* Posts by Chronos

1246 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2007

Euro Patent Office prez's brake line cut – aka how to tell you're not popular

Chronos
Holmes

That's no reason to have two layers of nepotism, and old boys' clubs.

The PC is dead. Gartner wishes you luck, vendors

Chronos
Holmes

The PC...

...you have is perfectly adequate. You are not a Phombie (phone zombie, wandering around looking at a smartphone and not watching where you're sodding well going, wishing you had some brains) and you don't want Windows 10 despite Macrosoft more or less ramming it down your throat, so SALES are dead.

The PC's demise is greatly exaggerated.

UK.gov pays four fellows £35k to do nothing for three months

Chronos
Devil

Trial?

I hope this gets rolled out across government in general. You show me some lazy sod who's sitting there scratching his nads and I'll show you someone who's not causing any bloody trouble. (©George Carlin, sort of)

30 years on, Chernobyl wildlife still feeling effects of nuke plant catastrophe

Chronos

Re: Is Chernobyl paradise for nature?

Indeed - have you read "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman? Quite a sobering book

That's a very clever title to appeal to those of us who grew up with Mr Attenborough's BBC programme. I'll try to grab a copy. Thanks for the recommendation.

Chronos
Thumb Up

Re: Is Chernobyl paradise for nature?

Which just goes to show you that removing humans from the equation, regardless of whatever else may be there. is always a net positive for nature. Now they want to use the 30km exclusion zone as a nuclear waste dump and buffer zone but, personally, I think it has far more value as a massive experiment in nature without human interference, if for no other reason than to teach the klaxon mob just how resilient life really is. Note the way they describe Pripyat as a "ghost town" with life all around them, even when they go out of their way to always film in Autumn so it looks as dreary as possible.

Oh, and try telling people in areas with large concentrations of granite what the "normal" background radiation level is. I'm sure some of us could do with a good laugh.

Stop using USB sticks to move kids' data, auditor tells Education Dept

Chronos
Flame

Stop leaving spare USB ports active on machines that handle sensitive data.

FTFY. This was SOP not so long ago. And rivet the case shut, too. Repeat offenders to be issued with machines that have a solid blob of epoxy where the USB connectors were.

You don't need spare USB ports on a corporate/government machine. Peripherals should be shared per office, installs done from approved images over PXE and input devices should be permanently attached and only removable by a technician. Sort your physical security first, always. Then layer on the software and wetware policies.

So you’d sod off to China to escape the EU, Google? Really?

Chronos
Big Brother

Re: Google gives everything away for free, so how in heaven can EU extort google ?

For the avoidance of doubt, "free" is simply a have now, pay later with your privacy deal. It's worth remembering, when June rolls along, that we didn't even have a right to the expectation of privacy before the HRA 1998. Ms May&co wants to repeal that[1] but even that would be a pointless gesture until the shadow of the ECtHR is removed. Be careful with that vote, folks. You may have someone's eye in.

OTOH, I can't help wondering if Call-me-Dave's special exception on closer political integration renders that a moot point.

[1] George Carlin once said a right isn't a right if someone can take it away. It's just a temporary privilege.

UK web host 123-Reg goes TITSUP, customer servers evaporate

Chronos
Coat

An extended team of experts

Over-stretched has-been drips under pressure. Yup, sounds about right ;-)

Sorry, just couldn't resist.

Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge

Chronos

Re: Pastafarianism is under attack!

But He would then have to be the Flying Fusilli Monster. Doesn't really work, does it? Never mind, there's always Discordia to fall back on. Hail Eris on this Prickle-Prickle, the 31st day of Discord in the YOLD 3182.

Google HQ evacuated

Chronos
Devil

Obligatory...

Law enforcement searched for potential threats - and got 1,030,284 results. Many were adverts, the rest were completely irrelevant SEO chancers gaming the system.

