Posts by Ole Juul

Ad-blocking is LEGAL: German court says Ja to browser filters

It's my computer

There shouldn't be any doubt about this.

Flying giant octopus menaces New York

Re: Buffalo burghers

That's my point. Glad you got it. :) Besides, the octopus in question weighs 45kg so there is indeed an issue with the accuracy.

Regarding measured weight, there's always the old question of "what weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?"

Buffalo burghers

Octopus may be to their taste, but it seems a tad inaccurate. I would suggest that it would be much more precise to liken the weight of the flying manhole cover to 50kg of calamari.

That's right: FBI agents can't pretend to be ISP repairmen to search homes without a warrant

Re: FBR

I was thinking more along the line that someone could pose as an FBI agent in order to gain access, and then while there fix their telephone without them knowing it.

FBR

I assume that this means that repairmen can also no longer pose as FBI agents.

D-Link: sorry we're SOHOpeless

There's hope

The company optimistically assumes that customers know they need to pop back to the support page daily . . .

It's probably less trouble to just go out and buy something else and be done with it.

Lawyer: Cops dropped robbery case rather than detail FBI's StingRay phone snoop gizmo

Loophole

I wonder if other crims are paying attention and planning to use this loophole as a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Australia mulls dumping the .com from .com.au – so you can bake URLs like chocolate.gate.au

Shop by URL

Am I the only one who, if looking for flowers, would not start typing out a URL in the hopes of finding what I want?

Web advertising giant (Google) to spew ads over web – using HTTPS

a snoop is a snoop

Google's ad initiative follows the encryption of its Search, Gmail, YouTube, and Drive services, which is part of a wider effort by major tech players to use SSL to try to lock out crims and government snoops.

What about all the other *cough* snoops?

NatWest and RBS' mobile banking apps go TITSUP

Limits of Nat

Amazing they still haven't figured out what their core business is.

NTT adds two bit barns to gathering global cloud

Two-bit barns

Perhaps I read that wrong.

Your city's not smart if it's vulnerable, says hacker

Insurance companies might want to hear this talk.

Governments and/or insurance companies demanding some kind of certification will help clear things up. Until then, vendors will continue selling whatever someone will buy.

Go for a spin on Record Store Day: Lifting the lid on vinyl, CD and tape

Re: You know back in the olden days...

As long as you don't get into things like click and noise removal, yes it's pretty straightforward.

Actually, click removal and track splitting is automatic in the little program called GramoFile.

FCC hit with SEVENTH net neutrality lawsuit

Re: Arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and a violation of federal law

It also sounds more like a rant than a legal argument. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to put the toys back in the pram and continue pushing it. Though I can't wait until they grow up and can walk on their own.

Makerbot axes 'scores of staff' – 3D printing just doesn't pay the bills

Management style

The unlucky ones were escorted from the building with a small severance payout and a security guard by their side, we're told.

And thus increasing morale even more - not.

The Internet of things is great until it blows up your house

Re: No Codes for You

Clothes with labels are mostly cheap off the rack stuff for people with little sense of fine fabrics or clothes and who send stuff to the dry cleaners. I bet that the guy who thinks up this kind of toy wears a t-shirt and is stuck in gadget land dreaming of sales.

'Arkansas cops tried to hack me with malware-ridden hard drive'

trust

So if the Fort Smith Police Department thinks it's OK to break the law in this way, I wonder how many other ways they think it's OK.

Grandmaster FLUSH: Chess champ booted for allegedly cheating with iPod app in the loo

Re: "... check players for electronic devices before they enter the toilets."

Space diapers! (MAG) Simple solution, and they forfeit the game if they leave their chair.

Verizon to world: STOP opening dodgy phishing emails, FOOLS

an inexact science indeed

The analysis is based around actual breach claims to insurance firms,

And how many of these claims include the cost of a hitherto non-existent roof in their cost estimate when claiming water damage?

