Probably worth mentioning that you're referring to the adjustable and not the hole at the other end.
Posts by VinceH
3483 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2009
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Aussie wedges spam javelin in ring spanner
Supernova bubble clocked at 19,000,000 km/h
Russia faces Ukraine and Georgia in Eurovision deathmatch
Microsoft phone support contractors told to hang up after 15 minutes
Re: rubbish
I'm glad I'm not the only one confuzzled by the maths of this - the numbers just don't add up.
Or multiply for that matter.
The claim is that this guy's team were each handling around 250 calls per day. If that's a seven hour day, that's just over one and a half minutes per call. Even if they were working 24/7, that's still less than 6 minutes per call.
If limiting the calls to fifteen minutes was a problem, that suggests the calls were each longer than fifteen minutes prior to that directive - but 250 calls at at least 15 minutes each equates to them working well over 60 hours per day.
Take the 'each' out and things might be more plausible. 250 calls between the 15 people in the team over a seven hour day equates to about 25 minutes per call.
We're calling it: World hits peak Namey McNameface
Windows 10 build 14342: No more friendly Wi-Fi sharing
Re: Good
"You Your guests have to actively tick a box each time you add a network give them access to your WiFi to share them - it's not by default. And some will probably do so without asking if you're okay with that."
FTFY, because that's the real problem - guests.
Luckily I've had no visitors who are using Windows 10 and needed internet access. I'd already decided decided that if I did, I would be changing the password after every such visit.
I didn't know, however, that it was an opt in thing. On that basis, rather than recite the key to them, it would be easier to just grab the computer and enter it oneself, and ensure that option is unset (while at the same time trusting Microsoft not to piss around and change such options*) - but an obvious question is can user re-visit that setting for a particular network and subsequently change it?
* Luckily, though, they have changed it - in a sensible way.
Re: Good
"You also have to wonder why, having come to their senses and dropped it, they do so on the basis of some waffle about the effort needed to maintain it. They might at least get the brownie points for doing the right thing for the right reason."
That would be like admitting they were wrong. Not going to happen.
Super cool: Arctic data centres aren't just for Facebook
Lie back and think of cybersecurity: IBM lets students loose on Watson
"Check out this video. If you're not scared of the possibilities hinted at after viewing this, you have nerves of steel."
Pfft. That extract from The Guide that we've never heard before was rubbish.
TalkTalk customers decide to StayStay after £3m in free upgrades
Re: providing free upgrades to customers.
"You can choose from one of the following TV boost packages – films, kids, entertainment or Sky Sports, which will be free for three months.
This upgrade would normally cost between £5/month and £30/month depending on the channels."
So this "free upgrade" is just a loss leader promotional offer; three months for free, then start paying.
The same appears to be true for #2 and #3, though the loss leader period for both of those is twelve months, rather than three. #4 is the only apparent exception - though wherever you pulled that list from did question it from an up-sell angle.
Dwarf planet intumesces before astronomers' gaze
Laser-zapping scientists will save the Earth from meteorite destruction
IBM's Internet of Things brainbox foresees 'clean clothes as a service'
"At a higher level though, he said, the Internet of Things is about the data produced by the things, which should allow companies and organisations and 'selected partners' (i.e. any third party who pays enough) to optimise maximise their processes or develop better products and services for opportunities for marketing to their customers"
FTFY
Blocking ads? Smaller digital publishers are smacked the hardest
Archaeologists find oldest ever ground-edge stone axe
Kepler space telescope spots 1,284 new planets
IE and Graphics head Microsoft's Patch Tuesday critical list
It should be a crime to install spyware on phones, thunders Plaid Cymru MP
Did Spotify hire Alan Partridge to run its Netflix-style video push?
Can ad biz’s LEAN avert ADPOCALYPSE?
Re: LEAN?
"Ad industry, still in their own bubble without a clue about the performance & bandwidth grief their unwanted ads cause."
Indeed.
As far as I'm concerned, the initial file load for an advert should be covered by a single file request - the sort that gets issued when <img src="..."> is encountered. Absolutely nothing else. (But do keep the file sizes down, please!)
As I've said before, I don't use an ad blocker as such - I use NoScript, Ghostery, and a policy of not letting cookies persist beyond the browsing session (which to some extent negates the value of Ghostery).
And I am absolutely not going to change that. The only way, therefore, that the ad industry is going to get adverts shown on my computer is if they are served from straightforward <img..> links in the html, with no need for Javascript.
Do that, and I will see your adverts.
Think it can't be done? Look at the Krebs On Security website - I haven't had to enable Javascript on that site, and I can see two advertisements from third parties, and one for Brian's own book.
The pages load fast, there's no delay caused by the adverts being fetched, they don't interfere with the content... And I see them.
Going back to what Andrew said at the very end of the article:
"Curing the adtech biz of other nasties might be more difficult. So complex is the digital ad chain, the complexity hides fraud, including malvertising."
Curing the malvertising problem is dead easy (subject to new vulnerabilities being discovered in browser image rendering or whatever): See above.
DARPA wants god-mode attribution platform to pin and predict crime
"It should also sport algorithms to predict criminal campaign behaviour."
