Posts by mhenriday 1222 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Dec 2009
but I beg leave to correct the following statement : «Sweden's beaver population was wiped out by hunters about 200 years ago when the creatures' backside juice was used in medicines.» The native beaver (Castor fiber) in Sweden died out in 1871, but beavers from Norway were implanted in 1922 and the species now seems to be thriving here ; in 2000 the population was estimated to be some 100 000 animals....
whether it was article author, Iain Thomsom, himself, who penned that witty (by Reg standards) «Ecuadorian broom closet» comment, or was it a Reg local editor, under the guidance of the journals «Executive Editor», that contributed this particular jewel. The Reg's unrelenting campaign against Mr Assange long ago passed its best-before date....
Henri
Excellent, Maty, but you used the wrong icon ; the academic-cap icon is for grammar nazis. Those seeking to correct factual errors in other fields would be advised to use the technical-warning icon. Here, however, I'll be using the cheers icon, as I think your contribution deserves it....
Henri
A quick google would also show, «Vociferous», that Swedish law permits the taking of depositions abroad, a procedure which has been carried out previously. Mr Assange has offered to be be subjected to an interview in his refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in the UK, after which charges could be filed if sufficient evidence were forthcoming, but the Prosecutor's Office in Göteborg (which, by the way, is not the jurisdiction in which the alleged offenses took place) has refused. My conclusion is that the case, which was dismissed by a Chief Prosecutor in Stockholm, where, in contradistinction to Göteborg, the offenses are alleged to have taken place, is simply a means for our (in)justice system here to get its hands on Mr Assange, in order to send him to the United States, thereby demonstrating once again our total loyalty to the Empire....
Henri
to hear a former spymaster for a regime that demonstrably snoops on everyone and everybody, both inside and outside the country, point the finger at someone else and claim that they are (gasp !) spying. Thief crying «Stop thief !» ?...
Huawei's response to these rather vague accusations by Mr Hayden, who perhaps not so incidentally currently sits on the Board of Directors of Motorola Solutions, is the following :
«This is tired nonsense we've been hearing for years, trotted out anew as a flimsy bright and shiny object to distract attention from the very real compromising of global networks and information that has been exposed in recent weeks. Misdirecting and slandering Huawei may feel okay because the company is Chinese-based - no harm, no foul, right? Wrong. Huawei is a world-proven multinational across 150 global markets that supports scores and scores of American livelihoods, and thousands more, indirectly, through $6 billion a year in procurements from American suppliers. Someone says they got some proof of some sort of threat? Okay. Then put up. Or shut up. Lacking proof in terms of the former, which seems clearly the case, this is politically-inspired and racist corporate defamation, nothing more.»
I can only agree....
Henri
«... Assange gives every impression of being a vainglorious martyr with very dodgy attitudes towards women and an overinflated sense of self importance.» Just the impression those affected by the leaks wish you to have, Iain - they are to be congratulated on the efficacy of their work, given that a normally perceptive person like yourself seems to be taking it at face value - and moreover, chooses to talk about «the silver-haired Aussie» rather than about what we have learned from the efforts of WikiLeaks....
«After Snowden fled to Hong Kong he told the Chinese authorities about the efforts of the NSA to hack not just Middle Kingdom military servers, but also civilian networks such as mobile providers. There was a listening station not too far from his hotel room he said.» Fail, Iain - Mr Snowden didn't «tell «the Chinese authorities» ; he released this information to a journalist who published it in a newspaper. Quite a different kettle of fish....
Admittedly, it's difficult to avoid be ensnared in the traps that organisations like the NSA and the GCHQ and their PR experts - also known, rather inaccurately, as journalists leave for us - that is why it's so important to pay attention to the details....
Henri
Because they are all playing footsie with the USA/UK, so that they can spy on their own citizens/residents and claim they aren't doing so. But maybe, just maybe, as a result of Mr Snowden's revelations, the US government will become a tad more circumspect at pointing its big fat - and rather sooty - finger at others and claiming that they are hacking into peoples' messages. That would reduce the degree of tribute paid by vice to virtue by at least half....
