Posts by Steven Roper

Re: Could someone let Director James R. Clapper know...

"Somewhat unsettling twang of authenticity to that. Speaking from experience?"

Takes one to know one. At least I put my name to my posts when I take a swipe at someone.

Re: Wot, no names?

Much as I'm inclined to agree with naming and attacking those responsible - I detest telemarketers as much as anyone does - I find I cannot support this idea.

I'm strongly opposed to internet lynch-mobs and vigilante justice in any form and for any reason. If I condemn feminists for lynch-mobbing rocket scientists to grovelling apologies for wearing girl-depicting shirts, and ruining the careers of IT techs for making jokes about dongles, then I equally have to condemn people for employing the same methods for attacking telemarketing executives, however attractive that may seem. It is when we have our convictions tested like this that we discover whether we are hypocrites, and I do my damndest not to be one. Because the one human trait I detest above all else is hypocrisy.

So I have to say, identifying and storming the executives' homes with torches and pitchforks is not the answer. That said, I do feel the justice system has failed in this case, and it is when the justice system falters that vigilanteism flourishes.

What needs to happen is not a fixed fine, but instead an approach like that Finland takes towards speeding fines - a fine painfully commensurate to the income of the offending party. So instead of being fined a fixed sum against the company, the executives should be fined, severally, at a percentage of their income painful enough that they're going to be living on packet noodles and toast for a year or two at least, in addition to a significant percentage of the company's revenue. The fine should hurt everyone involved, not just be able to be written off as a running expense.

Shhhhh. Something something MALE PRIVILEGE something something something PATRIARCHY something something. Check your privilege.

But if they had a similar set up for encouraging more men into the school teaching field - an area in which men are severely underrepresented - there'd be hell to pay. Because something something MALE PRIVILEGE something something PATRIARCHY something...

"Not the best business model I've heard of."

Or the vendor will adopt the Microsoft/Adobe business model and charge you a monthly fee to continue using the razor. Failure to pay the monthly fee will result in intermittent operation of the laser, leading to patterns forming adverts being cut into your stubble as you shave.

A sensor in the razor connected to the cloud will also detect what brands of soap, toothpaste and deodorant you use, as well as phoning home, tracking and profiling your shaving and morning ablution habits for the purpose of advertising to you the same soap, toothpaste and deodorant you already use.

Re: @Steven

"Why assume that everything will also go public?"

First, that doesn't answer the question of what motive NASA (or the government) would have for suppressing the discovery of life in the first place.

As to it going public, even if NASA wanted to suppress discovery of life for whatever reason, asking Congress for more money to investigate said discovery would very quickly result in a whole lot of beancounters asking "But what do you want the extra money for?" There would certainly be a lot of leakage from that!

"The reason we have to label "alternative" music, left wing views, etc as extremist is because our government seems to be scared to point out that the threat we face is from Islamic extremism."

This highlights an interesting dichotomy; that left-wing views are held to be a cause of extremism given that it is the political Left who advocate for Islamic immigration in the first place. It's particulary surprising since one of the most fundamental tenets of the Left is "intolerance of intolerance." Thus we have all these buzzwords - racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic etc - to identify the various forms of intolerance that they tell us must be opposed.

But Islam, generally, is intolerant of other cultures. Yet by saying this I will be accused of being intolerant - "Islamophobic" I believe is the word. But the evidence is there for anyone to see. Simply look at the social conditions that prevail in any country in which Muslims are a majority of the population. Look at the laws imposed on those countries. I challenge anyone here to name one country in which Muslims are a majority, that allows women to dress as they wish, to consume or sell alcohol or pork products, to eat, drink or smoke in public during Ramadan, and to promote any religious beliefs other than Islam.

I've done a lot of looking into this sort of thing, and I am very wary of both pro-Islamic and anti-Islamic agendas here. I no more trust, say, the EDL or Take Back Australia as a reliable source of information than I would trust an IS or al-Qaeda site. Mostly my sources are government travel-advisory websites, such as smartraveller.gov.au, legal institute websites such as austlii.org, and news events examined across multiple sources ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC.

Without exception, smartraveller.gov.au provides warnings such as "women should dress modestly in public", "it is illegal to eat, drink or smoke in public during daylight hours in Ramadan", "possession and sale of alcohol is illegal", "public displays of affection may cause serious offence", and "homosexual relations are not socially acceptable / are illegal and may attract the death penalty," among others. These warnings are given in relation to every single country in which Islam is the predominant ideology - without exception.

