Posts by The Crow From Below

Data centre doesn't like your face? That's a good thing

"And yes, formal certifications do demonstrate that a provider has a certain level of process and procedure and has given due consideration to security and data protection."

Just because they can pass an accreditation and audits doesn't mean much in my eyes:

back in the early part of this century I worked for a company based on the south coast that gained both iso 27001 and iso 9001 whilst I was working there. The processes for staff to follow were written down/made up about a week before the accreditation, and were never followed post that (each time an audit was due, the paperwork was fudged and lies were given as answers to the auditors questions, which they believed). The server rack was installed in an non-airconditioned, ground floor store room with large windows on 2 walls, it was also close to a fairly large town, but far enough away from other buildings that everyone knew it was there but no one could actually see it, meaning anyone breaking in would have had plenty of time to do so (not that it would be needed as the windows were not even double glazed and led directly out to the car park to make thievery all the easier).

Oh and the door was never locked (except when the auditors were in), everyone used the admin account for every machine, server and RDP session and generally I couldn't trust that setup to securely store my mothers recipe for serving corn flakes, let alone the corporate banking and chemical production companies that entrusted their employee data to that shocker of a setup.

The kicker...the reason for not choosing a professional, secure and reliable data center was that the customers wanted to know that their data was held securely and not by a 3rd party...(I face palmed so hard when I was told this that I think I did some permanent damage)

Tim Cook: I'll give just a THIRD of what Gates gave to charity last year

Re: Charity?

Then you, sir, are a fucking moron.

I mean, seriously, how dumb can one person be to say:

"No, no I don't want you to eradicate malaria, I don't want you to save the lives of millions of starving children around the world, I don't want you to help educate people without the means to do it, and screw those dudes getting ill from drinking contaminated water every day because it is the only source for hundreds of miles....what I want is for you to pay a government organisation, which I am in no way related to and therefore can in no way benefit from directly, instead so that they can continue to make weapons and go to war killing thousands of innocent people and ripping of the population until they are effective wage slaves"

again, as I said, fucking moron.

To the down voters, I would love to know why you disagree, plus I would also like to make a list of like minded morons that I can mentally ignore comments from due to lack of logical reasoning and compassion for fellow humans.

'Why don't you buy from foreign sites?' asks Commish, snapping on the gloves

"Amazon.co.uk -> Most will not ship to europe, when they do it's by royal mail and that takes 5 - 6 weeks if it ever gets here."

I ordered from Amazon.co.uk to Danmark, it took 3 days for the package to arrive, I have heard the same experience from friends over the water in Germany as well. The problem in this case is most likely France, either at the customs end or at the delivery end (or just the same old story of making life difficult for anyone dealing with the English). Or it could be that the specific thing you ordered was out of stock and they had to wait...but in terms of availability and time to arrive from the UK once shipped I can't fault Amazon.

"The European Commission is to probe the e-commerce sector to find out why people aren’t buying across borders."

Isn't it obvious?

I live in Danmark, we have a fantastic postal system as does the UK, but still It takes around 3 days to get a package from the UK to my door. If I order from Danmark I get it next day. That's point number one.

Point number 2 is on shipping restrictions, parcel force (for example) refused to send a package to me from my parents because it contained some aftershave in it, citing restrictions on the aeroplane...I took the same package back in my hand luggage via easy jet.

Point 3 is on delays when the country does not have a quick postal service (kind of the same as point 1 but 3-4 days is acceptable, 3-4 weeks to get a package from Spain to Danmark is not).

Point 4 is on delays caused by the tax offices in both countries seeing if they can in anyway get money out of you (something I have had to fight many times).

Point 5 is on the fact that my bank will charge me an extortionate rate for foreign payments. This is the most common reason for not wanting to purchase across borders when on line, it costs more.

So there is my 5 point report on the matter, can I have my €10mil consultancy fee now?

