* Posts by Velv

2756 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jan 2010

Blighty's BONKERS BANKING BONKING BONANZA: Apple Pay arrives

Velv

Re: Litmus test

There are plenty of various sized "Power Banks" on the market now. These are more flexible than changeable batteries as you can cover different devices and possibly get more than one recharge per use.

I don't know anyone who carries a spare battery for their phone (even where they can be changed), but I have lots of friends carry varying sizes of power bank depending on their day/weekend plans.

Velv
Gimp

Re: With a £20 limit...

£15 iTunes Credit

Which I guess you could just buy online, but that wouldn't give you the excuse to visit the Apple Store

Police, firefighters, ambulances, hospitals: 20 per cent still rely on Win Server 2003

Velv
Flame

I don't understand El Reg's obsession with the end of support for Server 2003. The world is not going to suddenly collapse.

We balance risks against rewards or costs on a daily basis. Getting out of bed carries risk. Stand on that Lego brick and it'll hurt, so you look where you're going.

There is nothing wrong with running an OS without vendor support as long as you understand (and perhaps mitigate) the risk of failure. I wouldn't front Server 2003 onto the Internet. But my SQLServer that's firewalled even from the internal users (1433 only) is relatively well protected against attack.

I expect down votes, but then I'm not being paid by Microsoft to spin the sale of upgrades.

Judge says some top Dell shareholders are plum out of luck in share buyout beef

Velv

Unless they can prove Dell colluded in a criminal manner with other shareholders then they haven't got a leg to stand on. That's investing. Something is worth what two people are prepared to trade it for. So assuming every share received equal return (I.e. no backhanders outside the deal) then the majority decision to sell is the value of the stock. That's the risk you take.

Shapps launches probe into Wikimedia UK over self-pluggery allegs

Velv

"the charity told us that it isn’t responsible for the actions of its employees"

We'll see if they feel the same after someone takes them to court and the court finds the charity liable. It's one of the reasons most businesses have very tight gross misconduct clauses because they know they are responsible for the actions of employees from company resources (computers, IP addresses, email addresses, etc)

Flash HOLED AGAIN TWICE below waterline in fresh Hacking Team reveals

Velv
Terminator

Re: Oh Adobe...

One of the problems of an all pervasive item like Flash is that when a fault is found it affects massive numbers. It's one of the reason everyone slags Windows, because one flaws affects 95% of the world.

As the world converges on a standard, any flaw in the standard will have wider reaching implications. And there will be flaws. Expect more frequent updates with less rigorous but more frequent testing. As we abstract away from the OS to the browser, expect exploits on Linux (inc. Android) and Apple users to increase dramatically (and I'm not blaming the OS before you rush to defend the Fanbois and Fandroids). No longer will your choice of hardware influence your vulnerability.

UK politicos easily pwned on insecure Wi-Fi networks

Velv
Black Helicopters

Re: No SSL/TLS?

@NoneSuch

"The only way forward is an open source methodology with international review combined with strong encryption standards where the algorithms are public and available for stringent testing."

Yes, because that's worked so well for OpenSSL.

The concept of open source is great, the reality is that we rely on other people not only to do the review, but we need to trust them to be honest with their review. So unless you co-ordinate the reviewers, how do you know you've got the right and appropriate reviews, and if someone does co-ordinate the reviewers, how do you know they've not influenced the results.

Velv
Childcatcher

Re: No SSL/TLS?

SSL?

That protocol that's now deprecated and shouldn't be used. If we in the industry can't get it right, what chance has Joe Public got?

What do you MEAN, 'Click on the thing which looks like a Mondrian?'

Velv
FAIL

The Knowledge

The Knowledge has gone if my experiences of London this May are anything to go by. Four hailed black cabs, three drivers who didn't have a clue where the destination was (hotel, restaurant), and wanted the postcode (which we didn't have to hand).

Three of the drivers were of foreign extraction and one Londoner, but crazily the Londoner was the worst not even getting the area right to start with. The Sikh driver was the only one who gave any confidence of the current black cab service.

Tip: if you want to go anywhere in a taxi then know the postcode of your destination (and not just in London)

Apple's iOS 9 public beta lands: El Reg pops it on a slab, strokes it up

Velv

Re: I hope it fixes the little UI niggles

Anyone else noticed the space bar drop below the bottom row of keys sometimes (iPad Mini)?

I've given up posting faults on the Apple forums, all that ever happens is an Admin deletes the post with some accompanying email along the lines of "we've deleted your post because it didn't meet our criteria"

Chromecast gains wired Ethernet dongle

Velv
Boffin

Given the relative price of Chromecadt and this accessory, would they not just have been better making an Ethernet ported Chromcast (i.e. Have two models in the range)

Crap crypto crackdown coming as FBI boss testifies to US Congress

Velv
Pirate

If history has taught us one thing it's that the Internet will do what the fuck it likes no matter what laws governments put in place.

