Sign in / up

* Posts by raving angry loony

1244 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Dec 2008

Page:

Kill Flash now? Chrome may be about to do just that

raving angry loony

BBC off then

I guess the BBC better get off their lazy, incompetent technical heinies then and move away from Flash, because at the moment they're the only news organization that I read that uses that piece of crap.

@JLV: I don't think the CBC doesn't use flash, since I've managed to make their videos work once and I don't have flash installed anywhere. What they are using is an in-house player that only works if you aren't blocking some of the most intrusive and harmful advertising servers in the business. Into which they wrap YouTube and other videos that they've stolen and re-packaged so they could put their ads on them. I haven't been able to get their videos to work with even minimal blocking, and stopped trying years ago.

5 0

Curiosity find Mars' icecaps suck up its atmosphere

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: New Orderly World Orders AI …. for Live Operational Virtual Environments ‽

Oh shit, the poorly written Eliza program wanna-be called "amanfromMars" is back. I think it's the same program that writes that nonsense on those click-bait web pages and emails.

0 3

The Lonely Pirate MEP's Holocaust copyright stunt backfires

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

In conclusion:

Those who oppose modern copynever laws aren't the ones who benefit from a fascist mindset. Modern copynever laws are the real meat and potatoes of the fascist/corporatist governments. It's the facists/corporatists who benefit from these copynever laws, and those who defend them are either part of that system, or want to be.

0 0
raving angry loony

Quote: "Authoritarian regimes hate copyright, which is an Enlightenment idea that the individual should own and control their work. For state socialist and fascist regimes this is an anathema: the state should decide; the collective knows best. Pirates owe more to fascism than they are prepared to admit."

That's the point, isn't it. That INDIVIDUALS should own and control their work. That was the intent of the Statute of Anne. But it wasn't governments that owned copyright at that time, it was a CORPORATION, the London Company of Stationers. And we're moving back to that. Now it's corporations that own the copyrights. If an individual attempts to assert their copyright, they get buried in the costs of defending that copyright, because making the process expensive is to the benefit of the corporations.

So we've gone from a system that had no public domain and everything was copyrighted (pre Statute of Anne), to a system that had a growing public domain because copyrights expired, explicitly forbade perpetual copyrights, and broke the back of the copyright monopoly, to the current system where the public domain hasn't really grown since 1923, we have perpetual copyright again due to ever-increasing copyright terms, and YET AGAIN fucking corporations control just about everything. Including recent laws about "works for hire" that make corporations ascendant again.

Copyright today benefits large corporations, not the copyright owner. CopyRIGHT was meant to GRANT the right to copy, reuse, and generally play with previous works. CopyRIGHT was meant to encourage authors to create by granting a LIMITED ownership before their work entered the public domain. Today? We're almost back to the pre Statute of Anne days, and the London Company of Stationers, after 300 years of fighting, has almost won back everything they had prior to that original copyRIGHT legislation. Except it's not copyRIGHT any more. It's copyNEVER.

3 0

Official: Microsoft's 'Get Windows 10' nagware to vanish from PCs in July

raving angry loony

What else?

quote: will be disabled and eventually removed

Since this is Microsoft, what has me worried is "what else will they remove" when they automatically remove their spamware.

3 0

'I thought my daughter clicked on ransomware – it was the damn Windows 10 installer'

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Forgive me for not understanding how this happened

By your definition anything that honestly describes Microsoft policies, or honestly describes Microsoft software failures, is a "Microsoft hate article".

Let me guess, you work for their marketing dept?

5 1

Microsoft: Why we tore handy Store block out of Windows 10 Pro PCs

raving angry loony

Same old, same old.

Between the spam-ware nature of "upgrade to Windows 10" advertising and these changes to Windows 10, it seems that they feel the only way to increase sales is to force ANY business to upgrade to Enterprise, whether or not it's an appropriate choice. I guess that's one way to increase the Microsoft tax without admitting they've increased the Microsoft tax.

It's a pity so many businesses are either locked into Windows, or don't understand the alternatives. Or both.

76 2

Wi-Fi network named 'mobile detonation device' grounds plane

raving angry loony

Lots of lateness

Because of course someone meaning harm would call the network "mobile detonation device" and not "Happy heaven finder". If that's all it takes to ground a plane, there's going to be a lot of late planes in the next few years. Hell, you could beam it in from outside the airport.

