* Posts by Trev 2

149 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

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PC World website went titsup on Boxing Day

Trev 2

Maybe they installed some of the rubbish AV software?

They probably installed one of those annoyingly bad AV programmes that they try to sell you with every computer related "thing", and being ultra annoying it decided to do a "background system scan" just in the middle of the busiest shopping period.

Either that or someone spotted the multi-block powering the servers and thought - we need one of them for our staffroom coffee machines!

Chinese regime opens Google Earth rival

Trev 2

Was this what the Chinese were after from Google?

Tried it out, but it seems even much of China doesn't show any real detail yet - perhaps they've not uploaded those images. Also tried further around the world and it's very low res, so I guess this is what they mean by "regulate mapping".

I do wonder, was this what those Chinese hackers downloaded when Google said it had lost intellectual property (after the IE6 incident)? Someone downloaded the Google maps code?

Sex.com sells for $13m

Trev 2

Re. recovering the domain

Having spent about 2 months trying to get Network Solutions to release a domain by request of the owner I'm also rather amazed that they released it by a single letter. Maybe things were different back then, but they really wouldn't lose it these days.

As for the domain itself, I'm not sure it's really worth that kindof money as back in the early days people would probably type it in when looking for anything remotely porn related, but now there's Google for that so can it really make the money back anymore?

Regarding the mysterious company who bought it - whats the betting it'll turn out this is related to one of the people from the company who currently "own" it and very likely one of the people who sent them into bankrupcy in the first place.

'McDonalds' burger-lers making millions

Trev 2

Erm credit checks anyone..?

Would love to know who these companies are as presumably no one bothered with the usual set up a credit account, credit checks and all that gubbins. Yeah it's a big company, but you don't know that the person asking for the stuff is actually authorised to make those purchases....even if it had come from within.

Other question being - no CCTV around this warehouse...?

Chilean mint misspells Chile

Trev 2

We're not exactly immune...

Remember the £5 note c*ckup where they coated them in plastic then tried to print the ID code on top and still managed to get them into the shops before anyone noticed. Didn't quite last a year however. Wonder if anyone got fired for that?

US will complain to China about Google hacking

Trev 2

Shouldn't that be "most strongly worded note"?

Isn't the usual form to "protest most strongly" or in "strongest possible terms" when dealing with countries you know will basically stick one or two fingers up at you (unless there's a Chinese insult)?

Google talking to the Whitehouse is probably equally useless and the equivalent of "I'm gonna tell on you". At least they could have told China "my dad's bigger than your dad and will beat you up".

All we need now is for Google to use it's huge worldwide bandwidth to launch a DDoS against these Chinese IPs and it'll be settled in the best way possible - everyone gets a clip round the ear from Europe and goes back to sulk in their corner. Everything can be translated into school politics.

NASA finds cocaine in Space Shuttle hangar

Trev 2

They not got CCTV?

Seems like the kindof place you'd want lots and lots of CCTV cameras to ensure no one is doing anything dodgy like nicking bits of the shuttle and replacing them with chewing gum? Also random drug tests would seem like quite a good idea.

US mum calls 911 over Grand Theft Auto

Trev 2

They not got fuse boxes in US?

Pulling the fuse or switching the circuit breaker for he plugs would seem like a pretty good way to stop them unless it's got a UPS connected up. Bit quicker than calling 911 too.

Closeted lesbian sues Netflix for privacy invasion

Trev 2

Does she think anyone actually cares?

The big question here is why would anyone want to go trying to match up the dots - not like they can extract money from her or does she think somehow the world actually gives a monkeys about who she fancies? Me smells a rat here, especially in the "I want publicity" kindof way.

Google going local for next buy

Trev 2

Maybe needs a name change too

Not sure I'd want to trust a site called "Yelp" for good reviews - bad ones maybe. But guess it's partly a case of company moves to another country and doesn't bother to work out if the name has any meaning.

As for sale staff promising to make bad reviews disappear - of course they are! The vast majority of the type of "sales" people they'll employ (aka. telephone sales monkeys) will promise anything to get their commission even if they have no power to do this.

As for Google - hopefully they will look at the profit figures, not how much they got in ads and how much they spent of that on christmas management parties.

Design firm sues Microsoft over Bing trademark

Trev 2

They think clients won't know difference!?

I thought the usual trick was to claim that X was trading off the good name of Y with X in this case being Microsoft? Otherwise I fail to see any reason why they'd even have a potential for a lawsuit especially due to the lack of trademarks.

Ah well - looks like the lawyers will win out, this bunch of wannabes will go bankrupt and normality will return to the interwaves once more. Wouldn't be so bad if they were even a half decent design company based on their portfolio.

