* Posts by M Gale

3500 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Apr 2007

Apple iCloud: Steve Jobs' own private internet

M Gale

They can have my filesystems...

...when they prize them out of my cold, dead hands.

Facebook quietly switches on facial recognition tech by default

M Gale

Title? You can't handle a title!

"Have you seen the number of CCTV cameras lately?"

Most CCTV cameras are legally blind. Seriously, if classified according to human sight rules then most CCTV cameras would be collecting their disability payments, so to speak. Your 12MP Canon DSLR with a £2,000 lense however, is not.

"Anti-war protests aren't illegal (not in the UK anyway)"

Not yet, except for the middle of London unless you get some very deniable permission, and you only have to look at docu-films like "Taking Liberties" (play.com for a fiver last I looked) to see how sometimes even the police don't know the rules.

"Agree about ignorance, there are some right muppets out there. Hence my comment about making it very visible, understandable, and accessible."

Unless you don't fancy being tagged all over Facebook. In which case, you're kind of stuffed. Only option left if you can't go under the radar, is to make sure you utterly obliterate the radar with chaff. Hence my earlier suggestion of poisoning things. And why shouldn't we? It'll be fun!

"Wish I'd thought of "doo dee doo dee"."

I prefer "Dun dun DUNNNNNN" myself.

M Gale

A little harsh, perhaps.

You know with a little redirection, that lovely trolling nature of yours could be turned to far more productive pursuits.

Hm. Fancy uploading pictures of dogturds and tagging them as Tony Blair?

M Gale

Little tip.

Create one or more (preferably more) false accounts to do it with. If your account has a lot of silly tags associated it might make it easier for FB to say "fine, that person's a joker, ignore their tags".

Now I don't have a Facebook account yet. However if a large enough campaign gets underway to poison their facial recognition, I may just create a few...

M Gale
Devil

This...

...desperately needs to be poisoned. Wonder how the system would cope with a bunch of lulzmeisters taking pictures of random people in the street and tagging them as "Rick Astley", "Maggie Thatcher", etc?

Apple opens iCloud to world+dog

M Gale
Black Helicopters

Naw..

..they'll just contact the Cloud Provider who will be happy to ensure those pictures disappear forever, not just from their servers but from every single attached device that has a file matching the same signature.

Welcome to the future.

M Gale

I can see this being fun.

"When a contact, calendar, or @me.com mail message is updated on any iOS device or Mac OS X PC, it will be uploaded to iCloud and immediately pushed to all other devices registered to that account."

A friend of mine has a rather nice girlfriend. Ex centrefold, and she has still "got it", as it were. She also has a 9 year old kid with an iPod, and he has an iPhone 4, both registered to the same account.

Methinks those two are going to have to be VERY careful about what they send to each other, eh? Really, cloud-synced-everything was one of the first things on the droidphone that I turned OFF.

As an aside: Will iOS 5 support OBEX bluetooth transfer? It's not like every other mobile phone in the world doesn't support it or anything...

New 'liquid smart metal' can go hard or floppy

M Gale
Coat

Funny, I was thinking...

...more "lifelike", errr, toys. You know, they start all soft and malleable..

Okay, I'll get my coat.

Cameron calls for ISP-level parental censorship tools

M Gale

Mmmm ISP level filtering.

That'll be the shit that most mobile providers in the UK do already. The stuff that's very good at blocking Playboy or Penthouse or Encyclopediadramatica, but completely crap at blocking anything more obscure. Like furry pr0n, perhaps. Or basically, any site not on the filter list. Or private servers. Or stuff sent via instant messages. Or pasted onto Facebook. Or.. well, provide your own example here.

That and this mobile connection I'm currently connecting to has absolutely no problems allowing me to post onto a forum that is best described as "loosely" moderated. Not that I'd ever describe The Moderatrix as "loose", you understand. I value my appendages. Still, PG the register ain't, you bunch of cuts plus the letter N.

HP welds data center containers into EcoPODs

M Gale

Odd picture.

From the outside it looks like a printer or a photocopier with wires on the outside. No idea of scale, unless this uses some kind of freaky TARDIS tech.

Also "click to enlarge" reduces the image size. More TARDIS shenanigans?

New Bluetooth profiles for heart rate, body temp kit

M Gale
Thumb Up

Proximity reporting?

Do you need an official spec for "can't see the dongle any more, it's out of range, therefore set off the alarm/lock the screen/whatever"?

Asides that, Jolly Good Show.

Egyptian ad gives Vodafone credit for revolution

M Gale

No longer available due to a copyright claim by Vodaphone Egypt

Hmph.

Oh well. Streisand icon request pls.

