Posts by Simon Day

Wii Countdown conundrum brands family 'SH*THEADS'

Not the worst thats come from the show

I think this is a classic personally

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0Yds_GijJg

Tories declare students a burden on us all

Nonsense targets

The real nonsense is the target that 50% of school leavers should go to university. This is rubbish! Not everyone needs a degree, and while 3 years of more drinking, socialising and partying is rather fun, you shouldn't expect the rest of us to fund it for you.

The target should be closer to 20% or 25%, the A levels harder so there is actually a useful distinction for your grades and the courses aimed to actually be useful in future career. That then halves the tax bill. If you want to go further you can increase the fees over all, but add scholarships tapering from full for the top 10% of school leavers down to partial for the next 10%.

There is no shame in not being academic - for many, on the job experience and training is far more valuable than a degree - this applies to anything from plumbing to junior and middle management

Industry groups leap to Chip and PIN's defence

No magnetic strip?

I'm not sure about this case, but a large number of weaknesses with chip and pin stem from the presence of the magnetic strip.

Why can't I request a card from my bank that does not have a magnetic strip and will ONLY work in chip and pin, plus up to date UK ATM machines?

I'd be willing to accept the loss of ease of use for the gain in security!!

Mozilla lights fire under Thunderbird

What is really needed.

What is needed isn't fancy addons, skins, IM integration or all this nonsense.

Its decent calendar integration with support for shared calendars using protocols that outlook users can work with - even if that means mozilla releasing plugins for outlook themselves.

Until they get that Thunderbird will never make it in the small company environment, an area where it should excel.

Phorm failed to mention 'illegal' trials at Home Office meeting in 2007

reg reader campaign time?

That civil servant "works for us" right?

Lets have his mailing address, direct line and email - I'm sure there are a few reg reader, who as uk tax payers would like to have a word with this chap....

And if he turns it down... well I'll just have to route such communications via my local MP - could get very messy for him if every MP in the country is being hassled by voters because he won't talk to the rest of us directly...

UK prisoners offered data cabling training

I hope they profile the criminals carefully

Laying cables, especially large installations, usually means being given building schematics.

I can't see that supplying this to people with a history of breaking and entering would be a particularly good idea.

Temp workers to get equal rights after 12 weeks

This might even help

IT contractors do all they can to separate themselves from permanent employee status.

As someone already pointed out - its the company that contracts, not the person as a temp worker.

If its possible to exclude yourself from the cover of this law as far as rights go (and I'm sure the appropriate clauses in the contract should make it clear) it should be another handy division and further help keeping those of us that choose to be IR35 safe

Legal experts wary of MySpace hacking charges

And the RIAA steps in for the defense

I mean they are going to aren't they?

If this passes, all anyone needs to do is put some simple terms barring the RIAA, associates, employees, friends and family from their site, broadband connection, IP in some obvious place - and if they get caught file sharing then the person that caught them is admitting a now criminal offense....

Would probably save them a lot of hassle to provide the defense lawyers on this one...

EDF circles British nuclear powerplant sites

This is obviously a cunning plan...

I'm sure you all see it...

The government has realised that there has been two major mistakes in the last 50 years.

Joining Europe and privatising most of the UK - and it plans to kill both of these with a single cunning solution!!

First you get foreign companies to buy up all the uk utilities and then pass legal requirements for them to invest in them,

Then at a later date you announce our withdrawal from the EU AND the renationalisation of all those services.

Since the "shareholders" then losing out will all be from other countries they can be told this was all done for security reasons and the uk government will allow them no legal recourse.

What could possibly go wrong?

Oz cops sound iPod road cross death warning

Headphones or not people are oblivious

I think I encountered the most stupid pedestrian yet this morning.

I cycle through london to get to work (yes I know, thats practically a death wish) - the last turn into the street my office is on is a small one, but still quite obviously a road.

I indicate for a good 20 yards since I know people don't pay much attention - I used to have a bell on the bike but after 6 months of extremely heavy use it has snapped, that that as an indication of how little attention many people pay.

Turning round the corner a guy steps into the road, completely without looking (not very safe as construction is going on further down the street so plenty of heavy vehicles take that same corner)

To my cry of "CAREFUL!" he answered "NO!"

