Posts by Dave White

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

That's one way of looking at it

We control what can and cannot be changed on (or escape out of) our laptops, virtual machines, servers etc, with group policies, regular automated audits of machines, Active Directory tiering etc. Right now there is already a GPO to allow your users to access copilot or not, and I would not be surprised if that wasn't enhanced with more options like "do not allow interaction outside of the chat window", in the future.

Like many articles on El Reg, this is not factually incorrect, but is definitely presented in a very biased way...

BOFH: The Boss has a new watch – move readiness to DEFCON 2

8 Below

There is a club in Munich called 8 Below. The ceiling in the club is a massive array of addressable LEDs, which are linked to the sound system. If anyone remembers the old Cthuga program for linux/DOS in the 80's, then this was the big brother of that. It does patterns, text, images and I wouldn't be surprised if it could show movies. It made for some of the trippiest drunken experiences I've had here! I have no idea if this kind of thing is common, but it certainly should be.

Look for "Hangover 2000er Party @ 8 Below" on Youtube to see what I mean.

How do you protect your online systems? Cultivate an insider threat

Re: Employee IT skills?

I would think that one needs a good IDS system before putting this in place. The idea would be that you have enough reporting to know that while Fred in HR can't type his password, Dave shouldn't be trying to log into these particular systems.

There's more to it than that, of course. But having the lowest hanging fruit tested by everyone is a great way to keep the security / IT teams under enough pressure that the lowest hanging fruit soon becomes unreachable to the average user.

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

That upgrade was how my dad thought me to solder. I would have been about 10 at the time.

I do remember burning my fingers on something, but I also remember that the upgrade worked so we could immediately load Lunar Jetman and play that.

Good memories!

UK suit over reselling surplus Microsoft licenses rolls on

Re: Licence, not license

Down-voting not because I disagree with your comment, but because I disagree with El Reg's management.

If this not a British publication?

Microsoft Azure DevOps revives TLS 1.0/1.1 with rollback

I blame the users

We run the on-prem Azure DevOps, and have experienced exactly the same thing with our installation in the past. I have enough knowledge to hazzard a guess as to what happened...

The back end is a bunch of TLS encrypted database connections, and connections to build agents running in Azure. I don't believe that Microsoft would have done the upgrade without testing the whole system. I could be wrong about that, but it doesn't seem likely.

The more likely issue is that incoming connections from customers are not capable of using TLS 1.2 with the weaker ciphers removed. They might have proxys / firewalls / AV scanners that are incomptible, or even worse; may be running really old OS versions that don't talk the more modern protocols. Yes, I'm looking at you, Windows 7.

UK watchdog's punishment for Blackbaud, Easyjet, other big privacy lawbreakers was slap on the wrist in private

Not that GCPR seems to matter to Easyjet

I have twice send emails to them over the last year asking them to delete my data from their databases as per my "right to be forgotten". The first one came back with an automatic reply saying they were busy and would get back to me soon.

Fast forward a year and I still have no reply.

Pretend starship captain to take trip in real space capsule

Re: Use the force Kirk

No no no... Use the Schwarz!

NASA’s getting really good at this flying a helicopter on Mars thing

What an amazing time to be alive! Think about what we as a species have achieved since the invention of the integrated circuit...

Ministry of Defence tells contractors not to answer certain UK census questions over security fears

It isn't often that swarf finds a place in daily conversation. Thank you for some fond memories, sir. Have an upvote.

ISP industry blasts UK Telecoms Security Bill for vague requirements, high costs of compliance

Clickbait

The title does not accurately reflect the content of the article. There were comments and questions raised, but no blasting. We aren't teenagers who need to be dragged into the story, El Reg, so please don't treat us as such.

Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

Hacker is also a name

My SO's surname is Hacker. It is a fairly common Germanic name. Hacker-Pschorr beer, anyone?

Aside: My surname is White. Our door has White Hacker on it.

Next day delivery a bit of a pain? We have just the thing... nestled deep in the terms and conditions

Newfangled

You should have used lipsum.com instead of loremipsum.io... it pre-dates the latter by 14 years, and is probably more relevant to this audience ;-)

Let's check in now with the new California monolith... And it's gone, torn down by a bunch of MAGA muppets

Re: Just....

