Posts by DS

Make the change NOW.

For years, you've been told not to run as admin.

Take note, make the change, or pay the penalty.

There are no excuses for running as admin on your day to day account. End of discussion.

Its broken

A chip and pin nightmare.

It's the first of the month, and time to pay some bills. First up, my main credit card. I go to pay and there is an issue. I double check the details. I triple check the details. Payment still refused. OK, so let's call the Bank and get the low down. I ring in, and they put me through the 20 question wringer. We go over a couple of things, and they put me through to the fraud department. Turns out, on the 25th, 27th and 28th, illicit payments were spotted. The first couple were to Touch Tone, for £5.00 each. The last is an attempt to take £14.00 from a cash machine in Pakistan.

Before I go to town on the subject, I will firstly thank my bank, their watchful eye I have little doubt saved me from a painful situation. So, I'm in the situation where my debit card is nerfed. I've also had a strange kind of month for me. During that whole month, virtually the only activity I have had, besides standing orders, and direct debits is shopping. Shopping in one, and only one store. Now, just in case the lawyers are around, for now, I'm going to avoid naming the store in question. I'll refer to it as 'The Store' in the rest of this. Now, what is also unfunny, but I accept the universe likes a sense of humour, is my wife's card got cloned only days ago. And she also does most shopping at 'The Store'. When she went to the bank, they told her there was a serious problem locally going on at the moment.

So, I call up 'the store's' head office and have a chat with the customer care people. The bank were interested in knowing I'd only been shopping there in the previous 30 odd days, and assured me they would follow it up. Would the store do the same? The nice lady on the line was indeed very friendly. At this stage, it became clear that the store knew of problems, but would not discuss the details, or locations, but did offer to send me a letter.

It becomes clear that I'm not going to get very far with the nice lady, though she offered her condolences and expressed frustration at identity theft in a general and arranges for me to get a letter from them sent out. At this stage, I decide that a little chat at the store is in order. After all, they see me each day, least they can tell me what is going on. So I arrive at the store and request to speak to the manager. Of which there are many. Now at that point normally I'd expect blank looks and a sob story, or I figured I'd be fobbed off.

The manager takes your's trully to a quiet corner, and I explain in some detail what has happened, and in fact I get the whole story. What happened was in fact, one of the chip and pin machines got swiped. Now, call me crazy, but I was somewhat taken aback. The manager said she had lost £120 herself, and most of the other staff, who naturally at the end of the long day's the serve there, get their shopping there as well, had lost money. Unless there is something I am missing here, this would indicate that there are two serious problems. Both I'll cover in a moment. But I did thank the shop manager for not bothering to let their customers know. Perhaps in truth shop managers do not realise the problem until later. They got bitten harder than I did.

The first is the chip and pin machines. These tend to be around the counter in most shops, and seem to have merely a wired connection. Not a great deal to stop someone determined armed with Scissors or better. They need better security. The second, and this is a bit more technical, would be that the machines seem to store card information, including the pin (Erm... Why?, that data should not be there). Now, my understanding is that in the chip and pin install in the UK, the banks did not do things right.

Link- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1579995/Credit-card-crooks-'foil-chip-and-pin-security'.html

Link-

Of absolute prime concern here, is the statement from APACS, the UK payments association which is responsible for tackling credit card fraud, said: "The report does not identify any threats or vulnerabilities of which the industry is not already aware. In our view, the types of attack on PIN entry devices (chip and pin machines) detailed in this report are difficult to undertake and not currently economically viable for a fraudster to carry out.

Well, on the first score, difficult to undertake is meaningless. Once found and documented, its not difficult any more. The bad guys are not put off by difficult. These devices need to be fixed NOW. And the obscure method of arcane thinking along the lines of 'Its not economically viable' to steal money. All I can say is the APACS bunch seem to be rather too muppet like for my liking. If the case is how they claim, how have we reached the stage where chip and pin boxes are being swiped and everyone who ever entered their card info and pin seems up for being a victim. Now, being a layman, I can say that I don't know how much data these chip and pin machines hold. Perhaps it’s a month, a year, 10 years. But in the one at 'the store' I can say that I expect hundreds per day. Cracking that box would seem to be financially viable *now*, I know, because I've been right on the pointy end. But from where I am sitting, 'the store' and its like are prime targets. They have hundreds, maybe thousands of consumers per day going through them, and are protected by not a very great deal.

Lastly, I'm guessing, but I suspect the banks fully know about this. I very much doubt that they would have nominally stopped two £5 and one £14 transaction under normal circumstances. Which means I just got lucky. Had I been an early victim, I am guessing my entire account could have gone. On the other hand, I should be very angry, and so should you. Banks dropped the ball on the implementation, and place my data and information, and your's, where crime can be committed against me and you. At the very least now, its messing with my account for 7 days waiting for a new card. As will the hundreds, maybe thousands in the area affected on mass by this. I'll get my new card, but chip and pin will still be broken. Which means that soon enough, I'll face the same prospect, again and again, unless its fixed. Right now, the supposed security 'chip and pin' was supposed to bring us, has been replaced, with a fearsome new level of ID theft, and a serious threat to everyone's financial health.

