* Posts by Beachhutman

61 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Aug 2007

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Deception of 'up to' broadband speeds exposed

Beachhutman

more is less?

Perhaps we could have official labels like the ones that tell you the official MPG of cars?

Oh. Yes. Tsk They're bullshit too......

China rattles sabre at Google

Beachhutman

yeah, right

With the UK police just about to start seriously abusing another new power, and remotely accessing your PC to go fishing for your evil anti-EU thoughts, child pron, or old album covers, the Brits, as One Might Say, are not really in a position to criticize the CCP.

Because the Chinese government has spent 2 decades teaching schoolkids and students excellent IT and English language, the Great Fire Wall is increasingly risible in China, All the bright Young Things here know exactly what is going on, because they just casually noodle their way around or through the GFW. But it's really odd what the GFW TRIES to stop. Sometimes there's no apparent rhyme nor reason. Yet nearly all the Pro-EU, Pro-Nu Labour, and Left wing political blogs get through, even when they mention Dem**racy. (Unless they're on Wormpress or Tripepad. Then they are automatically evil, and proper steps are taken.)

Home Office denies remote snooping plan

Beachhutman
Gates Horns

From the people who had no plans to raise taxes

...and assured the people of UK that they had legislated, LEGISLATED, to prevent the imposition of University top up fees EVER, comes a denial that they intend to brown-nose the EU's Kommissioners, who are desperate to find ANY way of controlling the internet.

It is particularly important to get this control of the internet, and the enabling snooping activity, in place before the Irish are told to vote YES this time, or the whole Lisbon Process will (not actually) collapse and (not actually) create a crisis for the EU.

UK.gov to push Obama for tougher rules online

Beachhutman

If their lips are moving

They're lying. It's not about kids, they know it, and they don't give a toss if that bit would "work" or not. It's because they want to block any content that is hostile to the government in Brussels, as well as their parish council in Westminster. Zanu Labour wants to block content because they regard dissidence from their own ideas as basically criminal, and the EU does because they know the internet stands in the way of simply abolishing democratic rights, as per the Irish "No" vote. They need content filtering before they try any ig new scams. The EU has already proposed licences for video uploads, which is bugger all to do with Jihadis, but because Youtube has been so effective in political campaigns.

Yes, Andy Burnham is a twat, but on this he's just a sacrificial twat; it's Brown and Barroso pulling the strings

Fly-tipping yes, dog poo no - Jacqui promises Ripa changes

Beachhutman

oh dear

There will be "consultation"

Then a report

The report will be released on a holiday recess

Then they will do nothing about the misuse.

Except to find official; ways to let councils misuse RIPA even more often.

That's the way they work.

UK.gov plans 'consensus' on PAYG phone registry

Beachhutman
Thumb Down

silly Billies

This really does top the Prattery of the year poll for the prattyest suggestion since prat was a word. There are already 3 billion mobes in the world, including my 10 year old Nokia, and it is quite feasible to build your own out of assorted chipsets and sticky back plastic.

UK puts £55m into disabled parking reform

Beachhutman

cash cows

>>>Two thirds of councils said misuse of badges was a major problem<<, Nope. They mean badges make it harder for them to extort fines. That's why they are so-o expensive on the black market. If councils would stop acting like venal tax collectors and have fair parking policies, the problem would evaporate.

Govt ponders proof-of-ID law for future phone purchases

Beachhutman

borrocks

With sat boxes, TVs and TV dongles, I just pop into the store and then give them my real address which is outside the 4th ring road in Beijing. Usually makes them tear the form up.

China Skype service snags and stores users' messages

Beachhutman

What do you know?

That PDF link is blocked in China!

Airline industry refuses to be ID card guinea pig

Beachhutman

Tree, wrong

The reason they dare not scrap the cards is because the EU has told them we must have them. Not as draconian as the scheme ZAnulabour wants, true. Our politicians are little more than parish counselors now, carrying out Brussels requirements.

They (and the mainstream media) are SCARED to admit that they have to do this under the EU laws they have signed up to. And I'm waiting for someone here to whine (a) if you've nothing to hide..." or (b) "We've had them in Spain for years and ..."