Windows 7's grip on the enterprise desktop is loosening

Chronos
Windows

The demise of the PC is greatly exaggerated

Even us lUNatIX appreciate a full-sized desktop. However, the headshot to MS' dominance may come in the form of Android N[ougat|utbrittle]'s windowing multi-tasking. Imagine you can take your 'phone, with it's eight ARM64 cores, oodles of RAM and 3D graphics, and plug it into (or sit it on top of, with an inductive charger and some optical trickery as a data link) a hub with mouse, keyboard, NIC and an HDMI link to a proper monitor.

It's pretty much do-able now but Android's multi-tasking is clunky. RemixOS does a fairly good job of previewing what a proper Android window manager could look like. Ultimate hot-desk. You can bet Apple won't be far behind, either.

That's assuming that anyone by that point can get to the office without getting run over because they're too busy staring at the bloody phone to watch where they're going...

A 'hundred million' Truecaller users vulnerable to privacy bug, security bod says

Chronos
Holmes

Quelle surprise

I had an uneasy feeling about Truecaller when CyanogenOS first mentioned they were including it. I still wonder about the legality of sending details of all entries in a user's contacts database upstream without those contacts' permission. Regardless of how much data is slurped, surely this is the underlying disease and the IMEI thing is merely a symptom?

'Millions' of Android mobes vulnerable to new Stagefright exploit

Chronos

Re: Cyanogenmod time

Not buying into the constant upgrade cycle and becoming a cash cow for vendors is one of the many reasons some of us run CM. If you don't like that, old son, tough titty. You may believe they have a deity bestowed right to profit but I think they can sod off, frankly.

The Moto X is a perfectly capable device. The ability to extend internal storage with MM/6.0.1/CM13 using an SD makes it even more viable for long term use.

Chronos

Re: Cyanogenmod time

Short answer: Yes, you will get the AOSP fixes in the Nexus monthlies fairly quickly.

Long answer: You will need to be running nightlies for this to happen quickly. There are all sorts of warnings about nightlies not being production ready but, IME, nightlies are about as stable as the old ZTE Blade releases were back in the day. Or build from source, but that's a whole other learning curve, not least of which is where to get the proprietary bits from before you're actually running CM.

Good choice of handset in the Moto X. The Motos in general seem to become stable fairly quickly, even in comparison to some handsets (Wileyfox, I'm looking at you) that have official CyanogenOS support.

If you go with CM13, you may come up against an issue installing OpenGapps with the CM13 recovery. The workaround is to use a CM12.1 recovery booted through fastboot to apply Gapps or search for a bundledawk version of the Gapps zip.

Get ready to patch Git servers, clients – nasty-looking bugs surface

Chronos
Trollface

Re: Time to get downvoted to hell...

@AC: Irony. It's a bit like silvery but much cheaper.

Ad-blockers are a Mafia-style 'protection racket' – UK's Minister of Fun

Chronos
Headmaster

Re: Takes one to know one

Martin-73 wrote: the principle of 'innocent until proven otherwise' applies.

s/until/unless/ It's a subtle distinction but a very important one.

Google robo-car backs into bendy-bus in California

Chronos
Terminator

I now have this awful picture in my head of a load of Koala cars in a bar swapping driving anecdotes. It's like that picture of the dogs playing poker, only more Googley.

Photographer hassled by Port of Tyne for filming a sign on a wall

Chronos

Re: Jobsworths.

What you're looking for is this:

Jobsworth.

Dangerous Android banking bot leak signals new malware wave

Chronos
WTF?

Huh?

Downvotes, see icon. Relying on GoOgle for your security is probably a bad idea without some careful oversight of what you install. F-Droid is A Thing™ and is more than capable of fulfilling most users' needs with open source goodness, built and verifiable from the source rather than just randomly accepting apks developed by world+dog over which you have zero control.

Okay, it's a 386 situation...

Terrified robots will take middle class jobs? Look in a mirror

Chronos

Re: Argh!

@Mark 85: Nic's not really harmful on its own. One of the reasons we wean ourselves down is cost, which becomes especially apparent if you mix your own. Interestingly, the LD50 (lethal dose @ 50% fatality) of pure nicotine and pure caffeine is very similar. Admittedly, nicotine is more readily absorbed on the skin.

