* Posts by Mike VandeVelde

355 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Mar 2007

Page:

Mozilla loses patience with Flash over Hacking Team, BLOCKS it

Mike VandeVelde
Boffin

Re: The best bit is....

"Next you'll be saying they have insecure sign in pages, 3rd party tracking cookies, missing Alt tags from images, not using https to protect privacy......"

Using Flash on a website does not make that website insecure.

Flash insecurity goes from nasty guys using nasty flash on their nasty websites to you and your browser. Flash insecurity does not go up from those nasty guys to regular otherwise properly secured websites that happen to be using flash. If you're not surfing random porn or torrent tracker or conspiracy sites built by who knows who then you are 99% OK. Besides bad actors on advertising networks you are completely fine with Flash enabled on BBC or CBC or government websites or our very own El Reg. Flash can be a tool for hijacking browsers, not for compromising web servers.

That said Flash is stupid and should die a slow painful death like it is doing, but keep it in perspective people.

Using https on a public website of static pages does not make that website private, nor does it help in any way whatsoever to hide the fact if you visit that website.

Insecure login pages are a major problem for banking websites, but who the fuck cares for a simple discussion forum 8+ characters including upper and lower case and a number and a special character and no dictionary words is simply infuriating.

3rd party tracking cookies are pure evil. Easily blocked, tell all your friends.

Missing image alt tags are quite annoying to the sight impaired, but I can see fine so I only notice them at all on xkcd.

That is all.

US Air Force drone pilots in mass burn out, robo-flights canceled

Mike VandeVelde
Boffin

@Dan Paul

"That's not our fault, it's the fault of the combatants who chose where to fight from."

They "chose" to fight from their homelands when foreign military forces invaded. Yes it sure would be nice if all the people who didn't like their country being invaded would all just gather together en masse in the middle of the open desert with their ak47s and rpgs so they could all be entirely annihilated in moments by a few missiles from safely afar, but they savagely ignore the plight of our poor poor consciences and try to do what little damage they can while remaining contemptibly alive, near their homes and families, leaving no other option but to "save the village by destroying it". Evil cowards with no honour, apparently.

Big sales growth nothing to do with NSA fears - Huawei top brass

Mike VandeVelde
Holmes

Re: I don't think China is doing much more espionage than other countries are not doing...

I've heard of Tibet, it has most recently been part of China for over 60 years now.

Mike VandeVelde

Re: I don't think China is doing much more espionage than other countries are not doing...

Over the last several decades China has not invaded anyone, bombed anyone, drone attacked anyone, or opened any new military bases outside of its own borders. Food for thought.

Windows and OS X are malware, claims Richard Stallman

Mike VandeVelde
FAIL

@ Six_Degrees

What exactly is your problem? You don't want to share your code? You think sharing code is an evil communist plot? That's perfectly fine (and retarded), you have a right to your opinion.

Sharing your code is an awful burden nobody should force on you, OK. But you feel you have some kind of right to use code that other people have shared in any way you see fit? GPL places some restrictions on you, and you can't stand it? You place much more severe restrictions on people who use your code, and that's fine, but if someone puts any restrictions on you using their code then that's some kind of harsh human rights abuse? I really can't see your point through the forest of hypocrisy.

You don't like sharing code, fine go crawl back under your rock and reinvent wheels all day. What do you think gives you the right to demand anything from people who do like sharing code? GPL code isn't going anywhere, all the code that is GPL now will always be GPL, and there is more and more of it every day, leaving people free to solve new problems instead of wasting time working around moldy old proprietary software patents and restrictive copyright, making life better for everyone. There are lots of people who get paid to write, modify, maintain, and support it. More of them very day. I'm thankful for all of them, and even more thankful for the even greater number of people who freely volunteer the fruits of their labour for the greater good. You should show a bit of class instead of trying to twist their altruism into some kind of blasphemy.

Ranting and raving against the way some people choose to share their code with you would be much more valid if you weren't so vehemently against sharing any of your code at all in the first place.

Call girl gets six years for Googler's drug death

Mike VandeVelde
Megaphone

"WAY more cops get shot by criminals than the other way around."