Because you don't KNOW what will become a crime, and what the home secretary can make one retrospectively. Buying glue without an ID perhaps. Wouldn't surprise me. It's a crime now to overfill your (EU requirement) wheelie bin and

Because it never ever was a CARD, it was always about a massive Stasi type population database that YOU have to pay to maintain up to date, or get fined for NOT keeping it up to date.

Labour minister says 14 year olds should get ID cards

Beachhutman

Scorched earth policy

What better way could the be of reminding future generations just how much labour instinctively distrusts them, and of its centralising controlling dogmaa, and what finer way of giving the tories a stick to beat labour opposition for half a century? "We didn't want them, but the last lot of Labour b'stards so screwed up our laws that it's impossible to undo the scheme now"

(And of course, the real reason is that the EU wants them, admittedly nothing LIKE as intrusive as labour wants, but NO ONE admits that)

Met Office: Global warming sceptics 'have heads in sand'

Beachhutman

cool aid

It warms, it cools. It's OK. It just happens. It's just not Man Made. It's to do with the sodding great furnace in the sky. MMGW is about tax and spend.

Saatchi to promote foreigners' ID cards

Beachhutman

good to see

The youth of today have both a nice sense of irony and an ample supply of invective. Poor Dear Jacqui must be feeling sick a bit - but then the silly bovine I guess approved this stupid site, knowing what would happen to it.

Ivan O'Toole? That's nothing, snorts Hugh Jass

Beachhutman

Taffy was a

boss I had, in Leeds, about 1992, who rejoiced by the name of Ivor John Thomas. I didn't know his middle name til later. Then there was the Danish gent who no one would believe was real, Bent Kock. He will google.

Creative Zen X-Fi 16GB media player

Beachhutman

Nope

No more Zens for me - I can't lug my laptop to every place I need to recharge mine, especially on holiday with all those language podcasts on it. USB charging from PC only is frankly a gross stupidity

Vodafone says termination rate clampdown would hit the poor

Beachhutman

EU, accept decline

So when the screen says, "EU termination charge to accept this incoming call is 30p a minute, accept/decline?" we are all going to praise the EU aren't we? Yep. Are the t**ts in Brussels suicidal as well as stark staring bonkers? How to get unelected.

Oh, I forgot. we aren't allowed to unelect them, are we?

Erotic artist urges spanking for Jacqui Smith

Beachhutman

arrestng developments

Like the terrorism laws it will be of Phi Alpha use for what the government PRETENDED it was for, and Not used for that at all, but will be used instead to stop people mocking Nu Labour politicians (beware, Bo Beau D'Or?) or even to close down public events they don't care for. It won't be possible to prevent anything (crooks don't obey the law, right?) , but it will be useful to stop us going about our business.

Rather like ID cards

EC misleading EU on copyright extension, says boffin

Beachhutman

Dog bites man

So Eurocrats just do what they want, whatever. What's new about that? Its an anti democratic organisation.

Not "un"

UK fraudster gang go PIN sniffing

Beachhutman

PIN balls

The point of Chip and PIN was never to cut fraud, but to reduce card issuer payouts by shifting blame. The system was always hackable - it was hacked in Holland before the cards were introduced to UK - BY STUDENTS. So now the issuers claim fraud has fallen - whereas they are simply refusing payouts for frauds, because they changed the terms of card issue. Thats why in much of Europe, where unlike UK they never did buy the "safe as Chips" nonsense, they still ask for a passport and or a signature.

French cough in to filthy restaurants

Beachhutman
Jobs Horns

Once a knight....

Ah, the Templars. They transferred their lineage to the order of St John, more fully "Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta" and are still about, and recognised by the UN as well. The smallest sovreignity in the world (6000 square meters) they have diplomatic relations with many countries, observer status at the UN and EU, and can issue passports like the UN and the Red Cross can.

