Posts by Anonymous Blowhard

Windows 7 and 8.1 market share surge, XP falls behind OS X

Re: Now students, please use "free" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence.

"If I had the choice, I'd probably be running a completely debugged version of Windows 95"

Don't like Cortana? Mayber you'd also be happier driving a Cortina?

SEX-starved worm can GIVE HEAD to ITSELF to reproduce

I think "stylet" is a good word for "marketing drone"; it's a small penis that wounds as it delivers information...

VPNs are so insecure you might as well wear a KICK ME sign

Re: This is a test of VPN technology; in 2015 "network" means IPv4 *and* IPv6.

@Roland6

I take your point about the test setup/environment, but the impact for "real world" users is that the VPN software doesn't protect them as much as they might expect. Even if this is just a matter of configuration, I'd expect the default to be to handle IPv6 and IPv4 in as similar a manner as possible, or if that isn't possible I'd want the installer to disable IPv6 by default and warn me it's done that (although that may disable or interfere with functionality in other parts of my system, so not at all ideal).

IPv6 implementation might be a bit of a dog's dinner, but network security software should be the kind of software that is the most IPv6-ready, otherwise it's only solving half of the problem.

"IPv4 VPN in failing to work with IPv6 shock. This isn't a red top paper."

Two things:

1) This is a test of VPN technology; in 2015 "network" means IPv4 *and* IPv6.

2) The top banner of The Register is red.

EUROPEAN PURGE on hated mobile roaming charges

Re: Still not cheap

"Very competitive for PAYG though, it's several times cheaper."

I think you've misunderstood; the costs mentioned are additional roaming charges, to be added to whatever you already pay for your service, not the total cost of a minute or a text.

Revive the Nathan Barley Quango – former Downing Street wonk

"There is a chronic funding gap in the UK for companies creating digital media content, as our venture capital funds do not typically invest in this sector."

Is the lack of investment in any way related to past performance indicating that most of these "digital media content" ventures have no possibility of ever returning a profit?

Why SpaceX will sort out Sunday's snafu faster than NASA ever could

Re: NASA inefficiency: The hint is in the name

Yes, apart from putting the only humans ever on the moon, getting probes to every planet and exploring the surface of Mars they've done fuck all.

Apple Music available on Sonos by end of this year

Re: it's a speaker

@PleebSmash

Sonos speakers don't have an input cable, they're network play only.

FU UK?

"$9.99/month in the USA, £9.99/month in the UK"

Smart meters set to cost Blighty as much as replacing Trident

Cost Benefit Analysis?

What's the benefit to the nation of smart meters?

I can see that energy companies might be keen to implement them, but that will only be if they can get the consumer to pay; left to their own finances I suspect they'll only implement them in new installations and where repair or replacement of existing equipment is necessary.

As far as a strategic national interest goes, then there is really only the "belief" that smart meters might encourage consumers to use less energy, thereby reducing CO2 output; but what is the CO2 impact of making a smart meter and installing it? It can't be zero, so the CO2 impact analysis has to take this into account.

From a security and crime perspective, smart meters are only going to add to the nation's attack surface; giving rogue nations and criminals the potential to remotely disrupt the economy using DoS attacks or interfering with energy consumption readings.

Feds count Cryptowall cost: $18 million says FBI

Product Endorsement?

"These financial fraud schemes target both individuals and businesses, are usually very successful, and have a significant impact on victims."

Cryptowall: as recommended by the FBI (accept no substitutes)

Wake up, sheeple! If you ask Siri about 9/11 it will rat you out to the police!

UK Punter: Siri; what is one thousand minus one?

Answer: Emergency. Which service?

"The terrorists picked that September 11 specifically because it's short hand is the same as the emergency services number in the US"

All the more reason to change the emergency number to 0118 999 881 999 119 725....3

Killer ChAraCter HOSES almost all versions of Reader, Windows

Quote from Wikipedia:

"Adobe, the Spanish word for mud brick originates from Arabic, is a building material made from earth and often organic material."

I think "organic material" is a euphemism for "shit".

Do svidaniya to public record as Russia passes NEED to be forgotten bill

This law will not benefit anyone in Russia except Xxxxxxxx Xxxxx and his cronies!

Triple glitch grounds ALL aircraft in New Zealand

Re: Oh "l"

This post was much funnier before they corrected the headline from "Triple gitch grounds ALL aircraft in New Zealand"

Sorry for any confusion.

Oh "l"

Spe checker not working, or keyboard probem?

