Posts by Tom Chiverton

Cybercrime bust highlights PIN terminal insecurity

"How do I get a Chip-and-Signature card?"

Ask your bank. You may have to ask several times.

VMware admits 'time bomb' rolled past quality control

DRM

Digital Restriction Management isn't just for music remember, but anything where the makes decide your money isn't enough, they want to own your data too.

Make it stop: http://defectivebydesign.org/

Is Microsoft's Silverlight evil?

"I think that bridge has now been crossed"

You think ? Does Silverlight *really* work on Linux or Mac ? No ?

Are Microsoft even trying to enable that ? No ?

You mention the competition being Flash (and the Flex framework)- that *does* run everywhere (well, every-32-bit-where). Unless I was being paid by Microsoft, why would I choose to needlessly restrict my user base ?

At least Flex is mostly open source...

Clone dog mistress denies she is 'sex in chains' McKinney

@Richard

A certain Mr. S. King has already done it, hasn't he ?

BT slams bandwidth brakes on all subscribers

2nd Zen

Not only do they have a no-throttle and no-phorm policy, but their tech support (the one time in many years I had to ring) know their stuff, support Linux and generic ADSL routers (not just the ones you can choose to buy when you start your service with them).

Kaminsky (finally) reveals gaping hole in internet

Ernst & Young on the kool aid

"has the potential to bring down the internet" ?

Err, no, just DNS and applications on top of it. The actual underlying network ('the internet') will be happily sending TCP/IP packets around as if nothing as happened.

It's not like that BGP problem a while back that actually could have killed back bone routing...

Net shoppers bullied into being Verified by Visa

chip and pin NOT mandatory

C'n'P isn't mandatory at all.

Go ask your bank.

Several times. Probably try a few different people.

It might help if you pretend to be old.

Eventually you'll find they do 'chip and signature' cards - http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/PublicWebsite/public_chipandpin.hcsp

South Korean prez turns on the internet

goodluckwiththat

"force publishers to get real name registrations from anyone who wishes to comment on a story or in a forum"

Well, that wont fail miserably then.

US court liberates Cablevision 'remote DVR'

@Rob Farnell

"When's something like this coming to the UK?"

To the end user, it already is. What does the average Joe care if his V+/Sky+ cable box records locally or remotely ?

Dell to launch MP3 player, claims mole

Too late Dell

Too late Dell, handily the Sansa clip is listed on the same page, and it's out now...

It's official: The Home Office is listening

substantive criticism ... will all just fade away

Not while http://no2id.net exists it wont - don't sit there moaning - join your local group and get the government stopped.

Apple skewered over missing DNS patch

increase in single packet DNS version queries

"increase in single packet DNS version queries" ? Bwuh ? Am I the only one with options {

version "10";

}

in my named.conf ?

Dell's Ubuntu love-in expands to new laptops

My 1525 is basically silent

"if they didn't review their hardware, let me tell you that the Inspiron 1525 has fairly noisy fans which runs every five minutes"

The idle temp is about 35, no fans - this is with FireFox and KMail being used but it's obviously not taking both cores.. You're right that it wakes up every 10 to 15 minutes to bring the temp down from 45 or 50, but the fan is *very* quiet. Esp. compared to my previous Toshiba which sounded like a jet.

Consume .NET services without Silverlight

The only surprise is

The only surprise is that MS haven't screwed up^H^H extended the SOAP spec so it only works with their client.

It's not like they've got form or anything...

Congress accuses American Phorm of 'beating consumers'

one way has of IP address

A one way hash of the IP address doesn't help - it's trivial to make a 'rainbow' table for something as complex as Windows LAN password hashes, so how long does it take to do md5sum(0.0.0.0) to md5sum(255.255.255.255) do you reckon ?

Tech woes threaten NASA's Moon plan

No, they can't reuse the Saturn V

They can't reuse the Saturn V (ever on 'enlarge') because the same tech has to be used to go to Mars, including a number of heavy cargo lifts.

