Posts by Stuart Gepp
49 posts • joined Monday 25th August 2008 20:34 GMT
There is absolutely no truth in the rumour that I've done way more awesome things than that. Nope. Not me. Never. I just didn't happen.
Why stop at the beginning
These companies don't spontaneously leap into existance and start dialling on behalf of some politician. Assuming that there is some collaboration between the politician and the company breaking the law doesn't it become a conspiracy to break the law. The penalty should extend to all the parties involved.
Re: LOL
Maybe they could have chosen a later launch date when they had enough to meet initial demand - no extra capacity needed.
It is marketing hype. They are within their rights to do it but the gist of the article seems pretty much spot on.
Re: Doubtful, I think
He had 1 rifle (AR15 type, not an AK), 1 shotgun and two pistols which he had hidden outside the fire exit and retrieved them after entering the theatre by the front door. He also had body armour and helmet in his stash.
Protecting the front door with any kind of scanner would not have been any help at all in this case unless someone can come up with an insanity and malicious intent detector.
Bad things happen and not all of them can be prevented unless we all spend our entire lives literally in cocoons.
For some reason our governments think we want them to protect us from everything and fail to realise that it is impossible.
As far as individual, concealed carry is concerned, if there were a half dozen citizens with pistols who returned fire they may or may not have succeeded in stopping the bad guy but there is a high probability that *they* would have been responsible for some of the innocent people shot. A packed movie theatre is not a good place to shoot and miss but missing is easily done shooting under extreme duress in the dark. There are numerous accounts of trained police officers finding that the nice tight centre-mass group that they can reproduce at the range over and over again does not happen when they are in a real life-or-death situation. Can you imagine trying to differentiate between the following:
1. A bad guy you have never seen before who is shooting an innocent you have never seen before.
2. An armed civilian you have never seen before shooting a bad guy you have never seen before.
3. A bad guy you have never seen before returning fire at an armed civilian you have never seen before.
Number 1 is easy, but only if you can see that the innocent has no weapon. 2 and 3 are indistinguishable when they suddenly appear in front of you.
People will bang on and on about how to avoid this in future. Some will advocate banning all firearms from the public (and the counter argument will be that only outlaws will have guns and there will nothing you can do to protect yourself) and others will argue that every responsible adult should carry a firearm every day (with the counter argument that you are making all the undetected insane people carry too). There will be innumerable arguments in between these extremes.
Firearms cannot be uninvented. If the guns used in this case had been illegal, would the victims be any less badly hurt? Remember, when the UK banned self loading rifles – that was in response to the Michael Ryan shooting spree in Hungerford in 1987 – he used a pistol for most of his victims. About a decade later, Thomas Hamilton went nuts in a Dunblane school with some pistols so the government banned pistols. Within a year of the pistol ban Jill Dando (a BBC TV presenter) was shot dead with a rifle banned a decade earlier. Jill Dando still suffered the same whether the rifle used was legal or not.
If you are going to disregard the law prohibiting trying to kill people you are quite unlikely to be overly concerned with the prohibition of the method you choose.
There will be arguments for mercy because the man was insane. I cannot fathom anyone not insane unilaterally deciding to shoot 71 people he or she does not know.
At the end of the day this gunman is responsible for his actions. Do not blame the people who sold him the guns. Do not blame anybody else that has guns. Do not blame the governments who have led the public to believe that all bad things can be stopped by greater and greater restrictions on freedoms.
Re: I'm with Apple on this one
Unfortunately, <insert deity of your choice> is also in on the act.
There's this thing you can do with another player which seems like an awful lot of fun and you feel compelled to do it. However, 9 months later the bill arrives and by then its too late.
If you find it hard not to hand out access to your credit card, you have almost no hope of resisting this urge.
Re: "Julia Donaldson, who wrote the The Gruffalo"
Miss! Miss! He did it again!
Re: "Julia Donaldson, who wrote the The Gruffalo"
Miss! Miss! Irish Donkey stole Julia's IP!
Coincidentally...
...I was watching episode 2 of the first series of Yes Minister last night and Bernard was explaining to Hacker that he could simply transfer all correspondence from his inbox to his outbox without needing to read any of it. The civil servants would then generate standard responses such as "we're considering the matter" or if they were feeling especially generous "we're actively considering the matter".
He went on to explain the former meant "we've lost the file" and the latter meant "we've lost the file but we're looking for it"
That was an amazingly insightful script written over 30 years ago.
