Posts by Edward Pearson 112 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Aug 2007
"perhaps they've come over all Fran Liebowitz ("Children don't smoke enough and I find that they're sticky, perhaps as a result of not smoking enough")"
I'm not sure I've ever seen such a brutal misquote, I believe you wanted to say:
"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky. "
This smacks of a clever scam to me.
"GENUINE BUYERS
In the unlikely event that you are actually a genuine buyer then you really should be shopping in a real shop and not this scammers paradise. However this laptop does really exist and is really for sale. You can email me or skype me with suggestions on how we may actually transact this item to both our satisfaction – with both our safety in mind. Don’t even think of buying it using paypal. I’ve only listed it as accepted because ebay run a protection racket that means I have to accept it. If you do pay by paypal I will simply refund your payment and give you a nice new shiny NEG."
The genuine buyer calls/writes, the seller suggests one of these other payment methods, most probably an escrow agency nobody's ever heard of.
The fact that this is happening Israel is a good thing.
A few years back now, all the major car companies (GM etc) were researching "green" cars, do you not remember the constant talk of the millions of dollars that were being sunk into R&D?
Well Geroge W. had a word. It wasn't really "good for the country" at that point to seriously start thinking about moving away from Oil. Not when it was his family business after all. So they didn't, research budgets were cut, and the US suggested the TOTAL waste of time: Carbon trading.
For those who don't know, carbon trading is essentially the Americans, justifying using their SUVs and releasing vast amounts of Co2 by bunging developing nations a few quid and saying that they were using their carbon quota.
This money then gets spend on useful things for the developing nation, like guns, bombs, knives and khaki.
Yet another political white elephant.
We have over 650 "leaders" in Whitehall and the Commons, who seem to spend thier entire time thinking up little policies designed to make it look like they're ACTAULLY useful. Unfortunatly these normally involve banning things, and I've said, ban enough minority persuits and you'll end up with an angry majority.
I've never liked the current method of proportional representation. Oh I love the idea of a democracy, and a system that wouldn't allow for a dictatorship to form is of course needed. But do we really need to pay 650+ people a good full time salary for them to find even stranger ways to spend our money? Too many cooks anybody?
It's not like a MP REALLY represents the views of their constituency during the day to day dealings with the commons, when it boils down to it, its all about personality, and only a certain kind of person becomes an MP.
My point is, we've already got a load of overpaid politicians making stupid decisions, spending lots and lots of OUR money on daft idea's that the public never really hear about, all to justify their existance and move one step up on the ladder. We really do not need ANOTHER group of people even LESS in touch with the British public making decisions with the idea of personal career acceleration in mind, rather than making laws which will benefit the people, which in many cases means sitting the fuck still and doing NOTHING.
The EU and their stupid little laws can piss off, we've get plenty of idiots this side of the water doing things we don't want. I don't want the Euro. I don't want ID cards. I want to smoke (even if it's in the street). I want to stay out late drinking. I want a patio heater. I'm a fucking adult, treat me like one.
@Baloney:
Balderdash.
I know we live in a kind of Open Source e-Hippie era where everything should be free and that making money is somehow a bad thing, but wake up people, money is what really drives innovation.
Paypal and eBay are both excellent services, and you've got a choice of paying very reasonable fees, or using one of the many free competitors. Good luck with finding one.
@If eBay actually wants me to buy and sell on their site...:
Lets get this out in the open right now, if you use Paypal correctly, and have two braincells to rub together its VERY easy to avoid being scammed.
Even if you fall for a particularly clever scam, your Verified Paypal account will REFUND THE MONEY.
What would you have eBay do? Run background checks on every seller? Demand to see a picture of the item with today's paper next to it? Have somebody pop round to verify the item really exists?
Its all bollocks and people should realize that if you want cool services like eBay and Paypal, you have to pay for them.
But HEAR HEAR! To the Anon Coward whose responsible for "Cancel the ASBOs, Kill the killjoys."
Inspired stuff, VERY sensible suggestions, and point well made.
