* Posts by michael W

24 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Sep 2007

Man admits writing script that slurped celebrity iPad data

michael W
WTF?

Crazy

This sort of thing seems crazy to me, surely there are over web debs/general coders out there who like to stress test other peoples sites or applications not with any specific evil intention but just to see if there the security is as good as it should be.

If I found that sort of hole then I'd definitely do a proof of concept and spider crawl some of the data available.

Don't see how doing so should end up with your receiving 5 years in jail though

Blogger faces terror charges for 'naming MPs'

michael W
Stop

Missing out the violence part?

This blog didn't just list a bunch of MPs but was directly asking others to seek retaliation against those listed.

Anyone can get a list of MPs that voted for the war, that won't get you arrested. Writing above the list "These are the people we need to make pay for what they've done" seemingly will.

No refunds for ID card pioneers

michael W
Thumb Up

voluntary or not?

It was only mandatory for new citizens that were here either because of being a student or getting married, everyone else bought them voluntarily.

So I just think of it this way, those that were forced were simply paying £30 for the privilege of living here and those that weren't forced were stupid enough to agree to such a ridiculous scheme in the first place.

No harm done really, especially as it'd supposedly cost 500mill to completely refund it all.

National Theatre hack forces password reset

michael W
Gates Horns

plain text?

Don't tell me they were storing people's passwords in plain text!? I seriously don't understand how such large companies can go on doing that.

Twitter founder signs up to iPhone mag-stripe reader

michael W

oldy worldy

American doesn't use chip and pin, they still rely on signatures

Security firm chokes sprawling spam botnet

michael W
Headmaster

Repercussions

Isn't the only reason we don't normally see this happen is because it's against the law in most countries?

Even though it's meant in good nature they are still accessing machines without consent

UK space programme suffers serious setback

michael W
Alien

cough

hahaha, even though it's a joke article it sort of hurts how much it rings true :(

iPhone Dev Team player breaks ranks to release 3GS hack tool

michael W
Boffin

GeoHot != dev-team

Geohot got kicked out of the dev team like a year ago when he released an old unlocking tool early and the rest didn't want it released.

So although he used to be a member, he isn't any more.

Although they seem to still talk to each other fairly nicely

That Digital Britain report in full

michael W
Stop

FM?

Wow, is there any real reason to try and end the analogue radio that we all currently enjoy? I've read articles about the failer of DAB and when you add that to the millions of devices in the UK, it seems stupid to kill it off so soon.

Pretty much every car will have a pointless head unit in it :/

'Better IT could have stopped 7/7 bombings'

michael W
Flame

Options

This is where you have the two main views, one being that it's an outrage that MI5 had his name but didn't follow it up and that they should have done, yet to do this they would need much tougher privacy invading laws enabled that are currently talked about, like snooping on all communications.

And the other is the reverse of the above, if you don't want your privacy invaded then you have to acknowledge that a lot of the time, MI5 won't have enough information before an event happens to actually link the people to the plot.

It's all well and good to bemoan that MI5 didn't do enough yet once they have the correct name of a suspect after an event has happened it's probably pretty easy to slot that person into the puzzle and find all the evidence you need.

UK tech quango eyes 10Gbit broadband

michael W
Alert

Not needed...

No one except ridiculously large companies/universities needs 10Gbit/s to their premises.

What we need is 100Gbit more added to the backbone network so that we can actually fully use the 10Mbit/s connections we CURRENTLY HAVE.

There is already technology out there for cable's 100Mbit/s on DOCSIS3, and BT will be able to manage VSDL in a few years for a decent 40Mbit/s.

But as long as the core backbone is left like it is, none of these increases will mean a thing.

Retro piracy - Should the Royal Navy kick arse?

michael W
Stop

say what?

"Presumably someone else will provide the actual ships. (Good luck with that - other European countries mostly make our navy look massive. The only exception is the French, and they have plenty of admirals of their own.)"

What are you referring to specifically here? the UK has the third largest navy in both number of ships and overall tonnage, so we do have a massive navy, maybe not in the same league as Russia or the US but it's hardly an illusion :P

Archos 5 internet-enabled PMP

michael W

flac./ogg

the latest firmware adds flac and ogg support for free

That password-protected site of yours - it ain't

michael W
Dead Vulture

"hacking"?

This is such a retarded article :P

don't want to come across sounding elistest or anything but surely the majority of Reg readers know about this sort of thing.

Also, to try and boast about "haxking any site" using google cache is complete and udder shite. The only sites which don't require a login for search engine spiders are mostly forums that you would still not actually be "hacking".

It's basically the equivalent of saying "if you use bugmenot.com to find out a password for a website so you don't need to sign up then you've hacked it!!!11!"

¬.¬ suppose I should just stick to securityfocus for actual proper security stories

Hawkeye technology turns tennis into a cartoon

michael W
Stop

whine?

this seems to dig up an issue that isn't really there. Or of someone that is a bit of a technophobe and is scared of the oncoming robot invasion.