GCHQ: Security software? We'll soon see about THAT

Ringing Endorsement?

"GCHQ released a warrant which described Kaspersky software as an obstruction to its hacking operations"

THEY WANTED OUR WOMEN: Neanderthals lusted after modern humans

WAGS

'nuff said.

DEATH by VEGETABLES: Woman charged with killing boyf using carrots. And peas

Re: No Worries...

"She'll be out just in time for her Social Security cheque"

She won't need Social Security, she'll be pitching for the Dodgers...

Re: This raises some questions...

The US is more likely to ban vegetables than guns; they may even ban things that protect people from guns: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/5344

Still, medical advice is to get five servings of vegetables a day and plenty of iron.

Vodafone splashes €2 BEEELLLION to kick German TV sideways

It makes me beeellllioooous...

Germany says no steamy ebooks until die Kinder have gone to bed

Re: Oh, they will.

I thought "The Index" was just for people with super-powers? I think SHIELD are exceeding their mandate here.

Mum fails to nuke killer spider nest from orbit

Re: Burn them....

"Burn them with fire"

as opposed to an ice throne?

Tim Worstall dances to victory over resources scaremongerers

"He also gave every attendee a copy of his latest book"

Serves them right!

Facebook and Twitter queen Taylor Swift: Facebook and Twitter are RUBBISH

Next she'll be saying that your choice of mobile phone isn't that important...

Sprint: Net neutrality means we can't stamp out download hogs

Re: Pure BS

"Throttling of any kind, after all, is—by definition—a limit"

By this definition, having a bandwidth of less than *infinity* is a limit, because if my bandwith is less than infinity, there is a limit to how much I can download in a given period.

I can appreciate that people feel they want to get what they've paid for, but in a network of finite resources there has to be, at some times, a way of dividing up bandwith so that all users get some service rather than some users getting all the service.

The world .sucks at a minute past midnight on Sunday

Re: no dot-suck?

.SUCK will be next year's cash cow, followed by .ISAPAEDO in 2017.

Charging 20 times the going rate shows that this is aimed at corporations defensively registering domains rather than actual consumers with real concerns; ICANN make FIFA look like boy scouts.

A server apocalypse can come in different shapes and sizes. Be prepared

Re: Clustering does not eliminate need for backups and logs

"Take the example of the admin asked to anonymise a test database and who ran the SQL script against the prod database"

This is a good example of why a "prod database" needs to be on a different server from the "test database", ideally one that can't be remotely accessed by tools that can access the test DB; then your anonymising script (or whatever) won't be in the production environment and your admin will realise he's in the wrong system, because there's no anonymising script, instead of realising once the production DB is AFU.

But your point about backups still being required still stands.

45% of UK data centres have suffered a natural disaster. Really?

I've known some managers who qualify as a "natural disaster"...

Version 0.1 super-stars built the universe – and they lived all the way over there, boffins point

Re: This is why i love science

This just shows that we need experimentalists to keep the theorists honest.

The main problem is that experiments cost money, and the cutting edge of physics is getting beyond the budget of individual nations; fortunately the science community is able to work on a worldwide basis to make these discoveries possible.

Thumbs up to them!

JavaScript creator Eich's latest project: KILL JAVASCRIPT

"Someday you'll code for the web in any language"

Does that include Welsh?

Sharing Economy latest: Women's breast milk is the new 'liquid gold' of the internet

Re: Apparantly ...

And W. C. Fields has never been so relevant:

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

'Oracle, why are your sales f-' CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD, blasts Larry

Looks llike would-be database buyers are getting the message that "other databases are available".

The maturity of open source databases, like MariaDB, and competitive pricing of products like MS SQL Server mean that those in the market for a DB have a lot of non-Oracle choices.

And maybe their customers and channel parters are getting pissed off with them too, and migrating away; as an employee of a one-time Oracle "partner" all I can say is you need a lot of lube for the treatment you get from them.

'No evidence' Snowden was working for foreign power says ex-NSA boss

Work smarter, not harder

Seems like the Chinese now have the same data on US federal employees that the US Government has; only they let the Americans do the hard bit (i.e. collecting all the information in the first place).

YOU ARE THE DRONE in Amazon's rumoured new parcel delivery plan

Re: Never underestimate the human ability to be conned...

"cargo & battery capacity, as well as self-navigation & object-avoidance technology, will advance fast enough that drones will soon be able to quickly, accurately, & reliably deliver reasonably-sized packages within metropolitan areas"

Even if this happens, they still have to get CAA (UK) and FAA (USA) regulations for non-line-of-sight operation of drones changed (currently it's not allowed). This could take years, if not decades.