Cripple the manufacturers and the world will add its own layer on top.

Ditch crappy landlines and start reading Twitter, 999 call centres told

Velv
Facepalm

"it is a concern that making a voice call to contact the emergency services is not something that would feel natural to them."

Having been in the unfortunate position of calling the emergency services a couple of times, it is not something that feels natural to anyone. ITS AN EMERGENCY ffs. Adrenalin is pumping and you're probably trying to do three or four things at once.

Decision time: Uninstall Adobe Flash or install yet another critical patch

Velv
Pirate

It's lucky for Adobe's shareholders that the company doesn't offer a bug bounty, otherwise it would be more profitable for criminals to focus their efforts reporting the bugs than exploiting them

More than 13,000 emails swiped in Edinburgh council cyber assault

Velv
Pirate

It's lucky I use unique email address for different companies and websites so when I get spam I can track it back to Edinburgh Councils breach. (unique@mydomain)

I can then seek compensation from Edinburgh Council for each instance

Call that a mugshot? Aussie model/fugitive asks rozzers for more flattering pic

Velv

Reminds me of the guy who got sent a speeding fine in the post with the photo of his car as captured by the Gatso

So he sent a photo of the money

The ticket office sent back a photo of some handcuffs

WATCH OUT! Amazon hauled back to court in Special Ops wristjob ding-dong

Velv

Re: Tee hee...

Not making it clear something isn't stocked - don't see why any shop should be required to list the things it doesn't stock.

A shop passing something off without making it clear it isn't what the customer asked for? - seriously dodgy at best, illegal at worst.

Export control laws force student to censor infosec research

Velv
Gimp

Returning faulty goods to the manufacturer

Assange™'s emotional plea for asylum in France rejected

Velv
Terminator

Re: France...

"- Then as he stands around waiting for Obama to scoop him up he finds that Obama does not want him."

Just as the statute of limitation runs out on the Swedish allegations a new danger becomes more prominent - there is a very real chance of a Republican president soon, and whichever of the candidates may prevail, they're unlikely to be as quiet as Obama in tracking down "commie terrorist traitors"

YeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeHaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boffin: Will I soon be able to CLONE a WOOLLY MAMMOTH? YES. Should I? Hell NO

Velv
Trollface

This absolutely should be done, purely to see the look on the face of Creationists

Orange hurls €90m at Israel's Partner to end political bunfight

Velv

Re: 40m for a study

It's being headed up by Sepp Blatter

Velv
Flame

Re: Geee... I wonder who is behind this lawsuit?

Israel is not a democracy.

When you have different classes of citizen who have different rights you are not a democracy.

World+dog will soon watch 'at least 200 pr0n vids a year'

Velv
Paris Hilton

Re: Sounds like an opportunity

A whole new variety of selfie stick...

Uber execs charged, will stand trial in France

Velv
Boffin

Re: As usual the french make up the law as they go along

"you don't arrest individual members of staff of a company for the policies and activities of the company itself even if those policies might be in a grey area of commercial law"

Yes, yo do. Company directors are legally accountable for the actions of the "company", that is one of the joys of being a company director.

And they aren't breaking commercial law. Uber is breaking criminal law, a criminal law which was largely put in place to protect the innocent public. There is an arguement the law may be outdated, but that never gives anyone the right to break it without being subjected to judicial investigation.

So much for rainbows, Zuck: Facebook staff still overwhelmingly male and white

Velv
Facepalm

If you open offices/factories where white people tend to live then you'll tend to get white people applying for jobs.

We forget NOTHING, the Beeb thunders at Europe

Velv
Boffin

"you cannot ask BBC to remove the actual news."

Yes, you can. You can ask them to remove anything. They are under no obligation to remove it unless you have a court order, but if you can provide a valid reason why something should be removed the BBC will consider your request.

BT: Let us scrap ordinary phone lines. You've all got great internet, right?

Velv
Holmes

Legalese

I'm guessing the USO goes into more detail, but it is a Universal SERVICE Obligation to provide end users with a voice service.

Technologies have advanced and it may no longer be appropriate to restrict delivery of the service to a pair of copper of copper wires attached to a 50V battery.

Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to see BT get any more power than they already do. But at what point does it become advantageous to the country to update the USO. If, for example, BT we're going to provide the "voice" service to a new customer using a fibre connection at the same price instead of a copper connection, would we still be insisting on them laying copper too?

