Posts by voshkin

'Hello, is that the space station? NASA here. Can you put us through to Moscow?'

Freedom

Oh yes, completely forgot:

In true display of freedom and democracy the junta banned Russian TV stations in Ukraine.

That's right. Banned. All of them.

So people are not free to see different media sources, people are not free to compare versions of events.

Naturally, the EU's commissioner on freedom of speech said that "it's OK, under special circumstances"

So, to anyone who thinks that Russia is evil, think twice. Russia is far from cuddly, but EVIDENCE of ACTIONS clearly shows the evil side in this conflict.

Errr...

Frankly I have expected better of supposedly educated IT crowd.

On the Russia / Ukraine situation, did you all forget the pretext to Russian rampant evilness?

A) The Nuland-Pyatt conversation (confirmed authentic)

B) The Ashton-Paet conversation (confirmed authentic)

C) The footage of fascists throwing Molotov cocktails at UNARMED police in Kiev, and UNARMED policemen being shot -all on youtube.

D) The Democratically elected president (yes, democratically, confirmed by international monitors) overthrown, despite assurances by EU foreign ministers and opposition who signed documents in front of the cameras and everything.

E) The first thing the junta does once in power is remove Russian language as a (second) official language in Ukraine, despite the fact that the majority of the population speak Russian on a daily basis (including the junta, only off camera)

F) The leader of the openly fascist party (the right sector) is ON VIDEO saying that he will send a train to Crimea with armed nationalists to "explain" to the locals that they should abandon talk on the referendum - remember, this is ON VIDEO

G) AFTER the aforementioned video, and AFTER certain other expressions of "goodwill" by the junta to ethnic Russians the Crimea forms defence forces (YES, consisting of the Russian army that were stationed in Crimea)

H) The locals vote in a referendum (no "under the barrel of guns" comments please, the press was there, including the BBC, reports are online.)

I) The locals vote to REjoin Russia - and here is the thing, anyone that have actually ever been in Crimea will tell you that the majority are Russian, and they have always expressed a desire to go back.

What is extremely annoying is the bias of the media on this. For example, the BBC report; a group of 5 or so ethnic Ukrainians are waving banners "Putin go home" - just around a corner a demonstration of 10,000 are waving Russian flags. BBC chose not to show that for some reason.

Or how about a BBC report of 20 Ukrainian soldiers singing the Ukrainian anthem, their manly tears trickling down their uniform whilst they are packing to go to the Ukrainian mainland. Absolutely no mention of the fact that more than half of Ukrainian soldiers and officers have defected to the Russian side, including the General. THIS IS ALL IN THE NEWS, just not the mainstream news.

So people, please, before you comment on something, do some bloody research first, watch Kremlin's propaganda machine that is RT - and make up your own mind. They do not have the CGI budget yet to make digital crowds waving Russian flags, and enjoying fireworks. With guns pointed at them. Naturally.

Panasonic PT-AT5000E LCD projector

Re: Serial port?

It's for control systems, like Crestron, AMX, Philips etc

- to control the projector, switch modes, and so on.

ISS crew man the lifeboat

err

There are two Soyuz escape modules...

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

True

Red light after a green light are specifically designed for traffic "calming" - read traffic creating.

- especially noticeable on a straight stretch of the A41 - light goes green, by the time people fiddle around with handbrakes and gears, and accelerate enough to reach the second traffic light, it is red.

if the timing would be adjusted to sync the lights - the cars would flow in a stream, much faster than 15-20 MPH as they do currently (in a 40 MPH zone)

Nigerian airline ticket fraudster gets 8 years

Thumbprint? really?

Thumb print? *I* would never agree to that! no one asked yet, but when they do, I will take my business elsewhere

Second SMS Android Trojan targets smut-seeking Russians

PAYG

95% of Russian mobile phone users are on pay as you go - contracts do not offer significant advantages as they do in western world - and top up terminal are quite literally everywhere.

moreover, of that 95% 99% have no more than $50 on account, so no significunt damage can be done by this trojan.

people (kids) loose far more money on short message ringtone scams (pay for one ring tone, turns out you signed up for a year's subscription)

RIM's BlackBerry OS 6 may be too late to fend off Apple

no chance ;-)

Your phone is old, it has been replaced by bold 9700 - and even THAT is not getting OS 6. (annoying, as I have it, but what can you do)

even AT&T has 4.6 for your phone, and they always have the latest firmware.

https://www.blackberry.com/SoftwareDownload/index.jsp?client=Rc4cZBaBN

My advice, wait for the new hardware with OS 6. that's what I am doing.

