Posts by Andrew Barratt

Ex-Apple bods suing Apple for bag searches get class-action upgrade

Re: Experienced this myself...

I'd have to check on Ireland specifics but in the UK only the police can force you to do this. You're employer can ask you, and you can refuse. However this may put you in breach of your employment contract and be used as grounds for dismissal.

If you have 'given consent' when signing your employment contract you are still able to withdraw that consent at anytime. If someone were to man-handle you at this point they run the risk of committing assault etc. if someone has withdrawn consent to search and there are reasonable grounds for suspicion then calling the police is the next obvious step.

Sysadmin ignores 25 THOUSAND patches, among other sins

Re: I don't think he handled this job at all correctly

It is times like this that change control is your friend. And if they don't have it, you write up a basic change request loaded with management taking responsibility.

Sad thing is you've probably been hired as another fall-guy :(

Re: Rules for when starting a new job

These are the rules for taking any IT job perfectly summarised.

Crazy Chrysler security hole: USB stick fix incoming for 1.4 million cars

Will be interesting to see how many people get popped by a rogue - Jeep branded USB going through their door.

Re: No wonder we are running out of IPv4 addresses

From the write ups it appears that this is a public IP similar to the way ISPs used to allocate one during a dial up session.

I'm guessing very soon there will be automated portscans running looking for the affected port and device signature. Similar to the way the same sorts of scans are running looking for Industrial Control Systems.

Sony boss: Nork megahack won't hurt our bottom line

Re: If what I've heard about the Sony hack is true, then he's full of hooey

This still isn't material to SONY though. They have group sales targets set for 2014 according to their annual report in 2013 of 8trillion yen or about £44 billion. That is a whole load of money. Risks into the big millions are probably insured and the deductibles a rounding error.

Bonk to enter: Starwood Hotels testing keyless check-in via mobe

oh dear

Expect a blackhat presentation on this in 12 - 18 months.

XBOX ONE ROUNDUP-of-the-ROUNDUPS: Everything YOU need to know

Re: I'm the only member of my anti-social network...

I can't think of a reason to get rid of the PS3. In fact with all the silly stuff going on in next gen land I'm hoping the PS3 comes down in price a bit more so I can get another one! Becomes a cheap family friendly BluRay / media player and gaming rig. I just don't give a shit about being an early adopter anymore because work & family life means gaming time already at a minimum.

Microsoft plugs Xbox One consoles into its cloud - what could go wrong?

Re: Good.

Totally agree.

Hopefully Sony will do something less aggressive than MS and we'll see which way the public wants to go. Unless they bundle my console with a free fibre upgrade I won't have the bandwidth for half the stuff on offer!

UK economy to lose £198m if BBC and pals lose EPG slots - Ministry of Fun

How are the losses calculated?

£198m how exactly is that loss calculated for the BBC? The bbc gets our money, uses it end of story. The UK side of the business isn't revenue generating. Whether anyone watches is not part of that equation, we're all forced to pay the tv license.

Review: Britain's 4G smartphones

Random

Didn't realise el-reg had staff in Swinetown! How did the coverage go if you moved out towards the deep, dark Walkden area?

Goldman Sachs: Windows' true market share is just 20%

Re: @mutatedwombat

I'm seeing exactly this quite regularly now.

MS has run the corporate IT eco system for sometime, the proliferation of devices without Windows or the cumbersome nature of getting to work with the rest of the MS infrastructure has lead people down the path of selecting or at least testing alternatives.

MS has an opportunity with Win8 and surface to show it can easily integrate a tablet into the corporate space - but also that it will play with others in a world where they can't just assume that there will be Windows based servers everywhere. If MS don't get this they are doomed, Android's price point will see it keep on becoming more popular and the management and security tools for Android will become more mature. Interestingly this is who Apple should be most concerned about.

Hotel blames burglaries on hacked Onity card locks

Re: Full disclosure

What is frustrating is that they only did something after the information was demoed at Black Hat. If they had really cared they would have listened to the researcher when he told them initially, advised all their clients that there was a problem and those data ports could have been glued up or something before black hat. Find it bonkers that the data port is on the outside portion of the lock though. Its like fitting a door handle with all the screws facing outward.

BYOD: Ready or not, here it comes

Re: BMAD

That's exactly what's going on.

More expensive in the long run, less secure, and a world of pain. Bring your own disaster.

