Posts by Pseudonymous Diehard

Half of Brit small biz hit by cyber crime. 10% spend zilch on infosec

I find arrogance in SME's to be a big barrier...not only for Cyber Security but pretty much anything.

I did some work on a charity website recently. I wont name names here. The project was dooned tobfail as the Operations Director...a hard nosed bitch who is also an activist and a hard line feminist...couldn't grasp that what she was asking me to do was either technically impossible on their £6 a month hosting or highly retarded.

I got a lecture about their on house design expertise and her long standing experience in the industry.

I did some digging and found out that she has only ever worked at this charity and started there when she was in her early 20s. She is now in her late 20s.

A liability to be sure. The lecture she gave me was hilarious...I personally have web design experience going back to 1994...ive been through everything...seen all the trends...etc...you guys are probably the same...anyway Ibwas first told "we know whatvwe're doing we've been on a training course" and "it must be you the images we're sending look fine to us".

To clarify Ibwas asking for images 720 pixels by 120 pixels at 72dpi saved as PNG files. Or something to that effect.

I was getting either raw uncompressed and uncropped photographs or farting little GIFs about 10% of the size I needed.

I couldnt crop the images fornthem as they didnt want me to have any creative control.

I have an email chain the length of Linford Christies cock repeating my requirements over and over as well as explaining why the images they sent me were wrong.

This is not an isolated incident. A lot of Small Business directors get confused between "the vision" and "the business".

Once you've launched and are turning over some dough you need to reflect on your original idea and adapt according to the new facts you have learnt about your market. If you blindly follow "the vision" without wavering even slightly you will fail.

Bottom line, SMEs are generally chock full of arrogant self angrandising wankers who think they know better.

Do you have a 'co-working mindset' and 'ephemerally involve others' in work?

Re: SharePointless

Agreed. Sharepoint is was and always will be shit.

That said it seems to be making something of a comeback. I know a chap that is about to launch a business dealing in nothing but Sharepoint consultancy.

Madness.

Hulk Hogan's sex tape, a Silicon Valley billionaire, and a $10m revenge plot to destroy Gawker

Re: Anonymous Coward

El Reg ... the emo teen of IT journalism.

Dont hate on the reg. El Reg has held my hand through a number of challenging dumps at work.

One day im hoping to cash in my upvotes (thats how it works right?) to have an El Reg writer personally come and help me birth some epic stool by rubbing my back and reassuring me through the process.

Im not fussy which one. Ill return the favour by correcting grammatical errors at the time.

Purging colons all round.

Intel reveals Xeon E7 v4: Is that 24TB in your pocket or are... oh, it is

Ive seen them for about £800 a piece.

Not that insane, but still expensive.

Take that, Mom! Turns out Super Mario Bros was all about solving complex math problems

Nerds

Obviously the equation for solving all gaming problems is up up down down left right left right B A.

ID Software simified it some way down the line to IDDQD.

And eventually Call of Duty solved all the problems with no equation at all by simply having no challenge to get in the way of a crap plot to begin with.

Marvell's fave vendors sniff latest pair of SoCs

Marvell stuff

Always looks good on paper...in practice it usually sucks.

Microsoft Surfaces are plagued with bluetooth and wifi issues vecause the crummy Marvell chipsets they use.

I think its mainly driver related though. Fidning drivers for Marvell chips is frustrating. Updates are few and far between as well.

As US court bans smart meter blueprints from public, sysadmin tells of fight for security info

Man

Why cant governments just be open and transparent? Is it really so much to ask?

Bearded Baron Shugs hired by Gov.uk to get down with the kids

Hairy Walnut

Nice.

Next-gen Tor to use distributed RNG, 55-character addresses

and now for something completely random

Why are we still trying to create entropy when there is plenty of entropy in the universe?

@Lee D

Umm...what?

Hack probing poodle sacrifice cuffed for public crap

Re: He's lucky

...and others where you a presenting spot on Match of the Day...and you get made to flog crisps for the rest of your life...

Wayne Rooney razzles in X-Men: Apocalypse plug

Rooney in Xmen?

I didnt know Dreamworks and Marvel were doing a Shrek / Xmen crossover.

Sky! Blue!, Oceans! Wet!, Yahoo! Overvalued!

