Posts by Ben Norris

Sussex Police gives up on £790k Gatwick drone shutdown probe

Re: Not so certain- Detection?

How would you plan to tell the difference between a drone and a mobile phone carried by a passenger?

New UK drone laws are on the way – but actual Drones Bill still in limbo

Boundary is the outer fence https://www.caa.co.uk/Commercial-industry/Airports/Aerodrome-licences/Licences/Aerodrome-licences-and-boundary-maps/

23,000 HTTPS certs will be axed in next 24 hours after private keys leak

Thumbs from the cowboys on a bandwagon amongst us mean nothing to me.

Cos if you look closely at the technical details they don't have the platform to guarantee reliability, nor the physical security to be trustworthy, and the unnecessarily short expiry that enforces automation means that any interruption to that will render you without a working site. There's no pragmatic fallback to make it robust, they've chosen to design it in a fragile manner because their ideals are more important than your uptime.

It's a bunch of idealist amateurs. If you are playing around, learning that is fine but for any real production site it just isn't credible.

Lets Encrypt is not fit for purpose, not sure why you are recommending that.

Crunch time: Maplin in talks to sell the business

tbh maplin has been irrelevant for quite some time. Could have been the herald of the maker movement but completely missed the boat on that.

Whoever buys it needs to stock a wider range of parts. Else they might as well throw in the towel to ebay, amazon, etc.

Drone idiots are still endangering real aircraft and breaking the rules

Re: Prove it

Ok so lets ban cats too. We can't wait until a cat damages a plane!

These drones are too light to physically do any damage and most of the supposed sightings are at physically impossible altitudes and speeds. They pose no threat to air traffic. People are even legally allowed to fly them in most of the places you are griping about.

This is a case of any flash of a bird or carrier bag becomes a drone instead of a ufo. And a sensationalist media whipping a paranoid public into a frenzy to sell advertising.

Re: Prove it

There hasn't been a single accident involving a drone. Lets licence the sensationalist reporters and foaming knee jerkers and deal with 'the problem' far more effectively.

PC sales sinking almost as fast as Donald Trump's poll numbers

Re: Let's see:

"Intel's cunning revenue generation plan of changing the socket with each new CPU release"

To call it revenue generation really demonstrates your ignorance. Chipset features are being updated at least as quickly as cpu features these days and more needs to match in order to work at all. New chipsets with new cpu families are a necessity for innovation because CPUs are not the independant black box that they have been in the past.

Also hypervisors already have hardware support. Depending on what exactly your idea of not running in software is, it is either not physically possible or has been available in CPUs since 2005!

M.2 SSD drive format is under-rated. So why no enterprise arrays?

+1 for lack of hotswapping. None of these internal bus flash systems will replace SAS/SATA based drives in enterprise systems until standards or implementations for hotswapping and external access are offered.

When is a refurbished server not refurbished? Ask this Dell reseller

The problem with Dell's just in time model is that the customer generally doesn't have weeks to wait for systems to be built and delivered when they can get the same thing next day from a reseller for considerably lower prices!

Chip company FTDI accused of bricking counterfeits again

Re: Goodbye FTDI

They have not bought fake parts. The parts don't claim to be FTDI in any way, they just happen to be trying to be compatible with the driver.

DWP building a separate ID tool as Verify can’t cut it, whisper sources

Re: This is a solved problem surely?

@DoctorSyntax this only highlights how hard it is to verify who somebody is when documents can be so easily forged.

Sued for using HTTPS: Big brands told to cough up in crypto patent fight

Re: Personal Liability

So what happens when a big business starts using an individual's patented invention without paying? This would make the law only work for the big guys.

GCHQ director blasts free market, says UK must be 'sovereign cryptographic nation'

"I don't think that they are [contradictory]. I would have no issue with lawful, warranted access."

How do you provide warranted access to truely secure encryption if the parties involved don't want to give up the key? Your opinion on whether it is reasonable is irrelevant, without a backdoor, it is impossible. That is the contradiction. Either it is secure from everybody including gov or its not. Backdoors are there for everyone, if gov insists on some type of masterkey hackers and foreign powers will have that in no time because how will it be possible for gov bureaucracy to use that key(s) without passing them around (and losing them)?

'I posted winning race ticket in Facebook selfie ... and someone stole it!'

