Posts by Steve Roper

I take extreme exception to this statement:

"Avoid Gears when used by smaller organizations that might not have sites well defended against malware."

NO.

That comment is tantamount to a direct attack on SMBs. Money != security - Windows is the archetypal example of that. Just because SMBs don't spend millions on security doesn't mean their sites are not secure. Security is a matter of common sense and comprehensive testing, not the size of your bank account. And the attitude behind the comment - that SMBs are untrustworthy and you should only deal with large multinationals - is playing into the hands of big business and denying small ventures a slice of the market by spreading FUD about the supposed insecurity of SMB sites. As if the big sites are any more secure - witness Facebook and MySpace security as an example. Shame on you.

As the IT Manager for an SMB web developer, security of all our sites is my foremost concern. All our back-end code is developed in-house and tested exhaustively against all known attacks before being deployed. All user input is escaped and parsed before being processed, all our back-end scripts are refreshed daily from backups in case any become compromised, complete logs are kept of all site activity, and I liase regularly with our hosting provider on security issues. Yes, there have indeed been a few hack attempts on our sites (mostly attempts at XSS injection and uploading images containing malware) but so far all have been successfully foiled and all details have been forwarded to the relevant authorities.

Our clients rely heavily on their websites, and the few customers they can glean from major sites, for their relatively meagre income, and FUD like this doesn't help their cause. If everyone adopted this attitude towards SMBs, we would soon see a nice unsafe Internet with only 4 or 5 constantly-hacked websites ruled by a few massive corporations. Do not want.

Google Gears looks like it has the potential to make many webmasters' lives easier and allow the creation of much more effective and personalised websites. Don't let this innovation become the province only of the big players. Just as the terrorists win if we lose all our freedoms, so too the spammers and scammers win if your fear drives all but the major players off the Internet.

To all those who are using the word "Freetard"

I'm getting really sick of the do-gooders who seem to be suddenly infesting El Reg with their holier-than-thou moralising by using this idiotic word.

I hope you have NEVER once taped a show off TV or a song off the radio. I hope you have NEVER once downloaded a song from the internet without paying for it. I hope you have NEVER once hired a CD from your library or a movie from the video store and made a copy. I hope you have NEVER once borrowed a book, tape, record, CD, video, or DVD off a friend to read, listen to or watch. I hope you have NEVER once tried to get something for nothing in your whole life.

Because if you have EVER done any of these things, then you are a fucking two-faced hypocrite and should shut the fuck up. And get off El Reg.

Accident my arse

More likely that factory worker was slipped a few dollars by a VX gang: "Hey matey, if you just pop this file into the master disc for us we'll see your family gets fed for another week". Given the two cents an hour those workers probably earn, and the violence with which they are all too familiar, it would have been an "offer too good to refuse"...

Paris because she knows the effectiveness of slipping third-world workers a few dollars...

Well, there's only one thing needs to be done...

Ch-klick... HOCK! OOOOORRRAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!

@ heystoopid

"...what happens when the fuzz come a busting down the door and only see er this keyboard connected to the monitor , will they rip the house apart looking for the rest of the computer ?"

You, sir, are a genius! What you then do is, you set up an old PC box with empty hard drive, maybe Win95 on it, and have that sitting on the desktop next to this thing. When the pigs kick your door in, they take that instead, giving you a chance to slip the REAL all-in-one round to a friends house before they realise they've got a dud and come back!

Balkanisation

That would be interesting to see: the Balkanisation of the USA! Breakaway states demanding independence and forming their own little sovereign nations in defiance of the police-state NWO the US gov is setting up. I don't think Washington would take that sitting down though; can we expect to see US troops invading the newly independent Republics of California, Alaska and Montana in the future? Will Canada, Australia, the UK and EU side with Washington or the Free Republics? What would China's take be on all this? They have a lot to gain from the Balkanisation of their most powerful adversary, and their dream of world communism (and Chinese as the official global language) might not be too far off for them after all.

A kid with a BB gun...

...that has an effective VERTICAL range of 15,000 feet ? That's close on 3 miles! Pray tell, where can I buy one of those? ;)

Got one!