Whatever you do with them you have to treat them with the assumption that they are already compromised which means the growth area will be in networking kit. As suddenly businesses network architecture will need to look like an ISP. They've been letting people bring their own device to their network for, mmm - pretty much forever.

McDonalds staff 'rough up' prof with home-made techno-spectacles

Somebody tell La Forge

Someone warn Jordy La Forge, no "Le Big Mac" for him.

Seriously though this guy was assaulted by a member of staff and the police haven't done anything? For wearing what effectively is a small camera attached to his glasses.

Parisian police #fail

Game Group shares slide under a penny

Re: Yea but

This is the root of the problem I reckon. Shows really bad cost controls. When they bought GS they should have closed off all the none profitable stores. They should also be a bit more selective about the shit they let people trade in.

Shame, bought every console I've ever had there and got just about enough game points for a mars bar.

Microsoft tech turns any object into a touchscreen

crap

I'm sure an indian guy from MIT had done something better than this on TED.... need to find the link..

Crap PINs give wallet thieves 1-in-11 jackpot shot

Re: Re: Why not just insist less chance of failure.

of course :) certainly a good way to curb my vices!

Always got mates with me though!

Why not just insist less chance of failure.

Everyone focuses on the Pin number, but why not just give someone 2 chances instead of 3. enter it incorrectly and card gets blocked.

If they are daft enough to use a number associated with them #fail

If they are daft enough to write number down # fail

But if the ATMs were smart enough to slow the attacker down - 2 invalid attempts and the card gets blocked for 48 hrs. would be annoying enough to make it hard work.

Capital gets trendy address: .London on its way

I can see this all getting very

.messy

or

.confusing

for the average .joe

Windows 8 secure boot would 'exclude' Linux

it could all backfire on MS then

If MS start to try to lock people to their tin supplier when you buy a PC, maybe even more people will flock to Macbooks.

Another shot in the proverbial foot MS.

Here lies /^v.+b$/i

How about....

Simply

"Goodbye, World"

Stand by for more big, windfarm-driven 'leccy price rises

Power to the people

or not, as the case may be.

Elite coder readies £15 programming gadget for schools

How about an arduino?

Don't see why more schools don't teach IT and a bit of basic electronics using something like an arduino. You could even learn some elementary etching skills and actually make everything you need to then run your own programs, and flash your LEDs etc.

Pervasive encryption: Just say yes

Encryption is not the solution to poor IT & security management practices

As others have mentioned.

Encryption was in place albeit badly WEP - compromised. Problem = Business failing to update old hardware or update configuration.

HTTPS was man in the middled, so encryption was in place. Problem = User awareness fail.

Poor password policy, poor patch management, poor config management, poor end user awareness. Encryption won't solve any of these and I wish people would stop looking at crypto as a sliver bullet for all security woes.

The "little bit of crypto" was the problem here in the first place. Not understanding the threats was the second, then doing nothing about either was the worst.

SME's particularly need to get the very basics right first. The last thing we need is lots of small organisations blindly encrypting everything and then thinking that security is done.

BT vs Sky vs Virgin

Bandwidth?

Just out of interest, if these boxes start downloading fairly large amounts of data is that going to be counted against my monthly bandwidth limits? 100gb a month could get used up pretty quickly with HD Tv on demand.

Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down

steeped in irony...

Did you completely miss the point AC.

Or are you still looking for a God to steer your every decision. "Thou shalt carry ID".....

Maybe you should stick with an ark from your old friend Noah, apparently that had 2 of everything and none of them required ID.

Intel touts 'Sandy Bridge' video chops

Linux support?

Wonder if they will do proper linux support?

HP and Dell trade (still more) 3PAR bids

mmmm

Sounds like some one has been sucking up the cloud computing cool aid.

Single downloads big deal for UK comms industry

50%?

50% of your day? Really?

So that's (on average)

12hours (doing media & comms stuff) according to those Ofcom chappies

8 hours a day at work

1 hour commuting (more likely to be 2 if you work in London)

7 hours a day sleeping

Have Ofcom managed to discover more hours in the day? Amazing. Or are they from the school of bullshit.

Interestingly this report does more for the NHS than Ofcom. No wonder the nation is becoming obese.... We are all so busy consuming "media" that we can't get off our fat arse to do any exercise.

Quote:-

"They are also using several types of media at the same time – with the average person cramming 8 hours 48 minutes of media into just over seven hours during the average day."

