Posts by adam payne

We live in a world where a 'Hamdog' burger hybrid is patented

A bacon hamdog please.

Victoria Police warn of malware-laden USB sticks in letterboxes

Did they come in AOL packaging?

Apple seeks patent for paper bag - you read that right, a paper bag

Well i've heard just about everything now.

Is the bag to put on your own head when the staff start to clap you out of store.

Alleged hacker Lauri Love loses extradition case. Judge: Suicide safeguards in place

The extradition should be stopped, throwing this man to the Americans isn't justice.

He should be tried by a jury of his peers in this country.

Apple's tax bill: Big in Japan. Like, $120m big

CEO Tim Cook dismissed the entire matter as "total political crap" and said that the allegations that Apple only paid a 0.005 per cent tax rate in Ireland are a "made up number."

If it's a load of total political crap then publish your tax figures. If you are open and honest about this you wouldn't have to keep on denying it and having people not believing you.

BOFH: The case of the suspicious red icon

You gotta love the 2bs they are sooo intelligent and know so much about everything. So much so they ring IT. Hmmmm....

What about the 4a?

4a

A person who is so full of his or her self importance that every single IT issue they have is urgent and must be looked at first. Forget about everybody else, they are just not as important as these people.

Spam texters fined £30K

£30k fine but how much money did they make from the campaign?

Hacker and chums jailed over gold bullion hack, track 'n' grab scam

The toilet cistern, isn't that the oldest hiding place ever?

So, Gov.UK infosec in 2015. 'Chaotic'. Cost £300m. NINE THOUSAND data breaches...

"with 8,995 data breaches in the 17 largest government departments in 2014-15."

This makes Talk Talk look good.

It really must be utter chaos in these departments.

Seagate sued by its own staff for leaking personal info to identity thieves

"Plaintiffs seek to hold Seagate responsible for harm allegedly caused by third-party criminals," Seagate claims."

Seagate may not be responsible for what others do with the data but the criminals wouldn't have had the data if it hadn't been given to them. Seagate gave them the details so they are liable for damages they have caused.

Edward Snowden's 40 days in a Russian airport – by the woman who helped him escape

"But how does one defend their innocence, under a system of "innocent until proven guilty", without the right to a lawyer or lengthy detention without a court appearance?"

You can't and that's it what they want. A nice quick and easy throw them in a cell and forget about them.

Ten-year-old Windows Media Player hack is the new black, again

Windows Media Player wasn't that short for Windows doesn't want to play any Media Player.

I haven't used WMP since the days of Windows 98, never again.

Darn it no traffic cone icon, oi Reg we need a traffic cone icon.

Hello, Star Trek? 25th Century here: It's time to move on

So it will be set around the time of the four years war.

It just seems to be a big coincidence that Discovery will be set around the same kind of time as Axanar.

98.1 million CLEARTEXT passwords pasted as Rambler.ru rumbled

Cleartext passwords *shakes head*.

I think someone there needs to be thrown out the door preferably head first.

Japan's Brexit warning casts shadow over Softbank ARM promises

I already suspected that Softbank were going to do a Kraft and move it all somewhere else. This just makes it easier for them to do it.

TalkTalk's appeal against paltry ICO data breach fine thrown out

"TalkTalk has lost its appeal against the Information Commissioner's Office decision to fine the company £1,000 for a data breach last year."

I should hope they did lose their appeal. The only appeal Talk Talk need to make is an appeal for forgiveness from all the people affected by their lacklustre security.

The handling of these hacks and breaches by Talk Talk has been appalling. Talk Talk won't be able to restore their reputation by appealing fines for data breaches.

Suspicious DNS activity runs rife

A report from a company that offers secure DNS etc. I know what you are thinking but it must be a total coincidence.

Microsoft redfaced after Bing translation cockup enrages Saudis

I'm not sure what's stranger, the fact that this happened or the fact that people still use Bing.

Labour's Jeremy Corbyn wants high speed broadband for all. Wow, original idea there

"The maximum cost for nationwide FTTP [fibre-to-the-home] coverage is £25bn, spread over a number of years, which fits easily inside the £500bn investment commitment already announced. £13bn would provide 80 per cent coverage (Analysis Mason, “The costs of deploying next-generation fibre-optic infrastructure”, 2008). This investment could be funded at minimal cost to the taxpayer and with the most rapid deployment possible, using the National Investment Bank and relying on all-time low government borrowing costs."

