Posts by Bob

Google 'GDrive' revisits tech-pundit G-spot

I'll go the simple root, my mum can use google

I have a very simple alternative to GDrive, it's called a soekris box hung off my fat pipe.

Always on, uses no power worth speaking of, I don't have to worry about another company indexing my data and if the security fails or if the server is down I can only blame myself.

Of course I work in IT and know how to do all this, so for people like my mum GDrive seems a good place to stick pictures of aunt Bessie.

Also, to an AC above: "Yes it won't suit power users but really how many of those are there over 25?" ??

I would definately consider myself a power user and I'm 29, ignoring the point that the internet was created by people who are very much older than me... I think there are quite a few of us myself...

Always go to the old guy with the beard if you can't work out how to do something dodgy in IT, the kids will direct you to the programs that the old guy wrote.

Tell Santa to bring more assault rifles

@Wow. Are you brits completely disengaged

Nope, we aren't disengaged, we are just too polite to get to the point:

The entire mentality of gun ownership in America is completely and utterly stupid and we just can't understand how the (apparantly) premiere nation in the world can be so collectively idiotic.

As mentioned previously, must gun crime is an act of passion, or accident. Husbands shooting wives, kids accidentally shooting parents, robbers without guns taking guns off home owners and shooting them.

Normal citizens need guns like penguins need pet polar bears.

I can understand having gun clubs which are tightly monitored and allow people the delights of firing guns, but I can't understand allowing you to take the gun home afterwards.

And finally, your country doesn't get invaded by land because apart from Canada which politically isn't going to think about invading you for a very, very long time you are surrounded by two huge oceans and only a tiny, tiny strip of desert to mexico. America is quite safe as far as a land attack by a standing army is concerned, you really should stop worrying.

Really, really finally: You waited as long as you possibly could with WWII, then you came over and shot all the allies whilst charging us billions of dollars for the privaledge. Looking back, I think we shouldn't have bothered asking for help.

Massive ATM fraud triggers Gulf banking jitters

Complete non story

This is the financial equivalent of an American student being caught with a penknife compared to Columbine.

The largest bank has 223 ATMs, as opposed to a small European bank which normally has thousands.

If it was an inside job or the banking systems were breached then the people involved are obviously useless. You could easily hammer hundreds of accounts per hour and you would have to to make it worthwhile since the banks will notice quite quickly.

Obviously the UAE don't have a problem with card fraud and some idiot at routers or the like decided that this was important.

Shame on reg for bothering to publish this with out at least making it funny.

Today is not Hadron Collider Day

Engineering at it's best

"following an initial hiccup which appeared to be fixed by the traditional expedient of turning it off then on again"

Forget about the God particle, when will science discover the elusive "Gremlin particle"?

The evil beast which builds up inside electrical systems, wreaking havoc until some idiot says "have you tried turning it off and on again". When you eventually succumb to the annoying wittering said gremlin particles are destroyed by the loss of electricity and the bloody thing works again!

With this discovery Microsoft might finally be able to create an OS that doesn't need restarting every few weeks... No, sorry, that's just because it's code is shit...

We should also spend time finding the "weak engineering god atom", the atom which constantly fixes weak hardware until finally somebody decides to turn off the power, killing the weak engineering god atom and causing the hardware to explode the next time the power is applied. For examples see 30 year old mainframes and, strangely, light bulbs.

I did get good use out of the media hype by successfully arguing that since the world was due to end at 9:30 this morning (German time) I didn't see any point in coming to work so that was why I was late :) My manager obviously has a reasonable sense of humour, especially for a German.

Blank robbers swipe 3,000 'fraud-proof' UK passports

@Boring Bob

You had a nice little rant at Tony, so I can have a little rant at your good self.

I do work in the credit card industry, I work on EMV (chip and pin) systems and I write and design systems for the industry, so hopefully that removes any bullshit about whether I know what I'm talking about or not.

