Posts by 2460 Something

It's that time of the year again: Texas school district blabs staff tax documents to phishers

Re: Its Always The Weakest Link...

I thought you were going down the route of "If you don't know who it is in your circle .. then it's probably you" :)

GDS chap: UK.gov is better off on public cloud than its own purpose-built network

Re: Plod

Consider this 'by design' or indeed, being down with the tech kids, a 'feature' that way they can spend less time talking to anyone who might be concerned as to what they actually wastespend their budgets on...

Avaya files for bankruptcy

Re: Venture Capitalists

That is something that always frustrates me. You have a company doing reasonably well, venture capitalists buy it out, not because they think they can help it do better, but they want to load it with as much debt as possible to fuel their other purchases, then they can drop the one they don't care about and allow it to go under.

Woolworths still springs to mind. Great company, screwed over by the new 'management' mortgaging it to the hilt till as a company it was no longer feasible due to the massive debt servicing costs it now had.

But nothing is ever going to be done about it as the people that run them generally have very good friends in political offices, who's parties regularly receive large donations... cheaper than getting a prison sentence and not being allowed to screw more companies over.

College fires IT admin, loses access to Google email, successfully sues IT admin for $250,000

Re: And using Google is a good thing?

Google offers it for free to education establishments.

Re: Lax Procedures

he remotes in every so often to see how things are going.

You/'Your Brother' need to stay away from that one. Not worth the possible prison time if someone notices and they decide to go after him on unlawful access.

Revealed: How Nvidia's 'backseat driver' AI learned to read lips

Re: Old news

As much as I love driving, I would still love one of these for longer journeys, I'm thinking I, Robot style jumping between manual and automation. Just need swivel seats in the front and it's good to go! Another 10-15 years and they will probably be mainstream as opposed to niche.

SpaceX makes successful rocket launch

Re: Report errors...

If I'm making a comment I always use a PC, Kudos to you if you type all that on a tablet with good punctuation throughout. :)

Post counts can be frustrating :( Sorry you lost your badge, do you have to start from the beginning now or will you go straight back to silver once your posts are up?

Re: Well done SpaceX

I love watching the rocket launches, there is also a nice sped up version of the successful first stage landing. C'mon MoonBase, it feels so close now :D

You know you can report errors? I'm not sure he is going to pick it up from the comments :P

Sysadmin figures out dating agency worker lied in his profile

Re: Bless....

Haha, Reminds me of the time someone swapped a few of the keys around on my keyboard as a prank. Only I didn't notice for ages as I hardly ever look at the thing. When I did finally notice it was nearly 4 weeks later ... kinda killed their fun :D

No shoes for little Timmy, Mama needs a new 10TB hard drive

Re: This infomercial is missing...

I had a quick look and found the 10TB from 3rd party seller on Amazon .. at £498 .. which is pretty good. HGST 10TB is £600. Hopefully over the next year or so they start to drop down to £30/TB.

Four reasons Pixel turns flagship Android mobe makers into roadkill

Re: Lots of conjectures

Compared to that, the rest of the world has significantly lower Apple market share, higher tier 2 Android market share with significant brand loyalty in the upper mid-range and top bracket segment most of which are sold through operator retail. The Pixels does not do anything to try to break that.

Maybe not this year but to me it is the start of a slippery slope. 3rd parties have become completely reliant on the Android OS, Google is targeting the high end market, over the next few iterations they will increase the handset to match and be better. Others really need to push on any USP's that they have to compete directly with Google.

Realistically there is only one choice for most consumers and that is sticking to IOS or Android because of application investment. On Android, Yes, there is brand loyalty to some extent but that becomes more blurred when the phones become increasingly similar in their stats.

Been on the horizon for a while

In reality google has never been about sharing profits it was all about limiting liability whilst they developed and matured their mobile platform. Now they are at the point where they no longer have to worry about appeasing 3rd party manufacturers because the platform is too big. Google uses this same process across the board. When they bring something new out they are happy to have 3rd party affiliates, once it is to the point of no return they make it nigh impossible for 3rd parties to compete and grab all the profits. Rinse repeat.

Welcome to your new world order...

'Please label things so I can tell the difference between a mouse and a microphone'

Re: The old joke about the blond Executive Assistant...

