Posts by Dave Robinson

Not only is Zoom's strong end-to-end encryption not actually end-to-end, its encryption isn't even that strong

He uses Teams for talking to his sideboard though.

Britain's new F-35s arrive in UK as US.gov auditor sounds reliability warning klaxon

Re: I thought economy class was bad

You have to press the right button.

OK, Google: Why does Chromecast clobber Wi-Fi connections?

I had noticed the same issue with Android phones waking up and buggering the networking on my Marantz DLNA player. My solution involved a lot of swearing over the past couple of months, and then buying another Sonos speaker.

Drone-busting eagles to darken Blighty's skies?

Dive bombing not necessary

How about training the eagle to drop something on the drone? Or even just fly over it with a (detachable) bit of wire dangling from its talons?

Or even better, why not train the eagle to attack anyone in the vicinity holding a remote control?

State Department finds 22 classified emails in Hillary’s server, denies wrongdoing

We need to know the truth

I have a mail server. If someone sends me a beyond top secret copy of Thursday's lunch menu (to paraphrase an earlier poster) is it my fault? Theoretically, my entire server then becomes beyond top secret, including everything already on it, and thus has to be destroyed in a controlled thermonuclear detonation.

The key questions are:

a) was she *sending* classified emails from it?

b) was she aware that she'd received classified emails on her server, in which case, why didn't she do something about it?

c) WhyTF was she doing "work stuff" on her own server?

Either way, the full weight of American justice should be brought to bear, and she should spend the next 10 years on death row, at least.

Broadband routers: SOHOpeless and vendors don't care

I've built an Atom-based Jetway box from mini-itx.com, and stuck Sophos UTM 9 on it. Awesomely powerful full UTM (3 year free license for home use), and uses <10W. Cost just over £200 all-in. No wifi, no modem (just a router), and buggered if I can get IPTV to work, so won't suit everyone.

Wheeee! BT preps for FIVE HUNDRED MEGABIT broadband trial

Re: Step in the right direction

4K requires about 15mbps I believe. I get ~70mbps on my FTTC connection. Not sure why you think you need gigabit fibre in order to watch "several" 4K feeds, unless you have a very large family.

MP caught playing Candy Crush at committee meeting: I'll ‘try’ not to do it again

I believe the inherited-wealth types prefer Fruit Ninja.

Sporty in all but name: Peugeot 308 e-THP 110

What's the fuss?

My Fiesta gets 125BHP from a 999cc 3 cylinder. OK, so you have to take the 65.7mpg with a bucket of salt, but this Peugeot is hardly ground breaking.

Top Ten 802.11ac routers: Time for a Wi-Fi makeover?

Re: ADSL, VDSL built in / requires modem

Not to mention firewall/multinat/VPN etc etc.

Wireless throughput tests to the nearest millibyte are actually pretty irrelevant in most cases. If I move 0.5 metre one way or another in my living room it can cause a 50% drop in link speed.

NASA: ALIENS and NEW EARTHS will be ours inside 20 years

Re: Viruses, Bacteria, Fungus, yeasts and Food

That was bacteria. According to Wikipedia, Viruses were suggested just a few years before TWOTW was written (I love being pedantic).

Nevertheless, to paraphrase Jeff Wayne (rather than HG Wells, who was much more long winded), across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.

All I can add to that is, if they're regarding Earth with envious eyes, I don't think I'll be booking my next holiday in Ulla-pool!

ISPs 'blindsided' by UK.gov's 'emergency' data retention and investigation powers law

We're all screwed

I don't think it'll make much difference to me... I've already been singled out for special treatment, having downloaded Tor and visited the Tails website.

To be honest, these draconian and pointless laws (and dubious quasi-governental activities that would go on regardless of whether there were laws in place) just make me want to behave in a more suspicious manner (by their definition).

I'm looking forward to my close encounter with the cage of rats in Room 101.

Dubai to get huge climate-controlled domed city and giga-mall

Re: The future

Yes, a handy prototype for when we've completely f***ed up the planet.

You WON'T spend as much on IT in 2014 as we thought - Gartner

Gartner forecast out by $40 billion

One of Gartner's more accurate predictions, I reckon.

UK govt preps World War 2 energy rationing to keep the lights on

Re: Bring back the night!

And close the doors in winter.

Freeview's rumoured '£100m YouView killer' is real – and it's yet another digital TV thing

Re: Hope it's better than YouView

Agreed. Retrofitting a few more streaming players (in addition to iPlayer and Demand 5) to the original Humax Freeview HD box would be a much better proposition (for Humax).

Mind you, you could improve YouView simplying by allowing you to stream programmes you've "missed" before they've actually finished airing. It's so annoying pressing the play button on a programme that finished 10 minutes ago, and being told it's not available.

As you say, a solution in search of a problem

Hope it's better than YouView

My Humax YouView box takes two minutes to start up, and is dumbed down compared to my identical to look at Humax Freeview HD box. Hopefully whatever comes next (or at the same time) will be better.

