* Posts by VinceH

3483 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2009

Europol operation crushes phiendish global phishing ring

VinceH

"These two statements literally do not add up."

Beat me to it. I wanted to question that very point. Darren's link doesn't offer anything to explain the oddity. In fact he (correctly) quotes the linked press release as saying (my emphasis):

"The suspects, mainly from Nigeria, Cameroon and Spain"

That release doesn't state the numbers, though - so that information is sourced from elsewhere. I wonder if the numbers reveal where they were located at the time they were nabbed?

In memoriam: Christopher Lee, Hammer's Count Dracula

VinceH

Re: Dracula is dead at last... and I'm sad.

"Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing of course, were the first stars I saw when I started watching pitched-at-adults movies in the late 70's & early 80's and they made an indelible impression."

The Friday late night horror double bill on BBC2 (?) I'll wager - in which case, ditto. I cut my horror teeth on stuff like that, before moving on to quite a lot of the so-called video nasties that were subsequently banned. I reckon Christopher Lee is among the first actors I actually took note of, so to speak. RIP.

Although he passed away yesterday, it's Friday today, so it seems fitting to watch a horror double bill tonight with a couple of his films - the Hammer Collection box set on my shelf will finally be broken open.

Shine a light on the rogue IT that hides in the company shadows

VinceH

'a numpty “IT-savvy” user'

*shudders*

That is all.

Dre-stic measures: Apple Beats retreat from iTunes brand – report

VinceH

Re: Slowly moving away from the 'i' naming scheme?

There almost certainly will be a price at which they would be willing to sell it - and you are correct that Apple could very easily afford to offer that price. However, that isn't all there is to it.

Just because Apple could easily afford to pay whatever ITV wants, that doesn't mean the price ITV would be willing to accept is low enough that Apple would be willing to pay it.

Or, flipping that around, it doesn't mean the price Apple would be willing to pay is high enough that ITV would be willing to accept it.

Being able to afford it is only one part of the story.

VinceH

Re: Slowly moving away from the 'i' naming scheme?

"If they really wanted the name iTV, they clearly have the cash to own it."

That assumes the current owners would be willing to sell it.

VinceH
Trollface

Re: Slowly moving away from the 'i' naming scheme?

That's what I was thinking.

Perhaps they asked ITV to hand over the name and got told to eff off, realised they didn't own everything starting with i, and so decided to use something they do have the right to instead, and are now starting to rebrand their older stuff for consistency with the new.

Apple preps summer bonking bonanza for Brits

VinceH

I'm not.

DARPA unTerminators gather for Robotics Challenge finals in Hell*

VinceH
Terminator

"The mechanoids will have to drive a car to the test site, open a door,"

...and say "Come with me if you want to live!"

I know, I know, it was Kyle Reese - a human - who said that in The Terminator. It sounded funny in my head, mmkay?

One USB plug to rule them all? That's sensible, but no...

VinceH

Re: A far better Newport song...

Speaking as someone from just over the bridge, they both amuse me - but I've never actually been into Newport, only driven past it on the M4. I sometimes come off at J25a, and take the A4042 (mentioned in the lyrics) - in the opposite direction.

Always heading somewhere more appealing. :p

What a Zuckin' drag! 'Frisco queens protest outside Facebook HQ over 'real names' policy

VinceH

Re: Yes, good point

"Your passport is an international document, so I assume it has to comply with the requirements of multiple jurisdictions. HMRC and other UK government agencies are quite happy for you to call yourself whatever you like, as long as it actually is your name -- i.e. a single identity that you keep using all the time, rather than one of twenty aliases you keep to obscure your identity."

Indeed. I quite happily used a name that was subtly different from my given name from when I was a teenager up until about 2005 - at that point I needed a passport, so did actually change it formally by deed poll, but until then I never had any problem with any UK agency, which is exactly as it should be according to the law of our land.

However, I do occasionally have problems with broken-by-design web forms which insist on knowing my middle name, but also insist that my middle name - which is just a single letter - is not valid. (I usually just add a full stop after it, but I have had at least one case where that wasn't accepted.)

OK Google, how much of my life do you observe and disturb?

VinceH

Re: Google hater article?

"Unless I missed an episode, Google knows nothing about your WiFi passwords."

You missed an episode.