As an aside, nicotine is not particularly addictive on its own either. It's when it interacts with the MAOIs[1] and other components of tobacco that it grabs you. The rhetoric has made "nicotine" synonymous with "smoking" which is rather unfair as it's the tar and toxins that kills.

Keep your atomiser moist and the temperature down below 410 degrees (Fahrenheit) and you'll be mostly toxin-free. There will still be a few TSNAs[2] in the base nicotine, as the extraction methods make this unavoidable, but they're such small amounts compared to smoking as to make them a negligible risk compared with continuing to smoke. Synthesising pure nicotine is hellishly expensive right now.

[1] Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors, a form of anti-depressant which, along with other compounds present, amplify the addictive properties of smoking tobacco.

[2[ Tobacco Specific Nitrosamines, carcingogens present naturally in tobacco leaf from which pharma grade nicotine is derived. These are also present in the same low concentrations in pharmaceutical nicotine preparations such as gum and inhalators.

[3] Chronos, an obsessive gobshite always going on about the advantages of vaping. Sorry about that. I'll shut up now.

Chronos

Re: Argh!

EastFinchleyite wrote: It came down to her saying "all men your age should be taking Statins"

This does not surprise me. Next time you visit a GP's surgery, count the items of schwag. Pens, stethoscopes, sphygmomanometers, mugs (not including us sitting there, although they'd brand us if there was a way to get away with it), shine-in-your-eye torches, tongue depressors, earhole probes...

We know full well why they prescribe everything they possibly can and hate anything that can be obtained without their help. We just won't admit it.

Chronos
Holmes

Argh!

Must resist rant about "public health" attacks on vaping and harm reduction....

Ballmer schools SatNad on Microsoft's mobile strategy: You need one

Chronos
Megaphone

Dear Uncle Fester

Nobody is going to buy a handset with Windows on it. The Lumias had amazing cameras but there was one little thing that let them down: You. Stick with USS Enterprise laptops where the saucer section comes off and leave telephones to the grown ups. Who wants to use the vast majority of a mobile data allowance on Windows' spyware "features" alone?

The Mad Men's monster is losing the botnet fight: Fewer humans are seeing web ads

Chronos
Thumb Up

Re: Perfect storm

Usenet's still there. Come on back. We could do with a few more sensible people.

New open-source ad-blocking web browser emerges from brain of ex-Mozilla boss Eich

Chronos
Facepalm

Oh dear gods, no!

They keep the tracking stuff in one central location? Jesus unicycling Christ, that's even worse than what we have now. For a start, you just *know* that stuff is going to be slurped to death by everyone with five eyes and that's before it becomes a one-stop shop for every creepy bastard on the web.

No thanks. I'll keep maintaining my own defences, I think.

Oh, and lions aren't brave. They're just hungry and driven by instinct when something made of meat wanders by.

EE, O2, Giffgaff, BT Mobile customers cut off as mobile networks fail

Chronos
Devil

BT

Bungling...

I will leave you, dear reader, to decipher the other word in the acronym.

Got a Nexus? Google has five critical Android security fixes for you

Chronos

Brother Maynard

...lobbest thou thy MMS of Antioch toward Android 'phones which, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.

We need a Holy Hand Grenade icon.

/me sods off to check the CM repo for fixes

Dust off those White Space devices: New rules finalised by Ofcom

Chronos
Devil

Re: Hmm.

Should be a barrel of laughs to watch the fallout, though.

Popcorn?

UK digital minister asks for input on strategy, lauds 'sharing economy' biz success

Chronos

Re: So the British government wants to help digital businesses???

Commswonk wrote: 3: Protection of homeowners / renters against persistent disregarding of TPS protocol

4: Making owners / directors of UK companies who use non - UK call centres that flout the TPS protocol personally liable for any abuses.

5: Ditto owners and directors of UK call centres that flout the TPS protocol personally liable for any abuses.

