Posts by Richard Bos

Phoenix Mars website invaded by hackers

Noscript

Firefox with Noscript extension... so, that would be Opera clean out of the box, then?

Richard

Hackers find clever new way to hose Google users

@Roger

And the Netherlands are not Holland, any more (in fact, rather less) than the UK are England.

Richard

Critics chuck MS 'friendly worm' plan on the compost heap

Let MS do it

Please, please, *please* let them go ahead with this... getting all hosts in microsoft.* put on every single block list out there would be worth the temporary peak in network load.

Richard

Dutch fire up petrol-pumping robot

Fancy seeing that here

Heh... this is in my home town.

And yeah, it's probably not going to make a lot of money. Then again, knowing the guy who did this (which I don't, really, except by reputation), he doesn't need a lot more money. He probably did it because he thinks it's a cool idea. Which it might have been, if it hadn't had so many ifs and buts. As for unknown cars, I gather you need to register to be able to use it, so that, at least, should not be a problem. Never mind; I wouldn't be going there anyway, since it's out of my way.

Oh, and no, the 'j' in "bekijken" is not silent, never mind that I have no idea what "bekiken" would be supposed to be if it were.

Oh, and yes, that stunt of Verstappen is his best known in the Netherlands, as well. Apart from that, he's mostly famous for usually finishing DNF.

The 'blem wit' error messages

Internationalisation proven harmful

My favourite was not in English, but in Dutch. When some DOS versions of Norton Commander got given a floppy they couldn't read, they said something like "Floppy in drive a: kan niet geformatteerd worden", /Anglico/ "Floppy in drive a: can not be formatted". This resulted in quite a bit of concern when we tried to read a floppy containing important data in a certain computer with a wonky a: drive, and had certainly not asked for it to be formatted in the first place... until it hit me that some bozo translator with no experience with the program and an unannotated list of messages had chosen the wrong interpretation of "Floppy in drive a: _may_ not be formatted".

Spamford Wallace's MySpace riches come under attack

Still around?

So tell me... why is this guy still around the 'net? Never mind baseball bats and prisons, who the blazes has given him net access? Being Spammy should've been enough reason to give him a life-long keyboard ban - he should never have been able to get to MySpace let alone trick anyone.

Microsoft on the hunt for 'serious' Windows flaw

How!?

Can anybody tell me how on Earth you can write a patch to solve this problem, but _only_ for .com addresses? It seems to me that that's only possible with intent - I'd be hard pressed to do so by accident.

People are biggest threat to IT security

No really.

Deloitte in "open door kicked in"* shocker! Stating the obvious was never done with such professionalism.

* Dutch proverb.

The Times: PLA war-hackers can switch off US navy

@Sergei Andropov

These current attacks a threat? Yes, of course they're a threat. Spammers, script kiddies, and phishers are a threat to everyone on the 'net, not just to the USA military. And these days many of them are based in China. But the Yella Peril they ain't.

Richard

Dolphins abandon Bay of Biscay

Intergalactic superhighway

Hmm... Disappearing dolphins. A large empty patch discovered in the sky: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6962185.stm>. Could El Reg's quip at the end of this article perhaps be more perspicaceous than it at first appears?