Posts by Sceptical Bastard

More a user issue, surely?

I'm not taking sides for or against the EU or Google. But I think the issue of regulating cookie retention is over-rated.

The answer, surely, is in the users' hands? The commonly used browsers - IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konquerer - all have the facility to delete cookies (either by demand or on exit). Most have the facility to do so selectively - that is, for users to select which cookies to delete.

Personally, I set my browser to delete all cookies on exit. I know that some people like or need cookie-reliant functionality on some sites so I concede that indiscriminate deletion isn't always an attractive option.

Ultimately it's up to the user how much she or he values their privacy. The paranoid can renew browser sessions between every site; they can set security and privacy settings to 'high'; they can disable Active X (in IE) or run add-ons such as NoScript; they can empty caches or set their browser not to cache anything; they can run Stephen Gould's CleanUp! utility after every browser session; they can break and re-establish their DSL connection to gain a new IP address (assuming their ISP provides dynamically assigned IPs) ; and if they're not in a hurry then can use Anonymouse or Tor.

And all that without any intervention by our masters in Brussels.

@ John Lettice

Quote: "we think it's worth doing a corrective every now and again."

I'm bloody glad you do: we rely on The Register for a bit of sane analysis amid all the hype and spin.

Quote: "as far as we're concerned, yes, it's really a story."

Yup, I'd go along with that too.

As I've already commented, we're force-fed a diet of paranoia and FUD by the media quite out of proportion to the threat. And the debate is all too often skewed by vested interests and hypocrisy.

For example, I don't remember this degree of state-sponsored hysteria during the 1970s when the British people were faced with a barbarous and ultimately futile campaign of violence by Northern Irish protestant and catholic paramilitaries. That 'war' was tacitly supported by outsiders who took seriously the self-serving mythologies of both criminal factions. Today, we stand shoulder to shoulder with these outsiders against Islam - but when the boot was on the other foot, it was a different story as shown by the support radical republicanism received from Noraid.

From masterminds to morons

Quote: "Hillier is relatively new to the ID card brief ..."

And new to IT as well by the sound of it.

Quote: "...officials present were passing notes to try to get her back on message"

Ministers appearing before Commons committees are always accompanied by civil servants and these officials almost always pass briefing notes to them. No surprise there, then.

Very few ministers are both on top of their brief and good extempore speakers (Robin Cook and William Hague are two who spring to mind). Most politicians, however, are ill-informed inarticulate drones with the attention span of goldfish. And a minority are complete idiots who shouldn't be let loose unless heavily sedated.

Where does Jacqui Smith fit in that pantheon? You decide.

Stranger than fiction

Headline: "Jimmy Wales to chair World Economic Forum on the Middle East." Surely this *IS* the real Jimbo April Fools story?

What next? Sergey Brin and Larry Page to co-preside over the G8?

'Wisdom of herds' my arse

Quote "Phorm's PR team had not been aware of Wikipedia's policy on conflicts of interest."

Like hell, they hadn't. Lies, deceit and spin have characterised Phorm and BT's behaviour throughout this whole sorry saga. They cannot be trusted nor believed.

But as Tim says (above), at least they're increasingly in the public eye in a bad light. It's sometimes said there's no such thing as bad PR - but that's bollocks.

Unfortunately, Tim, I don't agree that the ISPs are "all backing away nervously." Carphone may have expressed reservations, but Virgin is sitting on the fence and BT is sticking to Phorm like shit to a blanket.

The 'Phuck ophph, Phorm' campaign must continue. Aux armes, citoyens!

A breakthrough for IT

Where did they do the study? In an IT department, I reckon.

Now it'll be sweetness on the helpdesk and freshness in the server room! But there *still* won't be any girls.

Ghastly place

I, too, worked there for a while.

I, too, left and never went back.

What did I miss? Drunkeness, whingeing self-pity, the ugly city centre, the appalling whining accent, muggings, vandalism*, endemic theft, urban decay, litter, violent pubs, the obsession with football, having my car nicked (twice) ...

Liverpool, city of culture? An oxymoron, surely?

* see topiary Fab Four

Lies, lies and lies. But no surprises.

I read the BBC's news report today about Cambridge University's findings.

In that BBC coverage, a spokesdroid for Phorm said: "The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was drafted in the earliest days of the internet. It is not designed to criminalise legitimate business activities."

Even that simple statement is disingenuous empty spin - or more precisely it is completely wrong.