To do this properly, they need to look at everything that is connected - including cameras, etc, and incorporate face and voice recognition, number plate recognition, everything. They can then call the resulting system "the machine" and whoever is ultimately responsible for developing it should definitely ensure that even though it is designed to detect acts of terror, it should see everything: Violent crimes involving ordinary people. People like you. Crimes the government would consider irrelevant, and on which they won't act, so the developer should. He'll need a partner - someone with the skills to intervene.
They'll be hunted by the authorities, so will have to work in secret. You'll never find them, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... they'll find you.
Or something.
Linux Mint to go DIY for multimedia
Facebook image-tagging to be tested in Californian court
"As noted above, the nasty part of this image tagging is that it does not require participation or consent of the people who are tagged. Nor is there a mechanism to notify those people.[1]"
AIUI (and IIRC from when I actively used the site and even had 'friends'*), Facebook's logic is that "tagging" is when the name applied to a face in a photograph is linked to a Facebook account - and it's that which Facebook's opt out setting applies to.
However, it's still possible to apply a name to someone in a photo; there's no opting out of that because it's not linked to an account. So if your name is a common one, such as John Smith, being named isn't going to matter a huge amount - but if your name is less common, such as Thelonius Davenport, then even being named in a photo is a bit off.
"I'm not clear whether this actually removes your data from Facebook's facial recognition database"
Here's a more interesting question: Back when I actually used the site, with the notification option came the ability to disapprove a tag, which degraded it from being a linked tag to just a name. In that scenario, was the link still present for photo recognition purposes?
* That original account was deleted. These days, I have another account (set up as a test) but haven't added anyone as friends, and basically don't bother logging in. And Facebook's cookies don't persist beyond the browsing session on my systems.
Official: Microsoft's 'Get Windows 10' nagware to vanish from PCs in July
The 'new' Microsoft? I still wouldn't touch them with a barge pole
"Microsoft make a number of truly fantastic technologies and they are legitimately at the cutting edge of a number of hybrid cloud technologies. By the same token, Microsoft are also asshats, so any attempt to make decisions about them gets complicated and messy in a right hurry."
FTFY. No need for the rest of the article.
'I thought my daughter clicked on ransomware – it was the damn Windows 10 installer'
"The fun starts about nine minutes into this recording of the live stream.."
No it doesn't - you've misread a report from elsewhere and didn't check.
According to other reports "the Windows 10 upgrade starts after minute 8:54" - and when it's a recording of over nine hours, that means 8 hours 54 minutes in. (And if you watch it from the start, you'll notice a Windows 10 taskbar at the bottom of the screen and wonder WTF?)
However, another option is to look at a shorter video, showing just the relevant few minutes, on YouTube.
Windows 10 free upgrade offer ends on July 29th
Have Microsoft-hosted email? Love using Live Mail 2012? Bad news
'Bitcoin creator' Craig Yeah Wright in meltdown
'Apple ate my music!' Streaming jukebox wipes 122GB – including muso's original tracks
Re: Old old news
I stopped using iTunes when an update to it disabled my network interface.
It actually did it more than once. The first time I thought the interface being disabled was probably some random glitch that coincidentally happened when iTunes was updated. I fixed it and carried on... but then it happened again when iTunes next updated.
And just to add insult to injury, having enabled it again before uninstalling iTunes - it happened again when I carried out that uninstallation.
Stop resetting your passwords, says UK govt's spy network
Re: Too Many bad Movies
'I think the constant need to cycle new passwords (sometimes every few weeks) is because too many CSOs/CIOs/CTOs watch bad hollywood movies. You know, the kind where a password is revealed character by character. "I only need 20 more seconds, we're almost there".'
Yeah - in the world of Hollywood, the function that is called to test a password that has been input is actually the guess checking function from the game of Mastermind.
Brits who live in 'smart cities' don't really know or care
Siemens Healthcare struck by rebranding madness
Clixta: A copyright-friendly way to share your family photos
Re: Unique ID
"How does that work?"
"Clixta adds a persistent connection between the user and their photo, via metadata"
That'll be metadata that the likes of the Beeb and the Daily Fail will remove if they ever get their mits on the photo for whatever reason - the unique ID won't prevent that. I assume the it's really to prevent the photo becoming an orphan work 'out of the box' through not having identifying meta data to start with, or to allow those who do respect copyright to find out who the owner is if they want to use a picture they've found.
Assuming they've found it somewhere and the metadata hasn't already been stripped.
Microsoft: Why we tore handy Store block out of Windows 10 Pro PCs
Re: Another footgun recorded from Redmond
"At my Camera Club, three members were 'upgraded' behind their backs."
People are also being downgraded in front of their faces. :(
I commented on an El Reg article last week about someone at a company I work for whose computer suddenly rebooted from Windows 8 into Windows 10 while he was working.
And yesterday I was there again, and found out that it had since happened to another member of staff. In his case, though, what he described was even worse: He had the GWX pop up, which has the two buttons labelled 'Install now' or 'Install later' - so he clicked on the 'x' to close the window, and yet it happened anyway: The computer is now running Windows 10.