And all this is on a neutral, unbiased, government travel advisory website. What other inferences can possibly be drawn from these observations, other than that Islam is generally intolerant of other cultures and ways of life wherever it has gained majority?

I know that I will likely cop a lot of downvotes for saying all this. But I'm not being hateful or racist here; I am not advocating excluding Islamic immigrants or suppressing Islam, I'm merely pointing out that all the facts indicate Islam being intolerant of other cultures despite claims made by some of its adherents that it is a religion of peace and tolerance. The observed facts do not back up the claims. So if we are to allow this ideology to take root in our democratic countries, it must be unequivocally made clear to its adherents that intolerance of our way of life, our freedoms, will not be tolerated, now or in the future.

So I find it paradoxical that the political Left, which claims to be intolerant of intolerance, so vehemently defends a clearly intolerant ideology - to the point where it would sooner alienate a sector of its own supporters rather than point the finger at Islamic extremism. And the obvious whitewashing of this issue in the pamphlet referenced in the article, while plainly referring to Islamic religious radicalism yet avoiding unequivocally naming it, merely highlights this very paradox.

Re: Free speech, so long as you're not an SJW

"The thing about free speech sites is that one has to also accept that if the site is being overrun by people who think people there are being dicks, then maybe people are being dicks."

So by that statement I can infer that you think gang-war tactics in flooding a site with political rhetoric is acceptable? I wonder if you would still think so when the tables were turned; that is, if 4chan were to raid a Jezebel forum with misogynistic commentary en masse, to the point where they drowned out the topic of discussion in every thread, you would call those "overrunning the site", "trolls."

The reason SJW is a pejorative term is because such people are, first and foremost, hypocrites. The term itself refers to the Authoritarian Left - those who have decided that the world must be run a certain way and relentlessly attack, using the same tactics they condemn in others, anyone who goes against that agenda.

Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity. SJWs may have a noble objective, but their employment of hypocrisy and bullying tactics in trying to achieve that end is sullying the end by the means. In other words, they are acting exactly as the fascists they are so fond of condemning did - they are justifying their means by their ends. They aren't making any effort to understand why people think and act the way they do, or to accept that they have differing worldviews; they have simply created in their minds an "ideal human" - a non-misogynist, non-homophobic, non-racist, lets-all-hold-hands-and-sing-happy-clappy-songs angel - and are forcefully trying, by bullying, shaming, and destroying others, to fit them into their predefined mould.

And people are fighting back, as they have fought against everyone throughout history who mistakenly believed in the perfectibility of human nature.

Re: Dirty minds

Absolutely this.

I've shut down these "Think of the children" crusaders in many an internet forum by simply pointing out that those who shout the loudest are usually those with something to hide and are just desperately trying to publicly prove otherwise. Then the more vehemently they deny it and attack me in response, the more they prove my point!

"I'm not any ad person's target audience. I don't buy stuff from ads."

I'm exactly the same. Never once in 20 years of using the internet have I ever bought something by clicking on an embedded advert.

I've bought loads of stuff online, but when I do I go looking for what I want. I get onto Google and I type in something like "buy Nikon P900 australia", and start clicking search results and comparing prices.

Marketing droids MUST drop this idea of brainwashing people into buying shit they don't want or need. The harder they try, the more people oppose them, because these delusional fucks can't understand that people don't like being pushed and manipulated.

Instead, they need to figure out how to capture the search market - people like myself, who when we are actually in the market to buy something of our own volition are willing to look at deals being offered. But when I am not in the market, no amount of shoving ads in my face is going to make me buy your product. All it's going to do is piss me off to the point where I will NOT buy your product even if it's the best one at the best price.

Re: It is not portion size which matters

"food must be eaten or tossed out in the garbage in the UK restaurant culture."

There's a similar thing here in Australia too. It's because there's some stupid bloody 'elf 'n' safety law that allows the eatery to be fined for letting people take away food meant for dine-in.

Most restaurants, however, will disregard this law - but not all. So it doesn't hurt to ask; there's a good chance the restaurant will tell you they're not supposed to let you take the food but will give you a container and look the other way regardless.

Few will actively refuse to let you take the food. The main exception is buffets and smorgies - mainly because they don't want people loading up a week's groceries from the salad bar and walking out the door.

I like you. May I add...

