Posts by Dan 55

Pause Patch Tuesday downloads, buggy code can kill Outlook

Re: And that ain't all

Well, Nadella did fire the Trustworthy Computing team in a round of layoffs and their work was moved into other areas of the business. Windows Update has never been the same since.

Microsoft capitulates, announces German data centres

Re: How is this different?

So what? MS would have to break Irish law to give away customer data to the US courts without going through the Irish court system, but there's still every chance that could happen.

US Congress grants leftpondians the right to own asteroid booty

Um, what's the point of offering ownership rights if it's not got sovereignty?

TalkTalk to swallow £35m ‘financial impact’ after attack

Re: Encouraged customers will stick around

There was a story only last week about a Reg reader who was a Talk Talk customer and had money taken from his account around the date that Talk Talk said they were willing to entertain goodwill payments, only for the payment to be about 30 quid.

And if you don't believe him then maybe you'll believe Jeremy Clarkson who published his bank account number saying it wasn't enough information for people to take money out of his account, only to find it was.

That's a big generalised statement you're making, but you seem to have less to back it up than the people who have quoted passages from the DPA and Supply of Goods and Services Act.

Encouraged customers will stick around

They're not letting them leave, ignoring their statutory rights, and not giving meaningful conpensation when people do have money taken from their account.

Unfortunately few people know their rights and won't cancel the direct debit, won't quote them their rights, and won't tell them if they want the money they can take them to court.

Identifying terrorists: Let's find a value for needle in haystack

Re: I hate to say it, but...

I'm also starting to think this bill would allow a complete full population database to be held by this or a future government or an alphabet agency should it feel like it.

It is necessary and proportionate to have all the data if you want all the data.

Roamers rejoice! Google Maps gets offline regional navigation

Re: Here Maps

The previous offline version was max 50km x 50km.

This one lets you search and then select something for download, but it doesn't seem to let you have a full region/state. Maybe there's also still an arbitrary size limit.

Re: Stylish !!!

Why not? You can download the whole planet with Here if you want, space permitting.

Re: Here Maps

No it's not caught up with Here, because it seems you're only allowed to download cities...

Ex-GCHQ chief: Bulk access to internet comms not same as mass surveillance

And when the weblog access is finally saleable

Next up will be a card to ID yourself before being able to browse.

Obviously these people will never be happy untill they've got all the cattle tagged. Meanwhile we have to listen to nonsense like bulk access to internet comms is not the same as mass surveillance.

Anything AWS can do: Microsoft announces UK data centre region for Azure cloud

Not worth a penny until MS Dublin is sorted out...

Perhaps they should have waited first just to to be sure.

What the Investigatory Powers Bill will mean for your internet use

Google doesn't know what I've accessed

No Google account, don't use Chrome, I use another search engine unless I have to, and a dynamic IP.

Also the HTTPS question doesn't take account of client-based encryption and PFS.

The mail answer doesn't take into account a MITM fiddling with strings to stop STARTTLS from working.

The password answer talks about data in transit but doesn't say that data at rest can be stored without encryption (Talk Talk).

Probably others. Someone else will comment.

And the obligatory question - when is El Reg going to switch to HTTPS?

All cooped up and nowhere to go, US and German spooks spied on each other

Re: unsurprising

A Spy vs Spy icon?

Red Cross and Oxfam

There's your terrorist organisations right there.

Amazon's chomping at the Brits: UK to get AWS data center region

Re: Really handy

If we're RTFM, why do we not know about cross-region replication?

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2015/03/amazon-s3-introduces-cross-region-replication/

Re: Really handy

It'd only be more blindingly obvious if they said they were opening it in Cheltenham. Amazon would be obliged to decrypt everything they've got the keys for if asked to.

Don't these things also automatically replicate data to other regions in case they fall over? Perhaps after popular demand they'll need to put a tickbox on the control panel saying don't replicate to the UK.

Doctor Who's good/bad duality, war futility tale in The Zygon Inversion fails to fizz

Re: "How long can the ceasefire last?"

