Posts by Roland6

UK's internet registry prepares a £100m windfall for its board members – and everyone else will pay for it

Re: When is the deadline?

>I had tried to move the bare .uk names 123 hold but I get an error when I try to transfer out...

Suspect (ie. hope) this will change once the free period expires in a few months time.

Re: I was gifted a .uk

It is interesting to ask the question: did 123-reg see this coming two plus years back?

Because clearly if you are a user of 123-reg you have been saved from Nominet(UK)'s scheme.

With my clients it has enabled me to hold gentle discussions about domain names so that this year they can take an informed decision as to whether to actively surrender the .uk domain or keep it (for now) and pay the bill.

It's official! The Register is fake news… according to .uk overlord Nominet. Just a few problems with that claim, though

Re: .uk was an awful decision

>I've always wanted to see mercedes.gmbh.de

Why when you have .gmbh ?

I'm sure the Germans would regard gmbh as being sufficient to denote the origin of mercedes and other quality products originating from their country.

>B&Q's diy.com

But then they did have a problem with how do you represent the '&' using the permitted characterset.

What is interesting is how they have maintained the two brand names and seem in no hurry to follow the pack and go through a rebranding exercise.

>I would recommend no company registers .xxx to protect their brand, its just a headache.

? aspirin.xxx

Ex-Autonomy CFO Hussain will not defend himself in the High Court

Re: Ummm

Also whether he is free to travel and leave the US before having to check-in to his new accomodation on the 17th.

LibreOffice 6.3 hits beta, with built-in redaction tool for sharing those █████ documents

Re: What a dumb way to do redaction

It's even more dumb, if the original document is 448 pages, as it makes the redacted version unwieldy.

Mind you it would probably guarantee that no one (other than a determined journo) would download and read the document; so no one would know what Mueller actually wrote..

Devs slam Microsoft for injecting tech-support scam ads into their Windows Store apps

Re: RE: "We rely on ad revenue to keep this site going."

>Now where is that finger icon???

What we actually need is the: "Give The Finger (GTF) mechanism that communicates a user's opinion of an ad received (and tracking details of the relevant ad) to ad delivery network owners and arbitrage service. Ad's that have received a GTF shall be blocked (ie. not served again) until the ad has been reviewed by an independent assessor."

It shouldn't be too difficult as basically we have the main elements of this system with the Do Not Track (DNT) and DCMA take down notices. However, doubt it will happen, unless it can be sold as a profit earning stream to ICAAN.

Buy, buy this American PCIe, drove my PC on the Wi-Fi so the Wi-Fi would fly

Re: Bottlenecks

> but can the rest of your system (e.g. CPU & Memory) actually keep up with data flowing that quickly?

Well change the numbers and this was the situation back in the 70's & 80's, there was a reason why the PC had DMA, and why PC's with NIC's that had on-board CPUs and DMA were notably 'faster' than those with more basic NIC's that did all the protocol processing in the PC's CPU.

What's a billion dollars between friends? Uber tosses match on mound of cash in first results since going public

Re: How does it run a loss?

>It has an app instead of bricks and mortar premises, and has a fleet of hire-and-fire owner drivers.

The app needs developers, as Uber hasn't mastered the art of running large virtual teams, they need somewhere to work. Additionally, Uber is a traditional American company, so it needs a large HQ - to impress the investors. So it most definitely has bricks and mortar premises, just not of the type traditional taxi operations possess.

The fleet of hire-and-fire owner drivers cost money, this is one of the cost areas Uber (and others) are hoping driverless vehicles will enable them to save money.

Additionally, the app doesn't run without backend servers etc., which require monthly payments to keep them running and bricks and mortar premises - even if they are "someone elses".

Basically, Uber have significant overheads that mean they are unable to be profitable if they charge the same (or lower) fares than the existing market operators. I seem to remember the price premium for the app was around £4 per fare.

You go that way, we'll go Huawei: China Computer Federation kicks back at IEEE in tit-for-tat spat

Re: 3GPP Meetings in the US this summer

>A bit late to change venue now, but what are the odds the next occasion will be outside of the USA?