Ch-klick... HOCK! OOOOORRRRRRAAAAAY!!!

To all calling for death to the scum

I'm very pleased to see my recent campaigns to institute public execution of these filth seem to be gaining support! My preferred method is mass public hanging; it's more spectacular and dramatic than shooting. :D So, all together now... 1... 2... 3...

Ch-klick... HOCK! OOOORRRRAAAAAYYYYYYY!!

Re: Display sheet as replaceable part

Much as that would be fantastic, there's no way that's going to happen. What will happen is that the TVs will be (fairly) cheap, say 50-100 quid, they'll last a couple of years, and then you'll have to buy a whole new TV and send the old one to landfill. Even though a replacement screen would cost a few pence, you won't be able to buy them for less than the cost of a new TV, because the plug-in method will be some kind of proprietary connector for each manufacturer that costs shitloads to buy, can't be sourced from anywhere else, and breaks into a million bits if you try to remove the old one to reuse it. So even if you buy a roll of these OLED screens, you won't be able to replace your or anyone else's TV screen with them because the on-roll ones won't have that expensive magic connector. That's how these companies make their obscene profits - it's called "planned obsolescence".

It's like the $39.95 (AUD) inkjets you can get from OfficeWorks in my city - it SEEMS cheaper to throw out the printer and buy a whole new one when the cartridges run dry, than to shell out the $60 odd for a single new cartridge ($120 to replace both) - even though the cartridges must cost MUCH less to make than the damn printer! Except that the manufacturer sneakily gets around it by selling the printers with only half-full cartridges. Stay away from them; those cheap printers are money traps... and these OLED TVs will be just the same!

Evil Bill because he is the master of planned obsolescence!

Polish booze ain't beer!

A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to Poland, where she has relatives. She brought back with her a bottle of real Polish homebrew vodka (don't ask me how she got it through the airport!), and believe me, this stuff was pure fucking rocket fuel! One shot did my head in for the night; it must be damn near 95% pure ethanol!

Funny thing is, she says her cousins over there (and most of the village apparently) chugalugged about half a litre of this coffin polish for BREAKFAST, before going off to work! And I might add she holds her own liquor rather well, too; I wouldn't engage in a sculling contest against her...

So if our esteemed Polish drinking buddies are chugging anything at all while surfing their pr0n, it sure as hell ain't beer, and no doubt the pr0n looks positively psychedelic through those ethanol goggles! So take warning: don't try to drink a Pole under the table. You WILL lose!

Paris because she's another lady who holds her liquor rather well...

@ Keith T

How do you know he hadn't already contacted Real Networks some time ago, and had only now gone public? Sometimes these companies have got their heads so far up their own arses that they don't bother to fix the vulnerability, or have a we'll get around to it... someday" attitude. These are the same dickheads that worship at the shrine of security through obscurity, and in some cases the only way to get them to actually DO anything about it is to go public. Then and only then do the chickens start squawking!

If he did in fact go public without contacting the vendor first, then I agree with you 100%. But you should not cast aspersions on his professionalism without knowing all the facts involved; if he had contacted the vendor first, obviously we wouldn't have known about it.

@Andy Enderby

Ah, great minds think alike! I've posted both here and in other forums several times now that until we start PUBLICLY EXECUTING the bottom-feeding filth behind this activity, the problem is only going to get worse, until the Internet simply becomes unusable and a great opportunity for humanity to achieve its full potential irretrievably lost. The extraordinary rendition and public hanging of a botnet herder broadcast worldwide live on CNN and pasted all over the likes of YouTube will send a strong message to these criminals that their attacks on humanity's greatest asset will not be tolerated, and that no matter where you live, you won't escape.

Perhaps if our pollies and courts are too gutless maybe some kind vigilante-hacker groups might like to carry the banner!

Ch-klick... HOCK! OOOOORRRRAAAAAYYYY!

Re: AC with flame

Hmmm. Must be a patent troll as well as a forum one!

Alien because that creature looks more like a troll than anything else on here...

We are now offering a NEW! public service

Are your neighbours getting you down? Is your ex harassing you? Do you feel you are being persecuted and harassed and living in fear?