My knowledge is only based on Seccos type chips, so it might not work for all, but you can reasonably easily crack these credit card chips for offline use.

You need a lot of kit which is easily available, a lot of knowledge which isn't so hard to come by and a public key which can be obtained but is the hardest part.

With all this you should be able to make a chip which would pass at a petrol station or such place where they routinely do offline transactions.

If the transaction is done online then life gets a hell of a lot more difficult and you would be very, very lucky to get it to work, but of course it is not impossible which is why I have a job.

I have no idea about passports, but I would imagine they would use a very similar system and given that public sector workers don't get paid so much I'm sure an organised gang could find someone willing to leak the specifications and any public keys required.

Also, given the fact that the government are absolutely crap at databases and big centralised systems they probably have a fallback system for offline so it might just work.

Certainly where the government is concerned, never say never.

Mines the one with the German flag so I don't have to worry about the shit English government any more.

Rebellious BT computers refuse to take orders

I feel so sorry for you all

I had one run in with BT when I was a student. They wanted some ludicrous amount of money for me to be able to pay them more, I decided paying nothing to NTL so they could charge me money was more wise.

Since then I jumped the national ship and settled in Germany where the same thing happens with Deutsche Telecom, but they actually have an unbundling system that works. Therefore I pay €30 a month to Alice (of F1 and Moto GP fame) for extremely cheap phone, free in Germany and about 2p a minute in Europe, plus true, real, tested 16MB internet. Plus I only got charged €10 for the DSL box which normally costs more like €50 - €100, no sign up fee.

BT behave like a monopoly because the government let them. Ofcom is definitely the way forward and your MP as well. There is no good reason why brits only have a choice of BT and sometimes Virgin.

Also, please bear in mind that Virgin has been buying up all of BTs competition. Even if it was only local, they made an impact, Virgin just wants to become the monopoly rather than change it.

Heart because I love watching BT adverts and remembering that I don't have to use their shite. It's good to talk, as long as you don't have to talk to BT!

CherryPal out sweetens Apple with 2W, ultra-cheap PC

Soekris sounds much better

Anybody who finds these interesting should have a look at a Soekris box.

The fastest runs at 500Mhz and half a gig of RAM, and costs a little over €300 (more like €400, about £300, when you get through all the charges).

They are amazing little boxes for running as home servers / firewalls etc. They are upgradable, having hard drive connectors, PCI / mini PCI and USB connectors built in, plus they have 4 ethernet cards.

The only thing they lack compared to these cherries is a VGA connector (you can add a PCI card) and they use more like 10W, but that shouldn't matter compared to a normal 400W or so PC.

Mine runs OpenBSD a hell of a lot faster than any Windows PC I've ever seen and it won't randomly delete your backups like Windows Home Server...

If you want a PC substitute I think you can forget about these types of devices, but for a little data server, firewall, router etc I haven't seen anything better.

Plus, for Jamie Kephalas, the website doesn't play any stupid audio...

Windows Vista has been battered, says Wall Street fan

The videos show it all

The lovely swish M$ videos show the companies mentality.

I tried to watch them on a 2Mb corporate line which is normally good enough for streamed video. In this case the video spent 3 minutes buffering, played 30 seconds and stopped for a minute or two, repeat until end.

Obviously I got bored before the end of one video, never mind 24...

Windows Vista is a very good looking OS (which is seriously lacking in *nix OS's), but I want a computer to compute, not look good.

Same as the video, long time to start, then every few minutes it needs a little nap.

Personally, I run a XP desktop for me to interact with ('cos it looks nice) and everything important goes on an OpenBSD server, which certainly is "safer, easier, more reliable and more versatile" than most operating systems.

When M$ stop trying to hawk rubbish because it looks nice I'll rejoin the flock. Until then my ageing XP system will be tweaked until it fails to be usable (10 years perhaps) and then I'll go to Linux :)

Paris because she too looks very nice, but just doesn't work