Sales Strategy

Maybe they'd get more if they put it on eBay.

Some tips for the board:

Always start the bidding at 99p to garner more interest.

Go for a 10 day auction.

Never use a buy it now.

Make sure you take decent photos.

Answer questions put to you honestly.

Accurately explain why you're selling the item and the condition its on.

E.g. "Large Web 1.0 business for sale. Selling because we cant be bothered anymore, have other projects to complete but want offload the crap. May have slight scuffs and dents. In partial working order. Use for spare parts only."

Adobe launches Spark: Amateur graphical fun!

Decepticons

Adobe better hope their Spark isnt the one Megatron is after and if Megatron is after it he better have good malware protection.

World goes SIM-free, leaving Sony and HTC trailing behind

Buying

SIM free phones has fuck all to do with demand.

Its a response to shitty network practices. E.g. no updates, crapware, locking the devices etc.

We've not reached peak smartphone. We've reached peak "get your phone for 'free' from the carrier" time.

Got $130,000 down the back of the sofa? Great. Grab an HP 3D printer

10 bob

Says this printer will be restricted and wont be able to print out replacement parts for existing HP printers.

130 bags is reasonable if you want to set up ahop printing HP maintenance kits. At approx 200 smackers on average you only need to sell a thousand to make a nice profit.

I wont be turning my head at 3D printing unless its possible to print replacement parts for the 3D printer itself (not the hot bits obviously, ill have another printer for that...and so on). Now thats worth paying through the nose for.

PHP pioneer and Zend co-founder enlists for AWS big-data mission

Yeah

Its a mad language...but it is very easy to pick up and extremely flexible. I use it for all sorts...web stuff to admin scripts.

Its just easy to hack together a working script with it.

Arguably the quirkiness is what makes it easier to learn...ironically. Especially given the very usable error output.

Ive used a large variety of addins as well. The trader functions (whilst poorly documented) are very good and the LDAP functionality (again with miserable documentation) is also very powerful. So much so that I prefer it to Powershell...which isn't a hard situation to imagine.

I am by no means new to coding though...ive been at it since QBasic making tiny bananas with big 'splosions. Gorillas ftw.

A cracked window on the International Space Station? That's not good

We're missing the important question here...

A flexk of paint might be the culprit...

Why paint space stuff?

Italians rattle little tin for smartmobe mini lenses

Thank god.

We finally have a tool for reading a printed EULA.

PLA sysadmin gets six months house arrest for yanking US Army docs

deleting logs

Doesnt cover your tracks. It makes them deeper.

A glaring hole only makes me more interested and gives me a very specific window of time to investigate.

If you want to fool a sysadmin you need to make more noise over a broader period of time. Even then you're only slowing us down.

Sat TV biz Dish: I'm not an authorized iPhone repairer ... but $20 is $20

Oh no

All the popup phone cover / unlock / repair guys making the town centres look like a Bangkok street market will be put out of business.

NIST readies 'post-quantum' crypto competition

Even easier.

Dont use electronic signals as a means of secure communication.

I propose a peer to peer smoke signal network with a layer of semaphore for security.

Microsoft wants devs to take notes on their families

True but whiteboard markers run out of ink. For only 9.99 on top of your Office 365 you can have an additional 10 notes a month using Microsofts inevitablly upcoming product.

Irish mum coughs to children's allowance fiddle

This

Must be why companies with bases in Ireland pay hardly any tax.

Its theiving mums!

VXers pass stolen card data over DNS

Wouldnt

The practical solution to this be putting POS systems on an isolated network of their own with no net access?

Woz says wearables – even Apple Watch – aren't 'compelling'

Re: Network Connection

The GPS compass idea was a bit of a throwaway. I was kinda thinking if climbing mountains / piloting a rescue boat / coasteering / skiing / pretty much any extreme sport that requires locational awareness is your thing you might not want to use both hands on a phone in case you fall off of what you're clinging to / your attention is taken away for too long. Basically where a quick glance at your wrist at where the arrow is pointing is enough.

Im aware of the G shock with bluetooth...its weakness is the bluetooth requirement. All bluetooth does is shorten the life of both devices. I want my watch to be independent.

Network Connection

He hit the nail on the head there.

As for functionality...I think less is more with a watch based computer.

