* Posts by Phil Kingston

867 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jan 2008

Forking hell. It's summer, and Windows 10 is already thinking about autumn

Phil Kingston

Re: Notepad to support *nix line endings

Bad day?

Mastercard goes TITSUP in US, UK: There are some things money can't buy – like uptime

Phil Kingston

Re: Backups and redundancy, FFS

Is cash the analogue backup method?

Huawei won a contract in Oz. Of course there's a whispering campaign

Phil Kingston

Re: but when the trains stop, someone's bound to notice.

To be fair, this is just the comms network. From what i hear on their services it's mainly used to alert drivers to traffic jams, that Jonno's left his wallet on their bus or other mundane chatter.

Xiaomi's Wang: We're coming to the USA

Phil Kingston

Re: hmmm... sure....

"People don't want...."

Well, some people may want. And some people may not be bothered.

Last time I saw an IR port on a phone used, it was a Palm Pilot getting online through an 8210. I've not met anyone who puts the presence (or not) of a notch as a dealbreaker when it comes to phone choice. Bluetooth headphones are the norm round my way. And I've still never seen anyone actually swap out batteries (either for a quick top up) or to replace an eventual failed battery.

That's just my experience, some of those things happen, I'm sure, in large numbers somewhere and by some user groups. But to suggest that everyone, in all markets, wants the same as you is probably incorrect.

They grow up so fast: Spam magnet Hotmail turned 22 today

Phil Kingston

Snippet for those interested in how the browser-based email service got its name - HoTMaiL.

Or so I was told once.

Hands up if you didn't lose data in the Typeform breach

Phil Kingston

Baker's Delight

As a regular customer, I hope Baker's Dozen rise to the occasion. They won't want to be seen to be pounding the pudding. Yeast of all they doughn't want negative press - they'll end up looking a bit crepe.

Amazon’s Snowball snowballs as Google's clone gets real and IBM's comes to Europe

Phil Kingston

Re: Snowmobile

I want pics

Google kills AdWords!

Phil Kingston

To me, the logo looks like a green-haired clown in a yellow top and blue jeans bending over to take one from Google.

Microsoft says Windows 10 April update is fit for business rollout

Phil Kingston

The figures are both good. But at that rate of call reduction I'm not sure I'd feel very secure as a CSR for MS.

Bank of England to set new standards for when IT goes bad

Phil Kingston

Re: Did this get worse when they started "outsourcing"?

I think an El Reg article covering TSB's TITSUP mentioned that there was some hand-raising, but they were over-ruled by those higher-up.

Phil Kingston

Re: Backup plan??

It may exist, but good luck a) finding one b) finding someone in your local Spar who knows how/is willing to use it.

Cloud-in-a-box? Bo-ring! How about cloud-in-a-tank?

Phil Kingston

I do hope it looks cool. And is badged as Microsoft Azure Black Hack Multipack Attack Rack Stack

Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows 7, 8.1 support forums

Phil Kingston

Re: Not sure how big of a loss this is

As useful as Windows Network Diagnostics being the default button when you can't access a network location.

nbn™ CEO didn't mean to offend gamers, just brand them unwelcome bandwidth-hogs

Phil Kingston

I expect there's more howlers to come as he winds down on his way out the door. I'm sure someone will remind me, but he's got what, 6, months left?

Dual-screen laptops debut at Asus' Computex chat

Phil Kingston

I thought that too. But the second screen would be a pain in the neck (literally) to see. That whole thing would need to held up at such a stupid angle.

Phil Kingston

I'm puzzled by that second device. I can't think of a situation where someone would want a slither of a second screen above a non-tactile on-screen keyboard. And the use-cases for needing both halves of a laptop to be actual screens also seem small.

Still, I may be proved wrong.

Smart bulbs turn dumb: Lights out for Philips as Hue API goes dark

Phil Kingston

Re: Naturally

Third party? Are Philips farming out their voice-recognition?

Phil Kingston

The ability to set specific colours, brightness, not just on/off

Samsung escapes obligation to keep old phones patched

Phil Kingston

Good to see someone else falling foul of car analogies.

Cars ain't phones.

NAB mainframe turns its TOESUP* after power outage, offline 7 hours

Phil Kingston

Sadly, these outages seem to be an annual event. If not NAB, then one of the others. Luckily I'm not a business-owner. But as a consumer I have a second, pre-paid card with me at all times for just such an eventuality. I suppose cash would be a better backup, but I'd just blow that on beer and crisps.

Phil Kingston

Sadly, I fear you may be right.

And I'd imagine it'll be a while before they get round to a heavily-lawyered response that'll need signing to confirm the account owner has agreed to their offer of nowt and have no intention of sueing them (now or ever) just in order to maintain an account with them..

Remember that $5,000 you spent on Tesla's Autopilot and then sued when it didn't deliver? We have good news...

Phil Kingston

So if/when the software is available, these folks will have had their cake and eaten it too?

Waiting for 100 Mbps NBN on wireless? Errr, umm, sorry about that

Phil Kingston

Re: They got 100Mbps wireless in Iceland (country)

Sorry, yes, new service, not new satellites.

Phil Kingston

Re: They got 100Mbps wireless in Iceland (country)

Technology ain't the issue. There's apparently no consumer demand. And business demand can be covered by the "NBN Business Satellite Service" which launches its first satellites next year (Sky Muster will remain, but be consumer-oriented).

Top UK court to rule whether 4.5m Brit iPhone fanbois can sue Google over cookies

Phil Kingston

>"Lloyd wanted to pay himself “an annual salary of up to £50,000 for a period of up to four years"

Now it makes sense.

nbn™ isn’t fixing HFC, it’s ‘optimising’ it

Phil Kingston

Still got to admire Telstra's balls - sell a failing network to nbn for billions. Then charge billions more to fix it up for them. Genius.