US SaaS firm bows to Snowden concerns with UK-based datacentre

Velv
Terminator

Like hosting it in Europe is going to make the slightest bit of difference to the Merkins rifling through it

Privacy advocates descend on proposed domain name change

Velv
FAIL

Re: It's called DotCom for a bloody reason.

"I need to know you're a legit vendor whom has records on file where I can freely Copy+Paste them into the Police Report if need be"

I conduct commercial operations using a .com address. I only deal on referral, I don't advertise my services and I don't solicit new business from unknown parties. My business is registered with Companies House, there are several years of returns filed and on public record, and all contracts feature the company number of both my business and the client. There is ZERO requirement for anybody to use domain records to determine if I'm legitimate.

I can see a case where there needs to be able to trace the operation behind a domain, but that does not warrant the details being published openly to every malicious bandit out there.

10 things you need to avoid SNAFUs in your data centre

Velv

#11. Baseline before you make changes. Test it's working before you change it. Reboot, restart, power off/on or similar. You don't want the blame for a failed update because someone else has been messing with it before you.

What is this river nonsense? Give .amazon to Bezos, says US Congress

Velv
Headmaster

"...even though it is the world's longest and possibly most famous river and it runs through their territories."

General consensus is that The Nile is the longest, although there is no world governing body that performs the measurement. Peru and Brazil contest that the Amazon is longest using their own measurement criteria, but then we'd all have the longest if we could use our own measuring.

The Amazon is certainly the largest both by area drained and volume flow at its mouth.

RBS sticks it to customers once again as IT woes continue

Velv
Terminator

Re: Consequence

Companies don't flag "missed" payments until you've had a reasonable opportunity to pay. Direct Debits (and other payments) fail on a daily basis for many reasons and it is widely accepted that the payer must be given opportunity to rectify any "failed" payment.

Typically a payment won't be flagged to Experian et al until it is at least 30 days overdue. There are exceptions (bad companies) who flag quicker, but the banks are generally not among them.

Pirate captain blasts Google for its 'mystery' Chrome blob

Velv
Terminator

Re: So the problem seems to be that....

"People trust the open source lines because they can read them."

Which is great in principle, but everyone assumes someone else has read (and understood) the lines so nobody ever does. HeartBleed is a perfect example.

Open source *should* be more understood and less likely to be "malicious" than closed source. But the "trust" you place in open source software is only as good as the trust you place in the people who have peer reviewed the code. And you know who they are, don't you?

Why is it that women are consistently paid less than men?

Velv
Boffin

Ask the wrong question and you will get the wrong answer. Or more specifically, ask a weighted question and you will get a weighted answer.

Comparing "jobs that men do" against "jobs that women do" and picking bricklayers against secretaries is clearly weighted by the different skills required. Why not compare bricklayers (men) with oil rig workers (men)? Skills are different so pay is different. Or Secretaries with nurses? Different skills, different pay rates. To get a fair comparison you can only do so if all other variables are eliminated, something almost impossible to achieve given the number of variables.

As an aside, here's an interesting article about comparing like for like:

http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

Velv
Go

Re: He's got a point.

"now try getting a new mortgage. Freelancer? sorry, computer says nope."

That's not my experience. I had no trouble getting a mortgage from RBS having been freelance for only 5 months, the guy on the phone knew all about company dividends and just wanted to know my earnings as reported on my tax return. A friend had a similar experience with HSBC where they wanted the last three contract values. So I guess it's not just which bank, but which person in the bank you speak to, as its certainly not "computer says nope"

IPSE (the PCG of old) also have links with specialist providers who understand the freelance market.

Don't try ang get a mortgage the same week you quit your permanent job for freelance, but don't for one minute fear that being freelance will in any way restrict you.

Would EU exit 'stuff' the UK? Tech policy boss gets diplomatic

Velv
Facepalm

Re: “national measures” continue to entangle the single market

Ironically leaving the European Union and joining the European Economic Area would require the UK to join the Schengen Agreement, thus removing the border controls we currently enjoy as part of our opt out of our membership of the EU.

'Right to be forgotten' applies WORLDWIDE, thunders Parisian court

Velv
Holmes

No no no no no no.

You only have to remove the SOURCE information (each instance of which will be in one country) and ALL the search engines will instantly comply (since the source has gone and the link is broken).

Had the Spaniard removed the mortgage default notice from the newspaper website then all of Google in all countries would no longer return the article (and the same for every other search engine).

If we believe people should have a right to have outdated information removed then it is that outdated information that should be removed, not some fudging of a search result. Or are we suggesting that just by throwing a cloak of invisibility over it the elephant is no longer in the fucking room?

Velv
Boffin

Re: rewriting history

The clue is in the question...

