Posts by Matt Bradley 330 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2007
Isn't this interesting? We all joyfully pounce on every little hardware defect in an Apple product (including sparking power supplies!), but when Microsoft get into manufacturing hardware, they manage to build something that burns down houses and nearly kills people.
Gives one a sense of context, that does.
:)
Does anybody remember the outcry when Red Hat started doing similar with Linux? Look how that turned out: Fedora is a very nice platform, (Ubuntu seems to have a lot in common with it, too!), and Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a SERIOUS hosting platform.
<thinks>Now where is that TheRegister is hosted?</thinks>
Clue: http://www.rackspace.co.uk/managedhosting/linux/
I don't necessrily see this as a bad thing. Let's see how it pans out over the next couple of years. Maybe MySQL could actually mature and become a real contender as a result of this. Which would be (IMHO) A GOOD THING.
"blew through $100 at 2 cents a click in a matter of 36 hours and got ABSOLUTELY ZERO business out of it."
$100 spent on ANY kind fo marketing is unlikely to give you any significant yield. If you bought $100 worth of business cards, you'd still have to spend many more hundreds dollars disbributing them. $100 would get you the smallest of small newspaper ads.
To be brutal, I don't spending $100 represents a siginifcant effort at exploring an advertising medium to get right result. I'm not suprised it didn'ty work for you.
The biggest problem with Google Adwords as far as I can see is that competitive markets get bid right up to (and sometimes beyond!) the point where the clicks become uneconomical. You have work *REALLY* hard to make sure you make the best of every click, or somebody else will scalp you!
These a word which we wishy washy pinko leftist liberals have for your last post: It's "delusional" (Note: not "delusionotistic", or "delusionesque").
This young lad was arrested for "terroristic" threats: This a phrase that comes right out of the George Bush book of neologisms. To suggest otherwise is utterly bizarre.
I could go on by pointing out that your country has been run by a right wing Republican government for the last 7 years, and that much of us in Europe are astonished at what US politics rather laugably thinks of as "Left Wing".
I might EVEN make reference to the fact that much of Europe has also watched with amazement whilst some sections of US society continue to insist that the population is actually SAFER because everybody has guns; perhaps this could somehow be connected with the weapons safety paranoia that school bodies are feeling? I don't know.
<Shakes head in bemusement>
"Ethical products are a scam. All of them. If they gave you the same return/service/value that other products did they wouldn't need to be labelled "ethical"."
WRONG! They need to be labelled "ethical" because they don't involve themselves in questionably organisations just to maximise profit. That does not necessarly mean either:
b] The product is inferior
or
b] The product is more expensive (although it often is - with good reason!)
"It's a cover"
I don't think it is responsible behaviour for one country to continue fuelling its ecomomic growth out of the suffering of others; otherwise global capitalism just becomes a conveniently deniably proxy for old fashioned imperial slavery, surely?
If ethical business is such a bad idea, why don't we just do away with unions and employment / investment law altogether?
Rant over.
"Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands."
...as opposed to leveraging retailer / manufacturer relationships to maintain > 90% of the web browser and desktop OS market, which is PERFECTLY OK AND LEGAL.
The sentiment of MSoft's statement is fine. The motivation is dubious.
Pot, meet Kettle.
Yep - I have similar problem with my >10 year old motor. Under certain circumstances, when parked in particular locations, the "lock" button refuses to work. Move ten metres (or is that meters.. hehe!), and it works fine. Personally, I suspect that it is Wi Fi networks interfering with my key / receiver.
As regards the original article / exploit: I imagine this will be very useful to organised cirminals trying to gain access to large properties / expensive cars, but not much use to anybody else. Anything that requires the villian to hang around with a few kilos of electronic equipment just in order to clone the key is going to be worthless to the average car thief or burglar: they can just break a window. I imagine that the manufacturers of high end home security systems and executive motors are already using security far more sophisticated than this, so this makes this discovery a non-problem.
Nice to see boffins are still doing their jobs well but personally, I'm still more worried about some scally smashing my window for my radio, than some techie sitting in the bushes with a laptop.