EU tells UK to deal with Phorm - or else

As they say on /.

suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

BT opens wallet to send fibre to the home

Universal Service

How about they can do what they like, but in return have to provide 2mbps+ to anyone who wants it at RAND cost - much like the way the telephone lines work.

How to be an instant Web me-2.0 developer

A few corections

"Flex is the cheaper, techie-oriented IDE."

No, Flex is a set of open source components for developing Flash content (etc).

Flex Builder is a pay-for IDE (or Eclipse plugin) but there's always Adobe's free and open source command line compiler.

Real researchers discover 'Music Without Limits'

Yawn

Come back when it runs in the UK

UK abandons train and tube scanners

Screeeeeeeeeechhhhhhhhhhhhh !

Nice u-turn :-)

ICANN approves customized top-level domains

Bonkers

Why on earth is it a good thing to allow the creation of 'www.barclaysbank' ?!? Phishers dream...

Boris' crime map plan comes unstuck

Help us out here

Where is the privacy problem in saying 'In postcode X there were Y incidents of crime Z' ?

Microsoft says ‘hasta la vista XP’ - well, kinda

It's not that you can buy Vista-running machines

It's not that you can buy Vista-running machines, ala "I can buy a Vista Business machine that runs Aero (and runs it *well*) for $399" it's that the same hardware will be much much faster if you run XP on it.

The iPhone - yours for €1

"buyers won’t be able to break the two-year contract"

I think you'll find that I can break the contract perfectly well, tyvm. Restraint of trade ? Overly broad ? It's like the unenforceable click-through agreements on software...

Ex-Sun chief to fight Davis in '42 days' by-election

a majority of voters apparently support the 42 day legislation

A small majority (unlike, say ID cards, where most people are against them) expressed a preference for 42 days, when asked a loaded question.

And as was mentioned in the House t'other day - Parliament is for making good laws, not popular ones.

Fraudsters pool data to beat plastic fraud checks

@Nigel

My in-laws don't have a house number

Apple under the gun to master the iPhone's 'second album'

Err... no ?

'4) A “real” web browser. ... the iPhone was the first to mate a real desktop browser with a UI that actually made it practical for palmtop use.'

You must have missed the SE phones that have had Opera on Symbian for ages before the iPhone got it, and never mind Opera Mobile (Java), ditto.

It's bad enough Apple spread this gruft, without you doing it too.

US imposes 72 hour pre-reg for Visa waiver travellers

Easy solution

Don't go.

Tell the folks you *were* going to met in the US why you wont go, and hold the whole thing over video link/Skype/etc.

Better for your carbon foot print too...

Microsoft seeds HP PCs with Live Search

huruphm

<cough>

antitrust

<cough>

Bonce-antenna education downloads foreseen in 30 years

Mad man

"very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge"

Err, yes, technically. Your body is a radio antenna anyway, right ?

But actually then *programming your brain" so it can use those ? Whole 'nother matter mate...

Mozilla guns for Guinness world record with Firefox 3.0

@Sean O'Brien

You can always download and run it without waiting for the offical package.

Or just down load it and not run it, but you'll still be counted :-)

Phoenix prepares to flex its muscles

@Ian Hunter

The color-corrected photos take longer to appear than the raw snaps.

DARPA hands out cash for tiny bugbot-thopter

@Anton Ivanov

Some birds can fly backwards and/or hover - humming birds are the obvious ones.

As to being 'a waste of time' - have some imagination about what you could do with (say) smart nano material and a multi-domain constantly variable wing is fairly easy...

Government announces shortlist for ID card contracts

"so many people will just turn a blind eye to this"

Until it adds over a hundred pounds to their council tax bill, presumably.

Medion takes aim at Asus' Eee

Only 11n ?

"Akoya comes with 802.11n Wi-Fi"

Nice'n'all, but there are hardly any 11n hotspots, compared to those offering b/g.