"WAY more cops get shot by criminals than the other way around."

<thweep> <thweep> * * * total fucking bullshit alarm * * * <thweep> <thweep>

2014:

117 dead police:

http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html

1,100 killed by police:

http://www.killedbypolice.net/kbp2014.html

That DRM support in Firefox you never asked for? It's here

Mike VandeVelde
Facepalm

out of the frying pan...

"various companies, including Netflix, are already evaluating..."

The end of Silverlight!!!!!

"...Adobe's tech"

D'OH!

Money-for-mods-gate: Valve gives masterclass in how to lose gamers and alienate people

Mike VandeVelde
Stop

Re: removes any incentive for developers to make really good add-ons

The really good add-ons were already there. Adding the incentive turned it into a crooked fuckfest. Big surprise.

Ad-blocking is LEGAL: German court says Ja to browser filters

Mike VandeVelde
IT Angle

Re: FF22

I could get nostalgic for the days of gopher and use lynx to browse the web text only. I could be blind and use a screen reader, or near blind and mess with your precious font sizes, or colour blind and mess with your precious colours. I could be brain damaged and use IE and not see anything the way you planned, or you could be brain damaged and design for IE where my proper browser wouldn't see anything the way you planned. I could be a search engine spider and process the response from your server and never display it on any screen. Finally, I could go through through your server's response rendering it to my screen and when it gets to <img src="http://privacyhah.com/somestupidbullshit.png"> I could say no thank you sorry but I don't feel like fetching that extra file because reasons. Exactly what do you think you could do about *any* of that???

"That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. Maybe you should educate yourself about how laws (especially, but not limited to copyright law) and contracts work."

rofl

Mike VandeVelde
Meh

Re: It's my computer

It's my computer. It's your server. My computer makes a request to your server. Your server gives my computer a response. After this point you are entirely removed from the equation. My computer will do whatever it likes with the response you give it. If you want it some other way then you are going to have to come up with something different from www, good luck with that!

Give Jay-Z's Tidal tune stream thing a chance, says indie label boss

Mike VandeVelde

Finally, Mozilla looks at moving away from 'insecure' HTTP. Maybe

Mike VandeVelde
IT Angle

Re: If I'm not sending private details..

"how about if your ISP sold statistics on which health-related Wikipedia pages you had been reading to your health insurance provider?"

How in the hell does https stop anyone from knowing you were looking at wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_Fungus?

Sprint fined $16m for sticking it to The Man: Telco 'overcharged' Feds for phone wiretaps

Mike VandeVelde
Facepalm

meanwhile in China

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/05/obama_criticises_china_tech_rules_backdoor_terrorism/

The proposed laws "would essentially force all foreign companies, including US companies, to turn over to the Chinese government mechanisms where they can snoop and keep track of all the users of those services," Obama added.

"As you might imagine, tech companies are not going to be willing to do that," he said.

ALIENS ARE COMING: Chief NASA boffin in shock warning

Mike VandeVelde
Alert

Re: Ask pre-columbian south-American natives

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSOHO3GwEPg

To defend offshore finance bods looting developing countries of their tax cash

Mike VandeVelde
Devil

economists: similar to climatologists

Take all the derogatory commentardery about climate researchers you find around here, and just look how much more nicely the same comments fit when applied to economists instead :D

http://kickitover.org/notebook/

Streaming tears of laughter as Jay-Z (Tidal) waves goodbye to $56m

Mike VandeVelde
Flame

"centralised database for ALL music. Everything. No exceptions."

It was called Napster.

Put those smartphones away: Google adds anti-copying measures to Drive for Work

Mike VandeVelde
Coat

"feature to block particular files from being downloaded, printed and copied"

Hmmm upload a file to Google so that you can't download it, print it, or copy it - is that somehow better than simply deleting the file because cloud?

Anti-gay Indiana starts backtracking on hated law after tech pressure

Mike VandeVelde
Devil

I'll believe that a corporation is a person when it can be drafted or imprisoned.

How about executed?

