Posts by Allan George Dyer

Re: Teenage kicks

Yes. Apparently most people will answer simple questions, like, say, "What's your password?", honestly when half-asleep.

Re: Metaldetector

@veti - No metal detector last time I crossed.

Why wait a month - some people, including school kids, commute even day. Take one a day, and claim it's your personal phone - who can say different? Recruit a class-full of kids, and you have a cushy business model.

Re: "A pint of goat urine would be more pleasant to consume"

Have you ever been to a Budweiser factory?

Re: So?

With perfect equal opportunities, the mix would be the same as the mix of eligible applicants. The fact that one group dominates at the higher levels suggests that other groups are loosing out on promotions. The next question is why? - which is difficult for a subjective judgement of suitability for a job.

Re: "how the exchange was run"

Although it is the most spectacular (so far), there are millions of ways to run a web business badly.

There were possibilities...

I did manage to convert the Mamod static engine to mobile, with meccano wheels, clutch and gearbox, with rack-and-pinion steering. It moved, oh so slowly.

Re: If it works, don't fix it.

@BearishTendancies - thanks for the link, it's quite mind-boggling:

"GDS is not just trying to make government services online as easy as shopping at Amazon"

So we can look forwards to a third-party software glitch to set all our tax bills to 1p?

What's the air-traffic control equivalent of setting prices to 1p - altitude to 1 foot perhaps?

Re: Lakes of methanol and ethanol

@Martin Gregorie - propane and butane are intoxicative inhalants. I'm not sure if methane and ethane are too, and you'd have to be insane to book a package tour to Titan to find out. There again, methanol isn't really a tipple for the sane, either.

Re: What else is out there?

Hundreds of thousands of unique samples a day. The numbers don't mean very much anymore. Lots are corrupt samples, or repackaged known malware. It's like trying to do paleontology by picking through the rubble after bulldozers have flattened the Natural History Museum.

Re: Shark tooth huh.

'Calling it "art" is stretching things a bit though.'

Perhaps Unk did it while he waited for his elder sister to finish her detailed sand sculpture of a palm tree? We only find the stuff that survives.

Re: @Ole

@Ole Juul - I was making the point about HTML canvas fingerprinting specifically, which, if I understand correctly, depends on Javascript to work, therefore it fails when it is off. The downside, of course, is the loss of useful stuff that depends on Javascript.

Yes, my browser is unique among those the EFF site has tested, but if I turn off Javascript, then there are, apparently, three others that are indistinguishable in the ~4 million tested. Not really much of a gain.

Re: They play the opening bit of "Thus Spake Zarathustra" when they rise, right?

But a step forwards for public health and street fragrance. Though it wouldn't make much difference, as Hacney Carriage drivers were allowed to urinate at the offside rear wheel of their vehicles, and, anyway, everything was horse-drawn.

I also recall (from an antiques program, I think) that ladies had specially-designed pots they would use during long sermons at church.

Re: Hang on...

"WTF is an AV outfit doing NOT dealing with or reporting…"

From the article, F-Secure did deal with the malware, Mikko's tweet was, "Malware decoded, detection added". When you're receiving hundreds of thousands of samples of dozens of varieties of malware a day, something has to be pretty exceptional to deserve a press release, if the only known victim doesn't want it publicised, what's left to talk about?

Full disclosure - Mikko is a nice guy to have a drink with.

Re: ...why wasn't it air-gapped,

"I actually worked on a site where internal network was air-gapped from Internet." - So, how did that work against email malware? OK, you're protected against anything not in the SMTP stream, but a simple packet filter could do the same.

Re: Untrustworthy automatic billing

"Unless you set up your DD with a credit card, in which case you can not cancel the DD, only the company you have the DD with can do it."

That, too, can be dealt with. I was trying to terminate a phone service, and the company was being unhelpful. So, I called my credit card company and we had a little discussion about withdrawing authorisation. I granted the authorisation, so I can withdraw it, simple. Unfortunately, they disagreed, so I terminated the credit card account.

Of course, it's important to do this before any disputed money has been transferred. If you're trying to get back the cash they've overcharged you, you're probably buggered. Which, to return to the topic of the article, is difficult when there are unexpected changes in circumstances.

Have you noticed how often it is that the account termination part of a billing system is badly designed? It's almost as if it were intentional...

Re: The bible is a book ?

Well, that's a bit unfair, the bible isn't one book. How about we stitch together the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Origin of Species, Relativity and Lady Chatterly's Lover (you have read the Song of Solomon?) as a more fair competitor?

Re: Honeypot should already be in place

Or just redirect based on the Evil Bit, see RFC 3514

Re: @ Allan George Dyer

@Tom 13 - which was my point: economics says those things are interchangeable, but I still want my bloody breakfast! Economics is a useful model, but, like all models, it is not a complete, perfect explanation of the world. And the word I was missing last night was "externalities" - isn't trickle-down technology happening outside the economic considerations of those concerned?

"The Register has long been known as an on-line lesbian magazine"

But, but, but… I only read The Reg for the the articles.

Re: Cheap dig

Chris G, when you went horseback riding with no shirt, did you ask your publicity office to take a snap and publish it? It reminds me of Chairman Mao swimming the River Yangtze; Putin is building his personality cult as his country's "Great Leader", so he deserves to be lampooned at every opportunity.

Re: They did exactly what they should have done

"What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;"

I'm not sure why a genuine terrorist would feel the need to set up their own WiFi hotspot at an airport when "talking on a mobile phone, looking anxious" is perfect cover. However, if I was concerned about it, I wouldn't ground flights. First, I'd offer free WiFi throughout the airport, then I'd watch out for all private hotspots (not just the ones with suspicious names) and I'd listen silently, checking the number of connections and their distribution.