Posts by At0micAndy

Snowden: Canadian spooks used free airport WiFi to track travellers

It still amazes me that people didn't realise that their government agencies were spying on them. It was obvious from the first days of the net ( 'traceroute' for example).

Elderly Bletchley Park volunteer sacked for showing Colossus exhibit to visitors

I would like to see a LEO, I worked on one in the 60's and then we upgraded to an NCR315 with ferrite rings as well as valves. I used to love the half an hour the valves used to take to warm up, coffee time:-)

I guess BPLand will have no interest for me ( I am already fully versed in the codebreaking side) and so, if I am that way, it will the TNMOC only that receives my £s and I will gaze lovingly over Colossus.

Yes, Google can afford to lose $9bn in Motorola sale. But did it really?

Crikey, looks to me like Google have set Microsoft up for a big fall. I suspect the major future home for Office will be on Apple [ windows may already be terminally ill]. I did think the cloud, but then, well, what's the betting Office soon runs like a whale on Chrome?

Looks to me like a remarkably astute move by Google. So glad that I do not knowingly use their products. Soon they will be sending Androids back in time to kill as all in a Thermo Nuclear war engineered..... sorry, I'll get my coat.

The iPad age is over: The time of the iPad Mini and phablet is upon us

i know what you mean. I still use my Ipad series 1 and my white plastic macbook. Both work fine, why change them when they do everything that I need them to do?

PlayStation 4 BLUE LIGHT OF DEATH blamed on power cords, TV sets, butterflies in China

Re: Actually,

Anyone know if sony have improved braking distances for the PS4? I know that the PS/3 was pretty impressive at 30MPH in a built up area.

HUMANITY STUNNED - Apple Retina iPad Mini arrives. A solemn moment

I am still using my iPAD1 - does everything I need a pad for (browse web). Other stuff is adequately covered by my MBA, MBP and iMac. Interestingly, my eyesight is poor enough that I do not notice the improvements in my retina display on my MBP over my MBA. My OH still uses her iPadMini on a daily basis and loves it and feels no need to upgrade (but she does want a new case, her existing case is beginning to fall apart). All is calm in the world.

Rogue US-Israeli cyberwar weapon 'infected Russian nuclear plant'

stupidity knows no national boundaries

"The malware apparently got into the air-gapped network of the nuke plant on an infected USB stick." oh dear oh dear. Someone show them how to use a sheepdip. Please, I do not want a space station spinning out of control and crashing through my roof.

Apple: SCREW YOU, BRITS ... no unlocked iPhones for you

Re: As if I needed yet another reason...

well that’s fine for you, for me it’s another reason why I do buy apple, and why I buy from the Apple store then go and get my sim from Tesco (or wherever is currently cheapest) on a month by month contract. OH, and when I buy my new iPhone (or whatever) the nice tech in the store transfers everything and makes sure all is working before I leave. I am not [enough of ] a techie, I just want stuff to work. Thank you.

Bucket? Check. Toilet plunger? Check. El Reg's 50 years of Doctor Who

Re: Plumbing pedantry

indeed, but a toilet plunger, which I have, works very well at removing 'blockages'. I had considered its use for an Emporer Dalek project.

Surface 2 and iPad Air: Prepare to meet YOUR DOOM under a 'Landfill Android' AVALANCHE

The enterprise will move away from PCs, be they slim or fat, and move to diskless, thin devices on the desk that run all approved apps in the central server farm, this will reduce risk of attack by virus/worm etc at the user interface, and will reduce cost. Enterprises will stay with MS products, too much historic real estate is written in Office 97 or 2003 format and the cost of retraining and re tooling is prohibitive. MS Office is the big pull here for enterprises, nothing else fits the bill, certainly not the free stuff from Sun.

Home users fall into two camps, IMO, those that use computers at work, and those that don't. Those that use computers at work tend to gravitate to something that runs familiar software at home, and in that many enterprises still have not migrated from WinXP, Win8 or RT etc is not hugely attractive for home use. Those that don't use computers at work tend to go for what ever is used by mates, word of mouth seems to be the key here. Often they buy Android kit.

There is a third group, the Apple Orchard. They tend to like that everything works together, then can synch their iTunes library across devices easily, push all their contacts from their old iPhone to their shiny new one, and they like a degree of 'exclusivity' with possibly most of their friends/colleagues in the Msoft or Android camps.

iWorks, be it free or not, is essentially pants. It is feature stark and anyone who has tried to write technical or commercial documents knows that it is not fit for purpose. The same writers of these documents also discover quite quickly that trying to write anything other than a quick text by dabbing fingers on the screen is a non starter. MS know this also and wisely provided a version of MSOffice complete with VBA for Apple OSX systems.

