* Posts by Andrew Bell

5 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2007

Microsoft goes AC/DC with Instaload battery tech

Andrew Bell
FAIL

Oh wow

Microsoft have invented the bridge rectifier! Who would have ever thought you could have put one on each pair of battery contacts and joined them up in series? Certainly not I! I wonder how much they're going to license it for...

Masked passwords must go

Andrew Bell
Stop

Urgh

What a load of utter drivel! There is absolutely no situation where it is acceptable to display a password on-screen. Passwords should be masked, transmitted encrypted and stored as a hash. Plaintext passwords should never be shown or stored.

Man webcams butt in Burnout Paradise prang rage

Andrew Bell
Coat

Um, right...

So, how exactly is this hardware news? Come to think of it, how exactly is this news at all?

I think you're being a little behind in your reporting.

Mine's the one with the brown smear...

'Suspicious comment' provokes LAX terminal evacuation

Andrew Bell
Unhappy

Oh dear

I was planning on going to the US some point soon to visit a good friend of mine. Now I guess I'll be too shit scared to say anything to anyone in the airport, as I'm half Indian...

For sale: Herman Munster's MasterCard number

Andrew Bell

Phakes

Hobbes: The likelyhood of that happening is quite low, as the 16 digit card number is required, plus the issue number, plus the start date, plus the expiry date, plus the security code. Oh, and don't forget the name and address too! :P

Summa: Feeding bad card details into legit sites will only cause them to be validated as incorrect, as legitimate sites tend not to store your card data. On a phishing site, your entered details will usually go directly to a database, to be perused over and sold later.