HP fingered in bribe probe

Nope

"Whether these are the same prosecutors who are now investigating HP is not clear."

- this statement looks very nice and ironic, but is not true. since then the prosecutors office have undergone huge changes, the whole structure was reformed, in fact, only low level grunts may remain, but even they where probably moved to a different division.

- regarding illegible signatures. Russia is a hugely bureaucratic country. the official documents such as a contract to supply toilet paper will have the directors name, rank, official stamp (seal) and a signature. moreover, there will also be papers with name, rank, and official stamp of the chief accountant - so the document with "illegible signature" is most probably a spoof, something HP filled for it's records.

Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from iTunes

Blackberry

I got two phones, Blackberry and Iphone.

one business, one private.

well, with recent blackberry models, I am using Iphone less and less.

- and with this case, my blackberry 9700 has a very good WIFI app, that offers excellent site survey.

and it's free ;-)

HDI Dune BD Prime 3.0 Blu-ray media player

Got one

I got one, it is very good.

much better than popcorn hour (the leader of the market)

supports everything, very good network support.

only a bit slow when opening bluray ISOs over the network, but plays well.

Hacker cuffed for Moscow big screen entertainment

They did, they did...

Government was furious about this, introduced rush rules and regulations to tighten the industry.

Hilarious as the incident was, ensuing blame-game was even more hilarious.

Most notable hilarity was the add company blaming the internet company from whom they steam traffic data via RSS to display on the board, hoping that big name internet company (Russian equivalent of Google) would get the blame. Forgetting about the fact that RSS does not tend to hold video files.

Skype set for Verizon 3G

Now we know

Now we know why skype did not make an app for blackberies for bloody years.

they were waiting for an exclusive deal

Ofcom opens debate on Freeview HD DRM to punters

Just sent this to OFCOM

RE: Content management on the HD Freeview platform consultation

Dear Sirs,

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the proposed system will do nothing whatsoever to prevent piracy of the content, as the proposed system simply scrambles electronic programme data for non-official receivers, whilst the actual audio and video streams are/will be unaffected.

The proposed system will prevent the official receivers from allowing the user to pirate the content, whilst unofficial receivers will be unaffected.

Therefore any DVB-S2/DVB-T2 receiver, including those designed for computers that cost £30 will be (and are currently) able to record audio and video streams in original high definition quality for distribution on “pirate websites” and p2p networks.

Since the proposed system will do nothing to prevent piracy, the only reason for such a system to exist is to prevent competition in the set-top box market.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Vladi, M.Sc. (I.T.)

Ofcom balks at Beeb's HD DRM dream

Yep, EPG

"...to compress the service information (SI) data on the upgraded multiplex using BBC developed look-up tables. The BBC would make the relevant look-up tables available free of charge to any manufacturer that agrees, via a licence agreement, to implement the D-Book content management arrangements." So yes, Audio and Video streams are still free to air, just the EPG that is "encrypted"

To me, this means only one thing. The evil evil pirates can capture any content unhindered in any way (as they may do so with freesat already) and it is just the set top box manufactures who have to restrict ability to view the content via HDCP or similar crap.

So to recap – Chinese DVB-S2 / DVB-T2 USB receiver + large hard drive – capture what you want.

A law abiding citizen with a non-HDCP tv (or desire to record something to watch later/burn for archival purposes) is screwed.

So nothing new here then.

Russians demand flying cars and telepathy

The Unwashed

Quite evidently, the Russian unwashed masses know that perpetuum mobile is Latin, meaning “perpetual motion” e.g. an engine that never stops. Should have been not that difficult to figure out for a washed Englishman me thinks.

Yours sincerely,

Unwashed Russian.

BSA urges London companies to check for pirate software

Fonts?

Since when are fonts "software"?

fonts are vector graphics, collection of shapes - very much like clipart.

so how does that make it a software????

