Posts by Robert Carnegie

Doctor Who nicked my plot and all I got was a mention in this lousy feature

Dunno about six

Melody Pond went back in time as a little girl to grow up alongside her parents, probably making sure that they got together, then she murdered her future husband, twice, and... well, yes, but it's not -exactly- the same as [Back to the Future], is it? Also, two of them were ectoplasmic duplicates for part of the time, the other was an Auton, and the Doctor who was shot at Lake Silencio had come there from the future with... ah, that's a spoiler.

But will you let me claim "Let's Kill Hitler" as original?

Spies and crooks RAVAGE Microsoft's unpatched 0-day HOLE

Re: Shocking - up-to-date software avoids the problem

These versions of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office are supported versions. Therefore they are up-to-date and ought to be safe, as we were told when we bought them.

I expect to get more than a couple of years' use out of a computer before it is given over to international hackers to abuse as they please.

Bear in mind, too, that new products have new features that are uniquely exploitable. There are special ways to get you written into HTML 5, for instance.

Smut-spreading copyright trolls told to return cash extracted from victims

Re: Fraud, and the only punishment is paying court costs for the defendants?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24876145 : A Texas state prosecutor got an innocent man jailed for life for murder. The prisoner was let out after 25 years. The prosecutor has now been sentenced to 10 days in jail plus community service.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24877081 : For the first time, a British soldier has actually been convicted of murdering one of our prisoners of war. It seems to me likely that he wouldn't have been if he had not been video recorded doing it and then saying "I just broke the Geneva Convention." Everyone's very sorry for him. It seems likely to be a life sentence for murder, which is the same as if I did it.

Classic telly FX tech: How the Tardis flew before the CGI era

Re: BTW there was other stuff, too

I don't remember which comedy show it was that abused a version of the BBC globe and had it topple over and catch fire, but the design of the CGI one was borrowed to produce a see-through globe that turned until the continental patterns formed the faces of... that was Mel Smith and Gryff Rhys Jones, wasn't it? But Google Images doesn't seem to have that, so maybe I dreamed it.

Watch out, MARTIANS: 1.3 tonne INDIAN ROBOT is on its way

Re: Spending

Last night (Tuesday) on Radio 3 at 10pm there was a talk and debate led by a chap with original ideas about education, including giving children goals and the Internet (probably censored a bit) and letting them get on with it.

In one case he set a class of 9 year olds (?) to investigate what was the British Raj and was it a good thing.

After they worked out that an certain Indian restaurant of that name wasn't the correct answer, they firstly couldn't decide the second question, and when pressed, decided that it wasn't a good thing: British governance had done some good things in India but they had not asked for the people's permission to do things.

Planet hopper: The Earthly destinations of Doctor Who

Re: O Canada

Canada got to borrow The New Avengers from the U.K., apparently by co-producing and co-funding their show. Mmm... Joanna Yumley.

10 Types of IT managers from hell

Re: Team Leader

Well, your Team Leader isn't a type of problem boss, except for himself. What to do in that situation... stop? Explain that "Team Leader" is a rotating post and someone else should take their turn now?

'It's a joke!' ... Bill Gates slams Mark Zuckerberg's web-for-the-poor dream

Re: Think a little

"Something I find amazing here is the number of people who appear to think that all of Africa and India have access to a means of supplying energy to whatever devices they are going to connect with."

Yeah, they do. Solar, wind, muscle power. The basic device is a cellphone. You just need a charging system.

It's -our- money that Bill Gates is giving away. Big of him, but he got it from us, and sometimes by abusing his industry monopolies.

Could they distribute vaccines by putting them on the Google balloons and dropping them off at appropriate locations? Such as the places where you go to get your phone charged?

Wikipedia passes on reports that lions turn to attacking humans when they have bad teeth and their usual killing and feeding process can't be done any more, although there are doubts about this. Nevertheless, with this information, I suppose it's worth smacking the lion in the mouth to make its toothache worse. With the phone that you used to look it up.

John Kerry bombshell: 'Yes, the NSA... reached TOO FAR, inappropriately'

Re: Translation

Since apparently the exercise includes (rarely) NSA staff reading the personal data of people they are considering sleeping with, which technically could be everyone, either that isn't counted as "abuse" or they pick people who aren't "innocent", probably because honest-to-god blackmail works quicker than flowers and chocolates. And presumably we're only hearing about that particular use, and only when it's successful. No comment on NSA spooks checking out what they've got on the real reputation of sellers on eBay.