I am NOT a PC repair man. I will NOT get your iPad working

Re: Apparel Solution

Yep, I have exactly the same tee-shirt, and I wear it at appropriate times (i.e. when visiting people who I suspect have an ulterior motive for inviting me round in the first place).

Unfortunately, it's not wholly successful, so I'm considering getting one with the words "£30 per hour" written on it instead.

Look out, bankers! It's Lily Cole and her (Brit taxpayer-funded) WISH-PRINTING ATM

Accessible?

Is it just mean, or does the website printer need a new ribbon?

Complete waste of time, although I have no complaints about Lily Cole, because I used to work with her cousin.

Object to #YearOfCode? You're a misogynist and a snob, says the BBC

Re: More challenging than it looks

To get to the properties panel or the advanced properties you have to click on the tiny little arrow next to the word "Properties". Yes, the one that looks like a heading but is in fact a drop-down menu. Whereas the one that looks like it should do the job (the hyperlink-esque "Show All properties") is in fact useless.

The only thing that surpasses it for dogs-dinnerness is Windows 8.

Re: More challenging than it looks

The fact that you need an e-how page, and that it's different in 2007 and 2010, illustrates my point perfectly, I think.

More challenging than it looks

Anyone who things that Word 2010 isn't challenging should clearly be using WordPad. Even something "simple" like finding where Microsoft have hidden the Document Properties is a challenge :-)

The iPad age is over: The time of the iPad Mini and phablet is upon us

Re: Cheaper and more expensive?

I thought for a moment that I was reading a Dilbert cartoon.

Woman whipped gun from vagina in SPACE ALIEN spat, reports Officer Zook

Concealing a 44 Magnum in her "pork holster" (The Reg's words, not mine) would be an impressive feat worthy of reporting in any publication, irrespective of whether it had an IT angle.

I've seen the future of car radio - and DAB isn't in it

48Kb/s?

It's not clear from the article whether 48Kb/s is the streaming rate or the compressed data rate of the music. A 128Kb/s file is just about bearable, assuming it's AAC or equivalent compression. I can't imagine how bad a 48Kb/s music track will sound. If it's the streaming rate, I suppose you could download stuff in advance the night before, or perhaps just enjoy the long periods of silence in between tracks from Lady Gaga's latest offering.

Ho, ho, HOLY CR*P, ebuyer! Etailer rates staff on returns REJECTED

I think they're great

I have bought almost literally shed loads of stuff from ebuyer over the years, and have always found everything well packaged and delivered on time (often early). I've never had an issue with returns... just last week I bought some memory and accidentally ordered a single stick instead of a kit of 2, and they accepted it back no problem.

Station to station: Ten DAB-Bluetooth combo radios

Re: And next on the Register - a review of chocolate teapots.

Or volume control granularity... I have a Pure Chronos II clock radio that is either inaudible or loud enough to keep you awake.

This one time at Apple Camp... Tech titan offers to school US fanbois on coding

Re: blend o' skills...

Anyone can buy a book on the subject, and anyone with a vaguely logical mind can write a program.

Experience, discipline and method are what matter though in the commercial world.

Chaos Computer Club: iPhone 5S finger-sniffer COMPROMISED

A better solution

I reckon they should have fitted a rectal scanner. Much more secure. Or do I mean retinal? Can never remember the difference :-)

Google Nexus 7 2013: Fondledroids, THE 7-inch slab has arrived

Re: No talk of the known issues on this device?

It's the kind of "in depth" review you can write by googling and looking at some pictures :-)

Ofcom launches idiot's guide to traffic-shaping

Not so simple

It's not just about traffic shaping. The end user experience depends on contention, exchange loading, backhaul capacity, peering, CDN arrangements and more. Most of these things mean nothing to the average user who looks mainly at the cost, and in any case is using a cheap N150 router sat next to the microwave.

Tough luck, bumpkins! Blighty broadband speed gap misery worsens

That would be capitalism and market forces at work. Something which city dwellers should be all too familiar with and supportive of :-)

Why should BT rush to install FTTC in an area that already has cable? Particularly given that they are investing heavily in rolling out FTTC to the vast majority of the country ignored by cable companies.

Cutting CO2 too difficult? Try these 4 simple tricks instead

Re: Depressing

That's just ridiculous. Fossil oil (as is pretty much anything else that comes out of the ground) is a finite resource. Yes, we can cut down rainforest and plant biofuel crops on it, but if you think that's a good idea you must be mad. If we have an alternative to burning it, that's also sustainable and low CO2, then we should do that. You don't work for an oil company, do you?

Re: Depressing

We use petrol chemicals for virtually everything, from medicines to food. Burning it is pretty stupid. It will run out or become prohibitively expensive at some point.

Depressing

What a depressing set of comments and upvotes/downvotes. The balance of commentards seems to be towards not believing in climate change, and encouraging the status quo. So we carry on burning limited resources instead of doing something useful with them, pumping out CO2, radiation from nuclear power stations, and shit in general. Hopefully the planet won't end up like Coruscant in my lifetime.