- it's the same as saying that a copyrighted photograph is software...

Cost of a cuppa set to rocket

We, The IT

We, the IT people drink coffe. at least, during the daytime.

So What's the IT angle?

Spinning the war on the UK's sex trade

Good job

Good job!

I have really enjoyed this article; it is rear to find a person with a bit of common sense nowadays.

We do, unfortunately live in a completely crazy society, where enormously stupid laws are only avoided by the enormous stupidity of the police – this, unfortunately will soon change with the advent of ever-present surveillance technology...

“Your tracker implant was intimately close to the tracker implant of a known lady of ill repute, you are hence arrested for having said with the said prostitute”

P.S. Excellent as the article may be, what is the IT angle? (apart from the geeks being known to wet their carrot in such manner)

Kazakh TV off-air after satellite 'breathing troubles'

Meh

With many regular customers around the world, I am quite sure, that Russian space agency will not lose any sleep over losing a single order from Kazakhs. Besides, this satellite was probably supplied, and launched for free (or at a large discount) so you get what you paid for.

On the side note, the Russians build the Baikanur launch platform, and now, after the collapse of the soviet union has to lease it from the Kazakhs. Some engineers may resent that ;-)

eBayer invites buyers to rip him off

Western Union

Western Union transfers are virtually instantaneous, meaning that if you receive the fake notice, all you have to do, is come to the nearest WU agent, and see if the money is there (you do not even need the notice, just some ID)

If the money is there (unlikely) ship the item, if the money is there, do not. It is quite simple.

The moron who would get ripped off by “WU Scam” deserves it, for Darwin reasons.

Employee's silent rampage wipes out $2.5m worth of data

consultant

"It was not a sensationalistic amount of money," he told El Reg, referring to the fee he paid a consultant to dredge up the discarded architectural drawings.

I can see this conversation quite clearly in my head.

- Help! I have 2.5Bn USD worth of data DESTROID *cries*

- Err, ok, it will cost you 1m USD

- TAKE TWO! Just recover my data

A quick recovery with *any recovery program on the market* and, “where do I get my 2m USD?”

What can a consultant possibly do... unless she physically took the hard drives out of the severs, and through them from the 20th floor, or whipped the hard drives several times (unlikely) any bloody child can recover the data.

P.S. why am I never around when such morons are looking for a “consultant” I can even make it look good, by running cmd.exe full screen, and typing stuff just like in the movies...

British software pirate faces up to 10 years in jail

found computer equipment

"Trading standards officials raided Walton's home and found computer equipment and more than 300 discs, according to the newspaper."

I have computer equipment in my home! And more than 300 disks... crap, better roll them into a carpet and bury it in a wood somewhere..

'Ragtag' Russian army shows the new face of DDoS attacks

narrow-minded

For god sakes!

How narrow-minded can people commenting here really be?

The memorial was not a statue of Stalin, it was not a statue depicting a random communist raping Estonia nor a portrait of the Soviet parliament flipping of the passers buy in unison. The monument did not have the words “we invaded you, ha ha losers” in 2m lettering, it was a monument to the solders that dies in the WWII. Pure and simple. The people that starved and died in the trenches, the people that had to have hand to hand combat when the bullets run out, should I go on?

Soviet Union was defiantly not Disneyland, and I am not claiming otherwise, in fact, if certain commenters would bother to read my last post, they would see that my family suffered extensive loss, this, nevertheless does not belittle to contribution of the Soviet Union to the WWII.

In fact, may I also remind “the west” that in UK only a handful of politicians wanted to go against Hitler, (and thankfully they succeeded) and America only joined the war when it was about to affect them. Oh, one more thing, someone urged me to read some books alleging Soviet war crimes, does it per chance list the war crimes perpetrated by other nations, or are those facts conveniently forgotten? Some atomic bombs dropped on a country after the war was over spring to mind for some reason... is this the case of yea, we (the west) can torture and humiliate prisoners, invade sovereign counties accusing the leaders of those countries of war crimes against humanity with the weapons supplied by the west, but, we are the good guys, our torture and murder is OK, it is a different kind to that perpetrated by the evil [insert whoever here]

This remind me of the old Russian joke, that, unfortunately does not translate very well due to the little weight attached to the words used, but you should get the meaning:

“Courageous security officers arrested a dirty foreign spy”

Translation – there is not a single truth, it was not the case of a nice, good natured hard working people fighting a heard of filthy barbarians. No educated person can claim that the Soviet Union was 100% evil, whilst the west was 100% good. The Soviet Union was not Disneyland, and “the west” was not exactly the petting zoo.