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1810

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02oct-nov/oct-nov02corp1.html

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/

https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/corpo.html

Guardian: 'Oil reserves will soon be worth NOTHING!' (A bit like their stock tips, really)

Mike VandeVelde
Holmes

"Yawndeyawn... professional hot-air generator... grant wasting watermelon... twonk"

Climate scientists tell us that burning fossil fuels is leading to catastrophic climate change. Economists tell us about things like goodwill and support levels and market impact. A person is not "a twonk" if they listen to the experts and put 2 and 2 together. Thank you for your contribution :)

Mike VandeVelde
Go

"ignorant... dumb... egregious buffoon... dunderheads eating their crayons..."

Nothing freaks out a capitalist more than the idea that anyone might do anything for any reason other than maximum glory to the almighty dollar. This is worth supporting for that entertainment value alone :)

http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/02/20/Fossil-Fuel-Divestment-True-Aim/

http://gofossilfree.org/commitments/

http://www.arabellaadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Measuring-the-Global-Divestment-Movement.pdf

Cubans 'get' 'free community' 'Wi-Fi'

Mike VandeVelde
WTF?

"seeing a further thaw in relations with its neighbors, most notably the US"

"seeing a further thaw in relations with its neighbors, most notably the US"

Except for the USA (and Israel), is there any country that doesn't love Cuba??

Snowden tells tech bigwigs: It's up to you to thwart mass surveillance

Mike VandeVelde
Thumb Up

Snowden Live: Canada and the Surveillance State

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvcCh4LGaaE

‪Obama criticises China's mandatory backdoor tech import rules

Mike VandeVelde
WTF?

was everybody born yesterday?

Does nobody remember CALEA??? I can't believe it hasn't gotten a single mention!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act

"CALEA's purpose is to enhance the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to wiretap any telephone traffic; it has since been extended to cover broadband internet and VoIP traffic... USA telecommunications providers must install new hardware or software, as well as modify old equipment, so that it doesn't interfere with the ability of a law enforcement agency (LEA) to perform real-time surveillance of any telephone or Internet traffic."

What the hell is the difference between CALEA and what China is proposing? You don't need to bring up any NSA boogeymen to spot the glaring hypocricy, that's totally besides the point. "At least China is being open about it"?!? It's been the law in the USA for more than 2 decades!!!

International effort to wrangle t'internet from NSA fizzles out in chaos

Mike VandeVelde

Elon Musk plans to plonk urban Hyperloop subsonic tube on California

Mike VandeVelde
Trollface

Re: Is this intended to be a permanent fixture?

"Don't bother posting in reply if you can't make a factual and accurate reply to the two points I raise."

1. Hi there. In response to your second point, I'd just like to say: chicken. Chicken chicken chicken, chicken-chickens chickening chicken chickens.

Reckon YOU can write better headlines than us? Great – apply within

Mike VandeVelde
Devil

yeah, if you could could just hire me, that would be great

Peter picked a peck of pickles, feck the puck of poppers peepers pint...

The rain in Spain explains the pain plainly part...

OK wait... I can do thish...

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously! RESULT!!!

At least I can English, so I got that going for me, which is nice *8)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF95MMcn_B0

Net neutrality: The world speaks its brains on secret 'open' 'net rules

Mike VandeVelde
IT Angle

Re: Top Secret

"a sweeping new policy that affects much of the world"

I've seen this sentiment numerous times, and I don't understand it so I have to ask - how will these rules affect anyone or anything outside the jurisdiction of the USA? I mean they do usually try to apply their laws across the globe, with varying degrees of success, but here in Canada we had an open internet last week, we still have one today, and as far as I can tell we will still have one next week and into the forseeable future. What is going to change in any other country?

Net neutrality secrecy: No one knows what the FCC approved (BUT Google has a good idea)

Mike VandeVelde
Megaphone

"more openness will make it easier for lobbyists"

"What would actually happen is that the cable companies would throw lobbyist money at it like there was no tomorrow, and the whole process would drown in partisan politics and legal challenges."

Hello? McFly? That's the current situation, not some hypothetical future scenario.

