Posts by Jop

BSkyB punters drown in MASSIVE MYSTERY Yahoo! mail! migration!

2 weeks later...

...and Sky still have not fixed many of the issues.

BIGGEST DDoS ATTACK IN HISTORY hammers Spamhaus

Thought you had to have control of your own DNS server to pull off this type of amplification attack but that is trivial anyway. Cloudfare will be able to write a nice rule to protect against this in the future.

Such a waste of a good attack, obviously someone got upset to the point of rage-ing hard!

Standard DNS has done us well but its time to move on and get rid of some of the known issues.

'Let anyone be administrator' bug in VMware snapped shut

Mud

So the explanation given is as clear as VMwares renamed product range.

If it is not Hypervisor then it has to be through tools or drivers that link the host and guest. Obviously.

Ready for ANOTHER patent war? Apple 'invents' wireless charging

Re: Total bollocks from el Reg

Unfortunately the Apple fanboi in you was so bright there was no need to confirm that 90% of your posts in the last 3 months are related to Apple or iProducts. I did it anyway and got a stalker badge to sew on!

Just waiting for Nintendo to come along and claim WiPower is a Trademark infringement...

NASA: THE TRUTH about the END OF THE WORLD on 21 Dec

Damn

Thought I could get out of the Christmas shopping nightmare this year (and every year after) but no such luck :(

EE touts 4G Sim-only tariffs

Re: Virgin Mobile?

Virgin Media's unlimited internet actually has a fair usage thingy of 10GB. Compared to Three which is truly unlimited.

Similar to how Sky Fibre broadband unlimited is truly unlimited but Virgin Media's unlimited broadband has 2 different limits you can hit a day before they slow your connection down.

Its about time the ASA stopped these unlimited claims.

Exploit broker releases EXPLICIT VIDS of holes in industrial control kit

3...2...1

The countdown until ReVuln's own servers hosting exploit code is hacked and all the goodies stolen for free.

Long-suffering Virgin Media victims see no end to vid PURGATORY

Mushrooms

As usual the lack of information from VM to its customers is lacking. They won't answer if they redirect/proxy/cache/shape/fiddle with youtube or other streaming traffic. In fact they won't supply any information to their suffering customers.

On top of that they are stalling for time by asking customers to traceroute to youtube which they know is pointless as the videos are served from a different location to the actual website. They have asked customers to run wireshark now to sniff traffic, which is usually the domain of network professionals.

Its like one big joke....that is not funny.

Report: McAfee founder wanted for murder in Belize

Spot the Mcafee

Mcafee was posting on a well known drugs forum a few years ago, see if you can guess which poster is him ;)

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/541627-Hello-and-an-MDPV-Question/page11

A history of personal computing in 20 objects part 2

Re: The Lack of Commodore kit...

The Amiga was one of the few that were genuinely ahead of their time. A history of personal computing without mentioning at least one of the Commodore machines is flawed!

Workbench was so much better than the Macs gui in term of flexibility and speed even though both were developed around the same time.

Not to mention how many music genres came about simply due to the progression from Soundtracker/Octomed on the Amiga. Also the cheap CGI that it enabled thanks to the genlock stuff, which was used in films, overlays for weather forecasts and all sorts. The newtek video toaster and HAM never failed to impress anyone who saw it in action. Nasa used Amigas for space shuttle launch stuff too.

The Pet or Amiga (or both) should defo be on the list.

The tune from Radar Rat Race (Vic 20 cartridge game) is forever imprinted in my head...wish it wasn't!

As another one who could not afford the C64 at the time, I ended up with a Commodore Plus/4. That should be on the history list as it had a built in word processor, spreadsheet and database thingy. None of them were very good though.

'We invented Windows 8 Tiles in the 1990s', says firm suing Microsoft

Who next?

Hasbro lawyers have a eureka moment whilst playing Scrabble on Windows 8 and spelling the word Tile....