" who's court gets to decide something is libellous? "

A court. In a country. For that country. Now I get that not all courts around the world are equal, but given its 800 years of the Magna Carta today, it's vitally important to point out that in most civilised jurisdictions it is the people who make the decision based on the evidence presented, and nobody is above the determination of that court. It's not perfect, but it is generally fair.

Velv
Boffin

Unless you specifically request not to be redirected (/ncr (no country redirect)) then googles default behaviour is to work out which country you are in and direct you to the local service.

Uber petitions page p0wned, thanks to textbook code

Velv
FAIL

The Bigger Picture

Its easy to laugh at simple screw-ups like this. And what's the harm. So some links were redirected to a different service, big deal.

Well it is a big deal. If Uber (and more importantly its parent) can't get the basics in place, have you really got confidence in how they handle your personal information, name, address, dob, CREDIT CARD. Or their "we verify every driver" claims...

Fire, fire! Just move your data centre onto my lawn ... Oh rats!

Velv
Boffin

Power of Three

Exactly why anything mission critical needs multiple elements of resilience.

When your primary service fails and you kick into Business Continuity, your BC is now your Primary, so what's your new Businss Continuity plan?

The vast majority of businesses don't need to stand up that third data centre. But at the very least the plan must be written down and tested.

Apple store staffers probed like 'criminals', lawsuit claims

Velv
Facepalm

Re: A matter of trust

If only it were as simple as trusting everyone...

Trust is something that is built in levels, so it's not for employers to trust employees whole heartedly, it is to treat them with respect. Shops have obviously suffered from employees taking their staff discount to the extreme otherwise searching would never have started in the first place.

If searching is necessary, then it should be a formal part of the paid employee time and should be completed in a discrete and respectful manner. History has proven that not everyone can be trusted.

Cops turn Download Festival into an ORWELLIAN SPY PARADISE

Velv

Re: suprised nobody else got it yet

Automatic refund if you've registered, and the only way to get money refunded from the tag is by being registered (in the FAQ).

I agree there will be some who don't register.

Obama issues HTTPS-only order to US Federal sysadmins

Velv
Childcatcher

Re: Why?

Correct, not everything NEEDS to be encrypted, but the vast majority of users are neither willing nor capable of making an informed decision on which bits should be. Taking a safety first stance, encrypting everything is (in theory at least) safer and cheaper for the public than trying to educate them.

The only caveat is that there should be an option to turn it off (an exception process) where it is proven that the encryption is detrimental to the service and not required. But I can't think of a public facing service that would fit into this category

Paper driving licence death day: DVLA website is still TITSUP

Velv
Joke

I don't see the problem

It was always going to get hammered in the first week no matter how big the infrastructure was made. And it's good to see the government keeping it British by giving everyone something different to complain about otherwise we'd still be bitching about the weather.

The watts in a box that kept West London's lights on

Velv
Childcatcher

Re: Solution? RBMPG (Rodentia Based Micro Power Generation)

Your definition of the word many clearly differs from mine. Either Colin is the worlds oldest Gerbil or you've had more than one in those "many" years.

Velv

"The lesson for anybody with a stake in their company's power supply was clear: make sure you've got a back-up plan in place and the utility or the boxed generator firm knows who they can reach if the lights do go out."

Really the lesson is to sit down and consider what eventualities might befall your business, them develop and TEST those plans.

Read the chapter on the New York Board of Trade in "Blueprints for High Availability" by Marcus and Stern. It makes you think not just about computers but the rest of it. How do you get your staff to a temporary office? How do you schedule their workload? How do you feed them?

Disasters happen every day, mostly to someone else, but you never know when that knock on effect will kick in.

Voyager 2 'stopped' last week, and not just for maintenance

Velv
Boffin

Pointless Golden Record

Chances of intelligent life finding it in the next 10,000 years and not already knowing we exist? - practically zero.

We've been broadcasting our position for over a hundred years, electromagnetic waves travelling at light speed, which will be detected by intelligent life long before this physical heap of junk gets anywhere close (and I use the heap of junk term lovingly).

We're looking for intelligent life elsewhere by listening, so if we make the assumption intelligent life would be able to figure out the record and stylus then we can also assume they will have figured out how to listen for us too.

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

Velv
Facepalm

"It's understood that Apple Music will be pre-installed when iPhone customers upgrade their mobes to the latest version of iOS."

Yes, because pre-installing shit went so well last time....

Oh, shoppin’ HELL: I’m in the supermarket of the DAMNED

Velv
FAIL

Shops in Scotland are now required to charge for bags to encourage customers to bring their own.

Select the "Use own bags" option and the till goes into lockdown until the attendant checks your bags are empty. Way to make for a "fast" checkout...