* Posts by VinceH

3483 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2009

Aussie wedges spam javelin in ring spanner

VinceH

Probably worth mentioning that you're referring to the adjustable and not the hole at the other end.

Supernova bubble clocked at 19,000,000 km/h

VinceH
Coat

Re: My God,

TBH, it looks more to me like it's full of trees.

Russia faces Ukraine and Georgia in Eurovision deathmatch

VinceH

As per the last couple of years, I shall have my cider ready, and will be tweeting slightly inebriated from the beginning (becoming more inebriated as the evening rolls on).

Microsoft phone support contractors told to hang up after 15 minutes

VinceH

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

VinceH

"Bootnote: Boaty McBoatface was fun, but enough is enough. Or after this story. surely it is?"

Well, it certainly is if you can't get the naming convention right - which neither Googly McSearchface nor Codey McCoderface are, though the latter is very close.

Windows 10 build 14342: No more friendly Wi-Fi sharing

VinceH

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.

VinceH

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

VinceH
Facepalm

You didn't see what I did there, did you?

VinceH
Coat

"Cold climates certainly play a part in the citing of these data centres."

Umm. Sitation needed.

Lie back and think of cybersecurity: IBM lets students loose on Watson

VinceH
Coat

"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

VinceH

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.

VinceH

Re: If Only...

""People don't seem to care or understand about security and have short memories. "

^This.

It's not just existing TalkTalk customers, either. Despite the hack being significant enough to have made mainstream news, I know of a few people who have since signed up with them.

Dwarf planet intumesces before astronomers' gaze

VinceH
Facepalm

Re: 1920x990

"I think you were watching Doctor Who...."

Are you new?

VinceH
Facepalm

Re: Bang

Not bang. Jedit said Planet McPlanetface - PNGuinn said Planety McPlanetface. Spot the difference.

Jedit probably meant that, but it's not what he actually said. So ner. :p

Laser-zapping scientists will save the Earth from meteorite destruction

VinceH

I propose a giant cricket bat in space.

IBM's Internet of Things brainbox foresees 'clean clothes as a service'

VinceH

"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

VinceH
Pint

Re: Things get a little silly.

"Mind you, I'd pay to have a microwave that played the countdown theme."

That, Sir, is a brilliant idea. You are today's winner of the internet.

VinceH

Re: "“clean clothes” as a service, charging consumers by the wash"

What about service washes - which (some) laundrettes offer.

Blocking ads? Smaller digital publishers are smacked the hardest

VinceH

Re: My heart bleeds

"2. Stop serving anything but small text-only ads."

I've no problem with graphic adverts - as long as they're static, and don't require Javascript.

Archaeologists find oldest ever ground-edge stone axe

VinceH

Re: And, inscribed upon it, were found these words ...

"Upgrade to Stone Axe 10: [Now?] [Later?] "

Kepler space telescope spots 1,284 new planets

VinceH
Alien

Re: So we can start putting some numbers on the Drake equation.

They don't have to be friendly with us. Just pop by to ask us to keep down the noise, because they've just put little F'taax to bed.

IE and Graphics head Microsoft's Patch Tuesday critical list

VinceH

Re: W10 virus

Looking now, kb3150513 doesn't appear to be on the list of available updates via normal Windows Update. At least not here. Probably one to look out for in future as well, then.

It should be a crime to install spyware on phones, thunders Plaid Cymru MP

VinceH

Please may we have tracking cookies classified as spyware?

Did Spotify hire Alan Partridge to run its Netflix-style video push?

VinceH

Is it just me, or does anyone else think some of the suggestions already offered fit right at home on Celebrity Juice?

Anyway, here's my offering:

Adam on the Ants: Adam Ant and his band have to sit on ants nests, to see who can last the longest.

Can ad biz’s LEAN avert ADPOCALYPSE?

VinceH

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

VinceH

"Make no mistake: your toaster will rat you out to the feds."

What? Just because you don't want waffles, either?

VinceH
Coat

"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.

VinceH

Re: Actors?

"Hans Gruber, Professor Snape and the Sheriff of Nottingham all died on the same day! The humanity."

To be fair, though, two of them were bad guys (I don't know who Professor Snape is, but that's definitely a bad guy-sounding name if ever I heard one.)

Linux Mint to go DIY for multimedia

VinceH

Re: Nooooooo! @ VinceH

Sorry.

Wrist duly slapped.

VinceH
Alert

Re: Nooooooo!

"Probably won't let me upgrade to Windows 10 either.

Useless."

Look on the bright side. It also won't try to 'accidentally' force you to upgrade to Windows 10, either.

Until Microsoft develop a GWX equivalent for Linux, and craftily release it as part of something else for Linux.

Facebook image-tagging to be tested in Californian court

VinceH

"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

VinceH

Re: Finally!

No, it's taking away something you don't want.

At least that's what it says it's going to do.

The 'new' Microsoft? I still wouldn't touch them with a barge pole

VinceH

"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'

VinceH

"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

VinceH

"That's probably the scariest line in the article..."

Good choice of word with hustling, though. As a verb its definitions include forcing through, and as a noun it can mean a con.

VinceH

I notice it's in the list of optional updates here - but they've helpfully made it stand out from the rest by italicising it.

VinceH
Joke

Re: Tried the upgrade today: incompatible CPU. What a relief

Wait! What?

They're going to remove May?

VinceH

Re: No more nagware?

An idea is an idea, no matter what icon you attach to it.

Have Microsoft-hosted email? Love using Live Mail 2012? Bad news

VinceH

"PS: Microsoft says that Windows 10 is now active on 300 million devices. Which is nice."

I wonder what proportion of that number is a result of forced/"accidental" downgrades?

'Bitcoin creator' Craig Yeah Wright in meltdown

VinceH
Coat

Re: re: Spartacus, the truth revealed

WARNING!

Do not click on either of those two links. They will break the internet.

'Apple ate my music!' Streaming jukebox wipes 122GB – including muso's original tracks

VinceH

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

VinceH

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

VinceH

Re: Soooooo.......

'If they'd asked me for a definition, I'd have replied "An IoT buzzword".'

Quite. And I might have added something about increased surveillance on the general population.

Siemens Healthcare struck by rebranding madness

VinceH

Re: If only...

"Can we be referred to as commenteers from now on?"

Comentineers, Shirley?

What do you mean, that's not your name?

Clixta: A copyright-friendly way to share your family photos

VinceH

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

VinceH

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.

US telly stations fling malware-tipped web ads at unsuspecting surfers

VinceH

Re: "A rogue advertiser abused the Taggify self-serve ad platform"

I thought their stock response was usually to stick their fingers in their ears and chant "LALALALALALALA!"

Skygazers: Brace yourselves for a kick in the Aquarids

VinceH

Re: Halley's Comet.

Or missed the bus, so had to wait another 75-76 years for the next one.

VinceH

"making it fly."

If a cow can jump over the moon, then a bull can bloody well fly.