Posts by Blane Bramble

BT and EE, O2 and Three: Are we in for a year of Euro telco mega-mergers?

Picky but...

Shouldn't it be O2 not 02 - should I trust analysis that doesn't even get the company name right?

Galileo, Galileo, Galileo good two go

@DriveBy

It's because there is no guarantee that the USA will not turn on Selective Availability (yes they have stated new satellites won't support it, but who knows...) or otherwise block GPS should it suit them. Having a Euro navigation system means that both consumer and military applications are not dependant on another nations geopolicies.

Thin-lipped chancellor tight-lipped on contractor-nudge-onto-payroll plan

Re: Thin-lipped chancellor announces death of UK contractor market.

@Seanmon

No, he knows *exactly* what an IT contractor is. It's a self-employed, usually competent and skilled individual who competes directly with the large IT consultancies who donate so much money to political parties, and therefore must be punished to ensure he does not get the same tax benefits that the large companies do.

Yesterday: Openreach boss quits. Today: BT network goes TITSUP

Re: All Over The UK?

From BT's service status:

"Glencarse - 01738 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Belford - 01668 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

North Weald - 01992 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Husband Bosworth - 01858 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Buckland Newton - 01300 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Glenwherry - 02825 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Brenchley- 01892 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Ferndown- 01202 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Treforest - 01443 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Rothley - 01162 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Dinas Mawddwy - 01650 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Ashreigney - 01769 (estimated clear date 20/11/2015)

Watton - 01377 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

Chichester - 01243 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

Swansea - 01792 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

New Cumnock - 01290 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

Churston - 01803 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

Colwall - 01684 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

Painswick - 01452 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

Lydbrook - 01594 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

New Cross - 0203 0207 0208 (estimated clear date 19/11/15)

Broadstairs - 01843 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)

Bayston Hill - 01743 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)

Burton Bradstock - 01308 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)

Magherafelt - 02879 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)

Bunbury - 01829 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)

Yockleton - 01743 (estimated clear date 19/11/2015)

Lisbellaw - 02866 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)

Alyth - 01828 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)

Epping - 01992 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)

St Boswells - 01835 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)

Midhurst - 01730 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)

Sedgley - 01902 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)

Carrickmore - 02880 (estimated clear date 18/11/15)

Salisbury - 01722 (estimated clear date 18/11/2015)

Walthamstow - 0203 0208 (estimated clear date 18/11/2015)"

Feel free to Google some of the locations to see how all over the UK this is.

Considering mine had been down for more than 3 hours when I left the house this morning, that seems unlikely...

"The Register has contacted BT for comment on the outage. We'll update this story if we hear back from them."

You might have to wait 3 days, they can't get online at the moment.

Volvo eyes kangaroo detection tech

Re: Vision

Or they could be trying to bring the price down by 2020 so that it can be standard equipment. Your 2015 Volvo will not be a "new Volvo car" in 5 years time...

Get that OFF dot-com, hysterical France screeches at Google

Re: If I were in France...

It's not as simple as that.

Will French internet companies agree to be censored by the US government? The Chinese? The North Koreans?

If every company on the internet has to comply by every law passed in every country, we will not have an Internet.

Roll up, roll up: Microsoft, those Irish emails and angry Feds

Re: "Microsoft maintains that the data is secured under EU data protection laws"

USA law specifies as per current interpretation of 14th amendment of the USA constitution (confirmed by supreme court cases) that:

USA law is universal, no other law applies (or exists for that matter).

Not sure how they reach that conclusion from the 14th Amendment which clearly only refers to the USA and it's individual States.

@dogged

Not often I find myself cheering Microsoft on, but they've got my respect and support for this battle.

Have a virtual pint Microsoft.

Hacker mag 2600 laughs off Getty Images inkspots copyright claim

Re: Bonkers

@JustaKOS

Shows the complete idiocy of any automated process. To summarise:

Party A uses a "free for commercial/non-commercial" use image as part of their image A1

Party B uses the same image as part of their image B1

Party B uses an automated process that notices that B1 is similar to A1 and decides this is copyright infringement. It has no knowledge that the matching section of the images is free for use.

Obviously, party B is at fault for not vetting infringement claims before they are sent out, but this is going to be a growing problem.

SPACE WHISKY: Astro malt pongs of 'rubber and smoked fish'

Scientific newbies

"as a result of the much higher surface area of woody material that the spirit was exposed to"

So they didn't keep a control sample on Earth that consisted of the same volume of Whisky (note to posters above, there is no E in Whisky) with wood shavings in it?