I have to wonder what form of logic dreams this up.... and whether he'd say the same to 17 tonne lorry...

Mac is the first to fall in Pwn2Own hack contest

@Edward Rose

You don't run a software firewall, because you couldn't find a generic one?

Have you perhaps heard of IPTABLES?

Its part of your linux kernel - high configurable, good performance and with the right settings very secure.

Ok if you have a complicated setup it may take you a day to learn how to use it properly, but then network skills are useful especially if you work in IT.

There are hundreds of pre written scripts that will run basic firewalls for you, usually with a couple of insert here variables at the top.

Anyone not capable of using those should be allowed to connect a PC to a network, regardless of the OS.

The type of exploit use on OSX really goes to prove this.

Even assuming that the telnet session connected into the mac and had root privileges, it still required a user to click on a link without having verified it, and not having their machine behind a firewall. Both of these are user errors, admittedly compounded by what the browser allowed to happen (a very IE5 level of stupidity)

Oh and someone above suggested that root kits were named so because they exploit unix not windows more... that is true as far as it goes - but the reason as that these root kits were around before windows was available!

I'd rather see this competition rerun, but with the specification quite different: each box to be set up to run a specified collection of services and security hardened by an experienced admin, only its own inbuilt firewall, or 3rd party firewall running on the box to be allowed - no external hardware.

The boxes should then be scored on:

Performance/Cost (including admin time to set up - we assume ongoing time is minimal for any competent admin)

Do all services function as specified

How long to hack each box:

via a patch cable on day 1,

Local terminal day 2

Allow access to bios enabled usb ports and CD drive day 3 (no access to boot order, boot from usb/cd, or case internals - any child can hack a box with that level of access)

Portsmouth student peeled in potato laptop scam

@Markie Dussard

Actually you can con an honest man, quite easily usually.

The thing it its just not sporting - not to mention the severe difficulty in finding them!

Its so much easier conning dishonest people, besides they are so many more of them!

For those that want a crash course with a little entertainment on the side may I recommend a copy of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal - which if you have a couple of spare quid on you I can do you a sweet deal on an original signed hardback edition, if you'd just step towards the back of my car....

Dear ISP, I am not a target market

Have you written to your ISP yet?

If you do not wish your ISP to roll out such a system then why don't you write to them before they sign any deals. 1 person won't make a difference - but if a respectable percentage of a companies customer base say they will switch if they bring it in then there is a better chance they will listen.

When you write include the following:

Ask them if they are planning on introducing Phorm

Tell them you will leave if they do.

Tell them that as a material change to their terms and conditions that you will consider their contract unenforceable and recommend they see unfair terms in consumer contracts 1999 in regard to changes in terms and conditions (note IANAL) and that you will not pay an early cancellation or penalty fees and would be prepared to fight any in court as a matter of principal.

Tell them that if they will commit to not using this system you will be prepared to stay with them for the foreseeable future and that you will recommend them to those that you know who are intending to switch ISPs

Ideally if there are any lawyers out there that feel comfortable with providing a standard letter which would cover this I'm sure many would greatly appreciate it.

IE8 to follow web standards by default

Standards are wonderful things

There are so many of them to choose from....

(and anyone complaining about HTML should try debugging different vendor implementations of SCSI some time)

Brocade punts new SAN router for kid enterprises

Its not as bad as you think

Anyone posting that this is crap is obviously not thinking about what it will be used for.

Its a FC to Ethernet router for your SAN - so you will stick it in one of your smaller offices, that connects over WAN (possibly even internet) to the rest of your SAN.

You probably only have 1 server connecting in your remote office so 2 ports is plenty - and over WAN 50Mb is probably going to be enough.

If this is substantially cheaper than the full version I'd say it has deffinite appeal - especially since you can just use the pair of FC ports to connect to your existing FC switches if you have more than the 1 server in your small offices.

SAN kit aint cheap and most of it is focussed on the higher end - anything that can bring the costs down is going to be welcome to businesses that use SAN.

Mobo maker builds 'powerless' processor cooling fan

Are you sure its a CPU cooler?

The CPU slot looks quite obviously empty there?

