Posts by Rob

Ofcom works out why Wi-Fi doesn't work

Free Public WiFi

Who, in their right mind, would ever connect to anything with a SSID like that?

UK censors revolt against 'pornalone' ordeal

Precognition?

"but only on the basis that an appropriate policy is in place for having works which are particularly problematic or unpleasant viewed by teams"

How would they know, until after somebody had looked at it?

Apache gunbird used as robo kill-chopper fleet command ship

Those troopers...

The ones hanging on at either side. Would their heads not get sucked into the jet intakes, or something?

Brown backs down on expenses secrecy

Re: Nulab, etc.

OK, then. How about "Zanu Labour"? Or what about "Neo Arbeit (Macht Frei)"?

I'm a different Rob, BTW.

Council to crack down on Cracknuts Lane

In other news

Lewes Social Services has deemed naming one's daughter "Charlotte" to be child abuse, saying:

"Well, it clearly rhymes with 'Harlot', innit?"

Man trademarks ;-) emoticon

CUNT

That is all.

Wireless comms and the end of civilisation

@ Lottie

"What about carrier pigeons? A wireless, mains free eddible WAN "

So *that's* why those Scandinavian students actually implemented the joke RFC about IP over Avian Carriers! (2549, iirc).

It's the one with *everything* in the pockets.

BBC's TV detector vans to remain a state secret

@ Simon Painter

"Of course there are many ways to soundproof your flat and if the precise technical details of the vans were ever to get out into the public domain it wouldn't take much brains to produce a device similar to noise cancelling headphones which sticks onto your windows."

IIRC, it's even easier than that. I'm sure I recall reading a novel, many years ago, where the protagonist circumvented directional laser mic eavesdropping by simply gaffer taping a vibrator to the window...

PH because - well it's obvious, isn't it?

Prof: 'Taser-proof vests put cops in danger'

@ Chris G

Well said, Sir.

Government tied in knots by bondage protest

@ Lisa Parratt

"The question is, though, would their Master allow them to play with you?"

You'd have to ask his Mistress...

As a wise man once said: at the end of the day, we're all somebody's dog.

Feds: Search engine bride was tax evading prostitute

FWIW

Registration Service Provided By: Register.com

Contact: [e-mail]

Domain name: touchofbrazil.net

Registrant Contact:

Ipanema Girls

Christina Schultz

800 University Avenue

Palo Alto, CA 94301

US

Administrative Contact:

Ipanema Girls

Christina Schultz ([e-mail])

+1.6504445401

800 University Avenue

Palo Alto, CA 94301

US

Technical Contact:

Earthlink Inc.

Hostmaster Hostmaster ([e-mail])

+1.8889321997

1375 Peachtree St., Level A

Atlanta, GA 30309

US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:

dns01.gpn.register.com

dns02.gpn.register.com

dns03.gpn.register.com

dns04.gpn.register.com

dns05.gpn.register.com

Creation date: 15 Jul 2002 14:59:34

Expiration date: 15 Jul 2009 14:59:34

DVLA: A licence to bill

@ Ed Blackshaw

Silence, schweinhund!

UK minister looks for delete key on user generated content

I've got nothing.

No, really. What could I possibly say that wouldn't be redundant?

Mayor Boris serves Governator cold revenge

@ Richard Porter

"If Arnie is monosyllabic... how does he say his surname?"

Slowly, I would imagine.

I'll get *your* coat (and your boots, your clothes and your motorcycle).

BT's third Phorm trial starts tomorrow

On the positive side, at least this sorts out the P2P debacle.

After all, one of the main the ISP arguments has been "What if it's not the subscriber, but one of their kids or a stranger using their open WiFi."

Well, it would appear to be fine with BT for your kid, or even a stranger using your open WiFi to opt you in to Phorm.

So, under the well known legal principle of what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, should we expect BT to introduce 3 strikes you're out in parallel with this scabrous bag of puss?

Hammer Films has risen from the grave

The Public Life Of Henry The Ninth

Then, of course, there was the porno version called "The Pubic Lice of Henry the Nonce".

US blogger to enjoy Singapore jail

@ adnim

"I can see a new UK law coming into force, with the line between insult and criticism being very blurred or at least open to interpretation."

It very nearly did, a few years ago, as part of Rome II (harmonisation of non-contractual undertakings, iirc). Briefly, people would have been able to bring defamation cases in the English courts, under foreign law. For example, French law, where the truth is not a defence if the complaiant is a head of state.

