Posts by Chris Miller

UK users spending more time online

How can they tell?

Hours per week spent online may have been a meaningful measure when almost all home users were on dial-up connections - but with broadband, surely I'm 'online' whenever I'm sitting at my PC (or, if you prefer to measure it from my DSL router, 24x7).

These guys need to decide what they want to measure. Is it time spent using a web browser, playing interactive games, using IM, downloading media files, reading email? All of these are much more difficult to find out than 'time online', but at least they might mean something!

Greenland's super-melty summer

What does this mean?

"enough snow melted in Greenland this year to cover the surface of the USA more than two times over." To what depth? Two inches, millimetres. microns ...

Free-market think tank urges EU to unbundle Windows

Massive over-reaction

Instead of making life twice as expensive (and ten times more complicated) for the vast majority of purchasers of desktops and laptops, all that needs to happen is to prevent Microsoft selling an OEM licence that is only available to manufacturers that agree to installing it on *every* PC they produce. Volume discounts are absolutely fine, but manufacturers should be allowed to supply bare PCs without losing the ability to produce (cost-competitive) PCs with Windows preinstalled.

Then if there's a commercial (albeit minority) demand for unbundled systems, the market can meet it without introducing significant penalties for the majority.

Perhaps this proposal is intended as a negotiating position, rather than a suggested policy. I certainly hope so.

Balls: Schools should police the net

Bullying?

For heaven's sake let's try to preserve some degree of meaning in our use of language. Punching smaller kids in the nose and stealing their dinner money - that's bullying. Sending offensive text/IM messages is unpleasant and should be discouraged, but if nothing worse than receiving such things happens to you in life, count yourself pretty damned lucky.

At least by using technology they're leaving an audit trail behind, unless they've heard of Tor ...

People are biggest threat to IT security

Is this a surprise?

"... the mathematics is impeccable, the computers are vincible, the networks are lousy, and the people are abysmal." Bruce Scneier

Reference kilo shows mysterious weight loss

Time to diet

Oh no! Does this mean we've all become 0.000005% heavier?

Britannia triumphs over Johnny Metric

Meanwhile, sewer le continong

The metric system has been universally adopted. Except, ...

If I buy produce in a French marché, I can ask for une livre (pound) and get 500g. In Germany I can ask for ein pfund (pound again). Computer screens and TVs in France are usually measured in pouces (inches - I think this is supposed to be the distance a flea can jump).

Most building and plumbing materials are still imperial, though described as metric. So you can buy a 5x10 (cm) length of wood, but if you measure it carefully, it's actually 2x4 (inches). Go figure, as they say on the other side of the pond ...

The Times: PLA war-hackers can switch off US navy

Who is Wortzel?

Clearly a reincarnation of Adge Cutler:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adge_Cutler

ISPs turn blind eye to million-machine malware monster

Just block spoofed packets

The DSLAM (or analogous device if you're not using ADSL) 'knows' the IP address of each connection. Any IP packets arriving from these end-points with a non-matching source address should just be dropped. While this wouldn't prevent DDoS or spam, at least we'd have a decent chance of identifying where they'd come from.

Or am I missing something?

Original thinking in a derivatives market

Stockbroker (def)

A person who invests your money until it's all gone. - Woody Allen

NASA boffins resist intrusive security probe

More boffins?

I thought we'd established that only British scientists can be 'boffins'!

Top judge: put everyone in UK on the DNA database

Non-runner

Only a senior judge ("What exactly is a 'web site'?") could think this idea was even a starter. Even ignoring the inherent implausibility of a government-sponsored large-scale computer system being successfully implemented, the logistical difficulties of taking DNA samples from 60 million people (plus many millions of foreign visitors every year) and matching their identities unambiguously should be obvious.

As for his comment that "Disproportionate numbers of ethnic minorities get onto the database" - since the main way of getting onto the database is by being arrested, this would suggest that a disporportionate number of ethnic minorities get arrested, something that should not come as a great surprise to anyone living in the real world (I make no comment on the justice or otherwise of this state of affairs). For the same reason, I would strongly suspect that a lot more than 50% of those already on the database are male.

Boffins unveil sharpest ever stellar snaps

Some thoughts

A very clever technique (and British technology, dammit!), which may well allow kit that's no longer leading edge (like Palomar) to get a new lease on life. But I wonder if it could be used on leading edge kit, because (presumably) it must require substantially longer observation times, while you're waiting for a sufficient number of these 'lucky' moments to occur and observing time on these instruments is in great demand.

It's noticeable that the pics on the Cambridge U web site show relatively 'bright' objects. It's also the case (to my untutored eye) that the image of the Cat's Eye nebula doesn't show as much detail as existing images - e.g.

www.astro.psu.edu/~mrichards/figures/Cats_Eye_Nebula.jpg

Egg.com server cracks

Multiple ISPs

So, you're one of the largest on-line financial institutions in the UK and you put all your comms through a single (ISP) point of failure? Something doesn't sound quite right!