42 4

F-35s failed 'scramble test' because of buggy software

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Ah, so that's probably another reason the USA demanded the project be disbanded, and the Canadian government of the day (that bastard Diefenbaker) gladly acquiesced. The only place Canadian scientists and engineers are allowed to work effectively is American companies and organizations.

I guess they're afraid that if Canadians are allowed to actually do something useful they'll burn down the White House. AGAIN.

6 0
raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: I know nothing about F35's, nor the software they run

The pauses and failures in the startup sequence are possibly the Microsoft spamware demanding that they upgrade.

2 2

Half of people plug in USB drives they find in the parking lot

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: USB fryer

http://kukuruku.co/hub/diy/usb-killer?ModPagespeed=noscript

0 0
raving angry loony

USB fryer

Time to get out the capacitors and fill a USB stick with them. Plug in and ZZZAAAAPPPP!!

They won't be doing that twice. Sometimes, education really does need to be smoky.

5 3

Daft draft anti-car-hack law could put innocent drivers away for life

raving angry loony

Car lobby?

Wondering how strong the car lobby is in that state? Wonder if this is just the latest tactic in the claim by some nitwits that since the car has software, you don't actually own it but are only licensing it, and they can therefore tell you what to do with it, when, and how?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150421/23581430744/gm-says-that-while-you-may-own-your-car-it-owns-software-it-thanks-to-copyright.shtml

11 0

Pop goes the weasel! Large Hadron Collider blown up by critter chomping 66kV cable

raving angry loony

Assumptions...

I heard a weasel shut the thing down, and the first thing that came to mind was a sales manager.

11 0

ICANN in a strop that Intel, Netflix, Lego, Nike and others aren't using their dot-brand domains

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Proof that it was a shakedown all along

It's called "the fine print". And you'd think multinational corporations would have learned to read the fucking things before signing the contracts.

3 0

Switch survives three hours of beer spray, fails after twelve

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Reading that made my eye twitch...

> Allegedly it was because the commute was shorter in the new role...

Stupid-land is a hell of a trip after all, especially when you have to come back when you're done.

2 0
raving angry loony
Reply Icon

I'm guessing that the author is an American who forgot he was writing for a British publication perhaps? I've found they often do that.

7 0

Windows 10 handcuffs Cortana web search to Bing and Edge browser

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Get used to it.

So... reverts it to Windows 7, is that what it does?

7 1

Nearly two billion in the bank and yet this VC is slowly losing his beach-blocking battle

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

>> I read about it in the Miami Herald Florida magazine around March, 1974.

> How in the fsck do you remember what you read 40+ years ago to the month?

That's a very good question. I have trouble remembering what I read 40+ hours ago to the month.

1 0
raving angry loony
Reply Icon

re: I once bought a forest

Wasn't that Andrew Ryan from Bioshock? Although it does sound like Ryan was based on people like Khosla.

4 0

Comcast eats Dreamworks

raving angry loony
Mushroom

Well, that's Dreamworks and its staff well fucked then.

(we need a borg icon...)

3 0

Reskilling to become a devops dude could net you $105k+

raving angry loony

dear El Reg

You forgot the whole "up to" $105k +,

and you also forgot the "but wait, you ALSO get... lines".

If you're going to let the US office start acting like a bunch of TV infomercial fuckwits at least get it RIGHT!

4 0

E-cigarettes help save lives, says Royal College of Physicians

raving angry loony

Freedom

Far as I'm concerned folks should be able to smoke what they want. What I object to is the stink. I've walked through a couple of clouds of the vaping by-product and my GHODS it was foul. And it stank up my clothing such that I had to change and wash. Almost as bad as one of those "light" cigarettes that were popular a few years back.

Here's the deal:

They vape or smoke. I drink beer. They produce noxious smoke or vapour as a by-product. I produce rather foul urine. If the self-absorbed arrogant selfish little turds insist on putting the by-product of their hobby in my nose, clothes, and hair, then I'm going to start spraying my piss on them. See how they like it.

2 11

Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware storms live TV weather forecast

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Oh, yeah...

Have a downvote. Because expecting people to purchase enterprise versions for obviously small office requirements is never an excuse to foist spam-ware on anyone. You make a good Microsoft apologist though, have you considered working for their marketing dept?

