* Posts by Version 1.0

5379 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

King's College London internal memo cops to account 'compromise' as uni resets passwords

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A bit hard to do from China, though. ... you've never heard of office cleaners? But seriously, all you need to do is have the folks cleaning the office put a little extra hardware into a few computers USB ports and then head home - the job is done.

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Re: The mind boggles

All you have to do is harvest the usernames from a few of the recent breaches or start up social media interactions with employees and students - maybe sell them a few "cheap" phones...

RIP: Microsoft finally pulls plug on last XP survivor... POSReady 2009

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Re: End of an era...

As you can see from a multitude of posts, it's not going to be the end of an era. Western world folks can afford to keep buying new versions of Windows but out there in the rest of the world many people and organizations don't either have the money or care. We continue to support our software under XP because there are a lot of students in the third world that don't have a choice - we have new versions that run all the way up to W10 but we're not going to drop support for XP - so I still have XP machines running too.

Overzealous n00b takes out point-of-sale terminals across the UK on a Saturday afternoon

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Re: optimising compilers didn't have enough memory available yet to do a proper job

LOL - when I was helping teach a computer class at college back in the 80's they needed a 8080 cross-assembler for the students to use so I wrote them one in FORTRAN to run on an old Perkins Elmer that sat in the corner of the classroom ... I laughed so hard when I finished.

Gartner squints into its crystal ball: A pholdable phuture is very far away

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Re: This will be Itanic all over

I've used foldable phone for years but it's really difficult to get them to re-boot after you fold them.

You were warned and you didn't do enough: UK preps Big Internet content laws

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Re: what is

Advertising is harmful - it's generating the money that makes online harm/hate profitable. Just ban advertising and the entire problem will subside - sure, there will be some idiots out there but it will be much easier to find them and shut them down because they are going to have to pay to post their stupidity on-line.

US government tells internet body to hurry the funk up on privacy

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Unhappy

I abandoned emailing all abuse addresses years ago - nobody ever responded. These days I just hit delete.

HMRC accused of not understanding its own IR35 tax reforms ahead of private sector rollout

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Re: It's time for a re-write ...

"Such a change can't happen ..."

I think that it could happen - sure, it won't be anytime soon. But when you look at how badly our current system is performing, it's likely that we are slowly walking towards a complete collapse at some point in the future ...

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It's time for a re-write ...

When you look at the complaints on all sides, any sensible entity would throw the current taxation system out of the window, sit down and define a new one after looking at all of the issues and talking to economists, political scientists, and banks. Society and technology have changed everything, but the taxation system is still based on the concept of collecting taxes from a blacksmith (is that term still PC?) who has just sold a new horse shoe a to a farrier.

A fair and comprehensive system is possible, but we have too many entities making money from the holes in the current system and opposed to anything that would actually work so all that happens is we "tweak" the rules.

As the UK updates its .eu Brexit advice yet again, an alternative hovers into view

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Unhappy

Re: UK oversenstive

Everyone's going on about the Irish border these days but none of the brexiters ever mentioned the Spain-Gibraltar border - when we leave the EU that too will have to return to being a hard border unless the "technological solution" proposed by the brexiters works. What are they proposing, chipping everybody?

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They are all political ... so dump them.

The .UK and .EU domains are going to become political turds in a post-brexit Britain so it makes business sense to dump them now. If you subscribe to the ‘Brexit’ updates on GOV.UK site then you'll get about 20-30 emails of advice every day that effectively say that the government doesn't know what will happen but it will be bad.

Want to hang out with criminals but can't be bothered to download Tor? Try Facebook

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WTF?

But Facebook used to moderate...

Think back a few years to 2016 - Facebook used to moderate posts but then there were called out for doing it by the Republicans, claiming that Facebook was promoting a "liberal agenda" by removing posts that promoted conservative ideology. As a result Facebook completely changed the way that posts were moderated - and this was the start of the current imbroglio.

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But Facebook checks all the posts!

I guess they are far too busy checking content for the occasional breastfeeding mothers to find the time to worry about spam and credit card thieves.

Fake Google robocallers hit with $3.4m fine – but it turns out that the joke's on you

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Everyone is running around in circles

The fact is that the use of the telephone in business has dropped enormously - last year about 80% of the land line phone calls we got were spam and now we use nomorobo, a spam detection service that fights the spammers and has cut the number of calls that get through significantly.