Worse still, loads of people post pictures of their keys when they buy a house and also when they are going on holiday!

UK ministers, not judges, to sign off on Brit spies' surveillance

Re: Yo Gobshit Granny May

That is actually just what Cameron has brainwashed you to think. Labour had a far better record on the economy and spent LESS than this Conservative government. Leading upto the banking crisis the Conservatives were fighting regulation while Labour were trying to increase it, so repeatedly blaming Labour for lack of regulation really only fools the naive voters. The tories say they want to make work pay, meanwhile opposing minimum wage rises, tax credits, etc. Overall they have made a right cock up of the economy, the only thing they have succeeded at is lining fatcats pockets at the expense of the rest of us.

Don't bother buying computers for schools, says OECD report

headline jumps to wrong conclusion

Writing pads don't magically make children smarter either, but they are equally vital to have.

This report is more about quashing false expectations, it absolutely does not say that computers are unnecessary in education.

Britain’s device-theft capital is now … lovely Leicestershire

It is ok, they are only stealing from odd numbered pockets!

Antiques in spaaaaace! Retired space shuttles cannibalised for parts

Imagine if someone had said "We need to reuse stonehenge because it's a bit cheaper than digging up fresh rock"

The short term funding issue should not mean throwing away important world heritage.

Two weeks of Windows 10: Just how is Microsoft doing?

Newsflash: people didn't want the gadget bar in Windows 95, they still don't want it in Windows 10

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

Should be called noobsport. Having the same connector with different capabilities is idiotically bad UI

Sony tells hacked gamer to pay for crooks' abuse of PlayStation account

Re: I had a similar issue.....

At least you had a resolution eventually, Sony stand in front of any evidence and refuse to do what is right.

Re: Can't say I'm very sympathetic.

The point is there are no actual costs for Sony, they can remove the item from the account and playstation as easily as they added it. Not refunding any clown making unsubstantiated claims is one thing, not refunding where they have evidence and acknowledge fraud was committed is bad faith.

No refunds under any circumstances is their standard policy. They charged me £39.99 just before christmas for a renewal that I had cancelled. Despite proof that they had accepted the cancellation they still refuse to refund the charge and gave the same ultimatum to block my account if I use the bank or small claims court to reverse the charge.

They think they can completely ignore the law and take money as they please. I won't ever purchase anything from them again.

Millions of voters are missing: It’s another #GovtDigiShambles

Re: And there was me thinking...

to be fair to GDS there is not much they can do if antiquated Gov processes only allow them to be a frontend handing off registrations to manual paperwork departments.

The real problem is that Gov isn't embracing digital processes, but trying to slap on the veneer of GDS, etc. to give the appearance they are moving forward. However it is failing because they haven't updated how they fundamentally work.

Man hauled before beak for using drone to film Premiership matches

Re: The problem is complex

The rules only need changing if people flying WITHIN the rules cause (potential) accidents. If they are ignoring the rules anyway, then the rules wern't relevant to that incident. In fact looser rules would mean more people following the parts that ARE important.

I'm not suggesting that anyone should fly a drone drunk. However I'm also not suggesting that we should ban all cars from the road because very occasionally the steering breaks and one veers off the road.

Science tells us what is safe and what isn't. The rules should be based on sense, not a bunch of troglodyte mumbo jumbo.

Re: The problem is complex

How does a bunch of people flying outside the existing rules make a case for tighter ones when there were no accidents involved in any of them? Surely this makes a case for looser controls?

People are perfectly happy for a lorry to come within 1m of them as it drives by at 60mph yet are terrified of a 1kg drone pootling around at walking pace?

Why are we not seeing thousands maimed already, when there are endless clips on youtube of amateurs flying within inches of their faces? Because the dangers are being wildly overstated.

BACK OFF, spooks: UK legal hacking code should be 'resisted at all costs' says lawyer

Re: The Picture

Its from a spy comedy show, 'get smart'. The implication being that our spys and their overlords are bumbling idiots.

Erik Meijer: AGILE must be destroyed, once and for all

clearly a friday troll article!

people who complain about agile generally arn't doing it properly

Are virtualisation and the cloud SNUFFING OUT traditional backup software?

Currently highest tape sales ever, so no.