Firstly, K(u)nt and his odious PR drones obviously know nothing about the internet's history.

The RIPA Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on February 9, 2000 and received Royal Assent on July 28. That means it was drafted and debated during 1999 (although probably conceived the year before).

So they are saying that the year 2000 is "the earliest days of the internet." I think not!

Licklider had the idea in the early 1960s; ARPAnet went live in December 1969; the term 'internet' for a global network of networks was coined in 1974; the first TCP/IP WAN launched in January 1983 (when ARPAnet moved from Network Control Protocol to TCP/IP); the NFS network was made available to commercial users in 1988; CERN introduced Berners-Lee's HTTP and the World Wide Web in 1991; and the Mosaic browser was launched a year or so later.

Secondly, I concede that RIPA does not appear to be "designed to criminalise legitimate business activities." But Phorm's projected activity is not "legitimate business": it is an unauthorised interception of traffic as defined by Section 1 of RIPA and as such is illegal.

Moving on to the Wikipedia issue, I am sure El Reg readers take much of what appears there as manipulation by vested interests. So no surprise there!

It is no surprise, either, that pro-Phorm entries are traced to an IP address range assigned to BT.

Nor am I surprised that BT says: "It's nothing to do with BT PR. We haven't been involved with amending any Wikipedia entry on Phorm." After all, BT has consistently been deceitful and dishonest and secretive about Phorm. So why should we believe them now? They are habitual liars.

Phuck ophph Phorm.

Aux armes, citoyens.

Flee or laugh?

"... probably melt all the ice - that's a sea rise of 75 metres."

That's us completely fucked then. OMG!

"...no need to fear catastrophic carbon-driven climate upheaval, as mankind will run out fossil fuels much sooner than presently estimated."

Hoorah! We're saved in the same article!

A Pirana brother?

Dinsdale was convinced that he was being watched by a giant hedgehog whom he referred to as 'Spiny Norman'.

Only in El Reg! Brightened my morning.

A likely story

The headline sounds like a euphemism for "HMRC's database has been nicked or lost and will take a week to be restored from back-ups"

Hang on. It can't be that. They wouldn't have the foresight to make back-ups.

The Phorm angle

Don't you Vultures have any work to do? No? Thought not...

Next reconstruction photo: K(u)nt Ertugrul is hanged drawn and quartered in T5 by an unholy alliance of pirates, security officers and Naomi Campbell

Phrase de jour

"The life expectancy of a Brazilian electrician"

A metaphor is born :)

@Sarah Bee "Pssst, want some chocolate li'l girl?"

Speak as you find

For five long years BT was my ISP, first on dial-up then on DSL. In my experience, BT is a hateful corporation whose business model seems built on contempt for its customers.

Of all the ISPs I've used (work and home) BT was the worst by a mile: piss-poor products, unreliable connectivity, dreadful customer 'service', and a 'fuck you' attitude.

I voted with my wallet some years ago. Since then, things seem to have got even worse - this email fuck-up and the Phorm phiasco, for instance

I'd dearly like to see the whole shower of shit bankrupted and broken up, its directors in Guantanamo, its senior management tarred and feathered, and its PR people hanged drawn and quartered.

The more people who move ISP away from BT the better.

Beeb on bandwagon

A few days late with this so I spose no-one will be reading it but...

I just heard Walter L Wagner spouting off on BBC Radio 4's prestigious 'Today' morning news programme. As far as I could tell, his main gripe is that CERN has failed to publish a risk assessment and therefore no-one knows whether or not the collider will go tits-up and send all to hell in a handcart. A *risk assessment* FFS - how very 2008.

I know very little about theoretical physics but I know a 24-carat nutter when I hear one! Walt sounded barking to me (albeit in an affable way).

Given the choice seems to be between the views of an obvious loony and those of several thousand sober physicists and cosmologists, I'll rest easy in my bed.

Trouble is, a lot of Radio 4 listeners are even more scientifically illiterate than me and I am sure at least a few of them will be shitting in their slippers as they contemplate the Earth vanishing up its own hole.

They could, of course, be right. Walter the dread-droid might not be mad as a hatter. But at least they won't be around to say "Toldja so"

Good riddance

Reading this story, I think back to my pre-DSL dial-up days in a pre-Firefox +AdBlock world and the (limited) bandwidth and time that was wasted as DoubleClick served up shit I hadn't asked for and placed cookies I didn't want. "Waiting for blah.blah.doubleclick.com" was a more-or-less permanent fixture in my browser's status bar.