Wouldn't the passionate plea for peace get a bit boring after the 5th time?

And Thunderbird 2 should scrape off the platform in a shower of sparks then slowly tilt and fall nose first into the sea.

BlackBerry Priv: Enterprise Android in a snazzy but functional package

Re: "snooze" an email for later action. you wonder why nobody's done it before.

I'm not sure if the local calendar server as a way of allowing more 3rd party calendar software to work is innotive or an admission of Android's inherent cludginess. Hopefully everything's faithfully replicated upstream to the Exchange server, because if does something like screw up repeated entries then that could be annoying/embarrassing.

Re: Reviews, disingenuous much?

I very rarely have trouble with Ars' reviews, they tend to stick to the facts and argue why they believe a feature is or isn't any good. One of the first things he says is he's only had two days with it (like, it seems, everyone else) and a full review will come soon, which seems entirely reasonable.

TPP: 'Scary' US-Pacific trade deal published – you're going to freak out when you read it

Re: Source code

... which brings us back to VW... Countries will not be able to demand the source to the engine management software as part of the pre-sales certification process.

Re: Source code

Why would the TTIP be substantially different from the TTP if both are about America writing the rules of the road? The US can now say to the EU that other half of the road^Wworld does it this way.

Re: Source code

Maybe VW does have to cough up the source code in a criminal investigation but perhaps govt testing agencies will have trouble asking for it as part of their testing regime before allowing sales in the country.

And after the VW scandal that's absolutely what they should be bringing in.

Aren't they all?

Source code

No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the import, distribution, sale, or use of such software.

It depends what a Party is but I think that's entirely reasonable for power stations, vehicles, or governments. Does this mean that can't happen any more?

Let's get to the bottom of in-app purchases that go titsup

Well, that and they could give you an electric shock if it was feeling particularly French because the metal surround was actually a pin as well.

Also your SCART with RGB DVD player probably didn't talk to your telly in RGB because you plugged it into the SCART with S-Video plug or you bought a cheap 10-pin cable, instead you got a composite picture. Same for stereo and Dolby sound.

About the only thing it did was standardise the connector, but it didn't do that right because as mentioned there was some stange repellent magnetic force between socket and plug.

And we're about to go through all that again with USB-C, the SCART of USB connectors (see news of the Google engineer reviewing USB-C cables on Amazon). Apart from the falling out bit as we will find out when people trip over the cable and it's not at all like magsafe.

Re: Content and delivery

All they need to do is serve up a picture, how many stars it's got, a bit of text info, and a view button. Add a search option. Just the kind of thing a common API could do, and it all gets presented by the telly or box or stick in a standard way.

Sad to say the latest Apple TV is the one which has come closest to this. Bloody Apple. Again. Not really innovating, just doing the obvious thing while everyone else spent years not doing it.

Re: Original Version Films

Sad to say that nobody in all these gigantic megacorps has thought of just starting up Kodi and copying it.

Actually I'm not sure why I'm that surprised, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone/Mobile/whatever it is now should have feature matched every feature from older OSes like Symbian and Blackberry 7 but still haven't managed to.

Re: Old TVs

Or the ultrasound remote control which made the cats jump.

Re: Re SCART

Couple that with SECAM instead of PAL and we can only assume that the powers that be in France thought colour television was the le travail du diable but as they couldn't get away with banning it they just decided to make it a horrible experience instead.

Windows 10: Major update on the Threshold as build 10586 hits Insiders

Too... much... unification...

The New Xbox Experience screenshot appears to show a battery icon next to the clock in the top right, why on earth would it need that?

Top FBI lawyer: You win, we've given up on encryption backdoors

Probably. By the time they gave up on the Clipper Chip, they'd got a Plan B.

TalkTalk offers customer £30.20 'final settlement' after crims nick £3,500

Fraudsters are only ringing because TT couldn't secure their data in the first place.

Re: Small claims court

You've just let TT set the agenda. The slack security (three times over the last year no less) shows they've not taken the DPA and Supply of Goods and Services Act seriously and are not competent enough to provide the service.