I cannot see, after the Win8 debacle, MS gaining back the large percentage of the market that they once enjoyed in terms of PC hardware and OS, but if they are canny they will move Office ahead and ensure it has cross platform functionality and is the must have productivity tool regardless of platform. I think that Apple has about the maximum penetration in terms of H/w that it will get, and I think Android will continue to bring out varieties and flavours every few months to fill the gap left over. Consumers of such items are, IMO, likely to replace their android kit on a more frequent basis than MS or Apple users.

Re: MS will win

and for really serious stuff you used your Apple IIe :-)

Re: MS will win

thanks. I had just about managed to forget the joy of installing OS/2 from the 43 supplied floppy disks. It has all come flooding back. Thanks.

Re: That headline...

Yup, I still use my ipad original and iphone 3gs. I also still have my white plastic macbook, although to be fair since I bought my MBAir it gets little use !

Apple slams brakes on orders of (not so cheap) plasticky iPhone 5C

Re: Want an apple but not the 5c or the 5s

i still have my white 3Gs, still lasts a day on charge and has all my toons in it.

Thank you.

Control panel backdoor found in D-Link home routers

It is for reasons like this, exactly like this, that I live 4.8 miles from the neighbours, I don't use wifi, and have two separate wired networks in the house. On one, connected to the internet, i have diskless pc, a boot disk, a printer and a scanner. I boot from the disk and print anything i want to transfer to my other network. My other network is fully wired, has pc's, printers, scanners, and anything i want to transfer from the one network to the other I print on one system and scan into the other.

Oh, wait, perhaps I don't, maybe i just steal a neighbours wifi using a similar backdoor to the mentioned in this article. I love the prevalence of BT supplied H/W in the UK :-)

Backdoors have been around for a very long time, for some odd reason they seem to get little reportage, perhaps that is because of hidden influence?

Boffins spot LONE PLANET roaming interstellar void

It is the Great Evil approaching. We need Korben Dallas and Leeloo, otherwise we are stuffed!

Tesco's new fondleslab winks at Apple's stealthy NFC assassin iBeacon

Re: Adverts?

....So it will be used almost exclusively for beaming spam and other advertising at people then? So nobody will ever turn it on?....

unless it is set up so that you cannot turn it off.

Doctor Who to land on the BIG SCREEN and in 3D in November

who cares, 2D, 3D, Cinema, 4K ? Not me, just show the darn thing already!

500 MEELLION PCs still run Windows XP. How did we get here?

internet optional

i know at least one very large organisation whose Windows XP pc's do not connect to the internet and hence there is no security risk (USB also locked down, CD drives disabled etc). Peeps who want the internet go to internal internet kiosks or cafe's that are airgapped from the main network by sheepdips etc. it isn't difficult and it stops people wasting time trawling the internet rather than working. So far, no issues. ever. Those that do need to view the internet (procurement, finance, BOFHs etc) seem to manage very well with the current arrangements. Why should they spend money to upgrade at the moment when WinXP/Office2003 etc meet 99% of the corporate needs?

Samsung: Sod off Apple, we've made gold mobile phones for way longer than you

what does colour matter

I put my mobe in a [possibly faux] leather case, so what does it matter what colour the mobe is? Mine happens to be gold, but so what?

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 region-locking saga CLEAR AS MUD

another reason not to buy a Samsung. I routinely use local sims when I visit other countries.

EU move to standardise phone chargers is bad news for Apple

oh no, not more needless bureaucracy

i used to only buy Nokia, all the chargers fitted all the phones, then they changed the pin size, so they included adapters with all the phones - that was great. Now I only buy Apple, and all the phones and tablets use one of two chargers, but the adapter is a costed extra (still OK, but not so good). I have no interest in my chargers' fitting someone else's phone, or someone else's charger fitting mine. It is my responsibility to make sure my phone is charged and that I have the capability to recharge it if needed ( The USB charging lead is not exactly huge in my pocket). If I cock that up and my phone goes flat, that is my fault. I really do not need unelected European mandarins determining that the charger lead for my phone is the same as every one else's. Next thing you know they will demand that the outlet socket for your house electricity is the same all over Europe, so that you can plug your standard charger in wherever you are in Europe. The sooner UK gets out of the meddling EU the better.