I suspect that the phone companies are the real profiteers here but their phone lines must be dropping - we used to have 4 landlines and an 800 number, now we just have a couple of lines and even they don't get used much - it's all email these days and Spam-assassin is fantastic!

Plasma bubbles 500 times the size of earth, ultra-hot rain - let's face it, the Sun's not a place to hang out nearby

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Nothing to worry about ...

We've heading into a solar minimum, with sunspots and activity subsiding - it's probably going to be the lowest level of activity in 100 years. But then it will likely pick up again ... 2059 will be the 200 year anniversary of the Carrington Event.

Google Pay tells Euro users it has ditched UK for Ireland ahead of Brexit

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Unhappy

Re: We'll see more of this

The real disaster is that, Brexit or No Brexit, the damage has already been done - whatever the politicians do now, it's not going to fix the damage.

I was against leaving the EU but now I'm bored, I don't think it makes any difference what happens, the UK has face-planted itself in front of the entire world. It's clear that leaving will be stunningly difficult for years, but unfortunately revoking Article 50 would probably not "fix" anything either.

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Unhappy

We'll see more of this

A business has to make decisions driven by economics, and given the uncertainty after three years of non-stop negotiations, it makes solid sense to move to a country that offers a stable business environment for customers in Europe. This is not a "leaver or remainer" decision - it's simple the smart thing to do ... we even see many of the Brexit champions moving their assets abroad.

Prepare yourselves for Windows 10 May-hem. Or is it June, no, July?

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Devil

Re: Windows Brexit Edition?

And the same benefits too - great new features for free with an easy installation that will have no issues at all - think of the money that you will save and look forward to the new systems ability to exclude any resident applications that it doesn't like.

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I suspect that the biggest issue is that each update is applied to systems that may, or may not, have a myriad of prior updates and operating systems floating around and the Windows 10 update process tries to be safe but is unable to clean up the disk partitions that it's created in the past and other operating systems/applications have created.

Two Arkansas dipsticks nicked after allegedly taking turns to shoot each other while wearing bulletproof vests

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Re: Definite Darwin Award winner in the making

It's only a 22 - so there was no real risk unless their aim was bad ... "Hey buddy, hold my beer while I shoot you"

Boffins baffled by planet nugget whizzing round white dwarf that should have killed it

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Re: Plausible explanation

So what's going to be happening with a iron ball, a few hundred kilometers in diameter, rapidly moving through the stars magnetic field at that distance?

Who needs foreign servers? Researchers say the USA is doing a fine job of harboring its own crimeware flingers

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Re: But.. but... bu.... The RUSSIANS!

"The Rushings are inohcent - it's all fake mail from Hillery's server, lock me^H^Hher up @ The real Donald Trump"

Phew... Oi, was that you, Curiosity? Euro Mars sat inhaled mega methane blast, boffins baffled

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Re: Whoopsie

The easiest way to detect methane is to use a match or a lighter.

Former HP CEO Léo Apotheker tells court he didn't read Autonomy's latest accounts before fated $11bn buyout

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Re: Makes you wonder

What did he think his duties as a CEO were? - getting paid and riding in the corporate jet, Of course you have to make corporate decisions so that the shareholders will keep boosting you pay every year so you keep a couple of dice in your pockets.

UK.gov admits it was slow to intervene in Verify's abject failure to meet user targets

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Unhappy

Re: Pushing the boulder up the hill

... in the rest of the UK the Conservative government is viewed with suspicion. - there, fixed it for you. - I would use the Joke Icon except that these days it's not funny any longer.

The universal hatred/fear of an ID card in England seems totally at odds with the current push to remove all "illegal aliens" (not sure if that's a Trump phrase or a May phrase - maybe both?) from the UK ... essentially it seems as though the ideal solution that the UK would actually be comfortable with would be to only require ID's for non-citizens and the poor.

'It's full of beer!' Miracle fridge reveals itself to pals tuckered out from cleaning flooded cabin

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Re: Since when...

Yes, it's beer - basically if you live in the US it's good because (being pretty close to water) you can drink a lot of it after a hot day in the fields or at work ... today if's about 75F outside in the South and we think of it as a nice cool day ... summer's coming.

