Posts by Martin Lee

Men in Green step back from GM's 230mpg Volt claim

MPG Depends on

how long your extension cable is.

Man accused of trying to kill girlfriend with WiiMote

Do you think that she needs consoling?

Wii'll never know.

BT cuts 0870 charges

@David Edwards

Or do what a lot of other companies do and get a VoIP number which follows you no matter where your office is.

North Korea photoshops stroke from Kim Jong Il

The top of the step doesn't disappear.

He's clearly dead centre of the stand, where there's normally a staircase, which normally doesn't have a lip.

Not that I'm saying 100% this isn't photoshopped but that isn't any evidence at all.

Ubuntu 8.10 - All Hail new Network Manager

@Ken Hagan

I didn't mean leaving her wireless open, I meant if they access her autologined laptop with her autoauthed wifi, they're pretty much free to use it at that point. Either they have her permission or they've triggered the alarm in which case I doubt they'll browse digg while the police are en route.

Obviously those outside leeching off her broadband are likely get told where to stick it, if they can get past the WPA2, etc.

@Stephen

Why shouldn't my mum have autologin?

There's nothing important on her laptop, and if she wants to leave it open to the world to use it's not an issue.

I'm not too fussed about them using her wifi either.

Navy sonar dolphin 'massacre' - the facts

Re: Pete

That's more or less what was said in 1982 when the navy was being decommissioned.

Perhaps you should have a look at what's going on in the Fulf of Iraq if you think the Royal Navy aren't quite busy enough at the moment.

Reg readers bring down HMRC website

£100 fine

You just get a letter saying you've got a fine if you don't submit in time. If you give a valid reason, they'll scrap it. Don't ignore it, but don't always assume that late filing = fine.

US boffins create darkest material ever

Green

Baldrick made a nugget of the purest green, IIRC.

Also, the stealth implications are more for aircraft and ships than for people. British camouflage has very little black, mainly greens and browns (for temperate climes at least). If the aircraft absorbs all the radiation and doesn't reflect any back, there's no way of picking it up on radar, much like the current stealth technology, where a big evil aircraft shows up about the size of a large bird.

Mac OS X Leopard - Time Machine

Of course linux/windows/bsd can do this

But it's not easy.

I've been doing it for years. rsync to an rsync server, then ln back in time, so that you have multiple revisions of your files without taking up more space. Or use CVS/SVN/WebDAV/whatever you want.

Sorted.

I am a professional sysadmin. Your mother probably isn't (and most of the Anonymous Cowards here don't seem to be either), though she (and you) can use Time Machine. The point isn't whether or not it's possible, it's how easy it is to use. If you don't need to use Time Machine then don't. You don't have to pay for it either, you can run Linux, be happy, and shut up. The Time Machine fans are fans because they can spend more time doing things they want to do instead of writing backup scripts.

And as for RAID 1, yeah, go ahead, run that. Then delete an important file by mistake (and don't say you never have) and cry. It's not a backup.

US punters gobbling up mobile data

Web and Walk UK

WnW in the UK is £5/month, but you can typically get a discount (or free!) if you moan loud enough when it comes to contract upgrade/renewal time.

Silent bandwidth battles at BT

British banks

As a lot your readers will know, the British banking system works over ISDN still as it's more reliable and, apparently, more secure.

A great deal of standalone ATMs are ISDN based as well.

DDoS attacks fall as crackers turn to spam

Not quite, Phil

It wouldn't be hard at all to write a webscraper that can connect via port 80 to hotmail, gmail, yahoo or any number of free online webmail services, not to mention WebDAV connecting to Hotmail.

Microsoft did have plans to charge a nominal fee to connect to Hotmail using WebDAV (how Outlook connects to Hotmail) but AFAIK they never actually did it.