Posts by David 132

Prisoners built two PCs from parts, hid them in ceiling, connected to the state's network and did cybershenanigans

Oops, I see others had already made the "lag" pun on page 2 of this thread - that'll teach me to be slow. Don't upvote me, spend it on people who are more original instead :(

@Phuzz - Indeed I remember them. Visited them a few times in a professional capacity. I worked closely for years with Robin D, a very smart chap indeed. Upvoted for the happy memories.

Did they need "screws" to put the computers together?

Dunno, but what tipped off the IT department was finding a lag on the network.

As you stare at the dead British Airways website, remember the hundreds of tech staff it laid off

Re: RE "You can't print your return check in till you have landed on your outbound journey"

@Sandtitz Really? You haven't figured out how to use the three shells yet?

Qualcommotion: Sueball return alleges Apple 'pay-to-play' deal

Re: Apple had not responded

Exactly. When playground fights evolve into the adult world, this is the form they take.

"You smell!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"I am rubber, you are glue!"

(Actually, that leads me to a wonderful thought - wouldn't it be amazing, not to mention far more entertaining, if court cases like this were fought Monkey-Island-Sword-Fight style?

"In Re Qualcomm vs. Apple, testimony from the first party asserted that 'You fight like a dairy farmer'. Response from Counsel for the second party was 'How appropriate. You fight like a cow.'

The defense rests.")

Boeing 737 turns 50

Re: Tsk, tsk

@Crazy Operations Guy On the other, you have Emirates' "Even Caligula would think its too decadent" flying palaces.

"New for 2018 - Emirates First Class now offers...

- Complementary beverages

- Private lay-flat bed

- Horse Marriage

- Can choose up to 10 Economy Class passengers to be thrown to wild beasts in the cargo hold

- Cabin crew will worship you as an actual, living god

* Special offer during January - free stabbing as you exit the plane"

Re: A venerable workhorse

@Etatdame - eh, I myself am warming to Southwest. They're cheap, but not obnoxiously so (helloooo, Spirit, Ryanair etc.) and the cabin crew are invariably good-natured and pleasant.

I used to swear by United and BA, but both have taken a nose-dive (pardon the unfortunate phrase) in recent years - copying the budget airlines' penny-pinching ways, but not realizing that by doing so they are destroying their brand image and customer loyalty. United since the Smisek era, and BA since the IAG acquisition - nope, sorry, I'm not going to put up with such obvious contempt for the customer.

FCC kills plan to allow phone calls on planes – good idea or terrible?

Thank goodness.

I never thought I'd type these words, but: I agree with Ajit Pai on this.

(now excuse me for a moment while I try not to throw up)

Being on a plane is unpleasant enough without having to put up with other peoples' calls. What with the veal-crate-level legroom / bawling kids / flatulent/overweight neighbors / being nickel-and-dimed for everything the beancounters can re-brand as a "premium add-on" (breathable air, a seat, etc), and now apparently the risk of being beaten up and dragged bleeding off the plane if you don't voluntarily volunteer to voluntarily bounce to a later flight...

If it's THAT urgent that you talk to someone, connect to the inflight wifi and send an email.

Lenovo's 2017 X1 Carbon is a mixed bag

Goit - check out Intel Unite (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/unite/intel-unite-overview.html) - it might be of interest to your CEO.

Wi-Fi sex toy with built-in camera fails penetration test

Re: Rooted via back door

I misread it that way too. Serves me right for only giving the article a brief glans.

D'oh! Amber Rudd meant 'understand hashing', not 'hashtags'

Uh, sure.

Sir Humphrey: "Oh dear. We have a problem after the Minister's interview this morning. People have actually examined what she said, rather than just letting the feel-good platitudes wash over them like they're supposed to. Find something that sounds like "hashtags" that we can plausibly claim she actually meant to say."

Bernard [after 10 minutes frantic searching on wikipedia]: "How about 'hashing'? It's something to do with pictures, apparently, lots of binaries and codes in there, don't understand it myself and none of the other Oxford PPEs I asked do, so it must be seriously nerdy."

SH: "Excellent. Send out a correction to all the usual news outlets. Now, back to business. What were you saying about Gibraltar?"

Good Guy Comcast: We're not going to sell your data, trust us

Re: Aggregate and opt-in

Beat me to it. Weasel words indeed - typical corporate double-speak, where the words are carefully chosen so as to sound utterly reassuring whilst leaving huge loopholes.

For example, there is no incompatibility between

"we have never sold our customers' individual web browsing histories and never will"

and

"Hey, Walmart, we have a list of all of our customers who browsed for 'baby food supplies' in the last 6 months - pay us $AMOUNT and we'll inject your adverts direct into the HTTP streams of everyone on the list"

Grr.