Henri
«if you're not doing anything wrong, you've nothing to worry about», then why, pray tell, are the NSA, GCHQ, etc, etc, ad nauseam so eschauffés about the fact that their snooping on us all has been revealed - hardly for the first time of course, but now in an incontrovertible manner - and why are they so determined to get their tender little paws on Edward Joseph Snowden ? A guilty conscience, perhaps ? - although that seems unlikely in the case of people utterly without that mental quality. Rather, I suspect, that they wish to continue their spying without the problems caused by a (slightly more) aware public....
Henri
«You might at least read and understand what I'm writing before shooting.» Now, now James, please don't make demands of Mr Bryant which he is congenitally incapable of fulfilling. As he so often has demonstrated on this forum, reading and understanding are quite beyond him - as is the correct orthography of the names of those whom he dislikes and with whom he disagrees, despite - or because of - his failure to understand them....
Henri
can probably taken with a pinch of salt, ...» Thanks, Phil - hopefully you have saved at least one unwitting Reg reader from failing to descry the notorious unreliability of official Chinese statistics, the consequences of which failure would have indeed been dire ! But perhaps you should read up on English grammar - «can probably taken with a pinch of salt» doesn't quite parse....
Henri
Not wondrous at all, alas, but the name of the game - damage control - from the very beginning. Consider how discussion of the WikiLeaks revelations turned into a discussion of how often Julian Assange changed his socks. That's the way PR is done when it's done by professionals....
Henri
No, Frederic, Mr Obama probably doesn't require the service of UK spinmeisters (not that they would necessarily be rejected - what's a «special relationship» for, if not to help each other bug and bugger the rest of the world ? - modern PR grew up in the good old US of A under the tender mentorship of an Austrian, who, along with his parents, emigrated to that country at the tender age of one year, i e, one Edward Louis Bernays....
In the US, bullshit both talks and walks (and snoops and bombs and ...)
Henri
He was indeed dropped as a baby - which is why he's a dodgy old geezer now, like those others scientific illieterates who seem to believe that any increase in the level of carbon dioxide would necessarily be of benefit to the plants on which we depend. They probably also believe that increasing the proportion of molecular oxygen in our atmosphere by 25 % or more would help us to breathe....
Henri
are escaping Unity/Ubuntu - and it really is exactly what they want.» I can testify to that - after Mr Shuttleworth decided to force the Unity desktop on innocent and not so innocent Ubuntu users, I defected to using the Cinnamon desktop on various Ubuntu releases. Some five days ago I decided, at last, to test it on Mint 15 «Olivia» and immediately fell in love with the distro. If not necessarily «exactly» what I want, as close as makes no never-minds. Kudos to Clement Lefebvre and the other developers !...
Henri
I'm not about to ring you up, but perhaps you could aid me with a (very minor) problem I have with the Cinnamon desktop of Linux Mint 15 and which I haven't been able to find any help for on the Mint fora ? I've not been able to discover how to change the manner in which the date and time are indicated on the login screen - or, for that matter, on the screen which appears when the user has been inactive for a while and the computer requests that a new login be performed. When I log in, for example, I see, «ons maj 29, 19:34» ; I'd like to change this to the customary Swedish order, i e, «ons/onsdag 29 maj 19.34». Any tips ?...
Henri
I disliked it - more specifically the GUI - intensely. Then I installed Classic Shell and used a simple registry hack to disable the irrelevant lock screen and voila ! - an OS that was both usable (despite a few quirks) on a desktop or laptop without a touch screen and faster and smoother than Windows 7 ! No thanks to Mr Sinofsky, of course, who forced me to jump through these hoops. And just to be explicit, I prefer Linux Mint 15 to either of the Windows versions mentioned above....
Henri
«Seven days is an aggressive timeline and may be too short for some vendors to update their products, but it should be enough time to publish advice about possible mitigations, such as temporarily disabling a service, restricting access, or contacting the vendor for more information. As a result, after 7 days have elapsed without a patch or advisory, we will support researchers making details available so that users can take steps to protect themselves. By holding ourselves to the same standard, we hope to improve both the state of web security and the coordination of vulnerability management. »
What's wrong with that ? And if Google don't, in fact, «[hold themselves] to the same standard», I'm certain that you will be there to report, impartially as always, on the matter....
