Posts by James O'Shea

Heavy VPN users are probably pirates, says BBC

Re: Sorry Tom

"if its unwritten how can that be enforceable?"

I'm pretty sure that he was being sarcastic. I know that I was.

Some of the commentards need to lighten up a little.

Re: Sorry Tom

"Part of the BBC license agreement includes an unwritten clause that says if you're not directly contributing to the UK economy in the UK or you're on holiday outside of the UK then you're not eligible to watch the BBC over the Internet on your domestic license."

Unwritten clauses aren't worth the paper they're not written on.

15 MEEELLION malware-infested mobiles worldwide – report

I was, not too long ago, downvoted for mentioning that my Android device freezes repeatedly, and that this was not a problem with the particular device but was a design issue as I am currently on the third example and it still freezes repeatedly. Meanwhile my iPhone simply works. Which is why the Android will be replaced by an iPhone.

If the iPhone had exhibited the problems that the Android does, while the Android was as reliable as the iPhone, I'd be replacing the iPhone with an Android. However, the simple fact that I have found Android to be far less reliable than iPhone seems to get up some people's noses and choke them.

Note that I have never encountered malware or policy problems on my Android, no doubt because the damn thing can't continue to operate long enough for me to do anything which might get me in trouble. Yes, it freezes that fast and that often. The cure is to open the back and take out the battery and then put it back in, as it can't be turned off 'cause it's bloody frozen solid. It's a _good_ thing that the iPhone doesn't do this, as it doesn't have a removable battery. On the other hand... the iPhone doesn't freeze all the bloody time.

I _will_ have a replacement phone by the end of the month, and if it's not another iPhone it'll be a nice cheap flip-phone. It most definitely will NOT be an Android. Not unless one of the fandroids around here send me one for free... and maybe not even then. A free Android which gives this much trouble would cost too much in wasted time to be worth the bother.

Downvote away.

NASA said a 60ft space alien menacing Earth wouldn't harm us: Tell THAT to Nicaragua

Re: Not all collisions are high speed

"The minimum speed for a meteor is about 11.2km/sec"

Errm... not quite correct. Yes, that's escape velocity, and yes, an object would hit the Earth after falling from rest relative to it with that velocity... if you neglect _air resistance_ and the angle of impact and a few other minor problems. Small, rocky, objects tend to either burn up or simply explode long before they hit anything solid. It's the large objects that you have to worry about. This site http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/ which is a joint project between Imperial College, London, and Purdue University in Indiana, may help give you a feel for what happens to smaller rocks.

Now, a nice big projectile, made of mostly iron ore, moving at a good velocity, coming straight down into fairly deep water, _that's_ something you gotta be ware of. I once calculated what might happen if whatever it was which made Tycho crater hit somewhere in the North Sea. It wasn't pretty.

Want to buy a Woz-made Apple I? If you need to ask the price, you can't afford it

"If you do buy it would you use it? Would it be of any real use now?"

Depends on whether or not you could find a working copy of Bank Street Writer or Visicalc...

Anyone who buys that

at that price is simply, totally, utterly, bonkers. Nuts. Out to lunch. His elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.

And I say this as someone who has purchased a _lot_ of Apple kit over the years.

OH SNAP: Getty Images sues Microsoft over Bing pics widget

Re: No slideshow?

it's up now. Just in the wrong place.

Re: No slideshow?

no slideshow here, either.

Ballmer PERSONALLY wrote Windows 3.1's blue screen text

Re: BSOD > Bomb Icon

Personally, I liked the bomb icon. and had since the day I read a review of then Aldus, not yet Adobe, Pagemaker wherein the reviewer stated that Pagemaker contained 'more bombs than a fully loaded B-52'. He was right, too.

Re: He does love 'developers'

"Really? Have you, by any chance, got any evidence of that fact..."

Bend over near him. I'm sure that you'll get some evidence of exactly how much 'love' he has very soon.

Mac security packages range from peachy to rancid – antivirus tests

not news

I am totally not surprised that Sophos scored well. I'm also totally not surprised that Norton, McAfee, and Webroot stunk up the place.

Re: They didn't review...

MacKeeper is the single most widespread Mac malware. Ever.

CNN 'tech analyst' on NAKED CELEBS: WHO IS this mystery '4chan' PERSON?

No, unfortunately. They know vastly more about tech subjects than they do about politics.

Rubbish WPS config sees WiFi router keys popped in seconds

hmmm...

I never thought that I'd say this, but...