Android phones have an option to backup data - including such things as WiFi passwords - to a Google server, ostensibly so that it can be restored either to the same phone in the event of a reset, or to another phone if it's replaced.

I'm not for one moment suggesting Google access and use that data - because I simply don't know. What I do know is that the first thing I do with a phone or tablet is unset that option; IIRC it's set by default.

But the point is that the data is, for many people, stored on Google's servers, so the possibility is there.

So, EE. Who IS this app on your HTC M9s sneakily texting, hmm?

VinceH
Mushroom

BANG!

Okay, so it's not quite as powerful as the icon... ;)

It's FREE WINDOWS 10 time: 29 July is D-Day, yells Microsoft

VinceH

Re: How many of you Windows user will be...

">>"Well it will be my Birthday...so probably."

And you get the best birthday present ever! A new edition of Windows! To be able to say goodbye to Windows 8. :)"

FTFY! :)

Hardcore creationist finds 60-million-year-old fossils in backyard ... 'No, it hasn’t changed my mind about the Bible'

VinceH

Or, for that matter (for those further up discussing the genesis stories in the Bible) a short story by Isaac Asimov called "How it Happened" ?

VinceH

He's not ignoring all of creation though, because that's what he believes; that everything was created - including any evidence that things are older than his favourite creation myth says they can be.

And then the Google lad says: Of course you can use Android Wear without a smartphone

VinceH
Facepalm

I'm sure you don't really want to ration your wipes according to the number of plops.

Why voice and apps sometimes don't beat an old-fashioned knob

VinceH

Re: IoT

No, you aren't!

This $199 home air-quality gizmo will tell you to VOC right off

VinceH

Internet of Flings

I assume that term has been coined because Internet of Unwanted Things devices fling your data about - whether that's amongst themselves, or to the cloud. Personally, I think the term is better suited to websites like the one featured in this article.

VinceH

Re: At last...

Amen to that!

Web tracking puts lead in your saddlebags, finds Mozilla study

VinceH

Re: You know what's amusing?

Do you know, that idea hadn't even begun to consider the possibility of starting to think about crossing my mind... or perhaps it had.

You're not being cynical enough... or perhaps you are. ;)

What I don't know is how long a temporary noscript permission lasts. The wiki page states 'while the browser session is open'; as I (and I suspect many others) might have the browser open for weeks or months, with hibernation/suspension of the OS, I can't help feeling that it should expire as soon as the broswer tab containing the initial script request is closed. Perhaps it does - I don't know enough about it to know.

I suspect it'll be until the browser is closed. It should be easy enough to test, though - you need to load a page that uses some javascript (from a static location) and isn't already whitelisted (permanently or temporarily). Temporarily allow the script(s). Close the tab. Visit the page again. If the Javascript is still working, it's for the duration of the browser session - but if it's no longer working, it's the duration the page is open in the tab.

VinceH

Re: You know what's amusing?

"And I note a recent trend of scripts being served from cloud servers *which change* on a regular basis, which is a bit annoying when one has to enable a random URL for a page to work."

A cynical person might conclude this is a deliberate attempt to make things like NoScript more inconvenient, because you have to fiddle with it every sodding time you visit a page so affected.

Such a person might therefore be glad they have the facility to temporarily enable scripts for the session on any given page, in case one of those random URLs ever gets reused for a script used for annoying adverts (or worse) rather than something necessary to make a page work.

You can count how many favours the people behind such nonsense are doing themselves on the fingers of no hands.

ZX Spectrum 'Hobbit' revival sparks developer dispute

VinceH

Re: > WALK INTO MORDOR

Surely the response should be: "One simply does not do that."

City of birth? Why password questions are a terrible idea

VinceH

Re: Choose a question (and answer) on car numbers

(Leaving aside that car registration numbers can be a bit short)

"What was the registration of your first car?"

Okay, fair enough.

"What was the registration of your previous car?"

What happens if you change cars one or more times after choosing that question and setting the answer?

You set it up and enter AB12 CDE as your answer - then n years down the line, you have to resort to answering that question. You think back, and remember that the registration of your previous car (to the one you now have) is VW12XYZ.

"What was the registration of your red car?"

Even if you select a colour for which you have only had one car, the n years later problem still applies - between setting that question and answer and the arbitrary point in the future when you need to answer that question, you may have had more.