On the surface it seems reasonable
"Upon receipt of the notice from the rights-holder"
There is no mention of checking the voracity for the claim by the "rights-holder" that copyright material had been abused. How was the infomation discovered and under what authority did the "Rights-holder" collect this information?
I thought there were privacy, wiretap and perhaps other laws to prevent this without the courts being involved. If the courts are already involved who needs a new quango to send letters out to people?
Have you ever considered...
...what might be telling you this?
"The human brain is an amazing organ, fallible sure, but amazing"
American chocolate
An oxymoron or you jest.
Am I the only one that misread that as chauvinism?
Who cares?
Does it really make any difference?
The only effect of voting is to change the person the lobbyists have to contribute to. Most of them have hedged anyway and have contributed to both sides.
The days when your representative actually paid any attention to the people in their constituency have long gone.
"It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in"
What a load of cobblers
The Supreme Court ruled ages ago that sales tax did not have to be collected by the retailer for out of State buyers (it was about mail order back then but it has been decided that the same rules apply if the order is placed via the internet instead of snail mail). It did not rule that the tax was not due. The buyer is required to declare these things on their State tax return and pay the sales tax to their home state then. At least this is how it is in New Jersey.
It seems the issue is that the State tax collectors can't be bothered to collect the tax and enforce their own laws and want Amazon to do it for them. What makes it worse is people supposedly knowledgable in finance like Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt on Bloomberg Radio keep saying internet retailers have a price advantage because their products are tax free. WRONG! The tax is due in the State where the items are bought, not where they are sold.
I thought it was a joke at the time...
"If you're not embarrassed to state your rate, you're not charging enough"
Sorry Geoff - that one just stuck in my head for some reason.
Posted in Paintball round pops Bulgarian airbag
Frozen paintballs don't work very well
As the paint in the ball is water based they expand when frozen. Big balls don't work because they need to be a close fit inside the breech and barrel. If they're too big they rupture when fired.
UK law applies
No matter what nationality the person is, operation of a UK company in the UK is subject to UK law.
I'm a Brit living in the USA. I don't drive at 70mph and claim its OK because I'm not American because in America I am subject to their laws.
Reminds me of a Murray Walker/James Hunt exchange
Murray: Here comes the Honda. This car is absolutely unique!
Hunt: Except for the one directly behind it
Number plates still come in pairs, right?
PS Yes I know the front one has a white background and the rear one is yellow, but it still reminded me of dear old Murray.
How long before...
George Lucas demands his pound of flesh?
Great minds think alike...
...but fools seldom differ.
I wonder which we are.
An analogy that works?
The unlocked front door/car door analogies miss the point.
Google did not enter anybody's private property to obtain the slurped data. They were in a public placeand got what they could. If the householder had secured the signals they were emitting Google would have got less.
Similarly, if Google had their cameras at normal head height in the street and took a picture through your window of you changing your underwear you may object but you were carrying out your shreddy-swap in plain sight.
You *could* have have closed the curtains but you didn't. Joe Bloggs *could* have configured WPA2 but he didn't.
It has already been ruled that if it can be seen by 'normal' viewing from a public place it can be photographed/recorded. Why should wireless transmissions be treated differently from photons?
King of the pedants
Where in the story did it say the disk was full. Maybe there was only 20kB on the 2TB drive.
If this was the case you could copy the entire contents of the drive to the USB stick quicker than you could troll a joke response to a parody of a fictional farce.
I used to work there
What's the difference between BT Martlesham Heath and Jurassic Park?
One is a futuristic theme park filled with dinosaurs and the other one is a film.
How long will my iPhone be supported
I'm wondering how much longer I'm going to be able to use my iPhone - the original Linksys/Cisco one, not the Jobsian one which I never bought.
Oh well - its been good for the last 3 years.
The other side of the coin
You cannot be tracked if you're holding it *right*
Bust this!
"Each bang has been bigger than its successor"
Are the bangs really getting bigger as time goes backwards?
The other end of the scale
I think you'll find the last day of your life will have the highest mortality rate - 100% in fact.
People who live in glass houses...
Dear, oh dear.
It looks like the lid was left off the acronyms box again and someone is waving one around to try to gain credibility.
The routing protocol used has almost nothing to do with WAN latency. There are many choices, each with their advantages and disadvantages.
The fact is though, that there is a direct relationship between the distance between two points and the minimum latency for data transmission between them. It happens to be pretty close to the speed of light.
That would only give you the minimum, however. In practice the actual time taken will be increased because very few circuits follow a straight line path between two points.
you forgot...