BellSloth is actually good for something. The 2Wire (a.k.a. 'Pace') device they make us use for U-Verse (TV, phone, internet) service comes with WPS disabled by default. It also shipped with a _long_ random key printed on the side of the device; if you have physical access you know the key, if you don't, good luck guessing the 12-digit alphanumeric key. And they recommend changing the key, Which I have, to something a little easier to remember, though a bit longer.

BellSloth, a.k.a. AT&Useless, actually did something good. Probably for the first time ever, and by accident... Let's not let them know, they'll change it.

Are we there yet, are we there yet? Ballmer 'like a small child' upon buying basketball club

Oh, my

The Angel of Stern is very, very, VERY glad that he retired as NBA Commish _before_ Balmer became an owner. He had enough trouble dealing with Cuban. Cuban _and_ Ballmer? At the same time? Poor Silver's in deep, deep, DEEP trouble...

Time Warner Cable customers SQUEAL as US network goes offline

Re: The routers in question-

Linksys and Buffalo are both too reliable and too expensive. (though things are changing for Linksys thanks to a recent change in ownership; they may merely be too expensive now.) Undoubtably TWC is using Belkin routers.

Now that's FIRE WIRE: HP recalls 6 MILLION burn-risk laptop cables

Re: Flat, 3 core, single insulated, vs round, 3 core, double insulated?

My Asus laptop shipped with a similar cable.

So, Apple won't sell cheap kit? Prepare the iOS garden wall WRECKING BALL

Re: Holding it wrong

errm.... my iPhone lives in a case. And not one from Apple. And there ain't a hole to show the logo. And there ain't a logo on the case (and if there was a logo on the case, it wouldn't be Apple's, 'cause the case ain't from Apple...) I suppose that I don't deserve an iPhone, eh?

Hint: a whole lot of people have reasons to buy iPhones which do NOT include wanting/needing to be seen with something fashionable... my iPhone does what I want, unlike my Android, which is going to be replaced Real Soon Now(tm) precisely because of its problems, which include freezing randomly. And, no, it's not a manufacturing defect, unless it's a common manufacturing defect as this one is the _third_ example of that particular handset I've had, all under the warranty, and all in less than nine months, and all of them have had the same problem. (Yes, it could be that this particular handset is a less than stellar example of Android phones. However, I am disinclined to repeat my experiment with another Android. This phone will be replaced by a iPhone 5c once the iPhone 6 comes out and the price drops on the 5cs. And I won't care what colour the 5c is, as it'll be in a nice black case, just like the one on my current iPhone.)

And yet another 'Apple is dead!' moment

I'll let the good people at http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/death_knell/ know that #66 has arrived...

BBC goes titsup: iPlayer to News websites down – Auntie working to fix it

Re: Is El Reg also under attack?

Nah, that's normal.

Re: Bouncy Bouncy

Surely Amazonian Geordie lasses wearing less than owt would be _welcome_. (Their brothers, probably not, but...)

Microsoft: We plan to CLEAN UP this here Windows Store town

why

"Apps that rely on iTunes' brand recognition are particularly pernicious. For example, there's an app that costs $8.99 called iTunes Player App that “helps user to know how to use [sic] and download iTunes”."

Why on God's green Earth does someone, anyone, actually want to run _iTunes_ on a _Windows device_? I don't want to bloody run iTunes on a Mac!

Anyone who runs iTunes on non-Apple hardware deserves what he gets... and the time is rapidly approaching where anyone who runs iTunes, period, deserves what he gets. (Yes, I've seen the iTunes 12 beta. No, I'm not impressed. Horrified, now...)

Munich considers dumping Linux for ... GULP ... Windows!

Re: Easy

I just upvoted mmeier for the first time ever, 'cause he's _right_ (this time...). The problem for those who would be Tuxers is, and always has been, applications. John User does not CARE what OS is in use. He simply doesn't. He only cares if the software available can do what he wants/needs to do. if it can, he does not CARE that it's evil closed-source, locked in, capitalistic software instead of pure, open-source, standards-based software. he just wants his damn spreadsheet to display and print properly. He just wants his email to arrive on time, his calendars to be updated properly, his reports to show what he wants. Linux could be all-singing, all-dancing, but if it won't support software which does what the users want it won't be used.