4 0

Dyson hair dryer

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Measuring isn't controlling

I can witness that his "pet hair vacuum" sucks. For about 0.3 seconds, then it fills up with pet hair, clogs up, and stops being effective. I warned the spouse, but no, never trust the techie, always trust the salesperson. Even at home.

5 0

China's Dalek-like robots fear only one terrifying nemesis: Stairs

raving angry loony

Sorry but...

It still looks like they've found a bunch of short people, stuck them on Segways, then encased them in a russian doll to make them utterly incapable of righting themselves when someone knocks them over.

People actually got paid to design this? Amazing.

3 0

Germans stick traffic lights in pavements for addicts who can't take their eyes off phones

raving angry loony

Zombies

So much for the zombie apocalypse. Now we know how it starts. Pretty soon the zombies will be chasing down the non-zombies who dare interfere with their candy crush. But slowly, because the beat doesn't let you run faster.

3 0

China leaves Apple books, movies on the cutting room floor

raving angry loony

Theory vs practice

In theory, various nations are champions of democracy, free speech, honest trade, and encourage others to improve simply by not dealing with them, and forbidding any corporation based in their country from dealing with them.

In practice, all the nations that claim they are champions of democracy, free speech, honest trade et. al. are little more than utter hypocrites, happily doing business with the most repressive dictatorship if there's money to be made, and hang all those silly principles.

We seem to have two groups of nations left on the planet. Those run by those who worship money, and those run by those who worship themselves. And money.

Pity.

1 0

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: snooping my machine

Since the various advertisers hide behind distributors, 3rd party providers, and a host of other slimy practices that don't let us choose the ad provider, I CANNOT "not" visit sites with "bad" ads because they ALL have "bad" ads. At least all the ones I've visited without a blocker. The only "good" ads I've seen are those that, somehow, filter through all my blocks and still make it to my screen. Usually ads related to the website itself rather than fed through the usual slimy 3rd parties that the porn sites pioneered and that your industry seems to love.

So the only choices I have are "get off the internet" or "block all you dishonest scum sucking goat fuckers". Since I'm not going to get off the internet, I chose to block you.

Sadly, your industry is too deluded, too stupid, too wrapped up in your "advertising is good" model that you cannot possibly comprehend the fact that by hiding your origins you're hurting yourself. By attempting to foist your crap on EVERY website, you're hurting yourself. But you can't accept that, so you blame everyone else but yourself.

Fine. Do so. I don't care you who blame. But don't be surprised when I, and a growing number of others, block your dishonest, corrupt, stupid, ignorant, slimy adverts from our screens. On EVERY website.

14 0
raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: snooping my machine

FF22 the advertising industry apologist writes: "But with ad blocking on, you are not only eliminating that feedback loop" and "Ad blocking is not the solution, but the very problem that makes ads larger and more obtrusive."

Which, as we all know, is complete and utter bullshit.

For starters, I've only seen one platform that allows any feedback on ads. Others are "click here to give us feedback" but all that does is take us to the subject of the advert in the first place, with no way to actually give feedback. The only feedback we CAN give is tell you to fuck right off. So we do. Some ads are OK. Others are not. But we can't CHOOSE. So we choose to remove all of them. The problem is not ours. It's yours.

As for ad blocks making ads larger and more obtrusive? A tiny fraction of the population currently uses ad blockers. Ergo, ad blockers aren't what's making adverts larger and more obtrusive. I'm guessing the real reason is the total disconnect between the advertisers and the people they're trying to foist their shit onto. Advertisers seem to think that the only purpose of the internet is to sell their shit. Well, they're wrong. And until they learn that they're wrong, ad blockers will continue to rise in popularity. Of course, advertisers are like any salesperson - completely immune to self criticism and completely deluded about their popularity.

Tell you what. Go back to your boss in the advertising industry and tell him that when (a) they actually let us give FEEDBACK on the desirability of ALL ads they've just pushed in our face and (b) they STOP making the ads larger and more obtrusive some of us will then turn off the ad blockers (and script blockers, and tracker blockers, and other blockers.)

I've yet to see an ad that actually asks for feedback on the ad itself. No, each time there's a link, no matter what the link CLAIMS it is for, it's actually just another excuse to fuck me over with intrusive advertising and privacy invading scripts or some other crap. So we can't give feedback on a per-ad basis. Nor can block on a per-provider basis because the advertising industry hides itself under multiple pseudonyms and other slimy practices - just like the scum they are.