On the plus side, when there is evidence of crimes besides terrorism (such as non-terroristic murder, which happens a lot, and drug dealing) the publicly known agents of law and order are allowed to use NSA evidence in trials, by lying about it, such as denying that it was, in their terms, obtained illegally, and therefore is invalid.

DON'T BREW THAT CUPPA! Your kettle could be a SPAMBOT

Re: hmmmm

Just how sensitive is the weighing machine at the self-service checkout?

Having said that - I'd expect electrical goods to be security tagged. I suppose you could still use the self service whatsit though.

Anyway, thus they'd be weighed and the discrepancy detected - or not. I think most shops would just curse the self service thing manufacturer and pass it.

I suppose,

Once you've found that some of he shipment of kettles contain a Gooseberry Qi spam machine weighing say 3 grammes, you can weigh 100 standard-manufactured kettles and tell which ones weight 3 grammes more. You can even weigh them in tens and without taking them out of the carton. Martin Gardner used to explain this sort of thing in a column in Scientific American.

Then again, I'm sceptical too. Is there really enough unsecured wi-fi around that they can do that?

Naughty Flash Player BURIED ALIVE in OS X Mavericks Safari sandbox

I'm an Opera user

Last!

(um... not the last Opera user... I hope)

Long, long time Opera user, since modem dial up on Windows 3.1 or something.

Writing this in Opera 17 point something. Yes, it's chromium-flavoured now. I've chosen not to install Flash in it.

Google web sties telling me to upgrade my work browser to Chrome instead of its own newer version was, in my opinion, rude.

They've taken my storage hostage ... now what?

You missed the "Free money for everyone who reads the rest of this article" offer then. :-)

And you missed the cutoff time now. What a pity.

Open-source hardware hacking effort 'smacked down' by USB overlords

Re: Dead vendor squatting?

There was something about a $4,000 yearly membership fee.

0xABCD looks a bit suspicious, doesn't it? PetCam... I suppose it might be a camera that your pet wears at it gads about and you can see later what it's been up to, but the USB cord would be a bit awkward.

A bit like the kitten with the magnetic collar to open the cat flap, sitting mewing where it's stuck itself to the refrigerator...

Met Police vid: HIDE your mobes. Pavement BIKER cutpurses on the loose

Re: Its time...

Superglue seems worth trying, or very strong adhesive like "Gorilla Tape", but that doesn't come double-sided. And widely available "rape alarm" hardware. Then again, I think Poundland sells a plastic game-card case that would pass for a phone if the attacker doesn't have time to look closely.

If this is how you like to spend your time...

Send dosh (insecurely) via email, Jack Dorsey's Square tells punters

Re: @Colin Miller

Direct debit fraud happens. Described here at the BBC, it sounds like I'd use your bank details to buy something on direct debit. It can be done electronically with no validation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24085200

or search for ("Moneybox", "direct debit") - Moneybox is the BBC radio show about personal finance. Listen and worry.

You can stop bad direct debits if you identify them on your bank statement. Apparently you can't stop them from being set up.

COFFEE AND DANISH HELL: National ID system cockup forces insecure Java on Danes

I thought there was a workaround built in to the Java plugin...

...you can set it up so that any specific app that requires an older edition of the Java virtual machine, can be given it? I don't know the details that would apply, though.

BBC's Clangers returns in £5m 'New Age' remake

It is so a planet

And I think they always were ecologically concerned, precisely because their little world is ecologically fragile. Anything that lands on them from space could be an environmental disaster, including space probes.

'The NSA set me up,' ex-con Qwest exec claims

Trying to get it right this time... According to one political comedian, Iraq was invaded shortly after threatening to sell oil for euros instead of dollars. I'm not exactly sure how this works and how it would be bad for the dollar, but apparently it would, and it fits the pattern.

Boris Johnson's ex-right-hand man's right hand lands johnson in web slip

"the simple fact is that he hasn’t actually done anything wrong"

I don't use Facebook: are you allowed to put photos of yourself on it with your willy out? ITWSBT.

Then again, wasn't it invented to supply stolen pictures to perverts in the first place, or did I watch the wrong movie?

WD unveils new MyBook line: External drives now bigger... and CHEAP

Re: Encrypted?

