Posts by adnim

This is how it will be

"It [the satnav] kept insisting the path was a road, even as it was getting narrower and steeper. I just trusted it. You don't expect to be taken nearly off a cliff."

No Skynet, no hordes of intelligent machines scouring the Earth of the last traces of humanity. This is how the machines will take over, we will place implicit trust in them. We will obey blindly and without question. In the not to distant future, every decision, every human act will be a machine "AI" created or assisted solution.

Humanity isn't going to go out in a nuclear flash and subsequent cleansing of the planet by machine overlords. It's going to go out slowly in a random and chaotic manner driven by human stupidity and badly programmed software.

There will be no malevolent machine AI wiping humanity off the planet. Just stupid humans who cannot perform a simple task or come to a decision without the aid of, or instruction from, one of millions of disparate and poorly programmed unintelligent devices.

44 Pounds a month

for the next two years?

I can get a free laptop for that

@AC:Flying cattle prods

I felt sorry for the cow, but laughed when I thought of the level of intelligence and training of your above mentioned bobby. Then I became very worried as I thought about the kind of training that produces a policeman who thinks it is acceptable or good practice to taser a cow.

I wouldn't mind the police having tasers if they were properly trained, and could be trusted to only use them in self defence or the defence of another life. And never to taser someone for simply running away, for torture, punishment, intimidation. But that will never happen, so I do mind.

I was drunk-ish

and we had just had a little disagreement. My missus isn't a cow, she is a wonderful lady and she faces which ever way she is bloody well told, lest I tip her over.

No she doesn't read The Reg, it would be hard to type this with broken fingers.

I can only presume

that whilst trying to develop exploits for these browsers, they donned the mantle of most stupid user ever in addition to that of uber hacker. In other words they used the browsers in the most irresponsible way, clicking on any link rendered by the browser, and obviously links to their own exploit code. Did they also use these browsers without any limits on what 3rd party web extension code (ActiveX, Java, Flash etc.,etc) could do.

I am not trying to defend insecure coding by any of the developers of these browsers, what I am saying is that security begins and ends with the user. They certainly would have had a harder time exploiting the browser of web wise users who don't automatically trust every link rendered, who do take measures to limit the the ability of third party code to execute and have a healthy paranoia of the web in general.

"Still, browsers have a lot of problems. It's really a lot of codes that are exposed to the internet."

Not to mention the underlying OS if one uses a browser that is so tightly integrated with the OS that it is hard to determine where browser ends and OS begins.

The use of a computer has been dumbed down to the point that having an IQ which barely reaches double figures is sufficient to use one. Now whilst this maybe seen as a good thing, it is also very dangerous. There are child proof lids on medicine bottles for a reason.

The average computer/web user is far easier to exploit than the underlying technology he/she uses to access the web (with the exception of a certain operating system). I would be impressed if an exploit was developed for any of those browsers exploited that did not require user interaction.

Oh hum

Please, o please tell me what is faster than instant.

Dependent on contention ratio, number of hops, available bandwidth, current demand on the site one visits, number of unoptimised images on page, the rendering PC's local RAM, CPU, GPU and OS etc,etc,etc. Firefox's rendering for me is instant. Well maybe, maybe not, but it is certainly quicker than I can focus my eyes on the rendered content. Same goes for IE, even though I hate the pos.

If a human cannot measure the time difference between a page rendered in different browsers wtf does it matter, Google stfu.

It has been said above

3 month to realise something is amiss.

Outlook Express for email coms.( don't matter which email server it gets mails from)

and I am struggling to find work! ffs.

I am dumb compared some, but jeez I am a genius compared to those responsible for the security of India PM's IT systems

big numbers

Does the 17 million include those iPhones still sat on retailers shelves. And does the 800 million include iTune tunes?

I could spout some amazing statistics about my own business, like the number of business inquiries I received today. But if I mentioned that more than half were cold call sales and marketing, the figures wouldn't look half as good. Me = as skeptical as ever ;-)

Although I could do with more work... I resist the urge to spam my business website.

Well

My missus faces any way she bloody well likes

Perhaps...

The financial cost of cleaning the Internet; Making all web sites properly web standards compliant should be met by Microsoft.

Why? One may ask.