Beeb's iPlayer dismisses radio show as 'b011ckxs'

M Gale

For some people, "beardy" is merely metaphorical.

I bow and scrape in awe of your long, flowing chinlocks.

Android app sales skimpy, sluggish, slack, scanty...

M Gale
Trollface

"it is hard to know if an app will actually work on the phone you own."

Oh that's easy enough. In most caases, if the app is there then it will run. If not, the developer fucked up somewhere. Don't tell me there aren't the odd iPhone game or two that don't glitch about, and that's on an incredibly homogenous platform.

Anyway, maybe it'd be a better (perhaps fairer) metric to compare high-end Android devices with the iWotsits, and the budget droids with more feature-phoney devices. For better or for worse Android is rapidly becoming Windows for Fondletoys, and you don't expect a netbook to work in the same way as your hulking great LN2-cooled overclocked gaming rig acting like a space heater in the corner of the room. Could also help with regards app sales if Google had prepay vouchers in shops and the ability to process ALL common credit/debit cards.

Also I see you're in top form as usual.

Billionaire Zuckerberg kills to eat

M Gale

Small difference.

Digging out a sewer doesn't involve slicing throats.

And yes, actually, I have assisted in slurping out the contents of Gran's cesspit, before she got a sewage digester. Now that's a stench you don't forget in a hurry.

M Gale
Boffin

Oh Hi, ratfox.

You must be new here.

Goggles for blowing dust out and anti-static mat at the ready!

M Gale

My ol' ma's fiance has a T shirt that says that.

"...right next to the potatoes and gravy."

He also has a T Shirt that says "9 out of 10 of the voices in my head say 'don't shoot'."

And he has a firearms license. Black powder. Makes his own ammo.

Help.

M Gale
WTF?

@Tom Clark

Teehee

Also holy crap El Reg, what have you done to the icons?

M Gale

Not going to COMPLETELY discount the research...

...however a report like that coming from "Imarat Consultants" is a little like a report with a massive Facebook logo in the corner saying how Facebook respects privacy.

And I've still seen the videos. It takes longer than 10 seconds.

M Gale

Indeed.

You only have to trawl through Youtube looking for religious slaughter methods to realise that slicing a conscious animal's throat open is neither humane, peaceful or painless. Why do you think such slaughterhouses get an exemption from animal cruelty laws in the UK? I think maybe he interpreted the goat's struggling as a kind of play. "Hey, lookit all this red stuff pissing out of me!"

Still, at least he's not a hypocrite who cries at Bambi and then goes home to tuck into a nice dish of veal.

(yes I'm veggie, precisely because I won't kill the things myself)

Don't let your networks speak to strangers

M Gale

The only place I've ever seen a rule as strict as that...

...was the UK Census 2001. They barely allowed you to bring your own pens in just in case you had some kind of James Bond recording device embedded in it. Seriously, all phones off and checked in at the door, any equipment brought in (including aforementioned pens) to be checked by security.

Now unless you're working with that sort of data (and the vast majority of people aren't), then why the hell are people so fond of pretending to be working in, oh, the UK Census?

There are other ways, as some people here have pointed out. But, it seems some people just want to be a BOFH.

M Gale

Holy christ..

..what part of "audit trail" did you not read? It means "log what your employees are doing with company resources".

If you then find said employees are doing nothing but browsing dodgy porn sites and fucking about, then you can do something about it. The device they use to do it with is hardly the problem, is it?

Some people are just itching for that little bit of power. Seriously, have you got a PFY working with you as an apprentice too?

M Gale

How LJMU (.ac.uk) does it

For the unencrypted LJMU-specific network, you give them your student/staff user ID and password on the web login page. If you're using a smartphone, or if you just fancy having an encrypted connection, you connect to the encrypted eduroam SSID using your normal login credentials as the certificate.

Easy, simple (for end users at least), works well enough for over 40,000 students and staff (not counting the other educational establishments signed up to eduroam), and nobody has to get sacked for it.

M Gale

Go directly to the dole queue?

Or alternatively, implement proper security, treat a MAC as more of a session token than a permanent key, and don't end up firing a bunch of people who might be smarter than you and bring in more money for the company than you because you have to act like a BOFH.

This article is about random devices leaking information out. So, have a webcafe or BTOpenZone-style web login that pinpoints who is using what and where. You get a nice audit trail showing who did what, your employees can randomize their MAC as much as they like, and you don't have to act like a bastard who thinks they are running GCHQ, ultimately engendering disrespect from your colleagues and peers. That in itself can end up proving more dangerous to your network security than any toyphone or tablet.

