* Posts by Gilgamesh

35 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Sep 2007

Attack on open-source web app keeps growing

Gilgamesh
FAIL

1998 called, they want their exploit back

Let me guess, SQL injection?

Hooray, let's trust what the browser tells the PHP script! Better still - let's pass in unescaped to the database as a superuser account.

Morons. Anyone who gets hacked like this in the 21st deserves all they get.

Firefox maker moves towards a browser-free world

Gilgamesh

"Mature toolchain, massive user and developer base ... "

... bug-ridden closed source memory hog

X-COM UFO: Enemy Unknown

Gilgamesh
Thumb Up

Sectoid leader has gone berserk

Oh god, the nostalgia has kicked in very hard for this game. I might see if I can find an abandonware version that iisn't infested with keyloggers and trojans.

Google urges background tab websites to throttle themselves

Gilgamesh
Thumb Down

How clever of Google

... to suggest a new W3 standard which will coincidentally tell them precisely how much attention their advertising is getting. I know I can't live without it!

Gilgamesh
FAIL

PageVisability

Christ on a bike.

Entire London 2012 Olympics' cultural events database held on Excel

Gilgamesh
Trollface

Hooray!

Hooray for Microsoft Abscess!

Gilgamesh
Windows

I never understood

... why the suits love Excel so much and fail to grasp the simple concept that a database is for storing data and a spreadsheet is for working out the VAT on my invoice.

Although the last Excel addict I worked for asked me if I'd ever "written a database in Cold Fusion". Imagine my shame when I admitted I hadn't.

New graphics engine imperils users of Firefox and Chrome

Gilgamesh
Stop

I miss the days

... when a browser was for viewing HTML and images on the internet.

No ActiveX Sliverlight H.264 Flashy animated crapola.

Just text and images. And fewer exploits.

See also: phones that just do phone calls and SMS.

Sony: 'PSN attacker exploited known vulnerability'

Gilgamesh

this is why

I use a prepaid credit card on the internet.

Good luck cleaning me out on a card with £3.50 on it and no overdraft facility.

Guardian shuts local blogs

Gilgamesh
Headmaster

Yes, it is wrong

You should have thought "fewer bloggers in the world".

'Real' JavaScript benchmark topped by...Microsoft

Gilgamesh

What I utterly fail to understand is ...

why is everyone so obsessed with Javascript performance? When do you ever sit there in front of your browser thinking "hmmm, this script is really taking a long time to add a table row and apply a CSS style" ?

You don't. No one does. Chasing JS performance is a waste of time, for the vast majority of users it is completely irrelevant.

World pays tribute to Yuri Gagarin

Gilgamesh
Pint

My mum met Gagarin

on his visit to Manchester 50 years ago. This is an email she sent me last week (yes, my mum can use a computer) ...

"I was young - really young at the time of Gagarin`s visit to Manchester. I was at A.E.I. (later G.E.C.) when he came. It was VERY emotional. It was the height of the Cold War. All here were mighty suspicious of Russia and it`s evil intentions. And then - here comes this incredibly brave handsome man - forever smiling - to see us. He was so open and genuinely friendly. He was greeted with all the adulation he deserved... It was very moving. Up to seeing him in the flesh, we believed in the Cold War. When we saw him in the flesh, and after he had gone; we were left with the lasting and deep question of `what Cold War? WHAT is it all about? This man is no Cold War....`. From there it went on as you know, and suspicion started to drop away. But it was Yuri Gargarin`s visit that was the beginning of the end of total hostilities. Very moving indeed... He inspired us and we just loved him.... When I found out he had been killed I was (and still am) very sad indeed. I wonder whether they got rid of him..... He certainly did not fit Russia`s big plan at the time."

LizaMoon mass-injection attack reaches epidemic proportions

Gilgamesh
FAIL

1998 called, they want their exploit back

It's 2011, how is this even still possible?

Anyone still allowing this sort of thing to happen to their site deserves all they get.

Fukushima: Situation improving all the time

Gilgamesh

I wish ...

.. there was another word journalists could use instead of "stricken"

Microsoft: IE9's web privacy hole? A feature, not a bug

Gilgamesh
Troll

I don't see the problem here

Whitelist plus blacklist = greylist

Chicken Little report: Sat-nav dependency spells DISASTER!

Gilgamesh
Headmaster

pretty sure you meant to say

"thank you"

"thankyou" is a noun

And I'm posting the Grammer Nazi to!

And using conjunctions to end sentences with.

Illinois scrubs death penalty

Gilgamesh
Pirate

"Kill them all; for God knows His Own"

Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux and military leader of the Cathar Crusade

Grief and disbelief greet Elop's Nokia revolution

Gilgamesh

I was wrong

The post is required, and must contain letters.

Gilgamesh
FAIL

"turbulance"

I imagine someone will be correcting that fairly soon.

