Posts by JakeyC

Red Bull does NOT give you wings, $13.5m lawsuit says so

Re: Applies where?

No, but it does contain E-numbers banned in many European countries.

Will we ever can the spam monster?

Re: Yes

When I had to reset my Reg password to reply to your comment.

Oz library finds Lance Armstrong books a new home: The fiction section

Manly Library

Just how manly is this library?

I mean, does it even have a reference section on naked bear-wrestling techniques?

HSBC websites fell in DDoS attack last night, bank admits

Re: Wrong Target?

Certainly does seem an odd choice, as I thought HSBC were rather Islam-friendly: HSBC Amanah

Jam today: Raspberry Pi Ram doubled

Re: Incremental upgrades

Oh well it was meant to be a joke but not to worry!

Incremental upgrades

Where do they draw the line with these little 'upgrades'?

"I know, it'd be good if there was some sort of graphics chip included"

"Yeah, and a solid drive to permanently store data"

"Oooh, and how about we add a keyboard so you can type stuff on it?"

"We'll need to add a pointing device as well, like a mouse"

"Definitely - and a screen so you can see what you're doing!"

"What about sound, let's add a couple of speakers"

"OK, good idea. We can put it all in a case so it can sit neatly on someone's desk."

Well done, you just invented the PC!

British car parks start reading number plates

Re: I see a growing market

Yeah I've wanted one ever since I saw Bond's.

Turns out they do exist: http://plate-flipper.com/

Want to know what 5G mobile is? Ask this British university

Mandatory Spinal Tap Reference

"Yes, but this G goes up to 11"

Natwest's Get Cash app pulled, but NOTHING to do with frauds

Re: A 6-digit PIN gives 'emergency' cash to anyone who types it in

I wonder if they implement rate limiting?

If not, you could theoretically get a gang of 10,000 criminals to try 100 PINs each, all over the country.

Assuming there's more than one user of the app, several of those PINs will be valid over a 2-hour period.

And trying 50 an hour sounds feasible to me.

Re: A 6-digit PIN gives 'emergency' cash to anyone who types it in

"maybe your DOB even" - really?

You think that offers MORE security than a random 1-in-a-million chance?

Assuming I don't even know you, I can already narrow your DOB down to about 1 in 30,000.

More realistically, I can assume you'll be in a certain age range (i.e. probably of working age) which improves my chances no end.

If I know you, I have your money.

What was your first pet's name, just out of curiosity?

Steve Jobs is STILL DEAD

This isn't Twitter

Why do retards insist on using hashtags outside of Twitter?

'Replace crypto-couple Alice and Bob with Sita and Rama'

Re: Politically Correct Maths Textbooks

Oops. "trianle"?

I did once, it was sore.

Politically Correct Maths Textbooks

This reminds me of some maths textbooks in the 90s, which tried far too hard to be politically correct.

To the point where every problem was introduced with the same formula of two common British names and a random Eastern/Asian name thrown in:

"Tom, Jane and Harkandreepashka have two apples each..."

"John, Sarah and Cho-Hu-Fung are stood on the points of an equilateral trianle..."

etc.

NZ bloke gets eel stuck up jacksie

Re: "The eel was about the size of a decent sprig of asparagus"

Yes, I originally pictured it as being the size of an under-developed sprig of asparagus. Knowing, as I do now, that it was actually the size of a decent sprig changes my whole outlook on this story.

"The eel was about the size of a decent sprig of asparagus"

One more unit for the El Reg's weights & measures team there.

Dreaded redback spider's NEMESIS: Forgotten Captain Cook wasps

There was a redback on the toilet seat

Sing along now...

http://youtu.be/TjDAiq2-xeU?t=15s

There was a redback on the toilet seat, When I was there last night.

I didn't see him in the dark, But boy I felt his bite.

I jumped high up into the air, And when I hit the ground.

That crafty redback spider, Wasn't nowhere to be found.

I rushed into the Missus, Told her just where I'd been bit.

She grabbed a cutthroat razor blade, And I nearly took a fit.

I said 'Just forget what's on your mind, And call a doctor please.

Cause I've got a feeling that your cure, Is worse than the disease.'

There was a redback on the toilet seat, When I was there last night.

I didn't see him in the dark, But boy I felt his bite.

And now I'm here in hospital, A sad and sorry plight.

And I curse the redback spider, On the toilet seat last night.

I can't lie down, I can't sit up I don't know what to do. And all the nurses think it's funny but that's not my point of view.

I tell you it's embarrassing and that's to say the least, For I'm too sick to eat a bite, While that spider had a feast.

And when I get back home again, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll make that Redback suffer for the pain I'm going through.

I've had so many needles, that I'm looking like a sieve. I promise you that redback hasn't very long to live.

There was a redback on the toilet seat, When I was there last night.