M Gale

Only prevents honest people connecting.

ifconfig eth0 down hw ether 00:00:00:00:00:01

ifconfig eth0 up

...whups.

Insider data theft costs Bank of America $10m

M Gale

When I saw that sub-heading...

...I just figured, what kind of insane thief would even think about trying to take on Leonidas?

BlueStacks lets Android apps frolic on PCs

M Gale

Hm.

Wasn't Shuttleworth going on about doing precisely this for Ubuntu?

$8.5bn Skype goes titsup again - including website

M Gale

Dead simple explanation

Not that I even know what's in the file but...

<last_log_file value="sometimestamp.txt" />

App checks for file. File isn't there. App doesn't have an exception for this. App panics.

Boom! Headshot.

Yanks officially recognise the word 'boffin'

M Gale

3 people are stuck up prats with no sense of humo(u)r.

Oh come on, that was pretty funny.

Dear Dell and Microsoft: You're not Apple

M Gale
Troll

Best security?

I still remember a friend of mine who had just convinced his boss to get BackOffice. That's basically NT4 with Exchange and IIS. Well, I told him to chop that damned web server off at the firewall, and he laughed at me. He said it's NT, it's secure!

Yeah. So I went home, tapped in the IP address of his server along with a little bit of hand crafted unicode. I printed out the results, walked to his house and said "is this your hard drive? Is this your format c: command? Aren't you glad I didn't add the /y switch?"

That web server was chopped within the hour. While we're at it, how many people in the Win9x days had their file shares open to the world due to Microsoft being stupid and enabling NetBIOS on the dial-up adapter? I've personally managed to send a message to someone's printer saying "DISABLE NETBIOS YOU PRAT". Hopefully they got the shock of their lives when the printer next to them spat that out.

So yes, Microsoft has finally, at last, managed to get a semblance of somewhat, almost-security after a shitload of revisions. Even then, they only managed it by copying Linux, or do you think they invented UAC all by themselves?

These are facts and they make Microsoft sad.

M Gale

Send a link to this page in email.

I went and searched for this function, simply because I've never, ever used it in any browser.

You're right, Chrome doesn't have it, yet. There's a whole thread about it as a feature request on one of Google's forums. Some people are referring to it as a "minimum requirement", though I really don't know why. It's like people have never heard of CTRL+C/CTRL+V. Personally I'd hate a button I end up accidentally clicking and having to go "OH FUCK OFF EVOLUTION/OUTLOOK/THUNDERBIRD/WHATEVER".

I'm sure if enough people complain though, Google will write one line of Javascript and embed it into a permanent bookmark for you. Until then, bookmark this:

javascript:location.href='mailto:?SUBJECT='+document.title+'&BODY='+escape(location.href);

Taken from http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=660667a236a9d1e7&hl=en

M Gale

Internet Explorer? On Linux?

Just not in their DNA.

Google preps mobile payments launch

M Gale

At last?

Anything as long as it doesn't mean having to use (or rather, being entirely unable to use) that godawful Checkout thing. I'm a Maestro card owner. I'm not going to change bank for the sake of a few toys on my toy phone or toy slab. Every single other business I deal with has absolutely no problem taking my money via the plastic I already have.

Anyway, Android is out-selling iOS devices now. Why haven't we got Android Market pre-paid cards in Tesco/Wal*Mart/insert supermarket here?

BT cheerfully admits snooping on customer LANs

M Gale

Well.

...Except for WGA, which as I understand it has been snuck onto people's computers under the guise of a "security update" at least once.

Apple iPhone 5 to sport CRT-style screen

M Gale

Re: Paul_Murphy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/01/apple_headmount_patent/

That is all.

Dell intros world's thinnest 15in laptop PC

M Gale

Apple keyboard?

Reminds me of the old Spectrum ZX81 and 16 keyboards!

Microsoft squeezes out Windows Phone Mango details

M Gale

Letters and/or digits.

"Microsoft's love affair with digital rights management (DRM) for documents continues with Mango: you will be able to set permissons on email that stop people from forwarding or printing things such as embarrassing or compromising company memos and plans."

Because a camera can't take pictures of a screen. Oh no.

HP exec: WebOS tablet will trounce iPad

M Gale

Meh

Plenty of "better" options out there than the iWotsits. Myself, I like a fondle-toy that fits in a pocket, which the iPad doesn't. Now if the iPad really was a small, fondlable Mac even I'd be interested at the price it is. However, it's a toy with pretensions, so I'm really not.

Seriously, a 10" screen? And Saint Jobs telling us all that 7" is too small so we'll never see a 7" iPad? Might as well buy a Netbook. All the functionality of an iPad, cheaper, has a real keyboard AND you can do more with it. Including playing Angry Birds via Chipzilla's AppUp store.

