* Posts by TeeCee

9433 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

Worm breeds botnet from home routers, modems

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@Kanhef

"......serial number for the password."

Really? Can it be that you've already forgotten the BT Home Hub fiasco? You know, where they did exactly this and forgot that a simple WLAN query in clear would get the thing to tell you what its serial number was (AFAIR a little beyond the necessary for WiFi spec, but certainly within the spirit of it)?

"....router model as username....."

Yup, obscure that. Given that a) a large number of models already use it as the SSID and b) again, the spec says that a WiFi access point should disclose the type of equipment in use when queried (which is where BT went the extra mile).

Will Big Blue mainframes run Windows?

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Obilgatory comment really.

Finally, something that'll run Crysis properly. Now, if they can just sort out full screen anti-aliasing on a 3270 terminal........

Russian spy agencies linked to Georgian cyber-attacks

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Joke

Really?

"Nashi" is "anti-fascist" when translated?

That's a bit like finding out that "Vatican city" unexpectedly translates as "Porn shop"......

Bletchley Park fires up replica Turing Bombe

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@Ed Blackshaw

If it can, that'll be a Bombe Surprise......

Third e-bike to line up for 'zero-emission' TT sprint

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What a good idea?

I was just thinking that it was about time that they addressed the appalling emissions problem from small, highly-efficient petrol engines.

Especially since we've completely eliminated all those 10+ litre diesels in trucks, buses and trains that used to go around belching huge clouds of smog-inducing toxic exhaust products everywhere.........oh......hang on......

Someone remind of the the reason for this bloody stupid thing again?

Ballmer hails Windows Mobile for Welfare™

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He'll never work in retail then.

"No one's going to pay $500 more for a logo,"

Well, that's not only Apple gone for a Burton but the entire fashion industry, Rolex, most of the German car industry, Mont Blanc.........

Rule #1: Never underestimate the stupidity of the buying public.

El Reg spymobile snapper nailed on Street View

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Nice use of the autoblur.

Obscuring the "Magners" sign while leaving the face next to it fully visible as it does.

Have Magners not paid their Google tax this week or something? Hmmm, no "sponsored link" when googling "magners", maybe this is Google Blackmail 0.1 (Beta) at work?

Robo-fish to hunt pollution in Spanish seas

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Joke

That's the PR anyway.

Actually these contain a small, but powerful explosive charge and can spot a Spanish trawler full of illegally caught British fish at 2km..........

(Daily Mail articles can be recycled as humour. Who knew?)

Blighty orders first 3 supersonic stealth jumpjets

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Re: What, no catapults?

Catapults require steam. Nuclear powered carriers produce huge amounts of steam as a by-product. New carriers will be diesel powered and thus steamless to keep the OH NOES, IS NUCULAR=BAD fuckwits happy*. Presumably the OH NOES IT IS TOO MUCH CARBONS AND PLUTION FROM NEW SHIPSES fruitcakes are limbering up for a protest here.

Why one earth they've also deleted the arrestor wires (which would conclusively solve the "bring back" problem) is a mystery to me. Maybe there are hordes of anti wire protestors I don't know about.

*Officially this is a money saving thing. Everyone knows that it's really 'cos the Society of Nuts and Pillocks that currently runs Scotland won't let 'em make nuclear ones up there without a huge fuss / public enquiry / display of political ego-wanking and the whole purpose of building the things is to prop up the moribund Scots shipbuilders.

Philips 42in Ambilight LED array TV

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4:3 scaling?

How does it scale an old skool 4:3 picture? The aging Sony plasma that I have now chops a tad off the top and bottom before the sideways stretching, which looks a damned sight better than the unpleasant "squashed" effect you get from merely stretching the picture. This was the killer feature that persuaded me to go with the Sony rather than the much-touted Panasonic Viera at the time.

If this thing takes the same approach, it can go on my list of potential replacements....

Boffin builds DIY solar cell from doughnuts and tea

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Didn't work for me.

Turned out that the doughnuts I was using were low calorie ones made with "I can't believe it's not Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles"......

Pro tip: Don't include SEC lawyer in your $4.6m botnet scam

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Happy

@Daniel

Almost. Actually that's a punishment for the stock fraud.

They've still got to answer for the CAN-SPAM / Wire Fraud / other computer crime / whatever else they can think of offences. Someone's in a for a long stay in a small room with barred windows on top of being suddenly boracic.

Juror tweets could force retrial

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Re: OK, twit doesn't cover it....

I suppose that to be strictly accurate here and make sense we'd need to get Twitter to change the name of the service to "Dickheader".

