Posts by Sir Runcible Spoon

Sony tells hacked gamer to pay for crooks' abuse of PlayStation account

Other reasons to get your account banned

Your Personal Information:

Offender revealed personal contact information about themselves in a public area, such as email addresses, phone numbers, or physical addresses.

So you're in a game with some friends he wants to call you later and he tells you that's he's lost your mobile number - so you tell him. BANNED.

Wow, these guys are STRICT!

The section this guy was banned under was this:

Reversal of Charges:

A console or account may be banned due to having a credit card charge reversed or "charge back" resulting in debt. A charge back can include credit card theft, identity theft, or non-approved use.

Which basically means that you are held responsible for things that are not under your control. This is known as a FAIL.

Re: Can't say I'm very sympathetic.

Translate this scenario into a bricks and mortar purchase of a game and you will see how ridiculous it is.

Rascal buys game with your CC details from GAME.

CC company refund your account and block the payment to GAME.

GAME come round your house and take all your other games until you pay them for the game that was stolen from them by the Rascal.

Really?

The thing it, it usually says that thing about 'no refunds' when you click on the item to purchase it. If you weren't the person who actually ordered it (and it sounds like Sony admit that is the case here) then how can the user be held accountable for that clause for that particular purchase? He effectively didn't sign the contract.

I see that there might be a general clause in the account, but it's usually stated at each purchase explicitly (it is on the 360 at any rate)

Re: PR own goal

It's actually a lot worse than that.

"we need to insist that the account holder take full responsibility for their account security"

So, if I open an account with Sony they will insist that I inspect the security of the data and it's processing and be in a position to insist they rectify any flaws that I identify.

Now, for most people that would probably be a fairly daunting prospect - but since it's part of what I do for a living I reckon I could make the effort to ensure my account is secure.

@El Reg - please do provide the contact details for whomever at Sony uttered this bizarre statement and a CC address for yourselves and I will happily act as your stalking horse. It's time that these corporate arseholes learnt that T's & C's do not trump rights and laws.

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

"Why do you want to be a woman Stan?"

It's the FALKLANDS SYNDROME! Fukushima MELTDOWN to cause '10,000 Chernobyls' in South Atlantic

I hope you sent them to school without their shoes - now *that* would be funny :)

Forum chat is like Clarkson punching you repeatedly in the face

"but you southerners can't tell the difference"

Oh how I wish that were true -I could fob the missus off with a crate of the stuff and still have money left over for the mortgage :)

"(guiness & cider)

"Stop calling it Black Velvet you woofter""

Black Velvet is Guiness and Champagne. What you have described is a 'poor man's' Black Velvet (especially concocted for our poor notherern neighbours).

Smart meters are a ‘costly mistake’ that'll add BILLIONS to bills

""convert an edited photo of their current mechanical meter into a meaningless number"

What, as opposed to just entering a false reading on the web site?

Huawei networking kit gets the green light from Blighty's spooks

Re: So unsafe

GCHQ are now happy that they have been given the keys to the backdoor more like.

Snowden dump details Canadian spies running false flag ops online

Re: Blobs of data

I don't think 'blobs' is El Reg specific terminology, it's been common usage as far as I am aware for quite some time.

Wind turbine blown away by control system vulnerability

Sir

Are these wind-turbines considered Critical National Infrastructure?

If they are, someone is in for a rocket, NERC won't look kindly on such lax security.

US threatened Berlin with intel blackout over Snowden asylum: report

Re: Sir

@Oninoshiko, you are correct in almost every sense. I originally thought that they were bahaving the equivalent of a spoilt child who had taken their football home because no-one was treating him with uber-deference, but then again since ultimately all this overbearing oppression always leads to self-destruction in one form or another I stick by my original comment.

Thanks for taking the time to deconstruct my argument and provide feedback though, it's always appreciated.

Re: Sir

Thanks for the correction, it's so difficult to keep up with the slide into idiocy that I sometimes miss the little things :)

Sir

Not exactly surprising though is it?

I mean, who would have thought the most well-funded Intelligence Agency representing the most powerful nation on Earth would throw their toys out of the pram like a small child?

Everyone? Thought so.

icon to represent children with Nukleer weapons

BOFH: Mmm, gotta love me some fresh BYOD dog roll

BYO...

Dinosaur.

Mine's the one with the rips in the back..

Woman caught on CCTV performing drunken BJ blew right to privacy

Re: biased

AC/Roger Mew - busted :)

AC/Roger Mew - busted :)

Re: By the way...

Is that like a p-45 but with an added 110 ?

Re: Good

@Shocker-z

these comments are referring to the woman being seen to urinate on the floor of the lift, not the result of some baby-gravy dribbling down her leg onto the floor.

Man hauled before beak for using drone to film Premiership matches

Re: Not dangerous, Actually need *less* restriction and less paranoia

@AC's, I suppose you also wouldn't have a problem with one of these things falling out of the sky into your windscreen whilst you wre driving along? Or how about a straight down drop of a 1kg object from a couple of hundred feet up down onto someone's head?

