Posts by omg

El Reg assesses crypto of UK banks: Who gets to wear the dunce cap?

Re: Where are the First Direct results??

I don't have a First Direct account, but I can see they they load scripts from googleadservices.com and maxymiser.net on the login page. Not ideal.

Shame they didn't look at third party scripts loaded by the sites. that's where most malware comes from after all. I recently noticed that Halifax's account pages try to load scripts from advertisers, even within the login page. No ads are displayed on those pages, but the tracking scripts seem to have been added to all pages by default. I logged a complaint with them but the support guy didn't really understand the issue, so I'm now looking for a new bank.

Is HSTS really necessary if the site is not even listening for HTTP traffic?

If you do your HTTP -> HTTPS redirect on a separate site then there's no way the main site can ever respond to anything on HTTP.

Locking antlers with a network Nazi

Sometimes incompetence can work in your favour though...

I had an unexpected email from a client a few years back saying they were very impressed by the pen test results on a new web site we were building for them. They included the report, from a security firm I'd not heard of. I was immediately suspicious of the 100% pass with not even a single minor issue, so I checked the site and sure enough, it was 100% secure, as we hadn't deployed the server yet. All their pen test had confirmed was that our firewall wasn't passing any traffic on that IP.

Mozilla plots Firefox interface overhaul

Why do developers always try to fix the parts that aren't broken?

If the menu can't be re-enabled then I guess I'll be sticking with 3.5 for as long as possible.

Does anyone know if there's a Noscript equivalent for Opera?

US Spec Ops operates psywar websites targeted at UK

Interesting...

Slashdot doesn't have any ads, does it....

Opera Software reinvents complete irrelevance

Tedious

The standard of Reg articles really does seem to have dropped in the last year or so. The witty, ironic humour seems to have been replaced with arrogant teenage rants. Fortunately they do seem to have made a tag to quickly identify the rubbish: Anything with "fail" in the title.

Research: Airliners can be more eco-friendly than trains

Completely mis-reported.

The report doesn't say aircraft are more eco-friendly at all. Did you even read more than the first paragraph?

It's clearly shows rail as being generally more efficient per passenger-kilometre.

Oddly they didn't research long distance rail travel, or ships, which means they don't have any comparison for the large aircraft figures, but anyway, over short distances rail was more efficient.

Bad reporting.

Satanic net neologisms - nominations invited

Inappropriate use of 'fail' as a noun.

As frequently overused by the Reg.

Ten of the Best... iPod rivals

@Anonymous Coward - Alternative to an iPod

Not sure what you mean by Winamp "used to be a good system". Are you referring to the failed version 3? They scrapped that years ago.

Current versions work just like the old Winamp 2 if you choose the 'classic skin' and close the media library.

@Steven Gray

Just as you can't see why I would use explorer, I can't see why anyone would use iTunes.

The features you describe are not things I've ever wanted to do.

I never make random selections, I select a few directories and drag & drop onto the usb-player. I know what music I want to play, I don't want my PC to try and tell me.

My music is already well organised and named in Windows, why would I want to reorganise it again in iTunes?

Playlists are a disaster in iTunes (and even worse in WMP).

Winamp (basic interface) is simpler, faster, smaller, and easier to use. It also plays far more formats, doesn't advertise at me, and is far more configurable.

@Mark - re: I don't get it.

You've missed the point completely. I am definitely not of the iTunes generation, I have hundreds of full albums, but I mostly listen to them at home, played in Winamp, on my PC. If I'm going somewhere I copy a few albums onto my tiny cheap usb-player. Why would I ever need to carry around 160Gb of music?

I don't get it.

Unless you're back-packing around the world, why would anyone need to carry around more than about 2Gbs worth of music?

I just have a tiny little USB-stick player. It has a crappy little one-line LCD for an interface, but that doesn't matter because it only holds about 80 tunes anyway, ordered by directory. It only cost about £10 on ebay, it weighs about a gram, it's virtually indestructible, and no one's going to steal it. When I want to change the tunes, a quick transfer from the PC only takes a few minutes.

Best of all it doesn't need any crappy software like iTunes.

iPod's are far more a fashion accessory than a necessary gadget.

How to stop worrying and enjoy paying for incoming calls

Not quite...

I think you've missed the point slightly. Paying for receiving calls you wanted to receive is not unreasonable, it's paying to receive adverts, surveys, wrong numbers, and other junk that is unreasonable.

Unfortunately there often no way of knowing whether you wanted to receive a call until you've answered it.

Internet Explorer - now with 35% less FAIL

'FAIL' IS NOT A NOUN!!!

Ignorant cretins!

Cloud computing: A catchphrase in puberty

"Fail" IS NOT A NOUN!!!

Ignorant cretins!

Pandora prepares to join titsup.com club

Shame

It's a real shame they couldn't keep it going. Pandora was by far the best music-finding service around.

Lastfm seems to exist purely by polluting Google searches with links to content-free pages with no music or information what-so-ever.

And while Myspace may occasionally have music hidden amongst its hideously designed pages, I've no intention of subjecting my eyes or my browser to that kind of abuse.

Oh well, back to p2p I guess.