* Posts by Gordon Pryra

990 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Mar 2008

Spamhaus-style DDoS attacks: All the hackers are doing it

Gordon Pryra

That is the trouble with security firms

As soon as one person works it out and uses the exploit, some security firm will try to show how clever they are by documenting it (or as good as)

Thus the skiddies will Ctrl+C it to death

Groundbreaking Camino browser digs grave, jumps in

Gordon Pryra

Word Up

Sorry to see this one go, one of the first 7"s i brought as a child was from him

Quantum boffins send data ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

Gordon Pryra

Pfft

Talk about interpreting the figures to mean what you want them to.

All this shows is the proof of reincarnation. Photon 1 is reborn as photon 4.

And there in a nutshell is religion and the sky fairy's explained. Its all quantum not some white guy with a beard.

Can they not ask us some more difficult questions? This is like the Sun crossword vs the Times

BT! dumps! Yahoo! after! 10! long! years! together!

Gordon Pryra

Re: good

Na- that malware requires fdisk and a screwdriver through the hard-drive to clear

'Nothing will convince a kid that's never worn glasses to wear them'

Gordon Pryra

Were any of you people ever 20 something?

Check out the earphones that people wear now. When I was younger it was all about in-ear and hidden. Now its all about making yourself stand out and look stupid at the same time.

Having something techy on your face will sell out in seconds, kids will want one because they cant afford it, 20 somethings will want one because it shows they can afford it, 30 somethings will buy one to prove to themselves they are still 20 somethings and 40 somethings will buy it to watch pr0n at work.

My parents will still not approve, which only brings its street cred up 200%

Apples comments come from someone in the age group of my parents, from a company who has nothing to offer in this area apart from a ....... watch (yawn), He must be kicking himself and any designers he has close to hand about missing this boat. After all the jokes about Apple not innovating, they SHOULD have been here not Google.

Gordon Pryra

Nothing that will convince a kid that's never worn glasses or a band to wear one.

Except for this short list

1) The name Google or Apple on the side

2) Their mates wearing one

3) Some tard from Apple telling them they wont

Google gives vendors seven-day bug disclosure deadline

Gordon Pryra

To many middle managers posting here

To many excuses and reasons why company's should have more time.

As Google say. the bug is known and being exploited. A company needs to take responsibility for their actions and their products rather than bitching about it and finding ways to not fix an issue.

Working for many councils, NHS and other organisations and I see this sort of crap all the time. People inside company's justifying their wages by being heard and seen on email trails making spurious excuses, basically arguing the toss. This situation carry's over to the world of real work all too often.

A second trouble is that so many software companies are in it for the quick buck, providing all sorts of claims about their ability to deliver, hitting the low hanging fruit then screwing the customer towards the end of the project once they see the money well drying up. Generally these bugs and exploits are in there because they were quick fixes, or even worse they were known about but not brought to attention as the way around it was just to much work.

Software development is one of those industries that needs to grow up, and fast

Google on advertising-funded cesspools: We don't like them either

Gordon Pryra

Bit confused

Are they talking about adds appearing ON the websites (adsense, clickszor etc) or appearing on the search engine when a list of nasty sites is displayed?

If its the ad-sense side of things then the ad agency controlling the account has a lot of tools that they can use to push their adds towards hosts they deem accessible. But in the end, if a site is about bestiality or human trafficking, then they are not going to advertise themselves as such.

A "black list" is hardly useful as these sites are illegal and would be closed down the moment they are discovered.

If a company uses less reputable advert placement schemes then they do so with full knowledge that these company's will allow anyone to host their adds with little checking (if any) and as such, then yes they are implicit in the dark side (tm)

Russians draw liquid blood from frozen woolly mammoth

Gordon Pryra

Its all a cover

Don't believe a word of it.

This is just to give the local bab shop the ability to explain away the long hairs you find in your donna....

Going under the knife? Avoid Fridays. Trust us, we asked a doctor

Gordon Pryra

Re: No mention of some important facts

Who said anything about routinely?

But yes, there is more chance of the surgeon being available in the case of an emergency if they are not tied up on other ops.

Its not perfect, but it increases the chances of someone being contactable.

It also increases the amount of deaths over those two days because the operations are generally those that can result in death rather than in ingrown toenail.

While its pretty fashionable to bash the NHS, they are people and tend to not like their patients dying on them.

Gordon Pryra

No mention of some important facts

Like the hard cases are seen on the Thursday and Fridays as their surgeons would not then be tied up in operations over the Saturday/Sunday.