I think they do something funny in the controller to enable Windows to use a volume larger than a limit of around 2 TB that just plugs in - I think it was to do with sector size. But if you can't reproduce it to recover data from the drive, then "encrypted" it may as well be, whether it is so intentionally or not.

Space truck Cygnus left idling outside ISS after data format snafu borks docking

Cygnus is in orbit around the earth...

...staying up there isn't a problem.

Admittedly it isn't -quite- out of the atmosphere, and the ISS itself needs to be pushed up now and again to stop it from, in due course, landing.

And there's probably things like batteries that aren't the rechargeable type...

I also assume that Cygnus is farther than a convenient space walk away from the ISS right now...

...while the Russian crew flight sneaks in in its place...

TPG flashes cheeky 'down under' CAPTCHA

"It damn near killed him"

Famous Australian joke (or not necessarily Australian)

THE TRUTH about beaver arse milk in your cakes: There's nothing vanilla about vanilla

Luwak coffee - a question

Just curious - are vegans allowed to have that or not? It comes from the animal obviously, but it isn't something that the animal wanted to keep. I would still guess no, though.

The flavouring from dead beaver bum can't be vegetarian, though.

Stylus counsel: The rise and fall of the Apple Newton MessagePad

Re: Graffiti, my experience

For me, Palm's Graffiti certainly wasn't faster than typing. (Their problem with someone else's patented design seems to have been a genuine transgression; I believe they paid up, but I don't vouch for it.) On the other hand, I started to write Graffiti on paper documents, it was getting out of hand... At length I tried and learned to love "Fitaly", a highly efficient on-screen keyboard layout that's also available for Windows tablets up to but I think not yet including Metro. I can tap that about half the speed of full-size keyboard touch typing, which is just as well because I can't type any more because of RSI. But with Fitaly I'm okay. A tip for that is to use one hand (with pen) for pointing and another hand (with Bluetooth mouse) for clicking, if you have the right kind of stylus to do things that way.

OK, so we paid a bill late, but did BT have to do this?

Technically, malware imitates genuine alerts,

not the other way around.

However, this case does look quite like the genuine "Web site has been found to contain illegal content and closed down by the U.S. government" message, and of course the malware "You are being fined for looking at porn" one.

Moving from permie to mercenary? Avoid a fine - listen to Ben Franklin

Re: Jimmy Carr

You may think that Jimmy Carr's former tax arrangement was funny-meaning-peculiar - so do I and so does he - but it seems to have been and to still be legal to do that - I am not a lawyer. He himself didn't like it and found it embarrassing once he asked his accountant about it. I'm a bit disappointed, as I would have preferred him to stand up to the government, but, of course, that would get him severely audited. Does that sound like the tax man being corrupt and acting against the political enemies of the government? Well, fancy that.

I don'et exactly understand how it works, but the explanation does seem to be that your income goes into a company that you control, and then the company lends you money - which isn't in the interest of a real company but that doesn't matter. And because the money is only lent to you, you don't pay tax on it. You also don't ever pay the loan back.

'Peeping while you're sleeping' NSA parody T-shirt ban BACKFIRES

Re: "I can legitimately forbid you to copy this message"

I'm not a lawyer either. But see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/30/reg_ts_and_cs/

"8.1 We do not claim any proprietary rights in the comments that you post on our Website. You agree that you shall be solely responsible for your own comments and affirm that the comments you post on the Website are your own.

"8.2 You retain all your ownership, copyright and other interests and rights in your comments but by posting any comments on our Website you permit us to use, modify, alter, edit copy, reproduce, display, make compilations of and distribute such comments throughout our Website."

And this applies to -readers- of the site: "5.6 You will not use the Website in any manner which violates or infringes the rights of any person, firm or company (including, but not limited to, intellectual property rights, confidentiality rights and privacy rights)."

Now write it out a hundred times before sunrise, or I'll... quote Monty Python at you.[*][**]

(I think that's (1) "fair use" and (2) not actually threatening, also mentioned in Ts and Cs.)

[*] Inaccurately. I googled for Python and "or I'll cut your balls off" and apparently those are the only six words that people reliably remember from the scene, and, to be fair, it's what you -would- remember.

[**] Actually I won't.

Re: Sell through via Europe

Copyright -is- worldwide, pretty much. There are only a few places where it won't be enforced. I can legitimately forbid you to copy this message, although I'm granting some rights to The Register by posting it after reading their terms and conditions (I'm sure I did that once).