Microsoft and Oracle are 'not your trusted friends', public sector bods

Re: Licensing audits

"It needs to be easier to be honest..."

I really don't get what is so hard about this:

I have 200 Machines, They all have windows and office on them...that means I need how many licenses?

A) 200 windows and 200 office

B) 1 windows 1 office

C) A banana

D) Armadillo. smooth on the inside crunchy on the outside. ARMADILLO!

Here's a hint, it's not B or C....

Volume licensing is not exactly rocket surgery, it's pretty easy to make sure you are covered, especially if you license Excel!

"C# in particular is being pushed more into the open source arena"

Not just more, the .NET Core has been open sourced to avoid the windows team killing it off and allowing more implementations of it to exist in various different operating systems. The C#, VB and F# compilers have all been open sourced as well as ASP.NET and the entity framework. All are available on GitHub.

If you log into your MSDN account it tells you exactly how many licenses you have used.

It's not like MS don't provide these people with easy to use tools to track the activation rates. The problem probably came from the accounts department refusing to renew the licenses because they cost too much and simple cancelled them as they didn't know what they were for, which would have triggered the audits.

Labour has a pop at the government over missed GDS targets

It really does seem that parties that leave office instantly leave all responsibility and blame on the little table by the front door for the new inhabitants of Number 10. It's like watching a bunch of primary school children trying to decide who should be the one to go and ask for their ball back from Norman the angry neighbour.

Hello? Police? Yes, I'm a car and my idiot driver's crashed me

Re: Will it be easy to disable ?

Why would you want to? I know the whole "nothing to hide nothing to fear" counter arguments but seriously this is a system that can genuinely save your life and you want to get rip it out of a brand new car just because you forgot your tin foil hat today? it's 2015 and if you haven't worked out that all the worlds countries governments are spying on everybody 24/7 through every device that we have then you need to catch up.

"Using systems provided by anybody even remotely connected to the US means leaving yourself open to abuse by the US government, at least for non-Americans at any rate."

Any system? Like the internet that you are using right now?

"This means that US government could potentially demand that the provider allows for this location functionality be switched on without the users knowledge and without the public authorities for the country concerned ever knowing what has happened."

Like the US controlled GPS satellites everyone currently uses? Or the mobile phone in your pocket?

"This rather makes a mockery of any suggestion that this will never be about watching us IMO, and given the sharing arrangements between organisations on both sides of the pond it will probably be a real boon for agencies keen to spy on people here too."

You think they can't already via the smartphones that Google (American) and Apple (ditto) saturated the market with?

I'm sorry but this sort of tin foil hattery is even more crazy than normal, especially when you could compare what you have said to ANY product with electronics inside (at some point they ALL come into contact with some company heavily connected to the USA). Your concerns are valid but are WAY too late to fear this sort of system when you already cart around everything they need to track you 24x7 anyway.

Huh? I have re-read your comment and the article multiple times and I am still none the wiser as to what you are trying to say or what point you are trying to make.

US car companies have been fitting this sort of system to vehicles for years (OnStar). All the EU have done is make this mandatory.

PIRATES and THIEVES to get Windows 10 as BOOTY

Re: Windows for free?

What do you run that causes "none of the stuff you use" to work properly on windows? If you have software designed for another OS than windows then you need to use that OS, don't go jamming that square peg in the round hole and start blaming the hole for being the wrong shape.

We need copyright reform so Belgians can watch cricket, says MEP

"And if someone wanted Finnish bread in Germany and someone was willing to ship it, why wouldn't they be allowed?"

They can, the argument about bread is a bunch of crap, I can easily pick up some reikäleipä in Germany and that's pretty much the definition of buying Finnish bread in a German supermarket or bakery!!

Osbo: Choose a IoT fridge. Choose spirit-crushing driverless cars

Re: Am I missing something here?

"So what exciting control activity am I missing out on when, it seems, other people often need to control their fridge at 2 in the morning from the other side of the world?"