If only a system existed where the most qualified candidate could be put into a position of power to effect change. We can but dream.
"Considering Perl's claim to be the securest form of web programming, this incident doesn't make them look good. Incidentally Google's cache of perl.com still contains the grepblogs stuff at the time of posting this."
Ok, I've never heard perl refered to as the "securest form of web programming". However, this has NOTHING to do with Perl, It was just a cock up by the admins not keeping track of who adertised on the site.
"Is there a list of the porn sites responsible? Give us that list and we'll DDoS the fucking bastards off the web!"
Woah there, take a few deep breaths. This isn't a targetted attack its just a typosquatter (Who are a real problem, we'll run out of domain names if they don't change the way the system works) who got lucky.
How can we be THIS bad at keeping data safe?
Makes me think a few of these employees have caught onto the fact that you can SELL the data, and then claim you've lost it.
On a more serious note, if people INSIST on storing data on a laptop, then install TrueCrypt, encrypt your data, and whack the private key on a USB stick. Problem solved.
Don't get me wrong. I love technology, in all its shapes and forms.
However, when we as a society end up in a situation where we've spend time, money on effort on producing a "networked toaster", then somthing is seriously wrong.
Apart from the obvious "to show off a SecCons", what on Earth would you do with a networked toaster? Does your toaster need to communicate with your iPod? Do we really need a text message telling us that those crumpets are ready? Will these toasters support IPv6? Will we have to spend $500 in licensing fees for the "Ultimate" toasting experiance?
My advice, spend more money on renewable energy sources, if only to power my fully WiFi enabled kitchen sink. I've just installed the Reporting Server and I think my lights are dimmer, what with its new DRM capabilities eating all the power.
I've been zapped by a taser many times, ok, it hurts quite a bit, and its tricky to move afterwards, but is it more dangerous than a nightstick?
People argue that police with tasers is a recipe for heart attacks, and that tase the wrong guy and you've killed him. Ok, that may be true, hit the wrong person in the right spot and yes, you could probably stop their heart. Still, hit somebody in the wrong place with a nightstick, and you can just as easily kill them, leave them with a concussion, or simply break a few bones.
I've been hit with tasers, I've been twatted with nightsticks, I'll take the taser any day. Its quick, and relativly painless when compared with being belted around by what is essentially a steel bar (ok it's not steel, its hardened plastic, but how much give is there in hardened plastic?).
My favoure method of generating random numbers is through the use of the mouse
Give the user an area 500*500 pixels and have them move the mouse around whilst you collect the co-ords of the mouse movement. Do this for about 30 seconds, or until you have enough data and there you go, random numbers.
Ed
The MPAA/RIAA and obivously now IBM have got it into their heads that consumers will swallow ANYTHING. Its our fault for not whining loudly enough about DRM etc etc.
Fuck with the common man's DVDs, and he'll go and get the VHS out of the attic.
We, your customers, are not here to be abused, we're here to be appeased. Without us you're nothing, remember that.
9.99% uptime == 53 minutes downtime per year.
I moved from 1and1 about 3 years ago after having nothing but problems, do what I did, claim every penny of your money back and really stick it to them.
Despite claims, the UK supports is all but non existant, and if by some act of God, there is sombody you can talk to, they won't know their arse from their elbow. Also their management UIs are dreadful, and I don't know weather they've fixed it yet but their DNS management UI was broken for at least a month when I was with them.
1and1 are a dreadful host, in fact I can't think if a single other company (and I've been through a few) who were anything like as bad. I cannot denounce this company enough.
AJAX == Async XML + Javascript
Its nothing new, its not a special technology, and can be used on any OS that supports server side scripting and a client with an up to date browser.
Mods: I hate to bitch, but is it really beyond you to produce a working "Remember me" function?
Don't get me wrong, I love the form you've added, its really pretty and no doubt fools most people, but it'd be even better if it actually did what it says on the tin and worked.
Almost exactly the same thing happened to a friend of my Dad's (everything except the fire) in the UK.