Given the way it works, that is practically a certainty. The question is whether they vote and adopt a resolution to cease holding meetings in the US due to both the US's current actions and to safeguard their non-US members who may run the risk of their delegates being arrested etc. if they step foot on US/Canadian soil.

IEEE tells contributors with links to Chinese corp: Don't let the door hit you on Huawei out

Re: IEEE President

HE probably used one of his other places of work such as @nagoya-u.ac.jp

Re: Sauce for the goose

>I think I will be politely declining any invitations to review for IEEE

Depending on the number of requests, it might be worth getting a .cn email address to use in these circumstances...

Re: Presitator for life

>I believe Trump would need two-thirds of Congress to back him on that.

But only if he doesn't declare it to be a 'National Emergency' ...

It's the curious case of the vanishing iPhone sales as Huawei grabs second place off Apple in smartmobe stakes

Not listening...

"Demand for premium smartphones remained lower than for basic smartphones*

...

* Gartner classifies a basic smartphone as a "voice-centric" mobe with a 4-inch screen and a resolution of 720p or higher"

Given a modern 4-inch screen smartphone is more capable than an old 4-inch screen smartphone, I think the market is very clearly telling manufacturers what they want, just that it seems the manufacturers can't be bothered to listen and insist what customers want are phablets and thus complain when sales don't meet expectations...

It seems this is a variation on the netbook marketing failure, where vendors insisted that because the netbook was smaller and more portable than a notebook, it didn't need to be as powerful/capable as a notebook, yet still run the same application binaries (or in the case of Office Starter, slightly different binaries that further reduced the screen space available for user activities)....

'Evolution of the PC ecosystem'? Microsoft's 'modern' OS reminds us of the Windows RT days

Re: I'm OK with all this crap

Well if the MS AI lives up to the claims: "so a modern OS is aware of what a user is doing tomorrow and helps them get it done." it will be ready and waiting for that installation media.

Two weeks after Microsoft warned of Windows RDP worms, a million internet-facing boxes still vulnerable

Re: Basic security

PROTIP : The brilliant idea of changing the RDP port from default 3389 to something else DOES NOT HELP. A portscan will sniff it out and your ass will see a six-pack whoopass.

Never heard of firewalls with port scan detection and blocking...

The main advantage of using a non-standard port is to separate the grain from the chaff, also Shodan only seems to report the presence of RDP services if they are on the default port...

Re: It's not only the internet facing ones...

"Specifically, Graham said he was able to, ... find some 932,671 public-facing computers still vulnerable to CVE-2019-0708. To do this, he scanned the public internet for machines that had the Windows Remote Desktop network port (3389) open"

Given a common practice is to use a non-standard port for Internet RDS access, I expect significantly more public facing computers are still vulnerable. One hopes that they have firewalls with port scanning detection and blocking enabled.

I suspect any site/IP address that Shodan reports the presence of an MS service eg. Exchange, IIS (but not RDS) will odds on also have an MS RDS Server on a non-standard port.

Ofcom to Openreach: Thou shalt prise open thy network for firms targeting biz customers

Re: Huh?

>Then you are not in the low percentage deemed to have access to FTTP.

Agreed, I'm in the even smaller percentage of people who have explored what jonathan keith recommended Lostintranslation do.

So I had costings for getting 7 miles of fibre (exchange to street cabinet), street cabinet (installed and equiped) and fibre (cabinet to premises)... To cut a long story short, couldn't persuade enough residents (or the right ones) to invest and so went mobile broadband and waited (6 years) until BDUK/BT decided to install FTTC...

Re: Huh?

It doesn't really need to be defined. It's fairly well understood that 'Access to...' means that should a given property owner wish to purchase such a service they can do so.

I can purchase a FTTP service, just that the price it will have lots of zeros on it and a long lead time, thus from your definition I clearly have 'access to...'

Does 'access to...' include properties that have a dual copper/fibre cabinet to the home cable, but only FTTC and copper to the home services are being delivered.

The only definition that holds water, is that it only includes those properties that can access ultrafast services by only replacing the home router/modem....