This report should be taken like most reports, with the full knowledge that the figures have been compiled in order to prove whatever points the writers want.

The figures in this report are comparable to those in the US, which should tell you that its not as simple as people say.

From personal experience of both working for the NHS in multiple hospitals and from being a cancer patient that involved chemo and surgery I would always go private for the nice clean hospital beds and better looking nurses, but there is no equivalent of a "Friday afternoon car" in the NHS.

Massive waste, corruption and cheap labor employed for massive margins yes, but no lack of care to those who need it post operations.

'Secret Pentagon papers' show China hacked into Patriot missile system

Gordon Pryra
Devil

a growing Chinese campaign of espionage

I don't know why China bother to be honest, all they need do is put a camera or microphone in front of any top military and industry sources and they will give them all the details anyway. Far easier

Unless this is all a load of crap disinformation, one more "+1 to the total Chinese hacking Uncle Sam stories"

Seems bit convenient that a report is "leaked" about the current USA bug bear,

Revealed: Google's plan to float BLIMP NETWORK over Africa, Asia

Gordon Pryra

Is this before or after

We get food to some of these -places?

I know being able to serve adverts and give them face-book is a noble aim, but really?

Sad that the human race is able to get its sales infrastructure into areas far easier than aid and basic infrastructure for people (roads, clean water)

Judge: Evidence will likely show Apple DID fix ebook prices

Gordon Pryra

"she did stress that her view wasn't final"

Is she not supposed to the the bloody judge?

And is the process not to sit down and hear the evidence from both sides and THEN make a judgement?

I know this is Apple and they are guilty as sin, but aren't they at least supposed to pretend to go through the motions?

Open wide, Google: Here comes an advertising antitrust probe

Gordon Pryra

Re: Utter nonsense.

Yes it is utter nonsense.

People totally forget the reasons for Google's dominance, its very simple. Their organic search is the best of the best.

And its the best because its neutral. They apply their own guidelines to their own sites. And there have been well documented cases of them reducing their own positions due to various departments in Google not following the rules (Chrome and the Nexus are two big examples of internal pages they have marked down)

Constantly hearing from idiots like Foundem is pathetic. Why they even have a voice in this discussion escapes me. They were never one of the big comparison sites, their site is terrible. Just standard affiliate nonsense. Someone in this "company" must have a mate on a quango somewhere.

Rather than create a site that a user would want to find in their search, they would rather get their mate in Govt to force Google to reduce the quality of their search engine.

Woolwich beheading sparks call to REVIVE UK Snoopers' Charter

Gordon Pryra

The police already knew about these guys

And from the looks of things, not a lot happened.

So what was the point in giving the police the powers they already have?

It seems that either

1) the police knew about them, but had no resources to put to actually making use of the data they had.

2) the police knew about them, but chose to do nothing

3) The more stringent powers that the police could call into play here were not of any actual use?

After all, if they know about someone and they feel there is a risk then they can target whatever they want at them, this new charter being primarily the ability to make investigations look prettier in court after the fact.

Google to double encryption key lengths for SSL certs by year's end

Gordon Pryra

Re: What do they know?

Its not an actual quantum computer, its a computer that makes use of some aspects of quantum science but does not do the whole "object in 2 states all the time" type thing.

'Catastrophic failure' of 3D-printed gun in Oz Police test

Gordon Pryra

Why are the Yanks scared about this?

Is it because the NRA don't get a cut of its sales?

US Senator introduces 'Patent Abuse Reduction Act'

Gordon Pryra

No idea what any of the politics in the States is

But good luck to them on this one, hopefully they can do their job for once and put the people and society before their own greed and self serving crap.

To tkioz, what happens to the ones on the wrong side of the law?

Well a patient should be pretty specific, and if it is then it will be obvious that they are the owner of the "idea" If a patient is not specific then there are arguments that they should not be able to "own it" as such.

US Congress excoriates Apple's tax-avoidance shenanigans

Gordon Pryra

Merkin politicians doing the Same as the UK ones

Tub Thumping for affect on TV for Votes with no intention of changing anything.

Tim Cook will take the stage and get his verbal slaps, its part of the contract of big business with the Governments.

They wont change the status quo as long as a big name is willing to get a public slap to keep the plebs in line.

