Posts by Jimbo 6

Barclaycard pay-by-bonk fraud risk exposes Amazon's security

Re: tin foil lined wallet

Have you never heard the phrase "keep it under your hat" ?

@ Irongut

So if you are Mr Jones of Exeter, and someone places an order using your card number with the details of Miss Smith of Newcastle, you actually expect a retailer to say "oh well it *could* be legitimate, let's send that Fondleslab2" ? You might not care as Amazon are picking up the tab, but if they allowed this and *you* had to pay, you'd be pretty pissed off, I believe.

If the CC number was not connected to any existing Amazon account, then the *initial* transaction (at least) should be subject to a 'Code 10' check (i.e. the customer must enter the address *exactly* as it is on the bank statement, and the retailer verifies this with the bank before the goods are sent. Mismatch = possible fraud. This does not prevent the retailer from accepting a different *delivery* address.)

"Would you prevent a family having separate accounts on the same CC" ? - Yes, absolutely. This may come as a shock to you, but your family do NOT have the right to use your credit/debit card, any more than they have the right to write (and sign) a cheque in your name. At my former job (games + peripherals, mail-order: ergo, highly sellable down the pub), we were endlessly having to tell wives that they are not allowed to use their husband's card details. If you trust your spouse (or your kids) with your credit card, it's a simple enough process to get them a *separate* card, payable on your account, but with their name on it (& if the kids are at a different address - off at college, presumably - registered to their address).

Re: "shunning of new technology"

Because :

new =/= (useful, reliable, trustworthy...)

I presume you haven't noticed that some other articles on El Reg highlight *problems* with technology ? Particularly, problems that the profit-takers are happy to sweep under the carpet ?

As the Native American saying goes, "Only an idiot tests the depth of the water with both feet..."

Americans resort to padlocking their dumb meters

All the symptoms described...

....(insomnia, ringing in the ears, heart palpitations - and irrational technophobia) could also be explained by them watching too many Republican Party nominees' speeches.

Facebook: Your boss asks for your password, we'll sue him! Maybe

Re: All this seems kind of illegal to me

IANAL, but I think previous posters saying that they would take the line “I presume this is some sort of test” are missing a trick.

Given that accessing the account would be a breach of the Communications Act (in the UK), surely the very act of asking for your login credentials is a criminal act in itself ? Not sure whether it could count as blackmail (if you don’t do X, then we won’t give you a job), or bribery (we *will* give you a job if you do X), but it’s certainly ‘social engineering’, to get unauthorised access to a system.

I don’t see how it is therefore any different from the interviewer saying “one last thing…suck my cock”. He has committed a criminal act, and this isn’t negated by him backtracking and saying “oh that was just a test to see how you’d react, hahaha”.

Interested in people’s opinions on that… but if I’m correct then the appropriate response would be to advise them that they have just committed an offence, and you *are* going to report it to the authorities – and then walk out.

Personally I’d also contact media such as El Reg and the Grauniad, and as you didn’t get the job, there should be no problem naming company names, either…

(Thinks : I’m not actually looking for a job at the moment, but I might just start applying for a few, just for the laughs mwahaha…)

Florida man 'fesses to naked Scarlett Johansson outrage

Re: SP

He looked, but the only beaver shots on her account just involved semi-aquatic quadrupeds and heavy-calibre rifles.

Hard-up Iceland plumps for cheaper open source

Saw the headline...

"Iceland... plump... cheap... "

...and all I could think of was Kerry Katona.

Space probe in orbit above Mercury sees signs of polar ice

That place reminds me of my ex-wife.

Hot, but no sign of any intelligence.

Scammers exploit new Dr Who girl with Twitter smut video

@ very sad people

Indeed. But happily our fellow El Reg readers are all upstanding members of society, and not a single one of *them* is currently staring vacantly into space, imagining what this hypothetical grumbleflick involving the new Dr Who assistant (and/or the old one) would entail.