Renegade Android apps can siphon off your web logins, browser history. So make sure Chrome or OS is patched, friends

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Joke

JAB

Just Another Bug ... bugs are normal, I'd be a lot more worried if they were claiming that the software was completely bug free. Bugs are normal, eventually we find them and fix move them - works fine until someone notices where they were moved to. I've never seen software that was bug-free but I have seen bugs that were software-free ... at least it looked that way.

I don't hate US tech, snarls Euro monopoly watchdog chief – as Google slapped with €1.49bn megafine

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Re: So what's next?

I doubt it - Boeing backed Hillery in the last presidential election - that's something that he'll never forget.

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Joke

So what's next?

Will the US president jump into the argument and, with an about face, suddenly start defending Google?

Brexit text-it wrecks it: Vote Leave fined £40k for spamming 200k msgs ahead of EU referendum

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Re: Bit of a pointless thing to do

So what was the point anyway? It depends how you word the spam ... think back to the adverts that Facebook was showing everyone at the time and the big bus telling everyone that the NHS would be dripping in cash if the UK left the EU ... have you never heard of grooming?

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Re: Dodgy behavior by Vote Leave?

To say another vote would be "binding" would be stirring the pot and not helpful - couldn't we simply settle for requiring that all statements are backed up by facts and evidence - and the threat to prosecute anyone who makes a false statement without evidence? We do that all the time in law courts - why should it be reasonable to allow lies in referendums?

Look what the Softcat dragged in: Revenues grow 21% as UK reseller refuses to blink at Brexit

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Pint

I looks like most companies are spending money now to prepare for the Brexit bug (like we all did back in 1999) and that's boosting the economy in many areas ... but where is it going? COBOL and FORTRAN programmers were minting money prior to 2000 but these days not so much. Will we be ready to the post-Brexit situation? At least with the Millennium bug we knew when it was due - once I saw that everything was OK that night, I opened a bottle of Talisker ....

Public disgrace: 82% of EU govt websites stalked by Google adtech cookies – report

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Re: GDPR is a cookie own-goal

I like cookie walls - essentially it's a nice big "GO AWAY" sign when you visit the site.

Bandersnatch to gander snatched: Black Mirror choices can be snooped on, thanks to privacy-leaking Netflix streams

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Meh

All your data belong us

So the ISP can snoop on the user data ... that's hardly surprising is it? Is it a risk? At this level it's a small risk- but small privacy risks grow, and the money flows through them (hello Facebook) they spread and grow. Behind the scenes Netflix knows everything - do you seriously think that Netflix isn't busy assembling user profiles and marketing then as anonymized (hello Facebook) to advertisers? Scraping user data and marketing it is the business model in the entertainment industry these days.

From MySpace to MyFreeDiskSpace: 12 years of music – 50m songs – blackholed amid mystery server move

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Joke

Re: Likely sequence

Maybe the BIOS battery died and nobody noticed until they tried to reboot?

Oracle's long-running pension plan class action case: C'mon, judge, reject a jury trial – Big Red

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SOP in the US

I worked for a UK/US company back in the 90's - the US pension plan had everyone contributing to the plan and the company matching the employees contributions but if you left the company before "becoming vested" by making contributions for 6 years then all you got back were your contributions ... minus the management fees. The corporate contributions were then redistributed to the remaining plan members.

Curiously the company had a high staff turnover - unless you were part of the corporate management, your job was reorganized after 4-5 years and you were unemployed - most people got back less than half of your personal pension contributions, some got way less.

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

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We've all been there.

Great story to start the week El Reg!

Mistakes are useful - we learn from our mistakes - once this happens you learn to make a backup first, test the script, and write a debug mode into the scripts that reports everything it would do but doesn't do any of the things until you edit a variable at the start of the script.

I have told folks for years, "There are two types of users in the world, those who have permanently lost their data ... and those who are going to lose their data."

What made a super high-tech home in Victorian England? Hydroelectric witchery, for starters

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Re: FIFY

So the generator was DC? What voltage?

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

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It's easy to take the position that "criminality is not black and white" but you are wrong - and sometimes the laws are wrong too. We should all step back from these arguments and ask ourselves what is good and what is bad.

I know it's a much harder question these days, it's all too easy to fall into a "Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are Bad" statement but the fact is they are nothing without their users. We need to start taking responsibility for our viewpoints and actions.