Well, fear no more! Just give us the name and address of your persecutor and we'll do the rest! For the low, low price of just $20.00 (US) or £10.00 (UK) we will fabricate a convincing accusation or a convincing expression of interest on their behalf to more than twenty organisations including:

The Church of Scientology: We'll say they want join up!

The CIA, FBI AND MI5: We'll say they're walking around wearing turbans!

The Interpol Cybercrime unit: We'll say they're running a botnet!

The RIAA, MPAA, AND BFPI: We'll say they're downloading thousands of mp3s!

The BSA, FAST and Microsoft: We'll say they're selling Vista DVDs out of their garage!

And now - *NEW!! NEW!!* - The Met: We'll say they've got 50 mobile phones and a backyard full of plastic water bottles!

Why worry your life away, when for just $20.00 / £10.00 you can have that problem person gone from your life for ever!

So don't delay - call 1900 - WTCH - HUNT today!!!

To make historical revisionism possible?

"Wood said the main aim was to avoid expensive conservation work on printed versions of Hansard..."

Which means that the originals won't be preserved. So the only way future generations will be able to read historical parliamentary decisions will be digital text - which can be easily edited.

Given the way UK gov is treating its citizens right now, and the sort of police state it is well on its way to establishing, why do I get the feeling that allowing the paper originals to rot leaving only editable data is an initiative of the Ministry of Truth?

Don't get me wrong here - I absolutely agree that parliamentary records should be publicly available online. But the originals must still be preserved. Otherwise, the temptation to alter the past will, as other temptations in the hands of powermongers have shown, become actuality.

And the obligatory Orwell reference

Like others here who noticed the Orwellian lie inherent in the name of this monument: I see I'm not the only one who heard the name "Victory Mansions" echoing hollowly behind the sound of "Freedom Tower"! And no doubt, like Victory Mansions, it will have telescreens (or at least cameras and mikes) in every room and patriotic posters in every hallway...

Get ready for anti-sexbot legislation

So what's going to happen when the Japanese (most likely it'll be them) come out with lifelike sexbots? Or if someone gets it on with the animated sex dolls they currently produce? It's funny how all of a sudden activities that men have engaged in since day dot are now being publicised and those who engage in them persecuted, and the accompanying push to have sexual activity with inanimate objects made illegal. I notice, however, the double standard that women are not being persecuted for using dildos and vibrators.

Somehow, I can smell the stink of feminism behind this attack on men having sex with inanimate objects. Are "liberated women" and their male political arse-kissing puppydogs getting upset at the possibility they might be about to lose their sexual monopoly - the pussy weapon - because they might soon have to compete with lifelike robotic replacements?

Asbestos coat on - let 'em rip!

Every dairy CAN participate...

... because those that are not close to gas lines can have the gas pumped into a semi-trailer sized tanker, which can then be trucked to the gas works or at least the nearest gas-line injection point. Using trucks powered by gas, if necessary.

It's only small compared to our overall energy needs, but every little helps, and as a bonus it avoids additional methane being pumped into our atmosphere. Whether or not you believe anthropogenic climate change, I support it because if nothing else, it means I don't have to breathe cow farts!

Mis-information *again*?

Perhaps, Mr. Gutless Anonymous Coward, you might care to point out where (or where else) I've provided mis-information? Sounds like you have a bit a crusade going against me from the tone of your comment. Not that I care about your anonymous opinion, but you might want to shore up what little credibility you have with some facts.

My experience, and that of my friends, with BD has been less than impressive. One, a musician, put his clips on a BD only to find it would only play in the drive he burnt it on. A movie I was sent from England won't play here because the regioning hasn't been cracked yet. Until this bullshit is sorted, I stand by what I said.

A simple solution

my @mdays = (31,28,31,30,31,30,31,31,30,31,30,31);

if ((($year % 4 == 0) && ($year % 100 != 0)) || ($year % 400 == 0)){$mdays[1] = 29;}

Then use the @mdays array (days in each month) to print out days in your y/m/d selector, perform calculations, or whatever. The conditional equation contained in the IF statement above will compute leap years accurately, including the non-leap year at the end of every century and the end-of-century-IS-a-leap-year every 400 years. Therefore this equation remedies both the 1900 bug AND the lesser-known 1600/2000/2400 bug (these are leap years despite being century years).