The whole reason hawkeye is used is because we can't tell if a shot is in or not accurately enough whether we are looking at it with just our eyes or the added use of slow-mo footage.

Yeah sure it might be nice to have yet MORE slow-mo footage shown (side note, i commented to my brother that the BBC seem to show EVERYTHING in slow-mo for the tennis, it was like they had just received a high fps camera for christmas and so used to to show anything from the tennis, to a pigeon landing, all the way to simply the clouds passing by :P )

I'm all for advanced detection setups like hawkeye and the sooner they introduce it into footbal for goal line decisions et al the better

Virgin Media rubbishes P2P throttling rumours

michael W

usenet isn't limited or throttled

as someone who easily does over 200gig's of usenet downloads every month I can with 100% so they do not throttle the speed of usenet transfers.

I'm on 20mbit and never get below 1.5MB/s, at night and mid morning I regularly get the full 2.2MB/s

Personally I have no problem with the way they use the 4pm till 9pm usage limit as it means I can go all out any other time, they don't seem to care about max usage as I've had some pretty crazy months when it comes to total usage and received no letters.

I'd prefer a set 4-9pm timeframe then a total monthly cap or single app throttling and no max limit

Dutch boffins clone Oyster card

michael W
Flame

24 hour

i dont see how the 24 hour lockup will stop anything.

I was able to order about 8 free cards under false names a while ago, that would give me a weeks worth of free travel.

just need to rinse and repeat

How the BBC plans to save your ISP

michael W
Flame

fiber network?

The argument involving the possible FTTH or even FTTC deployment is rediciulous unless it's going to take the BBC 5+ years to deploy this CDN locally to users.

I seriously can not see any fiber deployment in the near future unless it's government funded and I highly doubt that will happen.

Also the idea of putting servers in every local exchange would surely end up costing way more than the BBC would ever think of putting into the iPlayer project.

the only real way this is going to end up will be servers at the ISP level to keep the cost for them down so they do not try and create a backlash against the BBC

Archos TV+ launched in UK

michael W
Black Helicopters

quicktime and flash

if you buy the web plugin you get flv support and one of the other plugins supports .mov files so you can get both flash and quicktime support it's simply going to cost you :P

good ol' archos ;)

michael W
Stop

IT DOES SUPPORT DIVX!

What is up with reviewers who don't seem to do any actual bleeding research?!

Just like the Archos 605 range (which I own) this Archos TV+ DOES support divx and xvid, they don't display a "supports divx" sticker because then Archos would have to pay DivX to do so.

but for the last freaking time (this question gets asked all the time for the 605) IT DOES SUPPORT DIVX/XVID!

Virgin Media dishes out free bandwidth boost

michael W
Coat

torrent correction*

oh also, virgin DO NOT throttle torrents.

the only capping/throttling they do is their public 4-9pm capping.

if you have poor torrent speeds, check your settings or use a better tracker. I regularly hit 20mbit max speed on a private tracker during capped times AND uncapped

michael W
Dead Vulture

whine

I still don't understand how people can't understand that ISP's reliability and service is pretty much totally dependant on where you are, or just put luck with a lot of ADSL services.(your copper cables, distance etc)

I've been with Virgin, since around 2000-2001 when they were blueyonder and since then have been with about 4 different adsl isps and everytime I either had a bad connection or good connection it had pretty much no correlation to the other customers with the same ISP I was with.

see, all this whine about virgin is just yet another example for me where my own virgin connection is maxing 20mbit and their capping isn't really that bad considering I download 150-200gig a month.

don't expect just because your connection is poor that EVERY single other virgin customer is experiencing problems because the majority aren't and if they were there would be much bigger coverage that JUST the vocal people who all happen to have problems as why would someone who isn't having issues post noirmally?

UK hit by one online crime every 10 seconds

michael W

Ridiculous numbers

I read the headline in the Metro "A crime online committed every 10 seconds"

Yeah, a crime commited online every 10 seconds if you think that a 12 year old saying "hey thar sexy ladee" or "stfu you noob" is considered a crime...

Fair enough, 100,000+ cases of identify fraud or credit card fraud is a serious figure, but don't start tainting the article by trying to make a huge figure out of petty every day occurrences which clearly no one takes seriously such as "online threats" or "unwanted sexual advances"

Archos 605 Wi-Fi personal media player

michael W

DivX IS supported

I'm not sure why so many people always think this but as a 605 Wifi owner since it was first launched in the UK I can guarantee you that DivX and XviD is supported by default meaning you do not need to pay for plugins to be able to play either codecs

This has been a popular area of discussion on an archos forum I regulary visit - http://forum.archosfans.com

I'm guessing because Archos simply say mpeg support and don't specifically list divx on their website that people guess it is not supported