You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

Re: suppositories

We all (occasionally) want to tell the boss where he can shove it, but did you mean 'suppositions' ?

Report: Feeble spam filters catch less junk mail

Re: Seems Yahoo is the big culprit here

Anecdotally... I've noticed on my Yahoo account in the last 7 days, that one mail *from Yahoo customer services* (confirmation of a change that I'd made) was sifted into my Spam box. While one with 'Viagra' (not even 'vigara' or 'viagara') in both header and body happily passed straight into my Inbox. Go figure.

Nokia invents teeny throbbing tattoos to make your skin crawl

March Of The Cretins

Given that you would still need to actually pick up the associated phone to receive any incoming message...so you probably wouldn't leave it that far away from your own location in space (especially if it had a high fondle-rating)... are that many people so *stupid* that they actually need a vibrating tattoo to tell them when a text message arrives ? Or when the phone needs recharging ?

Oh, right, bit of a silly question really.

Smartphone users sue Apple, Facebook over mobile app privacy

Cry 'Havoc' !

Let slip the dogs of Law !

Let their parts-most-private be consigned to a Rutland tree !

Lawyers of Mordor menace Hobbit boozer

Best suggestion I've heard...

...turn it into a "replacement parts for cookers" themed-pub.

Call it 'The Hob Bit'.

Council spunks '£100k on how to wash your hands' vid

Re: work as a chemist...wash your hands BEFORE using the toilet

Yeah, one of my mates made that mistake when preparing a 'five-alarm' chili. Ooooh oooh ooh the ring of fire....

Re: There are plenty of blokes...

My thoughts entirely - so many people seem to be baffled by the concept of hand-washing that I'm suprised WSCC didn't get Professor Cox in to explain it.

In fact I think the aforementioned council could produce a lot more videos, such as "When to use the indicator lights on the car you're driving", "How to put used teabags in the bin", or "Wet towels - hang them up !" and none of them would be a waste of money.

(I can only hope that trusted colleagues are, in fact, "wiping their arses", and don't need an instructional video on how to do *that*.)

That steady diet of EastEnders is turning her into a shrew

Re: video games having the same effect

Of course, video games could probably be shown to have the *opposite* effect, if anyone ever released a TV-tie-in first-person-shooter entitled "Mockney Moron Massacre" or "Grand Theft Walford". That would calm me down no end.

Solar storm has a 'sting in its tail', warn space weathermen

Re: ideal job

*and* you get to go to parties with the weather girls.

(Not to be confused with The Weather Girls. Though I'm sure they know how to party big-style.)

Re: Transformers blowing up

Wow, I thought they only existed in the movies ! Does Megan Fox live near you, cos if so I'm moving there

Restaurant takes the piss, recycles it as fertiliser

Re: Romans collected it to use in their laundries

They also used it to brush their teeth.

No wonder they had very little sense of humour.

Anonymous takes down Vatican website

Now, time to attack the Government of Mongolia's website

This is for building a vast empire that reached from the Pacific to the Dnieper in the thirteenth century ! Bastards !

The true, tragic cost of British wind power

@ Kubla Cant

Don’t know where you’ve got your info from but there’s a lot of factual inaccuracy there - I think you’re trying to conflate the two sites just because of their *relative* proximity (there are actually a good couple of mountain ranges between them). Dinorwig (still very much in use) is linked directly to the National Grid, it’s nothing to do with Trawsfynydd (which hasn't produced any power in 20 years).

Dinorwig simply uses the spare overnight capacity of the NG to pump water uphill, ready to release during the advert break in Coronation Street (for example) when most of Britain decides to have a nice cup of tea. From zero, to 1800 Megawatts in 16 seconds, now that’s what I call acceleration. (The most powerful station in Europe – Drax – produces just over twice that, so Dinorwic gives us the ability to effectively add a sizable power station to the Grid at will, run it for up to 5 hours, but then switch it off again in seconds. BTW It gives about 75% efficiency – i.e it takes about 33% more crackle-magic to pump the water back uphill again, than is produced by letting the water go downhill through its turbines.)

