I Sympathise With Aus Gov
I always draft out my secret plans by writing them on my garden fence, but the damn neighbours often read them. (Their dog pees on them as well but that's a separate issue.)
Posts by frank ly
6112 posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
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Mad Aus gov accuses Sydney hacks of hacking
BBC iPlayer rejects open source plugins, takes Flash-only path
Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:56 GMT 
Auntie Never Lies ?
"Since launch in 2007, BBC iPlayer has always used content protection in order to provide UK audiences ......"
I believe that from launch, the BBC iPlayer has in fact used 'access protection', based on the IP-address of the incoming request, to shut out non-UK viewers (which is reasonable).
This new arrangement is in fact a form of lock-in to a particular technology and I wonder if Tom 7 has hit the nail on the head.
The BBC statement is misleading to say the least.
Xerox sues Google and Yahoo! over patentspeak
Wednesday 24th February 2010 11:51 GMT
Nothing New (not much anyway)
The 'patentspeak' sounds like a Computing Science research paper written in the '90s, or earlier.
I'm sure that all these ideas and implementations were explored to death by many students and researchers in universities all over the world. Does anybody out there know about prior art?
Council backs down on CRB checking grown-up lecturers
Tuesday 23rd February 2010 23:43 GMT 
Vulnerable Adults (And Children) In Caerphilly
It seems obvious that every adult (and child) in or visiting Caerphilly is vulnerable to (having little or no defense against) the stupidity and petty-mindedness of the officials of Caerphilly County Borough Council . These fools can have a very real and sometimes tragic effect on the lives of ordinary people.
Hence, any such group of people, with so much power over others, should be subject to CRB checks if they wish to remain in their appointed posts.
I'm sure they will understand this and apply for CRB checking very soon.
Pope pooh-poohs airport perv-scanners
1.3 million phones found down back of the sofa in UK
Friday 19th February 2010 12:53 GMT 
Strange Things Do Happen
"We weren't at all clear what that entailed, except that no-one was dressing up as an iPhone."
A quick look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqx3R8qmqlo
and the related videos will show that many people actually do and it's been going on for a few years. (There is no suggestion that the people in these videos had stolen the iPhones or made any fraudulent representation of any kind.)
Icon: The Devil made them do it.
Apple squashes wobbly jub app
NASA's WISE opens 'candy store of images'
Google typosquat cash pegged at $497m per year
Friday 19th February 2010 11:23 GMT
re. Is it significant
"...even though they probably stole the money they are paying with..."
Yes, but the store sells them crowbars, knives, guns/ammunition etc, and then takes a percentage of the money that the dodgy-looking types make from using these 'tools'.
Analogies can be fun to play with.
Attack code for Firefox zero-day goes wild, says researcher
Swiss prostitutes armed with defibrillators
Thursday 18th February 2010 21:50 GMT
re, health advice
"Note to oldies - Amyl Nitrate for sexually aroused pensioners is not clever."
Probably not, but I'm sure this "pharmaceutical assistance" is a reference to Viagra which, I have read, has led to an upswell and a persistent, measurable rise in oldie-sex, of both the amateur and the paid-for kind.
Why you subsidize Google's Soviet-style Net
Thursday 18th February 2010 19:51 GMT
Google Bots Bad Behaviour Binge Burns Bandwidth
"...Google's bot insisted on blithely ignoring the robots.txt and crawling every damn forum thread page by sodding page.."
I have read, many times, that Google's bots are very well behaved when it comes to robots.txt compliance. Have I been misled or did you not set it up properly?
'Fat birds get laid sooner, have more one-night stands'
Thursday 18th February 2010 13:20 GMT
You Need To Wait A While
I've obviously read the article in much better detail that most commentards here - please note:
"....on the Italian island of Ventotene....."
This behaviour is only when they are on holiday in hot places. So, you'll need to check out charter flight prices for an early summer holiday.
Westminster politicos told to grasp Vista nettle
Tuesday 16th February 2010 04:47 GMT
A Question
If this 'IT Support Team' (who I'm sure are all experienced IT professionals) need Microsoft support for Windows 2000 and/or Windows XP, does this mean that:
a) Microsoft haven't managed to get Win 2000 or Win XP working properly yet.......or
b) The IT Support Team are a bunch of useless idiots?