I hope some sadistic bastard finds you, [Insert name of carbuncle on the backside of humanity here] and locks you in a cellar where he starts sawing off your extremities, at random intervals ranging from 5 minutes to 5 hours, 1 centimetre at a time, with a rusty blunt hacksaw blade dipped in sulphuric acid, beginning at the tips of your fingers and toes and working upwards, while repeatedly dosing you up on crystal meth to enhance your nerve sensitivity and preventing you from losing consciousness, and sealing the resulting wounds with hot wax so you don't die of blood loss, and thus makes it last a minimum 3 months of screaming, unrelenting, excruciating agony before he finally lets you die, you fucking cunt.

I have a sick and vivid imagination. And I watch/read too much Game of Thrones and its ilk.

Re: Evidence-based conclusions?

"Is she married? To What?"

Probably to some male-feminist misandrist mangina whiteknight cockroach like Michael Flood, or Allen G. Johnson.

(If you don't know who these maggots are, try googling them. Make sure your stomach is empty and bowels voided first.)

Re: You might not have a choice

Yep, like with smart TVs - try and get one that isn't these days. Or incandescent light bulbs. Or phones that are just phones. There seem to be 5 stages to this process:

1. A new version of something, now with built-in camera and microphone complete with monitoring phone-home profiling, comes out as an expensive, hard-to-get luxury.

2. The new version becomes trendy as all the hipsters line up to buy it.

3. The new version becomes commonplace and cheap.

4. The old version becomes an expensive, hard-to-get luxury.

5. The new version becomes effectively mandatory because the old one gets banned for "environmental" concerns or disappears since they aren't selling (because they were deliberately made expensive and hard to get.)

Voila! New lifestyle-data-slurping version in every home, car and pocket!

Re: With what lens and what atmospheric conditions?

It isn't that far-fetched. I photographed a gum tree near the top of Mt Lofty from the North Adelaide horse paddocks, a distance of 13.6 km as the crow flies, using a Nikon Coolpix P900 and basic tripod. Conditions were a warm clear afternoon in South Australia's Mediterranean climate. It's quite easy to make out individual branches on the tree in the resulting picture, and the effect of heat haze, while noticeable, in no wise obscures the detail of the tree. And that's with an entry-level pop camera.

So with a decent lens and this sensor, given a plane flying high overhead where heat shimmer would be minimised, it's certainly possible.

Re: Rights!

Exactly. People in this country seem to forget sometimes that it was founded as a prison. Its constitution was written to treat its citizens accordingly!

Re: "Personal" computer no more

David 132, are you me? That post reads exactly like something I would have written, I could not express my own thoughts about the direction computing has taken more succinctly than that.

I too have drawn my line in the sand, and the likes of Google and Microsoft et al will pry my computer from my cold, dead, rotted, maggot-eaten fingers. THIS far, NO further.

No cloud storage, no holding my software and data to a monthly ransom, no spying or monitoring or profiling of my habits, and above all no advertising in my private space. Not now, not ever.

Like moiety above, I'm in the process of transitioning to using Linux Mint. My biggest problem so far has been getting my copy of Cinema 4D R12 to run in it under WINE. People have been suggesting I switch to Blender, but I find Blender difficult to get my head around as its workflow is nowhere near as natural or intuitive as Cinema 4D's. Also I have 20 years' worth of 3D modelling work in C4D format, which Blender can't read.

But all this bullshit with Microsoft taking control of my computer is a powerful impetus to change. You're not alone. And reading your post is strong encouragement to me that I'm not alone either.

Re: I'm linking rollout to a h/w refresh

" But all (I hope) of the "telemetry" can be disabled via registry changes..."

Any changes to the registry to block "telemetry" will simply be reset every time there's an update, or if enough people start blocking it then there'll be a process that polls the requisite registry settings every X minutes and constantly resets them.

Windows 10 simply means you'll be entering into an endless war with Microsoft for control of your computer and your data.

Re: and people are worried about Windows 10?

"Paranoid, much?"

No, I just know enough about psychology and the marketing industry to know that the more a company knows about you, the more effectively it can manipulate you into wanting to buy its products. Advertising is not just about letting you know that a product exists and where to buy it. Advertising is about finding ways to bypass peoples' conscious decision-making processes to make them want to buy the product. This is the backbone of the marketing industry. I know, because I've worked in it. I got out because the lack of integrity and ethics in that industry made me sick to my stomach.

Anyone who thinks they're too smart to be manipulated in this manner is deluding themselves. These people spend their lives studying how the human mind works, how to analyse people's expressions, voice tone, idioms, body language, interests, hopes and desires, and how to exploit that information to get said people to do what you want them to. And the more personal information that can be gathered on you, the more effective those analytics and manipulations are going to be. Unless you keep a constant, relentless and indefatigable guard upon your behaviour and decisions, you will be taken advantage of. Ever end up buying something and later on wondering why you bought it? Congratulations, you just got manipulated.