The patent system will blow up eventually and hopefully bankrupt some patent trolls in the process. Time to stop vague patents and let them expire if the company who filed them does not make a product based on the patent within 18-24 months or so. Add a fine on top for filing and not using it which could potentially slow down technological progress.

Canonical flings out Ubuntu 12.10 – now with OPTIONAL Bezos suck

Re: Well, you haters can hate

A lot of peeps switched to Mint after Ubuntu's last update totally screwed up the ease of use. At least we now know it was to break users gently into this latest release, that not many actually want either.

Appreciate Ubuntu's work over the years. Just think they are following the commercial buzzword crowd now.

WoW cities wiped out by 'exploit'

Interesting

Hope this was done as a challenge rather than someone talented wasting those skills just on a game.

If it was something simple like directly editing ram/memory to increase the power of a spell/weapon then not so technical, although I would have thought Blizzard would have had some protection against that and dll injections stuff.

If they found an exploit that gave them some actual control over the server rather than a local hack, then kudos!

Only played the beta of WoW, recognised it as digital heroin and got out quick.

Virgin Media's 'bye-bye to buffering' ad nuked by watchdog - AGAIN

Worst was when you was in a quake competition and someone picked up the phone downstairs!

Funny that I got a more stable ping and game play on the 56k pace modem than I do on VM's fibre.

Still buffering here...

After suffering packetloss and constant buffering on video for 8 months, I got moved to another UBR of VM's only to have the same problem. The fix date was the 26th Sept but today was told the fix date will be somewhere between October and December...likely another 3 months down the line if the date doesnt change again.. So this is a buffering problem which they actually have control over, but have still done nothing about.

Almost every advert VM make the ASA slaps them on the wrist for, VM don't care as they have got the benefits already.

Kiwi cops forgot Kim Dotcom's visa

Money has always been a help in getting a visa in most countries, either through the front door or back. There is no story of interest in this, it is irrelevant.

What is relevant is the possibility that a media company group in the US could have affected the politics of another country in such a way that it may remove someone from power along with damaging the reputation among the countries citizens towards various authorities.

The fact that Hollywood can get illegal things done in other countries via their government is shocking enough that now a whole country is behind Kim and against their own government.

Virgin Media STILL working on fix for SuperHub corrupt downloads glitch

No customer care

For all of VM's excuses, none of them explain why it has taken over 3 months to fix (oh wait, its still not fixed!). They also do not explain why VM did not rollback to a previous firmware instead of letting customers suffer for months.

That is beside all the other problems with the superhub anyway.

Apple weighs in on AntiSec's alleged FBI hack

Re: Another way to harvest UDIDs

A slightly more trustable website to test it against. https://lastpass.com/udid/

Worth noting that an ESET AV employer blogged that his UDID was on the list.

Microsoft denies Windows 8 app spying via SmartScreen

FBI sends request

Asking for IP address of those that have installed at least 5 of 10 of apps like:

Netcat

Metasploit

Nmap

Mirc

etc

It will happen and time we will hear about it. As will a patch to remove this.

Password hints easily snaffled from Windows PCs

Cryptic

I can see some numptys making a cryptic password hint which they can't work out.

So there will need to be another level of hint, the pasword hint hint.

Attack vectors are slim but possible. Someone will use it to their advantage but it is not something to lose sleep over.

Assange granted asylum by Ecuador after US refused to rule out charges

The foreign office twitter account has William Hague saying: "The UK does not accept the principle of diplomatic asylum"

Keep hearing the name Pinochet mentioned....

Baidu bods arrested after deleting posts for dosh

Not ok for the little people

This is no different than large corporations lobbying governments with lots of money to censor what they do not like, either by way of changing the law or getting the police to remove it by claiming it is harrasment.

UK judges quietly declare text chat can be obscene

Does 50 shades of grey relate to how clear the law is no as to what you can say and where?

Beak explodes at Samsung's evidence leak in Apple patent spat

Heard this before

It is legally ok, but not morally.

