* Posts by Blotto

430 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Sep 2016

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It's begun: 'First' IPv6 denial-of-service attack puts IT bods on notice

Blotto Silver badge

FUD

These issues only really apply to servers who’s IPv6 addresses have been published, for example by DNS. the traffic will likely be traversing the same dual stack ipv4/6 infrastructure meaning routers, firewalls, load balancers etc which all need configuring to pass traffic which means someone’s taken the time to do it so why would they not apply the same security as they would for ipv4?

Most IPv6 stacks for home users will change their addresses frequently meaning the whole allocated subnet will need scanning for vulnerable machines who’s ip’s will change. The attacker could get lucky but it requires a lot more compute and sophistication to perform the attack.

So this article is all about spreading fear uncertainty and doubt.

The funny thing is that securing IPv6 means breaking the end to end philosophy many state as one of its positives.

UK watchdog Ofcom tells broadband firms: '30 days to sort your speeds'

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Facepalm

But there is no legal imperative for these companies to comply with the code

"But there is no legal imperative for these companies to comply with the code"

The DNS was designed for diversity, but site admins aren't buying

Blotto Silver badge
Facepalm

Duh

ITS IN THE CLOUD

The issue of dns has been outsourced to someone who’s promised reliability.

What could possibly go wrong, and if the worst does happen it’s someone else's problem!!!! (As well as someone else profiting from being available but no one is ever going to shout that bit out loud)

IPv6 and 5G will make life hell for spooks and cops say Australia's spooks and cops

Blotto Silver badge

Re: Legislation if necessary ?

they'd just pass a law making it illegal for those unauthorised to use the key, simple.

Blotto Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: I am a bear of very little brain.

as a bolt on privacy consideration an IPv6 address can be assigned per application flow. the reason why your unix like os is only showing 3 addresses in use is because unix is relatively quiet vs windows. If your unix os was as busy as windows it'd have 20 ipv6 addresses too.

US watchdog just gave up trying to get Google to explain YouTube's huge financial figures

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Big Brother

Obi Wan Page

These are not the financial figures your looking for.

Full shift to electric vans would melt Royal Mail's London hub, MPs told

Blotto Silver badge

Re: So go hybrid

"Ask the government to subsidise the costs"

you do realise that when the government subsidises its actually us citizens that are doing the subsidising. its not free money or coming out of the governments pockets, its coming out of OUR pocket as tax payers.

4G found on Moon

Blotto Silver badge

Re: Robo Calls

It’ll likely be asking if you’ve been in a crash and want to claim for whiplash or ppi.

Work continues on 5G, shame no one's sure what it's for yet

Blotto Silver badge

Re: 5G aims to cover a wider set of use cases from the outset.

5G affords modems to be always on and consume less power, so can either do good range at comparable low bandwidth, vice versa or great endurance.

Its funny how many people in technology don't want to move forward & 5G is not moving forward for the sake of moving forward, it'll be a true game changer.

Mobile industry wants less regulation, mooooar radio spectrum

Blotto Silver badge

Tech companies like amazon and google have managed to do it by getting people to buy listening devices they place in their own homes that constantly listen for their owners calling for them, with nothing to stop the devices listening to everything else too. I think the mobile companies want in on that type of thing too do they can make some money.

Trump buries H-1B visa applicants in paperwork

Blotto Silver badge

@AC i think that's the point. Companies advertising roles below local market expectations and then claiming they can't get the staff. Advertise at correct rates and get the staff. If i'm a manager on £40k i'm more likely to apply for the one on £60k than another at £40k. Either the firms don't know the market costs, or are deliberately low balling in the hope to get someone desperate or so they can import.

If you want to tick the box you'll pay £40k, if you want to attract the very best you'll offer £75k +.

UK's BT: Ofcom's wholesale superfast broadband price slash will hurt bottom line

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Paris Hilton

Re: Bad move

off you go then AC, go buy some fibre and run it from your house to the exchange, and see how easy it is.

snow flakes etc

Farewell, Android Pay. We hardly tapped you

Blotto Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: What could possibly...?