Western soldiers are honoured in Russia, it would not heart the west to support Russia in its rightful indignation over Nazi parades in the Baltic states, and honouring of the Nazi collaborators in Ukraine.

Steve Ringham and others:

I did not conveniently forget the millions that died in the USSR at the hands of the communist party. My own family has suffered greatly; a lot of my relatives on my mother’s side were murdered by the Bolsheviks, in fact, only by grand-grandfather and his daughter survived, out of the extended family of dozens. Even he was later repressed, - as you can imagine, I do not look at the history of the communist party fondly. But this in no way relates to the memory of the people that actually fought, and died in the war. As I said previously, they were fighting to liberate the world, not to rape and loot, the image of the Russian soldiers painted by the latest PR complain absolutely sickens me! Whilst it is true that there were looting, I know this for a fact, may I remind you of the American behaviour in Iraq (and other places they been to) – did they loot, murder civilians or did they bring tea and biscuits?

There were many storied regurgitated by the Baltic propaganda machines about the remains of the Russian dead, the best one that they died at that spot in a drunken car crash.

This is by far the most annoying thing, history books are rewritten, to suite the politics of the newly liberated nations. As the old generations wither away, there will only be the “history” books to learn from, and already they spew despicable lies, in Ukraine, for example, the ultra nationals who were trained and funded by the SS and were executing Jews and the Gipsies, are now given national hero stratus by the present bellowed by the West. When he visited Israel, he had quite an uncomfortable conversation about this. But, he is adored by the west, as a true democratic leader, and bla bla bla.

The values that at some stage seemed important are now forgotten. I get the feeling that it goes something like this:

- They are planning a Nazi parade in Riga, should we do something?

- Nah, no one here will care, but it will piss off the Russians, let them do it.

Insult

The removal of the memorial was such an insult, that it is hardly surprising that so many people decided to do the very least that they could – launch a denial of service attacks.

In the west people are used to unbelievable acts of stupidly (mistreatment of the war veterans, removal of memorials, political correctness etc), and so have their senses worn down, in Russia, however, every single family was affected by world war II, most people had a father/uncle/grandfather who fought it in the war, most people heard firsthand accounts of the war atrocities committed by the Nazis. Most counties suffered at the hand of the Nazis; however, none has suffered as much as the former Soviet Union (from actual fighting or from starvation). – One republic of the USSR (Belarus) had as much as 40% of the population wiped out.

Presently, the contribution of the USSR is honoured in all of the countries that took part in WWII, - even in Berlin and in Vienna there are huge memorials to the Soviet solder, and yet...

The Baltic States were always friendly towards the Nazis, In fact, the Russian soldiers that have remained in those countries after the collapse of the USSR are banned from wearing their medals (!) whilst... wait for it... the Baltic (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) Nazi collaborators (natives who worked with the Nazis to execute the Jews, Gypsies, and other “undesirables”) are marching on the streets of Riga and Tallinn in full Nazi uniforms, whilst the European union looks on, and does nothing.

If that was not insult enough (and it was a huge insult) the removal of the memorial to the Soviet dead was such an insult to the Russian heart, that word cannot describe the range of emotions felt by every single Russian, and the majority of the citizens of the old Soviet Union.

No matter the current politics, no matter the ill-feeling towards the USSR for occupation of the Baltic States after the war, - the contribution of the MILLIONS of the dead soldiers should not be moved! They died for the liberation of the world, they died from bullets, gas poisoning, starvation and torture, and they did not occupy the Baltic States. Their memory should and must not be pissed upon.

EVE Online update kills Windows PCs

Idiots

Oh come on, since when did a missing / corrupted boot.ini necessitated system reinstalls? Just boot with *anything* e.g. live CD’s, NTFS supporting boot disk, or take the hard drive out, stick it in a working computer (or USB enclosure), and.... recreate the boot.ini – it is, after all a text file!