If the watch had its own low speed mobile data connection (GPRS would be enough) and a Pushbullet style app as well as a clock...that'd be perfect.

Especially if it had a low power e-ink display with backlight toggle.

All I care about is being able to push my own notifications to it from my google calendar or a quick API call from a script to let me know the script has finished.

A simple GPS compass might be useful as well.

Am I right?

What I dont really need to know is my heart rate.

Effectively I need is a device that compliments but is not tied to my phone.

You listening Casio? Simple and low power is what you do...make this. Now!

Cinema boss gives up making kids turn off phones: 'That's not how they live their life'

I can think of many ways

To get me back in the cinema.

1. Ban hot dogs and nachos. They fucking stink.

2. Reduce the price and while you're at it make 3D movies the same price as 2D movies.

I last went to the cinema in cape town. It cost less than a fiver. Here in blighty its £12+

3. Clean the cinemas more often. Once a year isnt enough.

4. Tier the seats. Again in CT the seats were properly tiered so nobody blocked your view.

5. Offer free parking. Again in CT the cinema validated your parking.

6. Serve cold beer in full size glass bottles at the same price as a pub. Im a cinemagoer not a football hooligan. Im also not a mug.

7. Ban romcoms.

8. Allow me to see how heavily a film is booked *before* I start the booking process.

9. Tell me in advance when the screen opens so I dont have to queue like a dole scrounger.

10. Let me take my own snacks in without being looked at sideways. Your prices are a rip off...im not paying a tenner for 150g of pick and mix when the newsagent next door does the same for a fraction of the price.

Apple pulled 2,204lbs of gold out of old tech gear

Cool

So their recycling program means they will pay me for the valuable materials in my old phone right?

Arf!

Therein is the problem with recycling.

Eco Concious Consumer pays premium for product (because it contains recycled material).

Consumer uses product for its estimated average lifespan.

Product breaks.

User puts product into recycling trash.

Recycling trash service paid for out of municipal taxes. Recycling is expensive apparently so it adds a lot.

Apple should push their recycling tech down the chain to local municipalities and should buy the recycled materials from them (at a mutually beneficial rate).

That way municipal levys for recycling are taken away fro Joe Schmoe so his tax goes down. Apple contributes something useful to society in lieu of the tax it dodges and we get to keep the environment clean.

Am I right?

Linux-fight! Dev's plan to bundle kernel patches sparks debate

Here we go

Come on $bsd_os users throw your hat in. We're waiting.

Half of people plug in USB drives they find in the parking lot

Re: Shock Horror

No thats almost the polar opposite. They are cash rich but USB port poor.

Shock Horror

Students at University dont pass up on a freebie.

Go and drop these USB drives somewhere there isnt a high concentration of poor scroungers and ill take notice.

Windows 10 debuts Blue QR Code of Death – and why malware will love it

Come to daddy...

Since a QR code looks like one of the sides of the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser...cant they just make it so that Windows users get dragged to hell by Ballmer dressed as Pinhead followed by his other cenobites one with a lip piercing containing a Clippy where they have "such sights to show you" and an "eternity to know your flesh".

If that doesnt get people off Windows I dont know what will.

Ive always imagined Microsoft Hell (coming soon) to be coloured using the NT4 pallete and be plastered with progress bars stuck at 99%.

Teal....lots of teal.

Cyber-underworld price list revealed: $500 for company email inbox, $1,200 passports, etc

Corporate Mailboxes

Who'd pay $500 to read another persons spam?

Dont these people know there are very good spam services that can send you a relentless deluge of steaming shite for free. With bo obligation to buy anything I might add.

AWS to crack $10bn annual sales this year says Jeff Bezos

AWS is cool...

But the bills dont half rack up quickly and the statements can be friggin' hard to interpret.

I use Digital Ocean myself.

Furious English villagers force council climbdown over Satan's stone booty

Legal nonesense...

I hope the locals campaigning against the removal of this rock remember that the devil is in the details.

Facebook throws BlackBerry an HTML bone

Blackberry?

Are they begging on kickstarter yet?

Teen tricks leaky Valve into publishing hot new Steam game: Watching Paint Dry

They arent the most

Boring games inexistence. The El Reg comments section is.

