* Posts by Keith 21

137 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2009

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Nasty session stealing hole filled in WordPress All in One SEO plugin

Keith 21
Trollface

Re: A Matter of Trust

"Call me old fashioned, but I just can't trust code that I did not write myself."

Cool! So you wrote your own browser, running under you own OS, compiled by your own compiler, and connecting to the internet through a router / modem running firmware which you wrote? Fantastic job!

Queen guitarist Brian May releases virtual reality viewer

Keith 21

@frank ly Given that Queen are still alive and touring today, with Dr May still acing guitar duties, I'd say you are being rather pointlessly pedantic, yes!

Hubble spies supermassive black hole in surprising spot

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: Or dark matter is other universes

"Matter can't escape black holes because it can't travel faster than light"

Nothing says something can not travel faster than the speed of light.

Einstein did postulate that it is not possible to accelerate through light speed, but that's all - he said nothing about not being able to travel faster than the speed of light.

"galaxies are accelerating faster than light"

Given that light doesn't accelerate anyway, even you or I can accelerate faster than light merely by going from standing to walking.

Perhaps you meant to say they are accelerating to speeds faster than that of light? Even then you'd be wrong. It's all relative (as someone once said).

"out of our universe"

Again, no. They are, by definition, part of our (expanding) universe, and remain so even if we can not see them.

"Ergo we've made a mistake somewhere"

Well, quite.

Boozing is unsafe at ‘any level’, thunders chief UK.gov quack

Keith 21
Pint

So if there is "No safe level"...

...that means that no matter how little you drink, it's dangerous.

In that case, might as well just Go For It and down several units every day then - if we're going to die anyway, might as well enjoy it while we are here!

Keith 21

Hands up who didn't see this coming?

It's been obvious that this was coming ever since they banned smoking in public places, slapped huge duties on it, and cast smokers in the role of pariahs.

I remember at the time, when several non-smoking drinkers were smugly celebrating their victories over smokers, saying that drink would be the next target. Sadly, it seems to be coming to pass.

So, watch for increasing propaganda against drinking, leading to massive hikes in alcohol taxes "For the good of the public health".

Then once they have achieved that for alcohol, it'll be on to the next item on their agenda, namely sugar (I note they have already started on that).

"First they came for the smokers, but I didn't speak out because I am not a smoker..." to coin a quote.

WHY are GoDaddy and Verisign stockpiling patents? Do I smell war?

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: A patent on a Method of Communicating Information in Physical Form

Ce est OK, je vais communiquer en français qui a plus de 26 dérisoires vos symboles, et ne est donc pas couvert par votre brevet.

W3C recommends Pointer Events standard – but it's a touchy subject. Right, Apple?

Keith 21
Joke

Re: Point of order

"I always enjoy riling up the emotional fanboys with a few well-chosen facts."

Then I know that I and many others will look forward to seeing you post some well-chosen facts!

Will you be doing it soon, or do I have time to go make a pot of tea?

We'll ask GCHQ to DELETE records of 'MILLIONS' of people – Privacy International

Keith 21

Re: Catch-22

You mean like the existing and most heinous RIPA (kindly brought to you by the previous Labour government back in 2000) which provides for jail time if you decline to hand over when asked your encryption keys.

What's that? You've lost them? Tough, off to jail with you for not handing them over (not having them is not considered a valid reason not to hand them over under RIPA).

Oh, and whatever you do, don't tell ANYONE that you have had to hand over your keys, for doing so will result in another spell in jail.

Neat, huh?

'Revenge porn' bully told not to post people's nude pics online. That's it. That's his punishment

Keith 21

Re: has anyone read his side

Yup. Just gone there and read his pathetic excuses and self-justification.

Reads like someone who is genuinely sorry that they got caught.

No sympathy for the odious creep, serves him right even though his supposed punishment is light in comparison with the distress he deliberately caused those he abused.

Scouts take down database due to 'security vulnerabilities'

Keith 21
FAIL

Do the honourable thing...

Come on Scouts UK HQ do the honourable thing - scrap the abomination that is Compass, and use OSM instead - you know, like the majority (95%+) of your Scout leaders already do, and like several national and international groups already do.