We managed to stop it, though :)

Dick Smith pr0n mobe heads for eBay

@ Paul Naylor

The thing about copyright is, it has to do with the making of copies. She isn't.

Seems to me, it'd be a legitimate sale under first sale doctrine.

UK launches major road signage review

How much would you bet?

That the review will conclude that all traffic signs should be re-designed to include CCTV and ANPR, along with periodically displaying a little green environmental homily?

That 'Elderly Persons' sign: Can you do better?

pickpocketing?

Surely fisting?

It's the one with the granny porn in the pockets. All the pockets.

UK bank chief stung in ID theft scam

@ AC - and others in the same vein

"These fat-cat bankers have utter blind-faith in chip-n-pin. "

Perhaps. But I suspect that you're thinking of C&P as a flawed anti-fraud technology. OTOH, it might make perfect sense to have faith in it as a risk transfer technology...

And so on. Sometimes, it's a good idea to work out what exactly people are trying to do, before criticising them for doing something completely different badly.

Forgot your ID? You must be a terrorist

Excellent!

1. Forgetfully leave wallet at home.

2. Turn up at airport, sans ID, give *a* name to TSA.

3. Have no way of proving that it's really your name.

4. This name, which nobody knows if it's yours or not, gets added to a database.

Is it just me, or is there a teensy little flaw here...?

NASA: Mars is good habitat for Terry Pratchett dragons

@ Dave Bell

Your title reminded me of "The Game of Rat and Dragon" an excellent short story by Cordwainer Smith. Humans and cats, partnered up to fight aliens, which the humans see as dragons, but the cats see as rats.

As for politicians - just feed them to a giant kitten, perhaps a lion or a Bengal tiger...

Supercomputer to improve UK weather

@ Geoff Mackenzie

Too late, old chap. In a classic example of joined-up-government, the old one's already been sold. To Russian Business Network!

Home Office bankrolls plastic plod 'documentaries'

Plastic Plod?

Surely the correct term is C3PO?

Southeast London is card fraud cesspool

Ah, 3rd Man again!

How are they getting on tracking down that international-criminal-super-dooper-AVS-circumventing database of theirs? You remember, the one that they announced to the world must exist, because of a trivial number of AVS colissions?

In other news - Chav Scum commit crimes!

Unions line up against airline ID cards

@ Neil Barnes

You're right-ish, mate, but you're not quite precise enough.

You wrote: "all it tells me is that was able to persuade the issuing authority that he should be allowed to carry it."

In truth, all it tells us is that *somebody* (who may or may not be the bearer) was able to persuade *somebody else* (who may or may not be the issuing authority referenced on the card) to manufacture it.

BAA 'invented green superjumbo' to OK Heathrow plans

As I've said before...

If you're 90 years old and live (near LHR) in the house you were born in then, fair enough, you're probably entitled to complain about the noise.

Everybody else - if you don't like the sound aeroplanes make, why did you buy a house next to a fucking airport?

Nike pulls Air Stab trainers

@ Rachel

"We have always had an idea in this country for example that it is better to steal than to beg, where other peoples might believe that it is better to die than to steal."

Speak for yourself, you thieving pikey bastard. Nobody in the UK, today, is so poor that they need to steal to eat.

"I am particularly annoyed with the parents who move house to gain better catchment areas for their children, rather than committing to their local community."

Well, I hope that those heartless bastards feel properly chastised by you. I mean, how dare they try to better the lot of their kids?

Are you real? Or am I feeding a troll?

The War on Cutlery...

... is proceeding at full steam, it seems.

Expect it to be about as effective as the War on Guns, which saw gun crime double in the 10 years following the handgun ban.

Mine's the one that will soon have a US Green Card in the pocket.

IPS ditches e-passport system

it's just depressing, really.

Especially as all they really needed to do was put a few pdfs with fillable fields on a web server somewhere.

Which would have cost them (ie us) sod all.

And which would have been pretty good, in terms of privacy, as all the data would be saved locally on the user's machine, preventing it from being left on a train or in a taxi, or posted to some guy in St Petersburg.

And which is something which the USA's IRS, BCIS etc have been doing for years, incidentally.

Christ! I'm depressed now.

I'm off to lie down in a dark room.

(a different Rob than the one who said Grrrrrr...... )

Enraged devil dog lover locks on to Reg photo team

Marmite!

It's Marmite crisps you should be plugging, or at least Prawn Cocktail...

Mine's the one with crumbs in the pockets.

Yahoo! Messenger! Trojan! false alarm!

Is it just me?

Or does anybody else think that "Microsoft's Live OneCare" sounds a little bit too close to "Microsoft's Live Wanker"?