@ Pen-y-gors

do you wear your tinfoil hat when doing your transactions from the 1 pc too?

don't you think your going a little to far with the precautions especially when millions of others are happily doing online transactions without your precautions and aren'y getting done over?

my debit card got skimmed from a London cashpoint one night, its not stopped me using cashpoints, contactless cards, apple pay and online transactions has stopped me using cashpoints though!!!

Windows slithers on to Arm, legless?

Blotto Silver badge
Facepalm

Oh no not again...........

did they not learn from last time?

funny how the press are whipping this up to be great again..............

Oi! Verizon leaked my fiancée's nude pix to her ex-coworker, says bloke

Blotto Silver badge
Paris Hilton

is logger some american slang for *anker or *osser?

Paris as she's american.

Stephen Elop and the fall of Nokia revisited

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Re: Why can't Elop take credit for his achievement?

Android and IOS are based on unix type OS's, i'd say they work well on phones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

Blotto Silver badge

@HmmmYes

re Nokia fucked up

i want to up and down vote you.

Upvote for Don't trust M$ or employ its management

Down vote for "They had a dominant platform. Then Apple came and scooped the high margins, leaving Nokia a sprawling mess "

iPhone was a new entrant and holding on to a single carrier in each territory to help launch. At the time if you wanted a good phone the lazy choice was Nokia, followed by a Sony Ericsson, or if you needed mail on the move it was a blackberry.

Your suggesting that Nokia ran away from a fight with Apples iPhone, but Nokia had the history to win the fight, apple had everything to prove and its high price was against it.

I got an iPhone 1 and returned it because it was crap, i used nokia symbians up until i got my iPhone 4 which was the year Elop took over. Instead of getting a new Nokia every year i'm now on my third iPhone after 8 years. I was actually quite happy paying £400 for a new Nokia every year and £40 per month for airtime. I now pay more for each phone but buy less of them and pay only £10 per month for airtime, so i'm actually saving more with apple.

I'd rather had a nokia with a proper nokia OS. i wouldn't have had a nokia with windows on it, id rather gone BlackBerry or Android than deal with Windows at work and on my phone.

Blotto Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Business Market Niche not spotted?

@Ralph76

there was this Canadian company called Research In Motion who owned a brand called BlackBerry that made corporate focussed mobile messaging and phoning devices, coupled with an Enterprise Server. At a time when carriers charged for text messages BlackBerry's with BES could send messages between each other for free as well as being able to send and receive corporate emails. The best thing was that all comms between the mobile blackberry and the corporate where encrypted so that the carrier or RIM could not read the content. It became very popular with government and companies that needed secure comms at the time & the BES fine control of what the remote could or couldn't do. The BES also permitted remote wiping of the handset in the e vent it became lost or stolen.

Yes it also became popular with teenagers at the time, but i think that was due to the cheap messaging (BBM) and the devices ease of tapping out said messages.

Rogue IT admin goes off the rails, shuts down Canadian train switches

Blotto Silver badge

Re: So did the accused admit his guilt?

The guy was fired and his creds not wiped, presenting the open window for criminals, who may or may not have been the man on trial, to do malicious damage, or something just happened and the recently dismissed / resigned was blamed with evidence corroborating it.

I’d like to see remote access, ad and tacacs logs proving he logged into that laptop and did those things before he wiped it and handed it back.

For a tech site, we can surely expect the journo to include info on these details.

What if I told you that flash drives could do their own processing?

Blotto Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Is this an Advert?

Is this an Advert?

It's been 50 years since those damn dirty apes took the planet by storm

Blotto Silver badge
Facepalm

The most recent Planet if the Apes was utter garbage

I really liked the original, saw the Wahlberg one at the London premiere.

I’m not too keen on the newer reboots, the originals had the premise that the apes evolved, now where told they came about due to human meddling. I Preferred the evolution angle.