...mountain rescue
Variation on an old BT rumour
Sugar: Don't you know who I am? I'm Lord Alan Sugar!
Call centre drone: Hmmm. Do you know who I am? No? Fsck off then! <click>
Unlimited, instant broadband...
...over a distance of 1mm. Useful.
Pull the pin out of what?
The new shirt you haven't even gotten on to your back yet?
Sorry I was still thinking about your govmint comment.
I wonder how much GL paid Mauser
The blaster pistol that Solo carried has a striking similarity to a Mauser C96 "Broomhandle" pistol.
Posted in Home Office to secure mobile phones
I have a business proposal
Who has connections in the wallet/purse manufacturers realm?
We need a phone cover which incorporates a pocket for a card - brilliant or what?
Re: Really? A/C 12:07
Easy peasey lemon sqeezey.
Just look at some of the sites aimed at pre-school children. Nickjr.com and disney.com have websites where the word on clickable buttons is spoken through the PC speakers so kids who can't read yet can still navigate around.
Posted in Vonage drops off the net
Communications in the modern age
"We tried to contact Vonage about the problems but the company hasn't responded to our enquiries"
You have to send them a letter - the phones are out. Hang on, the post is useless too.
Get a megaphone and shout to them.
@AC 14:00
O2: "Our online shop saw a 150% increase in online traffic in the first two hours."
- wow - that's almost.. half their regular users again.
If you're going to be a pedant, at least do it right. A 150% increase is your normal traffic plus 1.5 times your normal traffic which is 2.5 times your normal traffic.
@David Webb
Teh soudn the speakers make is caused by your phone TRANSMITTING an acknowledgement of the signal it was send from the cell tower. The cell tower sends the signal in all directions at once and is picked up by all the cell phones on the frequency. Only the one it is addressed to does anything with it - e.g. acknowledge it.
This new submarine thing is one way only. The sub does not transmit a response and is therefore not subject to detection just because it received a signal. The key thing you are spectacularly failing to understand is that the submarine pager is one way only. Cell phones are two-way.
BTW, don't even think of trying to make another pathetic analogy with TV detectors.
Huh?
Why doesn't the OS lock the account being attacked after 3 wrong passwords or at least suspend it for a while. If the attack continues against the same account extend the time of the suspension or lock it out.
If the same address is hitting lots of accounts (or non existent accounts) block it.
The big question is why does Linux need add-on packages to do any of this? It has been built in to VMS for years.
The penguin has been chosen as a mark of my cynicism.
Surely a mistake
I'm certain many thousands, nay millions of Americans have spotted Pluto whilst on vacation in Florida and California.
@AC 20:59
"Labour MP Keith Vaz has no idea how the Amazon marketplace works"
The last five words are unnecessary.
The police need bigger guns
A couple of 12 gauge slugs to the engine would have stopped it.
Agile - Not new
A few years ago, that behemoth that was EDS dreamt up a new use for the word agile in collaboration with Microsoft, SUN and a couple of other big names that slip my memory and created the Agile Alliance.
As a VMS specialist working for them at the time I was relieved to find VMS had been left out of the alliance.
Our team of VMS System Managers adopted the following mantra:
We're not agile - we're stable.
@AC @Stephen Gray
"The M1 Abrams tank will do 45MPH (60MPW with the governor removed "
MPW = miles per week?
So it goes like this
Crim: Can I have some credit, please?
Bank: Tell me you name, address, DOB, mother's maiden name, etc
Crim: <reads from death cert>
Bank: All that appears correct except you're dead. How much would you like?
If banks are that stupid they deserve all they get - its just a shame us regular punters get to pay for it in the end.
Posted in Linux desktop freaks out Ubuntu man
Here's another angle
Currently there are legion malware trying to infect your Windows box and seemingly endless security holes are found in Windows by those writing the malware.
If Linux was to become a viable desktop OS replacement for the masses its likely it would be one distro that would emerge as the defacto leader. It would then become viable, indeed attractive for the malware writers to turn more of their attention to infecting that.
I'm sure that this new attention would reveal a plethora of vulnerabilities in Linux and that would be bad for the image in the server market.
Should Linux still be developed with the desktop as a target market - sure, but there's always going to be someone who wants to protect the "we're more secure than they are" image that exists.
Why would you want to get hit by a shotgun?
This thing is supposed to do a fly-by in 2011. If you blow it up just after it been past you won't get hit by the rubble.
