Posts by SolidSquid

Increased gov spy powers are NOT the way to stay safe against terrorism

Re: Maybe the only way to prevent this

Light touch regulation of banks which hasn't been strengthened in any meaningful way since they left power (and I believe they discussed weakening them further to "boost the economy"). Labour didn't do particularly well at regulating the banks, but neither did their predecessors and neither have their successors, there's too much banking money in politics for them to be willing to go along with that (if nothing else, a significant number of politicians have immediate family working in banking)

Top US privacy bod: EU should STOP appeasing whiny consumers

Re: That's the way the UK as well as the US has worked for years

The point he's making is that the EU policy of protecting privacy is contradicted to the UK's policy of cooperation with US intelligence agencies. Pretty sure it's tongue in cheek too, since he's also joking about a Baroness being elected

Re: RE: Stalemate

Considering how large a chunk of the aviation industry is American, I dare say they'd be objecting if people weren't allowed to fly to Europe just as much

Scientific consensus that 2014 was record hottest year? No

Worth mentioning, the ocean surface temperature they found had increased enough to be considered the highest since records began. Land surface temperature wasn't the highest (it rated 4th), but that ranks close enough that margin of error becomes an issue.

Also, weirdly the margin for error from last year was significantly higher than previous years than any other in the top 10 hottest, which they don't seem to explain

Just WHY is the FBI so sure North Korea hacked Sony? NSA: *BLUSH*

Look, look, here's an example of how the NSA is fighting the bad guys! Everyone knows North Korea are the bad guys, right? That makes us the good guys!

Buggy? Angry? LET IT ALL OUT says Linus Torvalds

True, but generally either those bugs have been patched and the scripts only effect older versions, the disclosure was done on the darknet rather than publically (so the developers aren't aware of the issue) or it was disclosed to the company first then publicly and the developers have decided it was't a big enough issue to be worth patching.

Public disclosure of a bug is a pretty small proportion of automated scripts, which tend to favour detecting and exploiting known existing bugs which just might not have had the patches installed yet and using that to get access to the server, and an internal IP for the network to access other systems (like the Sony server hacks back when Geohot was sued, the boxes used for entry hadn't been patched in years despite fixes for the bugs the hackers exploited having been released for some time)

US drug squad cops: We snooped on innocent Americans' phone calls too!

Re: earl grey how many of them went to jail

Subpoena != warrant and don't even necessarily have to be issued by a court, just a government body. The National Security Letters which were issued (and arguably abused) by the FBI to force people to cooperate and keep silent about it were subpoenas issued by the FBI without going through the courts. There's nothing here suggesting the subpoenas were issued by courts as opposed to the DEA itself

Mr President, is this a war on hackers – or a war on people stopping hackers?

Re: Obama, like all politicians, is computer illiterate.

While I recognise that this terminology is used within the hacking community, it isn't used the same way outside of the community (even by people who are familiar with computers). "Hackers" has become the term used for "Crackers", with what you'd term a hacker being considered by those outside of the hacking community as "security researchers", or something along those lines anyway

DAMN YOU! Microsoft blasts Google over zero-day blabgasm

If Microsoft is telling the truth and Google decided to stick to it's 90 days even though a fix was in place and ready to release on the next patch day then Google was at least somewhat in the wrong, although I'd raise issue with the idea that you should sit on a patch for a zero day exploit for weeks just so a designated day can arrive rather than releasing when it's ready because people got so fed up with the number of patches your software needed

BAN email footers – they WASTE my INK, wails Ctrl+P MP

Re: Esp. One-Liners

Was thinking the same thing. Only case I can think of is if he doesn't read emails unless his secretary prints them off for him first

FREE EBOOKS: Apple falls into line with EU refund laws

Re: GOG did this far earlier for games

GOG's model is pretty good actually, you can build up a library of games that you can store locally, but essentially have backed up online if you delete them by accident. Also any updates to the software get provided through the same download system as the game itself. Not quite as straight-forward as Steam since you need to download patch installers, but the good pricing and the lack of restrictions which go with Steam make it a really nice platform to buy from

Marriott: The TRUTH about personal Wi-Fi hotel jam bid

I'm curious whether the starbuck next door has the right to interfere with the Marriott's wifi network in the same way because the network signal is able to be picked up there.

