Posts by Velv

Another US$148m this quarter. Ongoing. Increasing.

And yet so many large businesses are continuing to scrimp and save on little bits of security "because it'll never happen to us"

Is your security as good as it could be. If you just answered "yes", prepare to be boarded. What was the best last week is old news and vulnerable. Security is a moving target and if you don't keep looking at ways of improving it you will be a victim.

You missed an option on the Poll

"Don't be stupid, El Reg is never going to be invited to an Apple event"

"There is no reason, in a competitive integrated market, for companies to frustrate customers on both sides of the border by introducing roaming charges after independence."

Although there will be a currency conversion between Sterling and the Euro

It's like trying to stop the phone from ringing by removing all the phone books.

If information is out of date, then it is the out of date information that should be removed, not the links to it. The links will disappear if the information is removed.

Politicians really don't get it, do they

Conspiracy Theory

There is actually an extensive, ongoing, developed monitoring of a specific known threat. Why else would ALL parties agree to this rushed legislation.

I don't for one minute believe it would have received the support from Labour if Ed Milliband not been fully appraised of what his predecessors left behind and he would be likely to inherit.

Now I know David Cameron announced in a vague way that loss of data retention "would hinder investigations", but I'd suggest there must have been something substantially more tangible to present otherwise the opposition would have taken the opportunity to oppose.

Or maybe I just need a thicker tinfoil hat...

Statistics are brilliant. Until recently that's how the insurance industry priced premiums. Male, 17, more likely to have an accident than a Female, 17, or a Male, 45.

There are types of people who are more likely to have accidents. It's largely down to attitude. It's a generalisation but it's been the foundation of the actuarial industry for centuries. So the people who adhere to the ban are typically those less likely to have accidents in the first place. Those who "know better" tend to be paying less attention irrespective of it being a phone, cigarette, CD, satnav, short skirt or any other distraction. That doesn't mean the ban is invalid. It simply means those who have chosen to ignore it continue to have accidents.

Orange (and now EE) really piss me off with these texts. Despite following the instructions to STOP, they continue.

Why does it piss me off - well its not my phone, its my Mums, and she's not up to speed with this text thing yet. So I get a call - "my mobile's making funny noises, what should I do". I then need to go through the whole rigmarole again of explaining what SMS is and why she can ignore it

EE - get your act together. Opt-out means OUT. No texts. None. Nada. Keiner. Aucun. Nessuno. Or do you like paying those Ofcom fines?

"Although Assange maintains his innocence of the Swedish allegations – and no charges have been filed against him..."

Yes, that is why Police have powers of arrest - so they can investigate allegations and determine if charges are appropriate. They cannot charge him until they investigate fully, that would clearly be a breach of human rights or at the very least would jeopordise any potential trial as a technical failure.

The simple answer is that the Swedish offices come to Ecuador (UK) and interview Assange. They can then decide either to charge him, or remove the arrest warrant. That then only leaves the UK laws he's broken.

You have important passwords, and very important passwords. Just because they are passwords doesn't mean you should treat them all in the same way!!!

I save passwords for many websites and other services (e.g. El Reg) in one of the above. What's the worst that can happen - someone can compromise my account and post as me online.

I keep my very important passwords in a completely different manner.

As has been said many times before, security is about layers - you're more secure the more layers of protection you have

A bit like the old desire to be a politician should exclude you for life, if Murdoch wants it, it should automatically be discounted as an option.

Utter rubbish. Google is under no legal obligation to "publish" anything in a search result.

Public interest law does not mandate that a search must return any particular item which may well be in the public interest.

Nostradamus

"Apple hasn't officially announced the arrival of its iWatch, but you don't have to be Nostradamus to see what's coming."

And yet ironically Nostradamus didn't see it coming

Nothing like obscuring something to peak peoples curiosity...

"oooooo, what's that bit of property I'm not allowed to look at online, lets drive by next time we're out in the car"

Doomed to failure. How do you police the content? (and don't answer "the whole point is that you can't")

By their very point of being anonymous, these services are designed to be used for illegal activity. So how do you separate the wanted illegal activity from the unwanted illegal activity?