"What was the registration of your father's car?"

Which one? (Car, not father!) My step dad has had quite a few in the 40+ years I've known him!

"Would work for quite a few people."

I see flaws. :)

The advice I generally give to people is to treat "secret questions" as password prompts, and enter a sensible password instead - especially on sites that have replaced passwords with secret questions (HSBC, I'm looking at you - the use of 2FA does not make this acceptable). However, since it's likely that (because they aren't passwords) many sites won't salt/hash the answers, this makes it even more important to ensure that password is unique. (So use a password manager such as KeePass)

VinceH
Joke

Re: Damned lies

"And (in my defense) no amount of dumpster diving or Facebook scraping would have revealed my family's secret shame that grandpa used to roam the American woods in a monkey suit."

Yet you happily revealed that shameful secret in a comment on El Reg!

I think as a punishment, you should don a dinosaur suit and start swimming in Loch Ness.

Google DOG WHISTLING fails to send URLs across the room

VinceH

Re: Full circle?

"or a ZX Spectrum loading a game from tape"

Or any other home computer from way back when. I'm glad I'm not the only one who made that connection as we see, yet again, something old becoming something new.

Why not avoid the noise, by using a simple male/male 3.5mm jack lead - plug in one end to the sending computer's speaker socket, the other to the receiving computer's microphone.

The next logical step after that? Plug the other end into the microphone socket of a cassette deck and record the tones. That way the URLs can be stored for later use, and even carried around if the intended destination computer is too far away to use the lead.

Got that sorted? Great, now we can add other useful information to the tones. Use it to save whole swathes of data.

Last flying Avro Vulcan, XH558, prepares for her swan song

VinceH

Re: What a shame

[Concorde]

When I was very young, my mother and I lived with my grandparents in Brentry - close enough to Filton to get a good view of it on test flights.

I wish I'd taken a trip on it before it was grounded.

Manchester car park lock hack leads to horn-blare hoo-ha

VinceH

"Why does the boot not lock? Are you telling me someone designed a car where the only way to lock it is via radio? Stop buying these cars."

Quite so. As I said only a couple of weeks ago:

"I have a remote lock on my car (unsurprisingly) - but the key also works.

The remote lock doesn't because the battery has run out of juice. I've not bothered to put a new one in because the key also works.

And here's the thing: It's not a major inconvenience to have to put the key in the lock to unlock it - because if I need to unlock it, I'm going to the car anyway. It's not as though I ever walk past my car and think "it'll be handy if I can unlock the car now, without going over to it."

Simple, mechanical central locking. First turn of the key unlocks the drivers door. Second turn opens the boot. One turn locks all - and there is also a lock/unlock button on the central console.

Had I been at that car park and saw what was happening, I'd have chuckled, then carried on with my day - happy in the knowledge that my 'dinosaur attitudes' (as they have been described a few times lately) have been validated.

Amazon cloud to BEND TIME, exist in own time zone for 24 hours

VinceH

Re: Sounds complicated

That explains things. We don't need explanations - we need a solution!

Doom is BOOM! BOOM! BACK!

VinceH

Re: This sums up the problem:

"I really, really hate that most FPS games have dumbed down to the 2 weapon limit, linear levels, regen health and checkpoint autosave systems"

The artificially forced, linear levels mentioned further upthread bug me a bit, but generally if the game is good enough (all the key elements, good story, suitably difficult, etc) it doesn't bother me that much.

The dumbing down, though, that does - a particularly annoying example is where defeating an end of level (or even final) boss isn't a matter of using things you've learnt and skills you've acquired playing the game... instead it's a matter of watching the screen and pressing square or circle (PS3) as soon as the message pops up telling you to do so (MW, I'm looking at you). All of a sudden, the story you've been so deeply immersed in is thrown out the window and it's a game of reaction: Press the right button fast enough when prompted.

Another thing that annoys me is in the Tomb Raider games. You solve these puzzles that lead you to some remote place and seemingly provide you with the only means to get in to the secret door into the underground temple (or whatever) - and in collecting the pieces to solve that puzzle, your enemy is unable to do the same. Yet when you get there, the enemy is already there, firmly entrenched deep in the system. Grrr! Okay, we need the bad guys to be there to make that part of the game more difficult, but it screws up the story!

