* Posts by Alister

4259 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010

Dixons Carphone: Yeah, so, about that hack we said hit 1.2m records? Multiply that by 8.3

Alister

I don't think companies should be allowed to hold full credit card data.

They aren't supposed to, if they want to be PCI-DSS compliant. But lots still do it, and even store them unencrypted as well.

There are well established methods to make repeat payments using an authorisation token, which don't require the retailer to store the card details, and for one off payments the details shouldn't be stored at all.

Beam me up, UK.gov: 'Extra-terrestrial markup language' booted off G-Cloud

Alister
Boffin

Re: "All work is Blue Book compliant"

Well played, I give that a Twelve...

Ecuador's Prez talking to UK about Assange's six-year London Embassy stay – reports

Alister

Re: Julian has already been deprived from liberty of movement by Britain for 6 years

What complete bollocks.

Alister

Re: So much hostility

That'll be the rape accusations that he was interviewed about in Sweden at the time, case was closed and they said he could leave the country.

It's amazing how people can rewrite the facts to suite themselves. Assange was interviewed by the Swedes, and then, whilst their due process was taking place, and after giving assurances that he wouldn't attempt to leave the country, he skipped to the UK, at which point the European Arrest Warrant was issued. At no point did the Swedes say he was free to leave.

Span hits F#, LinkedIn gets mumbly, and UWP (yes, it's still clinging on) furnished with new toys

Alister
Headmaster

Re: Fluent

Am I the only one who thinks efflouent when I read this ?

Very probably, although others might be thinking effluent...

Alister

Re: Perfect...

The only remaing question is...

Why the hell would Microsoft drag their redundant platforms all the way to Blighty, to drop them off Brighton Pier?

:)

Think tank calls for post-Brexit national ID cards: The kids have phones so what's the difference?

Alister

Re: No Excuses!

Currently, passport and driving licences aren't linked. Two separate offices, two separate renewals, you can't use your driving licence photo on your passport or vice-versa

Sadly this is no longer true. I recently helped my daughter apply for her first driving license, and the online application form had a tick-box for "Use my Passport Photo".

EDIT: Whoops! NorthernMonkey beat me to it.

Alister
Thumb Up

Well said.

I wish I could upvote you more than once.

Early experiment in mass email ends with mad dash across office to unplug mail gateway

Alister

Re: alert emails

As a small company, I'm able to wield the LART at a very personal level, so if a developer does it once, he and his colleagues are unlikely to forget for a considerable time.

So only staffing churn is responsible for those who missed the message...

Alister

alert emails

On three different occasions, with three different developers, I've had the pleasure of trying to recover and clean a mail server after they've written a try..catch in their code which sent any errors to the company alert email address - but didn't put any logic in to see whether the email had already been sent.

The record was 176,000 emails sitting in the queue of the local environment MTA, waiting to be sent to our main email server after the developer set a site running on a Friday afternoon, and I didn't get a warning until Sunday night. One email a second for over 48 hours, dammit!

Nah, it won't install: The return of the ad-blocker-blocker

Alister

Re: Searching for adverts

@Flocke Kroes

You've never come across tracking pixels before then?

Alister

Re: a question to ponder

why don't The Avengers put some adverts on the side of The Incredible Hulk?

It might make him angry?

Alister

Re: haven't ad's died yet?

I really don't understand the business model of websites that rely on adverts for revenue.

He / She says, whilst posting on The Register - a website funded by Ads.

All that dust on Mars is coming from one weird giant alien structure

Alister

Doctor,

You know when you sealed the rift in the Medusa Cascade...

Did you forget the back door?

Samsung’s new phone-as-desktop is slick, fast and ready for splash-down ... somewhere

Alister

Re: Ridiculous

I wouldn’t want my car to double up as my bicycle or an aeroplane

So... you don't want a flying car then?

Pah! Call yourself a commentard...

:)

Alister

Re: WIMP

It even needed wiping and refreshing periodically.

Did you have to pick it up and shake it?

Alister

From the header image, Simon, I can only say this...

You have a woman's hand, milord

You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way

Alister

Forum pages

We need a link at the bottom of the forum (comments) pages to take you back to the home page, without scrolling back up to the top.

Where it says "The Register" in red used to be hyperlinked, but it isn't any more.

