Posts by Cliff

Yes, it'd be good to see an 80 column dot matrix joining in the choruses

Re: A stupid question

>>>.On the face of it there appears to be a hint of fraud and extracting money with menaces involved here, maybe even blackmail.<<<

Not a hint of it, it's outright, deliberate, balls-out abuse, extortion and bigger war-chest thuggery. It's even worse than Prenda and ilk, involves zero innovation beyond retrospectively making a land-grab for the commons.

These businesses, their owners, shareholders, directors, employees, lawyers, and anyone involved in the rackets they're created to 'enforce' are cunts of the highest order and deserve to live in their own company for all eternity in the newly created 8th realm of hell, just for them.

Re: Almost worth it

Not much point, few days before the polls after which he stand a rather good chance of standing down as a politician.

Plausible

Being in a movie doesn't necessarily make something a bad idea (although it often does, in fairness, but it's correlation, not causal).

I'd day plausible - if doddery old Fingers McMetal was looking for scrap, what's the cost of sending him down Holborn on the right weekend? He fucks up comms whilst he's there, it may affect alarms, which can only be a good thing for you. If he blows himself up, even better, you don't have to pay him the few grand you promised. Put another way, you're about to do a nine-figure blag, why not stack the cards in your favour with something that can only count in your favour?

Sadly, yes.

Re: So, the conclusion is ..

@Fred,

I think I just felt a little let down as I hoped for better. He (and his producers and researchers and writers) is clearly very capable, evidenced by well-constructed programmes that manage to be both entertaining and cutting.

The jumping at shadows business, though, undermined the interview message. The petulant 'I flew in comfort for 10 hours to spend 2 days somewhere for my interviewee (who is a guest of the Russian government and therefore extremely likely to be briefed/driven to the hotel/whatever by them) to be 40 minutes late' just seemed, well, bizarre. Real people fly real places for interviews or jobs frequently. Len blinkin' Goodman flies from London to USA weekly for Strictly Come Dancing/With the Stars, and he's an old boy dance judge on a light entertainment show, not a comedy journalist.

People living in Moscow, London, New York, wherever are subject to the vagueries of traffic, tube, other things. I've waited longer than that for 'showbiz' interviews with someone in the same building. If Snowden hadn't been able to make it at any point within those 2 days, it would have been impolite, but not earth-shattering either. Making a fuss about it plays to anti-Russian sentiment for sure at a time when Putin is posturing and making people uncomfortable - why go for cheap redneck populist shots like that when you're trying to do a story about something far more important? It was just clumsy and, well, bizarre.

Re: I just don't understand the need for the concept to be honest

The contactless bit is handy on my credit and debit cards - Waitrose have self-scan machines that don't take cash, just cards, so it speeds up what's already a fairly low-hassle transaction

Re: I've seen worse

26ROT-1 is only marginally worse.

Re: For what it's worth

and Chrome on Android. Seems pretty conclusive to me :)

Re: For once the news on the battery front may actually lead to something.

Yes, this is actually rather exciting.

Just hoping it can also work for weight, endurance, self-discharge etc as it could be such a boon.

Re: A little math..

>>>.But isn't that exactly like going elsewhere for your apps?<<<

Exactly - going to an illegit distributor massively raises the risk of catching a nasty.

Re: Dear sir or madam

Why? Why not she/her/hers? Manning obviously identifies strongly enough as female as to make what cannot have been an easy decision. Is that less important than whether one's bits dangle or not?

I see the whole story as someone who was sick of keeping secrets - if you like, a woman having to pretend to be a man and so ashamed and tense having to maintain a lie. The weight of keeping what they saw as deceit secret 'burst', and personal and state secrets all came out in the open.

I'm guessing you identify as male, so how would you feel if you, with the same mind, feelings, brain, intuition, self found yourself in a woman's body? People would treaty you according to what they saw, maybe treated you as dumber, maybe paid you less, made gags about your physical looks, maybe even made you cover up and forbid you to drive without a brother accompanying you. How would that feel? Would you feel 'but hey I'm actually a man inside here'? Imperfect analogy, but I'm sure you can see the point I'm angling towards.

Basically, are you only male because of you knackers? Or do you identify with your gender strongly?

Re: Angle grinder?

If the hardware components of the laptop can catch 'sedition', then the grinder is surely contaminated by now, you're right. It'll be having words with the garden forks and half-sack of gone off cement in the back of the shed...

Re: Internet Bubble 2.0

Been in it a while, but nobody listens to the grey dogs when there's a quick buck to be made at the expense of the pension funds that'll end up bearing the brunt of the crashes. Dotcomboomandbust2.0 was in full flow when instagram was overvalued at $1Bn, and that seems like chump change now compared to current overvaluations.

I despair

All the NSA will learn is that you don't want Grace to dance on tables

Re: Early start...

As with all the best terrible ideas, it's not that bad - Instagram showed there's a market for 'shabby chic'-ification of 16Mpx crisp, bright images of lunch. And look at the appeal of the low-fi titles for 'Better Call Saul' - those guys worked hard to make them look that shit (and it works)

Re: Feeling il.head

As DNS is getting replaced by search engines, it's not actually a bad idea. Let's face it, Google is the AOL of the day in that your granny probably types 'hotmail' into a browser bar and doesn't know the back end difference between that and typing 'hotmail.com'

Bagsy can my number be e7:14:9a:78:ac:11 (or will the Ascension islands object to the 'ac'??)

Re: Watch the post

Maybe slice himself into postcards to be reassembled on the outside?

Re: I like their complaint @cliff

Übermens - I see what you did there ;)

Re: Stupidity is tsn't quite the right word.....

I think the author knows this and was trying to add a little colour to the piece along the lines of 'they may only be one star but dumb activity can make even that star irrelevant'

Re: Bit crap, that.

Not your computer.

Apple's computer. That you paid for and they don't want back.

(Waiting patiently for the downvotes)

Re: surely there was a reason that IE became so popular?

Lost me at 'sheeple', I'll never know if you had a brilliant point to make.

Re: The guy was an idiot...

A tiny percentage of criminals are 'CSI Cyber' - worthy, the vast majority are regular people doing stupid things out of necessity or laziness, neither being the ideal motivation. You don't just wake up one day deciding to be a criminal mastermind, there are usually other factors.

Re: Will developers take up this opportunity?

So developers will have to deal with siri, Google and Cortana - looks like the next step might be a virtual assistant abstraction layer...

Re: This is a lovely story

Either you're lucky, unlucky, or very bad/over vigilant at spotting fakes! Royal Mint is a pretty good source to cite...

http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit-one-pound-coins.

I was using old data, 2.5%, where the current figure is 3%. Hope this helps :)

Make more effort...

ELECTRICAL_CONVERSION_EFFICIENCY = 110%

500 Error

In fairness, isn't that the best 500 image you've seen in a while?

Re: Interview

>>>.However that same protection allows you to avail yourself of certain rights.<<<

The right to hide in foreign embassies? No problem with that. Is that what you mean by 'same protection'? That's not in question, though, is it?

>>>.So you were in favour of Apartheid?<<<

Say what? What possible leap of imagination equates one paranoid narcissist choosing to hide from police with an entire nation being oppressed for their skin colour? I seriously can't see the parallels here, it's a terrible line of argument. Why not just skip to the ad-homs??

Re: But what happens a few years down the line

For the record, I am saying that neither the secondhand watch nor the new apple one has any inherent special value as watches, not that someone won't pay over the odds for them.