Welcome to the FUTURE: Maine cops pay Bitcoin ransom to end office hostage drama

$300

the police in Maine decided to pay the $300 ransom

Seriously? Only $300? One wonders if these are just kids or whether that's all police records are worth. Surely somebody in this for the money wouldn't put their neck on the line for that kind of change.

Strange radio telescope signals came from microwave ovens

Diet change

From now on it will be low peryton lunches at Parkes.

China weaponizes its Great Firewall into the GREAT FIRE CANNON, menaces entire globe

commonly used analytics, social, or advertising scripts

I'm not a fan of those anyway.

TTIP: Protect our privacy in EU-US trade deal or ELSE, snarl MEPs

Re: And...

American exceptionalism does not require them to keep bargains.

Blaze it: US drug cops taken to court to ensure all dragnet snooping records are destroyed

Re: a pattern of partial or somewhat misleading statements on issues of mass surveillance

"Partial or somewhat misleading" doesn't really do them justice. The American propaganda machine is the best in the world.

Drill, baby, drill: HIDDEN glaciers ON MARS hold 150bn cubic metres of precious frozen WATER

Re: Compare and contrast

California can go through that in no time.

FBI to WordPress users: patch now before ISIL defaces you

Automatic Updates

WordPress has had automatic updates for a long time now and I've been very happy with that on two sites where I use WP. It's been trouble free and nothing has ever broken. I do update plugins by hand though.

You. FTC. Get over here. Google is INVADING our children's MINDS – anti-ad campaigners

Other people's kids

I don't think one could argue that this is not taking advantage of children. I guess Google's point is that this is a good thing. I strongly disagree with them.

FTC: Hey, Network Solutions, time we had a chat about 'refunds'

Back?

canceling a one-year package would cost $34.99, while backing out of a 10-year plan would carry a $179.90 fee.

I suppose that's what they meant by "money back". Poor Network Solutions - they're so misunderstood.

Popular crypto app uses single-byte XOR and nowt else, hacker says

The up side

The end result of this might be good education. I think many people use encryption without knowing if it really works or not. If this app is as popular as suggested, then a lot of people will get a heads up.

US law enforcement rushes to assist bumbling Canuck pirates

3 meter waves

This was quite an adventure and considering the weather with high seas and high winds it was obviously not a matter of "bumbling". There was a lot of damage and it sounds like the right decisions were made.

Don't be stiffed by spies, stand up to Uncle Sam with your proud d**k pics – says Snowden

Re: YouTube Error

It doesn't work for me using a California IP VPN. I get:

Flash version must be 10.0 or greater

Unfortunately I've got version 11.2. (I guess Adobe does their own, in house, math.)

Big changes proposed to DNS overseer ICANN

US control

There are underlying contracts with the US which could prevail. US is also not likely to relinquish their ability to control .com .net and .org where in the past they have seized domains that were registered in other countries. Things could be a lot worse though. I'm hopeful, but skeptical.

Here is a quote from Michael Geist in an article published last year:

in 2009 the U.S. and ICANN entered into an agreement that institutionalized “the technical coordination of the Internet’s domain name and addressing system.” That document included a commitment for the U.S. to remain involved in the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), the powerful body within ICANN that allows governments to provide their views on governance matters. It also contained an ICANN commitment to remain headquartered in the U.S., effectively ensuring ongoing U.S. jurisdiction over it.

Torvalds' temptress comes of age: Xfce 4.12 hits the streets

just works

This is good news. I'd say Xfce is the best desktop around for most non-expert users simply because it's functional and stable and doesn't require dealing with a bunch of quirks. I generally use that on Linux machines when I set them up for others. For myself I prefer fluxbox or KDE on FreeBSD. KDE has lots of features and configuration possibilities which I've grown to love, but you have to fight a lot. Xfce performs without a fight.