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It's not a difficult balance - in the modern world Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter don't kill people - it's their users who are doing the shooting. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other "social" platforms are just making money from our stupidity, if you are using these platforms to watch these videos then you are one of the guilty parties - none of these platforms would bother showing this kind of thing if they were not making money from it.

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Meh

Re: Why share?

And now we have "videos of people being murdered in cold blood" on Facebook and everyone's having panic attacks - but we have had computer games that show this and movies in the theater that shoot up people left right and center for years - and all we say then is it's a fantastic plot, great acting, wonderful special effects ... killing people in movies used to be quite rare but these days it's become common - Die Hard is a Christmas movie ...

Society as a whole is responsible for creating the conditions that push the fringes towards this - is it reasonable to say that it's OK to shoot someone in a computer game but we'd rather you didn't do it in real life, and then expect that nobody will ever disagree with you?

Q&A: Crypto-guru Bruce Schneier on teaching tech to lawmakers, plus privacy failures – and a call to techies to act

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Happy

Re: Pro Bono? TINSTAAFL

"Maybe we Sci. & Eng. types are just too honest to be politicos?" - that's a very good point, how many politicians these days have a STEM degree? Personally I think a degree in History should be a minimum requirement for anyone to run for a a political office.

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Pro Bono? TINSTAAFL

Tech companies are already providing pro bono advice to lawmakers .... it's called lobbying. The tech companies push their point of view and the politicians modulate it with whatever gets them reelected. This is happening at Federal and State levels in the USA - looks like the same game is going on in the UK too. It illustrates the root problem with politics these days - it's a job that needs no qualifications other than the ability to fool most of the people every now and then. We elect stupid politicians, smart politicians, and occasionally good politicians but most of the time we can't tell the difference until after the election.

It's like feeling sick one day and deciding to hold an election to appoint someone to treat you. Yes, a doctor or surgeon could run for the position - but would they get elected if other candidates offered free beer, comfy beds, or a five course dinner every evening? This is how we end up picking someone with a second class BA degree in geography to run the country and look how well that's working out.

What do WLinux and Benedict Cumberbatch have in common? They're both fond of Pengwin

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Happy

"So how the heck did the Welsh come up with that for a bird from Antarctica." - there were Welsh communities in southern Argentina in the mid 1800's and Welsh seamen on ships around the world for much longer - and Welsh is a very old (and beautiful) language.

Welcome. You're now in a timeline in which US presidential hopeful Beto was a member of a legendary hacker crew

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Re: Nice

Definitely - Shakespeare lived it times as mess as ours and illustrate the issues well in King Lear, we should quiz all potential candidates and ask them what they have learned from history.

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Re: Is the "fix" in?

Louisiana voting machines leave no paper trail, you just push buttons and press vote - I think that turns a light on, and it might record the vote too?

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Thumb Up

Re: Nice

I agree, I didn't think that he had much of a chance but now I'd have to say that he's in the running. The best thing about him is that he's not another old fart running for office. I was taught when I was younger that age = experience and wisdom but now that I'm older I realise that age == stupidity in the political world.

Mayors having a right 'mare in Florida: Acting mayor arrested weeks after boss also arrested

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It's just Florida - this is not news

This is just normal everyday stuff - when I lived just down the road from Port Richey back in the 90's I remember reading in the paper about an incident at the local emergency room on Christmas Day, some poor lady had thought her pet parrot was having trouble breathing so she had tried to give in artificial respiration but it had chewed half her face off ...

If you like this kind of thing then read Carl Hiaasen's novels ... at least 80% of the incidents in his "fiction" stories happened in real life.

Yes! Pack your bags! Blossoming planetary system strikingly similar to ours found by boffins

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Re: Faster than light not needed?

Yea, but that's old school. These days the trope is that when you get there you discover that Apple arrived first and nobody uses Android phones there so you are completely unable to communicate with the natives.

Facebook blames 'server config change' for 14-hour outage. Someone run that through the universal liar translator

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Unhappy

Re: Not sure the comparison is valid

The problem with apps is that there are so many of them and you can't call your friends if they don't have the same app that you are using - but everyone has a phone so that will work even if you get spam calls. Yes, spam calls suck but spam is everywhere, you can't avoid it, it will get to you eventually whatever app you use - spam is just a blue arsed fly on the Internet.