“”[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect””

MS Word edit history snares Scottish Labour on donations

LOVE IT!

This lovely feature of word should be made mandatory through a system policy on all government computers, and those computers owned by politicians and their families. Should this happen (in a parallel universe) the parliament would be clear of all but the occasional tourist..

British teens score a C in international science poll

WTF

In light of the aricle, WTF is this all about?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7119511.stm

BBC Changed the article

BBC Changed the article!

When I have posted, it was “UK among school science leaders - BBC News

The UK is among the better performers in an international league table”

I have the screenshot to prove it!!

Now, when I click on the link, it says “UK schools slip down in science”

It is not paranoia when they are really after you!

When I saw the headline in the morning, I could not believe my eyes! With all my respect for English teenagers, those unlucky few whom I have quizzed about their scientific knowledge, were, frankly way below the average of what a sensible person would consider basic knowledge.

Fasthosts customers blindsided by emergency password reset

own server

I have used FastHosts dedicated Linux server in the past, until it was hacked, through a (as it later turned out) a well known vulnerability that was not patched, and all the websites on it were defaced.

That was enough for me to buy my own Dell server, and host it in a professional data centre for £100 per month. Now that I, and only I have complete control over my own server, knock on wood, I have not been hacked in 5 years! All you need is to close all ports except the ports that you need, apply all the patches, and disable all, but critical services.

P.S. and having your own server means that you can do whatever you want with DNS, email servers, etc – something hosters will not (or be unable to) do.

UK Government tried to stop EU roaming cap

ignorance

""Is it a coincidence that as soon as the roaming cap comes into force, O2 put up their rates to 0845 and 0870 numbers to a whopping 20p/min and exclude them from included minutes? It now cost me £6 to pay my water bill. Great!""

The ignorance of some people is staggering!!!

The operators are excluding 08x numbers from free minutes not because of the evil roaming cap, but because of the international call discount numbers.

For example, I can call Russia for 2p per minute using an 08x number from any landline, or using including minutes from a mobile – all I have to do is call the 08x number, then, after the voice prompt dial the number in Russia.

Naturally, it does not cost 2p to call Russia from my mobile, not even £1, so guess who I am going to give my money to, and guess who does not want to lose the revenue stream from me?

P.S. who in their right mind will call the water board using their mobile anyway? Ever heard of landlines?

Harry Aldridge: Stop talking out of your arse

Since when did the “normal” consumers have to foot the bill for international travellers?

I know of no person who had their monthly contract go up a single pence – “roamers” or not.

Free market economy does not imply that the consumer can be shafted as a result of the cartel agreement between the operators.

Come on, did my example about “roaming” chargers for Vodafone UK customer by Vodafone Italy mean nothing to you?

EU maybe.

EU roaming charges may be over (about bloody time, if you ask me – UK Vodafone charged me an arm and a leg for calls using Italian.... err Vodafone)

However, I have a suspicion that it will now cost me £5 per minute to use my phone in non-European countries, e.g. Turley or Russia.

Roaming charges are ridiculous, not just for Europe – and not just for calls, for SMS too. I am not even contemplating to use data abroad.. One of my customers once used a T-Mobile data card that came free with his Sony laptop to check his emails in Kazakhstan. He later received a £600 bill.

How to get colour composite-video from an Apple TV

Xbox 1

And yet again, for standard definition one cannot fault a (modified) Xbox 1 running XBMC – play any format, and I mean any format – from .qt to latest versions of XviD or DivX – from any source (shares on a PC, various media streamers, even live from the net)

Absolutely perfect for standard definition, even has optical out for true 5.1 and, you can pick one up for about £50 second hand, with a remote control and high quality RGB SCART cable.

I know of no other device on the market that can do half the things XBMC does, at the quality that it does. Peace of piss to mod the XBOX 1, no need to even open it up.

The Pirate Bay absconds with domain name of its nemesis

Evil tax-avoidance conspiracy

An interesting though has occurred to me, - the various industry associations claim that they are losing trillions upon trillions, and the government tends to back it up – could this be a nice way not to pay taxes? I mean if they “lost”, say, 20,000,000,000 but made only 10,000,000,000 then their profit is offset by the loss, so, in fact they would not pay any taxes et al.