You are missing out on the ability to be standing in Tesco at 3am on a sunday morning (after your pregnant wife has screamed you out of the house to go pick up some turkey slices so she can have a sandwich cause she woke up hungry) and check to see whether or not you have enough beer left in order to cope with the rest of the day because there is no chance you'll make it to the offy and back without her noticing and therefore removing your balls for leaving her in "a distressed state".

In all seriousness though if you have an IOT fridge, washing machine, freezer, circuit breaker, lights etc etc, they can communicate with each other to make power consumption more efficient, this is very important in an age where we are consuming more and more power but building less and less power generation centres (usually down to the nimbys, but that's another conversation).

Power consumption overall will not change (your bill wont reduce much at all if any) but if your fridge knew you were running a wash and had the kettle on it may delay firing up the compressor for 5 mins whilst the kettle stopped boiling, lowering the overall load on the power network. This is not so important in areas where power is plentiful (most of the UK at the moment) but in 10 to 20 years time when we are all humming around in electric cars it could be a very big deal. When power rationing starts then the kettle being able to say to you "if you turn me on you'll stop your wifes hair dryer working because there's not enough power available at the moment" may just save your life one day (did I mention the pregnancy thing!?).

I think people are putting too much emphasis on controlling the devices via the internet, rather than the reality which will be that the vast majority of options made available by the IOT will be automated services. Yes you will be able to turn on the lights with your phone, but that is pretty much going to be the only thing people will actually use the IOT for when it comes to controlling devices themselves, as everything else usually needs an additional human input, like putting the bread in the toaster before turning it on.

My self-driving cars may lead to human driver ban, says Tesla's Musk

Re: Not a problem solved

"As for duff kit and dirty sensors - I'd pretty much expect these vehicles to refuse to depart if they don't have a defined minimum set of kit available, and I'd expect them to take themselves off to be fixed or call for service when things do go awry."

I am not really talking about total sensor failure as I agree the car simply wouldn't allow you to move of if it had a problem like that, but what about the many occasions where some dirt or a frayed wire caused the sensor to appear to work fine to begin with but then randomly gave out duff signals when going over a bump or around a corner?

"I think the ownership model changes when self driving vehicles become commonplace. Why would you need to own one? In the main though, why own something that gets used for a tiny portion of the day?"

For all the same reasons people currently own cars. Not all people like the idea of leasing cars (it's why people don't all do it at the moment) and would prefer to own their car out right. The ownership model is exactly the same as with a conventional car, and people will be very unwilling to buy into a forced lease (BMW tried it with their Hydrogen cars, as did Honda with theirs, both cars were magnificent but the lease only model made people shy away from it)

Re: Not a problem solved

"It will take statistically proven decisions, and it will do that from a much broader array of sensing inputs than a human could."

With one massive draw back. Sensors go wrong, stop working, wear out, get dirty and many other things that would cause them to give an invalid or no reading at all. Then you have the average commentard who believes that Knangjung Ditchfinders at £50 a tyre are just as good as the Brand name tyre at £300 each. Then that same commentard takes it for a service outside of the dealer network cause his mate can do it a bit cheaper but "it's just the same as the dealer but half the cost" then misses a critical hardware update for the braking sensor, or his mate doesn't realise that the sensors are a serviceable part and so fails to check them at all.

I could go on naming issues, and most people are right in that the failings come from the human rather than machine side, but the fact is that people are lazy and will always try to save costs where ever possible. I still get worried when I see people not using brand name tyres (or worse, having different brands on each wheel) so I will never be convinced that people can be trusted to service their autonomous car correctly.

Re: AI - As Bender would say

"So what happens if I set up my AI car to watch the movie Deathrace a few hundred times?"

Ok Google. If they scatter, go for the baby and the mother.

Samsung puts eight-core processor IN A WATCH

Re: what are these watches actually for

"To me any watch function that replicates what already happens on your phone is not much use."

