Posts by VinceH

Re: Power corrupts.

Absolute power ..."

... corrupts absolutely.

Re: Who's liable? El Reg tried to find out...

"Easy. It's the site you are connected to via its URL."

Websites that carry advertising, etc, will have something in their Ts and Cs absolving them of all responsibility - and until someone with enough clout (and/or money to sue) is affected and takes a high profile site to court as a result of their computer(s) being fucked up by something like this, and those Ts and Cs are shown to be the crap they are, they'll continue to operate with a hands-in-their-ears-"LALALALALA" approach to the problem.

Re: I'd love to turn off ad blocking

"Reasonable ads please, then more of us wont be forced to block them!"

Indeed. That sentiment is why I'm glad I wasn't partaking of any coffee when I read this bit in the article:

'“Yes, we know this could be naïve, and we know this will be complicated,” Daniel Weilar of Nyheter24, an entertainment and news site. But Weilar thinks its preferable to the “protection racket” model of paying off the ad block software companies, he told Digiday.'

They haven't even considered the possibility of just making their advertising more reasonable - which to me means just static banners (no video, no audio) that don't require Javascript.

Re: meh

It's not just about being able to afford one. Sharks just don't seem to take too well to being placed on a desk and pushed around.

Re: Now, if they could deliver Seven of Nine also...

I was going to question the use of Seven of Ten - but then I realised that with Microsoft, there is no Nine!

Re: I have to say I'm a bit frustrated here

"All those years of IT support for mates and some acquaintances and I have never, ever found anything even remotely racy on any of them."

I can say the same. Almost.

I have only ever seen one photograph on someone else's computer that I wish I could unsee.

That someone else was a relative, and the picture was a webcam shot of him standing with his shirt lifted and trousers and underwear down. Presumably taken for a dodgy dating site, or a webcam conversation with a six foot biker dude pretending to be a woman. Or something.

Re: Stating the Obvious

"The problem is the IE engine is also used in other applications. So if you don't patch it, you may be vulnerable even if you don't use IE to browse the web."

Indeed. When I went through the updates, I saw 3139929 was for IE, but let it install even though I don't use IE precisely because of other stuff using the engine.

And, as the article suggests, I didn't notice the sneaky payload those bastards at MS added to it - but even if I had, I'd still have let this one install because of the above. Catch 22*.

* Until I have time to sort out a spare machine, install a suitable Linux variant on it, and either find suitable equivalents of all the software I need, or ensure I can get existing stuff running.

Re: Jeesh!

"Certain sites make you jump through hoops if you don't install Flash (BBC, I'm looking at you!)

The BBC now have a beta HTML5 player in operation.

Except on the (small number of) occasions I've tried to watch something on their site, I get "This program cannot be played in our HTML5 player - please download Adobe Flash Player" or words to that effect.

Umm. No thanks, BBC.

Re: Fire! Burn baby burn!

Tell the unfortunate soul that lasers will be used, then take him to the nearest swimming pool. When he looks confused, explain "That's where we keep the sharks."

Although the average Joe just wouldn't understand.

"I want my reading material to be mine, not some profit based company that's renting me the book for only as long as they are in business."

Calibre is your friend. Or wants to be.

Re: What happened to all the Eagles with frickin laser beams on their heads?

The sharks took out an injunction.

"This all happened because I was checked into hospital with a BP of 236 after having a migraine all night and the GP being worried about my BP being in the 180's and telling me to go to hospital to get it checked out."

Similar story. (Having not had reason to visit the doctor in many years) I woke up one morning with double vision - and a visit to the doctors later (by which time the double vision had more or less cleared) I was sent to hospital, where I spent the next few days, because my BP was at 240/140.

I've been on pills ever since to keep it steady, and I check it regularly using a Pro Logic PL100. It may not be 100% accurate, but I wouldn't even consider using a smart phone app in its place.

"Just one more reason to stay away from block Farcebook at the router then."