Researcher gives Elvis and bin Laden fake e-passports

Beachhutman

So wot`question

I seem to remember reading in El Reg that if you go through UK passport control with a broken chip they will have to admit you anyway, because it isn't required by international agreement that biometric passports are mandatory? Apparently the UK passport people will "advise" you your chip is kaput, and "suggest" you shell out 90 quid for a new one. And if I need a passport renewal when I am in Ulan Bator, will it even HAVE a chip?

Chinese net censors unblock BBC, Wikipedia

Beachhutman

Roband works

Just last night I was conducting a one on one demo of Loband. Surprising how few journos working in countries with dire download speeds don't know about it. As a last resort, I always find the dialectizer from rinkworks will get me news in Redneck

Plods say it's OK for them give out your DNA

Beachhutman

funny how

We stopped believing or trusting the Police around about May 2 1997........ what happened then I wonder?

On a brighter note, at least we don't live in a state like this: “Fascism is typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic.”

oops.

UK's first caller ID-spoofing service shuttered after five days

Beachhutman
Happy

Hurumph

Who needs to pay for caller ID spoofing anyway? Half the calls I get show up as "Private" and all that needs is a switchboard in between caller and receiver. And if you want to really make it wierd, use a Skype divert and it shows up as meaningless number drivel

Ex-Sun chief to fight Davis in '42 days' by-election

Beachhutman

Sunthings rong surely?

Kelvin is going to lose in Howden - have you ever BEEN there? Even the cows are blue. I dipute the claim that everyone is behind Gordy on this one anyway. Radio and TV panel shows and phone ins over the last year or so have indicated that the public are NOT behind the prolonged banging up of people Gordy just doesn't really like much. The Sun misjudged their readers in the last election by supporting Zanu Labour, and now is looking to show its readers it cares about them. A bit late now - without the Sun they probably wouldn't have had Gordy, House price drops, Massive VED hikes, the fall of the pound, and the EU constitution.

Mobile roaming in Europe: Have your say

Beachhutman

load of tosh

If they have done so well, how come my roaming cost me 174 quid* in ten days last Christmas? Cos the networks just move the profits. Like now europe has no "exchange rates" (The fab Euro, y'see?) so the card firms and banks just charge "interbank costs". As usual, the EU know sweet phi alpha about how these things work.

(*MY wifi phone is brill - except it doesn't work if there isn't a signal to surf - where I was when I got the business stuff to deal with.)

Two arrested over piracy at computer fair

Beachhutman

faulty logic chip

As usual, they miss the point. A person who can only afford a ten quid game isn't likely to be in the market for it at 60 quid. It would stay in the shop. So the "equivalent value" is tosh - it's making the totally false assumption that every pirate copy sold is a genuine copy not sold. Any evidence for this? I think the evidence is all the other way.

Police go slow with encryption key terror powers

Beachhutman

garbage

This is of course all garbage. Just as aircraft bombers now know that the best way to get explosives on a plane is to put them in your silly plastic bag and wave them at a security guard, who will ignore them. Downside risk - you get caught and get life in jail, but hey, you were planning DEATH anyway, so where's the problem? So the true file hider will just work with the system, and put the data in plain old word files deep on a disk labeled "Archived documents 2000 - 5", kept with a hundred similar CDs of any old random files, or do the really SMART thing - move it all onto ..... wait for it ..... paper.

Saudi blogger freed from prison after four months

Beachhutman

Country?

No mate, it's a family firm, wholly owned by the Sauds, and all the citizens are mere employees. Their "legal" system (they don't have "justice") is exactly what the boss decrees it to be, and their laws are the rules the boss makes up.

And like all tough choices, we don't HAVE to buy their oil, but we're scared of the consequences.

West Yorks rolls out cop cams, ignoring plod nod probs

Beachhutman

weee!

Stand by for lots of "Cop forgets head cam in urinals" out takes on Youtube!

eBay kills live auctions

Beachhutman

bad decision to kill negatives

I have been shafted several times by US buyers who didn't understand pounds were not dollars, or that there was a big pond in between us, or that a carpet is a heavy heavy item. These people then left negative about ME - in one case pursued me for non delivery on an item they refused to pay for. We SHOULD be able to leave negative f/b - there is a process for canceling it if it is untrue. This was a bad decision.