Like displaying the current date and time?

Vince Cable opens hipster-friendly London tech creche

"Why, if the UK performed so consistently highly in innovation and research, are so many of our cities lagging behind the rest of the country in terms of growth?"

Because cities are full and "urban sprawl" from the cities into the surrounding towns means that you need to reclassify the city boundaries rather than spout bullshit claims to the press about how cities aren't growing?

Facebook unveils P2P moola-to-mates payment feature

Frapeing just got a whole lot more expensive.

Sit back and let someone else manage your telephony

"You mean like we did 30 years ago when we just had the local Telco install phones in each office, each with a line back to the exchange where all the fancy stuff was done by experts who knew the kit? Sounds reasonable."

HAH!! As if the IT world would go back to old technology! next you'll be telling us we'll all be moving back to having a central mainframe running dumb terminals in some sort of computational cloud based....set.........up........DAMMIT!

Google adds evil-code scanning to Play Store

Re: The problem is app stores itself

"Plus there is the problem that the classification of malware vs non malware is rather subjective."

No it's not, malware, by definition, is software that has malicious intent, advertising is not malicious it is a revenue stream for the people that you are taking for granted (the software developers). If you gave even two shits about supporting the community you claim to be taking full advantage of then you would change your attitude quickly. Not having the source code also does not make a product malware, but lets face it you are the sort of person that agrees with North Korea and China on how to review software, I suppose you want us to believe this can't possibly make you a bit mental!

"I for example consider apps without source code or apps which display advertisements malware."

Then you have completely misunderstood the meaning of the term malware. If you really think that and aren't just being a liar (which I suspect is the case) then please post a list of your computers hardware components and tell us how you managed to get the source code for every driver, every chipset and every piece of software you use. (drivers and software is fairly easy if you limit yourself to only the opensource stuff, but the code running at a lower level than the OS is much more difficult to get hold of)

As a software developer who actually needs to do things like eat, drink and have a roof over my head all I can say to your attitude of calling my software malware is FUCK YOU.

MARIO MOBES: Nintendo hooks up with DeNA, births NX gaming system

"Ignoring points 4 and 5, this already exists with emulators and the touchscreen crontrols are always awful. Borderline unplayable. Definitely unenjoyable."

The emulators are illegal at worst and not built with touch screen in mind at best. When you get a company that knows how to build a game then touchscreen works very well, but emulators are a problem because they are usually just ports of the PC version of the emulators, so rarely work on phones in the way they were intended.

As an example of a working port GTA San Andreas is a fantastic game to play on the iPad and the touch screen and accelerometer control IMO adds to the game rather than takes away from it. Nintendo can easily make Mario work on a touchscreen phone, they have the money and the skills to do it right if they want.

Remember that the original Mario was on the NES which had a D-Pad and 4 buttons, 2 of which were start and select! which is easily done on a touch screen without it being unplayable or unenjoyable.

Nintendo...Follow my 5 step program to get back the "adults"

1) Take the original Mario game

2) Change nothing

3) Port to mobiles

4) Charge 99p

5) Profit

If I could get Mario on my phone I'd buy it, but not anything but the original games, the newer ones suck donkey kongs moist nappy.

Flying cars will take to the skies in 2017, if government allows

Re: Lordy

You only drive in 2 dimensions? pfffrrrttttt clearly not trying hard enough.

***Dixie horn***

Rezzed: Indie gaming shows off its finest

I downloaded carmageddon: reincarnation when it was first released on steam as a preview. I loved the game when it was first released and was very happy to support the development of the new version.

They have done an awesome job of things. the humour is better, and more crude than even before, the game voice shouting "YOU RECTUM" when destroying a car was enough for me to know they had kept the most important part of that game for me, the fun.

If you played the original then you have to play this one, it's a Cunning Stunt away from being the best car based game I've played in over a decade.

