* Posts by Number6

2293 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

BOFH: The Idiot-ware Project and the Meaningless Acronym

Number6

No, I think he left them together in the box with the drum of calcium chloride.

Google 'screwed over' its non-millennials – now they can all fight back

Number6

The balance is being steadily redressed (I see quite a few younger female engineers now), but in the group of engineers with lots of visible grey hair, women are still a small minority.

Number6

You need at least one grey-haired engineer on the staff, it's cheaper than gaining the equivalent experience by making the same mistakes he did when he was your age. He might not have all the answers, but you can be sure he knows a lot of the right questions to ask.

Citizens don't trust UK.GOV with their data

Number6

Re: Freedom

Isn't that the difference between external control and self-control?

Psst. Need some spy-on-employees tech? Ask Oriium

Number6

Re: The usual "credit card" string

No idea how well the security measures work against it, but the VM with the VPN works quite nicely. It also helps that if you want to go browsing patents or competition websites, it's not immediately obviously your employer's IP address, which can be enough to trigger a lawsuit if they've got a trigger-happy lawyer in need of a new yacht.

Number6

Before installing any employer-related app on my phone I read the Ts&Cs. The Outlook app requires permission to do a factory wipe on the phone, and even though I was assured by the employer at the time that they'd never do that, I refused to install it on my personal phone. OK, I lose some functionality (although it turned out that I could have IMAP access to my email without any strings) but if it's important then they can provide the phone.

My device, my rules. If you want your rules then supply the device.

My Nest smoke alarm was great … right up to the point it went nuts

Number6

I've had the 3am awakening with no prior low-battery chirps. It is not fun to be dragged out of deep sleep to the sound of a frantic smoke alarm.

Does your house get cold at night? My theory at the time was that the battery was getting old, but not enough to initiate the sporadic chirp at comfortable room temperature, then the temperature dropped overnight because I'd set the thermostat to be really low while I was asleep, and as the temperature went down, so did the battery volts.

Source code unleashed for junk-blasting Internet of Things botnet

Number6

Re: Routers anyone?

That's one of the first things I disable whatever the product. Anything wants a special accommodation on my network, it can ask nicely. Or just refuse to work and I'll figure out what needs to be done and decide whether I'm going to allow it.

Blighty's telly, radio watchdog Ofcom does a swear

Number6

Re: Bah!

I tend to agree, use of swear words in sketches rarely improves them. I think people laugh out of embarrassment. Look at comedians such as Les Dawson, capable of being offensively funny without actually saying anything, just leading the audience along and letting them complete it in their own minds.

Then there was the Two Ronnies: "Your nuts, milord, your sweet, milady" and all of that, leaving the audience to insert apostrophes where appropriate.

Number6

I just sent the link to my teenage son and recommended he read it thoroughly. That should put him off ever clicking on the link.

Samsung: And for my next trick – exploding WASHING MACHINES

Number6

Is it controlled by an old MC6800 CPU? that even had an opcode for HCF.

US govt pleads: What's it gonna take to get you people using IPv6?

Number6

You lot are hopeless. Clearly IPv42 is the ultimate answer to the internet.

Number6

Re: Article needs puppy dog face

That's where the UK scores, I guess. The US seems to have a near-monopoly situation, whereas the UK government did at least force BT to sell access to others so they could provide alternatives. However, BT's original network was built with public money, I'm assuming that wasn't the case in the US so the government has less moral right to force things. Although with the recent TW-Comcast merger talks, perhaps they could have allowed it but required some degree of unbundling so you could have a pipe from your cable company to your ISP of choice with a different mix of value-added services.

Comcast does IPv6 (possibly not everywhere), although they occasionally change the assigned /64 prefix which is irritating, and yes, they're expensive. While it works it's generally OK though, but that's true of any large organisation, things only get bad when you have to interact with their customer service department after something's gone wrong.

Number6

Re: we are forced to have ipv6 internally so we have it 'on'

Surely the default firewall just doesn't pass anything initiating from the outside, so the basic IPv6 router is roughly equivalent to the NAT router with no port forwarding.

Then you allow specific IP/port combos through, with the advantage that if you want two web servers on different devices(for example), they can both use port 80 without conflict bceause they'll have different IPv6 addresses.

I have two Linux boxes on the network here. I've given them fixed IPv6 addresses from the private address space (FD00) so they can talk even when IT or the DHCP server decides to do something silly with the IPv4 space.

Number6

Re: Article needs puppy dog face

I think there are some home routers that understand IPv6. If not, there's always OpenWRT, which is fairly easy to install (and should default to 'safe')

As for the ISP, I deliberately switched to one that did support IPv6 - perhaps if people started voting with their routers (see above) then more ISPs would need to take it seriously.