Lawyers claim Palin hack suspect's PC had spyware

Trev 2

Isn't everyone going to use this one?

Can forsee a point where every lawyer is going to use the spyware claim and it'd probably work in many since the jury has to find "beyond reasonable doubt". It's just a bit less plausable when it's only one person targetted, although still possible.

Dodgy Avast update classifies multiple legit files as malign

Trev 2

Human error = cheesed off employee?

Sometimes wonder with these kinds of errors if it's more a cheesed off employee who was responsible for adding these errors and of course the system not checking them against all variations of Windows (inc. the ones like XP).

Bing dies (briefly) after Microsoft hits wrong button

Trev 2

They running everything on 1 server?

This rather suggests they're running a very small group of computers for them all to go down at the same time. If thats the case I guess it means they don't have plans for Bing to exactly takeover from Google anytime soon.

As for looking into what they can do to stop this - erm, make sure the dev's can't press a button and make the code go live? You know, permissions....even if it is Windows.

Cartoon smut law to make life sucky for Olympic organisers

Trev 2

Keep up the pressure

Looks like this could become very interesting as a court case and might finally remove Wolff Oilns along with that idiot Seb Co from the scene and maybe we'll even get our money back? Can't have one law for one and another for the public...

Finns fail to warm to 2.6GHz auction

Trev 2

After 3G, is anyone going to bid?

Don't understand all the technical reasons why they need so much of the frequency range, but economically after the whole 3G auction suggestions that they way over paid for something that won't make them a return, are any of them going to bid?

There's also the news about T-Orange mobile or whatever they'll be called already having a huge chunk of the frequency band so presumably they don't want any of this currently?

Finally one thing that confuses me is that they went / are going digital with TV which was supposed to compress everything into a much smaller chunk of frequencies. So if that's the case and the mobiles did this years ago, why do they need all these extra frequencies?

Serial slurry fetish man jailed again

Trev 2

If he ever tries going into the slurry tank

Kindof surprised he's survived as going by lots of previous stories of people falling into slurry tanks, they are usually said to become overcome by fumes and it's quicksand like properties. I'm guessing the same fumes would be present around the opening to the tank too, especially if covering yourself in it.

Suspect eventually he'll end up as a Darwin award if sexual gratification qualifies for such, but in the meantime perhaps sectioning the bloke would be a good idea? Especially if he's also likely to commit arson too (not sure if that's related).

Gov net disconnections could breach EU law

Trev 2

Won't BT have summut to say?

If this is the case, then won't this seriously affect BTopenzone services as they must be making a fair packet from that considering they seem to be in a lot of Premier Inn's, Roadchef's and various other places...? Can't imagine they'll be exactly happy since they might not get prosecuted (not exactly sure), but presumably their customers would.

Pentagon world-sim tool making good progress, say profs

Trev 2

Ah, now we find the use for the LHC

So what we're basically trying to create is something where they put a copy of The Truman Show, The Sims (game) and The Matrix into the LHC.

Then using the newly created wormhole they can generate this simulated world outside the current world / universe and thus get around the schrodinger's cat problem of watching the simulation causing the effects to be predictable. Presumably you then have to receive back the result through said wormhole.

So in theory if you run the right simulation all these predictions around El Reg comments sections about the mice in nazi uniform coming through from the LHC and taking over the world probably could come true...!

UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files

Trev 2

Sounds like judges need their powers changing too

If they can ignore things like pre-sentence reports which cover a lot more than simply chatting to probation services then why on earth would it possibly be a good idea to ignore them. Sounds like the judge needs a kicking somewhere painful to remind him that he's dealing with people, not robots and there might be reasons behind certain behavior.

As for release from hospital - probably be done quietly in a month or two.

AOL taps strategy boutique ahead of Time Warner spin-off

Trev 2

If they're unveiling on Dec 10th, are these real?

A bit confused here as the article says they're unveiling on December 10th but then these are previews of presumably the new brand? If so, what they going to unveil in Dec?

As for the logos they seem fitting such as:

- Goldfish: AOL users seem to forget they're getting "had" and keep paying.

- The two fingers I'm guessing would be better as a single one referring to their contempt at their customer base (and it being an American company).

- The swirl maybe signifies the blackhole that is the money Time Warner put into this.

- The pink one looks like a kindof smokescreen or "hey look, pink elephants"

- Next is what happens to your mind when you try to cancel your AOL subscription.

- Finally a company who are forever going round in circles trying to confuse everyone.

As for Aol. - so they presumably spent a load of money trying to think what to do to the logo and then figured why don't we do something that no one else does....mostly for very good reason, unless it's stopped being short for America On Line in which case it makes even less sense.