Yee-hacked! Fired Texan sysadmin goes rogue, trashes boot business

Re: "Given the boot"

Yeah. And was this admin the sole culprit? Heel be lucky to get another job, anyway - probably be on his uppers after paying off the fines.

Sorry, I'm just talking cobblers.

Creators Update gives Windows 10 a bit of an Edge, but some old annoyances remain

Re: Aaah Win 10

Wade Burchette I am thinking it is the latter because there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

As I always remember it: "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is technically a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in the fruit salad."

Windows 10 Creators Update: Clearing the mines with livestock (that's you by the way)

Re: Looks good!

<sarcasm> I would bet that with continuing progress like this, Windows 10 will be ready for release within the next few years </sarcasm>

Yes! 2017 will be the Year Of Windows 10 On The Desktop!

/s

Re: Wish I could use it

Windows sleep / resume seems very sensitive to hardware.

Indeed. But my point - albeit obliquely made - is that this is Microsoft's own hardware, so they should have validated it... no?

Re: Heavy Users Are Most Effective

How about a sheep on a pogo stick?

(aka a woolly jumper?)

Also, I am vaguely unnerved at the amount of research that you've apparently put into this topic.

Re: Wish I could use it

Yes. Because it's Microsoft's fault that Lenovo/the hardware manufacturers haven't sorted the drivers out.

OK, I'll bite.

I have a PC here running Windows 10 b1607 that has been a PITA from day one. Let's run through the sad litany of issues:

- Sleep/resume will randomly turn into a complete shutdown/wake - I have a dozen windows open, close the lid, and maybe 20% of the time when I open it again the machine will boot from cold, all windows (and unsaved work) gone. I am getting VERY familiar with the Excel/Word "document recovery" pane.

- Wifi doesn't detect changes of location after a sleep/wake cycle (i.e. if I am at work connected to SSID "corp_wifi", close the lid, then wake the PC at home - it will still "see" corp_wifi, still think it's connected to it, and the only way I can get it to connect to home_dlink_wifi is to go to Airplane mode, count to 10, then turn off Airplane mode again. Same issue when I go from home to office the next day.

- Mouse pointer keeps changing size. The PC has a high DPI screen - so to avoid my mouse pointer being the size of a gnat's todger, I use the "Extra Large" cursor scheme. Randomly (sleep/wake? clock has ticked over to a new hour? I opened a new window?) it will reset back to standard size, although it "thinks" it's still on the Extra Large scheme. I have to go to the control panel and toggle scheme from EL->standard->EL to restore it.

- Occasional hard lockups. I finished a meeting on Friday at 6:30pm, and left the laptop sitting there in Outlook. Came back to it 2 hours later - mouse pointer wouldn't move, and the clock was stuck at 6:37pm. So for almost 2 hours it had been frozen solid. Had to do a full power cycle to get it back.

And those are just the ones I remember.

OK, ArrZarr, you're right, it's unfair of me to blame Microsoft's OS for all this - they can't possibly test every combination of hardware out there. It's clearly the fault of the OEM who made the laptop and didn't bother to do the most basic validation testing. So who do I shout at about this machine?

By the way, it said "Surface Book" on the box, if that helps.

Re: Great Picture

i'm shaking my head at the udder futility of it all. Charolais Microsoft can't be serious?

Virgin Media suspends 4 staff over misreporting connections

Ben Rose It actually turns out 70meg ADSL is faster than 200meg Virgin fibre.

Ben, did you mis-type, or is there really such a thing as 70Mbit ADSL? I was under the impression that ADSL maxes out at 25Mbit/s, and the briefest of glances at wikipedia seems to agree. I is confused... and probably very out of date...

I need an ISP that offers IPv6. Virgin Media: Whatevs, nerd

Re: I'm Ok with IPV4 for now

jason 7 An IPV6 address that's really hard to remember.

Yeah there's a definite similarity with something else...

IPv4: "Call 999"

IPv6: "The new emergency number"

Re: Considering

@Rob Crawford their tech support claimed that you can't use the 5GHz channels unless you are using Apple devices as it is specifically for Apples use.

What the blithering F? There is so much wrong with this. My head hurts. Did you have trouble keeping a straight face as they were telling you this??

Re: need

So, the first rule of IPv6 Club is that you don't talk about IPv6 Club?

Similar story here with my ISP.

I'm with Frontier in Oregon (DSL if that makes any difference). I enquired about support for IPv6 last week; their technical help desk referred me to the sales/marketing department, who... referred me to the technical department. All I got out of the exchange was that they don't support IPv6, and have no immediate plans to do so.

