Posts by Michael Fremlins

@Michael Fremlins and crowd

There you go again, you bleating sheep! I will make up my own mind, thank you.

I don't need an Anonymous Coward to tell me that "It is a poison". (Actually, cocaine is not). But alcohol is, and that is legal. And judging by any Friday or Saturday night, loads of people are happy to get themselves paralytically drunk.

Stop treating people who take drugs like ill-informed children, instead treat them like adults who have made a conscious decision. Their freedom to decide to take drugs is no different from your decision not to take drugs.

When will the anti-drugs lunatics get it into their supposedly un-addled brains that prohibition does not work. They must be on something.

I think it should be free

I know - I'll fork it. I'll register linuxisthebestestoperatingsystemontheplanet.com. Actually I'd better make that gnulinuxisthebestestoperatingsystemontheplanet.com. Who with me? If you are not, it means you are against free and open source software.

2,300 pages?

Nobody will ever read it.

It makes me laugh. Seemingly every time that Whitehall makes a report or a document about something, it always runs to hundreds of pages. This guarantees that it won't be read. Perhaps that's the idea.

Security through sharing

"The organisations involved in SCOPE are MI5, MI6, GCHQ, SOCA, HMRC, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the MoD and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (ex-DTI)."

And they hoped to keep this secure???

I am reminded of a line from Blackadder: List of personnel cleared for mission Gainsborough, as dictated by General C. H. Melchett: You and me, Darling, obviously. Field Marshal Haig, Field Marshal Haig's wife, all Field Marshal Haig's wife's friends, their families, their families' servants, their families' servants' tennis partners, and some chap I bumped into the mess the other day called Bernard.

But suspected of what?

"A Met spokesman said the device was merely a new tool officers could use when they stop and search suspects". But what are these "suspects" suspected of? I can see this being absolutely ripe for abuse by the plod, something alas seems to be the norm these days.

@Lars

You forgot Solaris, the one true OS ;-)

And yet...

I do seem to recall a program on the TV quite a few years ago about some criminal who was caught after leaving a bite on someone or something.

An odontologist was asked by the police for help. This clever fellow told the fuzz what the crim would look like, with overhanging upper teeth.

I'm a little bit surprised to read that "Bitemark Evidence: A Color Atlas" is apparently "the only comprehensive textbook on the subject of bitemarks", cos there is a quite a list of books on this specialist subject here: http://www.bafo.org.uk/resources/textbooks.php. One of them shares a suspiciously similar title: "A Colour Atlas of Forensic Dentistry".

Hold on a minute

If an episode with John Pertwee didn't win, it's flawed.

How can anyone not like that bouffant hair and crushed velvet jacket?

@foo_bar_baz

I was a little harsh to some of the Linux noobs the other day, but I do draw a distinction between noobs and loons.

I consider somebody a loon as you have done - somebody who thinks their OS defines them or how big their balls are. My comment today was mostly aimed at Yaro, somebody who couldn't even get the right OS with his "most secure operating system" spike. Not surprising with the 874,000+ Linux distros out there (alright, alright).

I'm glad that more people are using Linux (or *BSD or Solaris...), that is good. And I thoroughly endorse trying and learning.

MF.

FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux loon.

Windows at home on the desktop, because it is the simplest for so many things.

When the boot is on the other foot...

Linux fans blame the admins! If it was IIS, it would be Microsoft's fault.

@AC 11.19, if that is what you think you shouldn't be doing sys admin.

By buy bye

Texas to email camp and knee spin box 4 sails. By buy bye.

Blue horses shoe loves spinning box.

If Exchage really is so hard, don't use it

I don't have any experience of administering Exchange, but plenty of running email on UNIX 24x7. My colleague ran an Exchange server, and he said it was one thing he worried about.

If Exchange really is so hard to administer, move to UNIX. It's not hard.

Who is right/wrong or more right/wrong?

Alan Davis's statement that "the US competition authorities had already cleared the deal" suggest that America is right and therefore anyone who challenges this decision is wrong. But why is that so? Why are we supposed to accept that America is right in this case, or indeed in any case? Why is it wrong to have a disagreement with America?

I don't have an axe to grind against either Sun or Oracle. I have used products from both firms for years.

How many emails were tested?

The false positive rate is important, but also the number of emails tested. A small company, let's say with 25 staff, can live with that and manage it cos it's only one email now and then.

But when you have 5 million+ emails a day, a tiny false positive rate can cause huge support problems, as well as "it doesn't work properly" type comments.

I agree with Kevin Johnston that 100% is a pipedream, so I live with that.

And along with Martin Burns I would like to see dspam, spamassassin, etc tested.

Abolish ACPO

Make ACPO a proscribed organisation. These jumped up policepersons have no business forming policy. That they do, and get away with it, shows how far down the road to totalitarianism we have gone. Drip drip here, drip drip there. It all adds up.