Number6

Re: the Register ... no IPv6

I was wondering the same thing. I'd be asking the BBC some questions too. And the UK government.

That's cold: This is how our boss told us our jobs are at risk, staffers claim

Number6

Re: When it comes to cold goodbyes...

It happens in the US. I was once in the lab talking to a couple of people. The manager of one of them came in and asked if he could have a few words and the two of them walked out. I said in jest to the other chap, "Do you think we'll see him again?" Well, I did, but he was on his way out carrying his box of personal belongings. Several others made the walk that day and it took me several more days to realise that the guy sitting in reception all day was a security guard hired for the week just in case there was a problem. My UK colleagues (who'd been given the consultation period spiel) thought this was somewhat funny. I guess attitudes (and the availability of guns) is a bit different.

Turing, Hauser, Sinclair – haunt computing's Cambridge A-team stamping ground

Number6

Re: Don't forget the bikes

Watch out because whether a road is two-way for bikes or not, expect to see bikes travelling in both directions. Also don't assume that all bikes stop at red lights, not even pedestrian crossings.

(Note to the cycling lobby - I once almost got mown down by a van going the wrong way on a one-way street, but that wasn't in Cambridge.)

Dutch bicycle company pretends to be television company

Number6

Ditch bicycle company

Interesting typo there. Opposite of a mountain bike?

For airline transport it works the other way - when shipping a bike to the US (for free, thanks Virgin Atlantic) I bought a transparent bike bag for it. The theory is that if it's clearly a bike the baggage handlers will treat it a bit better than if it's an anonymous cardboard box. It worked for me, the bike arrived at San Francisco intact. I did discover that if you put it crosswise on a baggage cart then it won't go through the customs channel, nor the exit door from the international terminal.

Forgive me, father, for I have used an ad-blocker on news websites...

Number6

Re: No guilt at all

My early object to ads was the intrusive flashy nature of a lot of them, plus having to close the annoying pop-up and pop-under windows. Limited bandwidth also predisposed me against stupid large images too. Now I'm motivated primarily by security - unless a site is prepared to indemnify me for losses incurred due to their site serving up malware then I'm going to keep matters in my own hands and block ads. Ironically, they'd fix pretty much all of it by serving ads from their own sites, not via a broker's site, and by doing so server-side with no scripts or flash on my machine. I'm sure a blocker would be hard-pressed to reliably block a static image from the host site. However, that would break the whole ad industry and the way they track people, so I doubt if it would happen. Not to mention the fact that all the sluggish scripts slowing down your PC would now have to run on the server, so they'd have to upgrade their end of the link.

'Faceless' Liberty Global has 'sucked the very soul' out of Virgin Media

Number6

Re: I guess 200Mb upgrade was the last I will see :(

Silicon Valley does at least have Comcast with 100Mbit, but I'm not convinced they've got the infrastructure to back up the local pipe because throughput gets slower at peak times.

We still get AT&T pushing their amazing broadband internet, but nowhere on the literature does it actually say what speed it's capable of. I assume it's DSL and so very limited, especially given the length of the (unused) phone cable to this house.

Number6

Re: "original Virgin Values"?

VM was good provided it didn't break. While it worked and provided me with a pipe to the internet I was happy with the broadband because it's been a long time since I relied on any other service from the internet pipe supplier. I run my own email and have my domains and websites hosted elsewhere, so I can switch them around should the need arise. One time someone in the office tried to cancel his VM subscription and it was hilarious for all of us listening in to his efforts to get part the customer retention department. When my turn came it was a lot easier, they don't have an answer to "I'm leaving the country" so it was quick and painless to cancel.

Once we had a fault where neither the broadband or the cable TV was working. To most of us, that would suggest a fault in the common part of the system, prior to either cable modem or set top box. So I called the VM support line, where it turned out you could report a TV fault or a broadband fault but not both at the same time. I picked the TV option, explained to the script monkey what was going on but we still had to go through the motions of rebooting the box and the other crap that was on the (inappropriate) script. At the end he confirmed that they'd need to send out a tech, we arranged an appointment and then he asked if I wanted him to put me through to the team handling broadband faults. By this point I'd lost the will to live and declined.

There was a bit of redemption later, I got a phone call from a chap (I suspect several support levels higher than the support droid I spoke to) who confirmed to me that (1) it was indeed a network outage and (2) it should now be fixed. Then he asked me to confirm that all was well and as it was, offered to cancel the technician visit.