Now, my need isn't pressing - it was more a case of "I should start playing around with this and stop being a future-fearing Luddite" - and Frontier are, in every other respect, a superb ISP, so I won't be dropping them over this. Still, it IS frustrating.

'Trash-80' escapes the dustbin of history with new TRS-80 emulator

Re: good old days...

10 PRINT " BOLLOCKS"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

Then run...

scroll?

D BREAK - CONT repeats, 10:1

Dishwasher has directory traversal bug

Re: Can't find the IP Address of my pitchfork

Dunno about my pitchfork, but this IoT madness has certainly spread to other things in my garden - I have a tree with root capability, and to make matters worse it runs on SAP...

We're 90 per cent sure the FCC's robocall kill plan won't have the slightest impact

"We're 90 per cent sure the FCC's robocall kill plan won't have the slightest impact"

That's funny, I must have taken a wrong turn... I thought I was on the Register but it seems I'm on a lookalike site that is absurdly, naïvely optimistic and thinks there's a 10% chance that this'll work.

Bloke, 48, accused of whaling two US tech leviathans out of $100m

Re: What surprises me is how long such scams can run and go unnoticed*

Actually, my favourite was the one last week about the lifeboat charity treasurer who ebay'd the charity's equipment, including their lifeboat...

"Greedy treasurer jailed for selling sea rescue charity's lifeboat on eBay" [telegraph.co.uk]"

I mean, how did they not notice? How far out in the towering waves were they before they realised there wasn't actually a boat under them?

Re: "whaling (like phishing, but bigger)"

@BebopWeBop Oh, you're just floundering now. Good Cod, man, stop being so shellfish.

So many weak fishy puns.... so little self-control.... must apologise...

Re: "whaling (like phishing, but bigger)"

I don't know, you'd have to ask a FinTech expert.

Adobe buddies up with Microsoft for new ways to mine your data

Re: Simple really

@Andy Non - yeah, sorry, my correction came across as a bit prissy - I was trying to be "helpful" and increase the standard of spelling on the internet (for some reason, I have a mental image of the Augean Stables right now...). Wasn't having a go at you personally. It's a homophone that many people get wrong (see also "baited/bated breath", "hoards of people" etc.) Thank you for taking it in good spirit.

Re: Simple really

@Andy Non it is a mute point anyway.

^"moot point"

King Battistelli's swish penthouse office the Euro Patent Office doesn't want you to see

Re: I'm starting to understand the Brexit vote

ooFie okay I know you Americans prefer Canon's its not a sticking point with me..

Use of canons has been superceded by the Vicars machine gun.

Coppers 'persistently' breach data protection laws with police tech

Re: Power corrupts

veti Wherever you work, how many of your fellow employees do you trust not to abuse private information they have access to in the course of their jobs?

If the answer is no more than 98%, that suggests police are no more corrupt than the average.

Mmm. But my fellow employees aren't empowered by the full might of the State to arrest me, ruin my life, seize my possessions & hold them for effectively unlimited time, deprive me of liberty...

Police have exceptional powers under the law. In return for granting those powers, we hold them to exceptional standards of probity and discipline. Frankly I would be disappointed if the police were "no more corrupt than the average". We should demand nothing less than absolute honesty and integrity. What, you don't like that Officer? Well, no more powers for you...

Microsoft delivers secure China-only cut of Windows 10

market size

To understand why, consider that China's military has over two million active service personnel, the nation's railways employ similar numbers and Microsoft’s partner China Electronics Technology Group Corp has more than 140,000 people on its books.

So that's a grand total of maybe 500 licences that MSFT will sell, then - this being China we're talking about.

User jams up PC. Literally. No, we don't know which flavour

Re: You missed out

@jake 6 tons of dead elephant? Easy ... make stew!

"Dumbo Gumbo"?

Re: You missed out

To my chagrin I discovered that when you cut up 6 tons of dead elephant, you still have 6 tons of dead elephant to dispose of.

Didn't you have a large trunk you could put it all in?

Several years ago, a colleague brought to me a PC that he'd built for himself - I'd acquired a reputation within the company of being someone who'd fix/upgrade PCs for little more than some chocolate or cider in recompense.

Anyway, this PC had two problems:

1) it wouldn't power on, at all, and

2) the chassis was faulty - must be, because the ATX I/O shield wouldn't line up with the rear aperture and couldn't be installed.

Some of you can maybe see where this is going.

The owner had carefully assembled the PC, but - seeing no need for the small brass standoffs - had methodically screwed the motherboard straight to the base plane of the chassis. So of course it was shorting out in about a hundred places.

I removed it, and re-installed it with the appropriate standoffs - and, mirabile dictu, it fired straight up, right as rain.

As a bonus, I was suddenly able to install the I/O shield at the same time. Funny, that.