BIGGEST DDoS ATTACK IN HISTORY hammers Spamhaus

Re: Spamhous must really be hurting those parasites

You forgot to mention DKIM and SPF :-)

Difficult to get working, but can be done. Also, it helps if you choose an ISP which doesn't segregate its home and business IP addresses into different ranges. It's not supposed to be easy though.

One ISP I used in the past would only open port 25 once it had tested the configuration of your mail server to make sure it wasn't an open relay.

Mozilla to Apple: we don't care about iOS

Re: I heard 90% of all statistics are made up. So, is that you're only source?"

"The weird/annoying/puzzling thing is that, no matter how many times these retard errors are pointed out , people"

If there's one thing that really winds me up, it's adding a space between the end of a word and the following comma.

Oracle trowels more plaster over flawed Java browser plugin

What a load of pointless fuss

So Java is rubbish because the browser plugin has the odd vulnerability or two (which could in fact be due to integration with the browser rather than anything fundamental to Java itself). Chrome and Firefox seem to get patched every five minutes and no one bats an eyelid. Known M$ vulnerabilities can hang around for months before they get fixed.

Anyone would think that someone has got it in for Java. Maybe it's Oracle that is spreading all this FUD and hatred?

Personally, I love Java and hate Oracle. I don't want the Ask toolbar, and it would be nice if the documentation didn't have lots of broken links to the Sun websites, or pointless links to top-level pages. However, I think the language is great, and is still a brilliant way to produce functional cross-platform applications (client or server) using a proper strongly-typed OO language.

Sir James Dyson slams gov's 'obsession' with Silicon Roundabout

Not a sucker

Following two Dyson suckers that didn't work all that well, made a lot of noise, and then packed up, I bought a Miele vacuum cleaner. OK, so I have to buy bags occasionally, but at least I don't have to buy a new cleaner every couple of years. And his fan apparently whines a lot.

But he's totally right about the roundabout.

Up your wormhole: Star Trek Deep Space 9 turns 20

Re: For me it was lacking the element of discovery

Boldly staying put where no one has stayed put before

Wikipedia doesn't need your money - so why does it keep pestering you?

Re: if only...

Couldn't agree more. I made a couple of edits regarding the town I've lived in for twenty years (including fixing an out of date link to a website I run), and the page owner (who lives in Thailand, I believe) reverted them. I sent him an appropriate message, put the changes back in, and strangely they stuck the second time.

The new Mac mini eviscerated with ease

Standardisation Please

If you're going to resort to describing colours for the hard of hearing or whatever, you could at least use the universally accepted X11 colours...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names

Your mauve looks more like "hotpink" to me, and teal is definitely nearer "turquoise. Or, of course, you could use the RGB values, which would be clearly understood by at least 90% of the Reg readership.

Skype worm chats up victims - then holds PCs to ransom

Re: Skype takes the user experience very seriously

Same thing happened to me. £10 cleaned out in a couple of hours, with calls to Yemen, Belarus and somewhere in Africa. Yes, I had a strong password. No, I didn't leave myself logged in a public place. Skype kindly spotted that my account was subject to fraudulent activity and suspended it when there was 13p of credit left, necessitating various hoop jumping to get it reactivated. No refund though, needless to say. I then got an irritating set of alerts informing me that my credit was low.

There is life after the death of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Start button

Re: My main gripe with Metro/Modern UI

It's the latest thing. Apparently, removing punctuation, capitalisation and spelling improves legibility... just like removing 3D effects and colour from the icons in Windows 8.

Pentax K-01 16Mp APS-C hybrid camera review

Worth pointing out that holding a camera far enough away to see the LCD screen (assuming it's not sunny, in which case you probably won't be able to see it at all), leads to a naturally more wobbly stance. Not good for your obscene telephoto lenses. However, you don't eventually end up looking like Patrick Moore.

BT to fibre up another 98 exchanges, puffs 'FTTP on demand' offer

Three Cheers for British Telecommunications

People have been "BT bashing" for as long as I can remember. Personally, I reckon they're doing a good job. They have to make a profit, same as anyone else, and rolling out FTTP to the whole country sometime in the next fortnight (which appears to be what a lot of posters to this forum require) is infeasible from both a technical and an economic perspective.

Compared with Virgin, who will only invest where there is a sufficiently high number of potential subscribers per square metre (PS/M2, you heard it here first) and won't open their network to anyone else, I reckon BT are pretty good.

BTW, I don't work for BT, but I do have no cause for complaint (FTTC 80/20).

I am now donning fireproof underwear in anticipation.

Apple iMac refresh due Real Soon Now

Reg gone American?

So that will be "Really Soon" then?

Before you know it, we'll be dropping apostrophes and using "like" at least three times in every sentence. Not that you'll be able to differentiate one sentence from another, of course, because there won't be any punctuation.

Or maybe I'm just being picky :-)