Pirate Bay to sue music industry

Beachhutman

becalmed Pirates

I'd feel a bit more sympathy for the industry if it didn't want to apply US and EU pricing to the rest of the world, who can't pay them. And I'd feel more sympathy for PB if it didn't keep promising stuff it can't deliver. It must KNOW a lot of the links are deceased, dead, no longer with us, not live, gone to the great drive in the sky?

UK.gov will force paedophiles to register email addresses

Beachhutman

Jaquiisanidiot@homeoffice.guv.uk

Quick, pete-o-phial@live.com is currently available. !

BAA grounds Heathrow T5 fingerprinting system

Beachhutman

Why is it needed at all?

Short question, shorter answer - "It's not"

It's fueled by our government's obsession with gathering data, and the craven agreements with the US over sending anything from the inner leg measurements to the family allotment grid reference to the US every time we get on a plane that goes into atmosphere the US uses too.

Network Solutions pulls anti-Koran website

Beachhutman

oh come ON!

They pull anything that might upset Muslims, because worldwide Islam have shown graphically how very angry and violent they can get if accused of being angry and violent.They don't pull the anti-christian site for the same reasons. Get real, and welcome your new rulers from Makkah.

UK CCTV numbers 'may be overstated'

Beachhutman

a plan

to really reduce crime would be to put CCTV cameras in police stations and broadcast outside the pictures of cops doing nothing very much except sending out camera speed tickets, filling in forms to prosecute homeowners who've been burgled, assembling evidence against the victims of crime, or working out new ways NOT to go after burglars, muggers and hoods.

US government cools on Real ID threats

Beachhutman

LAXity

>>One can only imagine the outcry at airports if Californians were forced to endure a unique set of bizarre screening rituals.<<

What, MORE? At LAX there is already tests of queue toleration, being shouted at thresholds, rudeness tests, crap food endurance, dirty terminal syndrome, shoe inspection, bag poking, body scanning, and the intensive "Why the F*** were you here anyway ?" oral examination.

EC tries to get on top of carousel fraud

Beachhutman

Eu must be joking

It would have been stopped almost immediately if (a) it wasn't an EU issue but a national one, but (2) the EU now controls the VAT tax regime so governments are powerless, and (c) the EU can't agree on ANYTHING easily, and (iii) it's a stupid French tax anyway, (0) sales tax was much easier and less prone to fraud, (IX) anyway the EU is no paragon, as its books haven't been signed off as correct and fraud free for yonks, and (D) The EU runs us all now so we are completely screwed.

The 'green' car tax grabs that don't add up

Beachhutman

Greed not gree

Darling's taxes are nothing to do with climate change, they are to do with the dire state of the UK economy. The cash won't get spent on the environmental issues he rumpets, any more than roqad tax gets spent on roads. it'll get spent on wars and ID cards, And keeping Labour MPs' snouts in the trough. But while we're about it, the VED bands don't make sense. As all the CO2 a car emits is based on the Carbon it puts in as fuel (the Oxygen being in the air already) then a car that does 36 mpg (MINE, right?) simply CANNOT produce as much CO2 per kilometer as a car that does 20 MPG. Like the fabled Chelsea tractor. But to the tax people, they both produce the same CO2 per Km. Ed Balls.They don't. Ergo it's about cash, not carbon.

Hulu says hello

Beachhutman
Dead Vulture

JOost about had enough

I signed up for Hulu when i was visiting LA, and even there half the channels were blocked. Here in PRC it is phi alpha use.

I really need online TV here to supplement a daily diet of CNN and HBO, but Joost is a pain in the ah - so. The content is dire (I mean COME ON, three week old excerpts from BBC 2 Newsnight??) and the access mechanism is deadly, I always seem to start whenever and however I access it, with a fat bird on a couch doing a chat show. Then the skiers......

The only half useful online TV comes from labpixies on my google homepage, and irfull screen definiition is rubbish, but at least I can get UK ITV channels, subject, natch, to international copyright.....

I am still struggling to get the Best of ITV video on my lappy too - all ideas etc. etc.