If Microsoft change their implementation of OOXML in MSWord, they'll no longer be allowed to call it OOXML.
Heise.de says:
"36 countries and standardization organizations appended comprehensive technical comments to their votes in the final round, and Microsoft will have to take them into account. The vendor will be forced to thoroughly revamp its current Office standard storage format for the upcoming initial implementation of the "new" OOXML."
Once MS has complied with the implementation changes, we'll have something that everybody can work with. Now all we need is an OOXML implementation for OpenOffice, and this will STRENGTHEN OpenOffice.org's position in the market.
Hi george,
I think AC did read RTFA: I suspect you didn't? (or at least closely enough)
"Double Tax Avoidance Treaty" suggests that the treaty assist US companies to avoid having to pay taxes in 2 countries, preventing them from paying the tax in India, but still making them taxable in the USofA. <http://incometaxindia.gov.in/publications/9_Income_Tax_For_NRI/Chapter012.asp>
I think you also need to look up the spelling of "Bull shit" Clue: it not the same a "Bush llit"
As long as *.gov can state that Police dogs are used to track down dangerous bomb-toting terrorists and those evil drug pushers, society as whole will willingly roll over and accept that they will be used responsibly.
So it is time to go out an buy one of these for next time I'm on the tube, I reckon:
<http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=33094&doy=28m3&C=SO&U=strat15>
This is very fine balance of political journalism and tales of ex-boyfriends / men you met in clubs / men you are chasing.
Kind of a cross between the front page of the Independent and Bridget Jones' diary. I never thought such a mix would be possible, but there you are.
Jolly well done!
I'll get me coat, you've pulled...
IF OOXML becomes a standard MIcrsosft will be REQUIRED to:
a] document it properly.
b] ensure that their software fully complies with the standard.
This would probably be a GOOD THING - It then becomes a trivial mater for OpenOffice.org, et al to open OOXML documents natively, and save them out as ODF. :)
Of course, it'll mean that we have not one, but TWO standards for the same file type. Which kind of defeats the whole object of having a standard...
"Most of the world's soot was created by Europe and North America until the 1950s, but since then the two regions have been overtaken in their contribution by nations in the tropics and the Far East."
How very convenient. CO2 isn't our problem: it's those damn developing countries! As long as they stop burning wood to keep their families warm, I can carry on driving my SUV.
Thanks for pointing this out Richard. Shame none of the other commenters seem to have noticed.
Granted, *nix is older than Windoze NT by a couple of decades, but let's be realistic here: XP was always stated to have been built directly off NT, so no huge leaps there (apart from some GUI stuff), and Vista is so very obviously just a reskinning of the same old code: what happened to our Longhorn database filesystem, eh?
On the other hand, MacOS 10 was a HUGE leap from Mac OS 9 (albeit based upon BSD, which has an even older legacy), and the GUI component is *so* much better that any other *nix desktop, that you'd be hard presed to argue that Apple haven't invested huge amounts of time and code into MacOS 10.
I really thought that MS had dealt Apple a killing blow with XP: it was such a huge improvement over 98, and at the time it looked really good: stable, secure, and not completely ugly, for a change. Then comes Vista, which looks a bit like XP only SLOOOOOOWER, requiring you to stump up loads of extra dosh for hardware, and knowing full well that about half your software isn't going to work properly.
Or, I could just go and buy a Mac - same problem: I still have to buy expensive hardware, and half my software won't work.
But here's the thing: Which would I rather be running after incurring all this expense: Leopard or Vista? That's not such an easy question to answer any more, especially not now MacOS has proper virtualisation.
Come on guys. The reason for this is obvious, surely: it's VISTA. It's certainly got me thinking twice about a Mac, when I'd practically ruled that option out after XP arrived.
MS have now made it abundantly obvious to anybody with a pair of eyes that they are just tacking more and more useless chrome onto a >10 year old operating system codebase, and they're not showing any signs of ever dumping that codebase and coming up with something better. They are in backward compatibility hell, and they've finally painted themselves into a corner.
Now, thanks to parallels, you can keep a copy of XP safely sandboxed where it can do you no harm; occasionally open XP when you need to convert a .docx to .odf format, or whatever, then carry on with your UNIX derived Mac OS 10.
As an aside @Dan Wilkinson
"Sam Vimes boots theory" - I suspect that TP has read "The Road to Wigan Pier" by Orwell, if not, then Sam Vimes has...
Where are you Webster Phreaky? We could all do with a good laugh, I'm sure. I'm a bit worried that you might have had some kind of rage overload when you saw this story, and may have already been sectioned before you got to your keyboard. It'd be nice to hear from you, just so we know you are ok!
I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here: are you trying to say that it's ok to stalk / harrass or abuse somebody via the web or email?
Or are you simply saying that once somebody has been the victim of this kind of thing, they should simply stop using facebook / their email address / the internet?
Either way: I think you are probably wrong. Although web and email technology are indeed "pull" systems, the fact that the (in this case facebook) account is the property of the victim, makes sufficient grounds for this to be called harassment if you ask me.
I guess if somebody attacked my house, I could simply not go home. After all, I don't have to go home after work... that is a positive action on my part, so it would be my fault?
Its because the screen half IS the computer (including a mouse controller at the back of the screen). The keyboard is a separate dockable unit.
This looks pretty clever for £99, I have to say. The only thing that's missing from these units is a slot for a mobile simcard, if you ask me
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for these people. They've lost the ability to make big piles of money by exploiting the creations of others, and now they are trying to take it out on the consumer.
The thing is, if they'd moved a bit faster and understood what was happening, they'd have been able to beat Google and YouTube to the punch. Instead they're going to silently slide into insignificance over the next couple of years.
Goodbye RIAA. You won't be missed.
Couple of things.
1] When a woman rings the police about their boyfriend, whether it be hamster related or otherwise, I think it is reasonable to expect the police to take it seriously (At least at first). There may be more than just the current reported incident to take into account. An indivdual in a state of distress may be incapable of properly expressing themselves. IT would be dificult for a good Emergency services operator to make this judgement without further questioning of the caller. I do hope this is what happened.
2] The idea of having a recorded messge is ALMOST right, if you ask me. WHat wrong with having some kind of triage scenario? If the caller turns out to be a non-emergency, just stick them on hold to the non-emergency line, and get on to the next call.
Requiring the individual to make decisions about what is and what isn't an emergency, and to remember 2 or 3 different numbers in order to ensure they make the right call, is ALWAYS going to lead to some problems. The best thing the emergency service can do in these cases is ensure that the calls get redirected quickly and efficiently with the minimum of fuss.
"In other words, the actual damages are only the actual files still lost, downtime, fee to the data recovery expert, and time to assess the restored files."
How about that awful, head spinning, stomach churning moment when you first access the file server and THERE'S NOTHING THERE!? - That sudden injection of adrenaline has got to shorten the operator's life span by at least an hour. Must be worth a few quid, surely?
"Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what
one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern
culture depends on what one shouldn't read."
The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde.
"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault"
Prologue to The picture of Dorian Gray - ...erm... Oscar Wilde.
Excellent idea: some sort of software patent held by W3C: patent based on DTD, licensing is conditional on the following terms:
1] If you support any part of the DTD, you must support it *all*
2] You must not support proprietary extensions of the DTD without prior approval from W3C, and without providing full documentation of those extensions, and an open licence for other implement same.
Any attempt to implement by M$ to implement a "lookalikee" standard (ODF / OOXML, anybody), will swiftly be batted down by a quick patent violation trial.
This needs to happen. I for one am *SICK TO DEATH* of having to convert documents to and from Microsoft world, whether it be OOXML, JScript / Javascript / ECMAScript or horrible MSHTML.
As for the new HTML 5 standard: I do hope this really is based in the real world, in contrast to some of the more outlandish thought processes that seemed to go into CSS 1 / 2... floated element clearing and element height / containment rules, for instance.
So when will we admit that it isn't a blow against the Electronic Freedom Foundation to say: "Unlicensed users can use secure browsers on restricted 'information appliances' for surfing. But anybody who wants to run a machine that can be compromised has to demonstrate a minimum competence"?
Such a "restricted information appliance" already exists: It's called a Mac. :) Problem is, it's too expensive...
I've often though that the solution is to simply release a few old school virii into the wild - ones that render infected machine inoperable, and require a re-install. Not only will this decimate botnets, it would also make the affected users think twice about securing their machine next time they re-install windows.
I had a fine notice from an ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) controlled car park recently. The notice said I had parked without buying a ticket. The tone of the notice was extremely threatening. They had obtained my owner details by sending my registration to DVLA and buying my info. This is what constitutes "reasonable cause" to the DVLA. I was given no prior notification (IE, no ticket was put on my car), and wasn't given an option to "opt out" of this illegal selling of my data to a private third party.
There are strict DVLA guidelines which say prior notice SHOULD be given to the person whose data is to be requested, however these voluntary guidelines a routinely ignored, and the DVLA apparently are "powerless" to do anything about it.
Of course, I couldn't prove I'd bought a parking ticket, because by the time the fine notice was issued, three weeks after the alleged parking violation, I'd disposed of the ticket.
When I wrote an equally threatening letter back to the ticket issuers, it turned out that there was something wrong with their ANPR software (suprirse surprise!) - Yes, I HAD bought a parking ticket. they simply rolled over an rescinded the parking fine.
So I can testify that the system is being abused by those using it.
Let's try a couple of hypotheticals out.
1] I see a nice Bentley in a car park somewhere,think "here's somebody with a few quid" - For £5 I can get enough information from DVLA to steal the owner's identity.
2] I'm a violent abuser, who wants to locate my ex-girlfriend who has taken out a restraining order on me. Simple, Just give my ex-girlfriend' reg to DVLA, and they'll tell me where she's living.
ID cards Mr Brown? If you can't keep my address safe, there's no way you're getting my DNA.
"Oh sorry, saving the planet is the only job that counts and justifies everything"
in know this was meant to be sarcastic, Ima, but try saying it out loud slowly to yourself, and LISTEN TO THE WORDS. Now try comparing it to the following phrase:
"Oh sorry, keeping the Japanese hoi polloi well stocked with whalemeat is the only job that counts, and justified everything"
Hmm...
Hmm...
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/09/23/hostgator_cpanel_security_hole_exploited_in_mass_hack.html
I wonder if these servers have had their Cpanels patched in the last 18 months? I wonder if perhaps somebody's found another hole...
(Steve icon seems appropriate, seen he's been implicated in this too.)
This is a very difficult to define crime, but which exists nonetheless. As a society, we are always concerned about the way that internet anonimity allows adults to prey upon young impressionable children.
Most of us will understand the immediate response one has to an insulting post in a newsgroup, forum or social networking platform. Most of us temper that immediate response with our wisdom and experience as an adult.
Imagine if we were teenagers dealing with those same things. Imagine if we were dealing with those insecurities and uncertainty that comes with late puberty. How would we cope then?
However you dress it up, this case sounds (on the basis of the reported facts here) as a form of electronic child abuse. As such, we MUST find a way to deal with it.
The strongest reason for not blocking the MAC address or serial number, is that you're effectively bricking the unit. How long before the scumbag owner puts his bricked XBox on ebay, and buys another one do you think? Blocking the box's MAC or Serial number create yet another victim.
To be honest, this is purely and simply a criminal matter. Obtaining somebody else's personal details by means of deception, and fraudulently accessing computer accounts belonging to another individual.
I imagine that Microsoft are currently trying avoid the public embarrassment of a criminal proceeding relating to poor XBox Live security. However, once the whole thing is out in the open (get writing those blogs, people!), there will be nothing preventing Microsoft from reporting these matters to the relevant enforcement agencies, and pursuing them to the full extent of the law.
IT would be nice to hear that the perpeterator here was not only stripped of his XBox, but in fact the ability to use any kind of computer for the next 5 years...
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