Really - so they can cram 8 hours of stuff in to seven hours. Really, would love to see how this research was conducted.

see - http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2010/08/19/consumers-spend-almost-half-of-their-waking-hours-using-media-and-communications/

Nice to see Ofcom grabbing whatever they can get their mits on to justify their existance.

Ofcom kindly do something of some use. "Fair Use" ....

Google mystery server runs 13% of active websites

Not Dark Fiber

Surely it is not Dark Fiber if Google are using it to transfer data?

Google unveils GDrive that's 'not the GDrive'

possible back fire?

When websense categorises google as a file sharing site....

How interesting that will be...

Google uncloaks the Nexus One

Sick of hearing the bbc report this as Googles first phone

Did they miss the G1 and G2 that are google phones on t-mob???

Dell tech flashes woman with (her own) jubblies

Never has it been more true

You get what you pay for...

Beeb iPlayer blocked by Xbox velvet rope

big deal

Why don't you just turn your xbox OFF, and switch your tv, sky+ or freeview+ ON. Why we insist on using the most inappropriate medium to watch, what is effectively broadcast television is beyond me.

Your bandwidth cap will be gone faster than you can blink if you start watching the crap on iplayer regularly. The best thing the bbc could do with iplayer is sell the service abroad to bring in some more money so they can make some decent shows instead of pissing our license fees away on yet another distribution model....

Virgin Media to trial filesharing monitoring system

Slightly off topic but I wonder if anyone can help

How do all these computer / video / music exchange shops work then, as they are technically "sharing" music / video. The last time I bought a DVD it had a notice on saying something like, "not for resale. rental blah blah blah". Now when some johnny come lately rocks up to his local tat bazarr (exchange shop) and sells his last three xbox games or DVDs do they contact all the copyright owners and ask for permission to re-sell them?

I'm really curios how they get around this, anyone who can answer will certainly be on my "buy them a pint" list !

:)

ICANN condemns registry DNS redirection

Someone better tell Richard Branson

Because Virgin media do this.......

Windows XP on netbooks to lose life support?

Its all about the drvers

Once intel start producing drivers that work properly in Linux its game over for Windows on the netbook. All people really use the for is web browsing in the lounge or as second/third pcs.

I got an Aspire one 751 couldnt buy it without the Windows XP tax, but soon got ubuntu 9.10 installed. Worked well initially even with the default vesa gfx driver, but was a bit sluggish. Once I managed to find a way to get the right driver on this machine feels much much slicker and responsive than the junkyard xp. Even passed the "even the wife thinks its quicker" test!

MS - stop ripping people off with millions of flavours of your os, stop pre-charging people for their hardware....

DIY GSM network is go

Coooooooool

Thats really cool.

Shame that you'd no doubt be shot by the police.

GM Volt to deliver three-figure fuel economy

Diesal for even more

And it doesn't look like it was designed by someone with a fetish for futuristic Buck Rodgers styling.

Asus Eee Box B206

Worse than xbmc on xbox

why spend £310 on this when a £50 xbox and xbmc will do the same as a media player if not better.

only any good as a lounge web browser. and £310 is a bit steep for that

Duke Nukem Forever developer defunct, says staffer

Open Source it?

Stick it on Sourceforge and let the community decide....

Botnet hijacking reveals 70GB of stolen data

Much better than the BBC

This is the sort of research that needs to be published. Listen up BBC, you don't have to go around compromising other PCs with botnets to get at the data....

Good job!

Acer Ubuntu nettop to get quiet storage switch

Good price point

for £150 this makes a nice price for a linux mce client. you could just hide it behind a tv/monitor.

bish bosh

job done.

London cops trial 'leccy patrol cars

Don't switch the lights and siren on ....

we need the extra 3bhp to catch that cyclist!

Gov systems found on 1.9m zombie botnet

oops

oops.

Beeb pushes major new iPlayer release

go beeb!

About time. Has anyone tested this to see if it does actually work with Linux

Microsoft targets Barmy Army with Silverlight

The mono version is rubbish too

The mono version on linux is rubbish too, cumbersome to install and has yet to play anything I've pointed it at.

Keep going MS, you will only make flash the defacto choice.

Recession takes chunk out of game sales

Bound to happen eventually

Maybe if Steam sorted out the issue with distributing EA games in Europe.....