Not having ever decommissioned a Magnox power station myself, I can’t speak from first-hand experience, but I’m pretty sure that any electrical requirements they still have at Traws similarly comes down a cable from the rest of the Grid.

Pumped storage wasn't expanded further because (in the early 80s) the UK cancelled a lot of its planned nukular stations; output from 'conventional' (fossil-fuel-fired) stations can be increased or damped down to allow for seasonal variations in demand, whereas a nukular plant produces about the same output for its entire operational life. So, fewer nukes means less requirement for ‘on demand’ production capacity.

PPE degrees ?

Module 1: Hard hats, goggles, and hi-vis jackets.

Social networks breeding spatial junk

Re: Newsflash: Crowdsourced data is inaccurate...

My ogglefloggle needs fleening ?

Damn that IT guy, he told me I needed a new flux capacitor.

Stolen iPad leads to 780lb crystal meth seizure

Re: didn't want to give any money to Apple

I suppose even crystal meth manufacturers have *some* scruples about the sort of low-lives they want to do business with.

Lithuania rules beer brewing 'vitally essential' to life

Re: saved many marriages

*caused* many marriages, surely ?

It's certainly caused a lot of pregnancies over the years.

Manchester biz raided in text message spam clampdown

Have YOU been injured by a flying book ? Ring our helpline NOW to speak to a claims specialist...

Weeing Frenchman sues Google over Street View photo

Re: pissoirs

One essential difference though, is that pissoirs are actually designed for pissing in, unlike a garden.

We've all taken a leak somewhere in public, behind a tree or in a shop doorway, if we're nowhere near an available toilet, but you have to be one lazy-ass mo-fo if you *can't be bothered to walk into your own house* to take a slash.

I imagine his neighbours' mockery is based more on his laziness, than on his violation of the acceptable rules of French behaviour (which I understand to be somewhat more 'relaxed' than those of the average Daily Mail reader).

Mine's the one with the funnel and plastic tubing in the pocket.

Election hacked, drunken robot elected to school board

Re: Secure?

A friend has parents who are both Salvation Army officers (pretty upstanding & reliable members of society, I think we'd all agree), and they have frequently (and for many years) been involved in the physical process as monitors at the polling stations. However they have *never* been invited to join in the teams that actually count the papers, and say that they have *no idea* who those people are...

If anyone knows how the counters are recruited, I'd be interested to hear.

(Personally I think all 'representative democracy' is like giving sheep the choice of which wolf they want to be eaten by... it doesn't really matter which one wins)

Indian ministers quit in parliament smut flick scandal

"The BJP...has stood behind the men"

No doubt to get a better view of the video in question.

New sat data shows Himalayan glaciers hardly melting at all

Glacial melt will surely increase dramatically

If she doesn't move her hot berg-boffin butt to a safe distance quickly.

MPs rattle telcos to help kill extremist material online

Fetch me my *broadest* brush...no, broader than that...

Given the number of people in the UK (such as climate change campaigners & opponents of airport expansion) currently viewed by Officer Dibble as 'domestic extremists' , they're going to have to take an awful lot of stuff offline.

Which could be tricky for ISPs when Plod aren't willing to reveal to us proles *who* they define as an extremist - http://www.acpo.police.uk/NationalPolicing/NCDENationalCoordinatorDomesticExtremism/FAQ.aspx

Though I'm sure it won't be long before the radical outpourings of the Archbishop of Canterbury get censored. (Those eyebrows look like a threat to national security to me, m'lud.)

Paris, cos she knows all about unwelcome things being posted online

'Space Monkey' craze: Texan students 'get high' by choking each other

This is definitely a SOLUTION, not a PROBLEM.

Russian supply ship heads for ISS, space garbage crashes into Pacific

Dan Burbank ... practiced his robotic grappling skills

Tonight on WWF !!!!! Its Metal vs. Meatbag !!!

My money's on the robot.

