Posts by Lawrence

Hotmail phish exposes most common passwords

Social networks are to blame too

The second step in Facebook's sign up process is the 'friend finder' option where the user is invited to submit his/her Gmail / Yahoo / Hotmail login details so that some script can send automated emailed to the contact list.

Ironically, point 4.6 of Facebook terms states: You will not share your password, let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account.

The problem with this (apart from the risk of some dodgy engineer skimming off this info) is that it makes it seem OK to share webmail login details. If I were a phishin' cyber criminal I'd set up a social network just for that purpose!

I've blogged about this here iif anyone is interested: http://www.architxt.net/blog/is-facebook-helping-phishers-hack-email-accounts

Don't remember passwords but a formula instead

Rather than using the same password for all my accounts, which isn’t partucularly secure, I’ve come up with a single formula that returns different passwords for each.

For example, a password for this site could be (but isn't):

The first 3 letters of my email address / username + the year i was born but using '!' instead of the last '1' + the first and last letter of the site's domain name + the number of characters of the site's domain name.

In this case: law!97!tr3

If this isn't clear I've explained it in my blog: http://www.architxt.net/blog/miscellaneous/remembering-password/

El Reg obtains snap of OGC logo reveal

Extreme porn!

Burn The Reg!

Microsoft Office Online falls into Halloween time vortex

thinkforward

Don't you guys start planning your Halloweens around March / April?

Microsoft shouts 'Long Live XP'

Vista is XP

Forgive my ignorant comments, but having just bought a laptop with Vista Home Basic on it I fail to see how Vista is anything other than a hazzed version up XP.

I was expecting substantial differences but they are only subtle and / or aesthetic.

Court junks $11m judgment against Spamhaus

Black list all 'em foreigners!

"Blacklisting certainly works - my users, for example, expect no email from China, Japan, Thailand, Korea, UAE, Turkey, Israel, or numerous other nations... "

I take it your users never expect to receive emails from people of these countries, and that business users too don't work internationally?

IBM faces Second Life strike

Why it has worked

Given that there are about 36 strikes a day in Italy media attention of any sort is a win.

Also, wouldn't it be great if London tube workers adopted the same strategy?

Safari gets four new fixes

alphabetagammawhateva

This time round it installs and works fine (so far).

I like it.

Pages render much faster than IE and FF. Impressive stuff.

Text are smoothed rather heavily so everything reads as bold, but I don't mind this at all as it improves readibility on my tablet's 10" screen.

I'm tempted to make it my default browser.

Fake flash player site used to spread malware

Many people will be infected

I've come across a site featuring this and was about to hit that download button. I didn't because I'm ultra-paranoid about stuff like this.

I suspect many people are going to fall for this as it's very well done. Kids in particular should be careful as they tend to play online games.

Half of Wi-Fi hotspot money is wasted

web analytics is just as bad

One would have thought that web analytics companies would be able to offer a pricing structure based on actual usage.

Eg - 34,123 visitors will cost you £5,89

But no, they charge for packages of up to X amount of vistors/pageviews/whatever.

I don't think there is hope for humanity as a whole when this is the case.

Google free again to pump out porn thumbnails

ok, well, yeah

"The case has nothing to do with robots.txt."

The article seems to suggest otherwise.

Another thought, if I may.

Porn sites in the US are now required to keep a record / proof of the models they publish pics / vids of. Secondary producers (eg. affiliates) are also required to hold this info (I think).

Shouldn't Google to the same then for each XXX pic is displays?

mod re-write .htaccess type solution thing

Not 100% sure about this but I think that server trickery allows for a certain level of control to what content is fetched by a third party server or bot.

Can one, for example, include a rule that any image that is requested by Google be replaced by one depicting test shouting 'yo! keep yer hands off our pr0n!'?

Grifters find rich pickings on social networking sites

One very bad practice

I'm not suprised at all about this and would like to expand a little on the bit about fraudsters setting up bogus social networking sites.

The bad practice i refer to is a marketing exercise used by a number of social networks. I'll mention a couple that I hate partoicularly: hi5.com and tickle.com

I was prompted to register to such sites when I received the same worded personal emails from my Yahoo! contacts. So I investigated...

Towards the end the registration process (or in the case of Tickle.com once you have finished a test) you are invited to submit your Yahoo!, MSN and AOL details to 'invite your friends' to the site. When you do this a script logs into your mail account, farms your contact list and sends out automated emails on your behalf.