They poor guy had to cut through his wrist with only a Swiss Army knive, I'm told he had to swap from the blade to the saw halfway through (for obvious reasons)
It begger's the question, why don't bailers/threshers make sure the off button is within arms reach of the mouth :p
"There are approximately 368,000 Microsoft SQl Servers... and about 124,000 Oracle database servers directly accessible on the Internet"
Any DBA worth his salt KNOWS how to secure a SQL server without a firewall. Its not like 'sa' was left with a blank password and remote access enabled on these, its just an open port.
One of our DB servers has port 1433 open to the WAN (it was that or a site to site VPN), it is perfectly secure. Even if it wasn't a complete muppet could secure a default SQL Server install.
But get this! I've found literally millions of servers with port 80 open to the WAN! I gather it's used for an rather obscure protocol called HTTP.
If I take a random sample of 1000 HTTP and SQL servers, I'll bet I'd get more webservers I could break into than SQL Servers (simply because there are many more attack vectors for HTTP, insecure scripts etc). This article draws attentions to absolutely fuck all.
David Litchfield is a respected security researcher, I don't know why he see's this as such a big issue, that is, unless he's sitting on a 0day remote SQL server exploit, but I won't hold my breath.
Before he taught at St Mary's, Mr McKenzie Johnston taught at a small school in Dorset called "Hanford"
Both my little sisters were lucky enough to attend, and I can confirm that this chap takes a much more reasonable view of Health and Safty than most of the populous.
One thing that sticks in my mind is one large tree, situated just outside the school's front door, next to the Church. The children were not only encouraged to climb this tree, but on starting a new year, they would all have to climb to a new, higher branch than they did last year, with all their friends watching and cheering. There were many other activities just like this, camp building, swimming in the river, and of course tobogganing down the many flights of stairs.
As somebody who was forever being thrown into detention for climbing trees, or being caught swimming in the school lake (I was trying to catch a swan, it always got away), I can respect what the man is trying to do.
I've just glanced through some of these comments. People are actually explaining why -6 is higher than -8!!!
"
If a number is positive, then it is greater than a negative number, therefore:
3 > 2 > 1 > 0 > -1 > -2 > -3 etc...
"
Jesus christ, even the Digg crowd wouldn't need an explanation.
Google makes all their money through targeted ads.
Webmasters are able to create great sites at no fee to the user, all down to advertising.
Without ads you wouldn't have free hosting. It just wouldn't happen.
Social Networks can exist, becuase of the ad supported nature of their business.
Where do youtube get money for bandwidth? Adverts.
The web is supported using Adverts.
Like it or loath it, using Adblocking software is detrimental to the internet as a whole.
If you want to throw up your arms and whine about targetted ads, or advertising as a whole, just stop. You might as well put on a beret and run the streets proclaiming that all property is theft, becuase nobody will listen to that either.
El Reg: For god sake, take 3 hours and implement COOKIES on this comment system so I don't have to constantly reenter my details.
My faviourite high is the one you get after eating nothing but four grains of uncooked rice every day, for about a week, then being repeatedly hit over the head with a jackhammer until you see spots, before finally plunging your head into a vat of searing hot ammonium hydroxide.
You just can't beat the buzz.
I've got another one which involves piano wire, a slow auto-release winch, three starving kittens and a bag of warm fertilizer, but that's only for real junkies.
I guess lack of Internet Connectivity is now right up there with the real tragedies you expect Amnesty to cover.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the idea of Internet censorship as much as the next man, but surly Amnesty could put their time, funding and effort into something a little more serious?
Droughts, suicide bombers, African Warlords massacring entire villages, TB kills millions in 3rd world countries every year, while we've had a working vaccine for years. Many cured/controllable diseases kill million of people around the world every year, simply becuase they don't have access to the medicine.
There are any number of things going on in this world, at any point in time, that make living without free speech look like a bloody picnic.
Amnesty should devote their precious resources to attempt to help genuine human plight, and while true freedom of speech would make the world a much nicer place to live in (or would it?), there are much more basic, less utopian, issues to address first.
There's no surprise there then, only the consumers suffered.