So yeah, there's a war on. One the advertisers may or may not win. But until the advertisers realize that they are the cause of most of their own problems, nothing will change. Until apologists like you stop blaming the public for choosing not to read your crap, nothing will change. Look towards how you operate for the real cause of the problem.

And if websites want to block me for using an ad blocker, by all means do so. I'll gladly go elsewhere. But do so without breaking EU privacy laws, or suffer the very real, very expensive consequences.

36 0

The web is DOOM'd: Average page now as big as id's DOS classic

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: See? I've saying this years

Voted down for being smug. So there. (and why do I read that in the voice Boris uses in the Bond film when he says "I am invincible"??)

5 2
raving angry loony

Example:

This page was just under 15KB in size using Firefox and a script blocker. It worked just fine.

The page weighs in at just over 700KB using Chrome with no blockers.

Nice example there, Reg. Now do something about the fucking bloat!

4 0

Microsoft, Google bury hatchet – surprisingly, not in each other

raving angry loony

Good?

Because two major violators of many laws and regulations agreeing with each other to keep quiet about it is "good"?

The author writes: "The only people this new detente agreement will hurt is the lawyers,"

Well, that and the general public whose governments have already seemingly been bought out by these behemoths. At least someone was trying to keep them in line. Now that they're not doing it to each other, I sense that the public is about to get right royally rogered a lot more.

17 0

Indian Capital Delhi bans Uber's surge pricing

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Late delivery

Looting? No. Extortion? Yes. But what do you expect from a black market clearing house of mostly illegal activities? Which is all Uber is. And AirBnB, Lyft, and the raft of others who encourage people to break the law so they can profit from it while suffering none of the risks.

7 8

Badges for Commentards

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Upvotes only?

ref: like / dislike / informative / twaddle / babies / idiot

The above should be checkboxes not radio buttons. The categories are not mutually exclusive.

2 0
raving angry loony

Upvotes only?

I just noticed that for silver you need "2000 upvotes". But nothing about downvotes. Just because someone posts something unpopular doesn't make it false. You're encouraging a typical echo chamber where people only post what they know others will already approve of. Rather than being shit-disturbing muck rakers who MAKE people think about what the hell it is they're reading.

Biting the hand that feeds you rarely garners upvotes. You're only rewarding the kind of behaviour that you yourself decry in other publications. Popularity should never be the sole measure of validity or rewards, especially amongst geeks, nerds, and muck raking journalists.

How about requiring that people also have a certain number of downvotes, just to make sure they're not just agreeable Milquetoasts who just jump on popularity inspired bandwagons rather than put any mental effort into what they post.

(what, you think it's EASY being a raving angry loony?)

4 0

US congresscritter's iPhone hacked (with, er, the cell networks' help)

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: within the grasp of powerful crime gangs and government agents

My comment was meant somewhat facetiously, but... not completely.

Two issues.

1) "Tend to know you're not a good guy". Spoken by a person who has never experienced deep and abiding corruption. The corrupt are often the first to believe, strongly, that they are in fact "good". That everything they do is "good", because they're doing it. Therefore by opposing them you deserve to be punished because, if you oppose them, you must be "not good" because they are, by definition, "good". Ask any "true believer" corporatist, for instance.

2) As for using the USA as an example of a place where there's a difference? I see little difference between Russia and the USA, except that the USA has overthrown more governments and been much more hypocritical in the difference between their official propaganda vs their actions. I'd go into details, but I was up to 4 paragraphs and had only scratched the surface of the documented stuff, let alone the "assumed" actions. Yet, as per item (1), the people of both Russia and the USA consider themselves, for the most part, to be "good guys". Probably because they don't know their own history. Or don't care.

So I was perhaps being a little less than facetious. Perhaps.

I agree about some Nordic countries though. Maybe.

0 1
raving angry loony

within the grasp of powerful crime gangs and government agents

There's a difference?

10 1

Official: EU goes after Google, alleges it uses Android to kill competition

raving angry loony

valid point

Sounds like the EU has a valid point. Google IS attempting to limit competition. Also trying to censor anyone who wants to limit the ads on "their" platform.

I'd still rather use Android than iOS, but it's getting to look like Google is making Android less and less about "choice" and more and more about "give us your data so we can sell it to others".