Did wonder where I'd heard the name Wolff Olins before....ah, now it makes sense, anyone remember the London 2012 Olympics logo...!

GPS alarm seems alarmingly useless

Trev 2

Couple of possible little glitches

One thing I wonder is whether it has the same problems as say sat nav's whereby if you don't update them every week they lose track of where the nearest GPS satellites are and thus spend 30+ seconds trying to find them?

Also, one good use for something like this would be during a mugging or similar, but presumably a likely target then would be said mobile smartphone which kindof breaks the whole thing. Also of course prevents the button on the smartphone idea from working, but then perhaps the best idea would be a personal attack alarm or this device doing the sending itself? Now that would be useful.

Maybe v2 will actually solve a problem.

Triumph in Geneva! LHC beams up and running again

Trev 2

Re collisions in space probability

I don't pretend to know the physics, but regarding this question about direct collisions in space happening and us not getting big bangs.

I'd assume that a few random direct hits in an area the size of the earth every second won't cause anything more than a very tiny explosion / mini blackhole or similar....nothing that we'd notice since if we did life wouldn't have gotten going. However if you send a concentrated beam of billions of particles towards each other then won't this likely increase the effect drastically and thus increase the chances of something more noticeable happening?

For the record - not against this LHC thing, just trying to put non-physics teacher logic to it.

NJ teen jailed over Scientology DDoS

Trev 2

Year inside, and this wasn't influenced?

Now, anyone care to convince the free thinking public that this sentence wasn't influenced by certain powerful parties in high up places?

Also going by previous court cases of the DoS type, isn't it normally the case that you can only claim compensation if there's been significant financial loss? Really can't see how a web site of a non profit "religion" being down for a day could possibly generate $37,000 in loss....unless they're not quite as far removed from business as they claim.

Summut stinks and it ain't just Tom Cruise's acting...!

Santa menaced by sex offender postie

Trev 2

Presumably pedo's didn't exist in 1950s?

This presumably means by admitting the tiny chance that someone might get hold of the address, they're opening themselves to massive law suits (this being America) from all the parents and kids who wrote to Santa throughout the last 50 years....just in case one or two of those were opened by rather dodgy characters in an American backwater town.

Also sounds like this system blocks the address being known, but doesn't check the content of the letter? Erm, aren't we always being told to check what our kids read and who they talk to in case they get enticed to contact strangers?

As for why they're all panicing about it - this is Alaska, home of Sarah Palin who makes George Bush and co. look fairly un-paranoid.

Channel 4 to become Channel 3D tonight

Trev 2

Guess CH4 execs are in London

Could have been worse than Sainsbury's - they could have used Waitrose as that's got even fewer stores in the north of England (actually non). Morrisons, Asda, Iceland or anywhere like that about 2 to 20 miles away, but Sainsbury's about 50 miles away and there's only 2 at that distance. Next one I think is 100 miles away.

Hope they put a note at the bottom of the screen or there's gonna be a lot of people thinking their digiboxes are faulty.

Web host lunches clients' emails for a week

Trev 2

Who's using UK2 for anything serious?

Really gotta wonder about the comments above some of which suggest people are using UK2 for business purposes. Have people never heard of all the stories about their customer support (or lack thereof) about this company or perhaps wondered why they're selling domains for a penny....someone gotta make cuts in any service if you're selling stuff for insanely cheap prices.

Assume it's also a right pain to move domains and thus email away from them too. Google UK2 problems for years of enlightenment.

Boinkfest clicks 'Delete' on woman's memory

Trev 2

Isn't that called "sex head"?

Just mentioned this to my g/f who muttered - you get that everytime usually forgetting other important things like cuddling before falling asleep or forgetting it's your turn to get out of bed and make the tea.

Usually lasts a few hours...

Half a million customer records: Zurich Insurance admits big data loss

Trev 2

Not quite as big as it appears

Going by the Zurich web site it's only people with "Zurich Private Clients, Zurich Special Risks and Zurich Business Insurance Direct" policies who are affected not things like car insurance. Although there'd be some juicy info in some of those, probably more so than car insurance for example.

Still wondering how on earth they manage to lose this stuff and what the couriers say.

Magpies hold funerals for fallen feathered friends

Trev 2

Just headline grabbing, err...

"It's just headline-grabbing shorthand to refer to them as 'funerals'."

Erm, you're not suggesting that Lester would in any way use such a tactic to get people to read his stories I wouid assume? ;-)

As for the magpies - considering I believe they have quite a long life in bird terms and seem to form almost friendships (in a sense), then this all makes perfect sense. Could be they don't quite understand "dead", but maybe they do understand sickness so perhaps they're kindof looking after the bird by covering it.

Database containing 1.8m UK postcode locations leaks online

Trev 2

Thanks for the headsup

The people we were using are likely to stop selling this, so it's handy to know where we can get the data to fill in some of the gaps. OK, not much good to marketting people but very useful for c/o type applications, eg: Google Maps API (as that only does it to the first bit of the postcode).

BT extends trials of boondocks broadband

Trev 2

Those places are "middle of nowhere"?

Don't know them all, but I'm sure a number of those places are big enough to have their own exchanges and thus won't be 12km from any exchange. Eg: Wigton and Leyland are small towns or is this for the few hamlets etc surrounding these towns? If so, theres no way on earth anyone is going to give grants for 1MB broadband.

Smoking iMac caught on camera

Trev 2

Macs can't even smoke properly

Thats a sissy attempt at smoke - try plugging a PC data cable into the wrong bit of a soundcard and turn on the computer, then you get real decent black smoke...! :-)

As for the video, what confuses me is why it was only smoking a little bit until he'd got his phone out and then started to puff out a bit more. Very very suspicious, unless the iPhone happens to have an instant video record button which going by the "sequence shortened" notes on the ads I kindof suspect isn't the case.

Btw, does anyone know what chemicals a smoking LCD screen gives off?

Breathe Networks administrator to hold creditors' meeting

Trev 2

Does Kaye have any connection with the Virgin Islands?

Read lots of speculation going around that Steve Kaye might be in some way related to this Unicorn company since it was the only secured creditor and seems very odd that they'd happily fund a management buyout by a guy who's sent so many ISPs to the wall.

Just waiting for the dust to settle before bailing out of one of the ISPs he bought.

A correction to this story - Zetnet was a public & business ISP rather than business to business.

IT grad sues school over failed job hunt

Trev 2
FAIL

College in the Bronx?

Perhaps non of her prospective employers actually believe there is a college in the Bronx and thus assume it's all one of these online degree scams. Plus suing and getting in all the press probably isn't going to help when said employer Googles her.

<-- icon aimed squarely at her.

Scareware package mimics Windows Blue Screen of Death

Trev 2

Since XP BSOD isn't as common

One problem might be that the BSOD isn't as common in XP and Vista as in previous versions of Windows so newer users are much less likely to realise it's not going to appear in IE. Plus half the computer using world probably thinks that IE is Windows - they don't use anything else.

Whether it'll work mind you is another matter as many still know "reboot".

Breathe Networks out, Breathe Internet in

Trev 2

Is Steve Kaye lying or clueless?

As one of the customers of an ISP taken over by Breathe I'd love to know exactly why Steve Kaye thinks statements such as "The problems with email have been blown out of all proportion" could have any truth in them what-so-ever.

As well as not paying Spider Networks for the email services and thus losing original Breathe customers access to their emails, they also moved mail on other bought ISPs at the same time with some customer I know of losing mail access for 3 weeks!

So Steve - are you clueless about the company *you* ran into administration, or just being very conservative with the truth?

Breathe Networks asks for euthanasia

Trev 2

It's what they did to those they bought

Always thought I'd avoid them, but they quietly bought Zetnet - the ISP I'd used since 1994 - and all went fairly well until they got rid of key members of staff, moved the email overnight (badly!) and essentially made an amighty mess without telling anyone what was happening. I'm fortunate to be one of those who is closer to sources with inside knowledge than the majority of customers.

At least we can rely on the Register to get some of the truths about what was actually going on at Breathe - pity they couldn't be bothered to tell their customer base.

As for the management buyout - in essence we end up with the people who messed up the company and it's takeovers running the new company. Wonder how long it'll be before the Register is talking about Breathe going belly up for the 5th time!

Explosive French workers threaten second factory

Trev 2

Don't they have references in France?

Just wondering exactly how they'll work with the job reference - not sure blowing up the factory really is the best way to get your ex-bosses to say nice things about you. Mind you with it's benefits system, being out of work is probably more profitable in France.

Rogue CA update bricks Win XP systems

Trev 2

Would be nice if it asked

Wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't just quarantine the files but said I think this is infected, do you want to deal with it. First I knew was when the 2 office computers came up with a Windows service pack 3 message within a few mins of each other (guess they'd just updated).

To make matters worse, it zaps the files into quarantine then when you recover them, it zaps them again within seconds! Not done anything bad for all the years we've used it, but there are a few things they and other AV products need to think about.

