Posts by TrishaD

Re: America

"The suicide risk increases after re-assignment surgery, which IMHO demonstrates the false nature of the treatment - it is a mental condition not a physical one; no dissimilar to anorexia and bulimia. The current indulgence in this foolishness is actually harming those most at risk and all for a political point. How low can you go"

You do realise that this is, to put it bluntly, total horseshit?

Suicide risks do not increase after reassignment surgery. The Religious Right and their stooges have recently siezed on the results of a Swedish study and (surprise surprise) misrepresented them. The claim is that suicide risk increases and that levels of criminality remain unchanged. In fact the study took two groups of transsexuals, one group who transitioned in the 1980s when social attitudes and social care for transsexuals less advanced and another group from several years later when Sweden had moved on signifcantly both in terms of social care and social attitudes.

The first group suffered high suicide rates and an unchanged level of criminality. The second group demonstated a significant lowering of both.

Thus demonstrating that if you support transgender individuals sympathetically and treat them as normal human beings rather than as freaks and pariahs, most of their problems go away.

This of course doesnt fit the bigot agenda so they lie about it.

Re: Indeed. 1 man +1 weapon +*no* hostages = 4 days x 30 officers + 1 house destroyed.

I mean... what IS this? Police Academy 92 or something?

Re: Limited

"10.The Dude - The Big Lebowski

Never heard of him."

Boy, you're about to enter a world of pain ....

Re: One big problem

Here on Salisbury Plain we experience transient power failure at least weekly. We can pretty much guarantee one biggie (6 hrs plus) a year - more in harsh winters.

There is precisely one mobile in our household and I get zero reception in the house and maybe one bar if I'm lucky when I'm outside. Even then, reception fluctuates between none and bad within a period of minutes.

Re: Spending money

"There is a benefit to the country from having decent roads over and above the money paid out to tarmac layers. There is no such benefit to be had from increased awareness of the existence of ethnic minority disabled lesbian single mothers."

If we ignore the cliches and the stereotyping, it's arguable that the benefit of such schemes lies in furthering the Public Good.

That may appear a somewhat quaint concept, but it does rather lie at the heart of whether the UK and its Government exist in order to serve the people of this country or whether they exist to serve the interests of the business community.

I'd be the first to accept that a healthy and successful business community contributes greatly to the Public Good but the concept of 'what's good for business is good for the country' seems to me to be a quite nonsensical one.

We affluent IT types can wibble on all we like about welfare dependancy and the evils of employee rights, but if we dont look after the vulnerable in society and provide checks and balances against the powerful exploiting the powerless, then I think we should be questioning why we have a government at all.

Re: based on experience of SMEs

Or the major organisation who's retail outlets used to photocopy the front and back of customer's credit cards and put it in their file ......I still wake up with cold sweats over that one.

I do quite a lot of work doing due dilligence on SMEs and there's an even split between folks who apply common sense and apply best practice to the best of their abilities and those who think it all involves too much braining ....

Re: Q: what did one Deadhead say to the other after they ran out of dope?

"they played music" - very debatable"

Really? If you play at all, try playing some stuff off American Beauty.

If you can......

Their chording is complex and difficult. The Dead were always excellent musicians - you cant be that sloppy without knowing what you're doing.

Re: Christ on a fucking BIKE!

@NotArghGeeCee

Quite so. Bunch of snivelling babies, whining because someone took their toys off them...

Meh ....

Re: It only makes you poorer if you displace a more productive use of your time

Let us assume that I earn 'x' amount of money. If I'm a good little consumer, I'll use that 'x' to purchase goods and services (putting some aside first either to pay my taxes or in savings to pay for all the bits and pieces like a pension and health care that I'd have to pay for if I werent a member of society that believes in tax).

Now that's fine - I have 'x' and spend 'x'. The only problem of course (because that's life) is that I only have 'x' and can only purchase goods and services up to the value of 'x'. If however, I choose to spend my spare time, the time I have after spending time earning 'x', doing my own plumbing, car maintenance, cider making or whatever, then what actually happens is that I dont actually spend all of 'x' and I'm at liberty to spend what's left over buying goods and services that I couldnt afford to buy if I'd not done stuff myself. I can go buy iPads, posh clothes, or whatever. Alternatively I could save the residue and that money becomes available for others to invest on my behalf.

Either way, the market hasnt lost at all, has it?

Re: What a crock!

@Abacus

Where does homosexuality rate in relation to having sex with the brain-dead?

p.s - the 17th century called - they want their social attitudes back.

