Posts by Steve 697 publicly visible posts • joined 25 May 2007
"the whole thing is just wind-baggery and empty posturing of the highest order. But that seems to be all the PRC's Communist government is about, these days."
Now all they need is to learn how to quietly pension off corrupt officials instead of executing them and they'll be just like our glorious western governments.
"Why would an intelligent man like Hicham Yezza not know how dangerous downloading / posessing a terrorist training manual could be, regardless of whose academic reading list it might be on?"
Shouldn't you be asking why he should feel it dangerous for a university employee to aid a student in obtaining a book that was required for his course? You're basically saying, "If he's that smart, why didn't he realise that we live in a racist police state?"
"How stupid can you get?"
Stupid enough to think that this is acceptable, apparently.
If he had been named John Smith, this never would have been reported to the police.
The EU seem to have a pretty good argument there. The US can bring all the lawyers they like, but they don't really stand a chance against EU bureaucracy. No-one does. Unfortunately, if the WTO side against the EU, the rest of Europe will probably ignore it while we toe the line.
It's still astounding that the WTO keeps up this pretence of being independent when they are willing to listen to complaints from a country that's breaking thier rules.
How many of those hackers you fondly remember could etch a silicon wafer, build a vacuum chamber for an electron microscope, calculate the grain size required to ensure domains are ferromagnetic at room temperature...
The reason the proportion of computer users with the "hacker mentality" has decreased is that computers have become simple enough to use that non-hacker types can handle them.
"for the sake of scamming me out of £300"
Try the small claims court, for that amount it should be free. The best thing is, if they ignore you, you get a default judgement - which means you can send bailiffs round if they don't pay.
You can do it online hear;
https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/csmco/index.jsp
"And yes, when artists sign contracts, that's not an agreement with benefits on both sides, it's STEALING."
Ever read a recording contract? They're usually daylight robbery for the artist. And while the RIAA may not have actually killed anyone, that doesn't excuse all levels of criminality up to murder.
What they *are* doing is killing music as an art. Each generation of musicians is influenced by the music around them. As the labels artificially restrict the music available, they restrict the musicians of each successive generation to producing more and more homogenised music.
"He'd have made a bit from live performances, but the heavy grease is in the records and selling the tunes as ad jingles and such."
This is patently untrue. The average artist makes far more from live shows and t-shirt sales than they will ever make from record sales. The reason being that the first thing the record labels do with a new artist is to make them sign over all publishing and performance rights to the label.
The lion's share of any sale will go to the label and most artists will have to wait until all of the advance and advertising money has been repaid before they'll see a single penny.
"Englander's surveys of 18-year-olds show that half have been cyberbullied – and 22 percent admit to having done it. A UK study shows that kids only tell their parents six percent of the time."
Oh noes how terrible! Half our kids are being bullied by robots and their luch money gets stolen by WiFi. Or something...
The reality is that 50% experience some form of bullying (define your lower limit), but only around 3% of kids are bullied badly enough to tell their parents. A smaller minority will be in serious psychological trauma from bullying but won't tell anyone.
Essentially, kids are behaving on-line in the exact same way as they do off-line with exactly the same effects. You'd probably find similar numbers if you looked into "bullying" in the workplace.
On the other hand, if it's "cyber"....
Given the literacy level of the average plod, might this be making things a bit too complicated. Having had to watch two of them trying to take my statement while getting confused over spelling basic words, I don't know how they are going to manage all those passwords.
"My feeling is that anyone with any gumption got up and left England - all that are left seem to be spineless oiks who spend their time whining about how crap everything is and how they'll treat everyone else the same way while they complain about the demise of civil society and how awful the weather is."
Well, them and the Australians serving behind the bar.
Whose living room is big enough to have a TV in the centre with chairs on either side and how are you going to stop the sound from one program interferring with the other?
Those viper engines are going to be a bit conspicuous while the Dingles are herding their sheep (or whatever it is they do).
Is that they might finally kill off NuLabour. There own estimates are that about a third of the country will refuse them no matter what, so unless they want to turn a third of the country into criminals, they're going to have trouble enforcing this.
Fortunately, the leaked roadmap for getting people to adopt the cards means they are going to have a lot harder time justifying things like stopping people from getting a driving licence without an ID card.
"For them, "Gay" is the new universal derogatory. It reflects an unenlightened homophobia in a certain demographic."
More sanctimonious twaddle.
Gay means camp, effeminate or ineffectual and therefore is a perfectly good term for something which breaks before expected or fails to create the desired effect. Besides every gay bloke I know takes the piss out of things for being "straight" or "hettie" if they are ungainly, destructive or lacking in matching belts.
They're not all going to start crying because some "breeder" uses gay as a derogatory descriptor.
Having said that, sticking up for gays will win you points with their female friends so if it's working for you, good luck.
"I think he's simply ignorant of the fact that markets alone, so far entirely unaided by the plans of mice or men, ganging agley or not, have provided us with exactly what a decade and more of international scheming has been straining to push forth. The impetus for us to reduce our fossil fuels usage."
I don't need any bloody impetus, I need a viable alternative.
Tell me Tim, by what mechanism does the increasing price of fuel manage to move my house closer to my workplace?
What's that you say? It doesn't? It simply pushes the low paid into poverty while the rich just think "Fuck it, what's an extra £5 a tank on my wages?" Or is the idea to make travel so prohibitively expensive that I have to get a different job - although, if I could find a job that paid enough to live on without having to drive 30 miles to work, I'd already be doing it!