But then again, that would involve using something which was Not Invented Here, and would involve scrapping some VERY expensive contracts to your mates, wouldn't it?

UK Scouts database 'flaws' raise concerns

Keith 21

There is a well-proven system ALREADY used by the vast majority of Scout troops in the UK.

Sadly, the idiots at ScoutUK HQ refuse to consider using it because of their tired old Not Invented Here mentality.

Most scout leaders reading this will know exactly the system to which I refer!

Keith 21
FAIL

Compass has been an absolute unmitigated disaster right from the outset.

It is cumbersome, insecure, hard to use, and should have been abandoned.

To give you an idea - all Scout leaders are required to transfer all details of all their beavers / cubs / scouts / explorers into the Compass database before the end of this month. So far, so good.

They can do it using a bulk upload. Sounds reasonable.

Only, thing is, you can do ONE SINGLE bulk upload and that's all. Which is pathetic!

What if you want to do a small test bulk upload to ensure you get everything right, then do a full bulk upload afterwards of everything?

Tough luck, you can;t, the morons who designed the system won't let you do it.

Some fields are marked as compulsory, even though they make no sense and don't always apply - for example, the Compass database requires full contact details of TWO parents for any member - so if you are a single parent then screw you, clearly your sort are not worthy.

The system itself is cumbersome. To create an event, you must create the event, then you must invite yourself to the event, then you must accept that invitation, then you must approve that acceptance, and only then can you edit the event! To add attendees, one invites them, waits for them to accept, THEN one must accept their acceptance before they are actually fully accepted as attending the event.

The system is designed and implemented by people who have no knowledge or understanding of how to actually run a scout troop.

The Scout organisation have wasted millions of a worthless, insecure, useless system, and refuse to do anything other than continue to throw good money after bad.

Their original plan last year was to develop Compass and do a phased rollout, such that everyone was gradually added over several months, with the database fully populated n time for this year's "census".

Alas, as early groups were forced to use it, more and more bugs and instabilities came to light. The Scout organisation's response? To press ahead anyway, so that now the entire organisation are required to rush their members into a not-fit-for-purpose system which falls over under medium loads and doesn't actually do what is required.

Now, the pathetic thing is that a great number of troops already use an existing perfectly good system, designed, developed and actively maintained by a ScoutMaster who knows what he is doing. It is used by a great many local UK scout troops, as well as a few international Scout organisations, and works beautifully.

ScoutsUK, meanwhile, refuse to even consider using it.

Why?

"Not Invented Here".

So instead, they continue to force their volunteers to use a system which doesn't work, which is insecure, and which causes more problems than it ever solved.

The individual scout troop leaders? The majority put the bear minimum into Compass, and continue to use the existing excellent system for general running of their troops.

Well done, ScoutsUK, your pathetic shortsighted approach is causing major problems for your volunteers, all because you are too arrogant and proud to admit that given the contract to your mates was not the wisest decision.

No biggie: EMC's XtremIO firmware upgrade 'will wipe data'

Keith 21

Re: this isn't disruptive

I have to say in my old days, I loved the simplicity of upgrading on NetApp systems.

Take the cluster. Failover first head. Upgrade first head. Failover 2nd to first, upgrade 2nd, bring second back in. All worked nicely with no downtime. Just as it should be!

Even migrating to a new NetApp system was pretty seamless for the users, as NetApp helped us set up both clusters, mirror, keep mirroring until all was perfectly in sync, about 5 minutes (if that) downtime to physically change the heads, all done.

Not to say there were not other issues with NetApp systems, especially with a particular restore which would have take 2 weeks due to an undocumented "feature", mind you, but that's a whole different story!

Assange™: Hey world, I'M STILL HERE, ignore that Snowden guy

Keith 21

Re: Well my cousin will be happy

"if they did, they would have to explain the footage from their bodycam to their superiors, or face some very tricky questions about why it was turned off."

Really?

Let's ask the family of Ian Tomlinson, murdered by a member of the Police for the crime of Walking Home. What did the Police do? They lied. Repeatedly. Until independent footage proved that what eyewitnesses said had happened. Whereupon they decided not to press charges agains the Policeman who had attacked Tomlinson.