From the point of view of an illegal distributor or music (somebody who does their own music releases on BT or Newsgroups etc):
Early on, when the DRM adoption was high, if you REALLY had to get an album with DRM on it (which was easy to avoid, even then) then you'd have to go through the trouble of playing it, and rerecording each track.
Later on, tools were released, which provided you had the correct license installed, would allow you to strip away the DRM and produce a clean audio/video file.
There was nothing that would actually stop the baddies stripping away the DRM and releasing the content. If you could listen to it, or watch it, then you had the raw material and you could copy it.
Thus only the consumers suffered, unable to transfer music to new devices, and having to deal with tedious software installs which often didn't work, made DRM a recipe for disaster.
I once read about a case of a (sick, twisted) man who owned a website, which linked to various illegal child porn sites (are there any other kind?).
This man got off scot free, because he had none of the offending images/movies on his HD and was merely linking to these sites.
A total bastard like that still stalks our streets and isn't listed in the Sex offenders register.
Am I to derive from this article that the powers that be are now taking a harder line on copyright infringement than they do on child abuse? Thats the logical conclusion one can draw from this. I'm left feeling shocked and sickened.
If this isn't the case, its hard to see what point they're trying to make by dragging this poor chap through the courts and having him humiliated by the local press.
I feel no sympathy for SCO. Once a great company, the past few years have seen them spent their time and all their money, investing in frivolous patent lawsuits.
When did they last release a new product?
Ok, they may or may not hold the patents for Unix, but why run a good company, with a large capital, into the ground in cases that, if you ask many experts, they were doomed to lose.
The moment a company stops innovating, and spends its time trying to rob other organizations hard earned cash (patent violations or not), then it is doomed to fail.
SCO tried to be the school bully. It ended up with no friends, no respect and nothing to show for it.
One more thing before I go.
You'd have thought with the inevitable upcoming pension fuck up (and it is inevitable), that the Govenment wouldn't want to promote good health too much. People might actually listen, and economically, that would be a bloody disaster (Even more people on the country's payroll, demanding new hips and slowing the checkout at Tesco's to a crawl).
I've been threatening to do this for a quite a while now, and I'm afraid this is the last straw. On the day this law passes I will pack up my things, make my arrangements with work, and emigrate to Canada.
This is yet another pointless attack on our civil liberties, based on nothing but Labours seemingly unquenchable thirst to ban things.
Cast your mind over the past years, how many seemingly insignificant things have been banned.
Read Jeremy Clarkson's new book, he makes this point excellenty, and has some rather frightening facts and figures to back it up. However, I cannot be bothered to reproduce them here, you'll have to shell out the £7.99.
Labour beware: This country has a breaking point.
Keep outlawing things that are minority persuits (Smoking, Hunting with dogs, Certain psychoactive fungi are the ones I can think of off the top of my head) and eventually you'll only end up with an angry majority.
People will become accustomed to breaking the law, and as a result we'll have more people being dragged through the courts at the tax payers expense.
The respect the avarage person has for the law with drop, breaking the law will become a socially acceptable thing, and why respect one law, when you don't respect another.
We'll end up with gangs on hoodies skulking our streets at night. Oh, wait, thats happened.
We won't be able to go a month without hearing about somebody under the age of 18 stabbing/being stabbed on their street in the inner cities. Hang on a moment, we're already there.
We need to get back to basics, if its not hurting anybody else, then why ban it?
Let teachers actually punish children, rather then making them watch as their class grows up with no discipline. Then asking why the youth of today is too busy shooting smack and rival gang members to get a job.
Enough with all bleeding heart nonsense in the above comments.
My father used to own a kennels, and as such had contact with a lot of dog shelters. I can tell you straight, all of them put dogs down on a regular basis. After keeping the dog for a certain amount of time (it varied from 4 months to 2 years), if nobody was interested in adopting it, then, age dependant (normally anything over 6 years old), they'd be put down.
This is a great idea, we need something like this in England to highten awareness. It's a no nonsense approach (something that we see less and less nowdays), which I'm sure would work.
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