Matrix 4 and 5 in works, threatens Keanu

Gilgamesh
Paris Hilton

I'd like to see The Matrix redone as a musical.

Just picture it, big song and dance ending, hundreds of Agent Smiths tap-dancing, Busby Berkeley routine in 3D stop-motion.

And to really top it all, recast Paris Hilton as Trinity. I'd pay to watch that.

ROBOT COP scatters LIVE GRENADES in San Francisco STREET

Gilgamesh

Worst episode of Robot Wars EVER

also, a disappointing lack of explosions, gunfire and robots battling to the death

Google 'Do Not Track' extension preempts feds, Mozilla

Gilgamesh
Grenade

Block ads and cookies, get false sense of security

One word, Panopticlick. El Reg has covered it, you really think tracking creeps are just relying on cookies these days?

Microsoft arranges 'safe' Silverlight and HTML marriage

Gilgamesh

So Silverlight finally shows its true colours

It's ActiveX controls all over again. Wtih pretty graphics. Whoopee.

Scottish botnet master jailed for 18 months

Gilgamesh

As I've said many times before

if we all spoke Latin* then none of this confusion would arise.

*or Esperanto

Fans roast Microsoft for Silverlight demotion

Gilgamesh

so we're lumbered with Flash forever

HTML5 will never, NEVER be as "feature rich" as Flash or Silverlight. So we're now stuck with developing in Flash with all the baggage that comes with. Isn't it time there was a real open-source cross-browser rich media standard? And wouldn't Silverlight have been a good candidate for exactly this?

Microsoft cuts loose Iron languages

Gilgamesh

I'm sure this will come as a terrible blow ...

to both IronRuby and IronPython developers

assuming there are two developers in the world that use IronRuby or IronPython

UK.gov finally kills ContactPoint

Gilgamesh
FAIL

I did some work developing an early version of Contactpoint

... and it was abandoned in favour of an MS SQL database and an SQL develoer who was aid to tye in SQL statements whenever they felt the need to query the system.

Beware of cold call scammers pushing rogue antivirus

Gilgamesh
Linux

it's even more fun ...

... when you keep them talking for 20 minutes then tell them you're running Linux

Gilgamesh
FAIL

Had one of these calls yesterday

I played along, caller asked me to do start - run - then type "prefetch" and press enter. Apparently this displays "a list of corrupted files downloaded from the internet". So not the Windows prefetch cache then. I kept them on the phone about 15 minutes by playing dumb, just wanted to run up their phone bill. Eventually I just said I knew they were scamming me and they hung up. Good fun trolling them for a while though.

BBC website now unbroked

Gilgamesh
FAIL

Someone unplugged it?

when I checked around 2.30am, only one of the listed DNS servers was responding to pings

Les Paul dies at 94

Gilgamesh
Pint

cheers Les

awwww hell, I wanted him to live forever

Every time I pick up a Gibson LP it amazes me to think that those instruments have been in pretty much continuous production, virtually unchanged since 1954. I can't think of any other piece of design that has endured as long as that and it's very sad to say goodbye to the last great pioneer of music technology.

Well done Les, you got it absolutely right first time.

Silverlight 2 beta 2 - Go Live if you dare

Gilgamesh

SL _should_ be a Flash killer but it's almost dead in the water

SilverLight is beautiful, delightful to use, works from ANY webserver and offers a range of services, functionality and client/server integration that Flash can only dream of. So why is it going to fail? Because MS are leaking what should be Alpha versions onto the net and promoting it (like the original AJAX extensions) in a way that suggests it's a developer's weekend hobby project that the marketing department have suddenly gained an interest in.

So instead of proper databinding, version 1 has Flashy (note capitalisaton) video processing and filters. Instead of datagrids we get arty-farty 3D image galleries. Instead of a usable presentation layer for server-side code we get silly pointy-clicky-drag-round-the-screen-ooh-it-looks-like-we're-in-Torchwood navigation that no one really needs.

Make it run on Windows Mobile, release some FREE tools for C# SilverLight development, give us a WYSIWYG XAML editor, let me create Silverlight assemblies in VS2005, stop releasing half-arsed betas and promote SilverLight as a serious competitor to Flash and it could (and should) find a very good share of the market. As things stand, it'll be dead within 18 months. And deservedly so. Because it sucks. Big time.

Fire at The Planet takes down thousands of websites

Gilgamesh
Thumb Down

this is a disgrace

it's nearly monday morning and b3ta isn't working

people may be forced to do some work if this isn't fixed soon

B3ta served DMCA notice for Photoshop Prince challenge

Gilgamesh

meh

Did this really come as a surprise to anyone? In choosing such a litigious target, wasn't The Ginger Fuhrer really just stirring up a nest of hornets again?

There is no such thing as bad publicity. Unless you're name happens to be (or used to be) Prince.

Conservatives cock-up over pound again

Gilgamesh

if there's one thing b3tards excel at

it's vandalising the internet with crudely drawn penises