Or what about Jean Charles de Menezes, executed (yes, EXECUTED) by the Police for "Lookin' a bit foreign".

What did our valiant Police force do? They lied. And lied. And lied. They closed ranks. They decided that nothing wrong had happened, and decided not to press charges against any of the multiple officers who had held him down before pumping SEVEN bullets into his head at close range (out of 11 bullets fired over 30 seconds).

They claimed he had leaped over the ticket barrier when they'd shouted for him to stop - even though it was proven he'd used his Oyster card and walked through the ticket barrier and the police hadn't shouted for him to stop. They claimed it looked as though his heavy overcoat was hiding a bomb, even though he wasn't wearing such an overcoat. They lied and lied and closed ranks and lied more.

Not exactly the Dixon of Dock Green culture you claim, Loyal Commenter...

Rupert Murdoch says Google is worse than the NSA

Keith 21

Re: Opt-in?

"[Google] are pretty open with what they do and how they use your data. It's also obvious what they do with it."

Oh really?

Forgotten about the whole GoogleView car saga?

"We're just taking photos, nothing else"

"No, we are absolutely not sniffing WiFi networks"

"OK, we are sniffing them, but we are absolutely not storing the data, trust us, we are not evil"

"Well, OK, we do store it as well, but honest, we don't do anything with it. Do No Evil lollerzzzz"

Google? Open about what they do?

That'll be the day.

Premier League wants to PURGE ALL FOOTIE GIFs from social media

Keith 21

Interesting to compare this with what REAL artists are doing...

Queen are currently on tour with Adam Lambert as their singer.

Fans are recording and posting videos, ranging from chart clips, to full song, to the entire concert.

Others then started collecting these videos and editing them into good quality multi-camera videos of entire concerts and posting them freely on YouTube etc.

Queen's response? Brian May (lead guitarist and part time vocalist) posts links to them via his Twitter account, his Facebook account and his own website!

At one point the record company stepped in and asked YouTube to remove them. May found out, and his response was to tell the record company to stop it.

THERE lies the difference between genuine talent performing for the fans, and football which holds the fans in contempt and views them merely as a cash cow.

Ex-Apple man Sam Sung - for it is he - sticks namebadge on eBay

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: Why did Jasper

Well what else did we expect from Jasper, never one to knowingly give up the opportunity to sneer at the efforts of others who are actually doing something constructive.

Then again, the article was written by someone who can't even get the basic facts right, failing in the very second sentence - "But don't feel too bad for Sam Sung of Vancouver, Canada, because he's set to make a small fortune simply by selling his Apple name badge." It's not until much further down that our valiant hack actually grudgingly concedes that Mr Sung will not make anything from the sale, as he is donating all the proceeds to charity.

Journalistic integrity - would be nice occasionally...

*sigh*

ONE EMAIL costs mining company $300 MEEELION

Keith 21

Re: Accomplices

"He received the level of punishment he did because he did not try to profit from his activities."

Of course he made a profit from it!

He is not stupid. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly the effect his deliberate deceit would cause. And he knew that if he placed a short order in his own name it would be spotted...

"And I'll repeat, a suspended sentence is still a jail sentence, with real consequences for people"

You can repeat it as much as you like, it's still not true.

How much jail time does he serve? Oh yes, that's right - NONE.

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: Accomplices

"And I'm amused how "scot-free" equates to $1000 and 20 months suspended prison sentence."

The only actual punishment he got was a paltry 1,000 fine.

Prison time served? Zero. Absolutely none.

A suspended sentence is utterly meaningless in respect of his conviction. It's simply saying "If you break this law in this way again we'll punish you", nothing more.

So yeah, receiving nothing more than a paltry 1,000 fine (out of a possible maximum of 1 million) and zero prison time (out of a possible maximum of 10 years) is getting off scot-free.

"If the above genuinely is negligible, presumably all those complaining about his actions won't mind accepting similar non existent punishment?"

If I ever broke that law, I'd happily accept the same level of non existent punishment as he got, absolutely! Heck, with a little bit of carefully concealed shorting on the stock, I'd (and he'd) make WAY more than that in profit easily.

Keith 21

Re: Ball Ox

"Whatever you think of his actions, he didn't get off lightly."

Lightly is EXACTLY how he got off!

