* Posts by Duncan Hothersall

329 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2007

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Facebook and ABC News get political

Duncan Hothersall
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Don't diss Colbert

He's a jewel in the shite of American political commentary. And that's truthy.

Microsoft on the hunt for 'serious' Windows flaw

Duncan Hothersall
Flame

@ David Eddleman

</rimshot>??

Ignoring the fact that that brings something of a pornographic nature to my mind's eye, I can't believe that a poster to El Reg would make such a shocking XML error. You have typed a closing delimiter to the element <rimshot> there. But there was no opening delimiter! How do you expect us to parse this!!?? I can only hope that you meant to type <rimshot />, making it an empty element and allowing this tag to stand alone.

Semantic web my arse.

Civil service apologises for HMRC data loss

Duncan Hothersall

World's largest data loss?

I very much doubt it. First of all, there are lots and lots of data losses we don't know about, either because they have been covered up or, more likely, no-one knows they happened.

Second, we do know that CardSystems lost 40 million Visa and AmEx records to a malicious hack in 2005; US Dept. of Veterans' Affairs lost 28 million records through incompetence in 2006; and TK(J)Maxx was soft-hacked to reveal 45 million credit card account details and personal data on a further 47 million people totalling 94 million people's data exposed between 2005 and 2007.

So, not to diminish the idiocy of our home-grown buffoons, I would point out that as with most things, the US has done it bigger and better already...

Telling lies to a computer is still lying, rules High Court

Duncan Hothersall

Unusual that this sort of thing gets done in the open

Usually companies in Renault's position prefer to hide these sorts of cases because they expose their profit margins. In this instance they appear to be quite substantial.

I wonder if anyone is able to supply the little tidbit missing from this write-up - how much did BALPA/FleetPro pay Renault for the affinity scheme?

Save the BBC - by setting it free

Duncan Hothersall
Flame

Absolute bollocks

I was going to spend time on a rebuttal to some of the points made in the article, but I can't be arsed. Suffice to say privatisation would be a disaster. Competition in the media drives quality DOWN not up. If a "policy analyst" can't understand that then heaven help him.

Will Darling's data giveaway kill off ID cards?

Duncan Hothersall

@ Government grifters

What a moronic comment. Every assertion false, and every conclusion wrong. I think you meant to visit the Daily Mail website. You're welcome.

Babbling net software sparks international incident

Duncan Hothersall
Dead Vulture

As someone has already pointed out...

...Babelfish doesn't even support Hebrew. So whatever possible variety of bollocks this story is, it neither fair nor accurate. And I for one bemoan the complete lack of a Paris Hilton angle in the article too.

Buck up your ideas, El Reg!

Paris Hilton exits missionary position to save Universe

Duncan Hothersall
Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton surprises no-one, gets coverage

Sub-head:

Priorities re-assessed, pointlessness re-affirmed

Brown will 'scrap ID cards' for UK citizens, claims paper

Duncan Hothersall

@ Get over it!

Ah yes, the simplification of life that will come with a single, impregnable ID. Easy proof of ID for everything. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Well, you might want to ask a security expert. Try and find one that isn't hooked into the gravy train of ID database development. She or he might tell you that multiple ID sources for different purposes is inherently more secure than a single ID used for multiple purposes. One can fail, and the rest remain secure. In your brave new world, there is only one point of failure for your entire life to be screwed.

Mandriva bigwig (nearly) accuses Ballmer of b-word

Duncan Hothersall
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@ Niall

And Mandriva's response is called business too. They are continuing to fight for this business, just as are Microsoft. Exposing your competitor's unethical practices is very good business. So what's your problem, bitch?

Woman murdered after answering Craigslist ad

Duncan Hothersall
Coat

@ Michael

Look, I'm sick of people taking the piss out of Donzo and the little stick fellow. He was right about the Pope's underpants, and he'll be proved right about this too.

Duncan Hothersall
Flame

As Joe Stalin said...

...one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.

I completely understand the sentiment behind the "so what?" response, because singling out any death of this nature for special consideration is logically unjustifiable.

Once you recognise the fact that this is only a story because of its "evil internet" slant, the pleas for compassion and humanity are exposed as nothing more than self-serving platitudes. It does nobody any good to post crap about "caring" on The Register comments section. It makes you feel better. That's all.

Jailed terror student 'hid' files in the wrong Windows folder

Duncan Hothersall
Unhappy

Small world

Well well, somebody called "mohammed" took the trouble to put my name into a search engine and send me an email letting me know he knew who I was, and congratulating me on my comment up there. Isn't the internet a marvellous place.

Duncan Hothersall

Hey, no fair!

I haven't got a c:\windows\options folder. Where am I supposed to store my seditious materials? I have a picture of Bin Laden and a copy of a Jamie Oliver cookbook. I'd better make this an anonymous post...