I waste time crafting rubbish comments to gain XP (upvotes) but theres no skill system to use the XP in.

I came here to create a high level ice mage and to grind out some loot slaying noobs, but ive since discovered the loot drops here are worse than Diablo 3 and the only class you can choose is "Anonymous Coward". What a let down.

Shittiest game of multiplayer Gedit ive ever played.

Microsoft's bigoted teen bot flirts with illegali-Tay in brief comeback

Re: "intent that conflicts with our principles and values."

But you can have a platter of SSDs.

Here's a great idea: Let's make a gun that looks like a mobile phone

Am I the only person...

That noticed it has round corners?

Apple will be pleased.

Apple stuns world with Donald Trump iPhone

I know

The Donald Trump gags are current. But what about those of us who think of Jeremy Beadle when small hands are mentioned.

Consider Mr Beadles take on the standard iPhone.

On the one hand its probably fine but on the other hand it could be massive.

Hah!

Something useful from Cupertino?! Apple sees the light – finally

Wont someone

Think of the Kryptonians?

If they use this at night the increased red light might stop them being able to open pickle jars for their late night snacks.

Luckily for Apple there probably arent enough Kryptonians to start a class action lawsuit.

Hands on with the BBC's Micro:Bit computer. You know, for kids

Oh man

How long until we get the BBC take on a "lets play" with Crystal Rainforest?

Also IT lessons in school havent been the same since token ring networks.

Hands up if you were the bastard that used to unplug your T connector because your IT teacher didnt know how the LAN worked to get an hour of "choose a game from the box" time. While they called out tech support.

*raises hand*

Google spews critical Android patch as millions of gadgets hit by Linux kernel bug

So...

If the update has been sent to manufacturers we'll see it....never?

Galaxy Note 3 here. Still going strong. Android 5.0 kernel 3.4.

Havent seen an update for ages.

My kernel build suggests 19th November 2015.

Microsoft stops accepting Bitcoin in Windows Store

Yeah well

Id tell you what cryptocurrency I use but you've probably never heard of it.

*adjusts scrat, sips PBR and blazes off on his fixie*

Trivial path for DDoS amplification attacks found by infosec bods

Cant read the full research

There appears to be a paywall.

From what I can see it looks like they simply established that TFTP ports might be open and that might alliw an attack.

Realistically though the threat is elsewhere. Id imagine a lot of these TFTP enabled devices can easily be fingerprinted and are likely to be routers / switches / WAPs etc.

Or even more worryingly...phone systems...or indeed phone handsets.

More worrying still is the fact that TFTP is usually off by default on a lot of stuff and only gets enabked when maintenance or firmware updates are required.

Forget the DDoS threat...what about malicious firmware upgrades?

I doubt the majority are actual TFTP servers since most of us only fire up a TFTP server when we need it...right?

Pentagon to Dept of Defense: Give us $580bn for cyberwar and spacewar

Kudos

For the Bladerunner reference.

Im assuming if they get the budget we'll...see things you wouldn't believe.

Drone-busting eagles to darken Blighty's skies?

Bird eh?

Well if I were strategising to bring down drones over airports, I'd use the very turkey cannon they apparently use for testing aircraft jet engines.

The jets are built to withstand the turkey, but can a drone withstand a turkey? Goggles on chaps, we need to get this to the boys in the lab.

Canonical and Spain's BQ team to put Ubuntu on a tablet

good, good...

We're getting closer.

Just make sure we can pop a terminal open on it and we're golden.

Im not that phased about space...since you can easily strip back Linux to use less space.

Just dont fuck up the graphics driver.

Id buy a tablet running a proper Linux distro in a heartbeat.

Especially if it followed a similar format to the MS surface...albeit with a usable keyboard.

What canonical needs to realise here is that us hungry geeks are looking for a portable terminal...what we'll get though might be very different.

Im not even bothered about having massive amounts of power...I work mainly via servers anyway. So my power is elsewhere. Just gimme a god damn portable terminal!

With two USB3 sockets one for usb ethernet and one for a USB serial adapter.

Once you've nailed that. A nice universal rackmounted power dock / keyboard would be epic.

AMD emits fresh open-source GPU tools for HPC, game devs

Ok Cool...

But can they stop dicking about and fix the image tearing problems on Linux now?