"with the report suddenly dropping 15 pages to 317 pages following a last-minute letter from Google... in response to a last minute submission from a major California based company, an entire core part of the document was removed with respect to broadband subscriber access service... spend the next few weeks in ex parte meetings listening to stakeholder concerns"

Mike VandeVelde
Unhappy

"If T.T.I.P. goes through..."

On this side of the pond that happened in 1994 with NAFTA chapter 11. Corporations have the god given right to collect all the profit they plan on collecting no matter what democracy tries to whimper about it. The idea has been spreading like cancer around the globe ever since.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement

Net neutrality victory: FCC approves 'open internet' rules in 3-2 vote

Mike VandeVelde
Holmes

"the FCC's chairman has refused to publish the rules before the vote took place."

So do we get to actually see the actual rules now?

<gets popcorn>

Ads watchdog: Er, what does woman in her undies have to do with ‘slim’ phone?

Mike VandeVelde

Marconi: The West of England's very own Italian wireless pioneer

Mike VandeVelde
Boffin

Re: *ahem*

"It sometimes happens, even in science, that one man can be right against the world. Professor Fessenden was that man. He fought bitterly and alone to prove his theories. It was he who insisted, against the stormy protests of every recognized authority, that what we now call radio was worked by continuous waves sent through the ether by the transmitting station as light waves are sent out by a flame. Marconi and others insisted that what was happening was a whiplash effect. The progress of radio was retarded a decade by this error. The whiplash theory passed gradually from the minds of men and was replaced by the continuous wave, with all too little credit to the man who had been right."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Fessenden

'Net neutrality will turn the internet communist – and make Iran's day'

Mike VandeVelde

"an open and freedom-enhancing global Internet"

Gambling

Porn

Copyright / Trademark

"Promoting Terrorism"

Who has the most government control of the internet and who does the most censorship? Grinds my gears the way some people talk...

HIGH-RANNOSAURUS WRECKED: Druggie dinos tripped balls on psychedelics – boffins

Mike VandeVelde
Alien

Re: This reminds me...

Which in turn was ripped of from Terrence McKenna:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wg5V23lqXk

NSA raided hackers' troves of stolen data: report

Mike VandeVelde

take

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/on-the-take

WMD in Iraq, they obviously didn't look hard enough, they're all over:

http://www.fpx.de/fp/WebLog/2003/iraq-du.html

Oh, and:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah_during_the_Iraq_War

According to professor Noam Chomsky, "Fallujah,..., was one of the worst atrocities of the 21st century."

Wanted: Brit Facebook and Twitter trolls for counter-jihad psyops

Mike VandeVelde
Facepalm

diminishing returns

So they get someone like Matt Bryant to add the 13,147st comment to a major news article, that's supposed to be some kind of blow for freeedom? Once the noise to signal ratio rockets past 1,000% and the forum is basically overgrown with astroweeds, reclaimed by the astrojungle, who would they think remains to be influenced, is there anyone spending their days hyper obsessively reading every inane talking point comment? Will it be like an auto trading stock market crash, where everyone and their dog / blog squad has to keep up their pro/anti comment ratios and basically ddos all of the internets? How many major news outlets have a comments section where it's worth anything to read past the first 2 or 3 comments that show? How many more specialized forums like this one don't just laugh jokers like this off the stage? Up until there are just too many of them to bother with comments anymore...

I'd really like to see an organization like our esteemed paper of record The Register for example do some commenter analysis, and brand astrowarrior posts with the logo of the gang of thugs who spawned them based on IP addresses. I guess that wouldn't help sell ads though?

Who'd be Target's infosec chief? Tesco CIO joins hack-battered firm

Mike VandeVelde

What do China, FBI and UK have in common? All three want backdoors in Western technology

Mike VandeVelde

FCC sexes up, er, sextuples 'broadband' speed to 25Mbps in US

Mike VandeVelde
Joke

Re: re: Bootnote

"engaged in unauthorized operations."

Allowing NSA spying.