Home Secretary in ID card gaffe

Beachhutman

string and tin can I presume?

If they aren't online via the internet, how do a hundred thousand identity checking terminals from all over the country, schools, banks, hospitals public and private, post offices, town halls, airports, (and the world in our Embassies abroad) interrogate the database for identity checking?

'Boil a frog' ID card rollout to continue until 2012

Beachhutman

A title is required

Come on, it's no use telling the politicians it's no use and won't work, because they know that already. They dare not admit how wrong they are. LIke the EU constitution referendum, if they were to concede the argument then they'd lose, and probably have to call an election. So they stagger drunkenly on, trapped by their own folly.

Oh, and in PRC you do have the right to complain, just not too loudly, and not on the internet too obviously. You should hear the guys in my local luncherie on the subject of the powers that be.

Adware package tops malware charts for first time

Beachhutman

Oooops

I thought Kasperski WAS a trojan when it popped up on a borrowed machine./ Had a hell of a time scrubbing it off.

Airport staff to be first with compulsory ID cards, say Tories

Beachhutman

nuts

For heavens sake, we all KNOW it's nothing to do with security, as the real danger lies with people who WOULD HAVE CARDS, and because visitors won't have them anyway. It is simply a nu labour big willie contest, and replaces any real policies for improving the economy or tackling more serious issues. Rememeber that Labour burned up all its half-good people up in their first parliament, used the second raters next, and is now run by the failures. Time they went away.

Microsoft cuts Vista price

Beachhutman
Linux

Still not there

NO, no, the idea is that they'd PAY ME to run the rotten thing. Even then, I'm not sure I'd have time for all the hassle and fixes I need to make it work even 90% as well as XPpro now does.

Paper clip attack skewers Chip and PIN

Beachhutman

PINsane

Do remember that chip and PIN was never ever about security; it was about switching the cost of fraud to the card holder.There was never a secret about that; CHIP cards were hacked before they were ever introduced....and the card issuers knew that.

Gilligan's bomb: Is it time to panic yet?

Beachhutman

They only do it to annoy

Airport security is only there to annoy us and enable the b**gers in Brussels to pretend that they do some good. In EMA I was queiing to get through when the shifts changed, and they just stopped checking our shoes and belts. In malaga they scanned my backpack, when I got home to UK I discovered two half used bottle of water in it. I recently walked through Schipol and noticed that at some gates they were scaning computers sepaately, some weren't, some were havong shoes off, some weren't, some were having belts off, some weren't, and in all cases just waving your transparent bag of assorted tubes of unguents at the checkers meant that they would be ignored. It is all total bo**ocks. In Amsterdam they also use it to boost airport profits, by pouring away sealed bottles of duty free coming in on flights from elsewhere, and straight facedly telling you you should have bought it at the Schipol Df shop.

Forget passports - teachers and kids are the new ID card targets

Beachhutman

brilliant strategy

Wow! Choose one group (teachers) that have so much data on them and so many security checks already that they really don't NEED ID cards, and another group you want to alienate just before they are old enough to vote. Neither of whom are likely to be benefit cheats, terrorists, or illegals, all the reasons given for the card. Brilliant. This government must be getting utterly desperate.

Two UK web hosts go down

Beachhutman

all the options bar one

Don't switch to easyspace guys - I'm still waiting for my password reminder after five attempts in eight weeks...... and they don't send them by royal mail or tell you over the phone!

Galileo pork punchup takes unexpected twist

Beachhutman

Elephant pies, the white variety

Once the new Lisbon constitutional ooops "reform" Treaty, on which Gordon Brown is so very keen, has been ratified there will be no way to stop the EU funding Galileo even if it has to rob all the other budgets and shove it through on majority voting. UK is stuffed on this, it knows there is no point in Galileo, but can't stop picking up the bills. This is because under Brown's beloved constitutional oops "reform" treaty, the EU will at be legally authorised to run its own space policy, instead of using the ESA. This white elephant, redundant before it is launched, will be an immensely expensive, and inevitably mis-managed, EU funding disaster, and the UK will be far and away the biggest payer, as we always seem to be with the EU.

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