the reviews before you buy.
This report shows only half the story. This Admin didn't steal or re-set any passwords. He had possession of the passwords from the very start and he, and he alone, knew what they were. His bosses demanded them off him, he decided they weren't to be trusted with messing with his network and said no. They fire him. He still says no. Bosses call police.
Sounds like an over possessive admin, but maybe he had his reasons. Either way, this is a whole different story from the way its been presented. He wasn't a rogue admin, he was the sole admin, which also makes his bosses liable in a number of ways.
Family Guy sucks. It has always sucked. Anything it ever does right it has stolen from The Simpsons. Other than that it is an idea-free vacuum of staggering obviousness. Despite barely manage scenes of longer than 30 seconds, you can spot the punchline to every unfunny gag in what seems like half an hour in advance. And then it runs out of ideas and switches to another scene. Repeat this ad nauseum.
If this is the level of Seth McFarlane's inventiveness I'll not be rushing to view Google's offerings.
Yawn, usual pile-on from freeloaders with the usual outraged and imaginative examples of how this affect perfectly legal P2P, and how the customer may be innocent, and how it may not technically be illegal, yadda, yadda yadda.
Let's cut to the bottom line shall we? Did this BT customer share the music file or not? If yes then end of story. They are in breach of their contract with BT.
Other fevered examples about Linux distros, BBC iPlayer and British copyright law are totally irrelevant. The letter was sent for the above reason and that reason alone, any further extrapolation exists only in the minds of those seeking justification and a chance to indulge in a little piece of victimhood.
Never can follow why people always gripe about ISPs limiting P2P traffic. If they're doing it, they're doing it for very good reason, not just to annoy P2Pers (no matter how much fun that is). Bandwidth is a limited resource. P2P is often an automated process generating constant traffic at a greedy rate. It's got to learn to be nice and share the bandwidth. If I'm in the middle of downloading a web page and having to wait because some P2P process is transferring yet another Gb of video to an unmanned box on the other side of the world, then I'm perfectly happy for my traffic to take priority.
Stamping your feet and demanding more bandwidth isn't going to magically provide a solution. Demand always expands to occupy the increased bandwidth and before long we're all right back at square one. And P2Pers will still be wailing because they're being prevented gobbling up the lion's share of the bandwidth.
And the argument "I was promised unlimited bandwidth and unrestricted speed, and so I will demand it" is getting pathetic. No matter how foolish ISPs were in promising such a thing, people were morons if they believed it. No commodity is unlimited. Having a tantrum about not getting the impossible makes you look like a immature 10 year old.
I wish people would stop using toilet seats as the ultimate benchmark for germs. Germs require debris to replicate and thrive, your average toilet seat is a smooth surface with usually nothing worse than a splash of sterile urine to contend with.
So just about every surface with nooks and crannies is "dirtier than a toilet seat". Particularly if they collect human debris. That includes keyboards, your mouse, your desk, the bit behind your monitor and the even the back of your hand.
So Bluetooth *finally* reaches ten years, huh?
Were you expecting it to reach ten years old any sooner? Cos I can't think of any technology that's managed to do that. It pretty much follows that you have to wait ten years for it to happen, and then it never fails to occur exactly on schedule.
You don't go to PC World to get advice, or anything particularly techie, or particularly cheap. You go to buy something that you have already researched and know exactly what you want. You go to buy something that's a mainstream computer consumer item. You go to buy something you need now, today, and are willing to pay slightly more for. You go to buy something that comes in a needlessly shiny printed and oversized box with a 100 page manual for the clueless in 8 languages inside.
On no account do you expect accurate advice on anything from the staff. You don't expect them to have components that you only ever read about on overclocking forums. And you certainly don't expect to get it cheaper than the online specialist outfit that delivers in a plain brown box containing nothing but a sealed anti-static bag and a badly photocopied slip of paper with the manufacturer's website on it.
What does a cow have to do to "deserve" an entry in the Guinness Book of Records?? Is this the same kind of "deserve" you hear so much about on X-Factor?
Cue the sad music;
"Chilli was abandoned as a calf, so devoted his life to eating up his grass every day. He wants to win this word in memory of the mother he hasn't seen in 8 years, where-ever she may be." <Insert shot of sad bovine eye shedding tear, Display vote telephone number>
If you're in a car crash, what's likely to do the most damage? An unrestrained small child, or a unrestrained keg of beer? I know what I'd prefer to have smash me in the back of the head.
Still doesn't explain why the didn't put it in the boot though. (The beer, not the kid!)
Quoting shuttle astronauts' opinion on ET life is a bit misleading, as it suggest that they are in a better position to judge than us Earth-bound lesser beings. Or worse, it suggests that 'out there' is in the vicinity of the shuttle flights, when it clearly isn't.
Taking astronauts opinion of life in the universe is like asking your work colleague at the next desk their opinion of Iraq, simply because they're 8 feet further east than you.
I wouldn't be so smug yet if I was the blogger. Courts tend to be confused about what constitutes hacking and there's been cases before where surfers have been taken to court simply by modifying URLs. Take the case of the guy done for "hacking" because he did a a directory traversal;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/tsunami_hacker_convicted/
The argument has been that if it's not officially linked then accessing it constitutes illegal access.
