Posts by Trev 2

CISA gives federal agencies three days to patch actively exploited Dell bug

Re: Not a bug

Probably also find the person who wrote that bit of code has mysteriously left the country on a flight to China.

Encrypted email service files DMA complaint claiming it vanished from Google Search

Get better SEO

They need some better SEO people for starters. 15 years ago when I was dealing with SE rankings, the content of the page was only part of the story. As important was who linked to your site as more authoritive links were looked upon more favourably.

When I search for their main phrase all I get are articles about how you send encrypted emails, not links to products. So get listed on those pages for starters.

Ex-GCHQ software dev jailed for stabbing NSA staffer

He wasn't working for them by this time and it doesn't say when he left (could have been years ago). Possibly recognised the victim or maybe just saw them driving out of GCHQ.

Never underestimate the ability of someone to look relatively normal when they are evil (found that out from personal experience).

Pick an end, any end: Lost that critical Christmas cable? We know how you feel

Re: I’d be intrigued as to what the error might mean

It just needs a credit card and internet connection. Bizarrely such a connector does exist (others available on Amazon and Ebay). Perhaps it was hinting at a late Christmas pressie?

https://www.dictaphones.co.uk/mobile/Product.aspx?id=38526

UK on track to miss even its slashed full-fibre gigabit coverage goals, warn MPs

Re: GigaClear

That works until they suddenly discover the water, electric or other pipe is not where it should be. Unlike digging an hole, you can't immediately see the damage.

Eg: our main water pipes for the whole street and neighbouring village are on the completely opposite side of the road to where they should be. And they have been for likely 70 years.

UK firm NOW: Pensions tells some customers a 'service partner' leaked their data all over 'public software forum'

What service provider?

I would have thought even the people at Now Pensions wouldn't have access to do a data dump which this sounds like. Or did someone annoy the databaee admin?

As a secind point, very the heck does a 3rd party have anything to do with pension data? Surely tuey should he able to do their own processing or is this for "data analysis" rubbish?

Pleaee tell me this isnt going to be an unsecured AWS container... again!?

France fines Google, Amazon €135m total for slipping ad cookies into people's computers without permission

Re: Fine the EU

Exactly - in my admittedly non scientific checks with ordinary people (ie not techies), not one of them has ever given two hoots about cookies, tracking etc.

They do however get sick of these stipid things popping up and interfering with their experience. I am a former techie, and I fully agree with them.

Can we have extensive which blocks these stupid messages!?

Suspended sentence for bank IT worker who broke into his boss's webcam because he didn't get a payrise

Overblown ego

Honestly sounds like he had an overblown ego and figured "if they don't appreciate how brilliant my skills are and how I single handedly hold up this company then I'll show them".

Delt with plenty of people like that in all kinds of jobs - never ends well although is usually a relief for their former coworkers.

Here's some words we never expected to write: Oracle said to offer $10bn cash, $10bn shares for TikTok US – plus profit share promise

Re: They don't understand what they're bidding for

Exactly, its only "cool" until it becomes uncool and the next thing takes over. Then it becomes MySpace or Friends Reunited. Absolutely worthless.

I seem to remember some mention of the US tax payer getting a cut. Wonder what the other countries in this 5-eyes thing will think of that.

Ah well, good to see Larry wasting money.

Forget toilet roll, bandwidth is the new ration: Amazon, YouTube also degrade video in Europe to keep 'net running amid coronavirus crunch

Re: Why

But people don't understand which bit causes the slowdowns and tech support on Talktalk, BT etc will always blame someone else including your internal wiring.

The majority won't switch to more expensive providers else those above would gave gone out of business years ago.

No Huawei gear in vital 5G project to bring virtual-reality Robin Hood to Sherwood Forest

Re: So the DCMS want to raid their coffers,....

Exactly, we don't care who's watching on our internet, just give us some decent mobile access faster than in 1995. Struggling to get 4G even in town, a mile from the mast.

I see your blue passport and raise you a green number plate: UK mulls rewards scheme for zero-emission vehicles

Re: Groan...

Of course if the bus lane was being used properly, they'd be stuck every 30 seconds behind another bus carrrying loads of commuters who have ditched their cars.

Taxies can already do this and are probably cheaper than a Tesla.

