Posts by PaulWizard

'Password rules are bullsh*t!' Stackoverflow Jeff's rage overflows

Can someone please point this out to tucows/openSRS

...who have just introduced a policy of forcing users to change their password on a regular basis, because someone there still thinks this improves security.

EU orders Equinix to dump colos in Amsterdam, London and Frankfurt

Re: From the horses mouth

West Drayton (LD2) is already at risk from the Heathrow Airport plans (site is half in the new zone). Haven't heard a dickybird from our account manager about that either. Nice to hear about these things from the press first :|

GP records soon wide open again: Just walk into a ‘safe haven’

Opting out?

Any chance of some info on how to opt out of this mess?

BBC Trust candidate defends licence fee, says evaders are CRIMINALS

Of course!

While working at Pearson she thought the BBC doing educational material was bad, now working for the BBC she thinks it's great. What is the going rate for an articulate puppet nowdays? I think we should have a reforendum on ditching the BBC tax, but we won't be given that chance cos they have no chance of winning that vote.

Why can’t I walk past Maplin without buying stuff I don’t need?

Re: Two words (and an ellipsis)

I used to love Tandys. Spent many a lunch time in there buying electrical bits and bobs, that I may or may not have needed. Then they dropped most of their range of electronics components (apart from a few resistors and 555 timers) and concentrated more on consumer tat and mobile phones. Not many years after they pretty much vanished. Maplins went from catalogue to shop so I got a new haunt. Now it seems that Maplins have decided to go down the consumer tat route, I just wonder if they learnt anything from Tandys demise? So who will be next when Maplins disappears? Rapid?

French youth faces court for illegal drone flight

Re: Very impressive camera.

Wasn't it GoPro who used the DMCA to have a site taken down that had a less than positive review of their product?

GoPro accused of using DMCA to take down product review

Re: Sticking up for Gopro a bit

"and the littlest thing can start to undermine it."

Like, for example, acting like complete tools and misusing laws that were intended (supposedly) for a different purpose?

Parliament to unleash barrage of criticism on Snoopers' Charter

Mr Farr wants to be "C"

I'd say he already is a "C".

Conmen swipe 100,000 Brits' sensitive info in UK.gov fraud bid

Re: Not a Government IT system

Don't forget your date of birth!. The MP that recommended not providing real details to social networking type sites should perhaps of included any not giving it to any system related to government.

Sandy 'Mary Celeste' Island undiscovered - again

Maybe...

It has just been "lost", much like the script writing ability in the show of the same name.

NASA admits hiding 'really good' news from Martian soil

Re: Water or Life

Naaaa, it will just be [insert your chosen deity]'s way of testing the faith.

Evildoers can now turn all sites on a Linux server into silent hell-pits

A Russia-based attacker is likely

Aren't Kaspersky Russian?

Sanitary towel firm's 'CEO' sets traumatised man straight

Genius!

That is all

Man charged over alleged April Jones Facebook trolling

Re: Sick.

Please understand that although this joke is sick, that is it's intent. Jokes like this are intended to shock, go too far, make the recipient draw breath etc. There is an audience for these jokes, that's why Jimmy Carr is so popular. Your threshold for this sort of thing is clearly much lower than a large number of people. *IF* this chap posted this publicly on Facebook, then he should get his wrist slapped. If it was a private/limited audience message (if there is such a thing on FB) then the person who reposted it should be slapped. Neither are mentally ill, just not too bright for not limiting the audience to people who won't find a joke offensive.

Does this meen...

That everyone posting jokes (much like this one) on sickipedia is going to be arrested? He probably just repeated it from there anyway.

BT to fibre up another 163 exchanges, coy on exactly where

Re: Hah!!

3 times! My exchange (Greenhithe) has been deferred every quarter (usually 2 weeks before the end of it, like just now, End of September now end of December) for the last 2 years!! It's just BT's way of keeping people from going for another solution, cos theirs is "just round the corner". There aren't enough rude words available to call them!!!

'Kindness of America' snapper shot himself in 'act of self-promotion'

What have ukuleles got to do with it?? http://www.twukulele.com/ :)

Pet Shop Boy finally finds success with actual (virtual) shop

WTF?

in this case - "Who the fuck" - is Scott Davidson?? Certainly not one of the PSBs

Twelve... classic 1980s 8-bit micros

Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80

No? Anyone? just me then :( I've still got mine, although it now only sees 14k of the 16k memory it should have. I even managed to get my hands on a speaking rom cartridge 5 years ago that I wasn't able to get as a child.

ALL Visa cards blab punters' names - not just Barclaycards

Re: I've drilled the aerial out of my cards.