I guess 'tw@" will have to do for now....

IBM 'in talks' to buy Sun Microsystems

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Re: So long MS

Old foe? My, how some people have such very short memories....

BMW, Fiat partner to dominate small e-car biz?

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@Pete James

Nope, it's all true. Never heard the one about rusty japmobiles though.

I had a FIAT Croma on hire recently. Usual FIAT electrics, lucky lotto as to what worked and what didn't when I switched it on. No change since the '70s there. Are you a FIAT salesman by any chance?

I also recently spent a few years in the Czech Republic. At the start I was flown over for three days to find a house. During those days (and remember, this is a place where every antique Soviet Bloc vehicle ever made was to be found at the time), I saw two cars broken down at the side of the road. A Citroen AX and a Peugeot 206.

Last, but not least. A couple of years ago a mate and I were driving down the A1 in his Nissan Primera. It broke down. When the recovery service arrived, we were told that there was nothing they could do but tow it, as they had no Nissan parts or manuals because they never break down. When we queried this, due to the rather obvious broken-down Nissan next to us, they helpfully pointed out that serving that stretch of the A1 for the AA*, RAC*, Green Flag, Europ Assistance, etc. this was the second Nissan they'd seen in five years(!) When we asked what kept them in business, the reply was "Anything French. Or Italian.".........

*Yes, both use third party contractors when they have nothing available themselves.

iPhone chip designer trumpets multi-core GPUs

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Ah! The perennial conundrum.

"And Apple would love to give you a reason to buy more HD movies from the iTunes Store."

The only incentive that I can think of would be a mobile device with a 50" 1080p screen. Oh......wait......

There's a reason that mobile video continually fails to take off, despite the best efforts of just about everyone with a vague connection to the mobile industry to tout it as the Next Big Thing. Personally I reckon it's bleedin' obvious that a 4" display does not a good experience make for anything more serious than laughing at 30-second clips of dancing cats from YouBoob with your mates and that anyone who reckons they can tell the difference between SD and HD on such is a liar. But then I'm not a telecoms provider / handset manufacturer / control-freak computer company / whatever....

ISS spared space junk avoidance manoeuvre

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That Bootnote.

"This involves using the docked Soyuz's engines to lower the ISS's altitude...."

I think that "adjust" rather than "lower" is more likely to be correct here. If they were to always lower its altitude then eventually it would encounter atmospheric drag, get very hot and subsequently make a large and unexpected hole somewhere.

Great Aussie firewall claims first victim

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Did you pass on this delicacy deliberately?

"....someone in Melbourne with the user name Foad."

Er, you do know what FOAD* stands for, don't you? Sheer quality from the bloke in question, not only proving the point but also making them look like complete arses when they owned up to the allegedly genuine complaint responsible......

*F*** Off And Die.

Doc-in-chief targets 'passive drinking' with price hike

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Alert

Ok, I'll bite.

WTF is "passive drinking"?

"Passive smoking" I understand. Someone else smokes and you inhale the smoke by sitting close by. Are they trying to say that I can now get wankered 'cos someone else nearby is in wrist-turning overdrive?

If so, how would the fact that said person is paying more for the privilege of getting trolleyed have a positive effect?

Pandemonium at NYC 'Top Model' audition

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Joke

Poor form.

"clothes and shoes were abandoned in the street as women tried to escape the melee"

Obviously not the sort of crowd likely to do well at the audition then. I reckon this was just part of the interview process. Anyone left lying on the pavement, downtrodden, seriously injured and bloodied, but still in posession of their handbag and Jimmy Choos, passes.

Visa yanks creds for payment card processing pair

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Translation

' "From the council's point of view, the PCI DSS is solid," he said. "It's an effective way to secure cardholder data." '

Actually means:

<fingers in ears>

"La, la, la, we're not listening......"

Nature security breach prompts password reset

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Re: RE: Risk?

Nice one. So, courtesy of whoever purloined this lot in conjunction with the nice template reproduced here, I foresee a few mails going out to those addresses along the lines of:

"I regret to inform you that our Press Site...........<blah>......please reauthenticate your details at the following URL: http://moodyserver2.thieves.are.us."

Indefinite liability for online libel must end

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Re: Another option

This would work, but for one small problem.

British judges have never had a problem with handing out massive libel awards in respect of something published that is actually, er, true......

Google behavioral ads scare US lawmakers

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Unhappy

@Steve Roper

"Servers can fetch Flash, HTML and Javascript from advertisers as well as images."

Ohshit! Welcome to the Brave New World of Cross Site Scripting attacks with the handy, detectable Cross Site bit happening behind the scenes where you can't see it.