Voda goes ultra-cheap with handsets for the developing world
Aussie net censorship turning Chinese
Monday 15th February 2010 10:32 GMT
High Horse Coming Through.......
"As long as Australians are free to read articles such as this criticizing the law, I don't see any threat to Australian democracy."
As long as you are free to read newspaper reports about your kidnap and torture, I don't see any threat to your rights or freedoms when you are kidnapped and tortured. Reductio ad absurdum mission completed, I'll move on.
A decade of techno-sex: Look how far we've come
Computer Engineer Barbie coming soon to a toy store near you
Monday 15th February 2010 09:38 GMT
re. the good jobs
My local municipal refuse and recycling facility, a.k.a. 'the dump', has a woman working there who climbs into the skips and levels the loads, picks out stuff that has been put in the wrong skip etc. I don't know if she rides the bin wagons but after seeing her moving around like lightning in those skips, I'm sure she could do it.
Red Dwarf's Kryten exposes iPhone number
'Electronic fags' are useless - US prof's startling claim
Buster's World gives Guardian Professional balloon-sized headache
Tories will force BT to open up ducts to rivals
OpenOffice is the new David Hasselhoff
Tuesday 9th February 2010 14:08 GMT
E-mail and Calendars and Tasks...
Use Thunderbird and add the Lightning plug-in. That takes care of e-mail, calendars and Tasks and also e-mailing colleagues with invitations to meetings which get entered into your calendar.
If you need a mail server, there are many out there with free or low-cost licenses and a quick search on Google (or whatever) will yield forums, reviews, etc for them.
If you don't like Thunderbird, someone else will be along soon to suggest another alternative.
Vodafone tosses out idiot tweeter
Online Kiwis maybe feeling Oz censor trickledown
Windows 7 RC 'buy a copy' shut downs start next month
Wednesday 3rd February 2010 10:10 GMT
Re. Contracts
In all my reading on the subject of 'contracts', it has been stated that for a contract to exist in law, there must be payment (or 'consideration' as it is called). So, unless I pay MS some money (and get a receipt for it) or perform some agreed work for them (and be able to prove that I did), then there is no legally binding contract between us.
As far as I know, this is the situation for UK law. It may be different in other jurisdictions.
Tuesday 2nd February 2010 11:33 GMT 
Why should I bother? (and @Jacqui)
"Escape from the harassment will only come after a clean install of a paid-for copy of Windows."
So I lose all my tweaks and configuration and the entire look/feel that I spent ages setting up since last July when I installed Win7 RC on my laptop??
It's a good job I used a new hard drive for Win7-RC, because all I have to do is put the old XP-Pro hard drive back in and I'm good to go with an installation that I'm used to and that works fine. (Actually, I do put the old XP-Pro drive back in every month or so to update the anti-virus etc).
@Jacqui - The RC download 'terms and condition' explicitly stated that WIn7-RC would go through this 'shut down and deny' process. Also, since it was free, no contract exists between Microsoft and a Win7-RC user. In this situation, they have no obligations towards any WIn7-RC user.
Greenock pensioners cuffed for Tesco 'sex romp'
Next from Apple: The Pocket iPad
Brit kids failing to fall out of trees
Cisco offers $250k for your billion dollar idea
Australia leaves the internet
Monday 25th January 2010 22:23 GMT
A better way of doing it....?
Blanking out your picture on Facebook (or wherever) and putting a black page up on your website front-end is like wearing a lapel badge or signing a petition - it might get you noticed, it might not.
How about, webmasters who are sympathetic to 'the cause', rig their servers to deliver a 'You are not allowed to see this' page when a request comes in from a government IP address?
That should be simple enough and with a few discrete and friendly words in the ear of ISP techs, they could get the home IP addresses of Australian politicians who support this censorship and add those to the 'blocked list'.
Nothing quite like a taste of your own medicine.
Mozilla buries heels on un-YouTube open video
Monday 25th January 2010 21:27 GMT
think of the future....
As I understand it, the .mp3 encoding standard is patented by the Fraunhofer institute who are happy for anyone to play (decode) .mp3 files but you have to pay a license fee to encode .mp3 files on a 'large scale' or commercial basis. My own audio editor did not come with an .mp3 encoder, I was given a nod and a wink to download the plugin from a 'grey' website, that is how tight the control of .mp3 encoding is.