This however appears to be about the trademark. It's kind of weird that they -have- a trademark, but they do. Trademarks aren't worldwide or even strictly geographical. Famously, the Beatles' record company Apple and the computer company Apple did have a bit of an argument but agreed that if Apple didn't publish music then it was okay. Of course Apple Computer then started publishing music, with iTunes.

Likewise all of the products that the Coyote uses to pursue the Road Runner are "Acme" brand but from unrelated manufacturers. (I am making this up, but it could be true.) The word "Acme" just means "the best".

Another name with many incarnations is "Clippy".

Symbols as trademarks I don't remember so well, but I think there was some fuss about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Mercedes-Benz automobiles using similar symbols. Mercedes-Benz seems to have been first.

Doctors face tribunal over claims of plagiarism in iPhone app

Re: Struck off and die?

I'm guessing that that's the maximum penalty that this tribunal can impose for any cause, and very unlikely to happen in this case. Unless the copyright owner is very influential - which they may be.

Researcher bags $12,500 after showing how to hack Zuck's pics

I read the e-mails

I don't think that either of the people is a native English speaker.

So remember the last time you tried to use a badly translated manual...

I think that may be why they didn't understand.

Either that, or they wanted to avoid paying the prize money for the bug. I hope it wasn't that.

Facebook strips away a bit more of your privacy – but won't say why

Seen elsewhere, certainly.

I mean the exchange of some benefit in return for a Facebook "like" action.

I don't use FB and they may have a totally different meaning of the word "like", but in its original meaning, I will decide myself what I like, and I will withhold "like" from things that I don't in fact like especially.

Radio 2 may be an exceptional and allowable case, because if you don't like Radio 2 then you won't be bothering. Unless it's just that you have a thing for sexy sexagenarian Moira Stuart, and otherwise are not bothered.

NSA: NOBODY could stop Snowden – he was A SYSADMIN

If this is a super secretive organisation, why are "sources" talking to The Register?

Don't get me wrong, I am impressed.

Not!

'Kim Jong-un executes nork-baring ex and pals for love polygon skin flick'

Re: Rational

The disinterested declared goal for Syria of America, Britain, etc., is the removal of President Assad from his office, and maybe from life - I'm not sure how far our policy statements have gone. We do support a negotiated settlement, on the condition that he isn't in it. As a rational person, what should he do about that? What would you do in his place, if you aren't suicidal?

Pictures or it didn't happen

Sorry, but a "public" execution that we only know about because a dissident flees to another country to tell the tale isn't public. It might not be shown on TV but it would be announced. So it wasn't a public execution.

You -can- make this stuff up, and it's safer and smarter than being there to see it happen.

IP telly upstart stuffs Comedy Central, MTV in Freeview box

Does God TV sound bad, particularly?

Worst case as I see it - it watches you, instead of the other way around.

Or it doesn't let you switch it of.

Or, both.

Which you get with the real thing anyway...

Microsoft: YES Windows 8.1 is finished, but NO you can't have it

Re: Ship then patch

Yes... in fact it's "YES you can have it, but NO it isn't finished". Expect immediate updates that you have to load on a new Windows 8.1 device - not just security but fixing features that don't work right.

Having said that, that Isn't too bad, really. It just means that manufacturers get a buggy Technology Preview that has to be what they install on their product to sell, and that doesn't quite work.

I suppose that's pretty bad for you if you are a manufacturer.

Meet the world's one-of-a-kind ENORMO barge-bowling bridge of Falkirk

Re: Impressive, but nothing on what the continentals do

Price tag on the Belgian thing is, um, maybe 7-8 times what the Falkirk thing cost.

BBC radio has been down into the Crossrail tunnel works in London recently and having a whale of a time. But when it's finished it will be just trains really. Not that that isn't fun. I think the feature has been included in several programmes including World Service radio's "Science Hour" last weekend, or maybe previously.

Wikipedia page for Crossrail claims to have a picture of the "portal" to get into it, but it doesn't look like for instance the Star-Gate, which I think is a missed opportunity. Maybe they are going to put that in later, like Platform 9¾ at King's Cross. (Actually that's been done.)

