Posts by JohnG

Allofmp3?

I guess that means Allofmp3 was OK after all, as they had complied with the relevant Russian legislation.

This takes me back a bit

My game was Battlezone - many hours wasted on the machine at the campus supermarket.

I also have fond memories of the "pub table" variant of PacMan. Wacka Wacka Wacka Wacka.....

Currently, there is no net neutrality

A lot of people here seem to be getting upset about the possibility that they won't have net neutrality, guaranteed by some legislation and then policed by some nosey government body. Has nobody realised that the terrible future with no net neutrality they described is actually the current situation? Are there any ISPs that do not stipulate their right to constrain any traffic that they deem to be excessive? How about business broadband customers who have a lower contention ratio than domestic customers? Some large corporate customers may require a maximum average latency to certain specified points - and they pay to have this in their SLA. The unfair Internet described is already here - but it still works, ISPs are not dropping VoIP or VPN connections and the end of the world has not yet arrived.

Facebook : Our members details private, everyone else fair game

""Each person owns her friends list, but not her friends' information. A person has no more right to mass export all of her friends' private email addresses than she does to mass export all of her friends' private photo albums," he says."

Oh really? I am not a Facebook user but every so often, I get emails from Facebook because one of my friends has given Facebook my private email address and Facebook are using it to punt their service. These emails are typically repeated several times before they give up. Applying their own statement above, Facebook should not be using the private email addresses of people who have not chosen to use their service, whether those emails have come from Google or anywhere else.

Been there

Many years ago, I was working for a large subsidiary of a very large bank. My boss, the systems accountant, had ensured that an escrow arrangement was in place for the multi-currency accounts system we were using. This turned out to be very useful when the group which owned the software house went into liquidation. The software ended up in the hands of a software vendor who then attempted to extract new license fees for our continued use of the software and substantial sums for maintenance. Once my boss had indicated we had already obtained the source code via the escrow agreement and would invite other companies to offer software support, the maintenance costs were reduced to normal levels and the need for new licenses evaporated.

What a waste of money!

Pilkington made13 emergency calls to the Police in the year of her death. The culprits were known to Police, local council and social services but nobody was ever arrested. They don't need software - they just need to actually investigate emergency calls instead of ignoring them.

lamebook,com

Apparently OK.

A Yank working for a Dutch boss

For a publicly funded British organisation like the BBC, it is a bit questionable to have two foreigners given such well paid high level positions.

Coin operated meters

Maybe the landlords concerned had coin operated meters fitted. That might explain the large sum of cash found.

Science vs religion

Climate change does seem to be more like religion than science. Given the number of variables and timescales involved, demonstarting climate change and man's involvement is not a black and white issue. It understandable that politicians and businessmen will follow one side or another to suit their own interests or agenda but it is a pity that scientists the world over are expected to choose sides.

Dogs vs. robot bears

"Robot therapy offers advantages such as not having any of the hygiene-related problems that can accompany animals and of course, these robots do not bite."

Dog poo to be replaced by leaking or exploding batteries. Thinking about hygiene - these things will need to be washable or they will end up smelling of old people i.e. piss.

Most dogs (and cats, for that matter) appear to be well acquainted with the concept of "not biting the hand that feeds you".

The unnamed foreign power is

Israel

Infections vs target(s)

The distribution of infected PCs in various countries may only reflect the means by which the code has been distributed and does not necessarily correlate with the ultimate target(s). AFAIK, Siemens stated that they have not licensed any copies of their Simatic WinCC software for use in Iran and have not traded there for 30 years. Maybe Iranians all get their copies of Simatic WinCC from Bittorrent. That might also explain the infection rates in India and China.

The issue with P2P

Broadly speaking, network components share network resources amongst users on a per TCP connection basis. UDP transfers are typically expected to be brief (e.g. DNS queries) and therefore, insignificant. This works fine with traditional applications like http and ftp, where a single TCP connection or a few TCP connections are used per application. However, P2P applications effectively "cheat the system" by establishing large numbers of distinct TCP connections with multiple destinations. Many P2P applications also use UDP, again using multiple "connections" with multiple destinations. The end effect is that P2P applications grab way more than their fair share of available network resources, resulting in poor performance of other non-P2P applications and complaints from the affected users.