I get that the idea of someone faking being the Marriott's network can put other guests at risk (by setting up a man in the middle attack with it), but unless they clearly state that they're going to be blocking any wifi networks other than their own before people book hotel rooms and conferences, this doesn't seem like a reasonable approach

Ladies and trolls: Should we make cyberbullying a crime? – Ireland

Wouldn't a lot of this be covered by harassment laws? Otherwise I'd agree with the AC above, it'll need a *very* tight definition of what's meant by "Cyber Bullying" before it could potentially be written into law

Google unveils Windows 8.1 zero-day vuln – complete with exploit code

Er, not sure when you last used *NIX systems, but there's the options of group permissions so that users in the correct group have full access to features and those who aren't are restricted, as well as the usual kind of password prompt for things which require admin access. It might potentially take a bit more work setting up some things, but for most things you'd be doing with it the system works pretty well

Why has the Russian economy plunged SO SUDDENLY into the toilet?

Re: So, Crony Capitalism doesn't work!

Techically there's never *been* a fully fledged free market capitalist society. All markets have some degree of influence or manipulation by governments, even if it's just regulating what can be traded legally (since this pushes up the risk and the reward of trading such goods beyond what pure supply and demand would) and government granted monopolies (copyright, patents and trademarks)

Sucker for punishment? Join Sony's security team

Re: "five year's red-teaming experience,"

Looks like red-teaming is when you target your own company as if you were an outside aggressor, I'm guessing with the blue team being the guys who do the company's defence team

More like looking for a painter/decorator after your house was drowned for the building of a dam

Norks' internet goes TITSUP in possible DDoS attack

Re: Missing statement from article

Have you tried Supremeing it off and on again?

Frustration with Elite:Dangerous boils over into 'Refund Quest'

Re: 'bait-and-switch'

As a feature it was introduced fairly early on in the Kickstarter process and on several occasions the developers asserted to people who were asking if offline was available (because they didn't want an online only game) that they were going to do it. For anyone buying after the point this was added it classes as a bait and switch.

To take your analogy, it's more like buying a ticket to a rock music festival because they announced that a band you're a big fan of has been added to the lineup doing a one-time support act at the festival. You might go and watch the other acts, but you bought the ticket because they announced that this band in particular was playing. Then in the middle of the festival (to parallel the whole playable alpha phase) they announce that the band isn't going to be playing after all because it was decided they didn't fit the theme of the festival after all. Since this band was the reason you bought the ticket you go to get a refund, and they state that because you watched the other acts while waiting for the band you went to see you're not entitled to a refund anymore

FURY erupts on streets of Brussels over greedy USA's data-slurping appetite

Re: @The Axe: The point?

The point of the police cameras is supposed to be to hold the police accountable, they're expected to video any encounters with the public so there's evidence of what happened during it.

Also, even if people do things illegally, they can be punished when caught. The whole point of this is that they're trying to make something legal despite it being in conflict with the rights EU citizens are supposed to have, resulting in far reduced legal protections for us. For example, a while back Facebook was required to start doing data dumps of the data they stored on EU users when those users requested it because EU privacy law required it, even though they didn't want to be giving that kind of data to their users. While yes data can be lost or illegally shared, when caught users can hold companies to account as long as the law is on their side. This is an attempt to move the law more over to the side of the companies side, in spite of the rights of the users

Re: Hate Machine

It mentions the USA because this part of the trade agreement was most likely *introduced* by US companies who want to be able to host EU citizen data (currently the US isn't considered to have sufficient privacy protections for this). As such, including the USA in the headline makes sense since the clause being discussed largely *is* limited to 1 signatory to the trade agreement, very few others have any reason to add it and I don't think any others have enough clout to get this kind of thing added

Re: Leave the EU?