Improved Apple Watches won't get more expensive? Hmmm

"That's just mad. $700 worth of iPhone in 2007 is worth the same as $700 of iPhone 6 in 2015? Adjusted only for the general inflation rate over those years and not for the improvement in performance? Whut?"

Apple (it's manufacturers) have continued to improve the design, manufacturing and distribution costs over the years. I am pretty sure I have read somewhere (can't remember and can't be bothered to look for the article) that Apple have reduced the whole design, build, distribute process cost in half from what it once was. So they are factoring in the increased performance of the hardware in the price, they have just reduced the costs to themselves massively.

So whilst people are saying "wow look at what you can get for the same money as 8 years ago" they really should be saying "hey Apple, you pay so much less now, where the fucks our discount"...

BBC gives naked computers to kids (hmm, code for something?)

Re: Great idea and all that...

"who the hell is going to teach this stuff?"

Exactly the same person that taught me how to program on the original BBC Micro...Me and my dad...well, more accurately, the child and their parents...

Have we really reached an age where parental responsibility for educating your child is the sole responsibility of a government run establishment. Hell in my day (and we are only talking the 80s here) my parents chucked the BBC at me, I hooked it up to the TV then started copying lines out of my programming book, it kept me quiet for hours and my younger brother owes his life to this piece and quiet mum and dad were getting....*wink* *wink* *nudge* *nudge* ***realisation of previous statements*** ***little bit of sick in mouth***

iTunes snafu: DNS fail borked Apple's app & iTunes stores for 10 HOURS

Re: As usual, with Apple you pay more and get less

I know the article references an "idiot tax" but I can only conclude that you have some sort of idiot tax avoidance scheme because the force is damn strong in you if you've actually been paying to access the iTunes store.

$17,000 Apple Watch: Pointless bling, right? HA! You're WRONG

"Well, if we're to be honest about it, it's because Apple's pretty certain there's enough people out there stupid enough to buy one to make it worthwhile."

Is it really stupid to be successful enough at life that you can afford to indulge yourself with a $17K gadget? I am sure they would call you stupid for selling your Apple shares in the late 80s that they held on to and made them rich enough to actually afford Apple hardware in the first place.

Doh! iTunes store goes down AFTER Apple Watch launch

*Yawn*

I am getting so bored with the reg coverage of anything Apple tasting of bitter resentment from all of the contributors that it is actually putting me off visiting the site at all to read some of the articles written by the adults.

Bring in some people that know how to write a balanced non biased article using grown up words rather than ranting about, and giving huge amount of front page space to a company that doesn't like them and they don't like themselves.

'Roly poly' soft, wobbly robot BANGS EXPLOSIVELY, leaps 0.5m in air

Re: "They're They're Scott, its just the internet, not the Times."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH so conflicted!"

My work here is

(•_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

done

Re: So

"Hopefully better than its security against rogue apostrophes."

They're They're Scott, its just the internet, not the Times.

So

It's a slightly miss shaped sphere and it has an open exhaust port on the surface leading directly to the most combustible area of it.

I wonder what it's security against teeny tiny rebel invasions is like.

A gold MacBook with just ONE USB port? Apple, you're DRUNK

Re: If only 2 ports were allowed, why a 3.5mm jack?

A 3.5mm jack can make use of anything from the free pair of headphones sent to you 20years ago on the cover of smash hits to you £1000 baby rhino foreskin covered, gold plated, noise cancelling phones from the latest rapper turned audiophile con artist.

I would much rather have that than have to fart about with bluetooth headphones only to find out I've forgotten to charge them that day and therefore cannot listen to my music.

In the age of wireless are cables really needed?

For me the answer is of course. I have wireless everything but for playing games I have to use a wired keyboard, mouse and network connection to avoid "lag", meaning my main PC at home uses all 8 USB ports for various different things.