Re: A Physicist and a Chemist

"Apologies for proffering nutrition to an under-bridge dweller"

Thanks for that. You might want to consider that differing views dont constitute trolling even when you disagree with them.

Re: Fauna.

"I once found a slug in the office. We put it outside."

Last slug in our office got promoted

Re: All these posts, and no one has hinted at the real agenda ..

"Smart meters will allow the supplier to reduce - or disconnect - the supply at will. It's a prelude to two-tier energy supplies, where the rich get nice permanent expensive power, and the poor get a supply that can be cut at a whim."

Actually - no.

Regulations already prevent suppliers from disconnecting supplies until absolutely every avenue for recovering debt has failed. Smart meters wont make any difference to that.

Remote disconnect is actually a smartarse DECC idea - suppliers fought it

Having said all that, I've been involved in smart metering with a major supplier (thank goodness, I'm not anymore) and no, they have little to offer the consumer, certainly not at present. The only major significant advantage that I can see, in theory, is the ability for suppliers to provide cheap tariffs for off-peak usage. So, if you're in a position to schedule use of washing machines, dishwashers etc, for weekends and overnight, you stand (theoretically) to gain.

Its not that big an advantage though, is it?

Re: Odd

Yes, I think that this is the key to it.

If you think about it logically, equality of opportunity, far from being socialist or communist, is basically just good common sense that should benefit businesses just as much as it does individuals. If, for example, a talented black woman doesnt get the opportunity to make best use of her talents, that's not just a tragedy for her but a wasted opportunity for an intelligent business to make a few bucks.

Similarly if you have any ethnic minority who, as a whole, tend to bump along on the bottom in terms of relevant affluence, that isnt just an issue for that minority, its an issue for society and for business because their potential talents arent being exploited.

So a level playing field makes sense for just about everybody - it's essentially a win-win.

Unfortunately a set of figures like this are bugger all use to man nor beast. If company A employs more women in a senior position than company B is that a sign that they're not looking at the wider talent pool and are discriminating, or is it a sign that company B have already nicked the best, most experienced women in the job pool? Or is it a sign of something else completely? These figures dont help in asking those questions.

Re: But... native people have an affinity with nature

I trust that you're nor for a moment suggesting that the Clovis people (or whoever) hunted those things for fun, are you?

Running around after an n ton pachyderm with big tusks, even with the assistance of a few mates armed with bits of stick with sharp stones tied on the ends, doesnt strike me as being an enterprise you'd take on unless survival was an issue.

@Dan1980

"The point is that representation in employment is the end of a long chain of events and the real work needs to go on improving the earlier links - like education. Focusing on the last bit is very much a case of putting the cart before the horse."

I'm inclined to agree. Measurement of the end result can be useful however. If nothing else, it allows you to do some comparative work..

In the case of the Yahoo results, what struck me was how very low the percentage of black and hispanic technical workers was, in comparison with, for exampe, Visa (a former employer of mine). 10 years ago in their West Coast offices, those percentages were far higher, which would indicate one of two things - either that young black and hispanic kids are not leaving school with the right skills, or that Yahoo arent very good

Re: A dev's p.o.v

"Discrimination against "transexuals" alert!"

No, nio ... I'll just sit here cracking my knuckles and looking menacing ...

Anyway - was this sexist? Almost definitely not by intention. It was however hugely cack-handed (much more so than the 'broad-shouldered bad tranny' comment - speaking as I do as a broad-shouldered tranny). It implyies that 50% of the human population dont really matter. Which I'm pretty sure wasnt his intention. Engage brain before opening mouth would seem good practice.

That aside, there do seem to be quite a lot of female gamers, and quite a lot of those female gamers like to play female avatars. And on the global stage, 'quite a lot'='a lot' at least as far as cash is concerned.

Dumb move.

Re: no indication of INCREASED fraudulent account activity on eBay

So, if there was no evidence of fraudulent account activity, how did they know they'd been hacked?

This is actually quite an interesting incident and any comment must involve a certain amount of reading between lines. The truth is undoubtedly out there but getting to it may present a challenge. But a bit of speculation seems in order...

So then - if the intrusion happened a couple of months back and it was only detected weeks ago, we have two possibilities - either eBay are truly incompetent to the point of recklessness, or this was a fairly stealthy attack by someone who was actually rather good at this sort of thing. If the latter is true, then my best guess would be some sort of spear-phishing directed at system admin type folks. A bit of homework scanning through LinkedIn would probably produce enough information to send a plausible email containing some sort of zero day attack either as an attachment (old hat) or a link back to a compromised site. Job done, start extracting information and loading up the root kits or whatever.