Considering GCHQ is more than happy to pipe every bit of data they can over to US officials, the EU privacy laws are a large part of what *protects* us from this kind of agreement. Also Westminster has always supported this kind of bill, and supported the previous incarnations too

Re: Digital consulates

Consulates aren't actually considered foreign soil, that's just a rule of thumb used to explain a much more complicated legal standard to the lay person. If it were foreign soil, the host country telling ambassadors to get lost and then taking it over would be a declaration of war and invasion of foreign soil, which it isn't.

Whether the data would be protected would very much depend on the host country's legal protections for ambassadors and their communications, and also whether they would actually follow those legal protections. Also, since the servers wouldn't actually be on foreign soil any company hosting there could still be forced to divulge the data

Re: Hate Machine

Canada at least is deemed to have sufficient protection for personal details that it's listed as approved for storing EU citizen data on servers there, so they literally would have no reason to support this

Google sues Mississippi Attorney General 'for doing MPAA's dirty work'

"Hood said that he was "calling a time out, so that cooler heads may prevail," and will be seeking a conference with Google's legal team to resolve the situation."

"Don't be silly, of course that isn't evidence of wrong doing on our part. Now lets just sit down and talk about this without any ridiculous legal action... like the kind we took out against you"

Big Eyes falls short on the big question of popular art

In fairness the art establishment took pretty much the same perspective to Jack Vettriano's work. There's a degree of "if it's popular it's not really art" snobbishness within the art world which still exists today

MP caught playing Candy Crush at committee meeting: I'll ‘try’ not to do it again

Re: "The lawmaker was apologetic..."

And so impotent when it comes to dealing with real issues, although it's quite easy getting a rise out of them if you mention UKIP or expenses

Re: Actions speak loader than words

"hile he's wasting his days playing inconsequential little games, he's not doing what most politicians do: devising bad laws that neither achieve their intended purpose nor are tight enough to stop their loopholes being exploited."

That would imply them spending a period more than one day coming up with the laws, I suspect that's not very likely

No sympathy at all, in any other job he'd be looking at at the very least being written up for this, if not something more severe. The meeting might be boring, but paying attention to it is his job, and not just the "bits that interest him"

I've previously had advanced warning of issues which were going to happen in a day by checking El Reg in the mornings. Bit different browsing an article to playing a computer game that requires a lot if interaction and focus though

EU law bods: New eCall crash system WON'T TRACK YOU. Really

Re: Illegal for whom, exactly?

Insurance companies have been pushing for this kind of box to be attached to cars for at least a few years now. It doesn't sound like it records everything they'd want, since they want to have evidence of you speeding before the accident and such, but could certainly be expanded to incorporate that "so we can investigate what causes crashes"

97% of UK gets 'basic' 2Mbps broadband. 'Typical households' need 10Mbps – Ofcom

I'm curious where they get their information for this study from. Of the last 4 places I've stayed (in as many years, and 2 in a city centre), only 1 has had cable access. With the other 3 I've been told by the cable company that it was available until I went through the order process and gave them the full address rather than just postcode, at which point it stopped being available. If they're just going by the same postcode data the providers use then they could be over-estimating the number who can get more than 5mbps by quite a bit

Norks: We might be aggressive but we didn't hack Sony!

Re: Well that was unexpected.. not.

As I understand it, the NK approach to internal security is less "if we catch you breaking the rules then you're fired" and more "if we suspect you of breaking the rules then your families will be shot". Even if someone *was* willing to risk their family's lives, the risk of someone calling them out would be much higher than it would in a similar organisation outside NK

What a pity: Rollout of hated UK smart meters delayed again

Re: Meanwhile....

For once you can literally thank Thatcher for that one, water was un-metered in England and Wales before it was privatized by her parliament. Since it was a separate system in Scotland though we got to keep un-metered water and just pay a flat fee as part of the council tax

UK slaps 25 per cent 'Google Tax' on tech multinationals

Re: I'm confused...

That's going to be fiddly to work with though, they're going to have to be *really* careful about how the define "diverted profits" since we're really talking about companies purchasing something from other companies which happen to be subsidiaries of the same parent. Hopefully they'll find a way to deal with it, but with their track record I can't see it going well

Re: I'm confused...

If you're an idiot then you're not alone, that's pretty much how I thought it worked too. It's weird that he'd give actual numbers if that's the case though, generally they're more vague than that so they can't be called out on it later

Ten Linux freeware apps to feed your penguin

Re: GIMP

I'd say Pinta is probably a better option if someone is looking for a general usage image editor. Gimp is if you're doing some heavy duty stuff which requires layers or other advanced features

Sick of the 'criminal' lies about pie? Lobby the government HERE

Got to admit, they guy's got a point. Always disappointing when I order a steak pie and there's no short crust

Kim Dotcom Dotcan remain on bail, despite Fed protests

Re: Jail time or the highlands would have been better

Not sure where the 3 year sentence went, but I suspect there's going to be some pretty massive fines into the bargain regardless. Also a criminal record might impact his residency in New Zealand

systemd row ends with Debian getting forked

Re: This is gold

If it's so early in the lifetime of systemd, why are they making it the default for Debian? Surely they'd wait until after they have a better idea of what issues there are before doing that

Edit: Looks like I'm not the only one wondering about that

Holy sh*t! Amsterdam man in pop-up public toilet shock horror

From looking at the pictures, aren't those loos on the pavement? I hope the guy comes out ok, but I'm curious whether he was actually supposed to be driving over that area in the first place, and that might explain a lack of checks for moving vehicles

Home Office: Fancy flogging us some SECRET SPY GEAR?

Re: Mine detectors

I think you're talking about the dousing rods which ended up in Iraq, those were sold to the Iraqi army for finding explosives. These are bomb detection kits the MOD supplied to the British army and which had a 90% failure rate (in that around 90% were faulty and wouldn't pick anything up) and were geared specifically to finding IEDs rather than explosives in general (the dousing rods were used for border checks)

Stop selling spyware to despotic regimes, beg MEPs

Re: How is this related to Regin?

Apparently the finger was pointed at GCHQ and the NSA as the most likely candidates for developing it early on, although what evidence there was of this I don't know

Megaupload overlord Kim Dotcom: The US has radicalised me!

Sounds like a sitcom in the making!

Yes, UK. REST OF EUROPE has better mobe services than you

Nice to see they included some Scottish <span class="strike">pubs</span> locations, although I'm curious what testing was done in Wales and N. Ireland. More rural areas could be interesting too, I'd be curious how UK mobile networks in less built up areas compared with that in the rest of Europe since coverage is something that's been made a priority here

Trousers down for six of the best affordable Androids

"All in all for £150 it’s a cracking bit of kit. If only there was a 4G version"

There is, it's sold either as the Moto G 4G or the Moto G LTE and from what I've seen goes for £160

Calls for probe of UK.gov's DOESN'T VERIFY ID service

Re: Net access as a Utility?

That issue was raised as soon as the Universal Credit proposal was put forward. Don't think it was ever answered though

El Reg reanimates Cash'n'Carrion merchandising tentacle

They're just heading upstairs to sign the invoice paperwork. It needs to be dropped of at the mail box on the top landing with the dodgy light fitting

Surprised you didn't go with one of the swiss army knives with a phillips screwdriver on it, they're the perfect size for opening up your pc case if you don't have a proper screwdriver on hand

We have a winner! Fresh Linux Mint 17.1 – hands down the best

Re: Upgrades

I believe so, although you should be able to back up your /home, /opt and /usr/local directories to transfer everything over to the new install (software should be installed to /opt and /usr/local, comfiguration and personal files in /home)