Posts by Rob O'Connor

NotW didn't delete Milly Dowler 'false hope' voicemail

Could've been the parents listening to the messages. After all, they were accessing the voicemails - maybe they listened to the messages too?

London 2012 Olympics: 17000 athletes, 11000 computers

Vista?

Am I overly drunk or is it 2007 again? I know Acer are in a spot of bother but to bet the farm on Vista smacks of being in bed for 4 years.

Hey Commentards! [This title is optional]

How about up or down voting without it taking you to a seperate page?

Sony hack reveals password security is even worse than feared

Password safe

I started using password safe software recently, and reset all my passwords to be unique per site and use the software to generate new random passwords. The problem I've found is that a large proportion of sites seem to be completely broken when it comes to entering new passwords which are either too long (they rarely tell you the maximum length they accept) or using non-alpha characters. It's not uncommon to enter a new password (say) 30 chars long with the odd { or ^, the site accepts it, then hey presto you can't log in afterwards because their authentication is broken.

Rackspace backtracks over toff-proof sign-up process

Funny chars in surnames

Having funny chars in your surname can be a nightmare. I have an apostrophe in mine which any computing fule kno can do interesting things to poorly-written code. The amount of times I've got to the checkout on a shopping site for it to barf, and me not knowing if the payment was taken or not.

Grr.

Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict

Not a lot

As ratfox implies, $5m isn't that much. Maybe this is the way forward? Don't claim a huge amount, but claim enough to live off but with a case which is difficult to prove otherwise. Hmm, thinking of my retirement fund now.

Location-based quantum crypto now possible, boffins say

But but but...

What happens if, say, the attacker is on the floor above the intended recipient? You mention geographic location but not necessary in 3 dimensions. What's the granularity of the method of determing position?

Panicky Plod apologises to Innocent Terror Techie

Panicky Plod?

I thought this story was about a new version of Ubuntu when I first saw it!

Microsoft, Asus launch anti-Linuxbook campaign

Asus lost a sale

Well done Asus. I was about to buy an Eee PC to run Linux on, but now you say you don't recommend it, I won't.