Number6

Re: Yearning for the BlueYonder days

Sounds like they're jacking up prices to be comparable to overpriced cable in the US. It was definitely a shock moving here and discovering that for twice the price I could have half the product. This shocking state of affairs is obviously now being addressed, although not in the way that consumers would prefer.

I want to remotely disable Londoners' cars, says Met's top cop

Number6

Re: I am amazed...

....that the police DON'T want to use military-style Predator/Reaper drones! I'd have thought they would be demanding them, complete with Hellfire AGMs to "help them win TWAT".

This is the British police we're talking about here, most of whom do not want to carry arms and are well trained to try to defuse a situation without violence. They don't always get it right, but lethal force is generally a last resort, not a first, unlike some places.

Asian hornets are HERE... those honey bee murdering BASTARDS

Number6

It's clearly all a plot by the pesticide manufacturers. If something else takes out the honey bees then neonicotinoids clearly can't be blamed.

Brits: Can banks do biometric security? We'd trust them before the government

Number6

Setting a Low Bar

Saying you trust someone more than you trust government (unless it's the ability to screw up bigtime) doesn't really say much because the bar is set very low.

BOFH: The case of the suspicious red icon

Number6

Re: Brilliant line.

He couldn't do that until after he's stepped out of the window.

Sniffing your storage could lead to sensitive leaks, warn infosec bods

Number6

Re: Is not the complexity of the machine a major factor here?

That can work against you if you've got a resonant slot in the case, or a cable the correct length. That might cause a fairly strong signal to be radiated at that frequency, with the data modulated on it.

As for demonstrations, didn't the BBC do a programme some years back where they parked up a van full of technology and could generate an image of someone's CRT in an adjacent building? I've seen a TEMPEST demo, if they could do that sort of thing twenty years ago, with modern DSP and improvements in semiconductors generally, it wouldn't surprise me that such things can be done at an even finer level than before.

Delete Google Maps? Go ahead, says Google, we'll still track you

Number6

Re: Not just google

I have on several occasions gone to install an app and changed my mind on reading the requested permissions list. I do check updates as well - the US T-Mobile app (pre-installed because that's where I got the phone) keeps wanting me to upgrade it to something that claims it wants access to my microphone and camera. So I keep declining the upgrade.

Facebook replaces human editors with McChicken romping, Fox News faking AI bots

Number6

Sounds like a new game to while away the colder months - try to game the Facebook AI and see how many outrageous and/or dodgy stories we can get it to select for posting.

UK watchdog: You. Facebook. Get over here now. This WhatsApp privacy update. Explain

Number6

Informed Choice

Provided it gets enough publicity so people know what will happen if they continue to use WhatsApp, then she will have achieved something even if nothing else changes. Most people don't care about sharing their personal details.

Unlimited mobile data in America – where's the catch? There's always a catch

Number6

For some the monthly option works out cheaper. The US still has the quaint concept of minutes that expire, so you're looking at a monthly payment of some sort anyway even on prepaid. When you've got a family, the cost of adding an extra phone to a monthly plan is cheaper than adding to a set of prepaid phones.

In the UK we had a spare phone for emergencies or to lend to overseas guests with a PAYG SIM in it and provided it was interacting with the network enough, it stayed valid and didn't cost anything. It did get an awful lot of ambulance-chaser text messages though. That's not practical in the US, if you don't keep paying you lose it.

Number6

My current plan has a 3GB cap but I rarely get anywhere near that. Mind you, I don't consider a phone to be a suitable medium for watching videos so that probably saves me because it's something I rarely do. A bit of email, web browsing and navigation obviously doesn't use much.

WhatsApp is to hand your phone number to Facebook

Number6

Me too, heard the news that FB bought it, sent one last message to relevant contacts telling them I was uninstalling it and that was it.

I've never had the FB app on my phone either, why do they need access to my phone number and contact list?

DVLA misses out on £400m in tax after scrapping paper discs

Number6

I knew someone would bite... Probably without thinking about valid and legals reasons why someone might not be giving DVLA any money.

Number6

Re: Better ways??

You get several months' grace on the sticker anyway, mine failed to arrive last year so I had to fill in the form and request a new one, which duly arrived a couple of months after the previous one had expired. I was expecting to get stopped but I guess they never looked closely enough or took the trouble to check with DMV that I had indeed paid. The payment is the important part, not the tag display, it seems, unlike in the UK where displaying the tax disc was the important point in law.

Number6
Trollface

I have to admit I haven't given DVLA any money since they introduced the scheme.

LinkedIn sues 100 information scrapers after technical safeguard fail

Number6

Re: If I wanted a job at any company

You'd be surprised how many recruiters do search LinkedIn. If you pay them money then you can get all sorts of access and search features. I get a regular stream of pings from that source, some of them are even interesting, and I have to admit that my current job is due to that source.