A roll out spread over how many years? 10 or 15 years when better technology has come along.

80% has got to be better than it is now. How you can have towns and cities that are only half enabled for fibre is beyond me.

Minimal cost to the taxpayer I do not believe that for a second. Costs always go up when any government is involved.

Angler hooks German's todger at nudist lake

Ouch!

Microsoft's maps lost Melbourne because it used bad Wikipedia data

So a company that doesn't really embrace free software unless it helps them in some way took data from a free encyclopedia.

#howironic

Cisco's upsell plan: tell you your old kit is not as secure as its new kit

"Chris Dedicoat, the Borg's EVP for worldwide sales, snuck out this hint that Cisco's sales force will soon be saying that your current kit may be very good at shuffling bits, but could do with a security upgrade."

That's nothing new, Cisco have been trying that line on for years.

Beauty site lets anyone read customers' personal information

Reads article and almost falls off chair.

How on earth can people design a system with such a flaw and try to pass it off as a feature?

It's crazy and incredibly reckless to have a site display details like that.

What's the betting in a couple of weeks customers of the site will be reporting getting spammed with emails and dodgy phone calls? or even worse.

FireEye warns 'massive' ransomware campaign hits US, Japan hospitals

Over the past three months we have had loads of these emails, most blocked by the filter though.

Sent an announcement out to the whole business saying that these emails were bad news and to not open macro enabled files that come through email. Still people keep opening them.

Shark bosses sink teeth into booming ransomware market

"Coders distributing a ransomware builder to aspiring attackers that can be used on condition that a 20 per cent cut of any ransom payments it generates is returned to the original coders."

Honour amongst thieves. Hmmmm..interesting concept.

Vodafone: Dear customers. We're sorry we killed your Demon

A Vodafone spokeswoman said: “We are sorry that those business customers who have been using the Demon broadband are having to change their email addresses and can only apologise for the inconvenience."

Oh yes please apologise for the inconvenience you are causing for very little gain.

She said the move was part of the company's £2bn investment in its network and services intended to address issues around customer experience.

A 2bn investment and you penny pinch like that. One thing i'm not sure on is, how this address issues around customer experience?

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook's ad-blocker buster: It's a block party!

"We're disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don't just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages," Facebook said.

"This isn't a good experience for people and we plan to address the issue. Ad blockers are a blunt instrument, which is why we've instead focused on building tools like ad preferences to put control in people's hands."

Punishing people by blocking ads, what planet is this Facebook mouthpiece on?

With ad preferences you will put control in my hands, really? is one of the preferences to have no ads at all?

Bleeping Computer countersues Enigma in software review libel row

Go Bleeping!

McAfee outs malware dev firm with scores of Download.com installs

For me any download wrapper = no download.

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

A signed written agreement with the client is a must for any freelancer.

I would tell the potential client that the agreement would need to be signed and returned to me before I did anything. Any client that refused I thanked for their time and then walked away.

For larger jobs I used to do time sheets as well and made sure that they were signed by the clients everyday.

Anything you can do to protect yourself is a good thing.

Bomb victims denied .ir grab

Allowing this would open up a can of worms that really shouldn't be opened.

15 million tech-fried Brits have tried giving themselves a 'digital detox'

Of those, 25 per cent spent up to a day internet-free, with 20 per cent taking up to a week off and five per cent going web-free for up to a whole month.

No internet for a month, surely this can't be done.

US state sues Comcast for $100m in row over 'worthless' repair plans

"We stand behind our products and services and will vigorously defend ourselves."

We stand by ripping off our customers and believe it is our right as a business to do so.

What's ordered in Vegas, doesn't stay in Vegas? $6.7m of printer ink 'stolen by office worker'

Did no one notice the insane about of cartridges being ordered or were they involved as well.

How was this allowed to happen for so long?

Sounds like others are involved in this not just a few people in the purchasing department.

Pokémon Go tragedy strikes

If it gets the kids out of the house then i'm all for it, six weeks is a long time.

Zen loses its chill: UK biz ISP falls offline for four hours and counting

My ADSL was fine for all of yesterday, no connection issues or speed issues at all. Since moving to Zen several years ago I have never had any downtime.

Seagate's south UK factory hasn't a future but HDDs do (it hopes)

"There is no intent to compete with SSDs on the speed front, but every intention of competing from the capacity point of view."