Re: So nice to see....

>BT have cherry-picked their fibre deployment so they are already in areas served by Virgin anyway.

Discussion in BT: Wheres the best place to deploy fibre to maximise our return on investment? In high density built up areas like cities.

Discussion in VM: Wheres the best place to deploy our ultrafast service so as to maximise our return on investment? In high density built up areas like cities.

Given the lead times on these projects, we can expect those discussions to have occurred and decisions made sometime before anyone things about scheduling a gang to dig up the streets...

Re: Huh?

Nope, the figure is correct, possibly even understated.

Actually, I suspect the figure is more of an overstatement.

No where in the Ofcom report do they actually define what "Access to a download speed of

300Mbit/s or higher (ultrafast)" actually means.

>*)BT offer it through G.FAST which is very range limited but also have a lot of FTTP (GPON) in place.

Just to put "a lot" into perspective, according to Ofcom's report "access to full fibre service" ie. FTTP accounts for 7% of properties.

Uh-oh .io: Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains as UN condemns British empire hangover

Re: .US was the first ccTLD

>or they consider that basically the whole internet belongs to them...

This is probably closer to the truth, given the US corp first approach with resolving .com ownership, applicable laws etc. that was particularly noticeable in the high growth period circa 1995~2005.

Re: Point of view

>At which point in time should we say our borders were correct?

Well, the wise guy would say when the relevant parties can reach an agreement. However, that doesn't take account of human nature, so even though every thing may have been agreed some future generation will decide that the settlement was somehow unfair...

so the best we can do is probably to revisit the lines drawn on the map at the end of the colonial period by the various European powers.

Re: Strategic importance

>These islands are of strategic importance to the UK and its allies, Mauritius doesn't have an Army and if they were attacked I am sure the UK and the US would come to its aid.

Actually, I suspect the islands wouldn't be 'attacked'... Given their stategic importance, from a world shipping viewpoint, if the UK/USA walked away a bunch of very nice Chinese business men would soon be visiting Mauritius and offering an investment package, alternatively, given the islands are uninhabited, they might be simply annexed and developed - just like many islands in the south china seas...

Re: Get real

>You left out the fact that the UN is trying to be the head of a One World Government.

Don't worry it if ever shows signs of happening, the UK will vote to leave.

Re: Hazarding a guess here

>Just a guess, but I'm thinking that Thoguht is not a Chagossian?

But Thoguht does make a valid point, although uses a poor example, given the European nations agreed their borders after WWI, along with the borders of many former empire countries, particularly those in the middle east. Interestingly, China whilst agreeing to the post-WWII settlement, doesn't feel it needs to abide by it and thus feels fully justified in occupying Tibet, along with any other lands that might have been overseen in the distant past by imperial China.

That magical super material Apple hopes will hit backspace on its keyboard woes? Nylon

>I've noticed that all the cases for iPhones must have a big circle on the back so that people can clearly see you are using an Apple product

Not had that problem with third-party cases.

WikiLeaks boss Assange acted as a foreign spy, Uncle Sam exclaims in fresh rap sheet

Re: This will be fun to watch...

>Why? He's chosen to go to another foreign country he's got to follow their rules and laws.

And which country exactly was Assange in when the supposed espionage events took place? I suspect it wasn't the USA...

Re: This will be fun to watch...

>since he's not a US citizen.

Which means was whatever Assange did, was it legal/illegal in what ever country the transaction took place... To me it does seem that this is clearly a case of the US trying to extend its local laws to the rest of the world.

Twist my Arm why don't you: Brit CPU behemoth latest biz to cease work with Huawei – report

Re: Since when have...

>Arm Holdings, Inc. is a US corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. As such, it has to obey US laws.

>So yes, there are a lot of applicable US laws here.

I would hope Linus and friends are now looking very closely at what contains “US origin technology” may mean for Linux and associated open source projects sponsored by organisations such as the LinuxFoundation - HQ San Francisco...

Re: This could be good for all of us in the future

>so people can run actually free firmware...

Just need to ensure that the free firmware and its development repository isn't hosted on US systems and that contributions from US sources are handled very carefully...

