Posts by Ian Chard

EE!? The sound customers make when the interwebz don't work

They run their own DNS so that, if they so choose, they can exercise control over DNS traffic and potentially monetise it. See VM's obnoxious 'Advanced Error Search' which gives you a search page instead of NXDOMAIN and thereby breaks VPNs.

Internet of snitches: Anyone who can sniff 'Thing' traffic knows what you're doing

WeMo switches use--

nat.xbcs.net

api.xbcs.net

fs.xbcs.net

www.belkin.com

any or all of which might be needed for them to work.

Microsoft backports data slurp to Windows 7 and 8 via patches

Re: Disable CEIP?

I have CEIP switched off, but I can see my laptop still trying to resolve settings-win.data.microsoft.com and vortex-win.data.microsoft.com. I have them in an RPZ on my local resolver so it always gets NXDOMAIN. Haven't tried with the hosts file -- was worried that a future update could just revert my change.

AWS breaks silence over Truecrypt's role in data import/export

So encrypt your data before sending it to S3. Why would anyone not do this?

PayPal's fizzog-based payments app rubbished over reliability worries

Facial recognition is inherently unreliable

Remember when all plastic cards were going to have the account holder's photo on the back? That idea was trialled and scrapped when it was found that shop staff failed to identify a blatantly different person most of the time[0]. It takes skill and practice to match a (probably bad) photograph to a stranger's face in a second or two. Difficult to see any layer of security here.

[0] I can't find a reference, sorry... and my memory is crap so this might all be rubbish.

REVEALED: Cyberthug tool that BREAKS HSBC's anti-Trojan tech

Hands up who trusts Trusteer.

Anyone... anyone...

Limbaugh: If you hate Apple then you're a lefty blog-o-twat hipster

He got something right!

> Republicans to them, he says, “must seem like aliens from Mars, racists, sexists [and] bigot homophobes.”

Indeed they do.

Israeli activists tell Hawking to yank his Intel chips over Palestine

Re: Israel's naked selfishness is gross to behold

I've been called anti-Semitic for suggesting that Israel's policies might not be entirely sensible and constructive, and I'm Jewish.

As many others have said: Jews != Israelis != Israel != Israeli government.

Big Brother is prosecuting you: More cops to use court vid chats

Witness demeanour

> It's not like the video-part of it adds anything to proceedings that the court can act on ("This witness is obviously lying because he looks a bit shifty", etc.)

Actually that is something the court will take into account. The magistrate (or judge & jury) will often refer to the demeanour and manner of a witness if it goes to the veracity of their evidence. Police officers are witnesses in the same sense as any other witness, and it worries me that permitting them to give evidence behind a veil will give the prosecution a small but significant advantage. Sometimes money is worth spending in the interests of justice.

First full landing site and colour pictures back from Mars

Everything about this is awesome

I am absolutely loving reading every little snippet about this -- so much nicer than day job news of the form 'here's a grey humming box that's 1.06% better than last year's grey humming box'.

Nokia drops Lumia 900 price to $0 in response to bug outrage

The company will push out a patch

that won't be received cos the data doesn't work.

Bookeen Cybook Odyssey e-book reader

Every time my eyes see 'Bookeen'...

...my brain sees 'Broken'.

New dole system is 'digital by default', like it or not

'professional facilitation of agile elaboration workshops'

I'm willing to bet that no-one, not even the author of that document, knows what that phrase means.

Presumably they just hire people who say 'yeah baby, I'll facilitate the crap out of those agile elaboration workshops, and professionally too'.

Thumbs Up Desktop Phone

Make one with a rotary dial and a bell

and then I'll buy it!

Man who blasted five million text spams gets wrist slap

loanmod-gov.net

is currently serving a single file that looks like Cisco firmware. Odd.

Hackers break SSL encryption used by millions of sites

Trusteer

Sadly this will just make my bank even more eager for me to install this Trusteer dreck...

Sony drives DAB+ motoring

Ugh, that display!