This is dangerous because they promote the practice of giving out log in information to a third party. It's fair to say that big name social networks are trustworthy but it doesn't take much to set up a bogus version that offers the same functionality.

Tickle.com's TOS say that "If Tickle has reasonable grounds to suspect that you have shared your account access and password with another individual, Tickle has the right to terminate your account and refuse any refund."

One solution, if this is a problem, would be the likes of Yahoo! to prevent scripts logging into their accounts.

I hope something is done.

Scientology tries to discredit BBC documentary

He Mowed For Us

Don't you realise that He mowed for our sins?

He was placed in a garage, taken apart, its pieces cleaned and polished, and put together with a few extra nuts and bolts remaining unutilised... to never start again.

Only to appear again a few days later as a Qualcast Power-Trak 3400.

This is my fav bit about bollocksology

Off wikipedia, of course.

"Xenu (sometimes Xemu) is introduced as an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together and stuck to the bodies of the living. The alien souls continue to do this today, causing a variety of physical ill-effects in modern-day humans. Hubbard called these clustered spirits "Body Thetans," and the advanced levels place considerable emphasis on isolating them and neutralizing their ill effects."

Make you think that all this has been thought of by some omaginative science fiction writer.

Littlewoods bombards man by phone. Big mistake

Learning Tree

Anyone made the mistake to request a brochure online and be honest enough to provide their telephone number.

Don't try this at home or at work unless you want them calling you very very regularly.

In the end I called them up to ask them to remove them from their database.

"Sure, it's been done"

I asked them to double-check.

"Yes, you're off our database. I can see here... your name have been greyed out in our system, so yes."

Germans invade Second Life

Remember when no one admitted to chatting?

How about online dating?

Not so long ago most would never admit to chatting, online dating or even participating in discussions such as these.

Another question. Is gaming sad? Is playing Sims sad?

Second Life: the campaign for real life

Project Open Letter

Whether SL is nonsense or Web 3.0 one thing is certain: users at this moment ain't happy.

http://www.projectopenletter.com

Over 3,000 people have signed it, including some of the big names. They are demanding a product that... works.

What next? A meta revolution?

It's not that bad

Remember when web things such as chat rooms and online dating were embarassing to mention?

I think there is a lot of unnecessary hype around Second Life, but it is an exciting development. How can it not be exciting when you have a 3D environment where you can built and script pretty much anything you like in a thriving economy?

Most people are not as immersed as the lady mentioned in the article. Not more than millions of gamers spending hours in front of their consoles.

To be fair on Linden Labs they are committed to a certain degree of openness. For example, they have made the source code for the Second Life Viewer available to everyone.

It's right to dismiss the hype and all the bull****, but there a good things about it too that The Register could report on.

Daily Telegraph rattles legal sabre at Google

But there are tools to get de-listed

There are ways and tools the Daily Telegraph can use to get de-listed from Google (search).

The can also request Google not to include DT content/links in their News product.

So why aren't they doing this?

But I do agree with Kevin. YouTube is a better example of how Google is making a lot of cash off other people's content.

Motorola Motofone F3 e-ink handset

Always do your research before you buy

I didn't, and now live in fear that my newly acquired F3 will not be dogged by problems.

I've just bought it during my lunch break for no particular reason. It cost £15 + £20 Pay-As-You go credit on T-Mobile.

So far so good. In fact, So far I love it.

It has as basic set of functions, which is all you need if you're only after a phone that does phone things. The screen is very pleasant and yes, it looks a little bit like paper. The interface is easy enough to read and navigate, but a tad on the slow side.

I'm about to go to the bathroom and test whether the screen can be read in darkness. I might report back in 15 minutes or so.

In my opinion the F3 will become a cult-classic.

Sony PlayStation 3

Re.Re. Gameplay

Thanks for the reply, Tony.

Perhaps 'gameplay' is not the right word.

What I am interested is how the hardware you describe delivers the gaming experience in terms of graphics, smoother action, 4D surround sound with vibra-control head massages, etc...

I'd love to read game reviews too, and get the opinion of techy types that may be as crap at games as I am ;)

What about the gameplay?

What did you think about the games?

This review is like Jeremy Clarkson telling us all about the cars he takes for a spin and not telling us about the ride itself.

"We conduct an in-depth review of this eagerly-awaited games console and discover what all the fuss was about."

The fuss is about a high power, high price console delivering games that are: ____________________________

(Please fill the space with comments about gameplay)

I appreciate that this section is dedicated to Hardware, but it would be nice to know what the hardware actually does.

Cheers,

Lawrence