And, no, 'educating the users on the alternatives' won't work. That means that either the company or government or whatever has to spend time (and money!) training staff or the staff has to learn the new way on their own time (and dime). And, in many cases, the 'alternatives' simply aren't good enough. The GIMP is a wonderful tool, for what it does; it's not Photoshop and never will be. For certain jobs you simply have to have Photoshop, nothing else will do. (Of course, there ain't nothing which says that you have to have a _new_ version of Photoshop, so far Photoshop 5.5 has done everything I've needed it to do and I see no reason whatsoever to go near Adobe Clutch of Crap.) Thunderbird does some things nicely, other things not so nicely and other things not at all. Outlook may not be the best mail software in the world (now there's an understatement) but it can do things that Thunderbird won't even try. If you don't need those things, you can use Thunderbird and never miss anything. If you need those things, you simply can't use Thunderbird. Period.

One of the reasons why we don't use Apple iWork around here is _precisely_ that Apple doesn't support stuff for any extended period. (They not-so-recently dropped the disaster that is Pages 5 onto an unsuspecting world; if Microsoft had done what they did, then MS would have been lynched, and rightly so. I personally have a whole lot of old Pages '09 documents on my home Macs; they've being converted to DOCX format, not because I love Microsoft, but because DOCX is likely to still be supported ten years from now, while Pages '09 is dead, dead, dead. And, sorry, Open Office and Neo Office and Libre Office simply don't do what I want, what I need. Pages '09 did. Word 2010 and even (ick) Word 2013 do. Word 5 does not. Yes, I tried them. No, they don't do what I want. No, I'm not about to fork Open/Neo/Libre Office myself. Why should I, when Office 2010 and Office 2011 do what I want?) A lot of Tuxers do NOT understand that most people simply don't care about the OS, they care about the job. If Open/Neo/Libre Office could do what I want, I'd be converting my Pages '09 files to ODT, not DOCX. They can't do the job. LibreOffice 4.3 on a Mac cannot properly import a Pages '09 document. It just can't. That means that I'd have to export my documents from Pages to a format that LibreOffice _can_ handle. Pages '09 can export to some formats LibreOffice is familiar with... and which Word can read, too. And Word actually has certain features, particularly with regard to styles, that I want and LibreOffice doesn't have. Still. Word's had them since the 1980s. I've been using them for over 20 years. I like them. I really don't care if current thinking has them classified as old and stodgy and not worthy of being added to nice new modern software.

But, hey... carry on.

The Return of BSOD: Does ANYONE trust Microsoft patches?

Re: "uninstall the botched update from crippled PCs"

As noted on MS's site... boot off of install media. What? You don't happen to have a bootable DVD or thumb drive handy? How sad. Too bad. If you have a bootable install disc/thumb drive/whatever, you can boot from it and fix this problem in any of several ways (MS's site picks the most difficult and time-consuming method, of course) and be up and running in fairly short order.

You could also have done what I always do before installing patches: make a _complete_, bootable, backup clone. Reloading from the backup is a lot faster and much easier than running any of the fixes. And this way I have a complete backup of critical systems at least once a month, and don't have to use standard incremental/differential backups. Yes, I'm old-fashioned. My way works.

Please note:

1 not one of the assorted Win 7, Win 8.1, Server 2008R2, and Server 2012R2 systems around here have had a bluescreen

2 I do, indeed, have Win 7, Win 8, Server 2008R2, and Server 2012R2 discs parked in a filing cabinet. Plus Server 2008, Server 2003, WinXP, and W2K discs. I used to have Win98SE discs but tossed those out a long time ago. (I also have a complete set of bootable media for Apple systems from 10.4 on, despite Apple's attempts at making this difficult. Generating bootable media for OS X 10.9.4 is a major pain, and all because Apple has gone out of its way to make this hard. No, I don't trust the bloody recovery partition.)

3 I also have complete, bootable, backups of my major systems, plus bootable rescue media with which to clone 'em over onto the systems.

4 yes, this includes my own personal systems, not just the office systems. Frankly, if you don't have bootable rescue media and a bootable clone backup you're playing with fire.

But, hey, most people find out the hard way when a BSOD or a KP bites them in the behind and they didn't have a backup or rescue media...

Assange™: Hey world, I'M STILL HERE, ignore that Snowden guy

Re: Logic fail

looks as though you stepped on the toes of one of Julie the Ass(tm)'s followers...

testing

It appears that I'm not supposed to post anything about St. Julie the Ass(tm). Let's see if this one goes through...

Hmm

You mean that Julie the Ass(tm) is still alive? Who knew? Okay, he can go back into hibernation for another two years now.