And I'm meant to feel sorry that some of those responsible are redundant? Sack the lot of them (and the rest of the time-wasting droids peddling online advertising).

Lazy as well as sceptical

I'm too idle (and technically uniformed) to contribute to beta-testing. And I'm too cautious to be an early adopter of anything. So I'll wait til June's full release and then wait a week or two more til the inevitable last-minute issues have been patched.

But from what I've read here and elsewhere, the new 'Fox will have been worth waiting for.

@ Sarah Bee

Oy! How come you get FIVE comments in just one story? Yeah, I know ... favouritism cos you're a girl (a real one, we assume).

Also, your comments here are too sensible: stop making sense* because us commentards prefer it when you talk dirty (see comments here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/wombat_incident/comments/

*copyright Talking Heads

Beyond parody

We have a 'Minister for Transformational Government'? Not even Orwell could've come up with that.

Can anyone believe that ministers or Whitehall mandarins will become adoit with any aspect of technology newer than a sliderule (no, make that an abacus)?

As it has proved time and again, the UK government has the clumsy knack of turning any and every aspect of IT that it touches into a pile of poo.

The lessons of history

Quote (from lelong, above): "... the end of public confidence in the ISO impartality and honesty."

Eh? *What* public confidence? The ISO may be many things but 'impartial' and 'honest' are not among them. It is a bloated, patriarchal, self-interested cartel run by patronising bureaucrats with a 'we know best' attitude who are in the pocket of big business.

ISO was the body, remember, that tried to sink TCP/IP in favour of it's own cumbersome inter-networking system, the OSI Reference Model.

The OSI system was designed by committee and as a result instead of a racehorse they'd come up with a mishapen camel. TCP/IP, on the other hand, had been developed by inspired and talented individuals and was lean and mean.

Most significantly, TCP/IP was up and running on real networks and was being tweaked and refined all the time. ISO's system was just a collection of abstractions, never tried in the real world.

Despite initial kowtowing to the ISO by business, many arms of the US government, and most European governments, TCP/IP eventually won the day.

It won partly because it was evangelised by the fathers of today's internet (most notably by Vint Cerf); partly because the UNIX community adopted it and it was built into early Sun machines; partly because it was the de facto standard in academic and research institutions; but mostly because it was far better than anything the ISO could come up with.

Which brings us round to today....

BBC follows El Reg

Nice to note that the Beeb is running the story today in its RSS top news stories under the headline " BT advert trials were illegal"

See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7325451.stm

At this rate, the dreadful PR and (and its consequences for Phorm's share price and capitalisation) will render K(u)nt's business unviable.

Congratulations to El Reg for the lead it has taken on this issue.

@ Sarah Bee

Which do you resemble, Sarah... computer star or shoe collector? ;)

@ Dan ... yeah, I know what you mean. The cocky little four-eyed sod will be pinching work from us in five years time aided and abetted by his pushy mother.

Lightened my day, anyway

Quote: "In a candid interview with The Register, Wales said he intends to join the brotherhood of Franciscan Friars, taking the traditional vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience"

Brilliant, just effing brilliant. I burst out laughing when I got to the bit above. :)

But wait a mo - that's about the third or fourth April Fool on the site today. Don't you Vultures have *any* work to do? On second thoughts, silly question...

Fools rush in...

@ O RLY..??

"Can I be the first to call ... FAKE!"

No. About a million commentards beast you to it. Next.

@Wayland Sothcott

"... whitness such a traumtizing spectical."

Oy! What's with the anagram of my nom-de-plume? You're making a traumatising spectacle of yourself, man ;)

PS I had such awful teachers at school that I really wanted the story to be true.

National pride

""No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British..."

I glowed with pride at that. At last! Something we're world class at.

Then I thought "Whoa! He's obviously never met the French."

As to Microsoft avoiding (or, in this case, evading) tax, hey guys why the surprise? The big story would be MS (or any huge corporate) structuring to pay *more* tax.

Whitehall Wikipedians

A nice bit of PR for Jimbo from Stephen O’Brien, MP

Spooks and sundry government droids get as bored as the rest of us, I'm sure and it doesn't matter to me whether it's Wikipedia or YouPorn they waste my money on.

If only Mr O’Brien would expend as much effort on investigating Phorm...

You wouldn't credit it...