Diebold rebrands evoting business, revises forecasts

"due in part to the rapidly evolving political uncertainties"

Good to know that's the real reason. I just assumed that it's because their machines are complete cr@p!

Designer breaks up trad PC design

Nothing new

An Intel-based PC built from clip-together modules? Convergent Technologies (of blessed memory) were doing this 20 years ago (admittedly the modules had to be somewhat larger in those days):

http://www.sunsoft.no/bilder/ctos.jpg

Boffins issue speeding ticket for FTL photons

But how fast is that ...

... compared to the speed of the average sheep?

I think we should be told!

Palm directs Sprint to Centro

But what will it run?

If it's just going to be Garnet v5.4.9.1, I'm not really interested in the fact that 6 of the buttons have been rotated through 90 degrees.

Dell accountants spank themselves

Is The Register now obsolete?

Tom Lehrer observed that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize".

Now we have the news that "... financial leaders will be required to take accounting ethics training", managing to use the words "accounting" and "ethics" in the same sentence.

Please reassure me that you will still be here when I return tomorrow!

ISP panicked by MS Patch Tuesday

Life's a bitch ain't it?

You offer to provide an Internet service, and then your customers go and spoil it all by using it to *download files* - who'd'a thunk it?

Honestly, if you can't cope with a few MB of MS updates, you're really going to struggle when we're all streaming HDTV to our iPlayers ...

Streaking star leaves sweeping tail in its wake

Not so fast!

Actually Lucy, there *is* a speed of sound in space (and it's very high compared to Mach 1 in the Earth's atmosphere). This is because space is not (quite) empty, but travelling 'supersonically' has similar effects - matter can't get out of the way of the supersonic object and therefore gets compressed to (relatively) high temperature and pressure.

http://helios.gsfc.nasa.gov/qa_study.html

has more info (see #28).

Yahoo! tops! Google! on! customer! satisfaction! survey!

Exclamation! marks!

Please! keep! them!

BT rubbishes BBC bandwidth throttling reports

Kservice

I've been a beta user of iPlayer for a while now (and, for me anyway, it has worked well and delivered excellent quality pictures). I've no experience with P2P systems, but I can definitely state that I've seen no unusual/unexpected bandwidth usage (which for me is normally in the range of 3-4GB a month). Kservice has used 16 seconds of CPU time in the last 10 hours, although I agree that it can be a bit of a hog while downloading progs.

Welch on renewables deal, UK government told

Welch

I'm sure Lucy can defend herself, but just to note that there are quotation marks around this expression - perhaps any arguments regarding political correctness should be taken up with Mr Wolfe.

Earth will feel the heat from 2009: climate boffins

As Freeman Dyson put it:

"[Climate] models solve the equations of fluid dynamics and do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields, farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.

"The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That's why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."

Offender tracking database could be binned

Get it out in the open

The only way to put an end to this stream of fiascoes (not just confined to IT - buy a copy of Private Eye and read the 'In the Back' section for examples ad nauseam), is to make public the terms and conditions under which the orders are placed.

At the moment, this is all cloaked with "commercial in confidence" terms. While this may be entirely appropriate for deals struck between commercial organisations, this is MY and YOUR money that is being thrown down the drain. It would be most enlightening to see a breakdown of these figures - how much for database design, how much for hardware - which (of course) is precisely why it will never happen.

Come on Gordon - let's have some of that open government we were promised (ooh look, a flying pig just passed by my window).

Pipex invites customer to get 'c**ted'

Obscene passwords

Doubtless someone will now get the fun task of writing an obscenity filter for this app.

Back in the 80s I wrote an SSO system for our 'green screens' , which involved a computer-generated five letter password. I was concerned that someone might be allocated an objectionable password, and though I couldn't think of anything too bad that had five letters, I ensured that no password could end in UP, ME or IT. The system went live, 2000 users were given new passwords and, sure enough, someone complained because theirs was PENIS ...

PDF spam tsunami hits email inboxes

It's so sad

I'm not sure which is sadder:

(a) that there are folks out there who, on receiving an unexpected email from an unidentifiable source with a PDF attachment, open and read the attachment and then go on to purchase the stock;

OR

(b) that I didn't buy 100,000 shares for myself and sell when they went up by 50% - doh!

Shooting stars to dazzle in September...

Daylight meteors?

Sadly, the Aurigids peak at 11:36 GMT, so to see them at their best probably entails a trip to Hawaii ...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/08aug_aurigids.htm?list134468

We'll never get alien telly, says Zagreb boffin

More number crunching

"the probability that one of them will be detected is about nine per cent.

Which is about a 8.9% higher probability than me being able to get a decent signal from Virgin cable."

and about 8.999% higher than the chance of there being a prog worth watching.

In the words of Douglas Adams ...

... this is the Galactic News Channel broadcasting on the sub-ether waveband around the galaxy around the clock and before we move into the news we just want to say a big "hello" to all the intelligent lifeforms out there and to everybody else the secret is to keep banging the rocks together, guys!