You seem to have picked up the anonymous Mask instead .. here, let me hand you a coat... ;P

Bloke gets six years in slammer after fessing up to £4.75m tax scam

Re: Wow, Six years...?

Bravo sir, Bravo.

As much as I don't like what he has done, it is completely disingenuous for HMRC to state

"We will not tolerate tax fraud and our job doesn’t finish when someone is jailed. We will now continue our confiscation proceedings to reclaim all the money he stole,” added Barton.

I suspect the press release really went something like this before the publicity guys re-wrote it

"We will not tolerate tax fraud from someone who didn't employ one of us to develop appropriate loopholes and our job doesn’t finish when someone is jailed unless of course they were rich enough to have paid the appropriate bribes consultancy fees, in this case we ensure a reduced sentence in a no-security prison so they can still go home every weekend, honestly, between you and I, it's more like a county club. We will now continue our confiscation proceedings to reclaim all the money he stole because, once again, he did NOT go about this in the right way. If only he had listened and employed one of us, we could have earned him significantly more, even after our cut, and we wouldn't have touched it whilst he was at the spa for a few weeks either,” lamented added Barton.

In the name of love, don't scalp your U2 aka Dreamfest tickets, warns Salesforce

Re: Not quite sure if the scalpers know what they are doing...

Haha, I picked up on that too. 30% reduction seems like a good deal :)

WAN, bam, thank you... oh @£$%. We've gone dead. Drop the burger. RUUUUUN!

Re: Good taste in burgers

Five Guys always reminds me of Michael McIntyre's 'Herb & Spice' skit now though ...

Shopkeeper installs forecourt khazi to counter mystery Dublin dung dumper

Electified seat?

I wonder if he added a bit of .. stimulation .. and added electrification to the seat .. that would certainly help the overnight visitor evacuate himself fully. All in the name of helping someone in obvious need..

Sysadmin gets 5 years for slurping contractor payments to employer

Re: hmmm...

Unfortunately nothing in our legal system is appropriate proportionate.

It's almost like it was designed hundreds of years ago and then kept having new things tacked on to it with more weighty sentences for those who can't pay for a top lawyer ... Unfortunately.

Forgive me, father, for I have used an ad-blocker on news websites...

Do these same people feel guilty when they fast-forward through TV adds on pre-recorded stuff?

Moron is late for flight, calls in bomb threat

Re: "... police traced the call to his phone."

My thought exactly. Stupid enough to do it in the first place, but even stupider to do it from his own phone. Muppet.

I want to remotely disable Londoners' cars, says Met's top cop

bunch of rozzers on foot

And this is why they should use the predator style drones... Switch out those missiles for alternative non-lethal (optional :P) enforcement and take them down.

The police can follow at a 'safe' distance with a few cars and a van and throw them all in once they ditch the car and are 'apprehended' by drone.

Action Fraud warns of fraudulent anti-fraud warnings posing as Action Fraud

What is so frustrating is that the people being targeted are some of the most vulnerable, and they are more likely to fall for it because every Tom, Dick and Harry company representative rings up and asks for your personal information to 'pass security.' How can we expect people to not fall for this kind of thing when companies have such ridiculously bad practices (most of these are sales calls so it is entirely profit driven).

Rules of thumb should be...

1) NEVER answer 'security' questions when receiving an unsolicited phone call.

2) If a company calls up to speak to someone about something urgent (no sales calls allowed) they should be advising the person to call them back using the contact numbers they already have!

When companies start using better practices and educating their customers, their customers are less likely to be susceptible to fraud.

Universal Credit: 'One dole to rule 'em all' on verge of recovery – report

If it had been done correctly, like for like, without the bunch of numpties running it into the ground each time it 'could' have been beneficial. As it is the UC has just become another cost PR exercise. The thresholds and withdrawal rates are lower and higher respectively. So when people get moved across to it they will be getting less money. But that's OK because it appeals to their target demographic of voters to stick it to the most vulnerable members of society.

'Clock Bomb Kid' family sues

The way he was treated was absolutely atrocious but even with that initially I was still in the '$15million, that's just ridiculous and opportunistic!' camp. However, after thinking about it a bit further, all of these institutions (be that police, school or other) are driven by money. Maybe the best way to prevent similar disgustingly small minded and racist behaviour is to hurt their pockets so that they remember the lesson.