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

Re: Huge flaw in article

Interestingly photocopiers can be a source of data. They do contain copies of recent copies in various formats, not least of which the fuser assembly and the memory. Try buying a seconhand copier from any 'secure' organisation. Bet you can't

Microsoft warns of post-April zero day hack bonanza on Windows XP

Re: Wait, hear that?

I know of a number of large organisation networks running windows xp where the LANs are not connected to the internet and where USB is disabled. They run, they work, they do the job. Alongside them you can often find smaller LANs that have internet facing PCs, but totally isolated so that never the two will talk. It is not difficult for organisations to make IT decisions, but the cost of change to W7 is indeed huge. Especially if XP and Office still meet the corporate need.

Boffins harvest TV, mobile signals for BATTERY-FREE comms

something for nothing, someone always complains

I used to work for the CEGB and I remember a complaint that came in from a a woman who had a new Fluorescent Light fitted in her kitchen that would not turn off, even when the mains to the house was isolated. When we investigated we noted that she had part of the National Supergrid going right over her bungalow. Local area board replaced her tube light fitting with a standard bulb fitting. It amused me to see how the story changed over the years, at the last iteration I heard she had hundreds of tubes all over her house getting free light. All rubbish of course. Just one woman complaining, dealt with. Next.

Leaked photos of iPhone 5C parts portend ugly Google legal battle

Love the humour

Amusing tongue in cheek article, it did make me think though. When I went to school the primary colours were Red, Yellow and Blue, and we were taught in Art classes how mixing them made all the other secondary colours. Yellow and Blue, for example, made green. How the world has changed, now a secondary is a primary.

Chrome, Firefox blab your passwords in a just few clicks: Shrug, wary or kill?

safari too

yeah, safari does this, too, and very useful I have found it for those rarely used websites. Yes I know abiout it, yes I have a different password for every logon I need, yes I need a way to remember them, yes this is very very useful, and yes, I use a screen saver, with an auto set of a few minutes. No, please do not take this feature away, yes do teach people to lock their screens.

Mastercard and Visa block payments to Swedish VPN firms

my bad. Sweden are part of the EU, they don't use the Euro.

I don't think Sweden is in the EU zone, so I doubt the Eurocrats will use this as a basis for examining the restrictive practices of MC/Visa

In respect of a non us alternative to MC/Visa, obviously Amex fails, the clue is in the name. Wonder if the Arab world or Indian world has an alternative non us Credit Card? I know that their banking morals are different, perhaps it is time for them to spread their wings? The difficulty is getting acceptance in retail outlets.

In terms of anonymous payments being the reason the stop it, I am not sure how this would work? Is the network that you are using part of the authorisation process? I didn't think so apart from the obvious record of the IP address etc. Certainly when I pay online (which is rare ) there are a whole raft of steps to go through to validate the payment

And finally of course, they could always start to accept paypal.

REVEALED: The gizmo leaker Snowden used to smuggle out NSA files

quelle suprise

it can hardly be a surprise to the Security Services that the leaks have come from Trusted SysAdmins. It is the same in many companies, in my experience, ordinary users don't always have access to thumb drives or writable drives, but the 'techies' swan in and around with copies of the OS on a burnt drive or a pen drive. We assume they are doing something proper, but what if they are just using our accounts to swipe data? It would be easy enough to do. But then again, it is easy enough to stop too, the problem is, it is the SysAdmins that would have to implement the blocks, and I guess most of them are not motivated? At a recent place I worked, pen drives were locked away, issued only for special jobs, and had to be returned at the end of the day. Unencrypted non registered pendrives did not work on the system. Seems quite safe to me :-) http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/angel_32.png

Boffins hide cute kitty behind invisibility shield

so, silly question, why can't the wand be seen and the plants can be seen? I suspect the invisibility shield is actually a photograph. An easy demo to make for anyone with a camera, photo printer and a you tube account. I look forward to a plethora of invisible fauna with visible flora.

iOS 6.1 KNACKERED our mobile phone networks, claim Vodafone, Three

we are on O2 via Tesco, and no one here has had any problems.

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

The Shockwave Rider

Jon Brunner - The Shockwave Rider, as far as I know never made it to film ,but predicted life on the internet, worms, viruses and trojans decades before the existed. Oh, there is a Panther and a girl in it too :)

Failing that, I would Go with Asimov's Foundation series. Big Up to Hari Seldon