Some parts of the open source movement can say they saw this coming, hence why great efforts went into ensuring key software developments eg. encryption and OS, were hosted on servers outside of the US.

If you are involved in open source, warning bells should now be sounding: if your project is hosted on a US owned or located repository, and/or it accepts contributions from US companies (and nationals?), it can be claimed to contain “US origin technology”...

Bug-hunter reveals another 'make me admin' Windows 10 zero-day – and vows: 'There's more where that came from'

>How about simply being a decent human being?

This one cuts both ways. As has been pointed out, a big (US) company is making money out of this software - are the people with the chequebooks being "decent human beings" by not rewarding bug finders at rates that reflect the work involve?

I thus suggest "decent human beings" don't expect everyone to cover their own costs and work for free. In some respects I suggest finding a security hole and them crafting an exploit to use that hole is more akin to creating a work-of-art, so perhaps bug finders should be sending the results of their work to auction.

Where there's a will, there's Huawei: US govt already eases trade ban with 90-day reprieve

>The really interesting thing is this: the US represents about 5% of the world population, but a lot more by economy.

However, with the rise of the BRIC economies and other factors the US share of the global economy has nose dived over the last few decades, whereas in comparison the Chinese economy has gone from near zero to challenging the former no.1 economy...

Re: Not smart

>I'm sure that would work here just fine

>I think a lot of people in West London (Heathrow 3) and along the proposed route of H2S would take some issue with you if you think we are so much better.

Well it pretty much was how it was like when the railways were being built, circa 200 years back, although the land wasn't owned by the party but wealthly landowners - hence why the rails take some 'interesting' detours and stations aren't located where you might expect. It was the ripping up of N.London/Camden that lead to the introduction of the planning laws and compensation.

What I've not been able to determine is the events and when, that land that belonged to the crown, which was given out (and taken back) in grace and favour transactions, ceased being the property of the crown, and thus became the property of the last person granted a favour.

Re: Not smart

>This whole thing seems to be about protecting Apple

I initially thought you were forgetting that stalwart Motorola, then remembered they were now part of Lenovo...

Re: Around the world ? Really ?

>Perhaps when you grow up you'll be able to avoid mocking people for the colour of their skin.

I didn't realise mocking people for their poor quality (out of a bottle or machine) fake tan was racist...

Mind you at the college in Leicester a niece attends everything is 'racist' ie. the phrase "thats racist" is used to mean "I don't agree".

Re: Around the world ? Really ?

>If they can't source parts US can somehow control they obviously can't use them worldwide - unless they can replace them with something else not under US control.

...

Some parts may be hard to replace, though.

The only parts that will be hard to replace will be those actually manufactured in the USA; for any US parts manufactured in China there will be an assured supply of white label variants...

Backup your files with CrashPlan! Except this file type. No, not that one either. Try again...

Re: Just change the filenames ?

>Encrypting anything you "backup" to random third-party servers somewhere else in the world.

The backing up isn't the problem - just enable inbound SAMBA, FTP et al connections to access to your systems from the Internet, the only problem is maintaining a reliable list of "random third-parties" to which you can make restore requests...

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Re: Changing Wallpaper can have career enhancing effects

>No, it wasn't a prank, he just preferred it that way.

There used to be many resources on the Internet that helped people (with dyslexia and/or sight problems) select appropriate colour combinations.

Not had to deal with such matters since the world moved on from XP, so don't know the extent and ease that Win10 (and other 'major' OS's) support such creative colour schemes.

Re: Changing Wallpaper can have career enhancing effects

Don't forget to swap the L+R mouse buttons...

There was also a rather nice third-party add-on that allowed you to relocate the Window buttons from the top right to any other corner you wished and even change their design...

It was a couple of these simple tricks that meant (for some strange reason) why a top end PC was never borrowed from my desk for demo's etc. ...

UK's planned Espionage Act will crack down on Snowden-style Brit whistleblowers, suspected backdoored gear (cough, Huawei)

Re: An interesting test...

> how much of the proposed Bill would be legal if the UK remained a member of the EU.