Oh freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me...

Germany is helping the UK develop its COVID-19 contact-tracing app, says ambassador

Re: £11.8M

Sounds like they need to keep a handle on things. Maybe labelling them. Maybe a rindfleischmitarbeiteretikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz?

Ok ok, I'll get my coat...

Happy new year, readers. Yes, we have threaded comments, an image-lite mode, and more...

Re: Width

And? Does it?

Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too

Why not all of them?

Is there a practical reason why they can't print several notes for the most prominent scientists? Why not have one with Turing, one with Hawking, one with Lovelace etc?

Apple might be 'collateral damage' in US and China trade dust-up

Bernstein

Who is this "Bernstein", referenced throughout the story? There's a "Wall Street analyst", mentioned once, but nothing more about him.

d'oh because I don't have a clue!

GCHQ code-breaking challenge cracked by Google search

Active Server Pages

Of much more concern here is that this page was written in a language which microsoft made obsolete ten years ago. Why do people still use asp?

Mass ASP.NET attack causes websites to turn on visitors

--more--

This article contains absolutely zero information, and a whole lot of padding. Where's the information on the exploit? There's a link to the page, but no discussion about the exploit itself. There's a rather hysterical proclamation about ASP.Net, and then the linked page shows a piece of malicious JavaScript. Reporting standards seem to have taken a dive at El Reg Towers with this one.

WTF? because WTF?

Patent attack on Google open codec faces 'antitrust probe'

Patent-pool license?

"MPEG-LA chief executive Larry Horn said the organization was looking into the formation of a patent-pool license for VP8 and WebM".

Can anybody explain to me what that sentence means? Why would one group be looking for a license for a competing group's software?

Paris, because I'm dumb where IP law is concerned.

ASSANGE GRANTED BAIL

Maybe not

My understanding of the extradition process is that Sweden has to give notice to Britain if it is going to further extradite him to the USA. Britain would then be forced to decline, as a conviction of espionage carries the death penalty in the US. It may not all be as bleak as we think.

Apple MacBook Air 11.6in sub-notebook

I have one of these

I'm a Windows and Linux guy, and have long hated the Apple OS. Recently I found myself needing to buy a mac for work. The last time I touched a mac was about six years ago in a company I used to work for and having to localise software on it. I hated every minute of it.

As a freelancer I'm in the position of being able to chose my own hardware, and I opted for this model (the cheapest one they had). It was stylish enough for my liking, and not one of the cheaper white plastic macs that look like toys.

I haven't installed much on it, and I only use it for browsing, but I have to say that I love it. I believe that in a year I'll look back and wish I'd spent more and gotten a more powerful model, or a macbook pro. It works, and it works very well for what I need it for. In comparison to my other machines I find the quick boot up time of the SSD awesome, and the absolute silence of it is wonderful for some classes I take where I have brought it along.

I'm really not sure why all the nay-sayers are complaining. Yes, I'm sure it could be more powerful, but you aren't buying a powerful machine here. You are buying small. Yes I'm sure it could have more connectivity options, but you're not paying for those either. You are paying for the size of it, and sacrifices have to be made at that size. Don't like the network speed / SSD size / lack of X feature? Get a different machine.

Paris, because I feel like a tramp for buying Apple.

US college girls: Fatter roomie helps control 1st-year plumpening

What?

I've been reading the reg for many years now, and commented about three times. Once was in response to something I felt strongly enough to get off my arse and actually write out a comment.

The second was within the last week, and the last is now. What the hell is it with the increasingly irrelevant stories about crap that have nothing to do with IT? I can understand a segue into something related, and indeed encourage it. However, this has nothing at all to do with anything even remotely connected with the reason we read el reg.

Please stop with this bullshit.

'Unicorn' captured in remote Laos mountain forests

eh?

Isn't this The Register?

WTF 'cos... WTF???

Street View snooptrike stalks Siena

The thing that pisses me off..

... is that the Google camera car was seen in Munich as far back as early 2008, and the damn product STILL isn't available here.

Apple ships Air

Best thing about this review

"The other irritation most writers site - well, apart from the whole Apple hyperbole thing..."

Never was a truer word said. Why is it that when Steve Jobs says anything that most of the press treat it like Holy Writ?