Was a proper dot-matrix display really too much to ask for? That horrible segmented display makes the whole thing look cheap.

New UK 'leccy meters remotely run via Voda 2G

Blanket?

Not where I live -- the only mobile operator available has zero indoor coverage. The meter can talk to itself.

Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate G2 USB 3.0 Flash drive

Re: Is the manufacturer limiting future improved products?

> Giving your product the name "Ultimate" rather indicates that it cannot be improved. Sigh.

It didn't stop Sun^H^H^HOracle with the Ultrasparc, Ultrasparc II, Ultrasparc III.....

E-petitions site: Death wish FAIL

Alternatively they could get rid of this farce altogether

or at the very least withhold the signer numbers until the petition closes to prevent bandwagoning.

Facebooking juror gets 8 months

Re: Brains

> > most people with a bit of brains will do anything to get out of jury service"

> Not sure I'd want my fate to be in the hands of a bunch of self-serving arseholes like that, however clever they might be.

Absolutely. Serving on a jury is a civic duty, and 'getting out of it' is simply selfish and anti-social. Equally so is watching your fellow jurors ignore or abuse the process without informing the judge.

Creationists are infiltrating US geology circles

@sabroni

'...Or genuinely unable to respect other people's opinions, however misguided you may believe them to be?'

Other people's opinions are not automatically worthy of respect.

Wi-Fi strikes alliance with mains networking tech

If you have a billion years to configure it

then you could use Asterisk and do VoIP.

Apple Magic Trackpad

Doctors be prepared

for a whole new type of RSI!

BCS Linux-baiting sparks flame war

If the BCS publishes a magazine and there's no members left to read it

is it still a pile of bollocks?

Apple coughs to iPhone 3G IOS 4 upgrade problems

S=snail

My 3GS is really sluggish since the 4.0 upgrade with regular freezes of a few seconds where it is completely unresponsive... most annoying, but slightly gratifying to know I'm not alone.

IK Multimedia iRig and AmpliTube iPhone app

Hardly gig-proof

I can't imagine taking a small, delicate effects box made of glass on stage with me. When they were designing the input jack thingy, they should have gone further and enclosed the phone in a gig-proof case, protecting the screen and the 3.5mm plug that's itching to come out at the worst possible moment. If this was properly gig-hardened then I'd definitely go for it.

BCS trustee threatens rebels with libel action

Sounds familiar

An organisation reinventing itself and suing everyone... hmmm, sounds SCO familiar.

FSA: Of course customers don't read contracts

Apple

should take heed; last time I was asked to assent to modified T&Cs on my iPhone, it said 'page 1 of 90'.

Apple uncloaks deep details of its 11 iPad apps

Who cares if it's any good

when it's that shiny?

BT hijacks business browsers

Funnily enough they phoned me the other day

BT: would you like our broadband service? [5 minutes of blah free crap software]

Me: can you give me a static IP address?

BT: is that a website?

Me: *click*

FBI nicks 22 in classic bribery sting

whatever happened to

entrapment?

Atheists smite online God poll

Surely the title should have been

Bear Grylls is an Alpha Fail

CSC shuts final salary pension scheme

@AC

> I can understand why people would be upset about losing a Final Salary Pension but to strike over it is counter productive, especially in the current economic climate.

I understand what you're saying, and if they had said 'everyone takes a 5% pay cut until things improve, or mass redundancies' then I'd have less sympathy for the dissenters. However, shutting the final salary scheme is permanent. You can bet that CSC won't give it back once the economy swings back to a boom cycle.

Nationwide Freeview tune-up takes place today

@AC ITV HD

> Get a freesat box. Simply plug it in instead of your sky box. This is currently the only way of getting ITV HD.

Not true -- Sky HD customers who have had the new EPG update can add ITV HD manually by following the instructions at http://www.tellytoad.com/page/itv-hd-on-sky-hd.aspx

Demon splurges details of 3,600 customers in billing email

Demon don't know privacy

Today I phoned Demon to get them to check the access lists on a router they manage for my employer. All I gave them was the IP address of the router, and they told me everything I asked for. Didn't even give my name or company. More than a bit scary, and makes this story seem entirely expected.