And some more quotes...

"E.T. phone home." - E.T.

"This is Unix. I know this!" - Jurassic Park

"You've got it all wrong, priest. I absolutely believe in God. And I absolutely hate the fucker." - Pitch Black

"Where's the Eludium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator? That creature has stolen the Space Modulator!" - Marvin the Martian

"And I am Mr. Desiato's bodyguard, and I am responsible for his body, and I am not responsible for yours, so take it away before it gets damaged." - HGTTG

"He's going... to kick... our ass!" - My Science Project

"Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that your system sucks." - War Games

Mine's the flexible silver one with the glass-bubble helmet.

Never mind 10 bloody years...

...if he's convicted, string the bastard up!

Ch-klick... HOCK! OOOORRRRRAAAAYYYYY!

Teach the kids to tell the pigs what they want to hear

As I've posted elsewhere, all this sort of thing will do is teach the kids how to give evasive answers. Looking at the image on the last page, it looks like there is some kind of "credits" or "points" system involved, presumably where giving the correct answer wins you some points. Children are smart; they'll soon figure out how to max their score by giving the "right" answer, without necessarily believing it. What this "curriculum" doesn't tell kids is WHY breaking IP law is WRONG. How many parents, when telling their children not to do something, are confronted with "but why can't I?" And if the only answer the kids can see is "because we're the stinking rich controllers of everything you use and you have to give us your money to use it", kids will respond with "whatever you say sir" - and then go right on doing what they like.

That's good. It will teach children how to dodge the law while looking like good citizens - something they'll need to survive the evil future we're facing.

@ StopThe Propaganda

"What we *can't* do (legally) is blow stuff up, kill our enemies and sack their villages. Nor can we slay dragons, play around with magic rings, dogfight in spaceships, shag a bevy of bisexual female supermodels, or travel thru time. *That's* the sort of thing we want movies for, and that's the sort of movie that sells, whether "film critics" and milquetoast pansies agree or not."

That's exactly why I go to the movies too - well said that man! I went to see Rambo IV last week, and I thought it was great. No brain-strain required, just loads of nice de-stressing brutal and gratuitous violence - just what the doctor ordered.

What I also like about Rambo is that it doesn't pull any punches in depicting war as a bloody, soul-destroying horror. The character of Rambo shows exactly what war does to people, how it turns them into misanthropic, burned-out zombies inured to the worst horrors and unable to live in "normal" society. It's also one few American franchises that does not glorify the US with all the usual flag-waving patriotic bullshit that commonly spews out of Yank war flicks. It merely shows that war is not something we'd ever personally want to experience; there's no honour or glory, only needless suffering and death.

So I really enjoyed it, on both fronts - I get to see lotsa blood'n'guts and vent some steam, and I get reminded that I don't ever want to see a battlefield in real life. And I have no regrets about spending the money to go and see it.

Denied unemployment benefits?

So, this guy has been sacked from his job AND the judge denied him unemployment benefits? How then is he supposed to live? His only options, as far as I can see if he can't find another job straight away (and at 62 it's not likely) is to starve to death in the streets or turn to a life of crime. No wonder the US has the crime problems it does - if you create a system that denies a person ANY legitimate income, what the fuck do you expect?

After 9/11

I thought the good ole US took care of the Taliban in 2002? Or is it that there's no oil in Afghanistan and they were sooo eager to be off to Iraq that they didn't stay to finish what they started? I still remember the propaganda the Yanks spewed about Osama hiding in Afghanistan, then when they realised that there was no oil there, suddenly he was hiding in Iraq. But that doesn't matter, since the Taliban are back in the US's good books for now. Somebody's got to look after all the poppy fields the US has got going over there to help fund their war efforts on the back of "illegal" drug sales!

Re: people ARE aware that Firefox...

Not quite. First of all, the option you're describing is located under Tools->Options (Security tab) for FF under Windows (maybe you use a Mac or Linux?). If you look at the panel controlling this feature, you'll see below the "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery" checkbox, there are two option buttons. The first one (which is selected by default) is "Check using a downloaded list of suspected sites", and the second one, which you have to select, is "Check by asking Google for each site I visit".