Fraudsters pool data to beat plastic fraud checks

IMHO, Ferry Boat is the only one who has grasped the point.

It's about collisions. I've had a look at the company in questions website. They claim to have detected roughly 60,000 fraudulent CNP transactions a month in both May and April.

The article says that based on a sample of 50 cases, over a month or so, where there was an AVS collision, they have concluded that crims around the world have collaborated to build a super-dooper AVS subverting database.

What's more likely? A global fraud-facilitating DB or that 50 collisions out of 60,000 were the result of random chance?

And if that's the acme of their scientific rigour, why would any sensible company trust them to do anything more challenging than wiping their own arse?

I call bullshit!

First off: AVS is, and has been, a broken piece of crap which works spottily at best. Especially, but not only, when using cards in a country other than their country of origin.

Second: "the use of social engineering tricks to *intimidate* call centre staff into handing over details,". Intimidate? Yeah, right. Ever tried to be assertive with a call centre moron? Any social engineer who managed to surmount the langauge barrier would be far more likely to persuade or cajole, rather than intimidate.

Third: Oooh, the conspiracy! They're collaborating with each other and sharing data! Help me, Flash Gordon!

So what do we know? We know that a so-called "credit card fraud protection specialist" has put out a press release making much of the fact that in a sample of probably thousands or tens of thousands of fraudulent CNP transactions, they found 50 or so cases where the numbers in the shipping address happened to match the numbers in the billing address. In London. A city where, because of the way the postcodes are structured, numbers tend to repeat quite often: N1, EC1, W1, WC1, SE1, SW1 etc etc etc...

Hidden messages buried in VoIP chatter

@ Clive Galway

You're not the only one, mate! I took one look at "Wojciech Mazurczyk and Krzysztof Szczypiorski" and my first thought was "Oh, how clever, the author's put some stego in the article..."

Judge issues arrest warrant for Darth Vader

Dark Helmet

Surely!

The Schwartz is strong in this one.

Microsoft lines up with the good guys on identity tech

It's a see saw

Microsoft become the good guys, as a certain advertising sales corp becomes evil. And so the cosmic balance is maintained.

How BA handles lost luggage complaints: Shock picture

How come?

It's always the same poor pony tailed, yellow shirted pirate who gets it in the neck in these reconstructions?

BOFH: The London Underground vending machine conspiracy

So, this Boss,

seems to be a little too with the programme. Is he likely to stick around for a while?

Top cop: e-crime is the new drugs

@ Slaine

Indeed. As the man said: "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

Snitching is less than golden for piracy informers

@ Drew

Fair comment, old chap, but you missed one motivator. A significant proportion of reports come from for profit sellers of counterfeits, seeking to use anti-piracy organisations to eliminate (or at least inconvenience) the competition. It's not new, drug dealers have been grassing up competitors for years.

CIA demands UK halts interrogation tactics

Nice April Fool

Especially as El Reg is one of the worst offenders...

Apple 'most successful world brand'

Sorry...

But it still reads as "Clit Bang" to me.

It's the dirty mac...

Send your loved one's ashes to the Moon for $10k

What I want...

Is to have my ashes placed inside a fully armed thermonuclear ICBM, which is then fired in anger.

I've communicated my wishes to the wife, she starts the geopolitics degree next week.

T5 opening turns into Airplane 3.0

@ RW and Mr Cheese

Thanks Chaps, now I finally know what an MBA consists of.

Seriously, I was looking at Masters courses, reading up on the course descriptions and trying to decide which one to do. Every single course explained what you'd study, what you'd learn etc. Except the MBAs. Without exception, every MBA summary I read was just a load of apparently random buzz words or phrases strung together in a meaningless fashion.

I concluded that the B stood for Bullshit and opted for an MSc.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

That is all.

El Reg offers cut-and-paste comments service

The problem with comments...

is that there seems to be a view that longer is better. As a result, short, pithy responses to nasty vitriolic screeds (often from greenies, oddly enough) along the lines of "Are you mentally ill?" or "Why don't you just top yourself?" tend to get moderated out.

At least I think that's why ;-)

Transgender man prepares to give birth

Just to be clear...

This isn't the same Oregon man who was stripped by Craigslist looters, I take it?

Soot almost as bad as CO₂ for global warming

@ Mark

Your snide and nasty response to my (admittedly rather weak) joke is exactly the behaviour I'd expect from a typical watermelon.

Watermelon: Noun. Term used to describe envirofascists, because while they're green on the outside, they're red on the inside.