These three need a prerequisite: 2.5: Take the TPS away from the Direct Marketing Association, make Ofcom run it and make it mandatory, backed by the ICO and some fairly serious fines.

Chronos

Re: Is it just me...

Of course it is. Silly me. b != B. I've found myself a traffic cone, painted a big D on it and I'm going to stand in the corner with it on my head as penance.

Chronos

Re: Is it just me...

Commswonk wrote: And that mb doesn't mean Mb. (mb is another favorite hate of mine!)

Millibytes? Sounds like it could be a useful unit after Openretch have been playing with your cabinet. Or was Ed Millibytes another Ed who didn't get the Internet?

Chronos
Facepalm

The most important thing they can do

Step back and learn about the technology, history and culture they're trying to take over. Not only is is less amenable to the BS that was used in days past to justify interference, those who have made it into what it is today get rather offended when they're sidelined to make way for a "cluster[fsck] in East London" as if the Old Street Roundabout area started it all instead of actually being a Johnny-come-lately artificial development only brought about by being run-down and cheap but serendipitously having nearby, easily extendable fibre infrastructure.

Kids' TV show Rainbow in homosexual agenda shocker

Chronos
Facepalm

Cue

Bagpuss promoted sex toys - all those references to the marvellous mechanical mouse organ and Yaffle's book-end.

How about we just stop listening to these religious nutbars who are so concerned about, or more likely jealous of, what other people do in the bedroom? Is that an option?

Expert welcomes UK’s digital health recommendations

Chronos
Flame

"impactful"? Seriously?

I think these people are just making shit up as they go along.

Paris, jihadis, tech giants ... What is David Cameron's speechwriter banging on about now?

Chronos

Re: We need to have a mature debate

massivelySerial wrote: "We need to have a mature debate" ... NO! I literally don't want to hear what you have to say you totalitarian bastard. Nothing good comes after that political key-phrase.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, you have to remember that some of these people actually do believe they're protecting the general public. So I invoke C. S. Lewis:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Linus Torvalds targeted by honeytraps, claims Eric S. Raymond

Chronos
Headmaster

Extended Service Release

Please don't feed the "celebrity."

Hi, um, hello, US tech giants. Mind, um, mind adding backdoors to that crypto? – UK govt

Chronos

Re: Not that I'm condoning this ...

You're sniffing around the edges of key escrow again. We did this a decade or more ago and it was as wrong then as it is now.

KeePass looter: Password plunderer rinses pwned sysadmins

Chronos

Re: When spelling is important.

Whichever it is, the lesson is clear: Never leave your password manager's database unlocked if you're not using it. As I read the article, the password manager isn't the issue; it's a case of PEBKAC and insecure memory. It's also Windows only as it's talking about dll entry points but don't let that stop you from closing your KeePassX database, just in case. If it can be done there, it can probably be done elsewhere as well.

This may also be a good time to set a nice, strong password on your browser's password store, too.

The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!

Chronos

Guns and Merkins

Sod 'em, I'm more interested in the sarcastic ammunition that is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I can think of a few Usenetizens upon whom to use that particular put-down at this very moment. Powerful stuff when used correctly.

That said, following your lurid description of the average geek, Peppa Pig's dad would have probably been a wiser choice - with added Lynx, natch.

TalkTalk downplays extent of breach damage, gives extra details

Chronos
Flame

Why the giddy frig...

...does an ISP need your date of birth? You're obviously old enough to be paying the sodding bills. At some point there has to be a stop put to this nonsense of dragging as much personal data out of customers as possible. You can't even buy a Mars bar these days without some pillock wants your post code and inside leg measurement.

Also, why was this data Internet facing? If you must have someone's date of birth, they're not going to want to change the bloody thing in "My Account" are they? Oh, sorry, I'm a reborn Christian. My new date of birth is...

Safe Harbor 2.0: Judges to keep NSA spying in check – EU justice boss

Chronos
Go

The correct answer

Of course, the correct method of controlling the flow of data is not to give the buggers any in the first place. I have no reasonable expectation that things like my banking and financial records stay in the EU, let alone Britain but I can't really do much about that. Seppos will always be interested in your money and that's one area where regulation can make a difference. I won't hold my breath, though.