DOJ convicts second bloke for helping malware go undetected

Phil Kingston

Nice to see people get taken down for this kind of thing, but dang, 35 years!?

US senators ask FTC to investigate Google's Location imbroglio

Phil Kingston

I suspect they mean "messages" that rely on location at points in time. The sort of "we see you're currently at Tesco, why not pick up some discount ham today?" stuff.

Julian Assange said to have racked up $5m security bill for Ecuador

Phil Kingston

Seems a lot of expensive hassle when they could just elbow him out that window he's so fond of waving from.

Phil Kingston

>"Assange hacked into the communications system within the embassy".

Ten quid says the "hacking" was the highly-skilled vulnerability exploit of plugging his laptop into the wall's LAN socket.

We've found it! A cloud-and-AI angle on the royal wedding

Phil Kingston

THIS is what AI, machine-learning and cloud is for!

NASA will send tiny helicopter to Mars

Phil Kingston

"the first powered flying machine and the first human-designed heavier-than-air vehicle to visit another planet".

If not humans, who else is designed flying vehicles for other planets? That's some Area 51 shit going on. What does El Reg know that we don't?

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

Phil Kingston

Mate, that sounds like a shit place to work!

Phil Kingston

No real drama for firmware USB uploads etc... just clarify that such software is distinct from "data" in their memo of "expanding the practise of prohibiting data transfer to all removable portable storage devices". BAU for booting/updating.

Oz Budget 2018: Cash for 3cm GPS resolution, federated IDs, payments reform and blockchain

Phil Kingston

Re: Australia's budget also reduced its beer tax.

I can tell you one thing, I noticed no price cut at Pub Club last night.

Will be interesting to see if there's actually any impact on bar prices.

Still, 3cm positioning sounds great. Especially for rescue services and autonomous vehicles, oh, and Google.

Password re-use is dangerous, right? So what about stopping it with password-sharing?

Phil Kingston

Re: Those two guys will be successful in their future lives...

I guess that if some research didn't identify risks then others might not learn of them until too late.

Phil Kingston

Very much this!

There's simply no need to set up an "account" or to "register" when I just want to buy something from a merchant. So when they ask, I don't do it, I move on to the next merchant.

It's World (Terrible) Password (Advice) Day!

Phil Kingston

Re: Sensible Rules

By making it fixed length, doesn't that make it easier to attack?

Efficiency of retrieval shouldn't be the driver for passwords surely? If there's one thing that I detest it's processes/forms/systems/interactions that are designed to make it easier for the processing bod to work on.

Phil Kingston

Re: User-friendly method for good passwords

Gonna need a numeral in there for a lot of systems/sites.

Phil Kingston

"don't waste your time trying to tell anyone else what they should do when it comes to passwords"

Well that's ruined the comments for this article then.

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

Phil Kingston

Can almost cut the hate for Windows in here today.

Commbank data loss: Non-disclosure was pretty reasonable

Phil Kingston

Another factor is that Joe Bloggs finding a tape of an unfamiliar-to-most media format lying on the street, or the back of a dusty office cupboard etc, is unlikely to know what the hell to do with it. Unless it was labelled with something like "Super-important backup tape containing banking details of 12 million customers".

Still, no encryption is an epic fail for CommBank's IT bods. The idea that they'd accept the risk of shunting unencrypted tapes to/from a third party speaks volumes about the culture in their IT depts.

NASA's TESS mission in distress, Mars Express restart is a success

Phil Kingston
Thumb Up

Brave

I get nervous hitting the reboot button on kit a few hundred km away, never mind in freaking space.

Hats off I say.

Car-crash television: 'Excuse me ma'am, do you speak English?' 'Yes I do,' replies AMD's CEO

Phil Kingston

Re: F1 is a Car Crash

They do need to sort out the media rights again. Hopefully something more along the lines of what Formula E are doing - their emphasis seems to be on fan engagement and large audiences.

An next year's Formula E car looks like something straight out of the Hot Wheels factory http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2018/january/introducing-the-gen2-formula-e-car/

SpaceX's Falcon 9 poised to fling 350kg planet-sniffing satellite into Earth orbit

Phil Kingston
Alert

I'm no rocket scientist, but dang, having to hit a 30 second launch window seems like quite a feat to me.

Android apps prove a goldmine for dodgy password practices

Phil Kingston

Re: There's Nothing Wrong With QWERTY...

I've always been more of an ASDFGH kinda guy

It's April 2018, and we've had to sit on this Windows 10 Spring Creators Update headline for days

Phil Kingston

Where's the obligatory "just install Linux" comment?

NUC, NUC! Who's there? Intel, warning you to kill a buggy keyboard app

Phil Kingston

Have to wonder if this is linked to this interesting story from yesterday: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-06/porn-site-pornhub-displayed-on-perth-yagan-square-touchscreen/9624428

Intel admits a load of its CPUs have Spectre v2 flaw that can't be fixed

Phil Kingston

Re: So since Intel have now confirmed that are unwilling to fix...

Depends on the definition of faulty I suppose.

Car analogies are always a good bet on a downvote, but let's say a car maker were hauled over the coals for using glass in their windows. That glass can be smashed and used to gain access to the car and have a good rummage around the glove box.

Would the manufacturer be liable in the same way? After all, the window served its purpose just fine until someone decided to unearth the hidden weakness in it, much like these CPU bugs.

Still, common sense has no place in the US legal system.

Here's the list of Chinese kit facing extra US import tariffs: Hard disk drives, optic fiber, PCB making equipment, etc

Phil Kingston

Re: Hats off!

Don't forget to narrow it down to only those machines used in making hats out of felt.