Neither are Santander (who I've moved to). I've also heard NatWest give the user the option. Personally totally agree with drilling the antenna, and would have done it myself but I felt I needed to make some form of statement (yes, incy wincy in terms of how bank views me) which is why I moved.

Re: This technology is absolute bollocks

Same here, back in February the only alternative they would offer me, without contactless, was an "Electron" card (sounds cool, isn't). So I switched banks to one that gave me a choice.

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

Re: Saw this one coming

I think you may be missing the point, I'm not reading "money" from the card, I'm reading the card holders name, long card number, start date and expiry date. That is then enough information to be used elsewhere, such as say Amazon. Did you miss the article and skip straight to the comments?

Re: tin foil is the answer

Have a look at SkimStopper, basically selling people tin foil envelopes to put your cards/passport in.

Re: Saw this one coming

NFC is simply a modified version of RFID, one thats supposed to employ shielding to restrict the range. That's all well and good for standard readers, but it's essentially radio, therefore equipment can be built (and probably already exists) to talk to them at a greater distance. As for "bank issued reader", well I got mine from Ebay (I don't think they are a bank??). You can pick up a standard reader for about £50 and be able to read the card, or, as the article sugests, an NFC equiped smartphone ;)

Re: Non contact-less option

I was trying to keep it short :) I had spoke to bod on phone who couldn't help, he booked me an appointment with a chap at the local to where I work branch, as he wasn't able to do anything to help. Bloke I'm booked with rings up in advance as he was a business manager and was rarely at that branch so couldn't understand why I was booked to see him. Spent about half hour going through the points above on the phone (he was the chap who asked "didn't I want the convenience..."). He couldn't help either (other than to say he didn't believe they did it) so I went to see the personal banker at the branch. He rang through several departments and eventually said the best they could do was offer me the electron. He also said that it was exactly the same as a Visa, good job I double checked before taking him at his word!!. So no option, or at least none that three separate employees could give me. As I understand it from what I was told from each person, this is all down to how in bed with each other Barclays and Visa are. The other banks don't have the same special relationship :)

Saw this one coming

Barclays sent me a replacement Visa card in February with contact-less tech. Called them up and asked for a non contact-less card instead, was told they can't do that, but could give me an electron card without contact-less instead!!

When asked why I didn't want the contact-less card I pointed out I worked in info sec, dabble in electronics and also a radio ham (No beard, sorry) and the technology was unsafe (if I can read my details from the cards, so can criminals). I was then issued with the usual propaganda:

Cards can only be read from a few centimetres away - No, that's a limitation of the reader, not the card.

Transactions are limited to £10/£15 - Only if details are used to make "contact-less" payments, not if used elsewhere.

Bank would cover any fraud so I wouldn't be liable for any fraudulent transactions - Yeah that's great, and they are very good at doing that promptly (having been screwed over by a large high street phone supplier handing my bank details (via direct debit forms) over to some con artist) but that doesn't cover my inconvenience having my life disrupted whilst I have to deal with it and wait for new cards etc. I would much rather not expose myself to the risk thank you very much.

Even had the cheek to ask "Wouldn't you like the convenience of being able to walk into a coffee shop and just swipe to pay?" What's so inconvenient about typing in 4 numbers?

End result, having banked with them for > 30 years, I changed banks.

According to a colleague, who banks with someone else, when issued with contact-less cards recently, he rang up and they have the option of non contact-less cards. Shame mine couldn't do that.

iPad SURVIVES FALL FROM SPACE

Something doesn't quite add up here

Unless I'm mistaken they sent the thing up switched on and it returned to the ground still working?? Forget the actual drop and impact for a moment and consider the temperature. According to apple the operating temperature is 0° to 35° C, non operating -20° to 45° C (http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/) and according to scientific observation the temperature at > 87,000ft is below -40 on average (http://naca.central.cranfield.ac.uk/reports/1958/naca-tn-4169.pdf unless I'm reading it wrong). I take it this wasn't an independent test.

Take this survey: Win an iPad 2

You didn't say it was a Microsoft Product Business Continuity survey!

Oxymoron anyone?

BBC iPlayer to require TV licence

What a Jeremy Hunt!

BT hires another battalion of troops to speed fibre rollout

Oh really?

Then why is it my exchange upgrade date went from March 2012 to June 2012 only last week then?? Oh yeah, it's BT :|

$8.5bn Skype goes titsup again - including website

Linux too

Skype on linux was crashing 4 seconds after launch (without even trying to log in). Ended up blowing away the ~/.Skype dir which solved the issue (now to learn I only needed to delete a single xml file oh well). Am curious as to what caused the corruption on all platforms. It's a bit too early in M$-Skype's life to be blaming M$ at this stage, give them a few months and then they'll start playing with the protocol to stop it working on anything but windows (as they kept doing with messenger :|)

BBC engineers see PLT knocking out DAB

Really?