That looks more like an oversized chipset cooler....

US gov now says Eye-o-Sauron™ border masts are crap

Thermal blankets anyone?

Lovely little things, a couple of quid from any camping of hiking supplies, fit in your pocket, cover you completely and stop 99.9% of infra-red.

Sew a couple of these into your clothes and you are now a small enough signature to appear more like a rabbit than a human.

There is always a work around!

BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

People don't want to pay for unlimited bandwidth

I'm a very heavy user of bandwidth - 150Gb a month some months, I have absolutely no problems with my ISP, a mixture of VPN, ssh file transfer and BT traffic.

The reason is I pay for the service - £75 a month, plus VAT for an 8Mb (up to) unlimited connection, with 20:1 contention on my exchange and garunteed zero contention on the ISP's end, no limits and no traffic shaping.

The majority of the time I get the full use of my connection with little or no contention on my local circuit.

Most people complaining are paying £9.99 a month or less, and then wondering why they get end up getting throttled.

Sorry but you get what you pay for.

Calls to ban hoodie-busting sonic weapon

Court case....

If people want these and set them so they are only audiable on their own premises then fine - though I would expect fair warning in writing before entering.

However I'm 26 and quite sensitive to high pitch noise - it frequently causes me migranes.

The first time I encouter one of these from a public footpath I will be calling my lawyer- its tantamount to assault.

Starbucks mocha clocked at 628 calories

Or just make it yourself...

I have my white chocolate caramel mocha - I order the same sauces starbucks use and we have an espresso machine in the office (which unlike starbucks is set at the right temperature to make a good espresso)

Oh and it costs me about 75p a cup instead of £4.

I have them for dessert - oh and I'm currently loosing weight.

When will people realise calories are not a bad thing - nor is fat. What you eat, what you do and when is a far more complex issue than just a couple of numbers

Drivers on the phone face the slammer

As a brit visiting the states...

I lived in the states for a couple of years. I was always shocked at the attitude that being asked to wear a seatbelt was an infringment of their freedom and rights.

I had to tell a few people sat behind me when driving to either put on their seat belt or to get out of the car - and then had to explain that it wasn't just them but the person infront of them (me!) they were risking!

That and I was generally quite worried by most of the driving over there. I've driven in france, holland, belguim, the uk and london (which is a category in its own right) and have to say that the US is the most worrying in terms of other drivers (though probably the easiest to navigate in terms of directions)

Web 2.0 - carry on, don't lose your job

Realistically the worst case scenario for most of us?

Ok you have a stupid manager who buys into these technologies, decides to shift to them and drops you like a stone.

You get your notice, redundancy too if you are permanant and sit with feet up on desk reading the job adds while chaos begins to desend on the department.

6 months later while you are happy in your new and probably better paying position you get a call on your mobile from the old company - begging you to come back to help them fix the mess.

So, do you tell them where to shove it?

Or do you quote a £1500 a day consultancy rate? :)

Either option has its satisfactions!!

Ofcom's 0870 rip-off reforms stumble at the final hurdle

Its worse on mobiles

Ìts infinitely more expensive when you have to use an 0845/0870 or even a 0800 number on mobiles.

Up until recently these national rate calls could be used from your free minutes.

No longer - even if you have a high tarrif with tonnes of time to spare on it, you will still be charged in full for these calls - this is what I find terrible.

Ok provide a national rate number if its to make it easy for customers - but it really needs to be made compulsary that a normal number is also available, and printed with the 08xxx number.

Banks are some of the worst - take barclaycard - they give their 0870 number, include a normal number (for dialing from abroad) but only let you use that to deal with lost or stolen cards!!!

Ramones sticksman sues Apple and Wal-Mart

Re: Oh, by the way...

Just a correction for you, if you had GPL'd your work and Walmart were selling it then you would have no cause to complaint as long as they were also providing the oringal source code and providing the code to any updates or derived works.

A while back trading standards tried to arrest a guy for selling firefix for £20 a time.

They were shocked at Mozilla for not having an issue with it, they simply pointed out that their license allowed it.

Dubai claims world's tallest building title

More useful statistics?

Like how many seconds of free fall for a base jump from the top of it, the angle of incline on the walls and the size of any open areas for landing in...