The most recent movie was utter tosh though. Like Star Wars, the media reviewers loved it and raved about it, the overwhelming majority of the paying viewing public where not as generous.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3450958/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

I personally hated it and am saddened by what they’ve done to the franchise.

I really want a return to gritty passionate sci-fi as good as WoK, alien, Star Wars iv, silent runnings, moon, love, predator, gattaca etc.

Boffins crack smartphone location tracking – even if you've turned off the GPS

Blotto Silver badge
Unhappy

How do they get elevation information from a phone thats been on a flight?

The iPhones mentioned have barometers in them so can sense elevation (much more accurate than GPS elevation which is 1 reason why aircraft do not use GPS for elevation), but in a pressurised cabin it won't tell you outside elevation. by the time the plane is on the ground cabin pressure should be close to that of local so how do they know if the phone has been in the air or are they trying to just match phone reported elevation with that of known airports?

or are they suggesting the phone can regurgitate historical elevation data?

Insurance companies now telling you what tech to buy with um-missable price signals

Blotto Silver badge

Re: Waitaminnit.....

"eye-oh-ess "

must be like when i get bombarded by recruiters looking for iPhone developers as i have decades of IOS experience on my CV. Twits don't realise

South Wales cops crow about facial recognition arrests on social media

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Big Brother

@Prst. V.Jeltz

its probably way over the plods pay grade to go against what the computer says.

yes that tall black man really is the same likeness as that tiny white man in the photo, because the computer says so.

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

Blotto Silver badge

We need a brave airline willing to charge a little more

We need a new brave airline that is willing to charge a little more for more comfort in cattle class.

i did 5 hours in an easyjet a320 and it was just about bearable, cramped in the middle seat with my 6ft4 frame. There is absolutely no way i'd do any more than that, certainly not transatlantic.

we can't all sit in exit row seats etc, but i would pay a reasonable amount more for more general leg room and comfort on flights, and no premium economy or business isn't always the answer, i'd like a budget seat with more room than the current crop of budget seats that isn't premium.

CableLabs signs off MAC spec for DOCSIS full duplex

Blotto Silver badge

This’ll be great when it arrives in 2024.

I wonder how far from the node a client on coax can be to still get 10gbs.

I wonder what fttp/p will be offering at that time

I wonder what Xg will be offering at that time

I wonder what WiFi will be offering too.

The funny thing is that most Home consumers will buy high bandwidth because it’s a big number and then put crummy WiFi gear on it. Crappy android tablets, phones and cheap laptops running Wifi G on 100mbs+ BB is sadly not uncommon. Their owners have no clue and their providers are happy to take their money for a service their customers are unable to fully consume. It makes OFCOM happy at least.

Patience you must have, says Voda: Biz in talks with Liberty Global for grabbing Euro assets

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Does the uk market not count towards the overlap?

Does the uk market not count towards the overlap?

This is why we can't have nice things, BT tells Global Services after 3% sales droop

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Re: Lets all bash the British company

@lee d

There is so much wrong in what you wrote there is no point me regurgitating it all.

Just 1 point sticks out slightly more than others though. Re standardised fibre installation, I deliberately never mentioned any technology that should ride over the fibre. Yes VM use docsis for copper but will use RFoG for fibre, this enables the use of cheap repeaters to boost the optical strength rather than having to regenerate the data as is common for other transmissions over fibre. RFoG is used for under sea fibre transmissions for its simplicity and ability to pad out the data regeneration systems thus saving money.

VM’s method is better for TV, BT’s is better for data but costs more to install and maintain. BT’s method doesn’t stop alternate providers grabbing your data from the exchange and using their own backhaul. VM’s method requires more technology to separate the stream typically at a major node of theirs which may be several pops up from the client. If everyone used the same standard fibre install then it’s possible for fttp users to get VM tv over ip just like sky are planning, and creates more compin that space. VM’s way is monopolistic as only VM can run on it. If VM where forced to wholesale maybe they would entertain split in their HO or further in?