They won't get anything near to the initial damages sort, but it is also, presumably, down to it being America and the land of the free market lawyer. They are starting their negotiations from a good figure, there will be an undisclosed settlement at some point in the future for a smaller amount plus legal fees (which will probably dwarf any payment). And on the plus side, whatever he gets out of it (and he most likely will get a reasonable amount) pays for his (and maybe even his siblings) educations and gives them a better financial start in life. Go for it and good luck to them.

VMware pulls buggy NSX release from distribution

Re: So ... what happened to "testing"?

It is impossible to test every scenario. With that being said, it does seem that end users are being turned more and more into guinea pigs. We have been using it for over 12 months and have hit some really nasty bugs. Getting proper support has been ridiculous and they still haven't figured out what caused the problem of the latest one.

Hackers unleash smart Twitter phishing tool that snags two in three users

Re: Hmmm

He only did it once around the office and that was for charity? For the pics visit https://fake.url/naked

:D

And now for a lazy Fri…d'oh! Two VMware patches just landed!?

Re: THE HGFS bug...

Phew, back to lazy Friday after all :)

Seagate coats SATA flash in Nytro, waits for explosion

Price per TB still too much.

Still expensive compared with spinning disk. HDDs seem to have plateaued at about £35/TB for the past couple years, SSDs anywhere from £150-£400/TB. Hopefully with some of the higher capacity SSD's coming out it will start to have a reasonable impact on the prices over the next few years. Looking forward to being able to replace my 5x4TB home NAS drives with SSDs.

TP-Link fined $200k, told to be nice to wireless router tinkers after throwing a hissy fit

Re: +1 retarded marketing

You missed a bit from their 'misleading' marketing.

*Compared to routers from other major broadband providers in the UK.

Obviously they decide who they are measuring against, anyone that supplies better kit is obviously not a 'major' provider and so therefore they don't test against.

The full test report is here(PDF). 2x Virgin Media, Talk Talk, EE, 2x Sky and even plusnet.

Which other than plusnet (BT owned) being tacked on matches with the latest info I could find on ISP's in order of subscriber numbers.

Very PC disclaimer at the top.

The tests were based on the IEEE802.11T method, to provide robust and repeatable data, taking into account previous Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rulings and guidance on wi-fi performance claims

Also they are only testing the router itself, not an associated internet connection. Overall it appears less misleading than their normal run of the mill stuff. Always a pleasant surprise.

FBI electronics nerd confesses: I fed spy tech blueprints to China

Re: Riiiight

possible decade in prison

Decade? I would be surprised if it wasn't effectively the rest of his life. If he gets less than 30 I will be surprised.

Boffins unveil 500TB/in² disk. Yeah, it's made of chlorine. -196˚C, why?

Re: -196˚C ?

Never mind the servers, need to figure out how to get this for my home rig.

On the flip side. The more they research any technology the more likely someone is to have a 'breakthrough. Keep up the good work!

Google on piracy: We really, really care

And they wonder why people complain about them abusing their monopolistic position. I have no problem with a company that is trying to make money in exchange for services rendered, but when that company effectively blackmails everyone, at that point it should be investigated and fined proportional to their revenue.

It is a shame they dropped their original mantra of 'Do No Evil'. A company that pervasive could actually set some good precedences, and still be making ridiculous amounts of money.

Drowning Dalek commands Siri in voice-rec hack attack

Interesting premise, getting it to open a compromised website not too much of a stretch. Changing voice activation commands a good start. Shame they never work quite as well as the default ones though.

White hat banned for revealing vulns in news sites used by London councillors

Re: Surprise surprise

To be expected response from ostriches, they are all provided with emergency buckets of sand.

Of course, maybe the muppets think that by suspending them they have fixed all their problems, as nobody can report them now!

Just the facts, STT-MRAM: Your DRAM replacement's on its way

Re: Call me jaded...

Agreed. Massive hype over xpoint ... then it's just fizzled to nothing.

The cynic in me wonders how much someone in the intel advertising department made on share sales.....

Researcher pops locks on keylogger, finds admin's email inbox

Re: Located or Accessed?