Swedish military bras burst, melt during 'rigorous exercise'

Women in the workplace... workplace women... who work...

sorry, touch of asthma

Noel Edmonds brings Cosmic Order to the iPhone

The cosmos thinks you are a dick.

You now owe me £1.20.

Ofcom fails to sweep away power-line networking

Cat 6 cheaper? Hmm.

To install Cat 6, the average homeowner would have to rip their house apart to bury the cables. Hardly cheaper than PLT, not to mention the millions of tenants that don't have the option.

I have a degree of sympathy for hams being an ex-one myself, but PLT is hardly the same as burning rubbish. Frankly, one of the reasons I let my licence lapse was the high proportion of obnoxious self-important people in the hobby. Ham radio will always be an activity that lives on the margins of 'real' radio users, and something like this will always be round the corner.

Having said all that, if the devices really are in breach of regulations then the authorities must act, although I'm not sure what could be done for the large install base already present.

Startup crafts DVD-Rs for the 31st century

Where will you find a DVD player in 1000 years?

...or in 50 years, for that matter?

IT workers grumble about lack of career path

Training

Keith T: 'IT people are often sent on technical courses as an alternative to giving them pay raises.'

Dead right... but an important factor is that most training courses are rubbish, and the delegates thereon walk away with nothing except an attendance certificate and an expenses claim.

In the last fifteen years I've only attended two training courses where the trainers REALLY knew their subjects, were actually good at teaching, and the material in use wasn't hopelessly out of date.

NHS Direct gets to be number one, one, one

101 looks like a dead project

I'd never even heard of it before this article, but www.101.gov.uk says it's only available in Cardiff, Hampshire, Northumberland and Sheffield -- and now that the Home Office has binned its funding, Leicester has dropped out.

Boffins boil down witch-repelling brew

Finally

the secret of Boddingtons is revealed.

Ron Howard accuses Pope of scuppering Dan Brown movie

It was already scuppered

because Dan Brown wrote the book.

Sun begs IBM to come back and talk

Sun's support

has got slowly and progressively worse over the years, but sadly it's still the best I've used. I've never dealt with IBM's support operation; anyone care to tell me what I might be in for?

Ready or not, IPv6 is coming

Google and IPv6?

$ host www.google.com

www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.

www.l.google.com has address 209.85.229.147

www.l.google.com has address 209.85.229.99

www.l.google.com has address 209.85.229.103

www.l.google.com has address 209.85.229.104

I see no IPv6 address.

Rogue international ‘M&A advisors’ target Brit ISP customers

Stupid is as stupid does

Anyone that falls for this was only going to buy the Sydney Opera house from a guy in the pub anyway...

Google plugs your surf history into ad money machine

An industry-wide opt-out database

would mean that you'd need to find a way of identifying yourself wherever this matters. Who wants to have to log in to a search engine?

BT reprograms biz customers as hotspots

@Aaron et al -- spoofing hotspots

Having relatively recently implemented a web-capture-portal-type authenticating wireless gateway, I gave this a lot of thought... and came to the conclusion that, unless you know in advance what to expect as the host part of the URL when you get redirected to the login page, there's simply no way around this. It's not a new problem, but it's made worse by the sudden proliferation of BT hotspots, as people will expect to see them everywhere rather than in stations and airports.

Bad man carries pocket computer while walking through a town. Pocket computer advertises "BT OpenZone" (or whatever it is) as SSID, and redirects browser traffic to a domain for which he serves a valid SSL certificate. He presents a copy of the BT login page and collects the credentials. The SSL certificate is optional, as most users wouldn't think to check for an encrypted connection before logging in.

ISTR that there's existing malware that does this, advertising something like a "Free Wireless" SSID from its host.

That explains why

last night I got a BT Openzone login screen on my laptop, when I'm miles from the nearest hotspot. I just assumed it was a fake hotspot set up to gather credentials. But then how can you tell the difference?