Linux database becomes a browser

Pedants 'r' us

So Nate really ought to have said that you can sort ten million records in 11 minutes 40 seconds, rather than 10 minutes - the man should be shot at dawn!

Flash: Public Wi-Fi even more insecure than previously thought

Not Google

@Rich

The point is not just that I can read your email (I can do that by sitting next to you on the train/plane), but I can login as you and send email in your name. How about if I send some messages to OBL on your behalf ;)

@Ian

Actually Google are ahead of the field in that they at least allow you to configure your account to use HTTPS throughout (most people won't, of course).

Presumably all these webmail providers use HTTPS only on their login pages because of the overhead of using it throughout. Hopefully this will be a wakeup call. I know 3DES pretty much requires hardware acceleration to support high-volume traffic, but I understood that AES was much better in this respect. Does anyone have any real world figures for the CPU overhead of using AES - 10%, 20%, 50%??

Nice hack!

Although this is an important result, I would hope (probably in vain) that no-one would be using Gmail, MSN (sorry, 'Live') etc. for business or even for personal information that they would like to be kept confidential. And especially not from a 'public' location ...

Teachers vote to ban internet

Wi-fi nuts

I assume none of these 'professionals' are involved in the teaching of science subjects. Oh I forgot, we don't teach science any more, since the existence of right and wrong answers tends to bring down the GCSE averages

Nurses express doubts about patient e-records

Electronic records more difficult to lose?

Maybe, but at least with paper it's only one record at a time (barring a major fire). Who would bet against an error at some point that will wipe millions of patient records in one go?

California e-voting machines have more holes than Swiss cheese

@Iamfanboy - undisclosed accounts

"WHY was it included in the first place? It had to have been intentional and planned."

Not necessarily. It was most likely a default account that the developers forgot or didn't know about. This is one of the most common vulnerabilities that are found during many types of security testing.

Cock-up? Certainly - if I was attempting to subvert the system, I wouldn't do it by inserting a 'secret' account, and I'd at least give it an obscure name.

Conspiracy? Only if you're a fan of that sort of thing.

BBC Trust backs calls for Linux iPlayer

Content providers

A lot of BBC TV output is provided by third parties (e,g, RDF who provided the now notorious footage of Her Maj). I'm sure they now have agreements in place allowing them to deliver this content over the Internet, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that such agreements require 'watertight' content management.

Jordan names sprog 'Princess Tiaamii'

Meanwhile, back on 'Countdown' ...

... "Another consonant please, Carol"

Governments' systems used to power phishing push

"spamversied"?

As Google puts it: Did you mean spamvertised?

Google's Lemon squeezes out web app bugs

This will upset IBM

Having just shelled out $$$ for Watchfire, whose AppScan is one of the leading commercial tools for identifying web app bugs.

Survey lays bare people's phone habits

Rude awakening

"I have been woken at 2.30am on Boxing day" - my phone comes with an 'off' switch, doesn't yours?

Strict copyright laws do not always benefit authors

English v German

If you write fiction in English, your potential marketplace is 400 million with English as a first language and well over a billion if you include second languages. I can't remember the last time I saw a book on sale in Britain that was translated from German, but I guarantee that every German bookshop will have translated copies of the latest Harry Potter.

I'm not claiming this is either good or bad, it's just the way things are - but I don't see how they've made any allowance for these fundamental differences in this survey.

El Reg lobs iPhone at Genius Bar

3G or 2.5G

I have no desire for or experience with the iPhone, but I think producing a consumer phone without 3G is a good call. I've just bought a Treo 680 which is similarly 'crippled', because:

a) 3G significantly reduces battery life;

b) I have no enthusiasm for watching last night's footy on a 2-inch screen;

c) I refuse to pay the networks' extortionate data rates if I use it as a laptop modem.

I expect this makes me an atypical user, though.

How can you possibly test modern software fully?

Fixed, but ...

... only in 1 of 2 occurrences of "140". QA's tough isn't it :)

Bletchley Park scientist dies in car crash

Thanks Tom

You are a Google god!

Come clean amanfromMars

You are an artificial intelligence, aren't you ;)

Michie on Turing

I paraphrase (can't find the exact quote on the web):

Bletchley Park contained many extremely clever people. Often one of them would produce a wonderful new idea, but afterwards you would think "given a bit more time, I could have thought of that". But Turing was a true genius. He would produce ideas and afterwards you would think "I could have spent 20 years on the subject and never have come up with that".

Another link with the glory days at Bletchley sadly departed.

'al-Qaeda' puts on big shoes, red nose, takes custard pie

Economist quotes Lewis

Mr Page's "terror-clowns" have made it into the hallowed pages - see:

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9441495&fsrc=nwl

(I hope this is 'free to view')

No tip o' the hat to El Reg, though :-(

I saw aliens at Roswell, claims dead PR man

It must be true

After all, no PR person would ever state a deliberate untruth with the intention of gaining media coverage ... would they?