Everything else gets "need to know." If they ask for my DoB with no reason and no way to verify it, they get a fake one. It gets stored in KeePassX along with the password and it then becomes another factor of authentication on my side rather than a relational key for their data mining op. Get yourself a cheap domain name and use different e-mail addresses for every company so you can see who is selling your details on. All my passwords are different and I'll even falsify my address in cases where they don't need to know it, i.e. the local telephone exchange must be getting sick of getting Screwfix catalogues and Maplin vouchers by now. Oh, and don't give any personal information over the telephone to incoming callers. Ever.

If you drop a dead cow down the well of your personal data they'll have to stop drinking from it eventually.

Bacon can kill: Official

Chronos
Mushroom

You first

I suggest they try living without all the Class 1 carcinogens. Please let us know how the day WOO (without oxygen, as Mr Flibble suggested) goes. I can see some handy results coming from that study...

Bacon as deadly as cigarettes and asbestos

Chronos
FAIL

WHO cares?

The pharmaceutical trough union. Putting their invective in the Daily Fail is likely to cause a rift in reality.

So, let me get this straight, you want us to wake up, go to work in some mundane job full of petty and pointless corporate rules that never gives you a sense of fulfilment under managers who struggle to get their shoelaces tied, eat cardboard for lunch when you actually get a lunch break, go home on the politically correct eco-bus to more cardboard, drink, smoke and do sod all because it might be dangerous, rinse, repeat?

What the fuck is the point of a life like that? I'd love to follow a couple of these arseholes around with a video camera for a while. I'll bet they don't practice what they preach.

WikiLeaks leaks CIA director's private emails – including his nat sec clearance dossier

Chronos
Trollface

And, Crilly...

"If you ever try to leak my e-mails like that again, I will rip off your arms."

Wait, wrong Brennan.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Chronos
Facepalm

Windows 10

...Australian edition.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Chronos

If there's an NSA ear in the woods and there's nobody around worth listening to, the other four eyes probably won't find anything either.

Big Blue welds bits of carbon for nanotube transistor

Chronos

A new story at this time of night?

Have you no Ω to go to?

You started it :-P

Is Windows 10 slurping too much data? No, says Microsoft. Nuh-uh. Nope

Chronos
Flame

Re: Jesus wept.

David 132 wrote:Microsoft are selling - OK, giving away - colossal numbers of Windows 10 licenses, so there's obviously many, many people in the world who don't share my opinion & concerns.

Or are not technically literate enough to know or care about the implications as long as funny cat videos may be viewed, Aunty Mabel's joke e-mails still come through (with all the addresses in the "To:" field, of course) and they can play the odd hand of Solitaire. To them, a computer is a black box and the intricacies of the OS are as out of reach as the bottom of the Mariana Trench. These are people who can't even find the latest piece of crapware they downloaded even though the Downloads folder is pinned in Explorer. And Windows 10 has to be better, because it's a bigger number, right?

To cut a long waffle short, IT has gone Mainstream - with a capital daft.

Do I come across as the guy in this icon? --->

No, you come across as a normal, rational, intelligent human being who is sick to the back teeth of people screwing with his basic human right to privacy and hiding it beneath a semi-transparent veneer of bullshit that not only insults your intelligence but also takes advantage of, shall we say, the less cerebrally endowed to create a critical mass of people who "don't mind" because they don't understand what they're giving away to legitimise the whole damned thing. And you're not alone.

Privacy, net neutrality, security, encryption ... Europe tells Obama, US Congress to back off

Chronos

Re: Bot

He's just an Eggdrop with a very specific set of scripts timed to run in the Yvening.

More email misery and pillory for Hillary as FBI starts quizzery

Chronos
Joke

Conspiracy

Is it not possible that Hillary's e-mail spillary is ancillary and the grillery is artillery from the deep south Conservative hillbillary?