Re: So given that we now know the IRS were for political reasons

Because the IRS doesn't even have to pretend that there is evidence before auditing a group.

The Bush and Clinton administrations were both pretty bad for IRS attacks on non-profits that opposed their views

Re: I agree...

That's the problem - it lists ALL your applications.

Install visual studio and that spy tool (to check for COM messages in MFC apps running in console mode ) appears before the IDE

The surprising thing is that anybody would be surprised that they would do this

Re: And the other half the story....

How difficult could it have been to change the business logic from, "if irish = terrorist" to "if muslim = terrorist" ?

Re: As JC would say...

Although presumably without the follow-up customer service questionaire

Re: Strokes big fat pussy and laughs.

If memory serves - evil supervillians always seem to be very good at large project management.

You never saw the underground layer half covered in scaffolding because a contractor was late or a plot to blow up Fort Knox stopped because an IT system had been abandoned.

Perhaps it's the shark+laser beam based negotiating tactics - but government IT negotiating with CapGemini / IBM / Whatever-Anderson-Is-called-Today should probably be issued with a white cat and a nehru jacket

Re: What has the EU do do with it anyway?

Because BT also bids on contracts in Europe and now because it has just been given a 300M quid subsidy (assuming typical 1005 cost overruns) it can go out and underbid on every other contract in Europe.

Suppose Germany decided it was going to subside the cost of manufacturing every car so they could be given away free - but the deal only applied to companies whose intials were V and W - would a worker in a Nissan plant in Sunderland have any reason to object?

Re: Linux - the engineer's server operating system

IIRC Munich originally started this when they were facing moving off W2K/NT4 to XP.

It wasn't that they intended saving money on that move - reading between the lines of the CTOs statement MSFT were prepared to give them the licenses almost free.

It was that they wanted off the MSFT upgrade treadmill. they would since have upgraded xp->vista->win7->win8, each of which would have had the same licence and retraining costs. And would have been done at a date out of their control. You are facing a huge hole in your budget following a recession - and a US software company decides it's time for you to pay several million $ right now.

.

Re: Linux - the engineer's server operating system

If you are a city council and your staff are producing documents and powerpoints that are anything more than basic - fire them.

Similarly if you are making documents available to your customers - the tax payers - that are only readable by the lates tmost advanced versions of office you are doing it wrong

Re: some possible explanation [have I understood correctly?]

Surely - its just a connected series of internets for oil

Re: A free market in politicians

Surely in a free market economy you would just pay them for votes directly?

They could have advertised pricing and a loyalty card

But why?

Either they also target other major news sources's twitter feeds but none of them fell for the bait

Or - the Syrian inteligence agency is about as well informed as its opposite numbers in the CIA., M15 and RAC

Picture the scene; in a glass-whiteboard clad, moodily lit underground layer in Damascus:

General - our crack team of cyber ninja commandos have managed to penetrate the main news organisation of the western-facist-zionist-oppressors.

Abdul - I told you before, Fox is not a real news site it's a parody, try again.

No General - this time we have struck against "the onion", the one that revealed Kim Jong Ill to be the sexiest world leader.

Well done Abdul - have a medal.

Re: Pens should be banned

Don't forget rabid badgers.

It's because of the lobbying efforts of the NRBA (National Rabid Badger Association) that there are no laws restricting carrying a concealed rabid badger

Re: Overkill?

In other news - the city council have ordered 100 new BMW's after the old ones ran out of petrol

Re: Take the 5th?

Or you could just do a Murdoch and not remember anything, or do a Murdoch sons and not know anything or the MP that said he didn't recognise their jurisdiction and refused to answer anything.

Re: Poor sod

> without a coherent and demonstrably viable plan on how he would deliver.

Should have applied to ycombinator instead then ?

Re: Is it really surprising....

Same reason we didn't like South Africa - they look like us, so they make us feel guilty.

Black safars killing blacks safars = we don't care, white safars killing kaffirs = we boycott them

Brown bacon-dodgers killing arabs = we don't care, White bacon-dodgers killing arabs = we boycott them

Re: So if you diss that Intel chip, you get a lawyergram by the Anti-Defamation League?

And America's missiles and space program were designed by "a lot of very clever engineers, scientists and academics" from Nazi Germany - funny old world isn't it ?