VPNs or applications using nntp, ssl or ssh on single TCP connections are limited by the normal mechanisms, won't grab unreasonable chunks of available resources and are therefore, unlikely to attract attention for reasons of bandwidth usage.

Emigration

We should start building ships to take all the important people to one of the new worlds right away as ours is definitely going to be hit by a big asteroid in a few years time. Sadly, some of us lowly engineering types will have to stay behind to launch the first wave of spaceships but we will follow later. Important people like politicians, senior bankers, reality show celebrities, Scientologists and the like should pack only a single suitcase as space on the space ship will be limited.

Punish the victims instead of those responsible

"If the government loses the case, it faces fines of millions of pounds per day until it brings UK law in line with European law."

The "it" that faces the fines being the unfortunate taxpayers who will ultimately pay the fines and who are also the victims of the privacy violations concerned. None of those responsible will see any dent in their salaries, pensions or golden handshakes. Why not fine the former ministers and officials responsible for introducing RIPA in the first place and then fine those currently responsible if they fail to remove the offending legislation in short order?

M25 Jct 9 because....

....it is the nearest motorway junction to the nutters concerned (Pioneer Engage Church in Leatherhead).

Someone named their church after their car radio and they have a fascination for cassette tapes.

Shot in the foot

"...For a legitimate security firm like Check Point to adopt similar tactics is a great shame because it can only increase user confusion, especially if other suppliers respond in kind to the ZoneAlarm slur against the effectiveness of their products."

Many users will now probably associate Checkpoint and ZoneAlarm with fake security software vendors who employ similar tactics. What were they thinking?

Their competitors may choose to capitalise on Checkpoint's error by offering advice that suggests those who try to sell you stuff with fake warnings are all scammers.

License exempt

If they really wanted to improve broadband access, they would provide some useful chunks of spectrum for license free use. This would help reduce the costs to a level where providers would then consider providing service to areas currently not worthwhile and/or individuals and small communities could organise their own links.

Is this what is meant by ......

....an Act of God?

Does it deter? When would we use it?

Are there any scenarios in which Britain would use the nuclear deterrent in which neither the USA nor the French would also be using theirs against the same targets? If not, given the limited nature of Britain's arsenal, is it really worth keeping if it means we then have to lose or reduce other elements of the armed forces which see regular use. How much are the Russians or Chinese really deterred by our weaponry?

Can we even use our nuclear weapons without permission from the USA? Back when the Trident systems were first delivered, there was some discussion about dual keys: we had one set of codes and the USA had the others. At the time, we could not fire our nuclear weapons without the USA first giving us the remaining codes. Is this still the case?

Crimes committed in another country

Given that burning the Koran would be a crime in many middle eastern countries, I wonder if the Americans would extradite Pastor Terry Jones to one of their allies in The War Against Terror (maybe Saudi Arabia) upon request.

As I understand it, the Americans have refused several offers for Gary McKinnon to be tried in the UK, despite the fact that he was in the UK when allegedly committing the crimes in question.

Sued for future breach of an agreement?

Whatever this guy may or may not have done and regardless of his alleged ethics, greed, etc. - if I have understood this correctly, HP are suing him for something he has not done yet (but they believe he will do in the future). Additionally, they also want the court to arrange for someone to follow him about, spying on his every move, just in case he breaks an agreement with them. Seriously, WTF?

Horses for courses

Electric cars available at present are suited to a limited market, mostly because of their limited range. I know a few people who use electric cars, all of them from different manufacturers. In all cases, they use them for a commute to work of known fixed distance, park them in the underground car park (and charge them from regular 220V power sockets at the company's expense). They also use them for their weekly shop, where the distance is again, known and limited. They all have somewhere to park and charge their cars overnight.

Another point to consider about electric vehicles is what happens in winter time. De-icing or demisting windows and keeping the interior at any kind of sensible temperature usually means burning something to generate enough heat.

He disappeared into thin air!

Famous vanishing trick.

However, when the Chinese authorities catch up with him, no doubt they will be testing his ability to withstand electricity by passing some through his nuts whilst questioning him about what he has done with the money.

419eater

Have a look at www.419eater.com - the folk there use the greed of the scammers to get them to waste their own time and money. One of my favourites is getting them to go on a trip to another African country, where they are lead to believe, they will receive money.