Use your Apple gizmos only for good, says Tim Cook

VinceH

"Our products do [these] amazing things, and just as Steve envisioned, they empower people all over the world," said the CEO. "People who witness injustice and want to expose it [...] can, because they have a camera in their pocket all the time."

He didn't actually say it, and definitely isn't trying to imply it, oh no, but that quote reads to me as though he's trying to lead people to infer that before the iPhone, mobile phones lacked cameras.

AllJoyn your whitegoods, says Qualcomm

VinceH

"The aim, the company says, is to get around the incompatibilities emerging in the Internet of Everything space."

Given that, IMO, most Internet of Unwanted Things devices are solutions in search of problems, then this sounds like a solution to a problem with solutions in search of problems.

Mad Max: Fury Road – two hours of nonstop, utterly insane fantasy action

VinceH

Yup - saw it Friday, and also spend most of the movie with a grin on my face. I hope Miller's plans to make more pan out.

Lightbulbs of the future will come with wireless extenders and speakers

VinceH

"The big problems for IoT products are three-fold:

  • They have to be easy to use and easy to install
  • They have to constantly communicate without using much power
  • You have to be able to control them simply and easily
"

Firstly, the third item on that list is duplicated in the first as "easy to use".

Secondly, the list somehow misses some points that I would consider more important when it comes to iOUT* products:

  • Security must be paramount.
  • Customers privacy must be absolutely assured.
  • Continuation of support and service provision must be guaranteed.

* Internet of Unwanted / Unnecessary / Untrusted / Unsupported [delete as appropriate] Things.

Californians get first chance to be run over by a Google robot

VinceH

"My granddad thinks that is just fine for the fast lane of the M1."

His first mistake would be in thinking that one of the lanes on the M1 (or any other motorway) is a "fast lane" - for there to be such a thing, there would need to be different speed limits for different lanes.

USA Freedom Act moves forward as House prepares for vote

VinceH

Re: A 1984-ism?

"Not much better in the UK in terms of enacting scenario's from "1984":

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/new-counterextremism-plans-to-allow-police-to-ask-to-vet-anyones-internet-communications-10246381.html"

There was a tweet about that from the Number10gov Twitter account about that yesterday, saying:

"PM chaired the new National Security Council (NSC) today where he discussed plans for a new Counter-Extremism Bill: http://ow.ly/MUlom"

My reply said:

"@Number10gov Yes, we must put a stop to discriminating against extremes. It's no better than sexism, racism, aneurism, prism or indeed jism"

Rare monkeys stolen from French zoo – now even rarer

VinceH

Re: Isn't this

28 Days Later, Shirley?

BONKERS apocalyptic WAR WAGONS circle Vulture South

VinceH
Facepalm

I understand that when water is drained away through a plughole, the 'whirpool' goes in the opposite directions in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, due to the coriolis effect.

Does that also affect how people perceive left and right? Because to my Northern hemisphere eyes, in the first picture the ringed office is in the top left, not the top right as the caption currently says!

NASA plans electrolysis-powered ROBOT EEL for Europa's oceans

VinceH

Re: Ice

I've had to struggle very hard not to downvote you.

The very suggestion that frickin' lasers could be used with anything other than sharks is just so very, very wrong.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

Smart grid security WORSE than we thought

VinceH

Re: So they're shit and they know they are?

Read the linked announcement. They don't admit it - this update isn't because of the reported flaws, per se, but because "the overall security ... is dynamic" etc. This is a planned update - and it's "motivated by the latest recommended international cybersecurity standards" rather than because "the existing security has been shown to crap."

Traumatised Reg SPB team barely survives movie unwatchablathon

VinceH

Re: How about a Nicolas Cage marathon shitfest?

"Whoever out of the SPB who makes it out alive after watching his filmography back-to-back wins a Transformers four-film box set."

On the one hand, I'd say that's a cruel and unusual punishment - and for doing nothing wrong.

On the other hand, I recently watched Pacific Rim. All of a sudden, the Transformers films didn't seem so bad.

Ex-NSA security bod fanboi: Apple Macs are wide open to malware

VinceH

I'm tempted to bookmark this article, so next time at a particular office, talking to a particular fanboi, I can present it to him when he next boasts about how secure his Apple computers are.