Vodafone: Dear customers. We're sorry we killed your Demon

Number6

Re: Decoupling of email from broadband?

I took the decision back in 2000 to acquire my own domain based on my Demon hostname (a .org at the time, although I also now have the .com and for a while had the .co.uk), so I got over the pain of changing email address a long time ago. I also run my own mail server, so I get unlimited user names at the domain. The hard part now is having a static IP for outbound mail and the way a lot of ISPs block inbound port 25, but a friendly cloud VM provider provider fixes that, I have a Linux machine out there with fixed addresses and I can use it as my gateway in and out.

I stayed with them for quite a while, having been about number 700 on their customer database based on the IP address (158.152.10.x) before switching to AAISP because I wanted to play ipv6.

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook ads

Number6

Is Zuck going to provide a watertight guarantee to compensate people for damage done by malware from ads on FB? If he's sure that all the ads are safe (and they might well be if it's all in-house scripting around them) then he can do that and take away one of the biggest arguments in favour of ad blockers - the security one is hard for the ad-slingers to argue against.

Speaking in Tech: Nope, sorry waiter. I won't pay with that card reader

Number6

There's an interesting generation split here, when I'm looking for information I prefer to find it in written form, which I can peruse, skip through and re-read at my own pace. My son automatically looks for a video to show him how to do something, rather than have it in writing. I find video and audio feeds a lot less convenient simply because I'm often in an environment where listening to something is not so easy - either it's a noisy environment or it's somewhere quiet with other people who might not appreciate it. Having a transcript is easier, but failing that, I just don't bother with the article.

Olympics bans GIFs

Number6

I think it's now "you will not get paid for doing this", regardless of your day job. Once upon a time it was "you shall not receive any money from anywhere for doing this on any occasion".

Number6

I have the urge to go on Twitter and use the #Rio2016 hashtag just to piss them off. Possibly with a graphic image of the middle finger.

If the IOC try to be too controlling about it all then they'll probably do more harm than good.

Render crashing PCs back to their component silicon: They deserve it

Number6

Re: Dune

- Anything after Heretics of Dune aren't sequels, they're milking the series. Meh, some of them are Ok, but all of them together are not worth one of the original.

To be fair, the stuff written by his son is pretty good in its own right and fills in some of the background nicely.

Number6

Re: Dune

The film was dire, the book is good. There is also a Dune mini-series available (see Amazon) that I can recommend, which sticks to the storyline in the book and doesn't piss around with stupid weirding modules and rain. The mini-series covers from the start of Dune to the end of Children of Dune.

Oz stats bureau deploys a bot to harvest Twitter IDs

Number6

I seem to remember filling in my last UK census with a Sharpie. Shame about the cheap absorbent paper. Had fun colouring in all the barcodes, too.

Hello, Barclays? Why hello, John Smith. We meet again

Number6

Recognition?

So this is recognition as in identifying who you are, not recognition as in understanding what you're saying? I hate systems that attempt the latter, they don't like my voice at all. Contrast this with my wife, who breezed through the whole thing after I failed repeated attempts.

I think it was UFO where they had voice recognition in the room-lift that took people down to SHADO HQ and I think it was Foster who never bothered giving his name for the voice ID but quoted a bit of poetry.

Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update tweaked to stop you disabling app promos

Number6

Port Your Major Programs

So what it needs is a bit of effort and commitment from major business providers to produce Linux versions - we could have Solidworks and Pro-E for mechanical engineers, Cadence could port OrCAD, Altium could do the same with their product to keep electrical engineers happy, Mathcad for numerical people, Adobe for their suite (although they've gone all cloudy). We already have an adequate office suite and messaging solutions exist albeit with a bit of improvement needed.

That would get a fair few people off of Windows who are only still there for one application - if you've got to update your code to cope with Win10 then why not nudge it to something else instead or as well?

Think of all the times you've been shafted by MS in the past and take it as an opportunity to get one back.

Number6

Re: SLATFATF

Unless you need gaming performance, install Linux as the primary OS and run Win10 in a VM. It'll do most things happily contained and you get to do as much as possible in a Linux environment without being stuck with Win10 just because it's "work" time.

Number6

Re: @Ivan4 - Wow.

Yeah, but that program can only be installed through Windows application store, with Microsoft blessing. Tough luck, mate!

Not if it's just a compiled executable which you can run from a command prompt. Or have they locked it down that much? I have a Win10 VM in case I ever actually need to use it, but at the moment I just fire it up, let it collect updates and then shut it down again. Perhaps I'll snapshot it before the Anniversary Update.