Oh and the name of the building super and how much the local bribe for a one way trip to the roof wouldn't go amiss

BT feels the need for 50Mb speed

Unlimited bandwidth - it exists

Some people scoff when I tell them this

But its really quite easy to get unlimited bandwidth with no fair usage, caps or contentions applied.

However those same people have a mild shock when I tell them what I pay for my home ADSL - 79 quid a month - plus vat from zen. If you want to use the bandwidth then be prepared to pay for it - I do and I am.

I will also say this about zen - you can use terms like linux, pppd and /var/log/messages to their first line support and they will actually know what you are talking about and be able to help!

Nomansland

Nomansland is a rural area

http://www.multimap.com/maps/#t=l&map=50.95367,-1.6393|16|32&loc=GB:50.95367:-1.6393:14|nomansland|Nomansland, Bramshaw, SP5 2

(oh and its just a few miles away from Canada too)

http://www.multimap.com/maps/#t=l&map=50.9609,-1.58912|14|32&loc=GB:50.9609:-1.58912:14|canada|Canada, Wellow, SO51 6

I think there are 2 other villages with the name Nomansland in the uk - though I'veno idea of the ADSL coverage there

eBayer mails UK lad £44k

Do you really want to keep it?

Are you sure?

Are you really sure?

The kind of person that is sending out 44 grand in cash and who also knows your address might not be the kind of person you want to rip off.

I think in this case notifying the police was probably the only safe thing the family could do - though I will admit - I might have pocketed a couple of grand and hidden it before contacting the fuzz.

British customers miffed at email response times

Email response is shocking....

But atleast the response to smalls claims court online (www.moneyclaim.gov.uk) is much much quicker

Dealing with airlines is often the worst I find, online booking, online hell desk an no customer service.

4 weeks after sending the first email and still no answer - file the court claim online and they do move a lot faster (and it costs them a little more but thats their problem)

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

El Reg is rebranding madness!!

Watch out - whale song at 12 O Clock!!

Severe danger of incense burning may also occur!!

Please be serious!!

Most self respecting UK companies go for the .co.uk - then to avoid cyber squaters and typo's grab the .com - but then alias it to the same site (works on small sites) or as I presume you are suggesting use mod_rewrite (or similar) to forward any of the .com's to .co.uk

All it takes is a 301 redirect and Robert's your fathers brother.

Of course if you do decide to move to a .com then I think we will need to start a petition at no. 10 for you all to be hanged, though being lenient you could be given colonisation instead.

Not happy with PC World's customer service?

Have you ever played pass the hot sell?

Its a great little game.

It only starts after you go into a store and after several times of saying what you want specifically, the sales person is STILL trying to sell you something else, that you don't want.

The rules of the game are pretty simple, you start saying yes. And yes to the next thing, and yes to the next thing.

Extra points if you can get them to unpack one of the models and demo it to you.

More extra points if they have to lug large boxes to the checkout before ringing them up.

The final move is when at the check out you say thanks very much, I don't want all that stuff but I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, now how about selling me what I came in for?

Some take it in good humour and a lesson in when to push sales, others get really pissed off and its time to walk next door.

Either way its a nice amount of satisfaction when you see their face!!

40% of kids regularly visit forbidden sites

Treat your childs network like an office network

I treat all my son's network connections the same way mine in the office are monitored.

All direct outbound connections are blocked, a web proxy (squid) is provided for HTTP traffic, all pages are logged, cached and post/get data is stored. Instant messengers are also allowed via the proxy but only when encryption is disabled.

I provide his email address through one of my domains, and I admin the mail server.

I don't manually monitor the list but have it scripted to send reports of commonly hit sites, and search for pattern matches for things that may be dubious - otherwise I give him free reign but with full knowledge of what I have set up.

True I'm sure one day he'll learn to hack around these restrictions within the home network, however if he is knowledgeable enough to beat me at security I figure he's old enough to make his own decisions

Oz cops cuff Darth Vader on his 30th birthday

Storm Tooper olympics?

I dread to think how long the shooting contest is going to take...

Unless they have really really big targets!!