Re: Windows, Windows,

Sure - but everytime you spin up the instance you will have to run GenuineAdvantage and then phone India to get your licence re-authenticated

Re: But there ARE uses for this!

Sales people could work.

I go into PC-World-R-us and the glasses on the spotty 17year old would recognise me, check my MS-MVP and stackoverflow score and tell them to leave me alone because I'm only in there while the wife is looking at curtains next door

Re: This "problem" will only get worse

What's so hard?

BT have a record of which customer was getting which packet, BT are more than happy to help the government by handing over any data , with or without a warrant.

A more serious IP problem is that it doesn't uniquely record which site you visited. Your machine access 100.200.100.200 to download a thumbnail from an advertiser on el'reg. That server also hosts the Grimethorpe Ferret Lovers secret photo archive - so the fair and wise ms May has a recordt hat you accesssed a site showing images of under-age ferrets

Re: No Good Can Come From This

If your Ford Cortina conks out on the motorway it's considerably easier to pull onto the hard shoulder than if the rotors on this suddenly decide to stop at 2000ft

Exchanges operating in America, or with American owners could certainly fall under their jurisdiction.

\But between them trying to extend this because Americans use foreign exchanges, and a few media hungry senators wanting to do something about terrorist/drug smuggling/child porn dealing interwebtubes - there will probably be trouble.

Re: Any good currency...

So by that argument if Iceland had a bigger army they could have prevented their currency tanking after they decided to stop paying back what they had borrowed?

But they have also arrested foreign programmers, living and working outside America on foreign owned gambling websites who simply visited America - because the gambling site had American customers who were breaking US law.

If I was Mr Nakamoto I wouldn't be planing on changing planes in America anytime soon - especially if some senator decides that bitcoin is being used to fund terrorists, child porn or whatever the bogeyman of the month is.

Re: China involved in cyber-attacks

And yet if wikileaks had leaked this - it would be top secret military inteligence and treason.

>The problem is that the US can only regulate transactions that happen in the US.

Not if their attitude to online gambling is anything to go by.

They will happily snatch operators of bitcoin exchanges, programmers that ever worked on bitcoin and anyone who enabled americans to use bitcoin passing through their territory.

Re: It's pretty obvious...

> a known con artists and criminal,

And a great saving if you allow the secret services to investigate known con artists and criminals - without bothering with judges, warrants and police. In fact you could abolish the police altogether and just buy a job lot of black raincoats and rubber truncheons

Re: Lack of direction

Yes it did - it wanted a way of having control over people.

It tied all the credit card, internet history, oyster card usage together for that "total law enforcement" policy

It was a way of stopping and searching random (non-white male youth) and then nipping them down to the station for a quick DNA sample if they had forgotten theirs.

It was a way for local councils to be able to pull up something suspicous about your internet history or mobile phone usage if you went to complain about the bins.

It was a way of checking if you were a striking miner on their way to a picket ( well it does take a while to implement these things)

It was of checking if this was a nice middle class boy at a demo whose daddy may cause a row, or a chav scum that can be given a good kicking.

Re: There is no such thing as Palestine!

Pretty much the same argument could be made about Great Britain

Or Roman-Scandanavian-Anglo-Saxon-Norman-Hanover Land (incorpoarating Wales, Scotland and Ireland (sometimes)) land - but that is rather a lot to put on a passport

Re: Surely that's untrue?

>I think it's way more likely that this is simply propaganda

Or a leaked lobbying document by the MPAA

Chinese rockets

Don't worry if you kick out all the Chinese there are still lots of Russian physics grad students.

Failing that - you can kidnap a few Nazi's

Re: unintended f*c*i*g consequences.

Guns are noble defenders of America's freedom - she was using science.

Science is only one step from godless commie atheism

Re: 27k Golf ball finder anyone...?

Same way that somebody got a $bn contract for perve scanners at airports

Re: I disagree with most people here.

Presumably the people who sold Nimrod and Chinooks to the UK and Exocets to the Argentinians will get a rather longer sentance.

Re: Promises, promises

> Why is this?

Because the drivers are written by the guy sweeping up after those working on bleeding edge CPU's, NAND, lithography and so forth

Re: but what about....

Then you buy it yourself, only use it for work and claim it back on tax.

If you are really clever (or an MP) you buy it yourself from a cheap chinese site, lease it to yourself at 100x the cost (using your offshore holding company) and claim the lease costs back against tax