If you have the first option selected, which most people will have, nothing is sent to Google. That only happens if you actually select the second option. And I've just tested and verified this on our firewall logs. So - nice try at spreading a bit of anti-FF FUD, but no dice.

10 years? Bollocks.

Think about what these filth are responsible for. Think about what the Internet represents. The Internet is the first time humanity has been able to collaborate and work together on a truly global scale. It is the first true human Gestalt, with no big boss, no self-interested controlling body, the first free human communication medium, the most profoundly world-changing invention since the discovery of the wriiten word.

These are the scum who are ruining the lives of millions of people for their own selfish gain.

These are the scum whose deception and treachery dupes millions into unwitting participation in their vile crimes against humanity.

These are the scum who are destroying the greatest social revolution in the history of civilisation.

THESE ARE THE SCUM WHO SHOULD BE SWINGING FROM A GIBBET IN A PUBLIC SQUARE IN FRONT OF A CHEERING CROWD OF THOUSANDS.

Ch-klick...HOCK! OOORAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!

10 bleeding years? Bollocks. String 'em up. Hang 'em high.

@ James Basset and anyone else who thinks this is stealing

Mr Basset:

If someone walks into your house through your unlocked front door and nicks your telly, that is theft - I agree on that point.

If you dump your telly on the footpath outside your house, and someone puts it in their boot and drives off: a) That is NOT theft because there is no indication of ownership; and b) YOU are now guilty of illegal dumping and littering.

In my city (Adelaide) our local ISP, Internode, has rolled out a system called CitiLAN, which is free-for-all wifi access (albeit slow - about 2x dialup speed) located at all major shopping centres. If you are within about 1-2 km of a hub, you have access to it, and it's very useful for checking your email on the go, or if your home line is down.

Now, my laptop is configured to auto-connect to the strongest signal; if that is secured, it will try the next strongest signal. If you lived here, Mr. Basset, and I was on the PUBLIC ROAD outside your house, and my laptop connects to your unsecured router instead of CitiLAN, then guess what? Not only am I NOT stealing your bandwidth, YOU ARE INTERFERING WITH PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS!

Fortunately the laws and police here are a bit more sensible than what you have in the UK; if you are in a public place, accessing any *unsecured* wireless signal is perfectly legal. Same as taking fruit from a fruit tree - as long as you don't reach into private property to take it; i.e. if the fruit is overhanging the footpath, you can legally take it (and the owner of the tree can actually be fined for obstructing a public thoroughfare).

So, if you whingers want to charge people with "stealing" your unsecured bandwidth from a FUCKING PUBLIC PLACE, I want to see scum like you charged for interference with public communications. So if anyone tries to get me that way, that's what I'll slap them with. And I'll win, under SA law.

A quick tute on making Black Helicopter noises

You can't say "shuka-shuka-shuka" or "wokka-wokka-wokka" fast enough to emulate the high-speed turbine-powered blades of these dreaded machines. The correct onomatopoeia is "digadigadigadiga", uttered as fast as you can move your tongue between the "d" and "g". For a more realistic effect, gradually vary the shape of your mouth from wide to pursed as you make the sound; this creates the doppler-phasing effect as the helicopter flies overhead: "digadigadigadigadogadogadogadogadoogadoogadoogadoogadugadugaduga..." Clinch your lips more tightly as the helicopter fades into the distance (for now!) to replicate the deepening "thudding" note of it getting further away...

A bit of practice with this and you too can make your co-workers look at you like you ought to be locked up! ;D

Anonymity?

Everyone should know by now that there's no such thing as anonymity or privacy in the Western Tyrannies (US, UK, Australia, Canada, NZ). Smart whistleblowers will have used proxies or the Tor network to post their documents, then changed their names and moved to a different country, preferably one that doesn't think much of the Tyrannies.

What this shows is that whistleblowing is fine as long as you don't endanger the interests of the uber-elite. If the Cayman bank is guilty as charged, then there's obviously some high-powered godlings running slush funds through there. If they're not, then this would have been a straightforward libel case. Since there's no mention of libel... hmmmmm...