El Reg can't even get approval for launching a balloon in a desert...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/13/lohan_vulture_mug/

Apple CORED: Boffins reveal password-killer 0-days for iOS and OS X

Re: But shirley...

"if you have 2 processes running under the same user id on a system, then 1 process can attach to the other and scan its memory anyway"

No, modern (post 1990s multi-user system) operating systems should manage the memory space for applications to prevent this.

MIT bods' digital economy babblings are tosh. C'mon guys, Economics 101

@Tim Worstall

"That argument is like saying that because we've got cars we must teach humans to run faster than cars so they've still got something to do."

No it isn't at all; the argument is like "if we have cars, then we need people with the skills to produce and maintain cars". OK so when cars replaced horses, we didn't need as many horses or those employed in horse-related industries, but some of the carriage makers transitioned to making cars and now we have a large industrial sector making private vehicles. So maybe the lesson is that those with transferable skills will be OK and those without are screwed?

TERROR in ORBIT: Dodgy rocket burp biffs International Space Station off track

"Is there a big red "do not touch" button in NASA HQ that does this?"

No, the "Do Not Touch" button is at Roscosmos; the button at NASA is marked "Mess With Russia"...

Trustwave: Here's how to earn $84,000 A MONTH as a blackhat

Investing in crime

Looks like banks and other investors should be looking at "alternative" industries for high-return-on-investment; just make sure the business plan uses an appropriate description:

Leisure Pharmaceuticals

Combined Employment & Travel Agency

Pre-emptive IT Services

Freelance Ballistics Importer

Payday Lender

Capita wins four out of five stars for 'good', 'inexpensive' service

Advice for Government

Only use Capita on projects of similar, or less, complexity to running a Kebab shop.

Paper driving licence death day: DVLA website is still TITSUP

Re: Gross stupidity and idiocy

"All of this was entirely predictable and could easily have been catered for."

Hindsight is always 20:20

I just tried myself, and it seems to work fine; I suspect the heavy load on the first day was partly due to people logging on "just to give it a try", so a freak-load event rather than a peak-load.

The limited life code is entirely sensible, and I suspect that most hire-car companies will address this by not bothering to check the on-line license data; they'll most likely address the risk of disqualified drivers hiring cars through additional insurance (they make more money on insurance anyway).

Verizon splits with carrier-led bonking and invests in SimplyTapp

"Why on earth would you want to make hotel rooms unlockable via an app on your phone?"

The best use-case I can think of is unattended check-in. I used this recently at a hotel in Oslo, but they let you create your own key-card rather than use a mobile phone; this technique would allow you to get the security token before you arrive and would remove the need for the hotel to manage key-cards.

ROBOTS in sinister public-relations push ahead of coming WAR ON HUMANS

The DARPA tests worry me

Driving cars

Opening doors

Crossing rubble

All of these are key requirements for a Terminator; if the next round of test includes "using firearms" or "riding motorcycles" then it's time to head for the hills and start stockpiling weapons...

Au-mazing! Cornwall sold GOLD to Ireland back in the Bronze Age

"the boffins raised questions about the extraordinary early Bronze Age gold hoards that have been found in Ireland far more commonly than anywhere else in Europe."

No need for questions, it's leprechauns!

One USB plug to rule them all? That's sensible, but no...

Re: As the old saying goes...

"The cable will be thick but comparable to a USB 3 cable (which is already as thick as a kettle lead)."

I know what you mean, I only keep my Amazon Basics USB3 cable in my bag in case I have to abseil from a hotel balcony to escape a fire. My Note 3 seems to charge perfectly well on a bog standard USB2 cable.

Mass break-in: researchers catch 22 more routers for the SOHOpeless list

@Mage: Sound advice, thumbs up from me.

Intel imagines chips in nappies to create the Internet of sh*t things

Re: Two bit arithmatic should be enough

I can't believe I misspelled "arithmetic"! I'll be drummed out of the pedant's union for this...

Two bit arithmatic should be enough

Nothing

Number One

Number Two

One and Two

Spoiling staff with toys could turn against your business

Re: Disagree with blocking email on personal phones

I agree with Greg D, most corporate email systems support remote wiping; my company used to use Exchange/ActiveSync (you had to allow the ActiveSync permissions before you could use email) but now we've moved to Google Apps which also supports remote wiping:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/173390?hl=en