I don't know what you're all waffling about the aiming being impossible. If you must compare the pointers to a gun; they are not like a sniper rifle, they're more like a machine gun jammed on with a few billion bullets in the clip. They do not aim and fire off one single photon that would be lucky to hit anything. They fire in a constant stream that you can strafe about the sky indiscriminatingly until it strikes something.
All the muppet on the ground has to do is point in the direction of the helicopter and wiggle it a bit for a couple of minutes; the chances of the beam hitting the pilot in the eye at some point may be unlikely, but still a possibility.
I'm afraid the arguments here as pointless, as freeloading downloaders specialise in justifying having their cake and eating it too.
Apparently we are to comprehend a scenario where copies of music should be free, because they have no value in themselves, but should be also on their ipod because they like it and, may, maybe, possibly, pay to see the band live one day, or buy a t-shirt or something, or buy it for real; honest.
At the same time we have the personal opinion that most modern music is rubbish anyway, and that's not the fault of the people *forced* to buy it, but the fault of the eeeevil music industry who are suppressing the good music through their actions. So it's ok for everyone to take the rubbish music without paying. Exactly how or why either side would be doing this is never quite explained. The music industry would appear to me to have a definite incentive to make music that people actually want to buy of their own free will, and why would people want to take music that's rubbish anyway?
It's totally shifting justification that can't ever be pinned down and lacking any attempt at honesty. The bottom line is "Everyone likes something for nothing, and I take free music because I can. Let someone else pay. Now, what web of justification can I weave to make this appear to be fair?"
Usual tripe from those who gripe about speed cameras. You see; in their opinion it's safe for them to exceed the speed limit which, in their opinion, is too low in certain stretches of road, identified using their opinion. Any attempt to enforce the law on this is simply a method of making money.
This, of course, is totally different from mobile phone use while driving where drivers decide, in their opinion, that they can use the phone safely without, in their opinion, significantly affecting their driving skills and killing others. Attempts to enforce the law on this aren't nearly robust enough.
Got that? Mobile phoners opinions are not sound, unlike speeders. And a driver's personal opinion is not the way to determine what's safe... except with speed, cos it's different.
Robin above says; "the average price that people chose to pay for the album was £1.10 or so. After the record company profits^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdistribution costs are removed from tradition sales, they receive about a quid.
So 'giving something away' earns 10% more profit for the artist than selling it."
This is the kind of laughable logic that The Registrar is attacking. Selling it for £1.10 does not mean £1.10 profit and removing a record company from the equation doesn't magically remove production costs. Once we subtract all them, and subtract personal expenses, you can be sure the bottom line profit enjoyed by the artist is less that £1.
I can see at least two posts here that can clearly be taken as threats to all new-born children, or as a threat to kill everyone everywhere. Let's all be more careful about what were saying, shall we?
Let me make it clear that I'm not threatening anyone in saying this. I do not intend to take any action against anyone who isn't careful, or against any of their family or acquaintances. I can't spell this out more emphatically. (But I wouldn't hold it against myself if it was indeed possible to make this clearer. This post should not be taken as a threat to commit self-harm.)
Hope everyone understands what I mean. Not that I intend any criticism of those who don't.
Zohar Lee; "removal of non-copyrighted information was in itself an infringement of his right to free speech"
The American constitution says that the Government cannot limit American citizens right to free speech. As Google is not the American government, his right to free speech is irrelevant. Google, and hence YouTube, can decide who gets to say what on their websites and can remove whatever they wish for whatever reason they like.
The size of the areas this system would break down to would be so large that it would make them totally useless. Everyone knows plenty of places where that you can park in one street perfectly safely, but go 20 yards around the corner and you're practically guaranteed smashed windows. Do the crime figures used specify the exact street? Will this system give figures for each street? I very much doubt it.
So you're going to end up with a system that tells you that the district you're in has a high car crime rate. What are you going to do? Park 5 miles out of your way then walk? No, you're going to park near where you're going, regardless of crime rate, and use the same common sense and hope-for-the-best you've always used.
"Make you money from other people making money"
And how do the "other people" make money, from other "other people"? If a musician is to earn a living making music, *someone* has to put their hand in their pocket and produce the money. Otherwise you just have a never ending chain of people hoping the next person in line will magic the readies out of thin air.
"i'm fairly sure he is making far more than what the rest of the country calls a living"
What makes you think that? No-one puts a thousand pounds in your pocket every week simply for being (relatively) famous. I have no idea what Billy Bragg earns, but it's probably less than you think.
Anyhow, your following the same self-serving logic used by many freeloaders. The "they're all rich anyway" argument. The point is; very few of them are rich, most are getting by much the same as anyone else. If you cheat them out of the way they earn a living, then they will stop trying to earn a living that way.