FTFY

What they're really reporting (probably!) is "the number of accounts there are on our system from people claiming to be <wherever>"

Re: Since when are you allowed to publicly state your clearance?

"Whether he is guilty or innocent it seems to me that he thinks name/clearance-dropping automatically makes him untouchable (How dare you arrest me. DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?)."

That doesn't appear to be what's happening here - that's just the stuff El Reg pulled from his LinkedIn profile.

Re: The IAB wants more consumer-friendly and “lighter” ads

Quite.

I don't use an ad blocker per se, just NoScript which effectively blocks the worst, only letting through simple, static adverts served up using vanilla HTML. If [the site's own] scripts have been whitelisted, and adverts are served via the site's own Javascript, I'll see those. (I also use Ghostery for blocking trackers - but cookies are wiped at the end of every session here anyway.)

On sites that carry simple adverts that are dished up that way, therefore, I see their advertising.

So it's pretty much a case that I do see adverts that are more consumer-friendly and lighter. Sadly (for the sites) not many seem to carry that sort - though some do. Krebs on Security, for example.

"I for one will be informing all friends and relatives of the dangers these devices will present to leave them to make an informed choice as to whether they want to take the risk for the potential(still can't see this) benefit."

I for one have already been doing that for ages... and in most cases there's a very short route between the entrance in one ear, and the exit in the other.

Re: Desktop

"My RapidO Ig (Cortex-A15) has 4GB!"

Show off! :p

I'll speak to you on Saturday, no doubt.

@AC Re: It's true - what goes around ....

"> "by flipping it around, you decelerate at the same rate over the same amount of time."

Using what braking mechanism ?? The problem is you have the laser to get to you to whatever velocity and then no means of slowing down."

I wasn't making a suggestion for the method proposed in the article, I was - misreading and - answering the point made by a poster further up.

The misread was that where the poster said "turn it off at the halfway point" I read as "turn it around at the halfway point" - so I was pointing out the use case for a steady acceleration until halfway, followed by a steady deceleration. (And that I'd misread and mentioned turning the craft around was a part of that should indicate an assumption of an board system of propulsion - not the one the article was about.)

Re: Didn't everbody with a clue ...

"This made me think. Google didn't exist 20 years ago. How did we ever manage??"

Pretty much the same way some of us manage now, with one difference.

Then: I didn't use Google because there was no Google; I used whatever was available to do what I needed or wanted.

Now: I don't use Google if I can avoid it, because there is a Google; I try to use something else instead to do what I need or want.

Some things are unavoidable - if I want to watch a video that's on YouTube, for example, then that's what I do. C'est la vie. It doesn't mean I can't avoid them the rest of the time (and I even block some things at the router).

Re: Backup, people!

"How do these civvies get themselves infected?"

Because until they get hit, we can advise them until we're blue in the face about how to keep their systems clean and secure - they don't see the value in it.

Plus, some people just don't want to learn.

Re: More bile

Er... you can. There should be a little tab sticking out of it with an arrow pointing left. Click on that and the sidebar closes.

"can you write a screen scraper to get your info from the web pages?"

If you can save the page, it should be a piece of piss to do for anyone with even a small amount of programming ability.

The annoyance is that it might not be a single page: the coding would still be easy, but it's just the chore of having to save 'n' pages to get a complete statement.

What I find more irritating is the banks (and others) describing CSV files as "Microsoft Excel format" or similar.

Re: "do it right, or we won't connect your stuff"

Only problem is, this is GSM. So a device with dodgy security won't be connected through any of the networks... but will still be able to connect to the average Joe Punter's Wi-Fi, because that's down to him to control, and he doesn't understand the security implications of connecting insecure tat to his network.

Re: Memo

I have genuinely never seen that before - after just over 20 years online!

Re: Disable font downloading.

These are the settings I've just made:

gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled = false

pdfjs.disableFontFace = true

I'd hope they cover both the above.

Re: Security Theatre

@ allthecoolshortnamesweretaken: I'm glad you've seen sense :)

Re: Dido's lament

I always preferred Ultravox's Lament. :p