BOFH: Power corrupts, uninterrupted power corrupts absolutely

Re: Of course we had it tough...

"Up to 5 minutes power"

So 1 second would have done?

Google reveals OnHub WiFi router, complete with GLOWING RING

@DropBear

Oh, goody! So where do I plug it in? Assuming the one port is for the WAN cable?

You could read the actual specs and discover it has 1xWAN Ethernet and 1xLAN Ethernet.

Take redundancy if you want, Capita IS for turning now, after all

£1.2M over 10 years!

No wonder they're closing it down.

(Perhaps you meant £1.2B)

Reclothed BlackBerry Passport launched as Silver Edition

Re: Tried one once

The kind of Manager/Director who needs a Blackberry doesn't understand numbers. That's for Nerds.

MoD splashes £1.5bn on 10-year IT deal to 'keep pace with threats'

Re: What baffles me is

The Armed Forces employs approximately 180,000 people funnily enough.

http://www.armedforces.co.uk/mod/listings/l0003.html

Microsoft licenses are not concurrent. You have to license everyone who needs access.

Possibly all serving soldiers need a license to access DII

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Information_Infrastructure

Mobiles? What are they? Nokia immerses itself in virtual reality cameras

Does it come with a blast helmet and light sabre, or do you have to get them somewhere else?

Windows 10 in head-on crash with Nvidia drivers as world watches launch

Re: Fail on MS's term?

> More like NV didn't get the driver suit compatible enough in time.

They had the driver gloves and the driver hat fine, but the driver socks were missing.

Now car hackers can bust in through your motor's DAB RADIO

Re: TBH

Not if there is a substantial obstacle 10m West (wall, lake, large drop, etc.) of your destination.

Norks execute underperforming terrapin farm manager

Re: Putting aside the absurdity of the punishment...

Terrapin Farm + Nuclear ambitions = He is assembling an army of shell-backed martial-art trained super troops.

Ford's 400,000-car recall could be the tip of an auto security iceberg

Re: The more of this I read

The question is, why doesn't the key actually cut off the engine physically(/electrically)? This is not a function that software should over-ride. It certainly isn't a function that should provide a "hint" to a computer that the fleshy part might like the engine to stop.

VMware, Microsoft in virtualised Exchange blog battle

Re: Shark jumped @AC

Modern IMAP can do most of what Exchange achieves (at least the useful bits from a mail user perspective).

Or to look at it another way, Exchange couldn't even do basic email for that number of users with those resources.

'Facebook without sin' attracts 0.00006 times as many users as Facebook

Re: Religion get everywhere

sixdegrees was around pre-2000 and I used it from the UK.

Google yanks fake Android battery monitor

Re: Will no-one think of the ads?

@Tony W

It should be simpler than that. There should be an "Application is Ad Supported" permission that only allows access to retrieve and display ads. No general internet access, no additional permissions required.

Microsoft: This Windows 10 build has 'NO significant known issues'

Re: Cortana popped up a dialogue box...

I think it translates as "your microphone does not have the required NSA invisible intercept facility/hardware lock override".

Apple CORED: Boffins reveal password-killer 0-days for iOS and OS X

Re: But but...but...

I heard Stephen Fry is working with Apple to fix this at this very moment.

OpenSSL releases seven patches for seven vulns

First you say:

I don't like running with a known vulnerability in my SSL stack for two days, let alone two months. It doesn't take that long to write and test patches.

and then later:

The OpenSSL team owe me nothing, and for all I care can stop their work today - I have the source I need

Then why didn't you fix it yourself, genius?

Your servers are underwater? Chill out – liquid's cool

All the liquid cooled data centre articles I have seen have missed one very important point. Data racks stack servers vertically to achieve high density for a given floor footprint. Putting servers in a liquid bath would appear to limit you to fewer servers in the same footprint, and that's without taking the extra liquid weight into consideration.

So, you get a more efficient cooling footprint, but a less efficient density in the first place. Given that power and cooling costs are effectively passed on, what most data centres worry about is density. This increases their energy efficiency (nice tick box, but nothing for the business profitability) and reduces their maximum loading (and therefore potential income).

Secure web? That'll cost you, thanks to Mozilla's HTTPS plan

Left hand, meet right hand

Left hand: I won't let you visit a site using SSL unless that certificate is signed by an authority that I already know, and I mostly know commercial authorities.

Right hand: I won't let you visit a site unless it uses SSL.