This would obviously not work in the sane world, but we do not live in the sane world...

Forget municipal Wi-Fi, welcome to Zigbee City

>Anonymous Vulture

You got it in one ;-)

noone thinks of these things...

One plug to rule them all

hope so

I have several devices which have mini USB, the most convenient thing about it is that they can charge from the computer. Plug it in to sync the contacts, for example, and recharge at the same time. charge multiple items with the powered USB hub, what can be more convenient.

Being a smart arse, when I went on holiday, I took a powered USB hub with me, thinking that I can charge my Nokia phone (charges from special USB cable that looks like mini USB, but isn’t) my blackberry, and my camera. Imagine my annoyance when the devices would not charge, unless the laptop was switched on. Apparently, they need to “talk” to the OS for some reason, before they can draw power from the USB port, even though the hub is powered...

ICANN dukes it out with the USSR in cold war rematch smackdown

su!

.su foreva!

that is all.

Intel 'Nehalem' design completed, boots Mac OS X

arrr

This is so annoying. I must stop reading hardware reviews.

- I was just about to build a new computer, now, I have to wait for this CPU...

Eeeh

Orange speaks out with new voice

Democracy

Democracy hard at work for you. The majority are idiots, having a vocabulary of about 50 words – then we must change all of the news readers, to reflect this! You speak of the BBC as if it is the last bastion of proper speech – when was the last time you seen BBC news? 1975? I am watching Al Gezira just to listen to proper English!

If you were to pole 100 people on the street about the diode bridge, I am sure that 80 will have something to say. That does not mean that you have to listen.

Skype worm blows bubbles at victims

If viewers didn't automatically execute commands

>If viewers didn't automatically execute commands

"Viewers" do not execute commands.

the file is prob. a .exe with a name like

funny.jpg________________.exe (_ = space)

.exe after a long name is hidden by the lack of space to display the full filename in the window.

Google starts charging for storage

out of *your* mind

Dillon Pyron>

Go on, start your own online storage business.

About 2 seconds into the planning stage, you will find out that you will have to:

a) Pay huge bandwidth bills to your *multiple* commercial ISPs

b) Have at least one more drive in mirror RAID in addition to the one you indent on “sharing” for data redundancy

c) Have multiple sites, with multiple servers and ISP links, again, for redundancy

d) Not to mention the servers, the “data room” rental/purchase price

e) Did I mention the lawyers?

The actual list will be quite extensive, I assure you.

You do not need an MBA; you need a cycling proficiency certificate!

Get your Ultra Wide Band from Monday

110/220V

"110/220V, fully compatible to previous USB design"

Mate, you have some “issues”

Have you seen USB cables? (Inside the nice shielded cable) the tiny cables that would melt and burn at the slightest hint of a load required to power a monitor... your “idea” is simply unworkable.

And what is it with you and UWB – it is a great idea!!

My long table is filled with too much crap, two computers, three large monitors, printers, scanners, telephone, etc, etc, it barely leaves room for me to make piles of papers! I have long dreamed of unloading some of the crap that I use <1 times a day onto another desk in the room, e.g. the printers and the scanner can go in there.

All the network printer sharing thingies I tried are absolute crap! They are slow and unreliable (perhaps OK for printing of a TV guide, but try printing a 300 MB Photoshop file...) and network scanning... well, unless you scanner is networked out of the box – forget it.

- UWB security – I presume that they would work in a similar way to Bluetooth, with some kind of a “password” (hopefully not 0000)

Is AV product testing corrupt?

a user who is not an idiot!

>Steve Browne

Well, we sort of have one now. Called Vista

• Su command – got one, called “run as administrator”

• Display more information in the process list – got tons of free utilities that do this

• Provide monitors for important services – got this too, built in

• Provide monitors for important services – got that too. File level security in NTFS

It’s not bloody Microsoft’s fault that the users are morons! If one elects to download a 100 kilobyte exe/bat/pif/cmd/scr/whatever file purporting to be “die hard 4 movie” then how exactly is that Microsoft’s fault?