Drops back to HF so only bothers HAMS?? Two things wrong with that, firstly hams aren't the only users of HF, plenty of other services below 30MHz, secondly you are forgetting harmonics, transmissions that appear on multiples (roughly) of the transmitted frequency, caused by the fact that these POS don't have adequate filtering in the first place.

Ofcom Radio pokes at potential pirates

Not quite

Radio waves travel polarized, FM usually being vertical and AM usually horizontal (but obviously this depends which direction the transmitting antenna is in). Broadcast FM is transmitted vertical (as most antennas are vertical whips). Plus, from the bottom of tower the direction is, err, up :)

Punters take tech to bed, breakfast

"more than a third of them watching TV or downloading pr0n before bed"

Am I the only one to see the positive that at least they are getting some exercise? Mines the one with my hands in the pockets.

Kid spanks a grand on Xbox using Mum's bank card

Now come on!

there is no need to insult the poor lad. I remember being a bit portly at 11 too. The mothers stupidity deserves 100% of your mocking.

to be fair

the child is, er, a child. If she gave him the card and pin and let him loose in a sweet shop over a 6 month period I would expect similar results. Its her failure for either failing to check what her card was being used for and/or failing to educate the lad about the value of money.

A fool and her money...

For once I can't blame Microsoft, the tools are in place to prevent your little darlings spending all of your money. It's in all credit card Ts&Cs that you should be responsible for the use of your card. Plain stupidity. I hope she gets laughed out of court, otherwise the rest of us are gonna have to put up with some more stupid levels of notices on cards and payment screens. Is anyone else buying this bullshit she's running about not checking her online account/never reading statements? I feel sorry for the kid, what kind of example is this if when you do something utterly stupid you just blame everyone else for it!

419ers strip lonely heart mum of £80k

I want to feel sorry for her.....

but I can't. Fool and their money ay :|

Cable vendor slapped for unproven claims

Please do

and video his reactions for our pleasure.

Brave new Boris-bikers banjaxed by broken boxes

It was outsourced to a service company

as above

Ofcom slaps down ham botherer

A good start OfCom

Now grow some balls and deal with organisations distributing interfering equipment (homeplug) as well as the single points of interference.

Twitter joke martyr loses appeal

What happened to....

Would a reasonable person find these comments menacing....

Maybe the definition has been changed to would an over sensitive, politically correct retard find them menacing. Come back common sense, where did you go??

How I built a zero energy cost, zero carbon home server

What about ALIX

Nice article, I have a few ALIX systems which are also pretty good on power consumption. The models I have are the alix2d13, GEODE chipset, 500MHz, 256MB RAM, 1G CF Card for main disk, 4-6W power (9-18v input range), running NanoBSD (can be found in FreeBSD /usr/src/tools/tools/nanobsd <- yes, tools twice, don't ask me why). I have one running on a site with no mains from a solar panel and batteries (the panels charge more than is consumed overnight). It uses a USB stick for /var/logs and other modifiable content. Connects up to the net via a 3G dongle. I have a bunch of apps on mine, including lighttpd and openvpn. Very good if you need a server/firewall and have a low power budget.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

£50!!

Sainsburys - £27 if you buy £30 of shopping (not petrol, tobacco or baby food ?!?!) Got mine last night. I think Tescos is £30. Unfortunatly I'm now stuck in the campaign mode on a level that is completely black and i don't know if it's ment to be like this or it's a bug.

Florida cops tase naked jogger

Is it just me or....

"He still had to be repeatedly told not to move"... queue video of him being told not to move whilst, as far as I can tell, he wasn't. Was the tazering of a naked man not enough excitement for the police/news crew such that they have to invent a further threat?

HMRC systems downed by upgrades

Tax doesn't have to be taxing

And neither do extensive upgrades, but they bloody well are aren't they!! Think I will get Moira Stewart to give them a call and patronisingly tell them how simple upgrades are.

But it said so in the manual

Memory

so you need a bit more than 640K memory then?

Thieves jam key-fob lock signals in mystery car thefts

yes please

if you could provide me with one that would be great. None on my door, just the back window.

Not in my case

Cradle was on window when the little shits broke into my car the other week. SatNav on shelf under steering wheel (it's an antique). They stole neither of them, no, what the pikey scumbags were after was my emergency triangle that was under my passenger seat.