I didn't see him in the dark, But boy I felt his bite.

And now I'm here in hospital, A sad and sorry plight.

And I curse the redback spider, On the toilet seat last night.

Never mind Azure: They BROKE Twitter!

Twitter is currently down for <%= reason %>.

They even broke their error messages! I went to check and am currently getting:

Twitter is currently down for <%= reason %>.

We expect to be back in <%= deadline %>

Outage outrage: O2 dishes out 3 free days, £10 voucher

So Contracts are better off?

"An extra 10%" for PAYG and "10% back" for contract customers may sound equivalent but the better compensation is actually the latter.

Based on a £20/month contract or top-up:

Contract: £20 for the cost of £18 = extra 11.1%

PAYG: £22 for the cost of £20 = extra 10%

Olympic Security cock-up was down to that DARN software

Re: ...and LOGOC putting all their eggs in one basket

also, would have, not would of

Rifle-waving Yank's premature detonation ruins city's big bang

"It went boom"

"Fire investigator Jeromy Hicks [...] said: "It went boom""

Wow, 'Jeromy'. That's some valuable insight right there. Until I read your detailed analysis I was most confused by this complex chain of events. But your way with words has helped explain it to me in layman's terms.

Keep up the good work.

Phishing, cybersquatting scum could ruin gTLD fun for biz

Why defensively register?

Why should companies have to bother actually registering their brands to defend them?

Surely if someone other than Google tried to register .google, it would be sufficient for Google to tell ICANN "erm, 'scuse me but that's our brand name! Don't permit them to register it, cheers."

ICANN surely can't turn round and say "well unless you buy it, we'll let them use it", because trademark/copyright law trumps ICANN's jurisdiction on internet names.

It'd be like Companies House allowing me to set up "The BBC Ltd." unless BBC agreed to register that company name.

So if any marketing bods want to send me their $185k registration fees instead of blowing them on pointless "defensive" registrations, I'll go halves with you.

'6,000 RIM jobs at risk' of a pink slip

6,000 RIM jobs

That's bound to leave a bad taste in the mouth.

HMRC's real-time PAYE pilot trousers 310 more employers

"real-time PAYE pilot trousers"

I got excited for a minute and nearly ordered a pair.

London Olympics 'not immune' to cyber attack

"12 million cyber security incidents"

That's bollocks.

Virgin Media cuts Pirate Bay access for millions of punters

A sad day

Irrespective of whether or not The Pirate Bay was 'bad' or 'good', it's a sad day, sat here atop the slipperly slope of censorship.

Sure, sites have been taken down in the past, blacklists have been used to filter the illegal stuff out of our reach, but this is definitely another level.

My predictions for the years to come, if we don't manage to reverse this:

- 'Ordinary' people will become familiar with using proxies, TOR, VPN etc. as part of 'normal' internet usage to circumvent the ISP-level blocks. Kids will show their previously tech-unsavvy parents how to do so and once their use reaches a critical mass, the Govt., Judges and Lobbyists will take note.

- Rather than see the mass avoidance of censorship as a wake-up call that the whack-a-mole censorship can never work for long - if at all - they'll add the proxy servers, VPNs, TOR nodes to their hitlist because they're obviously a BAD THING that enables people to do BAD THINGS.

- ISPs and website owners will be ordered to maintain some sort of net ID scheme, whereby they must attribute every action on the internet to an individual, else they're liable for their customers' actions. They comply because they can't afford not to.

Dad sues Apple for pushing cash-draining 'free' games at kids

When will parents learn

When will parents learn to take responsibilty for educating themselves and subsequently, their offspring?

This guy clearly had no interest in what his daughter was doing and no knowledge of whether she could make purchases on the device he let her use unsupervised.

I'm no Apple fan but I think letting him claim up to $5 million "damages" is unfair on Apple!

He's now had to pay the in-app "idiot tax" and got a bonus parenting wake-up call - call it quits.

.XXX registry in .porn, .adult, .sex extension grab bid

...and my planned site

www.TheEarlofWes.sex

will now have to take on a whole new feel.

550,000-strong army of Mac zombies spreads across world

Fanboi slates Java, misses point in 3, 2, 1...

Only a matter of time until a Fanboi comes along to tell us how crap Java is, this isn't Apple's fault, Macs are still 100% virus-free and did I mention how good Apple are?

Megaupload boss: Site popular among US government users

Why do you have a space before and after your full stops? ('Periods' for you crazy Merkins) .

Big Brother refunds Facebook credits after vote crash blunder

Idiot tax

Should have stuck to "no refunds" - just write it off as per title.

Google plots Chrome web password maker

Mandatory XKCD: Password Strength

http://xkcd.com/936/

Google-hosted blogs to be censored on country-by-country basis

I'm sighing, by proxy.