1) It's their own fault

2) They can possibly afford it.

3) They have grown rich and dominant through bundling IE with their operating systems and their attempts to make the web bend to proprietary standards.

In my ideal world Microsoft would foot the bill.

Prison?

Sledgehammer meet egg.

ffs a prison sentence is just ridiculous for this kind of offence.

His making available of this material has deprived some already rich people of some money, big deal.

Ahh but wait, isn't that (money) what is really important here in our western "civilised" society. It is valued above all else including life, liberty and freedom, so bang him up for 15 to life, with no chance of parole.

Lets be honest here

In addition to what Nick Ryan has stated:

Microsoft operating systems are to running a PC what Horace goes skiing was to gaming.

Fucking awful.

All those who laud over Microsoft do so because they know no better, Microsoft business practices have made Windows and MS Office ubiquitous not the quality nor efficiency of code.

Professional page, Page Stream, Calamus, NEOchrome, Degas, Delux Paint, Cuebase, Notator, Cyber Studio's CAD-3D, 3D-Calc all manged to run on Atari ST and/or Amiga platforms without crashing or fucking up the system. Add to this that they were not so entangled with the OS that they were a security risk and one realises that although pretty and easy to use for the average retard, Microsoft software is in fact a step backwards.

If evolution followed Microsoft methodology, life would be no more than sea dwelling over complex, interdependent multicellular organisms where the death of one cell meant the extinction of a species.

@sceptical bastard

"What does one do to protect the stupid and lazy from their stupidity and laziness?" Er... Fsckall, we need the patsy. I also think all warning labels should be removed, let evolution sort things out.

If one was swimming in shark infested waters the best form of defence would be to throw children over ones shoulder and swim real fast. /metaphor I don't condone sacrificing children to ensure ones safety.

Seriously, just inform and attempt to make them aware, if they are not smart enough or too lazy to protect themselves when provided with the information needed, so be it. Besides, if people have nothing to hide then they have nothing to fear, so let's just let the people who believe this take the flak.

Quality

Microsoft would not comment on the potential launch date but said the IE 8 timeline is being "driven by the quality of the product".

That's a new one, shame they did not apply the same criteria to their operating systems. If they hold true to the above quote don't expect to see IE8 released any time soon, if at all.

Of course

All men know that there is nothing more attractive than a pissed up tart.

Is this the same logic that encourages women to think that a kilo of make-up smeared across their faces makes them more attractive?

@TeeCee

"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."

Or they stumble upon somebody having some fun.

What a huge loss

It's not like todays throw away music with its emphasis on the sex used to promote the music is worth a shit anyway. Talentless, packaging over content bullshit, where any skill involved comes from the producer and sound engineer.

@Funky Dennis

Yes first Foxit is safe because they use their own JBIG2 code to process images.

Quote "Foxit uses our own JBIG2 decoder and it handles those malicious JBIG2 stream gracefully (empty image will be displayed instead of crashing)." More fool me for believing them.

And then Foxit go and fix the non existent vulnerability. So did Foxit programmers code the exact same flaw into their own JBIG2 code. Or did they just reverse Adobes and "borrow" Adobe code?

"But it's more fun to hate Adobe, right?"

No not at all, just more righteous ;-)

@charles

Yes. But the docs are still in the possession of Google and their staff. Admittedly 1024 & 2048 bit PGP encryption is a pretty tough nut to crack. And most likely documents encrypted in such a way would at this time be secure.

But if one is using this for business and one has to rely on others(IT illiterate staff) to actually encrypt data before giving it to Google could one be 100% certain that all sensitive data is in fact being properly encrypted.

What one ends up with is another layer of administration/policy/practice to add to a businesses current security measures, another potential point of failure.

For a single individual uploading his/her own data who encrypts first then yes the data maybe secure from prying eyes and remain confidential, but then there are the other two concepts of the CIA triad to consider namely integrity and availability.

I don't doubt Googles security professionals are far more skilled/knowledgeable than I but using Google for sensitive information, to me is a no no.

I maybe missing something here

But why not shun FAT altogether and use an open source file system?

Can someone please enlighten me as to why switching to an open source file system is a problem?