My first reaction was that you'd have to be as dumb as a bag of hammers to casually import scripts 'n such from A.N. Other site and then run them on yours. Then I remembered how most of the web economy relies on advertising for its revenue and can't possibly say no without going bust.

Sadville transports shaggers to porncentration camp

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Name change?

Maybe we should stop referring to SL as "Sadville" and start using "WankWorld" instead?

Texting peer released from prison

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Re: Do you really.....

Yes I bloody do if you're driving a bloody car at the time.

Let's think of a few other things that require concentration and coordinated action and consider whether you would send a text while doing them.

Free rock climbing.

Moving a bottle of nitroglycerine.

Juggling chainsaws.

Cycling down a cliff path.

You wouldn't?

The only difference here is that doing so while driving poses as much, if not more*, risk to some other poor bastard as it does to you.

The fact that this miserable git had finished his text session *before* running into something is pure luck. The fact that idiotic wankers like this still have driving licenses turns ordinary, day-to-day tasks (crossing the road, reversing out of your drive, riding a motorcycle) into a dice with death.

*The other party may not be encased in something that converts itself into a bouncy castle on wheels at the first sign of trouble.

Science-boosting thickie questionnaire backfires

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It's Friday.

If we all go out on the lash tonight, get utterly bladdered and then collectively relieve ourselves al fresco, do you think that between us we can get this up to 72%?

Ice in fuel feed caused Heathrow 777 crash

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@Kanhef

Too true, look up TWA-800 for details (just ignore the usual selection of bullshit outpourings from the conspiracy theorists).

(I shall come back later to see if the laws of irony have been satisfied by a post responding to this with an outpouring of conspiracy bullshit about the TWA-800 disaster.....)

UK.gov thinks internet should be run like BSkyB

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The real reason?

Of course, were there a requirement that all ISPs provided access to the entire internet, those mobile providers off on their "walled garden" access kick would suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of the regulators.

I reckon that's where the pressure's coming from. Government don't do nuttin' 'less it can either make political capital out of it (can't see it here) or get a boundless sufficiency of free lunches off a lobby group for doing it.

'WALL-E' robot grunt obeys military hand signals

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Joke

@Lukin Brewer

Doom 3 Sentrybots going after Google Streetview cars?

<popcorn>

<beer>

<sofa>

Roll film please.

A one-act comedy with added .30-cal slaughterfest action. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

Texas Memory Systems punts Texas-sized SSD

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Unhappy

I read this as:

Wow!

WOW!

Wow, I want one of those.

$18,000

Meh.

Screeching rails close London Tube station

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IT Angle

@Eddie Edwards

"The fan on my workmate's GPU makes a lot of noise."

Possible cause: Imminent fan failure.

Much more likely cause: He's got an nVidia GPU.......

ID and Passport Service brings in ad men

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That advert.

Orang-Utans, goose-stepping soldiers, Polish Bus drivers, the visuals don't matter.

What's important is that the soundtrack should be a recording of a Football crowd singing "What a load of Bollocks".

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The way things are going we're going to need a bloody big wall When The Revolution Comes, as the list of those who should be first against it just keeps getting longer. I think the Chinese have one of about the right size that we might be able to rent for a day......

Apple allows Twitterers to f**k the iPhone

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Another Twitter-related thing?

Fuck that.

Hey, Apple are right! It *does* cause obscene language.....

Latest subject for peer review? You

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Class

Obviously you pick from one of the following categories, depending on how tightfisted the rated person is:

First

Business

Premium Economy

Economy

Jump seat

Bog seat

Luggage

Ryanair

Apple 17in MacBook Pro

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@Nathan Boal

Consider that the vast majority of laptops have a memory upgrade process that goes something like: Remove one screw, remove little placcy cover, stick in module, replace cover, replace screw.

By comparison, therefore, dismantling the entire base of the machine is "extremely difficult" and would certainly put off a large number of people.

I'd be willing to take a small bet that there are also no instructions on how to do this in the supplied manual, merely a short note to the effect that doing this in any way other than getting Apple to do it for you* will invalidate the warranty.

*Using their own hideously overpriced memory modules of course.

Man punts 'prototype' iPhones on eBay

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Paris Hilton

Buttons.

I wonder what the "More Other" button does?

Paris, because she likes more of the other.

Tata to release UK's first 'serious' electric car

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Re: Edsel

No I reckon the most ill-judged move of all time in the automotive business has to be ringing the appropriate figures on a Ford internal memo about flaming Pinto passengers, legal liabilities and the likely cost of a recall, handwriting "cheaper to let them burn" in the margin and signing it off as policy.