No conventional security tools are likely to detect this if done well.

At this point, my sympathies are with eBay. Briefly.

However, whatever protection they had over encrypted/hashed passwords was obviously woefully inadequate, assuming of course that passwords were compromised rather than 'might have been' compromised.

Which leads to epic fail on communications. Keeping your mouth shut for a couple of weeks is understandable - get the forensics folks in and crawling all over your logs etc and understand the extent of the problem before you go public is perfectly reasonable.

But - that period should give you enough breathing space to produce a coherent and sensible communications strategy. One that does not consist of vague advice to change your password. Why the hell couldnt some one have written a script to enforce password change at next logon? Not rocket science.

Bad security controls and poor incident management. A classic example of a major organisation not taking information security seriously.

Re: Really? Who is tolerant, accepting, and open minded?

"Leave the terms wife, husband, and marriage to the Church."

I'm afraid you're working from a false premise here.

As a C of E prelate (I think it may have been the Bishop of Salisbury) noted prior to the Commons vote, the Christian Church played little or no part in marriages for anyone other than the wealthy or noble until after the 15thC. Not even a blessing. People married outside Church with no religious ceremony as a matter of routine.

The Church does not own marriage. Never has done.

Re: Give me

"Stage 1. hire a few dozen techies

Stage 2. send them to power stations etc

Stage 3. Install dedicated phone lines to grid control

Stage 4. Air gap the power stations control systems from the internet and any internal network

Stage 5. Fill in all the USB slots with glue"

Dont suppose it occured to you that most UK utilities companies have already done that?

The one I work for finished off protecting their power station systems a couple of years ago.

@Wanderingone56ish

" You're article's not reporting that they are calling on anyone else to boycott FF, El Reg, only that they're boycotting it themselves - which they're perfectly entitled to do "

Dang it, you read the article - that's Cheating

@DropBear

Failure to stroke any of my cats results, generally speaking, in a severe mauling and loss of blood. They care little about animal welfare other than their own and they're very good at seeing to that.

Re: Lawmakers and the law

"Hodgey-poos seems to think that once a law is enacted, there is some sort of magical process that makes lawyers read it and think "yes, this is obviously only to be applied in certain, restricted situations - it's not a general-purpose law that could be applied universally". "

Gosh, and here's me thinking that that's what lawyers did for a living.

p.s Hodge is Chair of a Select Committee. This stuff is what she's employed to do. The Select Committee forms part of the system of checks and balances that are supposed to make government agencies accountable to Parliament. Her qualities (or lack of them) as a member of a former government are irrelevant

Re: Unless they're from the lucky sperm club they've got negative wealth

"so it's obvious to me that only a select few will have what it takes to "work hard, save and invest wisely"

Oh, I think you'll find that a large number of people have what it takes. Its just that for most of us working hard doesnt provide enough of a surplus to save and invest wisely. Or indeed at all.

I do enjoy reading Tim's articles though. Its rather like being lectured on morality by a Mexican bandit.

Re: taxing the public

I like the Health & Safety analogy. Corporate H&S works pretty well because senior managers become responsible in law.

Many years ago, a new Head of Data Centre was parachuted in from the US to run the site I was working at. I got an appointment with him to discuss Health & Safety. The conversation went...

Him: 'Why do I need to know about this stuff - we've got lawyers to deal with it'

Me: 'In the UK its criminal law and you could go to prison'

Him: 'Tell me about this stuff'

Management dont make coding errors for sure, but they are responsible for their staff and providing the relevant budget to put appropriate controls in place.

There really does need to be some sort of personal liability associated with Data Protection.

Re: WTF is Gender Fluid?

If we're listing euphemisms, might I offer 'Gentleman's Trouser Relish'? Coined by a friend, it has a spendidly Steam Punk sort of vibe about it....

Re: No defence

I do agree. Although I'l also admit to a touch of schadenfreude when it comes to Kitty Kelly's personal details... 'Live by the sword.. ' and all that.

Re: Trishiebunny TrishaD TrishaD Point of Order

"Really? In a forum thread on a rediculous allegation that MI5 killed Turing over sixty years ago?"

Why yes, Matt, really.

If you turn your mind back to what I actually said (rather than some figment of your imagination) I said that, much as I admire him, he'd jumped the shark on this one. I have no interest in what MI5 did over sixty years ago any more than I have any interest in what Peter T did thirty years ago

"What, now we're all homophobic if we're not GLBTI?"

Stop being a dick. I didnt say that. You know I didnt say that. Everyone else knows I didnt say that.