Drive-by Wi-Fi 'thief' heavily fined

Permission, invitations and specifications

Ok this was in the uk, so it may presume a little more sense on the part of the law, but I do recall hearing of a court case that was dropped (if anyone can find it I'd love the exact details to be able to cite it properly) based on the defence argument.

The prosecution case was simple: The accused had used a wireless network without the owners permission, thereby breaking the computer misuse act.

The defence asked if a formal invitation from the network owner would constitute permission, the prosecution agreed this would be a valid form of permission.

The defence then produced the 802.11 specification, specifically the part about broadcasting the SSID. In this specification the packets that provide the name and SSID for the base station is called an invitation.

Since the person using the network had seen received this packet, they had therefore received and openly broadcast invitation to this network. Because there was no encryption on the network it was deemed fair to assume this invitation was valid.

The charges were dismissed by the judge

Another ISP throttles bandwidth

The advantage of cut offs

They are a really good way to get out of fixed period contracts :)

Don't let me ancel without a penalty?

No problem, I'll just torrent a dozen or so linux distros, at once, repeatedly, continuously, until you boot me from the network!

Can we have a proper study of Wi-Fi, please?

Its the black shakes!!

Now only keanu reeves, an ex MOD dolphin and a group of mad max rejects can save us from the evils of modern technology!! Don't forget the VR glvoes and goggles!!

Greek cops to paintball rioting fans

Head shots?

There is a reason you wear googles when paint balling - head shots can blind you - I hope the officers are going to be well trained on this point!!

Cars could run on aluminium, say US boffins

Fuel efficiency....

So whats the actual efficiency of this once you include emptying the aluminium oxide from your tank at the petrol station, carting it back to a power generating facility, then hauling the new aluminium pellets back to the petrol station?

I'll admit if the electricity used is cheap and clean then this has a lot of benefits...

However only really iceland is going to have that advantage (a country where a lot fo aluminium ore is shipped to because of how expensive aluminium is to refine, given its huge power requirment) because iceland has such a surplus of geothermal power it because more economic to ship the ore then the ship the refined aluminium back...

would the same happen if this went into cars?

I still see a problem though... 175Kg of aluminium, plus whatever water capacity you need, vs the normal 60-80kg of the fuel tank?

Its not going to work too well in smaller cars, but then this did come from american research and they don't seem to do small cars over there

Microsoft vouchers undercut patent claims

GPL v2 or later

Most software released until the GPL currently specifies GPL2 or later (see the below clause) notably the linux kernel does not, but the GNU software, such as glibc and gcc certainly does.

It is also up the the recipiant of the code which license to apply (again see below)

Lastly, whether or not a lot of the GPL 2 only software (such as the kernel) move to GPL is a moot point. A lot of essential software which has become part of linux is from GNU and will certainly be GPL 3.

think this is going to be a long messy battle covering many estoic parts of law, and that lawyers are already rubbing their hands together just thinking of how much they are going to be able to bill.

From the GPL:

9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions

of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will

be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to

address new problems or concerns.

Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program

specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any

later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions

either of that version or of any later version published by the Free

Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of

this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software

Foundation.

Bible heads for Hong Kong's top shelf

Rape not encouraged in the bible?

He obviously doesn't know his old testament very well.

Lot begged a crowd of men outside his house to leave him and his guests (who the crowd wanted to attack) alone.

In return he offered the crowd his two virgin daughters to do with as they please.

Sounds like encouraging rape to me....

(The old testament is full of stories of a similar ilk - I heartily recommend reading it to anyone who likes a fuller view of a religion rather than just knowing the sections your local vicar chooses to read at sunday school)

Argentinian commuters fight back

When I was on a train...

We would have dreamed of just having a broken down train!!

We had to get out and push!! and we didn't riot, oh no...

....

Thats nothing, we had to lie down in the gaps in the track so the wheels could run over us, crushing us to death while the driver and conductor danced around singing hallehula...

...

And if you try to tell MPs these days, they don't beleive a word of it...

Mumsnet settles with Gina Ford over defamation claims

Hosting in America....

Ironic as it seems it might be one of those times where it is beneficial to host your site on a .com in the US, through a US registrar rather than host in the UK.

At least they have certain protections for the sites themselves on content posted.