I know that nobody is interested in my personal dreams and hopes in and of themselves. I'm not so full of myself that I think the world gives a rat's arse about who I am or what I do. But analytics software does. It digests all the information about me and every other person on the planet, and then spits out a recommended action designed to elicit the desired response. Right now, it's in its infancy. And these marketroids are going to continue refining and developing this software to find the best way to manipulate millions of people into buying their products. And the more personal data they can gather to play with, the easier that job becomes.

That's not paranoia. That's just plain life experience and logic, coupled with the knowledge gained from a few years in marketing.

Now that's just from a marketing perspective. It's not even going into politics and the risk of having your life ruined by those who don't agree with you. Ask any atheist living in Bible-belt America what the price of being discovered as an atheist is. Ask any Muslim in an Islamic theocracy what the price of employing critical thinking in the direction of their faith is. Ask anyone who has dared to publicly express a politically incorrect view what it's like to have a Facebook army of SJW crusaders descend on your employer and your home and ruin your career and your life.

As long as we are all sitting in judgement of each other (and I'm just as guilty - remember my comment in my previous post about people whose political views don't align with mine?) there is a real risk that any invasion of privacy on my computer could reveal things about me that would offend some people - and some of them may well be motivated enough to make my life a misery because of it. Again, that's not paranoia; there are some real bastards out there. I've had to deal with some of them.

So it's not unreasonable that I don't want anyone probing into my private data, whether I think they're interested or not. There are just too many manipulators and sociopaths and busybodies and do-gooders out there. And I don't trust Microsoft, or anyone else, to respect that privacy.

Because for them, profit and power will always supersede all other considerations.

Re: Dear blackmailer

My response, if I were bothered to give one, would be more along the lines of:

Dear Blackmailer,

Having received your demand for X amount of bitcoin I would like to inform you that I would consider it a more sound investment, to spend 5 times as much hiring a hacker to hunt you down, and a hitman to torch your house and rape your wife and kill your kids while you watch before gouging your eyes out with a blunt butter knife and skinning you alive with a rusty razor blade soaked in sulphuric acid, before posting the resulting video to YouTube as a warning to other blackmailers and scammers that stealing from me doesn't lead to a happy ending.

Kind regards,

Ramsay Bolton,

Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North.

Re: The usual definition of "observable Universe" includes being observable.

" I dropped a socket down there several years ago and I've never been able to find it."

Sounds like your car's warp core might have been designed by Romulans.

Re: "A Close Call Gromit!"

If you want to make sure you've excised all the Windows 10 crap from your system, you might want to go into Windows Update/Installed Updates and uninstall and hide the following updates if they're present:

KB2505438

KB2670838 (Windows 7 only)

KB2952664

KB2976978 (Windows 8.x only)

KB3021917

KB3035583 (This is the bastard that puts that "Upgrade to Windows 10" icon in your systray)

KB3075249

KB3080149

Re: Interesting, and probably accurate way of putting it

Then try to match the etymology to those who self-describe themselves as "liberal."

The 5 downvotes to 1 upvote you had for that comment also illustrates the judgmental mindset of the modern "liberal", a species that seems to be infesting El Reg's comment boards rather a lot of late. I've given you another upvote for it, but I fear the hivemind will gang up on me as well as you. At least we can take pleasure in knowing we're pissing the sanctimonious bastards off!

Re: Woah. Thank $DEITY for $REDACTED Freedom of the Press

For one thing, you can publicly disagree with privately owned news media and not get hauled off to a re-education camp.

No, you just get doxed by a howling Facebook social-justice vigilante mob who then spamflood your employer to get you sacked, picket your house and ruin your life for the hideous crime of political incorrectness.

Re: Nubile?

Maybe Iain Thompson is a closet planetophile? ;)

Re: Out of curiosity ...

"Rockets are simpler, cheaper, and generally easier to implement for any SCRAM jet munition application."

The difference is that rockets are limited by the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation (which in layman's terms states that the faster you want to go, the shitload more fuel you have to carry plus a metric fucktonload more to get back) and SCRAMJets, being designed to operate in a fluid medium rather than by reaction thrust, aren't limited by this equation.

Being able to achieve rocket-like speeds without the concomitant rocket-like fuel requirements would be the main driver behind all this research into SCRAMJet technology.