Blotto Silver badge
Unhappy

Lets all bash the British company

yes they have their issues in a competitive market

they have a stupid regulator who chooses the the most stupid awkward regualtions that actually hinder progression like:

insisting on keeping copper instead of allowing it to be replaced by fibre to protect the LLU mob's investment,

forcing the wholesale cost of BB so low no one wants to invest as the risk of low return is too high.

Not insisting VM and altnets also wholesale to encourage demand led installation,

not enforcing standards based fibre installation to ensure we see the same standard of fibre installations across the nation permitting access level competition for all installs not just BT wholesale

many many other reasons too

At least they pay uk taxes and are accountable to uk rules and regs, which is not the case with VM owned by US giant Liberty Media off the back of debt acquired by the smaller cable operators who pay(ed) little to no tax due to paying interest and repayments on previous loans which may now not be in the UK anymore thereby dodging taxes on profits the loan company (LM subsidiary or close related business) may make.

Im not a nationalist, but look behind the screw ups and angst and there are many thousands of highly skilled UK jobs like installations, civils, management etc Surely in a world where our jobs can be offshored next week, we as techies should be encouraging more on shore?

Apple: iPhone sales are down (but they've never been more lucrative)

Blotto Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: Selling fewer phones, making more profit.

so you'd rather they acted more like Carillion and go bust than themselves who are successfully selling new products every quarter and generating more revenues even though they sold less than last year?

Some people really don't think things through before they come out with them. I'm sure every other tech company would do anything to have apples problem of declining sales yet increasing revenues. Its like you don't think the highly paid people at Apple who knew this before the announcement don't already have some strategy to manage this.

Blotto Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Slowing Mac Sales?

i suspect all their future machines powered by their own ARM cpu's will offer more value than the Intel equivalent and likely have more grunt, maybe not overall geekbench numbers, but maybe more useful compute despite perhaps being down on raw single thread benchmark results. Apple have always sought to be different, moving on from Intel will give them their edge back, and they may be too far ahead of the curve for the likes of Samsung & Microsoft to catch up giving a generous head start on what ever new platform they introduce.

we need a crystal ball icon.

What a Hancock-up: MP's social network app is a privacy disaster

Blotto Silver badge

I guess he gets points for trying?

I guess he gets points for trying?

Twilight of the idols: The only philosophy HPE and IBM do these days is with an axe

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Re: Hammer nail head

there are 2 ways to chase profit,

1) work hard and sell more thereby increasing revenue and the profits that it generates.

2) lower costs and sweat your assets.

IBM, HP have decided that option 2 is the way to go. lowering costs for them means swapping staff numbers in expensive countries for cheaper countries. They have not taken into account the value of their experienced staff and have decided that 1k experienced heads in the west is the same as 1k newly graduated heads in the east. They literally have attached zero value to the skills, acquaintances and customer relationships their staff in the west have gained over many years of working with their (IBM's) customers. the fact that all their competitors are racing to do the same vindicates their approach and changes the market as everyone is offering a terrible barely bearable service & the customer doesn't seem to care.

Once customers realise their competitors are getting increased revenue after in housing their IT, more will follow.

Blotto Silver badge
Holmes

Hammer nail head

It’s great to read an article that cuts through the dross and looks at the actual direction of travel that prompted these behaviours.

If ibm & hp where focussed on growing revenue rather than cutting costs and jobs, their onshore customers may have more well paid consumers to target their products at.

It’s not all about a race to the bottom while charging customers the most, despite what the spreadsheet shows.

FYI: That Hawaii missile alert was no UI blunder. Someone really thought the islands were toast

Blotto Silver badge

Re: Conflicting information

Watch threads then come back and reread what you wrote

www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/

here is a snip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHoMSRZOS4

when the wind blows one to view

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090315/?ref_=tt_rec_tti

And the US version of threads

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/?ref_=tt_rec_tti

a snip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VG2aJyIFrA

Blotto Silver badge
Mushroom

FFS 2 minutes to issue the warning!!!!!!