That aside, TT trying to charge a leaving fee after going on record as saying they wouldn't if money was taken from bank accounts on or after the 21st of October allows you to argue they're acting in bad faith.

Re: I'd read the contract terms carefully

And the Supply of Goods or Services Act says that the service must be carried out with reasonable care and skill and the service must be of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose.

Everything that Talk Talk agreeded to do in the T&Cs and haven't done can and should be used against them, but that's not the end of the story. I have no idea why so many people quote the T&Cs as if they were gospel when they are not, your consumer rights always win over a load of one-sided lawyerese with a couple of paragraphs thrown in so they can claim it's not all one sided.

UK's super-cyber-snoop shopping list: Internet data, bulk spying, covert equipment tapping

And you won't even know you're visiting half the sites they record...

... what with advertising networks and apps connecting everywhere.

http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2015/11/user-data-plundering-by-android-and-ios-apps-is-as-rampant-as-you-suspected/

Re: Cautiously optimistic

I think the judge part can be skipped if the answer is needed in less than five days. Guess what will happen...

Re: I haven't heared so much bull$h1t since the last time she stood up...

No worse than an itemised phone and the domain list from your web browser's history, signed, sealed, and delivered to HM Govt every month.

Spanish town trumpets 'Clitoris Festival' thanks to Google snafu

Re: Spanish in Spain

That's because Spain's not a country, but 17 regions thrown together who all hate each other.

Re: Galician to Spanish?

Ooh, you're so going to burn.

What's "cheapskate" in Galician?

"It's a very serious error on the part of Google and we are thinking about making an official complaint"

No, try properly translating your text and proofreading it before publishing instead of just copying and pasting it. It seems it was from Galician to Spanish so it shouldn't be that costly.

Web server secured? Good, now let's talk about e-mail

That would be SMTP + DANE, but that's quite a long way away yet. Two services you've got to sort out, not one.

Here's how TalkTalk ducked and dived over THAT gigantic hack

Re: Why Is Dido Harding Still in a Job?

They ring up people and want them to enter their details on any old website? Nice.

That's if it really was TalkTalk ringing you up. If not then your data's doing the rounds.

Hi, um, hello, US tech giants. Mind, um, mind adding backdoors to that crypto? – UK govt

Re: Which Delusional World Are People Living In?

It's all part of the echo chamber. They'll happily bang on for years about this and there's a chance they will eventually get their way.

Sir Rowley Birkin QC

... and I'm afraid to say that I was very... very... drunk...

Star Trek to go boldly back onto telly, then beam down in streams

Re: It will be called>>>>>>>

Wasn't there a point where TNG, DS9, and Voyager overlapped? So I don't think they count as separate reboots.

Now VW air-pollution cheatware 'found in Audis and Porsches'

"ARB and EPA will continue to conduct a rigorous investigation that includes testing more vehicles"

Meanwhile, sad to say, the Rightpondians still seem to be hoping the problem goes away.

Proactive regulators... Whatever next?

Net neutrality debate: If startups want to rival Google, they must show some green to telcos

Re: Telco neutrality

And http://www.ukec.co.uk/ which is the website for UK ENUM Consortium Limited, the organisation in charge of the enum project for the UK, just reveals a template website.

I fear enough hoops have been jumped through so it looks good from abroad yet it's been set up just to stop people actually using it.

Third suspect arrested over TalkTalk breach

Wrong and a disservice to readers

Customers wanting to leave the popped telco will need to have had money stolen on or after 21 October as a result of the hack, and have contacted the fraud department.

They've not followed the DPA or the Supply of Goods or Services Act, but statutory rights aside, they've even broken their own T&Cs.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/broadband/2015/10/talktalk-website-hacked-what-you-need-to-do-now

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3292565/The-small-print-says-quit-TalkTalk-Hacked-telecoms-giant-refusing-let-customers-leave-without-paying-fees-ve-loophole.html

Use Skype if you want to report a crime, say cops

"Not everyone has Skype or VoIP installed"

Especially after all equipment of value in the house has been sold down the pub.