Not posting AC because there's no point in trying.

Think of the children

And this is why censorship cannot be permitted even to stop kiddy porn. Because once it's used to stop that, it's used to stop everything a government doesn't agree with.

Far better to leave the kiddy porn there until you track down the offenders and anyone who visits the site regularly. The police could even use such sites as honey traps - arrest the operator (on charges of possession without publicly linking him to the site), and keep the site running to nail anyone who makes repeat visits. A one-time visitor could have stumbled on it by accident, but someone who keeps coming back knows what they're looking for.

This case, with the blocking of a political activist's website, is exactly the danger the anti-censorship crowd has been pointing out all these years. "Save the children" becomes "Bury the dissidents" in very short order.

@ Antony Pearce

The idea of using bank-supplied card readers in the home was a fantastic one, and I never understood why it didn't take off. And it was because "People decided it was all too hard?"

What? Let's see:

Normal online transaction: I have to type my name, address, card PAN and CVC number, expiry date, and the cardholder name before submitting the transaction. Any fraudster can bang in details copied from a card along with a fake address.

Card-reader transaction: I swipe my card through a reader, key my PIN, and the bank does the rest. Far more secure, and it ensures that any goods ordered are delivered to the address the cardholder has registered with the bank, not some arbitrary address specified by a fraudster.

Anybody who thought this system was harder than the usual online formfest needs to be dragged out into the street and clubbed to death for the good of humanity.

We apologise for the inconvenience

When things in IT go pear-shaped, that last thing you want to do is waste time prepping press releases and updates, time better spent ACTUALLY FIXING the problem. You post a message along the lines of "We're currently experiencing technical difficulties. Our technicians are working to resolve the issue, and we will restore service as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience." Then you knuckle down to fixing it.

Distracting the techs with "How long is it going to be" questions simply pisses the techs off and makes it take even longer. People need to realise that when things like this happen, there IS a team of technicians working their bloody arses off to get the damn thing going again. The last thing we need is to be constantly harassed over how long it's going to take, or having some benighted suit threatening to relieve us of our jobs if the problem isn't fixed within the hour. Great - he's going to sack the people who are fixing the problem and take weeks more to hire and train our replacements. Believe me, we want it fixed every bit as badly as you do, so we can put our feet back up and go back to reading and posting on El Reg!

It takes as long as it takes to isolate the problem and develop and implement a solution. Screaming and jumping up and down and threatening to go elsewhere or sack people isn't going to make it go any faster; we're only human and we can only think and act so fast.

So the next time you see an "apologise for the inconvenience" message, picture in your head a bunch of stressed-out geeks running around pulling apart circuitry and frantically coding patches with a stick-wielding boss standing over them threatening to destroy their livelihoods. And CHILL. Don't ask us how long it's going to take. It'll be fixed as quickly as we damn well can fix it!

Educating the kids

Don't underestimate the intelligence of kids. Even back when I was in school we knew exactly how to tell the "grown-ups" what they wanted to hear, while carrying on doing exactly what we wanted. I remember the stop-underage-smoking campaigns in school; we wrote brilliant essays detailing what we'd learned about all the dangers and wrongness of smoking, and presented clean, wholesome-sounding speeches about how we'd learned to do the "right thing". Right before popping behind the sports shed at lunch and lighting up.

So when Captain Microsoft goes into schools to teach the kids about copyright law, they'll play compliant, good little robot-students, just as we did. Then they'll go right on filesharing and swapping games and media without any concern whatever.

In fact, these propagandist "educators" deliver a vital service in giving our children experience and practice in learning to "buck the system", how to break the rules and defy the law without getting caught, how to look like a good model citizen while forking two fingers at the powers-that-be behind their back. With the police state we are facing down, this behaviour will be a vital survival skill for the children in future. With resistance or overthrow impossible, the only way these children will preserve their freedom is by facade, deception, and secrecy.

So let the propagandists "educate" the kids. It'll give them valuable life lessons in evading authority!

Paedophile pachyderm

So an underage female elephant has been illegally sexed up by some perverted pachyderm who should know better. Are they going to charge the father elephant as a paedophile and put him on the Sex Offenders' register? Poor sod - I'm sure his life won't be worth living after this!