<quoteblock>The drill was started at 8.05am with the call pretending to be from US Pacific Command. The alert was sent just two minutes later, at 8.07am. </quoteblock>

if it takes 2 minutes to send the warning after receiving it, theres probably little point sending anything as the missile would be over peoples heads by the time they received the warning and tried to react to it.

Does anyone know how long the warning was intended to provide people?

IIRC in the uk it was a 3 minute warning of imminent nuclear missile ballistic attack. Many would be dead before they got the message if nit took 2 minutes to send the message from first report.

I'm really surprised they don't have a message already primed and ready to go and a BIG RED ROUND BUTTON behind a perspex box that sends it. The test message button could be a BIG BLUE or GREEN SQUARE behind a perspex box with appropriate warnings that its the test button on the opposite side of the room that sends it.

Dodgy parking firms to be denied access to Brit driver database

Blotto Silver badge

Re: dodgy parking companies

@Lee D

the thing is, if every behaved like you do the parking companies will come up with ever greater ways to entrap you. i say parking companies, but its more likely the enforcement businesses they employ encouraging the parking companies to be wankers in order to ensure they can make some profit of enforcing the parking rules they have dreamt up and had the parking owners agree to.

If the company exists purely to earn out of fines, then they will find ways of fining more and more people every year in order to keep their revenue up.

The other example here is smart meters & green policies. Utilities need to keep their profits up. If smart meters and green initiatives are to be successful, then utilities need to charge us all more to maintain their profits. Even if they are not being greedy, they have fixed costs that won't go down if we use less so our cost of electric rises per unit to maintain revenue to pay for stuff like maintenance etc.

Well done, UK.gov. You hit superfast broadband target (by handing almost the entire project to BT)

Blotto Silver badge

Re: Maybe

@Lee D

after such a glowing review, mat least let us know who your mobile ISP is, how much you pay and how much data you get.

User stepped on mouse, complained pedal wasn’t making PC go faster

Blotto Silver badge

Re first thing this morning

My Misses,

Her: it doesn’t work

Me: what doesn’t work

Her: It won’t send

Me: what won’t send

Her: this, this won’t send

Me ramming corn flakes down my throat as I’m already late.: what is it your trying to do?

Her: submit a review

Me: ok what is you want me to do about it?

Her: make it work

Me copied review into clipboard: com3 out of the review, go back in and paste the text in again, submit should work then,

Her:................. ( I’m still awaiting a response over half hour later)

The sad thing is that’s probably the most sense I’ll get from a support call all day.

Cold calling director struck off for ‘flagrant’ breach of duties

Blotto Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: There was a time...

@Zippy

They probably investigated you without you knowing by checking your bank accounts, credit cards, mobile phone movements, passport records, loyalty cards, Internet records etc. They probably decided that all that p*****b traffic during the day pretty much meant you where not earning at the time.

President Trump turns out the lights on solar panel imports into US

Blotto Silver badge

Re: Maybe I don't understand how this works

@ac

What you do t seem to understand is that if imported parts go up 30% then domestic parts will go up in price too as consumers now have no choice. Domestic manufacturers will be in a race to charge more as the price ceiling is now whatever the imported price is. Buy the import or the domestic with a flag sticker stating designed and made in the USA, if both are the same price people will buy yank. If the yank product is cheaper people will think it’s inferior to the Chinese model.

The losers will be the workers in the industry and their customers.

Blotto Silver badge

Re: Sunshine needed

@Manu T

Care to elaborate just where in Europe has personal income tax greater than 50%?

If the Chinese model of subsidy and tax is so great then why doesn’t the USA just do the same?

Info Commish tells UK.gov we shouldn't let artificial ignorance make all our decisions

Blotto Silver badge
Big Brother

Credit reference agencies need reigning in too.

what bearing does this have for credit checks when applying for stuff like mortgages and credit cards?