The legislators make money from the tax schemes in place (Look at our own hypocritical bitch Margaret Hodge)

They will never change things and will continue to have public charades like this right up until the electorate gets itself educated, off benefit and start to give a shit about how people in power are laughing at them and treating them like retards

Blogger better be a billionaire, says 'open access' publisher lawsuit

Gordon Pryra

When someone makes a threat like this

Its normally a sign that the person being threatened is on the right track

MYSTERY Nokia Lumia with gazillion-pixel camera 'spotted'

Gordon Pryra

NOW will you try Windows Phone 8?

No

Computer use irrelevant to education outcomes, says US study

Gordon Pryra

Computers in schools?

Useless,

From learning about Winchester drives when MFM and RLL where actually the drive controllers being used in industry to DB4 when SQL was taking over.

The education system cant teach the children anything that's current, thus all they can do is teach HOW TO USE computers and the basic theory behind them. (actually, theory is pretty useful as nothing really changes once you understand the ground rules)

You don't need a computer for this, you need an interesting/ed teacher and a class of attentive kids.

On top of that, use of devices that do the basics for you turns your brain to mush. Basic mental arithmetic is something that has noticeably different between my brain now and the one I had at school. Where I used to be able to work out sine wave coefficients in my head, after 20 years of using a calculator my ability to do basic multiplication tables is noticeably poor.

Anyway, all of the above means nothing. Education is no longer about giving a child the mental tools and the store of knowledge to help them learn, it is about ensuring that all children "pass"

In the UK this is achieved by making the pass rates so high that all should get a B or higher, pass rate inflation or something.

Dell's PC-on-a-stick landing in July: report

Gordon Pryra

Re: Instant PC

Aye, why use this when you have a smartphone in your pocket anyway? If its for people who can't afford smartphones, then what are they doing with multiple monitors and IO hanging around?

Cameron's Tech City: Desks? Yes. Cash? Yes. Coders? Nope

Gordon Pryra

Pay for what you get

You want slaves with the skills go to India

You want people to come to the arse end of nowhere every day its going to cost you.

Breaking news, LITERALLY: Financial Times vandalized by hackers

Gordon Pryra

Re: wow

He is not Spartacus

Who is the mystery sixth member of LulzSec?

Gordon Pryra

Re: Just goes to show

Exactly,

What do 5 script kiddies make?

Good fall guys for a real hacker

Google 'DOES DO EVIL', thunders British politician

Gordon Pryra
Meh

Whatever the arguement is about, Hodge has fucked it by being a hypocritical shit

No one can take the debate (or kangaroo court) seriously when someone who is only just behind them in the amount of billions is doing exactly what they are doing.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Mrs Hodge defended Stemcor’s behavior and said that the company had “assured” her it paid “every penny of tax that is owed”.

So exactly the same as Google then

How the hell did someone who is such a landowner in the real sense get to be in the Labour party?

Surly she is the kind of person/from the kind of family they despise?

Gordon Pryra

Re: An open letter

@wowfood "Why stick around in the UK and pay our incredibly high taxes, when they can close down shop and move everything to ireland where it's cheaper for them."

Because you do not then allow them to do business in your country or to take advantage of the infrastructure of your county. And other players step up to fill in the gaps left by this company.

Our high taxes would not be so high if people paid them, laugh at the Greeks as much as you like, we are the same.

Gordon Pryra

Re: An open letter

What have politicians got to do with it anyway? They are just supposed to legislate.

The courts and HMRC are the bodies who deal with it, anything said in Parliament is just grandstanding trying to make a name for themselves.

While we believe that Google may be in the wrong (teithing fuckers is the current term) we also know this is the same for 90% of the corporations.

What pisses us off is not really the corporations, but the hypocritical lying fuckers called politicians (again the current term in the office) Who use the same schemes to line their own pockets as the big companies.

The politicians just don't get it.....

Half of youngsters would swap PRIVACY for... cheaper insurance

Gordon Pryra

"privacy is only a problem for the last generation"

Maybe asking a bunch of kids a question like this is probably a waste of time?

Maybe the question being asked was so biased that the results are probably a waste of time?

A combination of the 2 above?

I don't think I was actually capable of thinking about a serious concept like this till I was at least 30, how many kids of 20 do you know that have any clue about privacy and what companies/private organisations actually hold on them?

Prankster 'Superhero' takes on robot traffic warden AND WINS

Gordon Pryra

Get yourself issued with two notices for two different car parks at the same time

Makes no difference,

I've been to court and received 6 penalty points for going through a speeding camera in Watford and Hull within 15 minutes of each other.

Lent my car to someone who did the deed in Watford then buggered off home (Bloody Aussies), at the same time I was driving the company car through what I thought was a 50 zone that turned out to be a 40 in Hull.