The thing is that what I tend to use instead of my laptop now is my iPad which also has a single port used both for charging and output to my monitor plus the head phone socket. I have not had a problem with this setup for the past 3 years. So I doubt the people buying the new macbook will not have much problem either...and if you can plug it into the USB slot in your car to charge all the better (I doubt this is possible due to current requirements but would be nice to find out)

Apple Watch: Wait a minute! This puny wrist-puter costs 17 GRAND?!

Re: What's that sound?

"Can I hear the sound of barrels being scraped?"

It's probably just the sound from your IOT toaster.

GSMA: Er, sorry about that MWC brothel ad with our logo

Re: Exploitation?

"I go to work every day and get paid. Am I being exploited?"

Yes....Yes, you are!

Tired of IoT hype? Internet of SLUGS and SPIDERS is the reality

Re: Former?

"Dan just headed in different directions"

At the same time? must have been one hell of an explosion.

Win! El Reg exceedingly fine mug collection

Re: FTW

GERMAN Lidl biscuits for my ENGLISH TEA...yer aving a laugh aint ya!!! Next you'll be telling me to start using FRENCH mustard on my ham sandwich or ITALIAN Sausage in my missues, you're sick you are.....SICK.

How does a global corporation switch to IP Voice?

Re: Interception law

What are you talking about? Have you skipped your pills today? In my example my ISDN (the protocol/service I am replacing with VOIP) is encrypted end to end, so when I replace it with VOIP the voice traffic will still be encrypted (possibly using a newer more secure method, but the ISDN was still relatively secure for its time), but the data interception is the same as it has always been, which is what I mentioned in my original post.

So if they could read your secure voice data before they can still read it now, if they can't because it was correctly encrypted they still can't, that was my only point with my comment stating that the interception of the data is just as possible as it was with ISDN, I never mentioned actually being able to use the intercepted data for anything.

Re: Interception law

"Some countries don't allow VoIP because it by-passes their normal telco snooping."

Which countries? there were a few that people claimed don't allow it but I have held VOIP conferences with people from most of the countries claiming it has been banned.

Dubai, Brazil, Mexico and China are good examples where people claim it is banned but in reality it isn't, at least not for business.

Re: Interception law

Unless your company name has 6 letters and means a really really big number, then you wont own the communications network used to transmit the VOIP traffic, so interception is still just as possible as with the ISDN used previously.

Nokia boss smashes net neutrality activists

"Connected cars, for example, will need near-instant response times if they are to avoid accidents"

I know it was a throwaway comment but for the love of Bob who the hell thinks that using the internet is a good idea to help avoid accidents?!

"Sorry, your iCar was unable to connect to the internet because the server stopped responding"

Sadly the text to voice will only be able to read out the "Sorry" part before your brain is smeared over the bald patch of the OAP in front of you who has suddenly stopped in the outside lane of the M1 to adjust his snazzy seat covers.

Facebook sad-nav: How to put depressed chums on internet suicide watch

Is this not just a bit of a facebook social twist on Clippy?

"{friendname} says that it looks like you are trying to kill your self, would you like some help with that

- Yes please, I can't go on

- Please ignore, I am just whoring for attention

- Please ignore, {friendname} is just being a dick"

Re: Good idea.

Based on what I have heard through various media outlets, if facebook really wanted to help prevent teen suicides then they should simply shutter their doors and pull the plug.

MP resigns as security committee chair amid 'cash-for-access' claims

"Is there a particular reason MP's seem to get away with resigning when this happens"

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

George Bernard Shaw

US trade bods: No, your iPhone can't detect CANCER

Re: Minor slap

I used to work with a company in the UK that was using phone cameras to take pictures of moles, review them and give you a green, yellow or red score as to whether or not you had cancer. It actually worked as well, so there's no need to call people "stupid fucks get what they deserve" when there really are systems out there that do what is being claimed by these guys.

LinkedIn values your privacy at ONE WHOLE LOUSY DOLLAR

Re: Once again

It shows more how worthless and pointless class action law suites are, unless you are a lawyer.