@Steven Dalton
Your problem is the same one many new Wikipedia editors have. Wikipedia doesn't care what you say are "facts", because you could be anyone and could be making it all up. Essentially these "facts" could simply be your personal opinion. Wikipedia requires cites to reliable sources. So if other "self righteous cretins" removed your addition they were entirely in the right and you are entirely in the wrong.
And it's not likely they were any "inner circle", just editors who know Wikipedia policy.
This is the standard of behaviour on Wikipedia, otherwise anyone could declare anything "fact" and demand its inclusion.
Have they checked with the websites whose web pages their going to decorate with their adverts? When an advert appears will it be obvious to the reader who is responsible for presenting it? If Tesco have an advertising contract with BT, do they get to add their adverts to pages from Asda's website?
So this guy has been going out with this girl for like, a month, and then they broke up. In the course of breaking up some bottom feeding scandal rag has stuck its oar in. It's a bit of a mess and everyone looks a bit foolish.... including The Register for delving into this intrusion into other people's private lives.
All I can see here is the usual complications of getting involved with someone through your work. It happens all the time, it can present difficulties, Wales handled it as well as anyone else would have. How he handles the breakup of a short-term relationship, however, is scarcely anyone else business and we're unlikely to get an unbiased summary from anyone.
Being someone important in Wikipedia doesn't mean you never have a messy love life sometimes. Being someone important in Wikipedia doesn't mean it's everyone's business.
Such a lot of hot air, and most of it avoiding the basic fact that patio heaters are useless. They are inefficient because they burn all that gas and don't achieve what they're suppose to do. I've not encountered one yet that didn't do one of two things;
- Nothing. The heat you receive from them is negligible enough to make no difference. It's all going straight up.
- Burn the part of your body closest, leaving the rest of you frozen.
No matter what you do, and how they are designed, you are trying to achieve the impossible; i.e. heat an area that's wide open to the elements. You'd think that this would have penetrated people's thick skulls, but apparently not. So maybe we do need legislation to stop the idiocy.
This is just another reason why the idea of a central UK ID database is a bad idea. People put vast wads of data, unencrypted, onto their laptops because they can. Technology makes it easy, and it makes their work easier to have the data to hand. It doesn't matter what regulations the organisation has in place, and people aren't being malicious or even lazy, they do it because they can.
Now consider how data storage is progressing. It is not inconceivable that in 10 years time somebody at UK_ID central is going to download the entire ID database onto their mobile phone. Because it's convenient for them, and because they can.
Now, if this is almost inevitable and easy for someone who is simply wanting to make their work easier, what's going to stop someone who is actually has more devious plans in mind for the data (and by that I don't just mean criminals)?
The story says "production". You don't need a broadband connection to write malware, you only need it if you're hosting any resulting traffic.
In fact, if anything, having to use dial-up would be an incentive to produce tidy and compact code, thus improving its chances of avoiding detection and being installed. I can think of a few downloads I've done that would have been greatly improved if the coders had had to use dial-up. Surest way of avoiding bloatware.
Software experts, and sales gurus who know sooo much about someone else's market!
Selling a specialist software package to a defined business sector is not the same as selling a copy of MS Office in PC World. They're not going to sell many copies of their software, and reducing the price of it is not going to increase their profits. So every pirated copy is a very big deal. Particularly when each copy sold on ebay could go on and be copied another dozen times. So when it comes to estimate the damage this could do to their business, I think the company knows a whole lot more about it than the clueless on here.
Jon Press has it right.
If I'm spending money on new hardware I want it at the sharp end of things, on my desktop. I don't want all that new technology hidden on a boring old server that's not doing much except being a big disk. I imagine most home users feel the same.
I'm far more likely to buy a new desktop and a maybe a large second drive. Put the second drive in my old computer and make *it* the server.
"Think of the hassle moving house, update the address on the ID card and you automatically have your NHS, DVLA, HMRC, DWP and the rest changed for you. In fact there is no reason you couldn't automatically be issued with new documents for all those things."
Think of the hassle stealing someone's identity, update the address on the ID card and you automatically have their NHS, DVLA, HMRC, DWP and the rest stolen for you. In fact there is no reason you couldn't automatically steal new documents for all those things.
"A "Four Doctors" special with McCoy, McGann, Eccleston and Tennant (or a special with any 2 or 3 of them) is quite possible."
Are you mad? Selection based purely on how old the actors are? Most of us are trying to forget about McCoy & McGann.
McCoy - BBC production at its cheapest and nastiest.
McGann - horrid experiment in US/UK co-production.
Not really the actors' fault, but dreadful doctors both. We definitely don't want them back!
How dare The Register mention anything about P2P software, even in passing, in anything less in glowing terms?! Don't the know that the great goddess P2P is the most powerful of all internet gods, bountiful supplier of 'free-stuff' to all her children?
You must be punished for this heresy!
The same principal applies to P2P software as does all software. If the user is in the habit of doing stupid things with the software then it is fault of the software. People are stupid, we know this, therefore it is the required spec of the software that it should be designed with this in mind. If P2P software is in the habit of catching out users, no matter how dumb you may thing they're being, then the P2P software's design is flawed.
Personally, I think you need to be mad to let most P2P software near your computer.
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