Posts by Alan Brown

Re: The real question is...

Speaking as someone who spent way too many hours in the back of a Bandit (2 hour flights to/from the middle of nowhere), you have my sympathies.

How is your hearing?

"The obvious solution to this problem is to ban the production of stock photos of cheerful people in brightly-lit offices with telephone headsets - without them, there'd be no way for the scammers to make their web pages."

The "WhoStoleMyPhotos" extension is useful to see which stock supplier they're using (usually ShutterStock).

I've never had one of these calls, but I've seen people fall for these, pyramid and various employment scams, As another poster has noted, teachers seem particularly susceptible to these kinds of con artists.

"Ban them from having more than one device on the screen and they will have a tablet and a mini wifi network connected to all the phones in his glove box, scraping the messages from each device."

That would probably be safer. (modulo mad driving stories)

Re: "China is a totalitarian..." blah, blah, blah.

"They (china) have invaded..."

Perhaps one should look at how many countries the USA has invaded - starting with Canada - and let's not forget that small war with Spain, started by a newspaper baron after a US Navy ship's boiler exploded whilst in Havana port, in order to sell more papers.

Re: Go after them personally @ Velv

If a company is found to be acting in a criminal manner, courts have ruled on several occasions that constitutes grounds to pierce the corporate veil and go after the entities behind it.

The hard part is getting the court to do it.

Re: LDS

"Intel machines translate most instructions into a more RISC-like internal architecture. "

Which does make you wonder what could be achieved if the internal architecture was exposed directly.

"I notice a particular ISP isn't advertising itself on the basis that it is from Yorkshire anymore"

They don't advertise that they're a BT subsidiary either (I suspect if they did, their customers would leave in droves).

In the same way AOL doesn't advertise that it's a trading unit of TalkTalk (AOL sold out its european ops years ago)

Re: Haven't you seen Fringe ?

The plastic explosive which downed PanAm flight 103 was supposedly about the size of a matchbox.

Aircraft are pressurised at about 5-7psi. All it takes is to split the hull and air pressure, plus the 600mph breeze outside will do the rest.

Re: A monopoly is all we need

"Fortunately there are many nations around the world with various rare earth ores. Unfortunately the pollution required to do the mining is so monumental that most nations require pollution controls that are not economically feasible."

The "pollution" mostly comes down to haveing undesirable byproducts - virtually all of that is Thorium - and no place to put them without the stuff leeching into waterways.

Thorium is likely to become very useful within the next 15-20 years if Gen4-5 molten salt nuke reactors take off and you'll likely see those rare earth refinerys rebranded to being thorium producers with a sideline in rare earths.

Re: Eh?

I remember the laser groove reader. AFAIK it's never gone past laboratory stage.

Supposedly, LPs can be read using a high resolution scanner. I'd like to see it (seriously. I have some old vinyl which has been damaged by abuse in the 1960s...)

Re: Point 3

"As for nuclear power plants, if they are so safe why can't we all have one in our homes?"

Simple answer: Plutonium.

Nasty toxic metal, fairly radioactive, used to make weapons, part of most fission chains

It's fear of that proliferating which keeps nukes tightly locked up, otherwise basement RTGs may well be commonplace (not just for electricity. They give off a LOT of heat)

Re: @DaveyG

The vast majority of the radiation can be stopped using good old fashioned water.

Getting enough of it into orbit to be usable as a shield is an exercise for the reader (hint, it may be easier to snag a passing comet)

Re: It's a conspiracy I tell you...

"they also run starbucks "

That explains the barista who looks suspiciously like the Soup Dragon in the one near me.

Re: Bomb us back to the stone age please

" a decently-sized war means culling the number of people jumping up and down on this planet."

HIstory has repeatedly shown that any such cull or dieback is more than made up within 2 generations. It's a stopgap method at best.

The single largest step towards cutting CO2 emissions to encourage people to have fewer children and ironically that's best achieved by lifting the poor out of poverty (Why? Because that bowl of cereal on your table has about the same CO2 cost as a 10 mile drive in a 4x4 - and the cost goes upwards from there)

"How do you stop spam? You catch the spammers, incarcerate 'em and take their loot"

Exactly - and for the criminal spammers there are usually plenty of reasons other than just the spam (illegal pharmaceuticals, wire fraud, kid porn, etc etc etc)

The single biggest problem is lack of international coordination and willpower, given that spam is a "whote collar" crime - the fact that it's tied to organised crime in a lot of cases seems to fly over most LEO's heads.

Re: Says it all really...

The "design council" has always been about style, not function.

Re: I hate to break it to you

"I work(ed) in the advertising and digital agency business and I don't see anything wrong with what they did (so long as the blog post by the bloggers do include some blurb about bieber)."

So... a spammer dpoesn't see what's wrong with spamming.

Yeah, ok. That's credible....

Re: Why

"Simple solution: grow a pair and TURN THE FUCKER OFF!"

If "too many" do that, the filter will be made mandatory.

If too many go along with the filter then it will be made mandatory too.

Re: Not suprised.

It's amazing the backtracking you get if you inform them a tape recorder is running and then ask did they really just refuse a legal obligation?

Re: So...

" it's off by default."

No, it's ON by default on new accounts.

Then it'll become on by default on existing accounts

Then they'll just start toggling it back on periodically (I'm already seeing this on TT and Tmobile filters)

There's already a section of the same filtering engine which is set to "Can't be disabled" and Big Media were quick to take advantage of it.

Re: DNS bypass isn't that easy on BT

"They use transparent DNS forwarding to their own DNS. Whatever DNS server you choose, all traffic to port 53 will effectively hit their own DNS."

That's a strong argument for using DNSSEC

Re: Other telcos are just as much at fault

It's your own fault for staying with TalkTalk.

Why didn't you go elsewhere?

Re: Adverts?

"Apparently Facebook didn't get that memo so am now no longer updating their app just in case."

I removed it as it was the largest cpu hog on my phone.

Re: Crazy System

"OK, no, not exactly. Apple Computer settled with Apple Corp in 1981, and the former undertook not to enter the music business (and the Beatles undertook not to write software, snort). "

Which is why the first apple mac default beep was named "sosueme"

Re: Not only but also

"instead of having one socket, you'll now have two. one for charging via the universal connector that won't do anything else, and then another one that'll be used for the data syncing, AV output, peripherals, etc etc."

Or a socket which can handle MicroUSB + extended plugs, like Nokia used to do with their charging shoe years ago.