Henri
And ex post facto, while we're at it ? Authors, musicians, painters, etc who had the misfortune to die before this wonderful legal device came to fruition could have their works assigned by an organ under the TPP to a depository - why not the MPAA or the RIAA, who have previously demonstrated their capabilities in this regard ? - which collects royalties on the works in question and sees to it that all infringers are slapped with fines and/or gaol terms. Thus, this horrible business of people reading, say, Confucius, Aeskylos, Dante, or Shakespeare, or listening to the music of Scarlatti, Pachelbel, Bach, or Mozart, or gazing at photos of the cave paintings at Lascaux or the Pyramids or statues of Praxiteles, etc, etc, without paying royalties (gasp !) could finally be brought to an end and peace and order restored to the world !...
Henri
PS : Simon, given, as you point out, that «they [negoiations on the so-called TPP] happen behind closed doors and don't result in the publication of any official communiqués», hitherto without China's participation, perhaps they should be considered rather a reflection of «just how [Washington] likes to conduct a fair bit of business» ?...
this judgement would put an end to at least this version of Apple's efforts at «competition by lawyer». Alas, however, this seems extremely unlikely, and ordinary punters are going to continue to have to pay the inflated salaries of barristers arguing their client's exclusive rights to rectangles with rounded corners. It will no doubt be interesting to watch the excellent Herr Leibniz attempting to explain his way out of this one !...
Henri
Actually, it's precisely the other way 'round - taxpayers build a hospital or a clinic (or school or day-care centre), a new government with privatisation as its mantra comes to power and sells it off at bargain basement prices to its friends, who after a short period, make a killing by selling it to an off-shore company. All this without any risk, as the care provided is still subsidised by the public purse. Yet another transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich....
Henri
Hej då - vi kommer nog inte att sakna en så ansvarskännande person som Du tydligen är ! Men snälle, när Du blivit riktigt gammal och vill ha bra sjukvård, kom gärna inte tillbaka hit, utan sök den i skatteparadiset som Du flyttat till ! Det räcker med en Lars Erik Einar Gustafsson....
Henri
from the expanding Chinese civilian economy ...» Well, that does seem frightening, especially given that the US military has not directly benefited from the expanding US civilian economy ever since the end of WW II - at least under periods when the latter was expanding....
Henri
Excellent points, FutureShock999, but perhaps addressed to the wrong person. One can't really expect Matt Bryant - who with his brilliant caricature of WikLeaks' name has once more revealed exactly what it is he needs to compensate for by appealing to the power of the United States and corporations incorporated there - to comprehend such advanced matters. Neither of his heads appears to be adequate for its respective job....
Henri
seem to have been used by Christian monks to write their religious tracts on, depriving us - and, not least, earlier generations - of vital knowledge on ancient Greek maths and physics. It's enough to give the term «palimpsest» a bad name !...
Henri
With all due respect, Mozilla - to which I am, by the way, immensely grateful for a wonderful product and, not least, for busting Microsoft's web browser quasi-monopoly - can you provide an example of any other kinds of «regime», i e, government, than repressive ones ? Perhaps the above statement should be modified to «Trusted CAs must not supply surveillance equipment to governments, corporations, organisations, etc, etc» ?...
Henri
«Perhaps the Swedes are just single-minded like that.» Let me point out that while not true of Swedes as a whole, most certainly our Swedish governments have shown themselves to be very «simple-minded» in demonstrating their loyalty to their masters in Washington. Prior to 1943 and Stalingrad, their loyalties were elsewhere....
Henri
But you see, Andy, Apple has a patent on FTL-travel, which allows it to patent things which were invented previously according to the lights (pardon the pun !) of those of us whose experience of time-like intervals is limited by the speed of light in vacuo. Apple ha sempre ragione !...
Henri
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