If the courts upheld me being guilty on this then what chance them giving a flying **** about parking tickets?

Microsoft conceals job ad in Bing homepage

Gordon Pryra

Re: Fail assumptions here

I am guessing a fair few people have never had to design websites twice over in order to get them working.

Once for IE and Once for the rest of the worlds browsers.

One thing that Google and Apple have in common is a working browser. If even these two can coexist then why cant Microsoft?

The point to my post being that I feel its ironic that someone who is forced to look at that screen where the job advert is hidden is probably not there for fun and working for Microsoft is probably not on their agenda

Gordon Pryra
FAIL

Fail assumptions here

A person having this window open is no more likely to want to work for Microsoft than the next person smacking their face against the desk wondering why Microsoft have their own implementation of an html standard and wondering wtf is going on.

Open letter to Microsoft!!!!

The clue is the word standard, rather than playing silly buggers, read the dictionary

Screw you and your Bing experience Microsoft, you make our live so much more difficult than it needs to be

Honey, I BLEW UP the International SPACE STATION - in full 3D

Gordon Pryra

But....

Can it run Crysys with max settings?

Dark blue side of the Force used to quell Star Wars nerd clash

Gordon Pryra

Norwich eh?

Says it all really

Currant Bun erects £2 paywall: Wraps digi-paper around free footie

Gordon Pryra

Good idea for once

Affordable price for a product their intended market actually want.

its good to see stories like this appear about the web, for once it doesn't appear to have one side scamming the other.

That said, having lived in Vicarage Road in Watford from an early age, and having seen them play live around 15 times and NEVER seen them win or loose. I kin hate football. Don't much like the Sun either

UK biz baffled by Reding's planned data protection law rewrite: ICO

Gordon Pryra
FAIL

UK Govt needs a kick in the balls

Rather than protect our data they would rather attack the mechanisms that would lead to some actual protection.

The entire attack is just an exercise in misleading the British Public rather than any real issues with the proposals.

When you work as a contractor on any Govt organisation you immediately see how lax any (if they even bother to have any) data protection actually is.

From securing data to using documents with the names and addresses of kids in the title of the document.

The UK govt is just scared of the massive fines they would need to pay and ignoring the reasons WHY they would need to pay those fines

Foundem urges Brussels: REJECT Google's search biz offer

Gordon Pryra

Re: Hmmmm

Even sites like Money Supermarket will only list those products it does NOT receive an affiliate fee if you do an advanced search. Others wont list them at all.

Price comparison sites are generally NOT YOUR FRIEND, they make money by pushing you to company's that pay for the introduction.

They dress themselves up as being champions of the consumer, but take a second to think about their business model and you can plainly see they are just adding an extra layer of costs to a purchase, as well as selling your personal details on to anyone who will pay. Compare the Meerkat for example, I used a unique email address, click the "do not hand out my details" button and then got that address spammed by PPI lies and other useless shit.

Gordon Pryra
FAIL

" the proposals ignore the natural search results"

The whole point being that they are natural search results.....

This is the free stuff that Google gives users when they come to them.

Asking them to change them utterly breaks the whole point and the whole value of their search engine, and therefore their entire business.

And anyway, who the fuck are foundem? and whats their link with Government that allows them to make any demands. On the face of it they are just one more affiliate site adding an extra level of cost to any consumer.

Even worse they bill themselves as "The UK's "Top" Price Comparison Site" and even worse, they have hardcoded IP addresses in the links to the various sections. That no matter the redirect, this is a massive issue of trust on this site for any user.

Finally I see a whole lot of this kind of shit over their site "Temporary reduction in the breadth of Foundem's service"

"In common with many of the World's leading vertical search services, Foundem's traffic has been severely impacted by Google's recent "Panda" update"

Panda, for those that care, is a change rolled out to Google, reducing the placement of low quality sites and those that contain much duplication that can be found elsewhere.

So yet one more person trys to make an easy buck as an affiliate, puts +1 shitty comparison site up, then crys when they realise there is competition for the top 3 spots.

Good job here Google

Bing uncloaks Klingon translator

Gordon Pryra

Good Old Microsoft

I've successfully used Google translate to migrate legacy domains to new active directory domains on Hotels in China remotely. Multiple times.

Neither side could speak the other sides language.

It worked well.

I don't understand the need for companies to try to do the same as their competitors when they can't do the job better. Maybe if there was a financial reason for people to use a Microsoft product like this then they may have a case.