This case is just a nasty move by Apple just to help sales of its iPhone and hurt the competition. Another reason why I will never buy an Apple product.

US judges tend to side with US companies but who knows how patriotic or fanboy like the jury are.

Virgin Media nukes downloads after SuperHub 'upgrade'

I kid you not

VM forum staff are now asking CUSTOMERS to install and run Wireshark to sniff the traffic. Unbelievable!

There are so many kinds of wrong with this.

Boy cuffed after Twitter troll's drown threat to Olympic diver Tom Daley

The Frankie Boyle angle

"You're telling everyone how shocked you are by a teenager's twitter feed on an iPhone that was made by a slave who wants to commit suicide." - Frankie Boyle tweet

Skype hits back at angry wiretap reports: Rat finks? Not us

Re: Deny everything

They have only admitted before to giving law enforcement logs that show who was talking to who and timestamps of conversations as this is all they could provide. However now they will include the actual content of conversations, which is the difference.

Before the change in the network structure of skype , there were situations where direct connections between parties could be made so these conversations could not be intercepted and spied on easily. Now the content of these conversations can also be recorded.

People who do not want the authorities to know what they are talking about will use other methods anyway. Linking who talks to who and when may help law enforcement with some small petty crimes but they use the terrorist fear to bring in snooping which will not help help catch terrorists.

Deny everything

Oh come on, do they really think everyone is that stupid?

Governments, especially the US, are openly trying to get access to all data they can and the meetings with various service providers about interception is common knowledge. They have been requesting some companies have backdoors in software or master keys for some time now.

Pointing out that they could already give some Skype info in the past does not negate the fact that the change in structure along with new techniques can give them more information than just connection details and times, which is what the US government is pushing them for.

For all the fluff in their rebuttal of more wiretapping, Skype have not actually denied they are implementing changes that increases the wiretapping abilities of law enforcement. They have gone all around the houses to give other explanations but they have not denied the accusations at all.

U.S forces maintain fire against Megaupload

So they sent a summons to Carpethia Hosting which is not owned by Megaupload? Unbelievable!

It is clear they have no jurisdiction over Megaupload and the entire process is to put a foreign company out of business.

This whole fiasco will do America and the RIAA/MPAA more harm than good.

Virgin Media staves off cable punter seepage

Re: The next quarter will be worse

"So you're complaining because something you are getting for free is taking a little longer than expected? If you prefer you can go to Sky or BT and pay for the doubled speed."

Only stupid customers would see it as a free upgrade. More enlightened users would see it as matching the costs and service that other isp's are offering. Although VM still fail by a long way with the upload speeds.

My VM contract is cancelled, I am one of the lucky escapees :)

The next quarter will be worse

VM used the double speed advertising to retain some customers who were thinking about leaving for BT Infinity or Sky Fibre. Those customers have just found out that the July completion date has been moved to October to December or 'after the Olympics' as one VM staff put it.

As the original Upload speed upgrade took 18 months after advertising to be implemented in some areas (including mine), you get used to VM changing the date when the last revised date gets closer.

UK's web super-snoop powers could be extended to councils

Oh no...

I should not have sent that e-mail to a friend saying that I put a plastic bottle in the non-recycle bin. Awaiting a fine form the bin-police now....

Advertisers slam Microsoft over 'Do not track' decision

Probably google related

This is a two fingers up to Google imo.

Google is a big competitor for Microsoft and MS are losing the battle of the browsers and search engines.

So this move will hurt Google advertising revenue.

Virgin Media flushes pipes clogged by piles of Spotify fans

VM customers usually have to put up with broken music/video streams for many many months before VM admit that they dont have enough bandwidth on the UBR or at Peering points. So 2 weeks to get a problem fixed is actually good for them!

If they genuinely do not monitor bandwidth, congestion and their network, then someone needs sacking for not being proactive. It is more likely VM were hoping no one would notice so they could save a few pennies...