Second most ill-judged move of all time? Letting a copy of the annotated version of that same memo fall into the hands of the Plaintiff's attorneys.

No investigation after malware is found on parliamentary PC

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Silly sod.

".....You do however expect it to be recorded."

I'll bet it was. They'll have jotted the details down on a piece of paper while he was on the 'phone and then filed it in the circular file. Exactly the same as when you get your car broken into then.

If they decide to take him seriously, he may get a questionnaire and some nice leaflets about being a victim of crime.

This is New Britain's New Police force. They know when something's a crime 'cos some computer somewhere will have taken a helpful photograph / video of it for them.

UK gov gets twitchy on Google feature creep

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That name.

"Latitude"? So your position is reported with greater accuracy as you approach either of the poles then?

FoxIT update defends against PDF peril

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Oh, really?

"......but because the security bugs in Adobe's software are the focus of targeted hacking attacks over the last three weeks or so."

But surely if FoxIT has the same vulnerability it doesn't make any odds to the severity of the weakness which product the attack is targetted at?

If you shoot someone, I'm sure that the fact that you were actually trying to shoot someone else doesn't make your victim feel any better about being unexpectedly dead......

Magna boils up EV kit for car makers

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Badge?

Not sure about a Saab badge on the rump being a plus.

That would imply an interior and ancillary components from the fourpenny spares bin at GM.

Get Merc to pin a Smart badge on it. That'll sell, as Smart buyers expect something in the "odd looking plastic thingy" vein, and they've had a bit of a gap in the range down there since the ForFour bit the dust when Mitsubishi pulled the plug.

Google Docs suffers serious security lapse

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"we were affected by this bug ourselves"

Hmm, given the total lack of internal documents showing how Google's "secret sauce" ad algorithms *really* work being displayed for all to see on Wikileaks, we can draw one of two conclusions.

1) That's a lie.

2) Google themselves don't trust their document sharing services with anything sensitive.

Question: Is touting a service to others that you don't trust yourselves more or less evil than lying?

Zhao 'C' - Chinese police computer says no

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Compromise.

What are the Chinese characters for: "Perfectly sensible name that we can't put here 'cos our computer system's a useless bag of shite".

Seems like a sensible compromise to me.

Reminds me of when "The The" played abroad somewhere (Moscow, IIRC?) that didn't have a single word for "The" in the language. They were billed as "Word that does not translate, word that does not translate".....

Fanbois will abandon iPhone for Palm, says Wikisugardaddy

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The PR those quotes came from.

Did it come in a package marked "Warning, contains nuts"?

Vista SP2 release candidate gets public airing

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@Walter Brown

Using XP, tried Vista by "borrowing" it temporarily. The problem here was I just couldn't find a valid reason to upgrade. Prettier yes, but that's about it. I was seriously tempted by the potential for going 64-bit without the insufferable software incompatibilty problems in 64-bit XP, but then I found they'd left the same insufferable software incompatibilty problems in Vista 64, so the only "killer feature" turned out to be a damp squib.

At the end of the day, it had absolutely no features that I wanted that, taken together, justified the price stuck on the box and the effort involved in the process. Nothing to do with lazy journalists or any other FUD-related issues.

Now, I'd probably be happy with it if I bought a new machine and it came with, but since my approach been a continuous "rolling upgrade" process for the thick end of fifteen years now that ain't going to happen.

Before anyone chimes in here, I also have another machine running Linux. I've found that if I feel the need for the Vista experience (pretty, but slow and with a few minor niggling problems), I can start a KDE4 session......

ICO raids and shuts builder blacklist firm

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Joke

Builder's blacklist?

I wonder if they had "insufficient arse-cleavage" as a reason for inclusion?

'World's Worst Banker' joins Lads from Lagos

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Heart

<wipes tears from eyes>

It was the dead Goldfish that got me. Best laugh in ages, I've been absobloodylutely creased up for about five minutes.

Thank f*** for Fridays.....

Google expands ad empire with expandable ads

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Point at foot, pull trigger.

I wonder how many click-throughs are because someone actually wanted to go to the advertiser's site and how many are 'cos they accidently hit the wrong spot on the page.

This would appear to go a long way towards eliminating the latter.......

Zero-day Adobe PDF peril goes click free

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@Adrian Esdaile

No, I think "Adobe" refers to the construction material itself not what's built of it. So "Adobe house" is not a tautology.

So it's not the house, it's filthy crap that you can use to build a house which has been replaced with better materials by all but the most primitive.

Even more apt.