Three UK goes TITSUP*: Down and out for 10 hours and counting

Re: "experiencing intermittent service"

Same here but they had their own outages recently so cant be greedy, got to remind people that Three still exists which is really the main point of these outages. They all do it as its much cheaper than TV ads.

Bomb-hoaxing DoSer who targeted police in revenge was caught after Twitter taunts

Erm, incognito mode?

Not allowed to delete browser history, so what if the computer does it via one of the browser privacy modes? Don't these judges abuse their computers with Xhampster!?

How do you know it's finally the weekend? Clock hits 5pm? No, Slack goes down on a Friday afternoon in June

Time to revive MSN?

So this is as company crippling as when MSN messenger used to fail and you'd have to talk to other people...or email...or sit there staring at the login screen?

Boffins' neural network can work out from your speech whether you'll develop psychosis

Re: Hmm... glances across office at the sales team.

Yes, but "they" still know who you are and might tell HR so you really need to get rid of HR...then kidnap Lassie before she tells the police you lured all the HR people to an abandoned mine shaft.

Re: Language?

There have been plenty of studies suggesting upper management types are generally delusional and psychotic, so it might be them you need to be worried about not the sales team.

Atari finally launches its VCS console. Again.

Re: Why the pessimism?

In reply to the unasked questions, I think we can give a few answers on behalf of their boss.

- Financially sound...he can't answer that.

- Backgrounds...not allowed to say (special ops).

- Project comparisons... for gods sake don't mention Vega+

As for the switch. Its launched ontime by an established software and hardware company who know exactly what it's specs are years in advance and have the money to produce ot without begging.

'AI is not the cause, it’s an accelerant. The pace of change is challenging' Experts give Congress deepfakes straight dope

Re: Expert

This guy is Larry whatshisname from Oracle desperately trying to flog us another overpriced database before they (Oracle) become just a footnote on a Wikipedia page.

Sure I've got an MS Access 97 CD round here he can use for this world saving database.

The first ZX Spectrum prototype laid bare... (What? It was acceptable in the '80s)

Re: 16K

I had an entire shelf of games that would run on the 16K one, although it did get a lot better when they switched to 48K admittedly. Pretty sure Hungry Horace would run on 16K.

There was even a 3D tank game, well kindof, it was 3D but with line drawings only but for the time that was impressive. Plus everytime you blew something up it had to redraw the objects exploding ...slowly...very slowly. But we had patience back then. :)

Crispest image yet of Ultima Thule arrives on Earth, but grab a coffee while the rest downloads

Beam me up Scottie...?

Anyone else see a rough model of Starship Enterprise in the pic, possibly made out of clay which someone forgot to fire / harden? How far have our TV signals reached?

Total Inability To Support User Phones: O2 fries, burning data for 32 million Brits

OMG never using O2...oh hang on!

Chav version:

"OMG never using O2 again...oh I just signed a 600 month contract for my fancy overpriced iPhone X so I'll never use O2 again, after the year 2068!" ;)

Thought black holes were donut-shaped? It turns out they're more like deadly fountains

Re: Interesting detail

These science bods need to change the way they describe things like "cold molecules" - can't imagine anything getting dragged into a blackhole is remotely cold!

Not sure about the other bit, but wouldn't be surprised if they are split into their component parts way beyond atoms? Really can't imagine many gas molecules surviving getting too close and still intact.

Teardown chaps strip away magic from Magic Leap's nerd goggles

Re: Can't Replace the Battery. End of.

That's when you send it back for repair (at your expense), although guaranteed out of warranty and thus wait 2 months and pay out about half the cost of the device in the first place while they just rumage around in the basement to find an unsold one to send you...if they don't lose it.

Of course you could buy the shiny upgraded model as we'll offer you a 10% discount, and it'll only be 25% more than the cost of repair and it'll make our sales figures look good.

Not that this is in any way part of the evil plan of mega corp. :)

Hot US deal! IBM wins $83m from Groupon in e-commerce patent spat

Didn't Amazon contest this?

Really surprised Amazon haven't contested this one especially the single click ordering patent unless it's simply cheaper not to bother. In the US at least it does seem a utility patent lasts 20 years which I think would be the type mentioned in this case. Can't find any mechanism by which it can be extended beyond that however except for the little bit of time it takes from filing to actual approval.

"A U.S. utility patent, explained above, is generally granted for 20 years from the date the patent application is filed; however, periodic fees are required to maintain the enforceability of the patent. A design patent is generally granted protection for 14 years measured from the date the design patent is granted."

https://www.stopfakes.gov/article?id=How-Long-Does-Patent-Trademark-or-Copyright-Protection-Last

Not sure however if Groupon is UK or US based, or maybe has a US operation?

AR upstart Magic Leap reveals majorly late tech specs' tech specs

Magic Leap - more like magic mushrooms

Reading this, it sounds like there's less magic leap and more magic mushrooms being consumed if they actually believe their own hype. Either that or they are just waiting to hookup with the Scientologists and zip off to their magical universe riding on the back of a unicorn next to Tom Cruise.

Brit cloud slinger iomart goes TITSUP, knackers Virgin Trains, Parentpay

They are using an identical tweet about the problem and they mention data centres in the same locations, so presumably they are the same company these days. I know Iomart went round buying up lots of hosting providers a few years ago, but don't know who bought who in this case.

On a side note, it's nice to see all the bumf from Easyspace about reliability including "Cross Connection to a number of Tier 1 carriers" - so it seems that didn't work too well. Suggests that maybe it's a config (aka upgrade just before Easter went badly wrong) issue rather than a hardware break?

EE fails to apologise for HUGE T-Mobile outage that hit Brits on Friday

If this only affected T-Mobile connections, I wonder if there's a single fibre connecting that old network to the Orange one which is where the internet stuff now comes through? Would seem the only way to break only one lot of customers connections without the other...but is a total guess.

London teen charged over Spamhaus mega-DDoS attacks

Re: Suitable punishment for him

Or even 56K modem with a rather dodgy phone line, then he'd have to listen to the annoying "boing boing" and cross fingers that it actually connected this time before mysteriously dropping after 20 mins...! :)

(I know only one of the 56K systems did the noises, but just make sure it's that one).

GM reveals how much you'll pay to turn your car into a rolling 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot

Only use i can see for this is those tablets without 3G or 4G built in, but love to see just how much coverage you'd get in the UK trying to use 4G on the go. Leave house if lucky enough to have 4G and two miles down the road it drops to 3G, then 2 and rapidly Edge. Pretty sure some Peugeots have 3G built in, but you supply the sim card...prob preferable solution.

AOL Mail locks down email servers to deal with spam tsunami

AOL probably don't have anyone forwarding mail from say [e-mail] to [e-mail] because in my experience it takes a single AOL end user two clicks of the "spam" button for the entire forwarding server IP to be dropped into a blackhole pretty much forever. Reading lots of forums over the years, this has been happening for many years.

If mailing lists are still getting through I am *very* amazed as their policy seems to be block everything, deny it's an AOL issue and then AOL subscriber will hopefully not be clued up enough to realise they're lying.

@AC regarding blocking AOL...did that years ago and no one seemed to notice. :)

Fiery bits of Euro satellite to rain down on Earth this weekend

Couldn't they use the Apollo 13 re-entry problem?

Based purely on the film Apollo 13, couldn't they have changed the angle of re-entry by a degree or two just before it ran out of fuel, thus causing it to burn up in the atmosphere much quicker? OK, not entirely scientific, but re-entry angle does seem pretty critical.

Here's what YOU WON'T be able to do with your PlayStation 4

CDs fair enough, but not compatible with PS3 games?

I can get the lack of support for CD's and old TVs - fair enough.

But not being able to run PS3 games or use PS3 hardware (controllers etc) sounds like a massive backward step alienating all the users who bought the previous product and would be more likely to be PS4 games and controller customers IMO,

Put up your ... err ... hand for free vasectomy streamed online

I want to know how long they think this op is going to take. In the UK there seems to be 2 versions:

1) Have it in hospital which requires a 4 - 6 hour wait around, some surgeon who was doing a varicose veins op 10 minutes before and might know where to cut.

2) Privately (via the NHS) when in and out in 20 mins and that includes 10 mins waiting to make sure you don't have any side effects from the antithetic afterwards. Luckily had this one and he did at least 20 that afternoon.