The real problem is that economists generally understand fuck all about the real world. They come up with a theory, make a prediction that doesn't pan out and then blame reality for the discrepancy. They then keep the obviously broken theory unmodified and try to make some more predictions with it.
When predictions don't match observations, you adjust the theory - you don't complain that it's the fault of the experimental subjects who failed to follow your predictions.
We wouldn't trust economists to make tea in the physics department, nevermind come produce theories.
"The Arctic is a new area that is important to us," said the general, saying that retreating polar ice could mean increased activity in the far north. "All of this has implications .. there could be security concerns."
Those commie bastards may have a flag down there, but I'll be damned if that's going to get between me and my oil! Iraq had a flag - look how they turned out.
I'm sick and tired of finding entertainment that's been rated as 18+ only to discover it's completely tame. We need a new classification - something like 18 Gold - which absolutely *guarantees* the gore level.
I want my cheerleaders ripped to shreds by slavering hell-hounds not mildly gnawed by a Jack Russell!
To be honest, if I hear that the BBFC doesn't like something, I'll go out of my way to find it. I resent the implication that I, as a member of the public, am inherently incapable of seeing anything on TV without imitating it. Fortunately our betters have decided to protect our feeble minds from anything that has not been vetted by the BBFC.
I have never had a temp job where my hourly rate was anywhere near that of a salaried employee.
Who exactly do they think they kidding when they say this will be bad because people will use fewer temps? The work will still need doing so they'll have to employ a permanent staff member instead.
Where will they find these staff members? How about all the temps who have been living on a pittance all these years because these bastards would rather treat us as cheap disposable commodities than pay us for the work we do. I don't see that as a *bad* thing.
Let's be straight here, "flexibility" means "zero job security". It's just a diplomatic way of saying, "We want to be able to dump people at five minutes notice while demanding complete loyalty to ourselves."
"And now that we return to paper voting, isn't there a risk voters can be filmed with webcams?"
Yes, there is that risk. Fortunately it's exactly the same risk that someone can be watched while voting and we managed to get around that problem years ago with the remarkably high tech solution of a curtain.
Is he seriously suggesting that we mitigate the risk of someone being covertly filmed while voting by making the system so vulnerable that no-one would need to go to the effort of installing a hidden camera?
"The law catches everyone and then informal pressure is applied to pick up those the politicos want or the newspapers scream about. Just like all the GWOT legislation.
Don't blame the police, vote for someone else. "
While they may be unaware of it, the police in this country serve the LAW and not the government. If they are selectively applying the law for political aims then that most certainly IS the police's fault and they need to be held accountable.
If they are willing to act like political enforcers, then they can't start crying when people hold them responsible for their actions - it's not like anyone joined the City of London Police so that they could "clean up their neighbourhood".
Re: Flashmob to spell cult
That would probably be classified as a "visible representation" allthough they'd have to arrest everyone invovlved. That or they'd label a few people "organiser" and do them for "conspiracy to incite a visible representation that may cause alarm, distress or offence" or something equally silly.
"As it stands it's already resulted in scientologists being discriminated against on the grounds of their beliefs (Tom Cruise had issues during the filming of Valkyrie) and ridiculed on the basis that "it's not a religion"."
It is not a distinction between religion and cult, but between religion and business. The German government considers their prime motivation to be generating profit (which would be hard to argue against) and they are therefore a commercial enterprise.
A commercial enterprise who have commited crimes against the German Government and people.
Refusing to let a member of a criminal group film on a government installation is not discrimination.
I'm fed up of everything "digital" automatically being newer and better.
Digital cameras - the best have analogue, optical lenses
Guitar amps - the best often have a vacuum tube pre-amp and a digital power amp.
All of human biology is digital and that's been around for ages.
I want to see if any of these politicians could actually define the word "digital". My mum swore blind that she was getting a digital TV from the neighbour - eventually she admitted that she had no idea what it meant but it must be a "digital TV" because the neighbour got it at the same time as getting Sky Digital.
D'oh!
"Shouldn't that read "businesses and government agencies"?"
What's the difference?
I also call shenanigans on this "only 23% realised that they were downloading illegaly". Presumably, the other 77% didn't know what a "file-sharing" service was or were just lying.
Personally, the only ID fraud that concerns me is the one where the government creates a ludicrously expensive citizen tracking database while fraudulently claiming that it will be really cheap and help save from the terrorist hordes.
"SO tell me what is the UK government doing about Phorm ??"
Mainly, they're keeping their heads down and hoping it blows over. They're to busy shitting themselves over the economy and trying to hide their expense claims from us.
That is, if they even know anything about phorm. When they realise that *their* browsing will be tracked as well, they might start paying attention.
Yes but, does it not also say;
'I sent your luggage off for you,' he said. 'Not much between you, I must say - just one small trunk!'
Five Go Down To The Sea, Ch1 p3 (Hodder & Stoughton Version)
"The Catholic Church’s top astronomer has said there is no contradiction between the one true faith and believing in aliens."
They also say that the bible is self-consistent. He wouldn't know a contradiction if it looked him straight in the eye and bit him in the ass.
Given that the mic only needs to be able to transmit the length of the venue, just crank the power and fuck anyone who complains. You're at a gig - shut up, watch the band and stop pissing around with your phone.
In this context, the mic transmission is the only "signal" and anything else is noise. If you want to use that frequency, go somewhere where everyone else in the room isn't trying to use it for something else.
So you won't want them interfering when I start broadcasting on your frequency then, or when I start infringing your copyrights?
When you want to profit from controlling something that belongs to the public, you'd better shut the hell up and take that government interference. Otherwise next time you don't get the lube.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
