* Posts by Patrick Evans

19 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007

Security industry too busy improving security to do security right

Patrick Evans

Re: Typo ...

That was the call. SSL has been verboten for a while. What the latest standard did was ban TLS 1.0, in favour of TLS 1.1 and above. It seems they''ve now backtracked on that, as support for TLS > 1.0 isn't quite as strong in the wild as it should be.

Top Eurocop: People are OK with us snooping on their phone calls

Patrick Evans

Ben Franklin nailed it 270 years ago

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Fourplay frolics: Vodafone launches landline broadband

Patrick Evans

FTTC

Fibre-to-the-curb? Really?

Orally urinating turtle boffin in nominative-determinism classic case

Patrick Evans
Meh

Hello and welcome to 2006.

WTF is... VoLTE

Patrick Evans

Bye bye battery

"It's like the early days of 3G. Back then, the new network was criticised for hammering handset batteries. Chipset and handset technology has solved that problem"

Really? I must have missed that one - if I need more than a day of battery life for some reason, I ditch 3G and drop back to 2G only and *that* solves the problem.

Or is a battery that gets me through til a teatime topup considered good enough these days?

Everything Everywhere bags 4G monopoly in UK - for now

Patrick Evans

Cheeky Vodafone

"The regulator has shown a careless disregard for the best interests of consumers" says Vodafone.

As an ex-customer, I'm fairly confident Vodafone couldn't give a rat's testicle for the best interests of consumers, so it's hard to give much of a toss what they think.

Sysadmins! There's no shame in using a mouse to delete files

Patrick Evans
Meh

Good grief

Anyone bothering to even debate the absolute merits of one against the other needs to grow up. Anyone who refuses to do so needs to be put against a wall and shot.

Spy Hunter

Patrick Evans

Re: BIG HAPPY SMILE

Outrun was good, but not quite the best. Why? Lack of turbo boost and guns. I give you: Chase HQ.

Steve Jobs' death clears way for Apple-Android peace talks

Patrick Evans

The more I read about Steve Jobs...

...the more I believe the bloke was a 24-carat world-class arsehole. And this article does nothing to change that.

Ten... best Blu-ray movies of 2011

Patrick Evans
FAIL

Proof that the medium ain't all that

Off those ten releases, there's only one I'd bother to watch, and it's not Tron.

What are you trying to prove, that Blu-Ray is as big a white elephant as 3D?

How to kill your computer

Patrick Evans

Will it blend?

Can't believe you didn't include the obvious option.

Vista attacked by 13-year-old virus

Patrick Evans

A victory for backwards compatibility

Vista able to run a 13 year old application with no known errors. It's not often you hear that about a Microsoft OS!

Facebook to show profiles to search engines

Patrick Evans

"May no longer be able to hide" ?

As you mention elsewhere in the article, it's dependent on privacy settings - you can adjust these to completely hide your profile from search results even for registered and logged-in users. Hiding is a doddle.

Buffalo's USB HDDs get bigger, faster

Patrick Evans

Firewire, maybe?

USB isn't the only way of plugging external devices into a computer, after all...

Enraged reader savages iPhone fanboys

Patrick Evans

"But will it run Linux"

This man is my new hero. I give it a week before someone starts whinging about how it's too hard to run Linux on an iPhone.

Nokia N95 multimedia slider phone

Patrick Evans

Vodafone seem to hate them

I called Vodafone twice a couple of weeks ago, asking about an upgrade, and both reps I spoke to had nothing nice to say about the N95. Battery life in particular seems to be a major complaint (the Nokia 9000i I had almost a decade ago sported similar battery life, ffs) as does the uber-buggy OS/app suite.

Not taking Voda's word for it, I asked around, and of the acquaintances I could find who'd one them already, all had sent them back after a week or so as unfit for purpose.

Not quite the near-glowing recommendation this review suggests.

Barclays deploys PINsentry to fight fraud

Patrick Evans

If I wanted to carry a calculator...

...I'd carry one. And probably buy a pocket protector too. But I don't, and my phone has a calculator built in anyway.

My employer already foists a second phone, two smart cards and two RSA tokens on me, none of which I particularly want to carry, but I do because it's part of the job. If a supplier (which is all a bank really is) wants me to carry more crap around, they can stick it.

Patrick Evans

Hardly convenient

Half the appeal of online banking using a web browser is that I can access it from any machine I choose, wherever I happen to be. If banks start to make physical devices mandatory for access, that convenience evaporates in a moment.

Two-factor authentication is fine and dandy, but to be workable it needs to be a) portable, and b) require some common token for multiple services. If I have to start carrying separate tokens around for my job, my bank account and anything else using a similar mechanism, my pockets are going to bulge in no time.

Maybe the answer is a man-bag...

Sunshine

Patrick Evans

Spoilers, anyone?

Oh great. A review that gives away the ending. Thanks a bunch.