A slap on the wrist and told "Now don't do it again" is what he got.

Keith 21

Re: Accomplices

"Shame they got off scot-free.

I am, of course, referring to the "news outlets" who didn't bother to verify the email, and just blindly publish it."

And what about the ones who DID verify it first, by calling the number and being lied to by this scumbag and his accomplice? Do you want them punished too, while this scumbag is pretty much let off scot-free (a paltry 1,000 fine and that's it)?

Just curious!

Seventh-gen SPARC silicon will accelerate Oracle databases

Keith 21

Re: Are these the SPARC or the T processors

It'll be the SPARC M series (the M7), not the T series, given this is for high-end stuff. Not that this rules out announcing the T6 as well, but from the description they are absolutely talking about the M7 here.

Keith 21

Re: Can anyone explain? I'm genuinely curious.

Depends upon what your task is.

Fast-as-possible single threaded performance, or a small handful of simultaneous threads?

Yup, x86 will do you right there no questions.

High performance very highly threaded simultaneous applications?

How does a box capable of scaling from 1 thread to 2048 threads, and up to 32TB (yes TB) of RAM, all viewed by the software as a single system without having to recompile for different numbers of threads grab you?

Guess which one high-end large databases will run better on...

And that's with the current SPARC technology, who knows what SPARC 7 will offer.

It all depends upon your tasks.

YouTube will nuke indie music videos in DAYS, says Google exec

Keith 21

Don't Be Evil

Remember the days when the googlistas and googlefans were falling over themselves to worship google because of that mantra?

Funny how they are so quiet these days now that google is showing it is perfectly happy to fully embrace evil (as it has always done) when it can make a few billion bucks.

Internet of Things fridges? Pfft. So how does my milk carton know when it's empty?

Keith 21
Trollface

Re: The internet of fridges

"""if the door is shut, the little light is out,"

But is it?"

Yes it is, by inference, as you will find a lever at the top of the fridge which can be operated manually instead of by the door to switch off the light."

Yes, but when the door is closed, how do you KNOW that lever has actually switched the light off?

All you know is that with the door open, move the lever and the light goes out. When the door is open.

When the door is CLOSED, however, you are in a different scenario, with no way to observe, and all bets are off.

Oh, and don't for one second suggest one could add a camera to observe the inside of the fridge, for then one has changed the conditions again and entered a third scenario...

Yet another reason to skip commercials: Microsoft ad TURNS ON your Xbox One

Keith 21

@Lee D and Don Jefe

Don't get the need for voice recognition?

Cool, then don't use it.

Simple :)

Me? I'm writing this entire post, and submitting it (having read the article and comments), all via voice control / voice recognition. Did I NEED to? No. Then again, I don't NEED to read or reply either. That I did, is made easier using voice control / voice recognition. Easier, more convenient, and as you can wee with this uncorrected post, it seems to pretty much work.

Police at the door? Hit the PANIC button to erase your RAM

Keith 21

"Surely you would then have grounds to argue that they would need to prove that there is a hidden volume, since it is also capable of NOT making such a thing?"

Nope, you would have to prove you did not create it, after all they would simply cite that they have "reasonable grounds" to believe you did. Ball is in your court. Can't prove you didn't create it? Oh dear sonny...

Keith 21

Re: RIPA2000

"What do UKIP say?"

Given UKIP do things like getting the Police to pop round for a quiet "chat" to ask you to remove posts from Twitter which they don't like (but which fall foul of no law), I rather suspect you will be out of luck if you think they would even consider repealing anything like RIPA.

Facebook wants to LISTEN IN on the songs and vids playing in YOUR living room

Keith 21

Re: Presumably would also monitor speech

"Mention politics and the Stasi roll up at your door."

Sadly we are pretty much there already, if you dare to post something less than glowing about UKIP on Twitter then they call the police to visit you and ask you to take it down...

And given recent election results showing our "wonderful" fellow countrymen seem determined to vote for these racist, sexist, homophobic,bigoted nazis, it's only going to get worse.

Mozilla agrees to add DRM support to Firefox – under protest

Keith 21

Re: @Keith While people moan about "Net Neutrality"...

Stephen - there is a very simple answer.