They're only filthy, scummy men

My question is, if the father has to pay for the upbringing of the child (and the judge has pointed out the child's right to know its father), will he be given equal custody, and a say in how the child is raised? Or, more likely, will he just have to pony up without having any say in the child's upbringing at all? My money is on the latter.

This is what feminism has brought us to. Women are accorded every right to cheat and exploit men as they wish, while men are blamed and demonised and forced to pay while being denied their right to be a father. If she wants support from him, and the kid's rights to a mother and father are so paramount, she should be forced to share equal custody, if she doesn't want to live with him. It is exactly this kind of entrapment behaviour that is why I've refused offers of sex (and I've been made a few!) and never intend to have it. Nobody will ever be able to sock me for maintenance while denying me the right to raise kids. I'd rather not have any.

@ amanfromMars

You are correct of course, if I read your post correctly. We could certainly artificially inflate our figures and reap the rewards, and with the frustration I've felt with some jobs, believe me, I've been tempted! However, we have to remain competitive, and the figures I quoted in my first post are based upon our experience and knowledge of the extra time and hurdles to cross in supporting both IE and W3C browsers.

In terms of creating a developer market for our code to support both browsers, we did consider this possibility. However, we've spent years developing our codebase and our ability to seamlessly support all browsers is our competitive edge over other Web developers in our area. Most of the other Web developers in our area still emphasise IE, and use packages like Dreamweaver and Frontpage rather than custom-coding as we do. To provide this codebase to others, besides introducing the risk of commercial piracy (as opposed to non-commercial filesharing), would undermine that edge.

These developers have built a number of websites, even some big, well-known ones, that support IE to the exclusion of other browsers, or at least are not tested in other browsers. These sites work on the idea of catering to what they see as the market majority.

But this approach is flawed for two reasons. The first is that by refusing to support either one side of the market or the other, you are cutting out a significant part of your audience either way. With the recent surges in the uptake of FF (and Opera), to ignore this segment of the market to support IE is to make a significant dent in your potential customer base. Web developers can no longer afford to pander to Microsoft's majority at the expense of the W3C browser market; those who do so, will find themselves out in the cold very quickly.

The second is that Microsoft themselves are not consistent even to their own standards. If you write HTML/CSS that works perfectly in IE6, it will break in IE7 - or IE5. If you are going to cater to IE, you still need to have workarounds in your code to address inconsistencies across different versions. This of course adds to development costs. Meanwhile, a site that is W3C compliant will display the same in any version of FF or Opera, barring support for a few new features in CSS 2.0 and XHTML 1.0 that did not exist in the pre-Firefox days of the Mozilla Suite, or the old pay-for version of Opera. And such changes are to be expected as innovation proceeds and the Web becomes more interactive. Even given these upgrades, however, a site that was written for CSS 1.0 and HTML 4.01 Transitional will still work correctly in the latest versions of the W3C browsers.

I also take your point that the intellectual efforts involved in supporting the different platforms exercises the creative centres of the mind, that the associated problem-solving improves one's ability to adapt and innovate, and that overcoming these problems can be an interesting challenge for the amateur Web hack. I also frequent code-sharing sites and exchange tips with other Web developers, which goes a long way towards streamlining our own design process.

However, while this approach may be fine for the enthusiastic hacker or hobbyist, it doesn't cut any butter when developing commercial solutions. Such solutions are implemented to a deadline, a budget, and client expectations. The most important thing in this scenario is to deliver a solution as quickly and inexpensively as possible, and ridding the world of IE would go a long way towards reducing this time and cost; an improvement to both the client and the consumer. Yes, if this were achieved, a large part of our codebase would become redundant, and we would have to find other ways of outdistancing our competitors. But I'd rather have that and cheaper, more reliable websites, than the endless frustration of solving the irritating incompatibilities that crop up with each new job. And do you not think it would be better to harness that intellectual potential in developing more effective and creative websites, rather than squandering it on merely finding ways to make the same code work in different browsers?