Alister

Re: My Comments

Please, please please! can you put a link at the BOTTOM of the comment pages which lets me go back to the main articles page, so I don't have to scroll all the way to the top to get back there.

‘Elders of the Internet’ apologise for social media, recommend Trump filters to fix it

Alister

Re: "USENET was a pretty clear warning."

September 1993, that was the problem.

Alister
Facepalm

Re: Every IETF document needs its errata

The Edlers

Oops, Muphry's law (sic)

When using the pedant icon, check you work...

Crooks swipe plutonium, cesium from US govt nuke wranglers' car. And yes, it's still missing

Alister

Re: That dirty yard in the neighbourhood

I doubt she would have been cancer-free having plutonium against her neck since 1957.

When I was six or seven, I was bought my first wristwatch - a Timex if I remember correctly - which had each hour marker, and all three hands (hour, minute and second) painted in Radium paint to glow in the dark.

A few years later, in a school physics lab, we were introduced to a Geiger counter, which registered my watch quite strongly!

I had been wearing all that radioactive goodness every day for a number of years, as I'm sure many other people of my generation will have done.

'007' code helps stop Spectre exploits before they exist

Alister

'007' code helps stop Spectre exploits

So, a Bonded solution, if you will...

Submarine cables at risk from sea water, boffins warn. Wait, what?

Alister

Re: Exterior cables in ground

Cables in the ground are designed to stand in water. Pits fill with water.

In my (UK) experience, the legacy underground copper telephone cables - the major trunk cables with 100 pair / 200 pair - are polyethylene sheathed with a foil wrap as a moisture barrier, then a paper wrap, then the cores with PTFE insulation, and are filled with petroleum jelly.

These are pretty resistant to water, but the polyethylene does become porous over extended time periods.

The bigger problem is where joints are introduced, these are commonly sealed in a Polyethylene tube with liquid resin poured into formers at the cable entries, then wrapped in self-amalgamating tape and latterley heat-shrink tubing. These tend to lose their watertight properties quite quickly.

It's rare,in the UK for armoured cable to be used in ductwork.

Microsoft's TextWorld gives AI a Zork-like challenge

Alister

It looks like WordStar to me...

No, seriously, why are you holding your phone like that?

Alister

Re: "get"

Twat: Are you good?

Person: How can I possibly answer that?

"I'm normally fairly well behaved, thank you"

Hoping for Microsoft's mythical Andromeda in your Xmas stocking? Don't hold your breath

Alister

"Surface Phone" and then Andromeda speculation has circulated for years since Microsoft withdrew from the handset business; the final Lumia models emerged in late 2015 and early 2016.

Well, a year and a half, anyway...

Security guard cost bank millions by hitting emergency Off button

Alister
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Slightly off-topic, but a memory stirred by tales of being shown around places.

Superb!

But see icon

Google Chrome update to label HTTP-only sites insecure within WEEKS

Alister

Re: I think you miss the point ...

to foster an internet environment where security - at least to the level that HTTPS can provide - is something the average user doesn't need to concern themselves with

I appreciate that.

But what they will achieve, instead, is that the end user will see scary warnings when browsing perfectly innocent, and safe, websites.

Alister

The Chrome update is designed to spur the millions of sites still using HTTP to adopt HTTPS.

For millions of sites, which don't require any user input, and merely serve pages of information, there is no reason to use HTTPS, and to label them "insecure" is just scaremongering.

Oracle, for one, says we'll welcome our new robot overlords: '90%' of you will obey an AI bot

Alister

Re: Dalek Obsessive alert.

Yep, well said.

A Dalek is effectively a one-man (Kaled) armoured car, not autonomous or robotic.

At a stretch, one could argue it is a cyborg, in that the Kaled's organic abilities are enhanced by the Dalek suit.

RIP Peter Firmin: Clangers creator dies aged 89

Alister

sent to the BBC for approval before filming.

That doesn't necessarily mean that what they filmed was quite as scripted...

:)

Alister

Re: Doctor Who connection...

And thirty-five years later, the Master was watching the Teletubbies. How the mighty are fallen!

Alister

I learnt a lot of swear words from the Clangers, impressive really since it was all done on the swanee-whistle, but there's no mistaking "Oh Fuck" even in the Clangers language...