Re: Please

"I'd say that gives a pretty clear view of his character, motives, and legal position."

Got it in one.

"None of which looks very pleasant."

That it doesn't.

Re: Logic fail

"That is assuming that he's guilty of the crimes he's accused of and is actually given a custodial sentence."

As i understand it, he _can't_ be given a custodial sentence for his alleged crime. _He has already voluntarily locked his silly Ass(tm) up for two years for an offence for which he couldn't be locked up_. Yes, he's really that scared of the Feds.

Re: Logic fail

"Possibly because one of the other small rooms he may end up in will have a slanted board and a bucket of water nearby."

Nah. Just putting a few members of the Swedish Bikini Team on the _other_ side of the bars would be sufficient. especially after two years of Ecuadorian porn.

Premier League wants to PURGE ALL FOOTIE GIFs from social media

Re: Premier League Football?

Miller and Bud are NOT beer. They just aren't.

There's a reason why Bud ads feature Clydesdales...

New Sprint CEO says he will lower axe on staff – but prices come first

Sprint is doomed

They combine Verizon-level arrogance with truly breath-taking incompetence into one slimy package. Their network stinks, it's the slowest of the Big Four (and not by a small margin, either), their customer service makes Comcast look good, and they actively hide their street address. For some reason corporate doesn't want the customers to be able to send them messages in writing. Finding it was... interesting... and once a letter is sent, don't expect a reply. i sent off a little note on the 29th December 2013. No reply as yet... I suspect that no-one even read it.

I'm holding until the iPhone 6 shows. Then I'll be off to TM, and get a nice shiny, cheap, iPhone 5c. And have TM pay my early termination fee. And buy my old phone off me. And Sprint can kiss my behind.

Murder accused DIDN'T ask Siri 'how to hide my roommate'

"At least he apparently didn't use Apple's Maps. Otherwise the swamp might well have turned out to look like a desert...."

Sigh.

1 the Apple Maps joke is getting old. And Apple Maps _can_ find the way to Raiford quite well. i suspect that m'man is going to be spending a lot of time in a fine state-run establishment there.

2 He's in _Florida_. Only an idiot needs a map to find a swamp or a canal or some other location where it would be easy to get rid of a body. All he'd need to do would be to move in a straight line for a bit, he'd find one. There's a north-south, and fairly small, canal about three-quarters of a mile from me. That one dead-ends into a east-west, and much bigger, canal about a mile south. And _that_ one empties into the Intercoastal Waterway a few miles east. The Intercoastal is deep and wide and suitably weighted bodies won't be easily found. But there's no need to go that far, they just recently found a car in a canal, after nine years... <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2599207/Missing-mans-car-NINE-YEARS-later-canal-near-Florida-home-skeletal-remains-inside.html> It's hard to find stuff in canals around here...

3 He's in _FLORIDA_. If there's a body of water or a swamp in the vicinity, there's a gator, or two, or more, in the vicinity. (As long as it's not salt water, of course. Gators don't like salt water, and while crocs do, there aren't many crocs north of St Lucie County. Mostly American crocs live in Dade, in fact.) Every ever so often there are 'news' stories about people who've forgotten this, and walk their dogs too close to the canal and... oops. Buh-bye, Fluffy. Or who go diving in golf course water traps looking for golf balls and finding Something Else. <http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/Alligator-Eats-Dog-In-Jacksonville-216753881.html> <http://on.aol.com/video/golf-course-staffer-bitten-by-alligator-518340462> And then there are the snapping turtles and the alligator gars and whatnot. They'll usually get rid of the evidence fairly quickly. Getting rid of a body in Florida is... trivial. It ain't like England, where the worst danger is the odd rabid Tory.

However, it seems that this lad really _is_ an idiot. He took his cell phone with him when getting rid of a body. He actually used the cell phone while doing this. And he's hired the most inept lawyers in Florida to defend him. Perhaps he's going to try a 'diminished capacity' defence...

Crypto Daddy Phil Zimmerman says surveillance society is DOOMED

typo

"Of course the abolition of slavery by Britain in 1823 "

as one who has spent a lot of time in the Caribbean, I'm pretty sure that that's 1833. Officially there was supposed to be a five year 'apprenticeship' scheme, so 'full free' wasn't to be until 1838. Unofficially the slave-owners got told to stuff it pretty much immediately. This resulted in multiple waves of immigration, from the Azores and Madeira, from Lebanon and Syria, from China, and finally from India, in an effort to 'break the strike'. The Dutch pulled the same kind of thing, only they used mostly Indonesia.