Kazaa tech chief joins BBC future technology team

Duncan Hothersall

Some consultant

Not surprised he/she is anonymous, having been involved in boo.com and the iPlayer. No reflection on their skills I'm sure. I wonder if they ever worked for EDS, the MoD or the Inland Revenue...

Facebook gags verbal dissent group

Duncan Hothersall

It's alright

Even if this group should disappear again, you can still join the "Jim Davidson is a cunt" group, which is a far more important statement in my view.

Mac, Linux BBC iPlayers in the offing, says PM

Duncan Hothersall

Re: re: @Simon

Erm, except Major, who took over mid-term from Thatcher. And Callaghan, who took over mid-term from Wilson. Eh?

Facebookers bring HSBC to its knees

Duncan Hothersall

A rather important element is missing from this story

HSBC had sold these customers their accounts on the basis that they would get free overdrafts for a period after graduation. They then reneged on this promise by announcing that they would be charging for the overdraft facilities instead. So this isn't just a bunch of students expecting something for nothing - it's a bunch of consumers exerting their rights. Good on 'em.

Thieves swipe biker's prosthetic hand

Duncan Hothersall

The lesson here is

that you should never leave your limbs unattended. Has he never seen those police stickers?

Shattered teens subsisting on 'junk sleep'

Duncan Hothersall

More pisspoor science

Mr Idzikowski should not be using words like "trend" when he is making a singular observation. Unless he has evidence from comparable studies done previously, the limit of his comment should be "I have observed this behaviour today".

Hmm. Is the Luddite Army funding junk science now?

US pokes intelligence agencies into Web 2.0 overhaul

Duncan Hothersall

Broadsword has written on Danny Boy's wall

Hiya! Any news? xx

Pirated Simpsons movie traced to phone

Duncan Hothersall

Re: 2 Things ...

James, do yourself a favour mate and take several steps back.

First of all, you totally over-egg your pudding; if you had a valid point, you have buried it in so much rhetoric and anger that it has been completely lost.

Second, you appear to view the status quo of the entertainment industry as a permanent fixture, when in fact the studio/distributor/punter system is not designed to protect your livelihood, nor to develop great art, but simply to make more money for the big guys at the expense of whoever is stupid enough to contribute. If there is a problem with it, it needs to change.

Third, you simply cannot equate the participation of an internet user in downloading copyright material with real world theft - it is a completely different act, with completely different motivations and effects. If something is stolen in the real world, it has gone and the owner has lost it. Downloading copyright material does not remove that material. People like you end up counting the amount of money which the downloader might have paid had he decided to buy the item, and then blithely stating that that is what was stolen. It is, frankly, a ridiculous and unsupportable position to adopt.

If you want to convince people that there is a problem with what is happening, give up the ranting and the ridiculous comparisons. They don't help you one bit.

Kingston hides Hull roots with KCom rebrand

Duncan Hothersall

Re: Eh?

Kingston *is* Hull. Kingston upon Hull is the proper name of the jewel of Humberside.

Travelocity accidentally books 1,458 trips between US and Cuba

Duncan Hothersall

Good lord

I had no idea that the US banned people from travelling to Cuba. What is that meant to achieve? Presumably they allow phonecalls? And how do they stop people going to the Bahamas or Jamaica or Mexico and then to Cuba?

"These Romans are crazy."

Google and Sun tag team MS Office

Duncan Hothersall

Re: why don't the open source people do something original

What a fantastically ridiculous line. If you want a wordprocessor based on the TeX engine there are several to choose from. "The open source people" did it years ago.

As for Oo.o being behind MS Office in features, I would call that a design decision. What features of MS Office that aren't in Oo.o do you genuinely use?

YouTube-Viacom trial turns comic

Duncan Hothersall

Truthiness

I really hope Colbert takes full advantage of this opportunity and talks about the truthiness of Viacom's claims...

FaceTime exposes prospect contact info

Duncan Hothersall

Microsoft still doing that are they?

I remember when we used MS servers that quite regularly a patch would change a whole set of directory and file permissions for no reason whatsoever. I'm not entirely surprised that it's still happening.

But I would have thought that anyone who was serious about security wouldn't even think about serving data from a Windows box when free unix is out there. I mean, why would you try to convert an outside crapper into a secure home when they are giving away whole houses over the road?

eBay rethinks firearms policy

Duncan Hothersall

As I believe Clancy Wiggum said

"If this is the way the wind is blowing, let it not be said that I too do not blow."

BBC Trust backs calls for Linux iPlayer

Duncan Hothersall

@ Fraser

Why do you think implementing DRM on Linux would be "pretty easily subvertible"?

Lazy DRM would be more easily broken on Linux, certainly, but there's no reason why the sorts of security systems that are already available on Linux couldn't be used to provide DRM.

The problem isn't implementation. The problem is that the content owners usually have no push to use something that would be robust in an open source environment. Well now the BBC, as a content owner, might just have that push.

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