"your current location as determined by your IP address"

So, not your location at all then? Yes, oppressive government, I know "IP address" sounds like "my address", but it's REALLY not the same thing. Trust me.

OK, so there's a strong correlation to location but do governments seriously think their net-savvy citizens haven't heard of proxies?!

Hell, most of them probably already run a TOR exit node from their bedroom!

Facebook registers mysterious fBoriGin domain names

Why the caps?

Why capitalize it as fBoriGin?

Surely it's FbOrigin or FBorigin?

Or have I missed something subtle?!

Bah, humbug! Virgin Media censors Charles D**kens

Clbuttic censorship error

The breastle says it all.

Cruel new punishment for hackers: Twitter, Facebook bans

And you'll enforce this how, exactly?

Will someone please educate politicians as to how the internet works as clearly none of them use it.

Without constant supervision there is no way on earth you can prevent a specific individual from accessing the internet.

Fine, cut off service contracts held in their name or at their address, but then what?

Watch them to make sure they don't go to Starbucks?

Ban visiting mates who are known to have internet access?

Oh and why reward them by removing Facebook from their lives? They should be made to do EVERYTHING via Facebook until they're so sick of it, they voluntarily become Luddites.

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

Excess baggage

And I'll bet he didn't have to pay any 'excess baggage' fee, even though he was smuggling the equivalent of two suitcases in that belly of his.

You know you're a little fat when you can't fit into a seat; should definitely have purchased two.

I think a new pricing model should be introduced:

Ticket cost = BC + (CW * S * PPK)

BC = £Basic charge (minimum cost)

CW = Combined weight of body, clothes and all luggage

S = Number of seats required to accommodate you without spillage

PPK = £ per kilogram

This way, fat people will either slim down to get better value, run out of money and starve or better still - stop taking up my personal space with their lardy overspills.

A pint a day keeps the doctor away - scientific FACT

"slightly more than an English pint a day"

Not that Scottish 'pints' are NOT a suitable measure of alcohol.

Az mayor offers Prince Harry beer and pizza in fornication row

Re: Pizza, Right?

<Gareth Keenan>

He means his knob.

</Gareth Keenan>

Kansas IT boss found faking CV resigns

Surely Ooh-Arr

Arr, where that degree to?

NHS staff rapped for gossiping about patients on Facebook

Bit harsh

Initially I thought these punishments were a bit harsh.

Then I re-read the headline and realised they were only "rapped" and no sexual violence had actually taken place.

HSBC UK systems major outage

Internet Banking works for me

I can log on to check my balance and it accurately confirms that I still have no money. Oh well.

Credit card companies plan to sell your purchase data to advertisers

Oh well

Looks like it's time to start carrying nothing but cash in my tinfoil RFID-shielded wallet now then!

Cabinet Office on £2m digital talent hunt

New Security Roles...

...are notable by their absence.

Jaguar recalls over 17,600 X-types in the UK

That's normal

"Only turning off the engine will cancel the mode in these circumstances"

In other words, 'turning it off and on again', which is a fairly normal thing to do when a computer misbehaves!

Can't imagine why they feel the need to recall them!

Scottish council leaks names, salaries, info of 900 people

Why so long?

"The council said it will address any weaknesses uncovered during the audit by January 2012"

Why does it always take so long, and why are timescales of that magnitude tolerated?

How about you stop sending out confidential spreadsheets next flippin' week, you lazy fools.

Basically, they got caught messing up and their response was "yeah, we'll sort it next year" - and that's acceptable?

Wales says no to outing Wikipedia users on Facebook

"Wales says no to outing Wikipedia users on Facebook"

What, the whole country?

Online gamers strike major blow in battle against AIDS

I propose a new game - "hunt the Higgs"

Bit like a multiplayer version of Where's Wally (that's "Waldo" for our American chums).

Also, Paris because she's a PROtease, geddit?! Not sure if she's retroviral, however...

LOHAN checks into REHAB

Am I the only one...

...who read "LOHAN vacuum beast" as "LOHAN vacuum breast"?

Did Bahraini activists closet anti-gay bus baron?

Not far off

Already happening as far as I can tell.

Google recently "adjusted" their Al Gore Rhythms to push content-scraping sites to the bottom, after the duplicate content had started ranking higher than the original source.

Black Hat SEO is full of posting dodgy links with your competitor's site referenced alongside to put them in a bad light.

Apple plan to rate shops etc by number of iPhones visiting

Opt out?

Yet to see any of these sinister data-harvesting schemes have the decency to operate on an opt-IN basis.

And yes, I know it's because there would only be a handful of people enrolled, but still...

As for a UniqueId providing anonymity - erm hello, it's *unique* and tied to the movements of an *individual*.

For details of how that strips away any anonymity when coupled with other seemingly harmless data, ask the chaps who released the AOL search logs.