I have a number of cards & pay the balanec every month, a mortgage and no other debts yet got refused a re-mortgage online with the company i've had for the last 3 homes & current home for 2 years. A visit to the branch and an internal call to their appraisal team discovered the reference agency didn't have my correct previous address. As they'd moved my mortgage from old house to new they where happy to ignore the wrong info from the reference agency and approve my re-mortgage. Only took 4 hours in branch to sort it :( Equifax have taken over a year to correct the info. I'll only know if they've done it correctly if i get refused something because of incorrect information they have on me and the automated checking fails to understand the info i'm declaring is correct and the info Equifax is wrong.

)

FCC drops idiotic plans to downgrade entire nation's internet speeds

Blotto Silver badge

Change the terminology, broadband means broadband, not a specific speed or technology

If they are serious, about encouraging high speed internet, create a new term for internet connectivity and let the technical terms remain technical.

Maybe call speeds over 25 mbps down and latency less than 20ms “connection experience 10” and slower speeds with different latencies can have lower numbers?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband

Crypto-cash exchange BitConnect pulls plug amid Bitcoin bloodbath

Blotto Silver badge

HODL = Hold On for Dear Life

HODL = Hold On for Dear Life

meaning keep hold of your coins/shares regardless of the ups or downs in the price.

Hospital injects $60,000 into crims' coffers to cure malware infection

Blotto Silver badge

would be nice to know if it was cheaper to pay the ransom than staff time to restore then test the restoration.

A tech is ~ $300 usd per day 10 techs = $3k plus costs for other hospital staff taking longer to do stuff plus outside consultants plus fbi time.

If the ransomware is priced right and reputable for handing over the keys then paying suddenly becomes a cost effective reasonable option.

Probably one not looked into in depth until it happens to you.

Former Santander bank manager pleads guilty to computer misuse crimes

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Coffee/keyboard

Re: This post has been deleted by a moderator

@unwarranted triumphalism

prob easier to just ban the user permanently.

"The Donald" will probably just spawn a new account though.

220 heads to roll as Steria hacks away at UK.gov back-office IT biz

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Re: How does your country become the leader in IT

@commswonk

Recent events at Carillion (in conjunction with earlier mishaps at G4S / Serco et al) might suggest otherwise.

yes but sadly you'll find that the current and former management are still getting paid by Carillion and will be likely get all they are due in their employment contracts. the ones that will loose out will be the Carillion staff, contractors who are performing the work for Carillion and the customers.

The customers, effectively UK public, will end up paying more.

Blotto Silver badge

Re: How does your country become the leader in IT

@AC

when you outsource everything you have and they make all the 'talent' redundant?

very true, but Steria are after profit growth which will come from inefficiencies in the contract caused by the moving on of the knowledgeable and skilled workers acquired when the staff TUPE'd over.

All outsourcers do it. there is no profit in some experienced person doing their job in 5 mins when it will take an inexperienced or even just unfamiliar with the account, highly trained UK or offshore degree holder a day or 2 to do the same.

the outsourcer management aren't stupid, & their customers have no clue as they TUPE'd away the only people in their organisation who knew how to get the technology to work the way the business wanted it to.

Childcare is a pain in the bum and so is HMRC's buggy subsidies site

Blotto Silver badge

@fangster

The other annoying thing is paying the provider, the same provider you've been paying for months!

until the last day or 2 (no longer asking for proof you've registered) you had to login to the childcare site which involves going to a stupid gov.uk page to register or sign in

https://www.gov.uk/help-with-childcare-costs/tax-free-childcare

you then have to prove you've registered by supplying your surname, dob & postcode

then sign into government gateway

await a text with a code to then enter on that page

then navigate to the account options

choose pay

select the provider and choose the amount

then it asks you 3 security questions like mothers maiden name, first car etc,

then it allows you to pay the supplier who have pre registered on the HMRC site for the scheme and that you already have been paying from the site.

Its a pain to operate, also they effectively add 25% to what ever you put on but a calculator would be handy, so if you need to pay £800 to the provider, the calculator would tell you you needed to add £640 (800-20%) to your account.

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