Whistle blowing has proven to be vital to maintaining sensible balanced order in our society, so finding ways to ensure it remains safe for the whistle to be blown are important. But that must be balanced against unwanted side effects.

I always thought the self indulgence induced by Apple products was called Macturbating

I don't install Java on my own machines, but I'm required to use it on the corporate machines.

In my experience Java is rarely backward compatible, with 6 being widely deployed in multiple companies I deal with.

So it really makes little difference if Oracle supports versions prior to 8 or not, those versions are going to remain widely in use. Oracle may think it can claim "we told you to use the latest version", but ultimately it is going to need to shoulder some of the responsibility for the impending major security fail rooted in older versions since the new version doesn't work.

Since the IPO took place in 2012 as well, it will not be long before a class action is launched by those who bought shares since this experimentation was not declared in the prospectus and is something that is likely to have a material impact on the share price.

TCO

Doesn't matter what you use, you pay for it. Don't like Microsoft, fine, don't use Microsoft.

Use something free? Well, is it really free? You still have to pay to train users on a different product, probably more so if its not what they use at home or learned in school? You have to pay for support. Maybe not directly (although some regulated industries mandate vendor support), but you'll be training and employing specialist support personnel who probably command a higher salary than an off the shelf Microsoft monkey.

If only the world of business was flat and one product did everything for everybody. Well it isn't.

Prices go up. Nothing to see here but bitching from trolls.

Nothing like placing a huge FRAGILE sign on something to ensure it receives the opposite treatment.

Looks like a fairly distinctive design, something that should stand out nicely as it enters the carousel system almost ensuring it receives the treatment it deserves (before being subjected to a controlled explosion as mentioned above).

Pictures, or it never happened.

Just goes to show how ill-conceived the whole non-geographical TLD piece was. And I mean all of it, .com, .org, .everythingthatsnotacountry. And no, the Merkins don't own it.

Many recent cases have raised questions over jurisdiction and pinning domain names to a country is one way to help clarify responsibilities.

Until we live on a borderless planet we are stuck with virtual borders as well as physical.

And the lesson to be learned from this story is...

... when you want to publish something new on the Internet that might be popular, publish it secretly in a quiet little backwater first and let google cache make a copy.

Then just point the waiting world at google cache and let them handle the load.

Police Commissioner - says it all.

An ELECTED official. Not a trained officer. Not someone who's risen through the ranks. Not someone who's actually down the day job.

Don't you know that its a requirement of accepting any publicly elected post that 99% of your brain cells are removed.

Since I haven't as yet spotted a footballer stopping mid-game to read his twitter feed it can hardly be "which team sings loudest".

But the day will come...

NO!

"On these pages, "boffin" has always been a title of honour accorded only to proper scientists and engineers ..."

PROPER SCIENTIST AND ENGINEERS

And in particular, not someone who is working in the field of peer readers here at El Reg such as a "security researcher" or "computer scientist".

Boffins are those who do Voodoo in other fields of science for which we cannot consider ourselves as having proper peer knowledge.

I'm not for one minute suggesting Dr Oren isn't worthy of our respect. But if I understand the technical aspects of his article says, he's not a boffin.

Previous evaluation by respected security experts found no immediate cause for concern, and an independent scrutiny of the TrueCrypt source code is now well under way.

Assuming that code passes, I see no reason anyone would stop using that version of the product because of any subsequent action by the developers. Perhaps Amazon have already conducted an internal review of the source code and didn't find any reasons not to use it exclusively.

Rumours ... Apple ... %product% ... %month%

Meh

I hear Apple's developing a holographic imaging and projection system for Facetime so little images will stand up from the screen while you hold it flat in the palm of your hand. Just don't tip it more than 5 degrees or your friends will fall over the edge.

So is it a murder, or a man assisting a heart attack victim?

The Guardian had a great advert in 1986 about Point of View. Anything could have been happening.

It would have been good if the Police had conducted a "full investigation" and asked Google for the original undoctored images so they could identify the perpetrator.