The open source community should not be incorporating MS patented tech in their solutions anyway. MS are, well we all know what they are and they should be shunned/bypassed/outcoded at every opportunity by the open source community.

Microsoft did not get to the position they are in by altruistic practice. Quite the opposite.

Foxit

is not vulnerable to this exploit

http://forums.foxitsoftware.com/showthread.php?s=b1a534257745ea24b83f6ebffa96a05c&t=13598

Nor is it bloatware

I just updated Firefox

Frustratingly hard work, I have never known so much hassle. It took a whole two minutes to download, install and restart. The update even had the audacity to suggest it would attempt to restore my session, this caused me unnecessary anxiety by making me think I might have to open The Register site again and re-open in tabs all the items I previously had open before the update. Attempt indeed, who are they trying to kid, It was flawless, how dare the Mozilla foundation scare me so. I am never going to use Firefox again.

No Icon because there is not one for sarcasm.

I am sure Firefox has crashed less than five times in all the years I have been using it on the several systems I have owned in that time. However, I have never ever owned a pre-built, pre-installed PC. Ah, I tell a lie, my very first PC a 386SX was pre-built and came with WFWG 3.1 pre-installed.

@richard:Bootstrapping

You do have a point, maybe MS should bundle Firefox, Opera, Safari et al with Windows. A nice little tick box to select preferred browser is all that is required.

There is ftp but the vast majority of users would not know which ftp server to connect to, nor most likely how to use the MS command line ftp proggy.

Horse before cart

"The guidelines do insist that consumers are told if information about them is being collected, and they also require the possiblity of opting out of such collection." [sic]

How about opted out as the default with the possibility of opting in should one wish to be spied upon?

Making a loss

I can only presume that MS are going to make a loss this year, and I mean a real loss not a reduction in profits that most companies report as loss. If not then this is hardly a fair move.

But then that's just the opinion of a man who sees a profit as a profit even if down on the last fiscal year.

Opt in technology?

"Barclays Bank is to embed contactless technology into every debit card issued from this day forward". Is there a choice here?

I don't use Barclays, but I am sure other banks will follow suit especially if the sheeple see this as a good thing and it takes off.

As this is an offline system how is unusual behaviour detected?

How often are these offline purchases compared to a card holders "normal" usage?

How often do random checks take place, Every 2, 5, 10 or more transactions?

In essence how many £9.99 CD/DVD's, packets of ciggies or alcohol purchases be made by the thief who has lifted ones card before the system thinks, hold on wait a minute?

I guess every card stolen will, without a PIN or signature, be worth at least a tenner. A guaranteed £10 bonus possibly much more is enough motivation for some lowlifes to smack some poor sod in the face and take their wallet/purse.

I was thinking.

Perhaps he banned it because it is overpriced, over-hyped bling that attempts to lock the user into a proprietary closed system.

Oh wait a minute, do his kids run Vista on their PC's?

@AC:The Best

Absolutely. The best hackers are unknown at least as hackers, and do not get caught.

Replicating a commercial website, even a bank/post office is not exactly a difficult task. Creating a false identity to physically get ones hands on the cash is a little more involved though not impossible. Eliminating all the electronic and physical connections between oneself, the false identity and the crime is not impossible either. But it takes a lot of planning, work and most importantly silence.

Perhaps he siphoned money from the compromised accounts straight into his own account... as opposed to a swiss numbered account opened with a false/cloned identity. Perhaps he bragged about it to the wrong people. (Everybody is the wrong people if one is committing a crime). Who knows but getting caught is most certainly not a smart move.

I am poor because I am honest.

Time to waste

Sticking barcode labels on objects and telling (via typing into) the OS which barcode is associated with which object. Or are the barcodes pre-associated with data and the user has to stick the correct barcode label to the correct object? No window for errors then, system will will work perfectly without problem or security issues. Does this surface computer come with autorun/load/display enabled by default?

Why bother with the whole surface thing, surely a USB barcode reader hooked up to the PC will do the same job although with a little less pomp and much less cost.

My brain is instantly able to recognise an object and determine if that object should be connected to a computer via USB, firewire, other interface or placed in an optical drive. But wait, this must be worth the silly cost just for removing the inconvenience of pushing a plug into a socket.