You need _some_ rules in a society you know, sensible ones that is. Stopping any tit with a dodgy drone from filling the skies with these objects seems sensible to me.

Samsung puts eight-core processor IN A WATCH

Sir

If they put a camera on it, I hope they remember to configure the software to allow you to flip the camera vision upside down ;)

Are you clever enough, and brave enough, to give a Register lecture

Re: Not sure about the IT angle but...

Shit, I think I just upvoted a Welsh-person :(

I was thinking of offering myself up for a talk along the lines of 'Ethel the Aadvark teaches troubleshooting across multiple suppliers and stakeholders, most of whom only want to blame someone else and not actually fix the fucking problem' but I wasn't sure it would go down very well, so thought better of it ;)

Snowden tells tech bigwigs: It's up to you to thwart mass surveillance

Re: Magic!

I think he might be referring to such things as

---begin pgp encypted message---

sfgsadgkjasdfjpo2ki54iu9038690twejg

34tiu3409ruiwmdfp'wqj

---end---

Re: Only for a limited definition of "secure"

Or hide it in plain sight by spoofing the sender and using a spammy subject line. As long as the recipient knows what to look for in his spam folder (or sets a rule up) you are good.

Australians! Let us all rise up against data retention

Re: Who wins?

What about that guy with three nipples? He has a Golden Gun, so does he rule the world?

Net neutrality secrecy: No one knows what the FCC approved (BUT Google has a good idea)

Re: I think you may have mis-read that part?

"I've spent more hours of my life than I care to admit to trying to figure out a way to edit a document to bring a single word up one line to save a page before going to print"

I usually just fudge the line spacing for that page, or reduce the font size in a table or something :)

Re: Last minute revisions are just that...

Thanks for pointing that out.

"That is seemingly true, with the report suddenly dropping 15 pages to 317 pages following a last-minute letter from Google"

When I first parsed this I thought it was typical El-Reg sarcasm, that'll teach me not to try and work whilst I am reading El Reg articles :)

Re: Last minute revisions are just that...

So, from 15 pages to upwards of 300, that's normal in your world for a 'last minute revision' is it?

You also don't 'sign-off' the draft versions, you wait until all the revisions are completed.

So if this document has been signed-off (i.e. voted on and approved) then by definition it is a release version - so why not release it?

El Reg regains atomic keyring capability

Re: Ahem, excuse me...

"He-he. He-he-he..."

Shouldn't that be more like "Mwah-ha-ha-harr!"?

Don't pay for the BBC? Then no Doctor Who for you, I'm afraid

Re: Worth every penny...

+10 for the person who registered as Mr Mulligan to make the 'crap' comment.

Well, Mr Mulligan, I think you're a load of old crap too :)

Net neutrality: The world speaks its brains on secret 'open' 'net rules

Re: Land of the Fettered

"What always makes me laugh is that the Americans go on about the land of the free, about capitalism being the new religion, free competition etc. And then they turn around and moan about net neutrality"

You seem to be referring to 300-odd million people as if they had a single, unified, opinion.

Surely not?

FinFisher, the spyware loved by cruel dictators, stomps all over human rights, says UK govt

Re: Sad indeed

I don't know why you would think your post would be moderated, I didn't anything in there that would break the rules of this forum.

Having said that, it would be naive to believe that these forums are not closely monitored by all and sundry.

Reddit showers gold on drugs, hippies and Tor-rorists

Decimate

Finally, a correct usage of the word!

So often I hear people use this term when they actually meant 'almost wiped out'.

Small cells are like DRUNKS. They don't use lamp posts for light, they use 'em for support

All hail DA

and the tome's that just keep giving..

" SEP (somebody else’s problem)"

aka how to make mountains invisible :)

For anyone who hasn't yet read the 6th volume of the trilogy (not by DA obviously) should give it a go. It tries a little hard in the first few pages and overdoes the swearing a bit, but once it settles down is practically indistinguishable (sp?) from DA's prose. So much so I did actually laugh out loud several times whilst reading it - highly recommended

SIM hack scandal biz Gemalto: Everything's fine ... Security industry: No, it's really not

Sir

"isolated from the public internet"

Are you aware of how many ways that could be interpreted? I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head which would mean that the servers could be cracked whilst still maintaining the 'truth' of that statement.

It's just PR shite to save their stock price or to try and stem the flow of people asking for new SIMs free of charge with new keys.

Live a day in the life of Jennifer Lawrence: Tell Reddit to delete your stolen nude selfies

Re: To the editors...

" if all of them could be pictures of Jennifer Lawrence"

or 'Spooge-face' as she is known now :)

UK.gov shuns IT support tower model. Now what the hell do we do?

Re: Well well well

I can't help but think of chickens and their chosen domicile.

The only way to fix that lack of in-house IT teams is to hire a few good people then re-instate training budgets.