The iPad and other huge tablets just won't have as much market as smaller, book-sized form factors. Either Apple will realise this and start releasing more portable slabs, or they won't and people will eventually either go Droid or Netbook. You know people get the same sort of hypnotic "Ooh Shiny, what is it where can I get it from" reaction from my nicely pocketable Tab as the iPad? Should tell you something, that.

Other iPad slayers, indeed. Sorry matey, but for many people a 10" expensive games console with no keyboard is dead on arrival. Apple seem entirely uninterested in doing anything for these people either, so they have to go elsewhere if they fancy a bit of "Ooh Shiny" that doesn't break the bank and is actually portable as opposed to merely battery operated.

Whether they go to WebOS on the other hand, is another matter entirely...

M Gale

C - Sony

Because I'm old enough to remember when "iPod" was "Walkman".

M Gale

It's what happens...

...if you piss Sarah off.

I'll be going now, before she gets that horsewhip..

Firefox 5 beta slapped on Mozilla conveyer belt

M Gale

If you don't like BLINK and MARQUEE...

...You really, really won't like http://therevolvinginternet.com

Not a bit.

Office 15 steals OVERLARGE font, design vision from Windows PHO

M Gale

Re: Well.

To paraphrase a film that I'm sure plenty of geeks enjoyed (and no doubt, LSD freaks tripped out to):

"This year we put a 15 on the box."

Guess the film.

M Gale

I'm rather pleased.

No, really. If Microsoft keep stuffing the UI up like this, people will eventually lose patience with having to re-learn ways of performing common tasks every other year. In the past, it was the file-format lock-in and the stagnation of other company's products that kept Office on top.

Now? Not so much. Export as PDF, anyone?

Student accused of posting bogus coupons to 4chan

M Gale

You can try scanning a bank note.

However on many scanners, it'll get halfway through and then complain that you're not allowed to scan that. Some will, some won't, but you don't know until you've bought the thing and tried it.

I've been told it's the same with printers, but I've only ever seen it in action with a scanner. Kinda creepy, really.

M Gale

Keeping track of EVERY coupon?

That's the sort of thing that got the UK's National Identity Register quite rightly derided by near enough everyone outside of New Labour's brainwashed elite. Well, that and the awful privacy and freedom issues.

Given how many coupons are created by how many manufacturers for how many products EVERY SINGLE DAY, you would need the mother of all databases to keep track of it all. Hell, I doubt even Google would be able to keep up. Then you'd need to link that all into various disparate EPOS systems used by various disparate and often-competing businesses.

Then you need to prevent it from falling victim of fraudsters and other black hats.

I think the phrase here would be "good fucking luck".

Coders run Android 3.0 on Honeycomb-less tablets

M Gale

I HAVE played with it.

Animations? Whoop de frigging do. My Tab animates the orientation change too. It adds next to nothing to the user experience. Having a half-decent processor adds to the user experience, due to things not shuddering and jerking regardless of the OS.

Changing everything for the sake of changing it does nothing for me, sorry. It's not slicker. It's not "more complete". How much more complete do you want? "Click on icon, app starts." Really, you can't get much slicker than that without dipping the thing in oil.

Larger screen? That only helps if you buy a 10" tablet, which is something I really do not want to do. I'd rather get a netbook and be able to use Windows and Linux on it, if I'm going to buy something large enough to need to be put into a bag rather than a pocket. Subjective I know, but still..

What does the Android 3.x UI do to improve things on tablets over 2.x? I'm not complaining about faster and smoother. Faster and smoother isn't the UI, it's the mechanics underneath. Unfortunately all the supporting foundations mean shit if the bricks and mortar look like a dog's dinner.

Maybe 3.x is "better" and maybe not, but I feel I really have to counter this inane, mindless, almost Apple-fan-esque drooling worship of the Honeycomb. It's not a new paradigm. It's an annoying bunch of changes. Where is the button that says "fuck this, I want it as it was, it wasn't broken so don't fix it thankyouverymuch"?

Mentally ill file-sharer had 'low self-esteem'

M Gale

30,000 songs, maybe a little bit of a piss-take.

However I have to say, I have the occasional tune I haven't (yet) paid for.

I'm willing to bet that if the BPI came a-knocking, then the judge who would eventually try me would likely possess more unauthorised copies of media than I do. As would the jury.

Cast the first stone and all. Is your entire music/film/software collection legit, Orlowski?

What, every single item? Sorry, don't believe you. Very much thumbs up for actually letting me say that in a comments section, though.