Sun may never set on British Empire's pint

Actually England's own fault..

Yep its all our own fault that we can't get a proper pint when we go state side.

True they still have 8 pints to the gallon over there - but rather oddly only have 16 fluid ounces to the pint...

Turns out the root cause goes back a few centuaries where we decided to sell those yanks a smaller gallon, but still charge them the full whack price.

True they were dumb enough (see also London Bridge) to fall for it so it can't be all our fault...

As for pints of beer

See here:

http://campaign.publicaffairsbriefing.co.uk/home.aspx

Downing Street rejects Vista petition

Price increase specific for the OEM version

Just a note the price increase is specific to the OEM version of windows - certainly an interesting topic as I'm sure people would consider which PC OS to buy differently if they were given the options at retail prices of no OS/ubuntu for free up to vista ultimate for an extra 300 quid...

On the other hand I still know people that when asked what OS they run will give ansers of, Office 2003, Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox.....

Virgin throttles national cable network

Not exactly harsh

When the throttles kick in they get restricted from their full speed to 50% of the full speed and a reduced upload speed??

That does not exactly seem harsh!!

Plusnet on the other hand has much worse system on their ADSL (and they are probably one of the better ADSL providers its sorry to say) after you exceed your monthly limit, they start throttling you, at different caps for different protocols, by the time you hit the full cap ftp usenet and p2p are completely blocked, http is limited to 256kbps - and this is for the whole month, not just the rest of the evening!!

Personally if virgin's service does exactly what they say they are going to do here (subject to the normal contention issues any provider has) I certainly would not be complaining... if it weren't for the fact I have no desire to have TV I'd be seriously considering their service

Boffins to UK.gov: Don't muck around with science teaching

Alf, you are dreaming

I'm afraid you are dreaming Alf,

Its probably been 20 years since they taught you enough science to make your own taser in science classes.

Electronics courses however fare a little better!!

(9v battery, lots of caps and a few transformers will just about do it)

The problem with schools is that there is now an opinion that every child should be capable of an A - which is purely nonsense, only the top 5-10% should be getting an A, and not even that if not enough come up to the standard, the more you water the qualifications the more worthless they become.

The simple fact is that in the same way most people can't run 100m in less than 11 seconds, most people cannot reach a high level in any given accademic subject.

It needs to be realised that this is not a problem, but a simple fact of life, school should be there to help people reach the maximum of their aptitude and then provide suitable tests to clearly separate those that can, from those that can't, and to which level the achieve.

No wonder most employers ingore qualifications these days and concentrate on previous experience.

Dell's dance with Ubuntu: True love or farce?

The average user wouldn't notice

Most users wouldn't actually notice they had linux installed - especially a linux like Ubuntu.

They are more likely to think that its just been rearranged a little and that it behaves a little differently but since they were fairly clueless with windows and just kept clicking until something worked, the same tactics will work in Ubuntu - they might even find it easier, who knows.

Ask them what they have at home on their computer as the OS and the answers will probably vary.

Some are likely to say its Firefox or OpenOffice

Others are quite likely to respond with something along the lines of "Oh its that new Windows vista Linux" or "Windows Ubuntu" without really knowing what they are talking about.

True a lot of people will notice - but (ordering business machines for the office excepted) they are unlikely to be shopping at dell.... bar possible ordering machines for users in the former category.

Engineers write defence against aliens manual

Why would they bother with fancy weapons?

Nice simply kenetic energy is all any invader would need.

Given they would have to have travelled several light years to reach us, a short trip to the asteroid belt on the way in isn't going to be an issue.

And if anyone has a good idea on how to stop an orbital bombardment of several thousand rocks raining down on us I'd really like to hear it.

It comes down to the same old choice - either we have to hope we are alone in the galaxy at this time, or that anyone else out there is a lot nicer than we are!

(or perhaps as just as bad as us and consider the planet earth the very latest in reality TV - but thats just far too sick to contemplate)

Loutish users scupper collaborative technology

You mean others don't....

You mean other people don't fill up their diary with entries for their normal working hours of either "busy getting my work done" or "lunch" so that manglers or meeting obsessed co workers don't just assume you are free?