... and these phonetards would wilt under the lack of credit. Jeeze-us-aitch-christ, the Darwin principle in action - humankind is better off without hypertensive heart-diseased mobe addicts. Die, you sad losers, and help us clean up the genepool.

So this bloke shot his wife through the wall? And the police actually believed his cock-and-bull dish story? Unless the plod are unbelievably gullible, he's cleverer than he appears at first reading.

Crowing premature for Ubuntards

As an Umbongo user myself, I'm wary of getting into a fanboy frenzy over this result.

I think the real lessons are to beware sloppily written proprietary apps (in this case Flash) and that no OS is 'secure' if lusers don't patch, harden and exercise caution and commonsense.

Still can't help a thinly veiled smirk, though ;)

@ Sarah Bee

QUOTE: "'drink a pint o'cock' is the new 'eat a bowl of fuck"

God Sarah, we sad geeks just *love* it when you talk dirty ;)

The absolute pits

This story doesn't surprise me - BT must be the worst ISP anywhere ever. Not to mention being the arseholes who secretly trialed Phorm and lied about it.

Music to my ears! Reminds me of...

... the animated Lego reconstruction of "Matty Groves", a folksong murder ballad, which I saw projected on a big screen at Fairport's Cropredy Convention music festival last August.

The folk story involves a feudal lord's wife and a peasant. While her lord is away she fucks the peasant but when they awake from their post-coital sleep the lord has returned. In a fit of pique, he fights a duel with the peasant and kills him. But his wife tells him the peasant was a better shag than him. So he grabs his sword and "struck his wife right through the heart and pinned her against the wall".

Sounds grim? Well, it was hilarious in Lego action! You can watch the band (Fairport Convention) playing the song with the Lego movie projected behind them on YouTube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKYZUx7tPBc

and here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WysEoApJQqw

And if you fancy a weekend away from your server room, workstation, or helpdesk, try the festival in August - it's a hoot as a rule. More here:

http://www.fairportconvention.com

@ Money well spent

Well, at least they're doing their bit to save the Post Office

@ Sarah Bee

Laughed myself silly - good story.

Can I have your babies?

Powerful

Quote: "Hewlett-Packard-based cluster, sporting 14,400 processors, 28TB of memory, and 140TB of disk storage. EKA has a peak performance of 180 teraflops per second, has a sustained computation capacity of 120 teraflops..."

Should just about be able to run Vista then. Can I buy one in PC World?

Trust the FBI?

This is the organisation whose "intelligence gathering" was so good they failed to act when it was reported to them that Arabs were learning to fly passenger jets but NOT learning how to take-off or land them.

The same FBI that gave America NO warning at all of 9/11 or Oklahoma or.....

And British police and intelligence? Are they better? Yeah. Right. Look at the witch-hunt cock-up that was Operation Ore. Look at the way the plods shot the Arab terrorist Charles de Menezes. And look at how our brilliant boys in MI5 and JIC told Tony Blair that Saddam definitely had WMD ready to go in 45 min.

Why the fuck do politicians, judges and juries swallow the at-best speculative and at-worst falsified "evidence" the spooks and the filth present to them? If they do it in matters of national security and life-or-death, what hope can we have that they'll excercise due scepticism in matters of IT forensics?

Mention kiddies and people turn off their reason. Don't get me wrong - I am a father and I would happily see proven paedophiles banged up til the sun goes out. But the case must be PROVEN beyond reasonable doubt - and being tricked by the feds or having some fuckstain IT git on the plod's payroll planting "evidence" on a hard drive is NOT proof.

Proper criminal investigation, yes. Witch-hunts, hysteria, and fabrication of evidence, no.

</rant>

The solution to the problem

So the bandwidth of BBC's on-demand streaming output will hit ISPs "...who are already operating a fiercely competitive volume business on tiny margins"?

But, thank heavens, a solution is ready and waiting. Hard-pressed ISPs can restore the margins lost to bandwidth charges by pimping us 'customers' to Phorm.

We ISP-fodder will be so much better off, then. As we watch all those missed episodes of "Two Pints...." wonderful WebWise will protect us from our own stupidity by eliminating phishing and we'll enjoy delightful highly-personalised advertising which will enhance our miserable serf-like existence.

As Kent (with a 'u') Ertugrul might say, welcome to my world.

PS: What sort of a surname is "Ertegrul"? I mean, the best anagram you can get is 'gut lurer' which is pretty pathetic.