My thoughts as well. So he has the gmail email address which for all intents and purposes could be the final repository. Or... is this just another compromised account en route to else-where? If he couldn't log into it he doesn't know if it is actually just a next step.

Crown Commercial Services is to slap SMEs with price hikes

What a surprise! So the suppliers will increase their prices to reflect their increases in costs ... which will get passed straight back to the departments. How is this round-a-bout of fee's on badly negotiated deals going to help anyone? Rather than these ridiculously expensive national frameworks that government bodies are forced to use, more leeway should be given to finding the best deal. Rather than trying to get good value, it just looks like CCS is augmenting a management pay hike!

Isis crisis: Facebook makes Bristol lass an unperson

All of these decisions are made by filter lists. To be expected that a good amount of false positives will occur. They will improve over time. And anyway, our machine overlords don't really care about the soft fleshy meatbags that resent the new world order.

Here's how police arrested Lauri Love – and what happened next

Re: So the Rozzers went "Softly, Softly" on them then

I am sure there are a lot of good police officers. Unfortunately I seem to only have ever had interactions with the muppets amongst them. And as soon as they do something wrong, they all close ranks and pretend nothing happened, and suddenly everything goes missing. Only have to look at the handling of Hillsborough and other catastrophic police failures to see how much they lie and alter evidence when it puts them in a bad light.

Dixons, UK's fifth 'emergency service', brushes off Brexit scare stories

Re: And the fourth?

Daily Mail to the rescue :P

It once billed itself as 'Britain's Fourth Emergency Service'

Re: And the fourth?

Isn't it the AA? and not the alchy one.

Re: There's only so long

Haha, warranties are the best money maker there is :)

Lester Haines: RIP

R.I.P

Thank you Lester for the countless articles I have enjoyed over the years. Condolences to your family and friends.

Arrests for 'offensive' Twitter and Facebook messages up by a third

Re: Power Mad

Absolutely, it is nigh impossible to get anything useful from these numbers (other than they are massively increasing) without the proper context behind them. Unfortunately when you look at the context behind other arrests we do find out about they regularly paint the police in a negative, over-reacting, over-reaching, law-twisting light. There should be levels of accountability within the police service to reduce unnecessary arrests, but most of the time they appear to close ranks and ignore any criticism.

Power Mad

Unfortunately this is the same of most laws, once they are in place for a given intent they are twisted and, unsurprisingly, it gets abused. The whole debacle over the right to take pictures/film on public property, The misuse of anti-terror laws against peaceful protesters. Anything and everything will be twisted around so they can justify whatever they wish.

I do wonder how 'understaffed' our police service would be if they simplified their over-the-top paperwork and stopped twisting laws to justify arrests that should never have occurred.

That isn't to say I have a problem with the police per say, I think there are many up-standing officers who do sterling work, unfortunately we only get to hear about the stupid ones.

Swiss effectively disappear Alps: World's largest tunnel opens

Re: You should go and have

Love the bit at the end of this BBC article. They've done their own helpful conversions.

Concrete: 4,000,000 cubic metres or 84 empire state buildings.

'Copper Cable: 3200km, more than half the distance between London and New York"

Boffins blow up water with LASERS, to watch explosions in slow-mo

Re: Always interesting

Ha ha ha, reminds me of what one of my friends did when we were much younger, except the nutter buried a load of it in the garden lit the fuse and retreated. Spectacular explosion, made a massive crater, the mud from which flew quite a distance, including splattering all over the house windows ... which he would have got away with if his mum hadn't currently been sat in there, with a few friends.

Watchdog snaps: Privatise the Land Registry? What a terrible idea!

Re: Did they actually read the consultation?

Because no Government body has ever said one thing to the public and blithely done the exact opposite through back-door deals. **cough** HMRC **cough** Yes, I have absolute trust that our glorious leaders wouldn't abuse their positions to benefit their friends **cough** Post Office undervalued sell off **cough** .. I could go on but I seem to be developing a nasty tickle in my throat.

EU mulls €3bn fine for Google

Re: Seriously...

It's not about penalising them for doing well, it is penalising them for abusing that position of dominance to stop anyone else from being able to have a chance at developing and releasing a competing product as well as practices to stifle the growth of existing competitors. If they focused on making their product the best it could be nobody would be complaining.