Yes, it costs money, but then so does a crappy little art-installation for the birds to shit on.

Short-sighted, narrow minded tits, the lot* of them.

*all the management types that ignored the warnings about the hidden costs of outsourcing.

Phase 2 will be the realisation that stuffing all your company data in the cloud isn't such a fantastic idea after all.

I wish I'd leaked sooner says Edward Snowden in post-Oscar chinwag

Sir

"The question is where does the line get drawn?"

In a public court officiated by an uncorrupted judicial system.

At least not behind closed doors by shadowy people and organisations.

Sir

The thing is, once the 'man in the street' is aware and pissed off enough about the loss of his privacy and all the ramications thereof, he won't have any tools at his disposal to fight back with unless they are made _now_.

You don't win a war by poncing off with your mates in the morning with a couple of hockey-sticks and back in time for a pub-lunch on the croquet lawn anymore. Most conflicts involve a good deal of losses before the 'majority' wade in and play their part. If it does all end up like that then it's better to armoured than not.

Law of unintended consequences

Whatever people think about the current state of play, I take a lot of hope from Snowdens comments about the tech industry leading the way and making updated software that costs more to subvert. It is exactly the way to overcome a monopolist corrupt political system - make it really expensive to do the things we (the people) don't want them to do.

If the tools are made, but people don't use them, then democracy has spoken, but we need to have the choice and people need to be educated on the issues - this is what Snowden has given us and it is a powerful undercurrent that I see throughout the industry.

They always say 'follow the money'. Well, the contract market for skilled security workers has never been more bouyant, and there feels like a real scarcity in the market, especially since JP Morgan started hoovering up all the loose contractors.

The profile of online security (and thus the ability to keep data private) has come a long way in the last couple of years and I don't see it changing course anytime soon.

There is a war going on right under our modems and has been for some years.

Google opens 'Inbox' heir-to-email trial to biz users

Re: If it ain't broke

@Moiety, thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately for my work I have to use whatever software the company I'm contracted to dictates, they take a very dim view of non-sanctioned software for some reason ;)

Once upon a time Outlook had standard plug-ins for PGP and for saving attachments offline (whilst leaving a link to the file in the email itself). Sadly no more with 2010. Progress eh?

Re: If it ain't broke

"Spam is not a thing caused by natural laws"

We'll have to agree to disgree on that one since human nature (i.e. some tits still click on links in spam and open attachments etc.) is a natural law.

I'd like a decent email client with built in key management and file storage options. I used to have a couple of add-ons for Outlook that did these things but every company I work at is different regarding what you can and cannot install.

If it was there by default it would be useful and that latter would especially be useful for all those expanding waistlines on the HDD's where users store all their attachments and important emails in the Deleted Items folder.

Marconi: The West of England's very own Italian wireless pioneer

Re: Timeless wireless communication ...

"Numbering always starts at zero"

Except zero isn't actually a number, it's a baseline from which to start counting, or simply a symbol to represent the absence of an integer.

Hellooo, NSA? The US State Department can't kick hackers out of its networks – report

Re: They use Windows

If only they could somehow re-configure all the HDD's at such a low level that installing any mal-ware would be impossible without the proper code.

Seven months of Basil Brush on YouTube: Er, boom boom?

Re: Not so bad

+1 for Sweep, couldn't stand Sooty or that bossy little britches, wotsername?

Did NSA, GCHQ steal the secret key in YOUR phone SIM? It's LIKELY

Re: From such things are "special relationships" built

"A more pertinent question is if you were PM *could* you really put a stop to it? Or, conversely, if you wanted to put a stop to it, could you really become PM?"

This.

There are some dunderheads in this thread that seem to think that because some other foreign spy agencies might be able to get their hands on my cell phone transcripts that this somehow justifies the potential misuse of such data by our own security services.

Perhaps GCHQ should be putting more effort into preventing exploitable weaknesses in our communications systems rather than just driving a fucking great JCB through them at 80mph.

Government FOR the people, not OF the people.

Re: Any chance of clarification...

@Bluenose: You're so full of crap that I can't work out if you are trolling or really believe the stuff you are writing.

For example

"I am pretty certain that they will have the necessary legal sign off to obtain this type of material. Remember the Security agencies of any country are not directly bound by the laws of the land "

If they aren't bound by the laws of the land, why would you assume that they have legal sign-off?

I suppose you haven't heard that the spooks have recently been identified as having been in breach of the ECHR for over a decade (up until the point their secret spying became public knowledge which somehow made it magically 'legal')

Re: Does anyone still think this is only about terrorism? ...Its just too big a dragnet...

@Bluenose, you are comparing apples and screws. The difference is that the spying activities of China et.al. do not have a direct impact on my ability to protest in my own country.

The spying of my country's state aparatus on it's citizens en-masse is a tool of oppression.

Is your argument that 'because China does it' that it's ok for our spooks to do it? To their own citizens?

If so, then damn right I will blame the 5 eyes.