If the latter than this is going to be an awfully short programme. As for the first poster with the massive side effects - ouch, sounds like someone pulled the tubes way too hard!

Thongs of praise: Slip on Japan's skimpy mobe knickers

Re: Missed marketing angle

Its only time before these get an USB connector of their own (assuming thats what's on the bottom of an iphone), and an app which makes Siri say naughty things to naughty Apple fanbois geeks everytime "she" dons a new outfit.

We're doomed...!

Hacked AP tweet claiming White House explosion causes Dow dip

Proof of rise of the machines?

Personally I suspect this was a test by the machines to see if they could destroy humanity or at least the infrastructure and take over while we're trying to sort out the mess.

- Machine in Syria talks to machine at rouge login Twitter server and gains access to feeds.

- Rouge Twitter server sends out the tweet.

- Machines in Wall St. oblige by "doing as they're programmed" and sell, sell, sell.

- Finally the machines put everything back to normal again ready for the global version.

Of course this doesn't work against Mr & Mrs Jones sitting on their farm in Wales with pitchforks at the ready incase Skynet becomes self-aware so perhaps the machines will have to start playing "Thermonuclearwar" afterall....oh I forgot they tested that over Wales (or at least the sheep), it was called Chernobyl...!

Unless the AP password was "appassword"?

SWARMS of ZOMBIES unleashed on innocent bloggers

Why Wordpress - it gives really easy PHP uploads

For login security, Limit Login Attempts plugin seems pretty good and you can lock people out for a long time with it. Not perfect when they're hitting from different IPs however. Still baffles me as to why the default doesn't include that.

One really dumb thing about WP is that you cant easily change the admin account name which was until recently also the default. Can't actually remember if you could select another name, but that's why so many have admin as a name. Either needs a plugin or database editing.

As for why hit Wordpress - going by a hack I saw a month ago it could work something like:

- Hack into the Wordpress admin account

- Go to plugins -> upload a PHP script pretending to be a plugin.

- While it's waiting to install the "plugin", it puts the PHP file in a public directory not /tmp!

- Said script is now available at example.com/blog/wp-uploads/evilscript.php from memory.

No messy FTP details required, just access to the WP blog admin account and you're sorted. The one I saw even upgraded itself as required so I'm sure any new ones will too.

Firm moves to trademark 'Python' name out from under the language

Low Orbit Ion Cannon initiated by looks

Since the website linked is currently down, it seems the Low Orbit Ion Cannon has been initialised, all fancy flashing lights are flashing, the big red glowie thing is glowing....and oops.

From Viper point of view - "what you mean the data centre lines are all engaged" as the data centre team, sitting round at a weekend read this news on El Reg and decide to send all calls to /dev/null

Do feel for the Viper tech support bods who'll be fielding calls on Monday.

Oddly Python . co . uk doesn't even seem to be used.

Acer slashes book worth of brands by £76m

Gateways were the most reliable

Would have happily kept buying Gateway 2000 machines and had a P75 running from approx 1995 until 2012 when it eventually died and wasn't worth trying to fix. Even had the original hard drive in it although the original monitor failed several years before.

Now had to deal with 5 ACER laptops and 1 desktop in the past 3 years and every single one of them has had major faults. Never had an ACER without a fault or known anyone who has one that not faulty.

- Mouse & trackpad mysteriously fail unless you take the power lead out (x2)

- Overheating problems on one with no obvious cause (fan running, no muck).

- Almost all of them developed problems with the power connector.

- Wi-Fi would go down on 3 of them while on power, but instantly work on battery.

- Desktop suddenly refused to work with the monitor, but worked with another...then switched.

- Desktop then just died and it was only a year old.

Other computers and laptop makes, basically few problems that aren't the run of the mill and all fixable. Btw, acer's make good frizbies! :)

Google pulls 'racist' Make Me Asian app

Title is cancelled due to the snow...

I would guarantee that 90% of the complaints never saw the app by a simple set of assumptions:

1) The people who complained are almost certainly members of said pastor's church.

2) The followers of said church division and very likely to blindly follow his every word like sheep.

3) Being the sorts who follow like sheep, they'd never buy anything but an iPhone.