But Google is free and Microsoft will never make a product as good as Google are giving away. If they did then Microsoft would probably price themselves out of the market.

I understand that the whole Klingon thing is probably a pet project of some engineers, which is fun, but in general it just more wasted time.

Android is a mess and needs sprucing up, admits chief

Gordon Pryra

Hagiographer

The article is worth a vote up just for the use of that word!!

You thought only Google dodges UK taxes? So do all the Brit firms

Gordon Pryra

But HP don't take the piss?

We all know big companies take the piss out of us, the front desk of one big hotel chain has a screen listing all their companies, we are talking hundreds of little companies all with names like X000001 X00002 X00003, all operating at below level required to register for VAT . No doubt they send all their sales through the Caymens and rent the use of the company name from an office in Delaware.

The moment you can afford to have 2 or 3 accountants working full time for you, you can recoup their wages in tax avoidance.

The trouble is that these companies can only make money out of the UK by taking advantage of the infrastructure and protective framework of the UK. (roads, police and general safe environment in which to do business)

As someone mentioned before, remove politicians personal links to big business and refuse entry to company's who wont pay their upkeep towards this safe business environment and all the corruption goes away (or at least finds less lucrative loop holes)

In the mean time, as someone who gets to make a decision on purchasing kit, it looks like HP are the winners here

France weighing 'culture tax' on phones, slabs, PCs, TVs

Gordon Pryra
WTF?

Re: 51st state

You are forgetting that the colonies copy us, and by inference we are just reinforcing our own culture by strengthening ties with the plucky chaps in the plantations, kind of a circular exchange of cultural ideals

The Frenches on the other hand all drive badly and drive very small cars to boot!! (you can link Boot to Wellington here as I feel it appropriate in a Xenophobic British sense)

Gordon Pryra
IT Angle

help fund music, film, and the arts

Really? Or the distributors or the Frenchy exchequer.

I say 2 fingers to them!!

Anyway, wheres the IT angle on this? France is hardly an IT powerhouse, mainly a smelly cheese maker who had Kings that dressed like girls!!!

Samsung sends gigabit '5G' signal TWO WHOLE KILOMETRES

Gordon Pryra

Exactly Mr Spaniel, the aim of the game is to get there first and work out what patients you will need. Not actually make the thing, just get an idea of what would be required for the patient applications.

Its been a long time since anything in the coms world was about innovation or actually making something new

Review: Samsung Galaxy S4

Gordon Pryra

You need a physical home button with a touch screen

If only to force your way out of a loop when the touch screen goes tits up, as it did for my S2 today after I installed Splay on the back of an article in this very rag this morning.

What kind of pirate are you: Justified, transgressor or just honest?

Gordon Pryra

Same old rubbish

They are equating a pirated item with a sale. Their "bread basket" of concert tickets and t-shirts means nothing. After all for them to "pirate" these the infringee (sic) would need to either grab the t-shirt and run or jump over a fence.

The majority of downloaded stuff is only downloaded because its free, the moment someone has to make a choice and actually pay for something, they decide whether its got some value to them. (a component lacking in 90% of films and music (and to a lesser extent e-books))

on top of that the numbers they give show just how few people actually are pirating and that those who are pirating are the ones who would not be paying for the stuff anyway. And on the back of these numbers, these organisations seem to be able to dictate legislation to the UK Government?

By the way, i'm not a freetard, I have just paid for my own licensed copy of office. But it seems that all the numbers for the whole pirating thing are lies and half truths

Your Flying Car? Delayed again, but you WILL get it, says Terrafugia

Gordon Pryra

Flying car, whatever

Yeah yeah we want our flying cars aka the Jetsons.

But more importantly I feel is where the hell are the silver clad space babes come to Earth to breed with us?

Its 2013 ffs!!! I'm not getting any younger after all!!

China: Online predator or hapless host?

Gordon Pryra

Have to laugh at some of the armchair security people here

"The People’s Republic of China has been singled out in increasingly unequivocal language by the US"

Because we can trust a word they say?

We can't trust ANY of them US China or our own Govt. On one hand they are crying that China are a bunch of spies, on the other hand they are disabling foreign nuclear power stations with viruses.

The US was unequivocal in its use of language when we all went to war to stop the various counties with large deposits of oil, fissionable and opium, yet that turned out to be a steaming pile of crap, why should them covering their own tracks by pointing the figure at someone else be any different?

China is an easy target, but not doing anything that the rest of the words self serving administrations are not also doing.