CompuServe signs off

Trev 2

Was good for getting started

Always assumed they'd disappeared into AOL, although did hear rumours of an online service with Compuserve 2000 but no dialup. Wonder if they ever did ADSL?

Got my first "internet" (kindof) connection with them via Telnet on my first computer way back in 1993 which I guess makes me old. Good old national rate phone numbers, staying up to 4am chatting on the "CB chat" system to people in the US and baffling my grandfather with the idea that I could send a letter 3000 miles in about 1/4 second. Oh and the £250 phone bill shocker.

Coincidently also joined Zetnet after them in 1994 - another longstanding bastion of the online world that I suspect will disappear pretty soon.

Music labels take (more) Irish ISPs to court

Trev 2

Methods and legality?

With regards the "experts", I'd like to know just how many laws they broke doing that kind of work and exactly how they determined that the content being downloaded was infact copyright.

As for the legal stance - not sure if Ireland has the same computer misuse act and RIPA but pretty sure both of those forbid anyone playing middleman which is presumably what they did unless they supplied the files. If that's the case, isn't that encouraging someone to commit an offence? Could be sooooo much fun if that was proven.

Where's the legal buffs...

Mozilla's servers wobble as Firefox 3.5 hits interwebs

Trev 2

Bookmarks

Just done it here from the link under "help" and it seemed to keep everything so might depend on previous version (think mine was whatever the last non-beta). Xmarks plugin however could be useful here to make sure there's a constant backup.

Not sure if it's any quicker generally, but at least the install was done in about 2 mins which is better than IE's half hour with 3 reboots. Nicely it also tells you what plugins won't work afterwards, although in my case 2 / 3 were updateable.

Buffalo Linkstation Quad

Trev 2

Playing catchup?

Reading that, it sounds like they've brought out a competitor to the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ range, just too expensively and missing half the useful features of the latter.

Did look at them for our office, but real big panic point was getting the drives from them exclusively. If using RAID5 at least the drives should continue, but having to source the drive from them isn't good especially if you're using this as the office fileserver which is where it's best suited.

Re. raid expansion - from everything I read you'd have to buy 4 new disks from them, then clear it all and recreate the RAID array. Which isn't good compared to the X-RAID system on the ReadyNAS where you can expand it just by adding a new disk and it just gets on with it.

No hot swappable drives? OK, not a major issue generally, but again fails compared to the competition.

Well priced, erm, not too sure about that. Only serious home theatre users and offices are likely to be buying something this expensive, and it fails to meet a lot of their needs.

Mind you, they do a nifty little linkstation 1TB drive which is seriously tiny, no fan etc. and very portable for backups.

Vodafone offers customers chance to pay for own infrastructure

Trev 2

Why use a mobile at home?

Whats baffling me is why on earth people would want to use a mobile either at home or in the office? Surely it's usually much cheaper to use a landline? Maybe voda are hoping all the stuff about mobiles frying the brain is true and thus loads of people won't think twice about buying this unit?

DHS killing satellite self-spying program

Trev 2

ID cards cheaper?

Considering all the marvel of ID cards which we seem to be being told will stop terrorism etc etc. I'm wondering if that'd be a cheaper alternative to a few expensive satellites....assuming of course either idea actually does anything remotely of the sort?

Does make me wonder however whether this is being shelved after someone deep in an underground bunker under the Pentagon whispered to the White House Lot - "erm, but we've already got a load of them spying on everyone....didn't we tell you?".

US city demands FaceSpaceGooHoo log-ins from job seekers

Trev 2

Security of the paper application?

Re. the reassurances that regardless of what they see they will only use the bits they want, presumably means they're either using computer algos (like Google) to read and sift the info since I can't imagine any person doing that is going to be that objective.

Even bigger worry however is simply security of the data. Can the prospective employees be assured they'll keep these forms in a secure locked-down vault with several layers of military grade security, as per Fort Knox thus ensuring that no one within the city HR dept can borrow, copy or steal the data contained within these documents?

Of course the easy solution is say "I don't use Facebook, Yahoo Mail, Google Mail etc". Scuppered at the first fence.

PS: You think I should post this as anon incase UK companies yet the same idea? :)

uSwitch up for sale

Trev 2

@DangerMouse

Was just thinking I might know a Meerkat interested in buying this site...

Zaphod Beeblebrox home sun 'shrinking', may have blown up

Trev 2

Italian Job connection?

Personally I suspect this was more related to the activities of one Zaphod Beeblebrox who in the process of trying to "relieve" the planet of some valuable asset or other maybe went a little over the top and did his version of the infamous Michael Kane line "You're only supposed to blow the ruddy doors off...!".

Or it was a giant bouncy castle...

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