4) It wasn't released on a iPhone and thus they'd never have seen it.

Before this gets too downvoted, the assumptions are based on this being one of those marginal and very brainwashing American churches where the congregation just follow the pastor religiously regardless of stupidity just to boost his / her ego.

Don't shoot the Windows Live Messenger, cry IM users

So far not looked at Skype to see if it has a typing chat system, but really don't like the idea as lots of people will want to video chat suddenly which will be an even bigger pain. At least with MSN you can go into away mode and don't have to cover the camera or pretend it's gone down when you need to nip out for 5 mins.

Alan Sugar's YouView loses brand judgment in court

From what I've read on their site, this YourView system seems to be a vaguely specified internal system for their clients so would have to agree it's not likely to cause any serious confusion to the clients or the public, most of whom won't even see it. Presumably the only similarity is it involves in some way looking at a screen?

Whether that makes it legally right is another matter, although I really do wonder why if it's not public facing, they bothered to trademark YourView.

Reading between the lines on their site they also hinted that it was very integrated into everything they do, which I can't help but think means "we've got it as a header on web pages" and might just possibly be an angle to say to YouView later on - well if you pay us X we'll go through the huge hassle of changing the name in a few places and changing the logo. Perhaps I'm being too cynical?

Who is it that makes pots of cash from Apple and Facebook?

Re: Profit -v- Revenue

Thats what I was thinking - either they're spending a fortune on R&D or they really need to look closer at where the money is vanishing to as the actual "cash at the end of the day" is hardly moving.

What happened to businesses that actually made some decent money from their sales? Does this not exist in the IT world anymore?

JK Rowling's adult novel arrives on ebook full of FAIL

I do wonder if it was deliberate...

I am wondering if it was a deliberate way to partly defeat the pirates by releasing a broken version, that gets pirated immediately with the same broken files will be copied over and over, and then release the fixed one.

That way most people downloading an illegal version will find it doesn't work and some might go buy it instead?

Pushdo botnet's smokescreen traffic hits legitimate websites

Ahhhh, so that's what the heck that strange URL was! Hit one of our very obscure and pretty much abandoned web sites a couple of weeks ago and sent bandwidth through the roof. Now going to the bit-bin, but how about sending all the traffic to apple.com - they can afford it.

Facebook sued by Chinese firm over Timeline

But the difference is...

Timelines as in chronological type list details in a logical and ordered way which makes sense to 99.8% of the human population, even those not previously familiar with them.

Facebook Timeline which basically seems to be the "profile" page (as the frontpage and such hasn't really changed in concept), lists things in a totally random order mixed up around the page with no reference to any date system I've ever come across, and therefore isn't a chronological timeline.

Exactly what Facebook Timeline's purpose is however seems to be a total mystery, along with the equal mystery of why the heck anyone would want to lay prior claim to something resembling that mess...!?

Google taking orders for Kansas City gigabit fiber network

Forget Kansas - bring it to the rest of us! :)

As mentioned Kansas is in the middle of Tornado Alley, thus wouldn't it make more sense to create the network somewhere that is a bit more stable?

Can't have the northern US due to snow and ice storms, the middle has tornadoes / earthquakes / or they shoot the engineers in Florida and further south they likely think the Internet is the work of satin, so there's only one place that this should be trialled - the UK.

Anyone at Google listening...? :)

UK.gov's IT catalogue Cloud Store knackered by login gremlin

Is there a "down time" government quota?

Am wondering if there's an unofficial quota that states all government systems must have x% of downtime per year, so that the badly written systems look a little better compared to the good ones? Having a login glitch is an easy way to keep this quota...maybe.

Iranian nuke plants rocked in midnight 'heavy metal blast'

Exactly "Not That Andrew" - not playing Justin Beeber kindof proves this was all an excuse!

Alternatively, maybe the Revolutionary Guard wanted to play AC/DC but needed a reason. Now they can borrow this "virus", run it each time they test the AV software and no one will be any the wiser?

Cumbria County Council: We'll sort our own ICT support, thanks

I don't know about being more efficient. Having delt with them a few times before and after the changeover, things were very "council-ified", ie: took ages for anything to be done anywhere. Plus even in house, the depts still weren't co-ordinating properly, but that seems to be typical of councils.