Fair enough, good luck to them, they made a good product that is easy to use and became popular and for all I know, their license fees and terms may be very 'reasonable'.
However, that was way back in the past when the only people who encoded .mp3 files were techie enthusiasts and serious commercial concerns. Now, we have a situation where every web-surfer in the world wants and needs a common encoding standard and such a common standard should and must be agreed on by all major organisations.
The question I would ask is, which pillock (or pillocks) accepted and agreed a standard that was covered by a patent ?! (....and i wonder what inducements were offered by the patent holders, because I'm a cynical old devil).
If the world (and several dogs) could only agree to use a payment free, open source encoder then it really would be free of control and influence (and arm twisting) by vested interests.
I do realise there is the question of maintenance of standards, wild forking etc, but that could be built into the license conditions perhaps....? Any comments?
Amateur goof makes Twitter account hijacking a snap
Boffins birth uber 'net neutrality' dowser
Police arrest MD of dowsing-rod 'bomb detector' firm
IFPI wants another stab at OiNK
Friday 22nd January 2010 09:49 GMT
I think......
.....that if the police carry out a 'justifiable' investigation against you, then any inconvenience you suffer (including loss of earnings, sales, etc due to you being in custody or having had equipment confiscated as evidence) is something you have to accept as the price for having organised justice in society.
The only redress you would have would be against the police (that takes ages) if you could show that their investigative actions were not justifiable (difficult, since it is widely accepted that the police have a duty to 'investigate' all reports of alleged criminal activity), or against the party reporting you to the police if you could show that their complaint against you was not justifiable.
Hacker brings multitouch to Google's Nexus One
Friday 22nd January 2010 09:45 GMT
Say it isn't so?
"Introduced and trademarked by Apple, multitouch gives users ..."
Are you saying that Apple have trademarked the word 'multitouch' for use on touch-sensitive input devices? If so, that is amazing and amounts to 'restraint of common language' (I think I just coined that expression). I hope I've misunderstood this.
Avatards rush to name sprogs Pandora
Yanks floored by nail guns, computers and baseballs
E-book readers attract unwanted VAT
Brown offers free laptops to deprived UK schoolkids
Tuesday 12th January 2010 10:43 GMT
Details?
"...to help kids from cash-strapped families do better in exams,..."
When I was a kid, I didn't have access to a computer and my family were cash-strapped, but I did very well in my exams. So, how does that work?
"...we want every home linked to a school."
I could throw a network cable over the fence to the infants school adjoining the back of my property, but I don't see what purpose that would serve and who it would benefit. (Having said that, I'm sure the kids would enjoy access to my large collection of music, films and cartoon series but they'd have to accept bandwidth throttling from my end).
Has any of this been thought through?
Westminster lays ground for shared networks
Thursday 7th January 2010 09:42 GMT
Let Battle Commence ?
"..does not prevent others from taking advantage."
"...we will be in a strong position if there is any challenge,.."
"...will be run as a competitive dialogue.."
"..there is a question over how much freedom they have to act independently...."
Is it my imagination, or are they mentally getting ready for a fight? Whatever it is, it sounds like a golden opportunity for the lawyers.
Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM
Wednesday 23rd December 2009 21:21 GMT
A frigging fridge magnet ?!
Who the heck buys a book because it comes with a free fridge magnet? Everybody's already got a coffee mug. I don't want to chat with the author. 'First dibs' at the next book? - what kind of sad sap would get a rush out of that, (and what if it's no good)?
I want to read a good book and I'm willing to pay for that. (I'm also willing to freeload it if it's on the Torrents in a suitable form).
Does anybody remember reading good books? Does anyone remember buying vinyl or CDs because they included a free fridge magnet?
Special Ops robots now do psychological warfare
Google fined for book copyright
Friday 18th December 2009 23:52 GMT
Hang On A Minute
I love free stuff as much as the next freetard, I've got loads of it on my hard drives, but I don't for a second think that I have a right to possess it.
Do you ever stop to consider that those books were written by someone working long and hard to write them, someone who's living depends on getting a cut of the sales, via appointed publishers?
I may be morally suspect for grabbing what I can while I can, but you are intellectually suspect in every sentence of your comment.
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