Probably just the title page...

Re: Official Secrets Acts?!

I think you are okay reading about it, just don't tell any one you've do so...

Salesforce? Salesfarce: Cloud giant in multi-hour meltdown after database blunder grants users access to all data

Re: Not all cloud providers are created equally

>‘Safe’ with your own locally hosted clouds assumes that you and your colleagues know more about managing enterprise systems than organisations that only do that.

No, actually it is a matter of risk and mitigation in what you can do in the event of the untoward happening, in this case the sysadmins giving inappropriate persmissions to a third-party organisation.

As you acknowledge, the 'experts' at Salesforce made mistake/got it wrong then in resolving the mess you lost access not only to data but also to an automated business process; lesson: as an organisation using Salesforce etc. what are your risk mitigation and business continiuty strategies...

Personally, I suspect good cloud vendors will up their game, and so put in place safegaurds that will reduce both the risk of this happening again and if it does mitigations. However, this doesn't alter the need for a user organisation to have done a risk assessment and prepared mitigations...

Aside: I think we are agreeing its about risk and its management, in which the quality of the in-house team is just factor in this assessment.

Re: Not all cloud providers are created equally

>For example, you could go with a cloud based provider that will implement single tenant systems (just your stuff on the databases you have rented) rather than multi-tenant such as the Salesforce model

One question: Who has sysadmin access rights?

About the only cloud you are 'safe' on is one where you are running your own VM's and the cloud providers admins can only prevent your VMs from running.

'Safe' with cloud is a relative term, obviously I suggest running your own VM's is at one end of the scale and having your data within a multi-tenant system such as Salesforce is at the other, with single tenant somewhere in the middle. However, in all cases you are (to varying degrees) at the mercy of third-party sysadmins.

Bloke accused of conning ARIN out of 750,000 IPv4 addresses worth $9m+ to peddle on black market

Re: Using IPv6

>IPv6 was invented ~15 years ago, to solve the problem once and for all

IPv6 was 'invented' back in the late 1980's ie. more like 30 years ago. If memory serves me correctly, the address length was set in the early 1990's. What took time was that the working group decided to try and do more (with revising IPv4) than just change the address length, which resulted in them missing the opportunity to get the new protocol out before the release of Win95...

It is interesting to note that it took until 1998 for IETF to adopt it as a draft standard and only in 2017 ratifying it as an actual Internet Standard. So we shouldn't be too hard on ISP's and others taking their time in deploying IPv6; although now it is a Standard...

Freed whistleblower Chelsea Manning back in jail for refusing to testify before secret grand jury

Re: secret grand jury on the grounds that they are undemocratic

>No. and it's actually a big difference.

Not that big a difference to the public at large.

From what I've read, I don't see a need for the grand jury in a first world legal system; either the prosecutor has the evidence they need to put a case before a REAL court and jury or they don't.

Giga-hurts radio: Terrorists build Wi-Fi bombs to dodge cops' cellphone jammers

Re: Diretional antenna

>if you make it wrapped around a hollow tube you can point it accurately enough to work over a couple of miles with little problem.

I seem to remember (in the days of GSM) that pringles tubes made excellent directional waveguards - a useful trick if you needed to get the best out of a poor/weak signal.

Banhammer Republic: Trump declares national emergency, starts ball rolling to boot Huawei out of ALL US networks

Re: What is the risk?

Looks like the UK's collaborative approach has resulted in "the Cell" becoming a rather useful canary.

I suspect if the UK were to try and openly do similar for a US vendor, the US would be up in arms and putting pressure on the UK government to stop undermining the "special relationship".

Microsoft emits free remote-desktop security patches for WinXP to Server 2008 to avoid another WannaCry

Re: Not just XP/2003 but also W7/2008 that are affected

>Seems to be a big focus on this vulnerability for XP/2003

Thats because all versions of XP are now EoL - unless you are paying MS for extended extended support.

Win7/2008 go end of life in January 2020, so will receive this patch via the normal security patch channel.

But you are right, in that the NHS demonstrated that WannaCry on Win7 was a bigger issue than WannaCry on XP.