Firefox developers tinker with new security protections (finally)

Err

"enable websites to define security policies that the browser enforces"

You mean the like the 'same origin' policy we already have, that isn't regularly found to haven problems in it's impl. ?

'Major' Flash Player beta released

Woo hoo, faster !

@Frank: Yes, v10 does a lot of hardware acceleration, so your alpha fades'n'stuff will be much quicker on the same hardware.

No, there are new APIs for the new Player, but the language (AS3) is the same still.

Re:64 bits

Only 30 votes on http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-37, which doesn't seem to be very many - have all you people complaining actually done something about it and voted ?

BBC iPlayer continues platform sluttiness with Virgin Media launch

Shady

It has been flaky in the past, but I've noticed a couple of updates over the last few months and just tried to from News 24 - and it works fine.

But yes, it's just NTL rebranding their existing catchup service as 'iPlayer'.

MS supplies cops with DIY forensics tool

"Another, even greater concern is that the kit will get into the hands of hackers"

I recently had cause to want to know the administrator password for a Windows XP install.

loginrecovery.com is great. Download thing, burn to CD, boot the CD, and send them the magic number. 3 days later, log on to their web site and you get the password. Fantastic.

Pay money and they'll do it quicker, over multiple accounts. Rar.

Secure ? Pfft. Nothing is secure if you're at the console... right ? Windows double so.

HSBC plugs hole that exposed site directory

Err...

"Great if you were planning a phishing attack and wanted to get a complete site layout and set of assets"

wget ?

Border Agency plans Olympic identity card

Bwuh !

"I don't think as a key public service we would want to oblige (the use of) biometrics"

This from the same government that wants the fingerprints of everyone in the country as part of a national ID card system ?!?

Left hand to right hand... come in left hand... what are you up to...

High Court quashes decision to release secret ID card reports

You would think

"The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) argued that the documents should be disclosed. "

You would think that would be the end of it, really.

Have you joined http://no2id.net yet, so you can help stop the whole stupid enterprise ?

Adobe launches 'free' Flash-only media player

@FRLinux

Actually, the AIR runtime is available for Linux right now on labs.adobe.com

New(ish) Labour plans Whitehall 2.0

freeing up O/S ?

' freeing up data “will allow us to unlock the talent of British entrepreneurs” '

So, how about letting us have the ordnance survey data then ? No ? Thought so... nothing to see here apart from spin, move along...

Adobe cuddles up to Linux Foundation

AIR source code

You can develop AIR apps using the same open source SDK as Flex, but have to use a binary-only compiler to make and sign the special .air files.

MPs pile pressure on ISPs over Phorm

Politicians acting on our behalf in a clear and obvious way

@Dave: It's almost as if local elections are just around the corner, innit :-)

opt-in not enough

"when the nationwide Phorm system goes live it is on an opt-in only basis"

It must not be just 'opt-in' as BT will just alter the small print in the T+Cs and opt everyone in that way. Or call it 'webwise advert spam buster' and opt-in people based on that misinformation.

Any 'opt-in' (assuming for the moment the system is legal, any ISP wants to touch it with a barge pole and Phorm isn't bankrupt) must be based on fully informed ('we will know everything you read, including web based email and forums, personal details included') explicit consent.

Tom, who's ISP is Zen, who have said they will never have anything to do with anything like this. Switch from BT now !

Buggy Flash code continues to plague the web

Whats up

Leo: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/02/buggy_flash_fix/

"Flash files produced by Adobe DreamWeaver contain a "skinName" parameter that can be exploited to force victims to load arbitrary URLs that include the "asfunction" protocol handler. SWF files generated with Adobe Acrobat Connect don't properly validate the "baseurl" parameter, allowing script injection. "

So yes, it's a recompile job. Assuming you have the source to that binary the contractor delivered.

Tokyo 250Mbps mobile supernetwork speeds into life

Super 3G ? 3.9G ?

Why not just call it '4G' and be done with it ? It clearly is...