Posts by DropBear

Are you alleging with a straight face those records are likely to be actually encrypted while it's unfortunately still common* to see sites that can mail you your password back...?

* Yes it is - it last happened to me yesterday on an e-commerce site no less, not much I could do beyond immediately changing it to an old one I no longer use anywhere...

Re: Dark mirror

I'd rather stick with Rammstein: "We're all living in Amerika, Amerika, Amerika..."

"Who's going to start reading up on IPv6 this weekend ?"

Not me. My router doesn't actually have enough memory to run the IPv6 capable version of the firmware (yes, I've explicitly checked). My router works fine, I can actually forget it exists for extended periods of time, which is the highest praise any appliance can receive. Ergo for the foreseeable future IPv4 it is...

Well, this is the first time I see El Reg treat an undoubtedly wrong and serious but lewd issue with such a gratingly sanctimonious attitude. Are we being trolled or something...?

I blame the existence of such "contortionists" on the stubborn insistence of every office suite ever that layout in any way, shape or form is Not Their Concern (insert imaginary middle finger here).

Re: Yawn

To be fair, I can see the appeal of something that Just F####ing Works. There are exactly two models of wireless* thermostatic valve in this entire region of Europe yet every single "home automation" project I checked so far failed to just present their controls to me on a GUI** even though the underlying radio lib sees and recognizes them just fine every time. I'd literally have to rewrite one of them to get them to work (considering even if they know thermostats they assume a completely different, US-centric device model), and I'm just not good enough for that... :(

* I need the state of each so I can control the heater...

** I might even get by setting them from a shell script - my mom, not so much...

Re: El Reg commentard sees the problem, no need for a $$$BILLION review

So is this one of those "uninitialised but active" waypoint things where my GPS insists I'm right off the coast of Africa (0,0 presumably) right up until it finally gets a lock...?

Yeah, no thanks. I plead the fifth...

Re: @Lotaresco

"In when you're out" - I saw some funny coloured LED lamps on sale just the other day; I was wondering why they seem to have that strange reflector-like shape until it dawned on me these are supposed to project a randomly flickering muted RGB lightshow onto your wall - not entirely unlike the one made by a turned-on TV set in a room - for the benefit of "legally-challenged uninvited guests"...

Re: So close, so very very close...

I noticed that too. I'm one of those guys who uses his phone only to actually call people 98% of the time, but 90% of the rest is taking a picture whenever I feel like it, instead of having to lug around my digicam (which is never with me anyway) to do it. So that's definitely an issue. Or rather not really, as a) I can't use it / see the display without opening it and b) can't afford it on a whim anyway.

Re: A quick trip to cloud cuckoo land

Twofold: a visible "accomplishment" and tighter control on who does what. Who cares about some kiddies...

Re: Requirement

It's the universal nature of having any power to not conceive of any limitations on it except by others with _more_ power. "Principles" and "fluffy ideals" is not on that list.

Re: Amazon is keen

"But you need to remember..."

How about we rephrase that as "Amazon are only interested in selling you things while those nasty government agents are trying to do nefarious things like potentially single you out for prosecution based on something you might have said they decide they didn't like hearing, where for all you know they enjoy complete freedom in deciding what that might be, at any point now or in the future". Sounds a bit more honest to me. Further reading, endorsed by Schneier (and this is actually orders of magnitude worse than that, because you'd never know when they listen...).

Actually, without any effort whatsoever, that's _precisely_ all I've ever seen from Google too. Cute beetle pics in a parking lot and vague news that "Google's cars" - whether said beetles or something else, no idea - have driven autonomously eleventy billion parsecs so far, with merely an occasional ding. Well, at least here, on El Reg. I don't exactly seek out this sort of news elsewhere, that's what I read El Reg for - and past a bunch of snarky sniping, that's all I remember them covering. Which is not to say Google might not have some sort of fully functional Schumi-in-the-box driving donuts by now, but all I remember having ever seen is a parked beetle indeed.

Re: Remind me..

Bah, softie... I'll have you know back in the day we were routinely landing the plane _perpendicularly_ on the strip in F29 Retaliator.