ROLOLOLOFLMFAOLOLOL

Hey, America. Canada's watchdog just slapped net neutrality rules on wireless internet

Mike VandeVelde
Devil

"a small data package upgrade for $5 a month, which seems a bit steep"

Yes, you do need to be a subscriber to access their internet video.

https://tvonline.bell.ca/

Let's say that it uses 300mb per hour, so 10 hrs is about 3 gb. For $5. Steep you say.

http://www.bell.ca/Mobility/Cell_phone_plans/Personal_plans

4 gb is $50/mo. Now do you see? Plus it says there you only get 5 hrs for $5. Welcome to Canada!

Cubans defy government's home internet ban with secret home-made network

Mike VandeVelde

"when no nation on earth could have come to Cuba's aid"

I was going to upvote up until that line. Maybe some of these countries would want to help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism

"Cuba provides more medical personnel to the developing world than all the G8 countries combined"

"The idea of a nation saving lives and improving the human condition is alien to traditional statecraft and is therefore discounted as a rationale for the Cuban approach."

"currently educating more doctors, about 70,000 in all, than all the medical schools in the United States"

"US President Barack Obama commented... a reminder to the United States that limiting its interactions with Latin American countries to military and drug interdiction might be limiting its influence."

I'm not saying that any of these nations would have declared war on the USA or anything, but there are things that could be done to make a move like invading Cuba quite expensive in any number of ways. Cuba has a lot more friends than say Afghanistan or Iraq had. Millions and millions and millions of people protested the invasion of Iraq, could you imagine military action against Cuba???

Hola HoloLens: Reg man gets face time with Microsoft's holographic headset

Mike VandeVelde
IT Angle

steady?

How steady does it seem? If you are looking at some minecraft blocks on your table, and you glance from one end of the table to the other, how steady and solid do they seam? How instant is the motion tracking to video updating? This would be the difference for me between a cheap seeming gimmick and a truly revelational experience. If I'm running up the stairs past a poster projected on the wall, does it seem like it's actually physically attached to the wall or more like a jittery overlay? If they've got that nailed then well done, otherwise meh.

NSA: We're in YOUR BOTNET

Mike VandeVelde
Joke

Re: amanfrimmars1 No one should be surprised.

he's conversing with amanfrommars gibberish bot vs rightwingnut bot lol

Give ALL the EU access to Netflix, says Vince Cable

Mike VandeVelde
Holmes

Re: iPlayer

"It's a licensing problem, blah blah blah"

Isn't that just the sort of handicap that a common market would try to cure?

Fertiliser doom warning! Pesky humans set to wipe selves out AGAIN

Mike VandeVelde
Trollface

"ElReg is INTERNATIONAL."

And so they use English (most/almost all of the time), which is used all over the world, which billions of people can read without any trouble. Then there is American, the simplified spelling version of English for simpler people, used only in the USA, also the exclusive home of a mad system of weights and measurements.

Spavined RadioShack to file for bankruptcy next month – report

Mike VandeVelde
Holmes

oh yeah radio shack theyre still around?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RadioShack#Canada

American bacon cured with AR-15 assault rifle

Mike VandeVelde

Apple WINS iPod antitrust fight, jury nixes BILLION-dollar payout bid

Mike VandeVelde
Alert

copyright violation = theft

Would you look at that, an actual case involving intellectual property that can actually be called theft - copies were actually removed from someone. But apparently that's fine.

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

Mike VandeVelde
Meh

NEEDS MOAR WHITE

what about just making the no man's land left & right a pale pale grey? make my screen a little bit less of a search light? give me a little bit less of a tan whilst reading?

the image at the top of each article could be presented at about 20% of its current size. one of those rare situations where css actually considered the use case during design of the specifications, something float was actually designed for instead of all the contortions is actually used for in practice, i think the coder will probably jump at the chance. let there be some text down the side of it, let some of the article show below it.

im not too bent out of shape about it over all. the content is still there and its really not much if any more difficult to get to.

Mike VandeVelde
Headmaster

Re: Still no https? really wide margins

What do people think that HTTPS is going to hide? These are static pages!! The "metadata" is still out there, what do you think you get out of obscuring the content when all someone has to do is follow the link you followed to see what you saw? It's useful for something like Facebook where what you are looking at is customized to you and possibly private, but here would it not simply be a waste of processing power??

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