UK High Court split over Twitter airport bomb joke

In the near future

Give it another 5 years and even the average Joe will be using VPN's and proxies for normal every day posting on the internet, just in case they say something that flags them up for arrest....

Virgin Media wipes out websites with routing blackhole

Not a normal routing or peering problem

VM has had its fair share of routing problems and peering problems, with the latter happening pretty consistently over the last 6 months. This time however it was different.

Only certain traffic had issues. For example ping/icmp echo packets were routing fine. HTTP was hit and miss although ssl traffic seemed to be more troublesome along with sites had redirects in them. If there was a redirect on the main page of a site, it just did not work. I noticed that clicking on a google search result or any site that had lots of variables seemed to either fail or take a long time to go through.

It is obvious VM were intercepting and messing with packets, be it DPI or something more sinister. The complete lack of information over this and the unwillingness for VM to provide any information says a lot!

Windows XP update fails in infinite .NET patch loop

Not the first time

The same thing happened with .net about a year ago.

Spy under your car bonnet 'worth billions by 2016'

In the future..

CarOS 2.1 Jailbroken! Now you can root your car and change your telemetry data such as speeds, all with a simple smartphone app!

Headbanger plays Star Trek theme on floppy drives

Another Amiga first

There was a Public Domain/freeware program back on the amiga 500 which let you play tunes using the inbuilt hard drive. Just played with the stepper motor in the drive.

The guy in this article got a larger range of frequencies from his drives, but its still a 20+ year old trick!

Russian upstart claims BitTorrent-killer

Besides the legality of this, it will speed up the evolution of bittorent and other p2p technologies as this kind of attack is defended against. Bad move by Microsoft to invest here...

'Shame on the register to post wrong informations'

The TPB has become another image of internet freedom in a world where governments and media are trying to take more control of it.

We live in a world where copyrights, patents and lawyers are holding back creation and progress. Supporting those that stand against this is one way citizens can show their displeasure and feel they are taking a stand, even if they do not get off their backsides to do so.

Microsoft ejects DVD playback from Windows 8

Another nail in the coffin

Apart from Windows 8 looking totally naff, another reason to stay with Windows 7 or another OS. While many will want bluray players, they still probably have a large collection of dvd's they will want to play. Got a feeling that Windows 8 will be the worst sales performance MS have, even once they force PC manufacturers to put it on new pc's.

Patents and licences go on for way too long.

Pirates not to blame for Big Media's sales plunge

Buying patents and then suing those who infringe them seems to be a major money maker for tech companies lately. It will all end in tears...

Great article!

Cloudy QR code bike theft stopper gets Police thumbs up

Am I being stupid or....

...could a thief just not remove the QR code sticker?

A good idea for accidents but the crime angle seems just to be an extra sales pitch that is not too well thought out.

Europe to assemble crack cyber-intelligence nerve centre

Re: Works 4 me

You get less time for murder.

Oh noes

So the next time I do a few 'security checks' on a small company website before thinking about giving them my credit card number for a purchase.....it could land me in jail for 2 to 5 years?

As with everything, it will start out as means to fight crime/terrorism/other evil and then will be used to curb freedom of speech and spy on us all.

Visa shows off data centre 'moat'

Ooops

That is not an EMP device in my backpack, im just glad to see you!

Court shuts down site that circumvents Pirate Bay blocks

Re: Query

America will only support he MPAA/RIAA etc if it does not affect business in it own country.

So Youtube and google will never be banned, in the same way Rapidshare has been left alone while Megaupload which was Hong Kong/Newzealand based was not.

The reason of linking to copyright infringing material was enough to take down TVshack and have its owner extradited, yet google does exactly the same thing. Double standards are rife.

Cat and mouse game

So they shut down a few proxies and then 10 more popup for each one down. A wordPress plugin called RePress now allows most with a WP blog to setup a Piratebay proxy now.

It is crazy that media companies representatives can now shut down a proxy site.