Devils advocate/bitch

Apparently he was traveling @ 60+ mph and was texting for 17minutes. According to BBC News 24 His last text was sent when he was three miles from the accident...

According to the BBC Website:

"The court had heard how Lord Ahmed sent and received a series of five text messages while driving in the dark at speeds of, and above, 60mph along a 17-mile stretch of the motorway.

Mr Justice Wilkie made clear the texting incident had no bearing on the fatal collision.

He said: "After a full and thorough police investigation it's clear the dangerous driving had no causal link to the accident."

So it appears Mr Ahmed was NOT the cause of the accident, therefore his irresponsible texting did not cause the accident.

Mr Ahmed admitted in court to dangerous driving. So he is guilty of dangerous driving by his own admission. Now did he hit a car that had stopped as a result of an accident and kill the occupant whilst driving dangerously, or had the dangerous driving stopped before this impact? If not then is this not causing death by dangerous driving, and is not 12 weeks just a bit lenient? Any witnesses, what do they say?

Only with full and complete disclosure of the alleged crime and those events surrounding that crime can proper judgment ever be made.

For those who expect justice to be served, there is no justice in the UK only law.

I'm confused.

Is not Windows 7 Vista SP2 or is it Vista SP2 that is Windows 7. Or is it that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been or is Windows 7 what Vista SP2 will be?

MS should not be wasting time and effort developing SP2 for Vista, they should accept that it is a pos and offer a free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 to all those poor sods who either bought a copy of Vista or had it foisted on them when they bought a new PC.

After messing with Windows 7 beta and although it is an improvement on Vista, all I can really say with any confidence is Windows XP is the last MS OS I will ever use. Unfortunately unless I find another career, and sometimes am I so, so tempted, I am going to have to deal Microsoft products, either fixing them or securing them. I guess life really is a bitch.

Nuns knickers

A nice guide with useful tips. Often the connectors for keyboard, display, speakers can be very difficult to disconnect, as stated never pull the wires. Often with these connectors the plug has an overhang at each end of the connector, by using a jewelers screw driver one can remove stiff plugs by alternately pushing each end of the plug connector at this over hang point out by about 1mm each push, be careful. I have split finger and thumbnails trying to unplug these connectors, sometimes the pressure needed can be great.

I used to do laptop repair, all sorts of kit from Acer to Zenith, The Acer 8900 series was by far the worse laptop to get into. Believe me when I tell you that laptops are not meant to be user repairable devices. It is easier getting into a nuns knickers.

How much

does one get paid for advertising Emporio Armani?

What was that? The customer actually pays to advertise Emporio Armani and gets a phone thrown in as an incentive?

Ah, maybe there is some kudos to having Emporio Armani emblazoned across ones phone, although this goes over my head completely. Could it be that such kudos is only recognised by those with a similar taste for such image conscious posing?

BCP/DRP

"This is absolutely killing our sales office in London. We currently have an entire sales team crowded round a laptop fighting over access to a Vodafone dongle!"

Second dongle, Backup ADSL line never considered? Maybe Sky are so reliable that the ROI wasn't deemed acceptable. Nevertheless this is hardly wonderful business continuity planning. Perhaps fighting ones way through shoppers in order to obtain more dongles would be more productive.

I'm sorry I have no sympathy for the predicament, nothing personal, the term "sales team" doesn't fill me with a warm glow.

I could do that

I would even donate 50% of my salary to charity or accept 50% less, 80k a year is sufficient for a luxury lifestyle, I'm not greedy.

But a truthful and honest man has no chance of getting this post.

maybe...

the Terminator films are as insightful as Orwells 1984 and like 1984 not so much fiction as premonition.

Perhaps the creators of a potential Skynet will insist on a kill switch for the hardware. And maybe a group of generals will say "if we can turn it off, so can the enemy. Kill the kill switch idea".

We reap what we sow.

@David Hicks

You are not alone. The Internet is a place where one gets information, information of varying accuracy and quality. It is not a place to which one should post personal, private or sensitive information regardless of how the "changeable without notice" T&C's may seem to protect your data.