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/The-unstoppable-rise-of-tape-storage-continues/ba-p/180219#.VO8Zui7LJOi

GDS: We might miss our digi-goal. Quick, MAKE IT BIGGER

High volume is not as tricky as high complexity. Tip: you don't put it all in one big database. Banks have had sharding for centuries, its not a new concept.

Win Server 2003 custom support: That's NOT going to be fun

Re: Maybe you could just...

They didn't stop selling it 12 years ago, in fact it is still purchasable now!

HORRIFIED Amazon retailers fear GOING BUST after 1p pricing cockup

Re: price mistakes

The problem with amazon's system is that they despatch the goods for the seller with no way to sanity check or intervene.

BT Infinity ‘working to fix problem’ after three days of outages

You can't just change your DNS settings, because BT hijack all DNS. If you set your DNS to 8.8.8.8 you still get BT's server and not google. :(

The gender imbalance in IT is real, ongoing and ridiculous

As AC put it so well, the reason for lack of women in IT is NOT because it is misogynistic or unwelcoming but because they opt out of learning the skills.

Worst still the SJWs repeatedly telling everyone the myth that it is a toxic, sexist environment are only making the situation worse by putting off more girls from choosing it as a career path!

@Jagged well then you are a fool because currently IT has a shortage of skilled workers and demand is very high. It is one of the few professions that completely bucked the recession. Since ICT was introduced and killed the previous bubble of interest there are far fewer people coming into the industry and chasing jobs. Demand to automate and increase productivity is higher than ever, that requires IT people to implement.

Too 4K-ing expensive? Five full HD laptops for work and play

why on earth would you want a 4k laptop? People are already complaining that the icons are too small, its just not appropriate. When you can't see the pixels its a waste of money/effort like HD phones

Webcam hacker pervs in MASS HOME INVASION

Shame that this is widely being misreported as hackers snooping rather than users leaving them unprotected. The message that there is something easy that they need to do about it has been lost from the headline.

Multi-petabyte open sorcery: Spell-binding storage

Re: Cost of SSD seems overestimated

Well for a start a £300 SSD does not have a super capacitor so would likely corrupt your RAID at the first power outage. Then there is all the supporting hardware, you can't just buy a petabyte of disks and bung them in willy nilly and expect any kind of performance or reliability. And how are you planning to back all this up?

As they say, the devil is in the detail.

Attack of the drones: ‘Nefarious’ private use rising, says top Blighty copper

Re: Prison Contraband

In the UK we invented a wonderous new technology known as netting.

Brit cops nab six in Silk Road 2.0 drugs sting

Well now that you've admitted it here they can just get your details from El Reg and your ISP

Amazon hopes fire stick will light up its video service

When Amazon took over the service from Lovefilm it went rapidly downhill. They have filled it with TV boxset, mostly old and their homemade very US centric series trying to stumble on another game of thrones.

They clearly don't love film anymore because very few new films are added on a regular basis and all the brand new stuff requires payment above the subscription.

It is not surprising that people don't want a service that they have ruined.

YARR! Pirates walk the plank: DMCA magnets sink in Google results

One rule for them and another for everyone else. When google themselves expect to be treated as an indexer not content provider, why are they not applying the same to others?

Martha Lane Fox: Yeuch! The Internet is made by men?!?

Re: Online Voting

4) where people find it difficult to get out of their home to a voting office (or postbox) through disability?

Trying to pretend that online voting wouldn't be far easier and subsequently encourage more people to do it is just moronic. There is no doubt that it would be beneficial, doing it in a secure way is the only part that is quite tricky.

A drone of one's own: Reg buyers' guide for UAV fanciers

Re: 400 feet rule

@stu 4 If my drone is within 400ft of me, then you can't possibly crash into my drone without being within 500ft of me (a person). Therefore you must be breaking flight regulations.

Re: Ignore the licence requirements

There is a reason that pedestrians arn't allowed to walk on the motorway. Highlighting the lack of safety in paragliding is not really a good argument for unreasonable regulation on drones. As you point out the pheasant is not regulated at all!

Re: Ignore the licence requirements

So you are basically saying you have insufficient visibility and poor control of your paraglider so as not to be able to see or avoid obstacles in the sky. Why is it that you are allowed to fly them again? Lets regulate the unsafe vehicle in this scenario of yours, not the highly accurately positioned and stable one!

You mean Lithium Polymer not Lithium Ion. Thats the one used in laptops.

Poor quality article in general. :(