The market has shifted towards SSD and will continue to shift that way.

It seems like they aren't looking forward, they are just putting their fingers in their ears and shouting I can't hear you.

Seems a strange way to go in my opinion.

BOFH: Free as in free beer or... Oh. 'Free Upgrade'

A there was me thinking everybody loved setting up new printers.

TalkTalk: 9,000 broadband customers did the walk walk last quarter

Re: Chuggers

@djstardust

I've been stopped by a guy trying to sell Talk Talk broadband.

I laughed in the guys face and told him that any company that gets hacked three times in a year shouldn't be touched with someone else's bargepole. He seemed a bit surprised when I said that.

Re: Faulty Router, Compulsory New Contract

@ Matthew Banwell

Very dodgy that. If the router was supplied by the ISP it is their responsibility.

MPs tell BT: Lay more fibre or face split with Openreach

It said there is "compelling evidence" that BT Group is exploiting the position of vertical integration to make "strategic decisions that favour the Group’s priorities and interests, at the expense of its access infrastructure business".

We didn't need a report to tell us that BT exploit their position as the main infrastructure provider. They have a monopoly as we do anything that can to milk it for profits.

BT's spokesperson told us: “We are disappointed to be criticised for having invested more than £1bn a year in infrastructure when the UK was emerging from recession and rival companies invested little. As the report acknowledges BT’s investment has made the UK a broadband leader among the major economies in Europe."

What did you spend it on? copper by any chance?

Since you love Flash so much, Adobe now has TWO versions for you

Internet Explorer - ActiveX - Alpha Build 0.0.0.00902

Internet Explorer (embedded - Windows 8.1) - ActiveX - Alpha Build 0.0.0.00901

Version numbers fixed.

Softbank promises stronger ARM: Greater overseas reach and double the UK jobs

"The Japan giant has committed to “at least” a doubling of ARM’s existing UK workforce, in addition to continued investment in the country, in addition to overseas expansion over the next five years."

Until they move the whole operation to eastern Europe to cut costs.

I'm not saying it will happen in this case but we've all seen it before.

The buyer gives everybody a speech about how fantastic the company it and it fits very well with the direction they want to go. They then say they're going to invest a few lorry loads of cash into all areas of the business. Then a few years down the staff get stabbed in the back.

Windows 10 a failure by Microsoft's own metric – it won't hit one billion devices by mid-2018

Oh Microsoft when are you going to learn that some people just don't want your new flashy OS (oh sorry should that be SilverLight).

All the nagging and underhanded tactics in the world aren't going to make me upgrade.

Google on piracy: We really, really care

Content ID is stupid

Google claims that ContentID is effective, with “over 98 per cent of copyright issues [are] resolved via ContentID”, and that the identification success rate is 99.5 per cent.

ContentID is so effective that one of my Chiptune videos was flagged for copyright. Apparently the copyright holder was a Bollywood company that has had nothing to do with computer games and didn't even exist when the Chiptune was made.

When I contested the claim the Bollywood company didn't even bother to respond so the video was allowed to stand with ads removed.

Google ContentID(TM) now with built in time machine and bogus copyright flags.

Omni-shambles! Card-stealing malware checks into US hotel chain

Pre-pay all day long.

White hat banned for revealing vulns in news sites used by London councillors

WOW! and there was me expecting something like this

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 6.0">

That email says, in part, that NeighbourNet's development team "acknowledged that you have identified some potential security holes but they have existed for a long time without ever been exploited and there seems little incentive for anyone to try to do so."

Are you sure you wanted to say that?

The fact that you have just admitted the security holes have been there for a long time makes you look like a bunch of fools who don't care about security. Just because they haven't been exploited doesn't mean you should ignore them.

Attention, small biz using Symantec AV: Smash up your PCs, it's the safest thing to do

I haven't recommended Symantec or Mcafee in over a decade and wouldn't use them if someone gave it me for free.

What makes a Symantec product safe? leaving it in the unopened box, on the shelf of the company desperately trying to get rid of all the copies they purchased.

Ofcom is to get powers to fine mobe providers for crap service

Re: "in the Bill is a legal right to fast broadband"

Depends on their definition of fast broadband.

5 years, 2,300 data breaches. What'll police do with our Internet Connection Records?

I have a feeling a process of re-training will occur soon.