But what was even funnier is that the person in question worked for our IT department in a quite senior helpdesk services role. Obviously a software guy and not hardware!

Re: Jammed...

Actually, my first thought was "Penfold's been nervous again".

And your comment makes me think of The Phantom Raspberry Blower Of Old London Town.

For all those of you now thinking "huh? Wossee on about?"...just ignore my ancient cultural references. Showing my age here :(

Spammy Google Home spouts audio ads without warning – now throw yours in the trash

Re: A company

Or rather wait the next day and see what is delivered from amazon.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1807/

Re: This is nothing

Car: "Playing 'Let Me Out Now'... Would you like to purchase this song?"

You jest (I hope) but I had a related steam-came-out-of-my-ears experience just last week while driving:

Me: "Play 'Shameless' "

Siri: "OK, going to the music store to buy 'Shameless' "

Me: DAMN YOU APPLE. "Play 'Shameless' *FROM MY MUSIC*."

Siri: "OK, now playing Shameless by Groove Armada."

And no, Siri hadn't mis-heard the name of the track the first time - its default decision was, believe it or not, to go off and offer to sell me a track, rather than playing it from my local collection. F*ck you very much, Apple.

(Oh, and this also shows I have poor taste in music. I regret nothing! Nothing, do you hear me?!?!)

Re: Yay for hardware attached to cloud services

Indeed, and it puts a new angle on this one from the other day:

Most of 2016's holes had fixes the day we knew about 'em. Did we patch? Did we @£$%

I will patch when the patch benefits me. I will not patch when the net benefit is in favour of the vendor ("v1.01: HIGH PRIORITY SECURITY FIX - we now show you ads every 10 minutes, fixing a gaping security hole in our revenue model").

Of course, with cloud stuff like Google Home, Nest, Alexa &c. you don't even have the choice - you WILL be patched, automatically, and suck it up.

I've long argued that there should be an expectation of security fixes - without bundled changes to UI or other functionality - for the supported life of the product. Oh, and I'd like a unicorn too please, and a perpetual-motion machine.

Why are creepy SS7 cellphone spying flaws still unfixed after years, ask Congresscritters

Re: replacing dangerous things

I'm proud that Ron Wyden represents my adopted home state of Oregon, and have written to him a couple of times to thank him for his stance on tech issues.

Unfortunately, as I'm only a resident alien, I can't vote for him (or anyone else) so my support makes bupkis difference one way or another :/

Is that a phone in your hand – or a gun? This neural network reckons it has it all figured out

Horse pistols and derringers common? You crazy brits.

We have the NHS, so access to horsepistols is unlimited & free, although the casualty department can get a bit busy (and as for the causality department, well, you have to make the appointment before your unexpected accident)

Dick Jones would like this

AI trying to detect what is, and isn't, a gun?

The first thing that comes to mind is ED-209...

"You have 20 seconds to comply."

Microsoft nicks one more Apple idea: An ad-supported OS

Re: they believe noone uses computers for anything serious anymore.

noone uses computers for anything serious anymore

Too busy, that's why.

Noone presents a weekly show on SiriusXM satellite radio.

Noone was Herman (of the Hermits).

The word you're looking for is "no-one" </grammar-pedant-mode>

Re: I presume

Oh, absolutely, and Microsoft are super keen to ensure that you get value in return for all the ads.

Windows 10 Pro, for example, is a $2700 value - but because of the ads, and the telemetry, and the fact that you have so generously agreed to volunteer for the mandatory beta testing, they can bring it to you for the low, low price of only $100.

Over a $2600 saving! Just for watching a few¹ adverts!

¹ -dozen²

² - well, hundred³

³ plus a few zeroes, ish

Most of 2016's holes had fixes the day we knew about 'em. Did we patch? Did we @£$%

Re: Why do we patch, or not?

Mike 16: Amen to that. I couldn't agree more.

Microsoft, Apple and the other software vendors have rather stupidly decided to poison the update mechanism with marketing-related "upgrades".

So yes, I will be aware that I am running a known-vulnerable version of software. I'll also be aware that if I choose to patch that vulnerability, I'll also get unwanted crap too - the new, secure, patched version will have also acquired the ability to show me adverts, "telemetry", mandatory TwitFaceGram integration, and as you mentioned, probably a state-sponsored backdoor or two as well.

0.00001% chance of being hacked (especially if I observe basic secure browsing habits) if I don't patch, vs. near-100% chance of my OS or app changing in unwanted ways if I do... gee, yes, I'd hesitate.

State surveillance boom sparked by fear-mongering political populists, says UN

It's a sensible, reasonable document based on sound research.

And for that reason, it will be completely ignored by governments because "OMG TERRURISTS HATE OUR FREEDOMS."