Solar power in deserts

The idea of using deserts as sources of solar energy is good in theory, but I remember seeing a doco some years ago that raised a point few seem to have considered since. That is, the effect of massive solar cell arrays on the climatic/desertification cycle.

Put simply, in order to meet our energy needs from sunlight, given the wattage per square metre, we would need to cover an area twice the size of Libya with solar panels just to satisfy Europe's needs. This is assuming 100% energy derivation from solar power, including electrified transport and logistics. Now, the reason deserts are deserts (i.e. regions of little or no rainfall) is because exposed soil, sand and rock reflects/radiates more heat back into the atmosphere than vegetation. This reflected heat warms the atmosphere above the desert, preventing condensation and therefore rainfall. No rainfall means no vegetation, which leaves the ground bare to reflect back more heat. Thus, a desert remains barren because of this desertification cycle.

So if we cover such a vast area of desert with energy-absorbing solar cells (at a cost approaching the GDP of the USA), this heat is no longer being reflected back to the atmosphere. This results in atmospheric cooling - which brings about condensation and thus an increase in rainfall. Great, you say - that solves the global warming problem, doesn't it? Not to mention turning vast areas of desert into arable land for farming and water collection. Except...

...you've just turned the Sahara back into the rainforest jungle it was 15,000 years ago. Rainforests are cloud-covered regions, that don't get much direct sunlight. Granted, the trees and plants won't just appear overnight, but the energy-absorption equivalent of the solar panels has still cooled the atmosphere, increased the rainfall and created the resulting cloud-cover, which would occur rather rapidly. Which means that all those very expensive solar panels are now about as useful as tits on a bull. Now how's that for Nature being a bitch? We can't win!

Paris because like Nature, she knows how to be a bitch.

@ "If the kids"

"There are evil devices slightly larger than a 9volt battery, they randomly beep or wail loudly every X minutes/hour and are impossible to locate in time, the battery lasts for years at this rate. They can be hidden anywhere even chucked into drop ceilings or light fittings."

Where can I buy these evil devices? What a c*nt act! I can think of a few places that would benefit from the surreptitious insertion of some of these things... like:

"Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Labor Party we BEEEEEEEEEP! Ahem, here present this Bill for Tranche Three of the Human Rights Reduction Act. We have consulBEEEEEEEEEP! What the devil is that noise? Hm, as I was saying, we have consulted two hundred electorates, and the response has shown BEEEEEEEEEP! WHERE IS THAT DAMN NOISE COMING FROM! Mr Speaker, this session cannot continue if Members will not turn off their BEEEEEEEEEEP! ...." >;D

Distributed computing with subsidies

With projects like seti@home and folding@home now time-tested and demonstrable supercomputing solutions, I would think the days of massive centralised supercomputers are numbered.

Now, the current limitation of distributed computing projects is that they only work if they capture the public imagination, such as the idea of helping to find alien civilisations. Such mundane tasks as city planning and infrastructure logistics aren't likely to induce millions of people to donate their CPU cycles to the cause - boring!

This problem, however, could be alleviated by offering to subsidise part of users' ISP bills in return for running the distributed computing software on their machines. Considering the millions of dollars spent on building and maintaining supercomputers, I'm certain that a cost/benefit analysis would indicate that a subsidy system would be a far cheaper way of effectively using distributed computing in a supercomputing application. If you set it up so that for every X work units processed we'll pay Y dollars toward your next internet bill, you'd find that a lot of people would join in the distributed system who otherwise would have no incentive to do so. Of course, you'd have to impose a limit on the number of clients you allow to join in any given project, based on the computational requirements of the project, the timeframe for completion, and the budget. You'd then have a central website where people could sign up for these subsidised projects on a first-in-first-served basis. This system then means the only cost is the subsidy and central server maintenance, instead of a massive energy-consuming beast of a data centre that costs millions a year to run and maintain.

And the obligatory conspiracy theory...

...is that this was the work of US-based antivirus companies like Trend or McAffee, who could have sabotaged the site in protest at these third-world countries stealing all the programming jobs and working for 5c per hour. Or simply to discredit a foreign rival. Or something.

Mine's the one with the tinfoil beanie, poncho, gauntlets, facemask, leggings and socks...