Comcast: Google, we'll see your 1Gbps fiber and DOUBLE IT

Re: Nothing to see here

"Someone in marketing just learned"

I think that's good news.

Dot-com intimidation forces Indiana to undo hated anti-gay law

Re: It's called freedom, folks

Your examples show people being asked to do something with specific individual requirements. This is different from serving everybody the same pizza. Or are you saying that you think Gays require different pizza from other people?

PS: I should also add that in most jurisdictions a pizza shop is considered a public place which has some different legal requirements towards its customers than a contractor does.

Re: I wonder how they're going to know?

You can always ask them, I guess.

"If a gay couple non Christian came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no," said the pizzeria's owner Crystal O'Connor. "We are a Christian establishment. We're not discriminating against anyone, that's just our belief and anyone has the right to believe in anything."

There, fixed that. Yep, not discriminating.

Light the torches! NSA's BFF Senator Feinstein calls for e-book burning

Re: Only time I've ever written to my MP

. . . the very concept that access to knowledge could be considered dangerous, and should therefore be forbidden.

Did you copy that from the Politician's Cookbook?

V&A Museum shows Guardian's destroyed MacBook as ART

Re: What makes art?

This one is about the context. The art isn't the item you're seeing, or how it's arranged, it's what it represents by the fact that someone has thought it worthy of exhibition.

In fact that is a pretty good definition of art right there. I mean art as different from illustration or commercial art. Have an upvote!

me

" who among us has not taken an angle grinder to an errant machine?"

Though I have administered some cruel and unusual punishment to the odd computer over the years - the worst being from a keyboard.

Snowden didn't scare many out of US clouds says Forrester

too much churn yet

These numbers are actually huge. But I think that it's too early in the rapidly evolving cloud game to put a lot of weight on this sort of thing. Still, 26 per cent - wow.

Is this what Windows XP's death throes look like?

web or not

“this is what we see hitting web servers”

That's an obvious, and perhaps the only realistic way to go about this, but I have a feeling that there are quite a few machines running XP which are no longer (or perhaps never were) connected to the net.

Barry Obama declares national emergency over foreign hackers

flexibility

"economic sanctions against overseas individuals who are believed to have participated in online attacks"

So, all it takes is a "belief"? This sounds like a very flexible multipurpose tool.

Yes, AT&T, you do have to go to court with the FTC

Re: Common Sense not AT&T's best attribute....

Looks like that AT&T still don't understand that they SELL a COMMERCIAL PHONE SERVICE and ADVERTISE it.

Their real mandate is to collect as much money as possible and by any means possible. The phone service is only something they begrudgingly do because they are forced to. To their way of thinking it's actually quite incidental.

Halifax's '24/7' online banking service is down YET AGAIN

I thought it was the Halifax server.

US still hoarding zero-day app vulnerabilities, say EFF campaigners

The NSA

is a vulnerability

Think server vulns are the IT department's problem? Think again

My 2¢

Not a bad article, but I think that those who need the particular advice given are not likely to come here.

Encryption is the REAL threat – Head Europlod

Headache eh?

Rob Wainright said encrypted communications gave plods across the continent the biggest headaches

I hope it gets worse.

Wearables market action is all in the wrist says market-scryer IDC

Smart

I don't see shoes on the list.

$23m to a WordPress biz? Why top-end hosting is big money

Re: Expensive

Geographically diversity. Shared hosting is one server in one data centre. And WP Engine also uses a CDN.

For a personal web site? How would a site visitor even know if there was a CDN involved? From the Western side of Canada I can browse through a VPN in Eastern Europe and get perfectly good performance browsing a cheap shared hosting site in a Seattle data centre. Yes, I just did that to make sure. :)

David Cameron's Passport number emailed to footy-head

defaults

Autocomplete is great for regular casual situations. I'm just wondering why people handling sensitive information have it turned on. Is it possible that their computers are just running on out-of-the-box defaults and not nicely set up by an IT department with appropriate skills?