Real world: grow the fuck up. Not all sites need their traffic to be encrypted. If they do, accept self-signed certificates.

It's time to separate "protecting a site via encryption" and "validating a site via PKI". SSL is (incorrectly?) used for both.

Self-STOPPING cars are A Good Thing, say motor safety bods

You don't need to fit brakes to sheep, they are more than capable of stopping suddenly in the middle of the road.

Re: A step in the right direction

but choose to look the other way.

I think I see the cause of all those road deaths!

Why, yes, that is my coat, how did you know?

Don’t want a footie-field-size data centre? No problem (or is there?)

Not really surprising

So a stripped-out OCP node is cheaper than an HP midrange server.

How about comparing it to an equivalent white-boxed server, that would be a better comparison.

Paranoid about the NSA? The case for dumping cloud's Big 3

Re: Lovely idea... maybe not

There are plenty of competent companies outside the major names. However, that competence and service costs, particularly when done at a smaller scale then the big boys.

The fact that most customers buy purely on price, choosing to ignore the "better" options, and then complain about the service is often the root of the problem.

ICANN urges US, Canada: Help us stop the 'predatory' monster we created ... dot-sucks!

Of course not, they just wanted the money first before they refused it.

Amazon's clouds are da bomb, say EU data protection watchdogs

Re: April fools?

Far too obvious.

Must try harder.

Cross-dressing blokes storm NSA HQ: One shot dead, one hurt

Re: JustWiz If only the NSA protected MY information with such zeal.

Yes, and they managed to keep us safe using genuine, old school trade-craft for years without the ability or requirement to scan all our communications.

The false sense of security and data overload means that a security service that thinks the ability to scan everything means they have solved the issue and don't need to put people on the ground into dangerous places will endanger us all.

We are less safe with mass surveillance, nor more. It becomes a needle in a haystack, rather than intelligent, targeted data gathering.

It just seems easier, that is all. Your attitude is both shocking and depressing.

Microsoft's three-way only goes one way: Backends merge into Azure App Service

Re: Cloudy Skies

How does this protect against the Feebies visiting Microsoft and taking the hardware?

Brute force box lets researchers, Cops, pop iDevice locks

Re: 17 hours is still a significant hurdle...

1. Place phone in Faraday cage

2. Crack password (max time 17h, therefore probably less).

3. Play Candy Crush

Swedish prosecutors finally agree to London interview for Assange™

Re: Good for him… maybe?

... and a one in a million chance is a certainty.

BBC: We'll give FREE subpar-Raspberry-Pis to a million Brit schoolkids

MOOOAAAARRR POWWWWAHHHH!!!

Microsoft working on 'Nano' version of Windows Server for web-scale ops

Re: Lightweight?

Linux running in 256MB can be a perfectly stable platform to serve Apache and PHP - you might need an older distro designed for smaller hardware, but it will work. How well does Windows "serve hundreds of http: connections in a live environment" in 256MB?

Expired router cache sends Google Cloud Engine TITSUP

Re: Remind me again

Because when it goes wrong it's someone else's fault.

Nobody got fired for using IBM / Microsoft / Amazon / Google / erm...

Turbocharged quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed, global geekgasm likely

Re: Acronym central

Additional Sub-assembly Standard

EE data network goes TITSUP* after mystery firewall problem

Re: Nothing Nowhere

Nope, try again:

Nothing Nowhere = no location has nothing = Something Everywhere as the first poster said.

Couch potatoes relax: Netflix scores big STREAMING TV PATENT win

Re: Wide Load?

Yup, that's a couch potato. The question was what is a coach potato (see headline).

TALE OF FAIL: Microsoft offers blow-by-blow Azure outage account

Re: Does sound complicated

The problem is the software they bought doesn't have any warranty if it doesn't work.

UK slaps 25 per cent 'Google Tax' on tech multinationals

Re: So its not VAT

No, it's a Completely Unenforceable New Tax

Return of the Jedi – Apache reclaims web server crown

Re: Closed is out of flavour these days.

"Time at risk" does not equal the time between the exploit being admitted to by the vendor and the time it is fixed.

It is the time between either the discovery of the flaw, or the time it was introduced and the time it is fixed.

When Microsoft sit on detailing a flaw until a fix is ready, your servers ARE STILL AT RISK.

Their policy is dangerous and cavalier. This is not the security you think it is.

Range Rover to fit trendy new SUV with FRIKKIN' LASER HUDs

Re: military to commercial - unheard of?

SAAB black panel / night panel

'nuff said by marketing droids who know no history of their industry