3 0

Saw-inspired horror slowly deletes your PC's files as you scramble to pay the ransom

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Copyright

Not before they hire them. After all, that's what the movie industry today does isn't? Incompetently evil plans followed by flurries of legal action when their plans fail?

4 0

Furious customers tear into 123-reg after firm's mass deletion woes

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

The brass won't listen, because they're more likely to hear the salespeople not the technical experts. It's been the case for decades, and will always be the case, because brass almost invariably comes from the sales side of the fence, and they only believe their own brand of lying sacks of shit.

4 0
raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Takes courage

-z with double-quotes around the variable? What happens if the variable is "space" or "tab"? Ah, right, same level of fuckup.

Get a new job son, you're terrible at this one.

3 4

AMC sobers up, apologizes for silly cinema texting plan

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

re: Aren't TVs big enough?

I've seen modern TVs bigger than some of the things they laughingly call "movie screens" in some of those multiplexes!

2 0

Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge

raving angry loony

"Freedom of religion" really was a myth all along. It's really "freedom of religion as approved by a government that's provably under the influence of at least one established religion".

Hypocrisy. Found at a local government near you.

3 0

Ad slinger Phorm ceases trading

raving angry loony

One down.

One down, 643,992 to go. Sadly.

As for them taking the money and running, perhaps they took enough money from idiots to stop those same idiots from spending money on other ad scammers? Nah, who am I kidding, there's always idiots out there thinking they're better scammers than the ad companies. It's why there's so many ad companies.

3 0

Bay Area man forced out of his $400 box home

raving angry loony

Enclosed space?

So any enclosed space that contains a bed is illegal in that area? So much for anyone in the area getting a traditional Breton box-bed.

I think the city has somehow confused the definitions of "bedroom" and "coffin". Someone should probably fix that before some of the Bay Area bureaucrats and politicians who refuse to help out the poorer citizens get sent to bed.

5 0

French thrash Brits, Germans and Portuguese in IT innovation

raving angry loony

It is Friday? No it fucking isn't!

So a British company that sells services based on DevOps is saying that some areas aren't spending enough on what they're selling, and equates (in a typically slimy salesperson trick) to equate "innovation" with "spending money on what we want them to buy".

Tell me, how much did El Reg get for this advertising? I think we should be told. Or at least FLAG it as "paid content".

1 0

The future of Firefox is … Chrome

raving angry loony

Why?

There's some serious functional lapses in Chrome as it now stands. It is not, for instance, possible to actually stop javascript the way it's done in Firefox. Chrome is an advertiser's wet dream - which makes sense, it was developed by an advertiser. If Firefox stops providing the functionality that has made it great I'm hoping someone will be providing a fork fairly quickly.

As as aside:

I've never understood why so many programmers who provide useful functionality are also so stupidly arrogant about imposing their often twisted idea of what a useful GUI might be.

Provide the functionality. Let the user decide what interface they want to that functionality. If you have a favourite GUI, provide it, but don't fucking hard-code the damn thing in so that nobody else can provide THEIR favourite GUI, which is what seems to be happening more and more now.

8 0

British booter bandit walks free after pleading guilty to malware sales

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Way too soft a sentence

Ah yes, the oft expected "too soft" post. Someone else who doesn't think a magistrate or judge knows what they're doing.

Note that the source of this "outrage" is the fucking Daily Mail! A piece of trash I wouldn't use to catch parrot droppings since it might poison the parrot. A "news" organization right up there with "News of the World" when it comes to anything resembling accuracy.

So I take it that you've gone through all the actual evidence as presented in court, not just what's been reported in the press? Have you read the actual sentencing statement from the bench, and WHY they gave the sentence they did? Of course not. Just a knee-jerk conclusion based on biased reporting in the press. Go read the Daily Mail, you deserve each other.

25 17

Nest bricks Revolv home automation hubs, because evolution

raving angry loony
Reply Icon

Re: Are they legally allowed to do that?

@TRT writes "That's not how I was trained when I worked in a Toronto branch of Radio Shack in 1988."

And look at where Radio Shack is today... oh, wait, they don't exist in Canada any more.

But just because the front line staff is trained to believe one thing doesn't mean that it's what is really happening. After all, hard to sell what you don't believe, which is why politicians and highly successful salespeople are invariably self-deluded and often actually believe the bullshit they spew. At least until the next day, when they can convince themselves they never believed it in the first place.

0 0

Page: