Posts by Gulraj Rijhwani

Norway Quizwall experiment ends with more quizzing than commenting

Funny guy doesn't get funny. Pictures at 11.

*Facepalm*

Stop resetting your passwords, says UK govt's spy network

Mis-statement of the problem

The problem is not changing passwords, per se, but the lengths users must go to to create and memorise/store sufficiently uncrackable passwords in each instance. Using a password utility which requires memorising only one master password is one solution (although keep backups, and don't use a "cloud" solution). Another is to accommodate and indeed capitalise on the way human memory works and to teach people mnemonic memory methods for creating passwords unique to - and known only by - them, rather than trying to remember arcane random character strings.

Admin fishes dirty office chat from mistyped-email bin and then ...?

And another thing...

"However, Flash was left forever unable to look the woman in the eye."

Really? That says far more about your guy, Flash, and his insecurities than it does about the fornicating travellers.

Do your job

Depending on company e-mail usage policy (which in any sensible organisation would specify that company resources are subject to possible scrutiny, and also dictate that communications should be within certain bounds - including, but not limited to obscenity, illegality, etc.) as a mail admin, people should assume that the mail admins have legitimate access to all incoming and outgoing mail anyway. The option I would go for is noticeably absent from the poll - a quiet word in the sender's ear to knock it off and/or take it out of the company system, because otherwise sooner or later they're going to get burnt. Now, if company policy DOESN'T expressly allow for scrutiny, then your boy has a problem, because no matter the intent, intercepting e-mail is a no-no, and without permission he shouldn't be doing it.

What puzzles me is how internal mail users could get the address wrong in the first place. Don't they use some kind of address book or company directory?

Seagate intros Innov8: A USB-powered 8TB external hard drive

Re: Built in incapacity?

When I say "dies" I mean ceases to hold a charge. Rechargeables on constant maintenance charge (as in this use case) die a lot faster, and additionally if they are not taken through a full discharge cycle periodically their total capacity diminishes. Modern cells are less prone to memory effect than older technologies, but it still happens. The battery will eventually cease to function, and probably before the electromechanical parts of the drive itself.

Re: Built in incapacity?

Not a fair assessment in my experience. I have had several Seagate drives all of which have lived, or continue to live, well beyond their expected endurance. Not a statistically sound sample, I'll grant, but I have no cause to complain.

Built in incapacity?

So - does this mean that when the battery dies faster than the primary disk, it will no longer be able to start, and essentially become an 8TB brick? Sounds like built-in obsolesence being hidden behind a veneer of convenience.

Video game retailer GAME in email marketing FAIL

"Although mildly irksome it’s no big deal – except where the recipients or email are in themselves confidential or sensitive."

I'm sorry, but I don't think it is for El Reg to be dismissing the severity of the problem. Some people keep their contact details very well guarded, for good reason, and not everyone has the luxury of multiple or unlimited e-mail accounts to assign one to a given purpose. How severely it affects them is down to the individual to judge.

Google, didn't you get the memo? Stop trying to make Google+ happen

Nope

It really makes little odds how they package it, G+ remains Google's attempt to infiltrate your life and own you and your identity to the point of being the arbiter and essentially gate-keeping your existence on the 'net. That alone is reason enough NEVER to make habitual use of a Google service.

The Lazarus Effect: Saved by Linux and Cash Converters

Re: If you like Kali..

As a long time user of Knoppix as a LiveCD "Linux desktop on a box I don't own" distro, it is great. I would not recommend it for full installation, though. There are better distros for that.

Wrong distro

I have to say - as a user of Kali for legitimate professional reasons - that it seems an odd choice for general desktop usage. Like you I can't abide the direction Ubuntu have taken with the desktop, and Unity is attrocious, but it is odd that you complain about a 90s era UI. The tiles and gestures interface only makes sense for a touch screen, otherwise your basic task bar/drop-menus interface is way the most user-efficient interface there is (short of a plain text console for people who know exactly what they want, and how to make it happen).

For first time/novice Linux desktop users there are plenty of ways around the problem which don't require you to lumber yourself with the arcane tools that Kali provides. If you don't like Ubuntu's default desktop interface, you can always over-load it with something else, or take the basic Ubuntu server and add your choice of desktop and tools to it (as I do for daily use machines). Neither method is particularly onerous. Or you could try out Linux Mint or even - as someone else already suggested - the parent Debian distro. Your penchant for wifi sniffing (naughty!) is easily satisfied, because all the tools, if not installed by default, are immediately available - aircrack-ng, Kismet, etc... Adding leisure facilities to a strongly-purposed distro like Kali seems a tad back-to-front.

Nokia will indeed be back 'making' phones – and it's far from a foolish move

Nah.

They'll be Nokia 'phones in name only. Reciprocal agreement with Mickey$oft almost guarantees they will be Windoze encumbered, and just because Nokia licences the name doesn't make it a Nokia 'phone. Nokia 'phones are dead, and have been for 5 years, sadly.

What is this river nonsense? Give .amazon to Bezos, says US Congress

"I don't think that word means what you think it means."

"Espousing" subtlety? No, I think you mean eschewing subtlety.

Not just arguing for Amazon, but actually strong-arming for them.

Re: This is important(ish)

I quite agree. All the additional TLDs just mean more money for old rope for the registries, and more for corporations to shell out to either protect their brand, or if they're megacorps with big pockets for vanity domains that little people can only dream about.

It's certainly not helping to address the gulf between haves and have nots, and the only ones who really win (like lawyers in court proceedings) are the registrars (and investors in registrars).

IBM promises mainframes on tap as SoftLayer lands on London

"Chessington, which while strictly speaking counting as greater London would be considered more a day trip venue by most of the capital’s residents."

Utter nonsense. Chessington is a 35 minute train journey form Waterloo. I know. I live there. I commute to the other side of the capital most days. Many's the time I come back from work, change and then go straight back into London. Yes it is the outer edge of the London conurbation, but we're not talking San Angelean scales of urbanisation. Remember that the M25 is only about 127 miles point to point, and that skirts the whole thing. It's only a "day trip venue" if you're hinting at the so-called World of Adventures.

Chessington is actually a very appropriate location for London access, particularly if you take maintenance and supply into consideration. Granted the rail connection is only a half-hourly service (serving both the Chessington stations, and Tolworth which is actually closer to most of the industrial estate), but it is situated just off the A3 - a major arterial route straight out of London, and is within ear-shot of the M25 which is also only 5-10 minutes distant, 12 miles as the crow flies from the centre. Digital Realty have a co-lo site here for that very reason.

Microsoft wields turkey knife, slices Surface to $199 for Black Friday

Yup, the UK price is a total rip-off

...but then even if it matched the dollar exchange rate, it would still be an over-priced locked-in piece of crap.

I wouldn't take one if Mickey$oft paid *me*.

'F-CK YOU GOOGLE+' ukelele missy scoops BIG WAD of $$ - for Google

Encouraging discussion...

When I post a comment on a YouTube video I don't WANT it appearing on Google+ to stimulate discussion. The discussion should be limited to the intended forum - i.e. the video on YouTube. If you want to see what is new on YouTube, that is what direct subscription is for. If you want a feed aggregator there are plenty around. It doesn't need all the baggage that having a G+ account brings with it.

There is one reason, and one reason alone why Google have done this. To FORCE users to interact through G+, to add them to their relationship and identity database and stimulate data generation for same.

"We note that dictionaries including Merriam-Webster and the OED define the uke as being a type of guitar. -Ed"

And you felt the need to get pissy about it? Ordinarily I'm with ElReg, but this was unnecessarily ascerbic.

Facebook tests sinister CURSOR-TRACKING in hunt for more ad bucks

Re: So what

The only way you are not Facebook's product is if you are not a Facebook member.

Re: Clearly I am out of touch ..

It is more likely relative cursor positition within the browser window, and you can get at it with Javascript.

Douglas Adams was RIGHT! TINY ALIENS are invading Earth, say boffins

Oops

It's the "anthropic principle" not "anthropomorphic" (which would be the projection of human intent onto the universe - a pretty tall order).

Brazilians strip Amazon of brazen .amazon gTLD grab bid

Why does Amazon do anything?

Because they can...

Re: Anyone want to bet...

ICANN is supposed ot be internationally neutral, but it originated in America, and is run from America. I will be very surprised if any other government than the US could achive such a thing.

Chocolate Factory chucks out Checkout

Isn't this the problem with any independent service provider

Google is particularly bad. They're so big the just throw their weight around and no-one has the inertia to stop them. (A bit like IBM of old times.) But whereever you get a service from, there are no guarantees it will last forever. In Google's case, of course, potential customers are - if they have any sense - going to become increasingly wary of starting in with one of their services, lest it be consigned unceremoniously to the tip.

easyJet warns 'several websites' to stop selling its flights

Not much of a leap of imagination

"However, this would also be expensive, as they would buy the tickets at the same cost as the consumers, then have to add something to make a profit.

Still, having seen the prices at Expedia and Lastminute, they may well be doing this."

According to these articles, that's exactly what Easyjet are alleging the screen scrapers do. And indeed that is exactly how a screen-scraped interaction works. Dead easy with Python, Perl, PHP or similar.

Comedy UK social network berates moaning users

1001 uses for a used limitation

"Hang on why make a Ltd co for your hobby?"

Because money is changing hands, and there are costs to be borne, and creating a limited liabilty company does exactly that - limits the personal liability of the operators if it all goes Horribly Wrong(tm).

Plenty of people run Limited companies as vehicles for hobbies, often with a view to stepping up to a full-time paying career, but not always. You see them at comic cons, book trades and computer fairs.

easyJet warns Expedia: 'Hands off our flights'

Screen scraping? Old news.

"72 hours later and I'm still waiting, and having read this article I suspect they screen scrape car hire websites as well as airlines."

Of course they do. Expedia are not the first people to develop their business by screen-scraping others, and definitely not alone even now, just amongst the most famous. Aggregators have been around for a long, long time, in the travel trade, since the before earliest days of retail web operations when the principal means of selling was the High Street, and the main business channel for travel agents was viewdata. Screen-scraping was often used to cherry-pick information (often from the opposition) either for reformatting for republishing or for importing into proprietary business systems.

These days most major operators (both operators and retailers) will co-operate using rather more efficient methods of interaction. But not always, and the rebuffed aggregator will often resort to screen scraping (sometimes bearing a strong resemblance to a DDoS) because the significantly greater resource cost is borne largely by the operator. The retailer still gets their product at the same price, and sells it for the same profit margin. It's a bully tactic to try to force suppliers to "behave" and enter into the commission-selling relationship the retailer wants.