If you do not agree to the terms of the offer being made by the content creators, then simply don't pay for it and watch it.

Problem solved.

Nobody is "taking control" of your computer (gotta love the hyperbola in that straw man point!).

"The way an honest free market works is" And therein lies the problem. As the high rates of content theft demonstrate in this entitlement-driven society, we are not IN an "honest free market", sadly.

We collectively reap what we collectively sow.

Keith 21

Re: While people moan about "Net Neutrality"...

"...their freedom is torn from them piece by precious piece."

And which particular freedom does this remove?

The freedom to watch other people's work without paying them for it?

No, that's not a freedom. If you don't like the terms, don't watch. Simple as that. The content creators don't "owe" you the right to watch their content for free.

Boffins say hot air makes Antarctica colder

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: Warming more slowly=getting colder.

I'm sure the scientific community at large will welcome the results of your detailed scientific study and analysis which disproves this latest hypothesis, itzman.

What's that? You don't have any research to back up your ideological position?

Funny, that.

Report: Google's NSA dealings not as bad as you thought – THEY WERE WORSE

Keith 21

How can this be?

But how can this possibly be?

I mean, we keep getting told that Google embodies their philosophy of "Do No Evil"...

Report: Climate change has already hit USA - and time is RUNNING OUT

Keith 21

Re: OK, predict next year!

Ah, yet another person deliberately confusing weather with climate.

Try this.

Take a pan of cold water.

Put it on the cooker.

Turn the heat up.

What will happen? Bubbles will start to form as it heats up, yes?

AH! PREDICT WHERE THE NEXT BUBBLE WILL BE!

WHAT? YOU CAN'T? THAT PROVES IT'S NOT GOING TO TURN INTO A PAN OF BUBBLING WATER THEN, the heating is a hoax!!!!!!!11!!!!eleventy!!!!

Battery-production problems delay anorexic 5.5-inch 'iPhone Air'

Keith 21

So let's see if I understand this...

A product which has not been announced may no longer be launched on the date which was never announced either?

And this is 'news'?

WTF happened to Pac-Man?

Keith 21

Re: Video Games

An excellent joke first told by British comedian Marcus Brigstocke.

Wanna use Bitcoin on your site? BitPay's open-source library wants to help

Keith 21

Exactly!

A month ago, 1 Bitcoin was 'worth' US$1,000.

As I type? It's at US$280.

Which makes for an horrific rate of inflation of Zimbabwean proportions...

Time travellers outsmart the NSA

Keith 21

Re: Personally I'd of hoped

Oh come on, everyone knows the real reason that we are not knee-deep in invading aliens is due to this one man.

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

Keith 21

"This is the equivalent of countries asking if you plan to overthrow the government when you enter them."

Sole purpose of visit, dear boy; sole purpose of visit!

Google Glass will SELF-DESTRUCT if flogged on eBay

Keith 21
FAIL

Do No Evil

Anyone remember the days when Google tried to claim that their company motto was Do No Evil?

And laughably, the idiots who actually believed them?

Amazon accused of knocking off AWS customers' products

Keith 21
Facepalm

Something doesn't stack up here

They claim Amazon launched the same product 2 WEEKS after they did and tgus Amazon ripped them off.

Honey, if it only takes 2 weeks from seeing your product to spec, develop, test and release a copy, then your product ain't all that much, especially as it won't have taken you more than a couple of weeks yourself.

Sounds more like unfortunate coincidence than industrial espionage.

25% of Groupon share value WIPED OUT after rates slashed

Keith 21

That's all well and good IF price is the ONLY factor.

Which, usually, it isn't.

Suppose Dave62 runs the best restaurant in the area with the best food ever, at the most reasonable prices.

That means nothing if people don't know about you.

You can halve your prices, won't get you any more customers if nobody knows about you.

So you advertise via a Groupin offer which naturally sells out.

Suddenly your restaurant is full for a month. Yeah, you make less than full price per table, but that is way more than you made on that same yet empty table the month before.

Wil most Grouponites return?

Probably not.

BUT for that month your place was busy, packed. And news like that travels it must have been packed for a reason. If everyone else is going, perhaps "I" ought to go.

Which I do.