Billions of potentially populated planets in the galaxy

You're not wrong

And you've saved me having to actually read any of David Icke's books.

GiffGaff boots freetards off mobile network

So...

99% of the people are subsidising the greedy 1% ?

Where have i heard that before ?

Occupy GiffGaff !

Astronomers map largest ever zone of dark matter

But on the other hand...

...is it not bad science to have a theory, and look for *evidence that supports* your theory, rather than looking at all the evidence and *modifying* your theory accordingly ?

Though to be fair, when you're an astro-boffin, there's an AWFUL lot of evidence to look at. Like, all of it.

German cops hacked in revenge for dad spying on daughter

@ Dr. Mouse

For a cop, I *would* be surprised if he *had the remotest chance of getting* prosecuted for *anything less than multiple murder*

There, fixed that for you.

Apple legal threat to Steve Jobs doll deemed 'bogus'

But what about the Undead ?

They could make a fortune suing the producers of all those zombie films.

(Though the blood-sucking vampires who masquerade as lawyers would obviously take a large percentage.)

Anonymous hunts neo-Nazis with WikiLeaks-style site

Little more than a century ago, it was LEGAL (your shouting, not mine) in the UK to pay for sex with 12-year-old girls.

By your standards, anyone publicly denouncing those men (eg posting lists of their names on the church noticeboard) would deserve to be prosecuted for harassment, because their actions were LEGAL, weren't they ?

Pseudo-Voltaire bullshit

You can't use 'democracy' and 'freedom of speech' to defend groups whose avowed aim is to to overthrow both of those by violent means.

A poll only six weeks ago showed 77% of Germans want this bunch of psychopaths to be banned, especially after a nest of them in Zwickau were discovered to have murdered 10 people http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Most+Germans+want+Nazi+party+banned/5766765/story.html

I could go on but I generally find that people with *any* sympathies for Nazis aren't interested in hearing any other angle, so why waste my own time ?

Now, where'd that hand grenade icon disappear to ?

Microsoft celebrates the death of IE6

They're the same thing, really

I was just looking up 'spleen disorders' on Alta Vista. The top 2 "Sponsored Results" ?

"Spleen Disorders Sale - Up To 75% Off Spleen Disorders Now. - Free UK Delivery On Select Items"

and

"A Liver Disorder Prices - We Have Millions of Products - A Liver Disorder on Sale"

I sh1t you not. There's nothing the interwebulator won't try to sell to you.

Solicitors from hell website unplugged by libel judge

"malicious and defamatory allegations about solicitors"

Presumably along the lines of

"Some of them are caring and honest people"

"They're not just in it for the money"

"The world couldn't function without them"

etc etc

(Obligatory "I'm joking, actually" disclaimer, for reasons that should be obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse)

Comet Lovejoy survives brush with fiery solar death

Hard vacuum ?

You bet it is -it'll rip you a new one, matey

Google Wallet fails to encrypt punters' personal data

Y’know, I *really love* this idea of using my phone to pay for everything, so that when I get blind drunk and lose my phone then I automatically lose my wallet too, but when oh when are they going to include a door-lock-swipe facility so that I can lose my keys at the same time ?

iPhone users get iJustHadAShag bedpost-notch boast app

I was mistaken, then

I foolishly believed this was aimed at gourmands, who may recently have dined on a seabird of the North Atlantic related to the cormorant

Will that be Transvision Vamp, "I Don't Care" ?

RIM execs chewed through restraints after in-flight fracas

Errrr...

...perhaps what catphish actually meant was that, as a company name, RIM suggests that all the people who work for them are RIMMERS who spend their time RIMMING.

(Go look it up in 'My Big Book of Gay Sexual Slang', if you don't know what it means.)

Arseholes, indeed.

REVEALED: People write things on Twitter, Media

I was going to say...

... nah, forget it, it wasn't anything important.

No icon, for obvious reasons.

Six cuffed in £1m student readies phishing probe

It's easy to laugh at students

... and great fun for all the family, too !