Re: Defeat of slavery

Ah... abolition movements in Britain were _not_ aimed at the US. For one thing, it is simply a fact that vastly more slaves went to the Spanish and Portuguese parts of the Western Hemisphere during the late 18th and early 19th centuries than went to US, and that's true if you count by raw numbers or if you count by percentages. In particular Brazil had a voracious appetite for new slaves, and one which continued well into the 19th century. Slavery in Brazil was not abolished until (well) after the War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860s, won by Brazil and friends on (mostly) the backs of Brazilian slave soldiers who'd been promised manumission if they fought for the (as it was then) Empire of Brazil. (And, yes, there is a connection between the two events.) There's a _reason_ why one of the first things the Mexicans did on tossing out the Spanish in the 1820s was to abolish slavery... and why the French tried to bring it back when they held Mexico during the 1860s. (Yes, the French. No, they didn't _call_ it slavery, but that's what it was and you can bet that the Mexicans saw it. After el colosso del Norte finished their little civil war, the Mexicans tossed out the French who really didn't feel like provoking el colosso into finding out how tasty frogs' legs are.)

in the second place, American slavery tended to be of the cotton or tobacco type, which didn't compete directly with sugar, the lifeblood of British colonies. (Yes, there was a lot of American sugar. Not nearly as much as there was American cotton and tobacco, though.) British industry depended on American cotton to such an extent that the Confederacy thought (erroneously) that Britain could be enticed into the Civil War on _their_ side. (What happened was that Indian and especially Egyptian cotton replaced American cotton... Oops.) There was no economic reason to shoot at American slavery. (Brazilian slavery, now, that was heavily sugar-based, so shooting at Brazil would have made sense. If the British abolitionists tried, though, it just didn't work. Not until after internal Brazilian conditions made slavery... undesirable. Lots of veterans of a very, very, VERY bloody war who'd kept their rifles even though it was illegal to do so and who REALLY didn't like slave-owners will do that.)

Now even Internet Explorer will throw lousy old Java into the abyss

pretty big peg

"Microsoft's own research pegs the figure at between 84.6 and 98.5 per cent."

that's a damn big peg, no matter how you count it.

Brits stung for up to £625 when they try to cancel broadband

Re: Please

Won't work. They have no shame.

Tor attack nodes RIPPED MASKS off users for 6 MONTHS

Re: No ACs Allowed

re Trevor Pott

many, many, MANY years ago I remember reading an article in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact entitled "How to make an A-bomb and shake up your whole neighborhood". It was the 'science fact' article for that month. In it, they described exactly how to make the gun-type bomb and more generally how to make an implosion-type bomb. They then came to real problem: getting the materials to make the damn thing. As you point out, getting the materials required is very difficult. They spent most of the article showing just how difficult it is, unless the bombers are a government or a very large corporation and have a _lot_ of spare cash. And how people would, like, you know, tend to notice what was going on unless they went to a _lot_ of trouble (translation: spent a lot more cash) and had a _lot_ of space to hide things in. And gun-type bombs would, unless our boys are complete idiots, work correctly the first time, but implosion-type bombs really should be tested. At which point _lots_ of people will find out about their little hobby. Of course, our would-be bombers could just fire one off without testing it, but it'd be a tad embarrassing if the thing didn't work... the problem with gun-type bombs is that they're big, and unwieldy, and have relatively low yields. Should someone want big boom, they go with implosion-type bombs. Preferably multi-stage implosion-type bombs, they could get all the boom they might want. As you also point out, delivering the bomb is also a problem, though a solvable one; Ryder Trucks are, after all, the Terrorist's Choice of bomb-delivery platforms in the US. (See further Federal Building, Oklahoma City, and first attack, World Trade Center, New York City...) yeah, it's a ground-burst, and so reduces the effect, which merely means that the bombers get to build a bigger bomb. Assuming they live that long, which is unlikely. Uranium and plutonium are hard, dense, toxic, heavy metals which burn real nice; that they're radioactive is just icing on the 'hard to handle' cake. Just grinding and polishing the various pieces into the correct shapes is incredibly difficult (translation: expensive) unless you have workers who are expendable. Lots of workers who are expendable.

Recording lawsuit targets Ford, GM in-car CD recorders

"And Apple with their Itunes and Ipod with integral hard drive that has a facility to store a complete CD in a lossless format from my home collections of CD's are not included in the law suit because?"

because when last I looked (which was, admittedly, some time ago) Apple accounted for 40% of the music industry's profits and it would be very, very, VERY simple for Timmy-boy to turn the money spigot off.