While you were basking in the sun, the relentless march of the Windows-maker continued

Alister

whilst brining back the mouse

Hmmm, salt cured mouse?

Delicious!

Git365. Git for Teams. Quatermass and the Git Pit. GitHub simply won't do now Microsoft has it

Alister

Re: OLD GIT

Bad form replying to myself, but I just thought of another one...

It should be called "Developers, Developers, Developers"

Alister

OLD GIT

Can't believe you didn't offer it...

IEEE joins the ranks of non-backdoored strong cryptography defenders

Alister

Re: less worrying "compelling suspects to reveal keys or passwords" ???

One must be living under a totalitarian regime

Welcome to Britain

No more slurping of kids' nationalities, Brit schools told

Alister

Re: Killing the patient

The way to prevent the inappropriate use of the data is to stop using it inappropriately; not to stop the data being collected in the first place.

Well no, not necessarily, the gathering of the data might be inappropriate too.

In today's society, it seems to be the default assumption that you should collect as much data as you can about everything and everybody.

Sometimes, it would be good if organisations stopped and thought about whether they actually should be doing that, or if they really need to do that.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a giant alien space cigar? Whatever it is, boffins are baffled

Alister

At first, there were a group of fantasists who believed it was an alien starship. Those claims were quickly debunked by researchers who classified it as an interstellar asteroid

Those researchers are going to look bloody stupid when First Contact happens...

Creep travels half the world to harass online teen gamer… and gets shot by her mom – cops

Alister

Re: Now he can get a tattoo, "Shot by the Mom!"

Petite tranchet arrowheads go back to the Mesolithic which was a few thousand years beyond the C15th.

Oh yes of course, I wasn't trying to suggest that the bow and arrow were a new idea in the 15th Century, rather that they were still considered a decisive weapon at that point.

It wasn't until the late 15th that firearms were starting to be used on battlefields in Europe, and of course initially only as bloody big cannon, not hand-weapons.

Alister

Re: Now he can get a tattoo, "Shot by the Mom!"

I'm not sure when it did originate

10th century, according to various sources - it is originally of French / Norman origin, long before the Grimms happened upon it.

For context, the Chinese were just beginning to use fire lances at the start of the 11th century.

The Battle of Agincourt, which was notable for the mass use of the longbow as a decisive weapon, wasn't until 1415, (15th century) and the first hand-held firearms appeared in Europe a decade or two later.

Alister

Re: @Alister

@wolftone

I forgot, sarcasm doesn't get across very well on El Reg unless you add /sarc...

Alister

Re: Psycho creeps will always be with us.

Yes, she would for initial investigations. But as he was shot facing her, it'd be self defence and she'd be let off.

Really? Going on recent history in the UK, she'd more likely have been convicted of illegal possession of a firearm, attempted manslaughter, and parental neglect...

Galileo, here we go again. My my, the Brits are gonna miss EU

Alister

Re: Great headline!

Yes, thanks, I was aware.

In fact I was watching the film with my daughter this weekend, but don't tell anyone...

Alister
Thumb Up

Great headline!

It scans and everything...

ICO seeks views on how tween-friendly websites should be designed

Alister
Thumb Up

Re: Can we ...

Well said.

Israel cyber chief's 'pants' analogy for password security deemed, well, 'pants'

Alister

It's not, it's I'm going t' pub, where t' is an contraction of 'to the'

Yes, that's right, but frank ly is also correct, as you originally wrote I'm from't north.

Get a grip, literally: Clumsy robots can't nab humans' jobs just yet

Alister

Re: That's odd

I'm a bit older than five and I've never learnt how to catch a ball.

Tell you what, I'll change my statement to read "most five year olds" how's that?

And the point is, that robotics and AI are nowhere near achieving even the basic building blocks of the systems which would be necessary to enable a robot to catch a ball.

Boston Dynamics Atlas robot has just about mastered the basics of walking, running and jumping without falling over, But it's not autonomous, it has no reasoning, and cannot even identify if a ball is thrown at it, never mind catch it.

EU summons a CYBER FORCE into existence

Alister

Re: EU only?

It's just a knee-jerk reaction in the finest tradition.

We already have Interpol, which mostly works, so why not just add an Infosec branch to the existing organisation... And whatever you do, avoid the C word when you name it.