IF you elect to stuff a dead rat down your exhaust pipe, it is NOT your car manufacturer’s fault that they did not cover the exhaust pipe with a mesh!!!

Nor is it your Microwave Owen manufacturer’s fault that your cat’s eyes, testicles, and cardio-vascular system explode when you decide to dry it.

Nor is it the fault of your hi fidelity system manufacturer when your system burns when you decide to switch it from 240 to 110 volts, thinking that doubling the supply voltage will double the sound output.

Need I go on?

Threats Independently Tested Service

The answer is quite simple...

1. Install VM

2. Install XP/Vista on the VM

3. Clone the VM

4. Install different AV packages on the VMs

5. Sysdif the VMs

On a separate VM without AV (also SysDifed) go to various nefarious websites. Best way to get a virus nowadays is search for “cracks” and “keygens” – any top 20 Google results would infect you 100%. Also, do a search for *anything* on Emule, and save all the <100 KB exe files.

Download a bunch of “Keygens”, and save the EXE files. Run Sysdif again, and find all the lovely EXEs dropped by browser vulnerabilities. Save those. Restart the VM a couple of times to make sure dropped EXEs download more EXEs, save those too. By now, you would have at least 50 “current” viruses. (To get even more, setup compromised email account, and run everything that comes as attachments, and click on all the links)

Now that we have a whole bunch of Viruses, and spyware, key loggers, and so on, we can do the actual tests

6. One by one, run each of the EXEs on a VM with AV product on test.

7. After each EXE, sysdif the machine (even if AV claimed to have eradicated a threat)

8. Save the results in xls, plotting a nice graph, that will show... that not a single AV package will protect you from all the threats.

The problem with the AV industry is that they tend to cater to Joe Blogs who reads the sun online and Jane from accounts, who looks for carrier change as a lion tamer. That’s it. The Viruses that those individuals are likely to come across will be long discovered by the AV companies, and in most cases added to the signature database. They tend not to search for MP3’s nor do they try to download a no cd crack for a game they copied from a friend. But that is where “it’s all at”.

This AV industry status quo is shattered when you through a teenager in the mix. And bam! Your home computers are well and truly screwed! I mean, which teenager will refuse a file called “best joke ever.exe” from a random contact on MSN?

To this end, I call for El Reg to setup “Threats Independently Tested Service” I for one, would gladly contribute by submitting all the nasty malware I come across, and believe you me, that is plenty!

Russian firm targets wooden phones at posers everywhere

overpiced

"What part of "this phone costs 5 or 7 grand" don't you understand?!"

- The part were Vertu costs three-four times as much (other than the vanilla model they have that no one buys).

As I said, this is for Russian Middle-management. Not for data-room attendants ;-)

normal numbers innit

Stop being so negative!

The Russian “Premium” phone market is quite well developed, and it is nice to see a Russian model on offer. People are tired of Vertu and other drastically overpriced models, so this particular handset will suite Russian middle-management nicely. And if it truly has Windows mobile 6 – it definitely has more to offer than £50 Nokia – exchange email being one.

Roman numerals are a nice tough, though personally I would have preferred the original decimal digits, http://www.ericofon.com/faces/face18.jpg just to make fun of people saying “why can’t you have normal numbers innit”

Fun with passports and paperclips

RFID Safe

Is it too much to ask for a link to the RFID safe "cracking" article/site?

UK payment service outage leaves users fuming

VM

For such an institution having a “test server” is an absolute necessity.

Clone the “live” server onto the test server, install [whatever] and test it out. Does it work? – clone it to the live server. Did it f up? – restore the server backup. All the data should (must) be stored on other serverS – so it makes no difference what server reads/writes the data.

This is SO basic “critical system” setup; it is very surprising that they did not think of it.

If you cannot afford multiple servers (I am guessing that this not the case with this company) just run VM on one server, one VM for SQL, one VM for transactions, other VM a clone of the transactional server for testing purposes, and so on.

The actual problem is the cockiness of the (obviously) inexperienced IT team. “We know best” type thing. Seen it before, and it is always extremely annoying when trying so suggest something to such people, and see them sniggering, thinking “yea, sure, you have a accent, learn to “speak” before you teach us”