64 bit browsers/apps - a retort

Firstly, it is possible to run a 32 bit browser on a 64 bit OS. I cannot think (yet) of any situation where I will need >4GB of RAM just for my browser. Of course, in years to come that may be necessary. But for now, no it's not.

@Cameron Colley. Just having 64 bit apps on a 64 bit OS/64 bit hardware does not in itself make the app run faster. In fact, it can run slower. If the system doesn't have a large memory configuration, i.e. greater than 4GB, then your 64 bit system isn't going to use it anyway.

Now, I had the (dubious bragging rights) benefit of running a 64 bit OS on the desktop about 10 years ago - Solaris. But the machine had 2GB of RAM, so there was no actual need for 64 bit mode. But it made me feel like a real He-man.

But Morrissey...

what difference does it make?

Err?

"We are determined to crack down on those so called 'legal highs' that pose a significant health risk". What, like tobacco?

LOL.

I tried IE8 last night

It's ghastly. IE7 had an option when closing the browser to "reopen these tabs" next time it starts. IE8 gives the option to "close this tab" or "close all tabs". It doesn't reopen them.

Thanks Bill. That was enough for me to go back to IE7 (when I need it).

Who says it was the Russians?

It's easy to blame the "obvious villain", but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody was trying to make the Russians (or a Russian) look like baddies.

The real villains, of course, are the refusniks who keep on running Windows day in and day out, letting themselves get infected with some Goddam Ruskie malware, which is then used against noble Western web sites. If they were using Linux zzzzzzzz.

I seem to have stirred a few hornets

Thanks to everyone for responding to my jab.

I prefer a minimal desktop over anything that looks nice but runs slowly. My preferred WMs are XFCE and FVWM. They both respond very quickly, much more quickly than either Gnome or KDE. And they take up far less resources. I have used numerous WMs in the past, but have long settled on FVWM. I haven't "needed" anything else. I would never use something like Compiz as it would just slow me down.

One of the best, and most productive, programmers I ever met used OpenWindows on Solaris. That really is minimalist. But it had everything he needed - a terminal, vi and a browser. And because he was so good, I learned from him.

I've read the stories about Vista sluggishness and performance and don't use it. Instead, on my Windows box, I have XP. That is an old desktop, but it works. And I won't upgrade it to Vista as that will immediately slow it down.

My desktop won't suit everyone. But nor will KDE.

Judges and immunity

"Judges are immune from negligence liability". That needs to be changed. I would handle it like this: The size of the judge's pension pot is fixed. Every time they make a mistake in law (cos that is all they are there for), the costs of the appeal will be taken from their pot.

@E 2

An OS written in Java? JX. Or JNode.

You do have a point, but also it depends what you mean by "OS". I wouldn't class ActiveX as an OS, and MSVidCtl is just a control. ActiveX is also meant to be language independent, which is exactly why controls can be written in C++, VBasic, Delphi and others.

This looks like a really simple typo, the sort anyone can make. It does surprise me a little that it wasn't spotted. Do MS not have any code review? Or did Bob the programmer do it all himself?

Management buyouts

I've never understood how these work when a company has gone into administration. Wasn't it the management who were ultimately responsible for putting it into that position? Yet suddenly they have found a way to extract the assets at a cheap price.

@Chris19

In the pockets of the mostly nameless bureaucrats, where else?

EU = lots of money for political nonentities.

What the hell is an "online symptom checker"?

Do they mean a one page web site with a list of symptoms? If so, I can oblige.

That'll be £4,000,000 please. I might as well have some gravy.

Bob Crowe

is positioning for his members to take vast amounts of time off work. This isn't a silver lining to the cloud, this is platinum! Whhey!

Just mention the words "Swine Flu", or even just "Sw" and Bob Crowe will start yelling "my members..."

Why doesn't Bob Crowe just admit he doesn't want "his" members to do a day of work?

Stubbed your toe, member? Call a strike.

Do something dangerous, member, and you were sacked? Call a strike.

Swine Flu symptoms, or just a cough, member? Cowabunga!!! We've hit the jackpot. All members will be on an indefinite strike until 10 years after the last case of flu in Tibet.

Bob Crowe makes me proud to be British. His inventiveness for doing nothing, and be paid for it, is simply the best in the world.

Great

"We take this issue very seriously and very aware of the loss of public funds especially at this time."

So who is going to carry the can?

Not very imaginative

Buying "designer suits and aftershaves" with their ill-gotten loot...

What about birds, booze, and "sundries"?

So let's get this straight

Even where there is no evidence of a crime being committed using telecommunications, the police will start a fishing exercise after every arrest.

What a waste of time and money.

OK, Stallman.

We know it's GNU/Linux.

Well done, Conficker

For the first time I find myself congratulating the black hats.

During previous "outbreaks" I watched with mild amusement as the Windows people scrambled to clean up a new problem, but I never condoned it. In this case, with some motoring "offences" to the mix, it's a different matter. The council has a very nasty money-grabbing scheme by shafting motorists. It's hard to not feel a sense of "serves you flipping well right" towards the council. Alas, it's not the council who foot the clean up bill, it's the tax payers.