US court: Dell can't hound debtor with robocalls to her mobile

Re: Automated dialling

Do Not Call means Do Not Call. In this case the objectionable behaviour seems to be a robot phoning you up. While I'm not a lawyer, I'd assume that the phenomenon of silent phone calls also would be blocked. If I decided for no reason to phone -you- and not say anything, over and over again, you'd complain. That happens when a robot tries to get you to answer and then passes you to a call centre worker, and there isn't a call centre worker free.

NSA admits slurping thousands of domestic emails with no terror connection

Looks good with the mask icon

Apparently they're not allowed to spy on Americans, but they do, and they pretend to be ashamed of that, but they're not.

They have enough data on you to predict whether you'll vote and which way. The mere existence of the database is an immediate threat to free American democracy, and American democracy has enough enemies already without the government spending your taxes to create another one.

Firefox takes top marks in browser stability tests

Opera?

Opera 12.xx, free, is pretty good for lotsa tabs open without running out of memory. You can have tab groups that concertina open or closed, and several browser windows to manage session state together or separately. (If you close one window without saving its state, I think it isn't easy to get back, unless it is; I try to avoid doing that.)

Opera 15 and later seems to be an attempt to take Chromium and add Opera features to it, initially rudimentary. Version numbers are the crazy kind - you can try out Opera 16 or Opera 17 with more features added but they are not yet built to be relied on. Each web page in O15 has its own process in Task Manager, plus one for the window.

Opera 12 will be maintained as it requires for the time being.

Opera 12 crashes on my Windows 7 tablet computer if I use the Google Groups web site, but I'm blaming that on the tablet, which is buggy at hardware or OS level.

Fiendish fake Flash plugin squirts grumble-flick ads into kiddies' websites

I don't see where "FlashBlock" helps with this.

As far as I can see, this malware only -says- that it's Flash, and tells you that you need to install its plug-in.

And, of course, whichever browser you're using makes it easy to do that.

If they took an actual copy of Flash and inserted their virus into it... that seems peculiarly thorough. Although I suppose if you're familiar with the Flash upgrade process - which you probably are - then it makes it look realistic.

I wonder why they don't have an Internet Explorer version. Maybe IE got some security right for once.

Microsoft warns of post-April zero day hack bonanza on Windows XP

They did it before.

Either Windows 95 or Windows 98 - I think it was on the very day that free critical support had expired that they published a flaw in.... something about a malformed JPG data file containing an executable, I think. One that they'd known about for ages, but that was when they graciously decided to issue a fix. I think. I expect. If I was doing it, it's what I'd do, if I also felt contractually and morally obliged to be, well, evil.

Attention, addicts: LEGO meth lab pays homage to Breaking Bad

BBC coverage

BBC says: not universal solvent, but, close. The body-in-the-bath incident is discussed.

"How much of the science in Breaking Bad is real?"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23710654

If this mad-scientist-meets-jackass stuff counts as "science" or "real".

Superstar cluster-Zuck as Facebook tries out celeb-only edition

You can't really whistle rap.

Even Eminem's "Stan", the music bit is a sample from Dido. (Not the opera.)

Wiley has given us "Wearing My Rolex" and "Heatwave". You may now remember hearing these works, but I don't recall that whistling is any option.

Definition of a celebrity

Somebody who pays for a VIP Facebook account.

And, after all, Facebook was founded by what's-his-name to make money out of attractive people. This is just one of the more direct approaches.

It's now or never for old sysadmins to learn new tricks

This may not be relevant,

but we're still waiting for our "infrastructure team" to take the guy who quit two weeks ago out of our development team e-mail address list. When we send messages, we get an error reply back because his account has been deleted.

So maybe they -can't- take him off the list, now. Ohdear.

US taxmen told to hush up shadowy drug squad unit laundering NSA intel

Re: It's how much they twist the law!

Congress has acted, was that your point? They approved the good work of the NSA. By a rather small margin.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/25/nsa_prism_amendment_close_vote/

Hacktivists torch C4's Jon Snow's web diary, reveal 'nuke strike' on Syria

Unusual name...is she Irish?

The news the other day was about old SIMs, a surprising number of which include a relatively short DES (I think) encryption key and something called JavaCard. So, old SIMs are not so good to have.

Come to think, mine is at least three phones old. Hmm.

There are charming but puzzling Irish names, I know, such as Roisin (I think it means "dried grape") and Saoirse ("English go home"), so I'm not much surprised to see your A*** ("Happy Christmas", perhaps? According to Kirsty Macoll...)