And discover a bloody good restaurant which I frequent and introduce friends to.

Now you have more customers, regulars, than you did before.

Is that not worthwhile?

And as for paying lots to Groupin and people not paying £40 for a meal they got for £20 last time?

Piss easy one!

Your Groupon meal is not a normal menu option, it's a limited Groupon special. At a special price.

They notice when glancing at the menu that there are some bargains.

And the food was great, so maybe next time they are in the area...

Sure, not every Grouponite becomes a customer. Nobody is claiming they do.

However, when run properly by someone who knows what they are doing, a Groupon offe can be a very effective marketing tool.

When run properly. Therein lies the rub...

Boffins FREEZE PHONES to crack Android on-device crypto

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: capacitor-based overwrite

And good luck fitting 2 or more of THOSE into your slim smartphone...

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: capacitor-based overwrite

What size of capacitor do you think would be required?

Let's take a typical mobile phone.

Battery supplies 3.5V.

Phone draws (very roughly) 0.125A

If you want to keep the phone alive for 2 seconds to allow an orderly shutdown (which, for some phones, is WAY too short a time - try it!) then the size of capacitor you need is

Capacitor = (0.125 * 2) / 3.5

= 0.071F

(It's actually way more than that because after 2 seconds the capacitor would be empty, but let's go with this figure for now).

So, that's a 71mF capacitor (or a 71,000uF capacitor, given the a re usually specified in uF or pF).

You might get away with 2 x 47,000uF capacitors in parallel.

And you want to fit that inside your mobile phone?

Good luck cramming those 2 capacitors, each 3cm in diameter and 5cm in length, into your tiny phone, John!

Apple supplier Foxconn could still take a bite out of Sharp

Keith 21
FAIL

Typical El Reg link bait title :-(

Article has nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, has no connection with Apple, yet El Reg resorts to tired cheap link-bait headline.

Whatever happened to quality journalism, interesting articles, and RELEVANT headlines?

Is this what El Reg has sunk to?

Is it too late to regain some of its former excellent spark?

New Year's resolution: Don't use Instagram, it'll sell YOUR photos

Keith 21
Thumb Up

Good!

Perhaps this will stem the tide of those nauseating hipster-wannabe crap quality photos which are supposedly suddenly of merit because they've been filtered.

The sooner they disappear, the better!

(As for those whinging, did you seriously expect Instagram to host all your shit for free forever? Seriously? Get real...)

Musos blast US copyright bods: 'ARTISTS MAKE LOUSY SLAVES!'

Keith 21
Angel

" I will boycott this system of exploitation and my work will be only available through underground means. "

Bleats Ms Johnston.

Thank heavens for small mercies, at least we'll be spared any more of her moronic self-righteous pathetic bilgewater - seems there is much benefit in the current system after all!

Hacker sentenced to six years – WITH NO INTERNET

Keith 21
Thumb Up

Good, serves him right and the sentence seems to be a pretty good fit.

So here we have a thug who abused the internet to carry out various crimes including fraud and making bomb threats (funny how those leaping to his defence on here wilfully ignore THOSE delightful areas of his crime portfolio, I wonder why?), and rather than just throw him in jail (where he will learn how to become an even "better" criminal at taxpayer expense) his punishment is to remove access to the very thing he abused in order to commit his crimes.

Sounds like a very well thought out punishment, actually. Perfectly sensible one, fits the crime, and is most definitely proportionate.

And those rushing to whinge that his hoomin rights have been abused by cutting him off from the internet would do well to actually READ the article wherein they will find he IS allowed internet access, under supervision with prior approval. So no, it won't stop him accessing legitimate sites to further his education.

We could do with seening MORE of this sort of creative appropriate punishment handed out by the courts, quite frankly.

Swiss railways ticked off at iOS clock knock-off

Keith 21

Something fishy here...

My clock icon on my iOS 6 iPhone looks absolutely nothing like the one claimed in the article.

Sounds like someone made up a pack of lies to get some exposure.

Another clickbait Reg article?

BT gets postcode knickers in twist, plants Shoreditch on Mount Everest

Keith 21
FAIL

Re: Failing it's GCSE geography?

Did you deliberately misuse that apostrophe while talking about incorrect use of geography?

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