The council had to hire a load of cake-eating consultants, presumably because their own staff are not up to the job. Even though Windows is supposed to be easy (though in practice it is horrible). Was anybody disciplined in any way for allowing this outbreak to happen? In between eating cornish pasties, what was the IT department doing?

To everyone who can't see a likeness...

do a search.

There are obvious similarities in the way the results are presented. As Kayak did this first, I'm with Kayak on this.

Porn is big business in the USA

Very BIG, if you get my drift!

Zzzzzzz zzzzzzz

This is just a smokescreen for the government to exert more control over the interweb.

Now that the interweb can be (mis)used as a weapon, it has to be controlled, and only in the safe hands of government IT "experts" (GOD HELP US ALL).

Lord West's has said that "Al-Qaeda is planning cyber war". And to combat these, a unit at GCHQ will "monitor, analyse and counter cyber attacks as they happen." How will they do that, one wonders.

Cyber "attacks" are very rare. DDOS is pretty rare, and more of a nuisance. So GCHQ will using this excuse to monitor ALL traffic, nearly all of which will not be damaging. It's just interception, dressed up as security.

ACPO just don't get it

I, in London, can manage machines in New York without getting on an aeroplane. I don't need to be there. Regions are irrelevant, so is distance. That is a benefit of the internet.

And why is ACPO, a private company, formulating policy anyway?

We are not a world power

We are not a world any more. We haven't been for a very long time, so we should stop acting like one.

The navy, when supposedly engaged in anti-piracy measures (let's say off the coast of Somalia) is not even sure what authority it has to do so. The Foreign Office told the navy not to detain pirates, because it might breach their human rights! And it can't send the pirates back to Somalia because that might breach their human rights too! Furthermore, the Foreign Office said it is important to resolve things peacefully, so there really is no point at all in having the navy there. So what exactly is the navy doing there, apart from getting some wonderful sun tans at our expense? I'll tell you - it's pretending that we are still a great sea power with a global reach. But it is only "pretending", it's not the truth.

The North Korea thing - there is currently NO power from the UN to incercept North Korean shipping. The most that can be done is to ask nicely for permission to board, but boarding by force would be an act of piracy. If the captain of the North Korean ship refuses his ship to be boarded, his ship must be directed to a port that Pyongyang chooses (most likely a home port). North Korea is in no position to attack us. That's just a rehash of the 45 minutes load of crap about Iraq. So, again, if the navy is near North Korea, it's working on sun tans and not a lot else. Once again, a bit of pretend grandstanding, but no real teeth.

Our merchant fleet has about half a dozen rubber dinghies to its name. So protecting "British" shipping is a bit of a half-truth.

The navy is so small that it is all but useless. The loss of one ship would have a major impact on fighting capacity. We no doubt have more admirals than ships.

We don't have an empire to defend. And even offering help to friendly countries (let's say Australia was attacked by somebody unknown), what could we do? Offer a couple of ships at most. We are only a member of the UN Security Council for historical reasons, and that history is a long time ago now. "You are only as good as your last sale (or sail)...".

The political classes (at least the major parties) threw our lot in with the Americans a long time ago (without asking us, the people, naturally). We have become nothing more than America's stooge. We are a useful extra vote on the Security Council (to frustrate those cheese-eating surrender-monkeys, and to spite the Russians). We have some bases for America to treat as though it owns, and that is exaclt how America does treat them.

We should stop this pretence. And part of stopping it will be to ger rid of the navy. It costs a load of money and doesn't serve a useful purpose (any more).

@ChrisInBelgium

"- their results are not up to par with Google"

Where's the evidence for that?

One of the first MP3s I downloaded, years and years ago, from the interweb was Big Sky's "Siberia". A while back I was wondering what happened to the band, so I looked them up on Google. I tried "Big Sky", all kinds of combinations of words from the song, etc. It was nowhere to be found. So I went to Yahoo! The band's website was the first link.

I just tried the same thing with Bing, and it's the first link there too. On Google at least it now shows up, but it's the bottom link on the first page. The first link is to cat breaders in Montana, not what I'm looking for at all.

Google is good, but I have found it fails occasionally. And just because it's good, doesn't mean that somebody else can't do it better. After all, that is how Google got to be number 1 for now.

Anyway, here's a plug: go to www.bigskyrocks.com and listen to Siberia. It's a free download on the site. No registration...

The thing is...

it's butt ugly. I wouldn't want it on my desk.

It looks like a techie "designed" it, in much the same way that somebody "designed" the hideous 60s' and 70's tower blocks that blight the country.

There doesn't have to be a choice between form and function. It is possible to have the two at the same time.

Port should have been sent to the clink

Let him cool his heels for a while, at Her Majesty's pleasure.

Time to play hardball

The Tories should state they will introduce legislation cancelling the ID contracts and any "poison pill" clauses to boot.

Retrospective legislation is not unheard of. Just remove the ambiguity and get on with it.