The problem is, if I did he wouldn't read it because "words" - and having not read it, he'll continue to boast about how secure his Apple computers are, having not seen anything to suggest otherwise.

I know other fanbois who could also do with some cluebat education, but this one in particular just annoys me.

Apple taxpayers swarm to stone-age iPhone 6+ purely for the bigness

VinceH
Trollface

"Years later Samsung get it right, then everyone else copies Dell thinks Apple were first with the 6+."

FTFY! (Probably, at some point in the future, anyway.)

Volkswagen Passat GT 2.0-litre TDI SCR 190 PS 6spd DSG

VinceH

"Why do people pay £500-£1000 for such an poor option when a £80 TomTom or the free Nokia Here app will do a far better job?"

Because it's 'integrated' and therefore cool makes their dick longer?

Why don't you rent your electronic wireless doorlock, asks man selling doorlocks

VinceH

Re: Rent a door lock?

I have a remote lock on my car (unsurprisingly) - but the key also works.

The remote lock doesn't because the battery has run out of juice. I've not bothered to put a new one in because the key also works.

And here's the thing: It's not a major inconvenience to have to put the key in the lock to unlock it - because if I need to unlock it, I'm going to the car anyway. It's not as though I ever walk past my car and think "it'll be handy if I can unlock the car now, without going over to it."

EC probe into murky cross border e-commerce kicks off

VinceH

Re: Why don't I buy cross border?

"I want instant interwebs gratification, and I want it *now*."

That'll attract a £2.99 delivery charge, and from your bank a "non-sterling transaction fee".

Sage boosts profit but that means NOTHING without the CLOUD

VinceH

Re: No clouds for customers

"and why Sage would prefer to push hosted solutions with an ongoing charge as well..."

When the article refers to subscriptions and a subscription model here:

"Software subscription rose 29 per cent for the first six months. However, this reflects a move to a subscription model across its portfolio rather than just cloud products, said Roe."

It doesn't just mean hosted solutions: They're moving to a subscription model for traditional desktop software - with the incredible flustercuck potential that has. I asked their Twitter-bod to clarify some points a while back: Specifically, what happens to your data stored in your desktop copy of Sage if you decide to stop using Sage (i.e. paying them for the use of the software) and move to something else.

The answer was basically that you are no longer able to access it. Legally, you need to keep your business records for six years - which kind of necessitates those records being accessible. So before your sub ends, you need to extract all that data, something that most people wouldn't think of doing.

And how do you extract it? Different accounts packages store different information in different ways - so simply exporting the data ready for importing into something else isn't really practical; you'd end up pretty much doing a second time a lot of the accounting work you've already done, in order to recreate the figures as they should be. The only other option is to export every report as a PDF file, covering every key point and period, which would be tedious at best.

A better, and fairer solution would be for the software to become read only, so you can still access that data but can't put anything else in - which Sage could easily do; the mechanism already exists in their software for "archived" data.

IMO Sage's subscription offerings aren't so much "software as a service" but "data as a protection racket".

Tattooed skin befuddles Apple Watch

VinceH

From a post on the first page of the linked 'sticky nob' discussion:

"But I decided to send back now. Will be interesting test to see how much I miss it."

How can someone 'miss' something he has only had for ridiculously short amount of time?

Makes me wonder if the sticky nob problem is referring to the nob attached to the watch, or the nob attached to the watch.

Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse chap in 'desperate' cash shortage

VinceH
Thumb Up

Re: @VinceH

Yummy!

Also: I didn't notice the bacon mentioned in the original recipe. I replaced that with tartar sauce.

VinceH

"I can recommend Neil's bacon & lentil recipe - although as we had them in the cupboard I replaced the red lentils with green and the tinned toms with cheap passata."

I may very well take up that recommendation later, though I will probably replace the red lentils with fish, and the tinned tomatoes with chips. ;)

You can now play thousands of classic DOS games on Twitter. Goodbye, productivity

VinceH

Re: VinceH

I wondered if it might be a regional roll out as well - since Chris (Diodesign) lives in Overpuddle now. I don't know where Alexander is based, but I've a feeling here in the UK. That (if my guess is right) would rule out it being a regional thing. And if you're over there, that probably rules it out as well.

It could still be a gradual roll out, I suppose, with who it does and doesn't work for being determined by some other factor that we can't directly see.