As far as I am concerned the moment my data any of my data is in the hands of a 3rd party I do trust them, I trust them to do whatever they want with it in order to spin a dollar. But I am not exactly new to the Internet, I have been online for over 12 years. In those 12 years I have never provided accurate and truthful information (name, address, postcode, sex, age etc.) to any website that demanded such info in order to access its content. I don't do social networking sites because people in general are vacuous, self-important, look at me types with all the depth of a puddle. Finding pearls, and I accept they do exist, amongst such dross is tedium in itself.

Younger generations especially those who have grown up with the Internet seem to trust it and the corporations behind it blindly.

Cloud computing and applications as a service are going to be a security nightmare. Not only am I concerned about unauthorised persons accessing my data via breaches, I am also concerned that my data will be mined for profiling and marketing purposes and sold on by those who hold it. Then there is the possibility rogue admins/contractors stealing the data for profit. I myself have had administrative access to servers belonging to some big name companies, this includes access to trade secrets, financial records and customer details. Not once did I undergo a background check. If I was a dishonest man I could be very rich, or doing time.

Most T&C's expressly permit the site owner to share any information one posts with "partners" of the site owner. Now who determines who those partners should be? The site owner does, and there appear to be no regulations in place to determine who these partners are or should be. A partner could be anyone from the EFF to Phorm .

Do I fully trust anyone outside my immediate circle of friends? No.

Do I trust individual people? Sometimes.

Do I trust businesses and multinationals? Never, or at least I only trust them to do what is in their own best interests.

Is this paranoia or common sense?

To paraphrase a popular saying:A fool and his data are easily parted

who needs this?

count number of OS installs in your business/enterprise

count number of applications in use at your business/enterprise

compare counts against number of licences.

Ah... those who cannot count need this.

"Microsoft’s licencing is complex, I’m not going to deny that point," agreed Bramwell.

Then make it simple, a corporation with the resources of Microsoft shouldn't find simplification of licencing terms difficult. Or is the complexity and obfuscation of licencing terms done on purpose for reasons only MS understand.

I would be more surprised

if a sucessful prosecution arose from this investigation. In fact I would go further and say I would be shocked if justice was done in this instance.

Protection

"FAST IiS said that the Government should protect all digital industries equally, and not give special treatment to one."

Bollox I say.

The government should be protecting people. Not using taxpayer money to protect the profits of digital industries.

A revelation?

"Parents should take greater responsibility for what their children get up to on the internet, according to Jeremy Olivier, Ofcom’s Head of Convergent Media."

OFCOM department of the obvious.

I understand that OFCOM is tasked with protecting consumers from harmful or offensive material amongst other things, so where is their sense of duty with respect to Phorm?

Strict censorship of the Internet is required urgently, children desperately need protecting from reality. Please shield their eyes and swathe them in cotton wool. This approach is far easier than talking to them about sensitive subjects and trying to explain in language they understand how the world works.

Oddly enough I as a parent were fully aware of my responsibility with regard to the nurturing of my child, and explaining the truths behind what he was exposed to whilst accessing the Internet during his formative years. Thanks to my attention to detail and unerring support he is now a confident and levelheaded young man.

Oddly enough I as a parent were fully aware of my responsibility with regard to the nurturing of my child. By denying him access to certain websites, telling him how sick and perverted pornography is and answering his queries of "why?" with "because I said so" in addition to punishing him severely for masturbating, he now has more hangups and psychological problems than one can shake a leather studded paddle at.

I don't need a third party telling me what is right and wrong or how to raise my children. Those that do and there are a fair few out there, check teenage crime stats, shouldn't be parents.

@Tony Gosling:finding a brave and honest politician

I feel that is an impossible task. Anyone with an interest in politics and a desire to become a MP will get absolutely nowhere with their party of choice unless they fit in. This means thinking and behaving within limits set by the party hierarchy. Step out of line, think a little differently, oppose the status quo and it is certain that progression within the party(any of them) will not happen.

As an independent there is also little hope, it is not healthy being a little fish in a sea of sharks.

Improve service this way...

Don't oversell the product.

Tell the whole truth in the advertising, not in the middle of several pages of T&C's.

Offer packages with no caps, throttles, port blocking, or download limits.

Offer packages with caps, throttles and port blocking but make this obvious in the advertising, "subject to fair use" is not specific, is open to interpretation and bears no resemblance to a users vision of fair use.

Basically be honest and stop the deception.