And the fact that Apple has mad-dog killer lawyers doesn't hurt.

Russia: There is a SPACECRAFT full of LIZARDS in orbit above Earth and WE control it

Re: Perhaps ...

" use the UK as an international dumbing ground for recyclable alu fizzy pop cans?"

IOW, nothing will have changed.

Apple: We'll unleash OS X Yosemite beta on the MASSES on 24 July

We're doomed. Hell awaits.

Attackers raid SWISS BANKS with DNS and malware bombs

Re: Normandy Furries?

Nah, they were watching 'My Little Pony' and/or wearing fursuits when they wrote their code. (and if you don't know what a fursuit is, be thankful. Really. If you don't know what 'My Little Pony ' is, be extra thankful. It's worse than you might think.)

Financial wizardess joins Apple board, air of coolness noticeably diminishes

Re: "fruity fuhrer Tim Cook"

"How politically incorrect can you get, Jasper?"

Especially as Timmy-boy is gay...

Why has sexy Apple gone to bed with big boring IBM?

Re: All-colour?

The yout' of today have no idea how things really were back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

The original Mac: 1 bit display. Not even grayscale. One bit. 512 x 342. A Moto 68000, 7.8something MHz. One 400 kB floppy (you could add a second, external, floppy. Hard drive? We've heard of them.) 128 kB RAM, a large chunk of which was needed by the OS.

Re: 150 IBM applications?

Let's see... a quick look at the app store reveals:

lots of collaboration software (five different apps on the first page...) plus engineering stuff, business analytics, You know, boring enterprise stuff. And, yes, I'm just counting the stuff which actually has 'IBM' listed as the vendor. There's lots more that is clearly targeted IBM stuff, including a terminal emulator which does an excellent job of imitating an IBM green-screen. And then there's the fluff, such as the ability to get hold of (shudder) IBM Systems Magazine (Mainframe Edition). The horror. The horror.

Re: and the little one said "roll over"

You read further than I did. I stopped when it was clear that m'man was clueless.

Re: and the little one said "roll over"

"Even in those faraway days when Apple computers were "cool", they still depended totally on IBM for their PowerPC processors."

Err... the early Macs were powered by Motorola processors. 68000. 68020. 68030. 68040. I remember the screaming and shouting among the more rabid twits when the first PowerMacs came out, with PowerPC CPUs... and how the nutcases were placated by a deal Apple made with IBM whereby Motorola actually produced many/most/all of the processors used in Macs. See, we're using a chip from the Evil Empire, but it's actually made by our fuzzy friends at Moto, so everything's fine. Fast forwards a few years and Apple goes with Intel and the same rabid twits explode. This time Apple tells 'em where to get off.

Even back then (assuming that Apple computers have ceased being cool, something which is open to debate) Apple did _not_ 'depend totally' on IBM. Moto, now, that was a whole other story.

Sit back down, Julian Assange™, you're not going anywhere just yet

Re: Operation Winkle

"He'd not leave until the flames were tickling his arse."

And this presents a problem, why, exactly?

My can of chlorine trifluoride is in my other coat...

<note: please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride and then run away very quickly>

Microsoft: You NEED bad passwords and should re-use them a lot

Re: Even a "harmless" site is still a potential attack vector

"Forget the k1dd13 p0rn. It can be used to spearfish you back or spearfish one of your contacts. Go and explain that it is not you to the hapless victim after that."

Err... no. Let's take the example of what I do on el Reg. I use a certain throwaway email account (from gmail) and a nice simple password. i use the same throwaway account and password on other sites. Exactly the same. Should someone get into el Reg's (or one of the other sites') logon database, they will find... an account which is useless for them, as everyone I know _knows_ that I use that account as a throwaway (I used it on USENET, for God's sake) and will ignore anything sent using it. If I see anything heading my way which uses that account I would be very, very, VERY suspicious of it unless I _KNEW_ that it's legit. And even then I'd check it out.

And, oh, should there be a site which requires me to 'register' using identifiable data, such as address, and I don't think that they need that data, they get fake data. Spearphishing doesn't work very well when they have the wrong info.

Now, if the contact is linked to a credit card, or is otherwise of value, I use a real password. If the contact is of no value, I use a simple, easy to remember password. The worst that can happen with my setup on el Reg is that someone can post stuff in my name.