Its totally broken

Its wide open now.

Not dealing with this, and I mean dealing with this is pure negligence from both retailers, businesses and especially the banks, and in particular APACS which is actually still peddling lines that are both untrue and misleading.

Having been through a recent case, I can tell you its a huge mess, and there is nothing trustworthy about chip and pin at all as it stands right now.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say the FSA and government have to step in right now, yesterday. Thats how grim the security is. And the UK banking system needs this like a hole in the head.

The security angle..

Vista is a bit more secure than XP.

At least thats the starting point. Vista is done right. No admin user at the start.

XP was wrong. Everyone an admin..

However, it gets amusing from then on in. You stop using admin on XP, and you can make it quite secure. Its not as bad as some claim, BUT, making it secure often creates Vista -a-like problems with applications and security.

Vista... well, how long do you think it is before users switch off the 'features'. UAC gets killed quickly and its suddenly not greatly better off than XP.

Most of the problems in Windows go way back, and reside around developers being dumb asses and creating a situation where users NEED to run as damn admin to use an app/game/whatever.

The antics surrounding the hilarious 'piss off the users to make the devs change their wicked way' via UAC is just one more really stupid MS thing of late. The regression testing right now sucks harder than it has for a long time, and the 28 different flavours of Vista just make supporting it all a pathetic affair. Should have remained as 'Home' and 'Pro'.

As for Windows devs, never has such a bunch of braindead idiots ever existed. Still - even today, more apps arrive and the devs don't see to even comprehend how to build apps right, or how to do so without forcing LAME security.

"It won't run... are you logged in as admin? Cos you need to be running as admin to run our superduper new cool tool."

People need to start being fired for writing junk like that, and the sooner it starts to happen the better.

Response

@DS and the rest of the Arm Chair CDPs

By Anonymous Coward

Posted Wednesday 16th July 2008 01:02 GMT comments in ""

"We are currently spending about £4B per year maintaining and enhancing UK military forces in Iraq and the 'Stan. Want more money spent? Ask for tax increases."

You don't need tax increases. All you need to do is trim some stupid fat in the worst government we have had in decades. Not hard when you spend your time infesting our streets with parking wardens who get more money than soldiers. 4£ Billion per year spread across two full theatres of war, and an armed forces stretched to breaking point. And yes, bottom line I want more money for it. If thjese buffoons put people - presumably people like yourself in harms way, I want you to get looked after. I am sorry if that offends your sensibilities.

"Please don't imagine buying a fleet of armoured vehicles, body armour, etc is like buying yourself a Dell Computer, if you think you can do better, please apply at MOD Abbey Wood, we need more confused blow hards (sorry Lewis, not you personally)."

If you'd bother to read anything I have said, I stated its exactly not like buying a Dell computer, and we make damn sure we can't do it with current methods. However, THAT is no frigging excuse seeing as they have for example still got snatch Landrovers and have had YEARS to replace it with something viable. Again, whining at me with your arm chair bluster is pointless.

"These two theatre's in terms of the UK are not vastly huge"

"Please feel free to hop on the regular train services in Helmand, or just call a cab in dowtown Bsara. In fact after you have got your job at Abbey Wood apply to go onto operations and work in Basra like I did for the last 6 months. You'll never whinge about the UK again."

Fine, YOU give me the job and the authority and funding and I WILL fix the issues. But we know that's a fantasy. In Iraq at this time we have 4,000 troops. Equipping 4000 people by a country like the UK is beyond us is it? Its 8,000 in Afganistan. 8000 men properly equipped is beyond us. Historically and by many a measure, that's a small operation that we should be able to equip and run properly. Again, I am so sorry its so mortally offended you that I feel you should be equipped fully and properly, have proper air cover, lift and the rest. We are at war in two theatre's, 4 Billion is peanuts.

"Less typing more action please. Clearly an organisational genius like yourself is wasting themselves in the UK. Head to the 'Stan and you can have it all fixed in a few days."

Its not going to be fixed, because the Politicians here have no stomach for fixing it. They prefer people like you die, than find the funds and money.

"And in general to all you arm chair generals (and those Junior Officers I tried to teach but were too self important to listen), when you next run a high tech military system production contract, or try to take a cold war army to war in the desert, spare athought those who have gone before."

We have been in the desert for years. Apparently, years is still too short a time for a modern, industrially capable nation to actually build, make, pay for and equip people properly. Again, I am so sorry you feel offended that someone should call it how it is.

Costs more than a chopper to maintain...

That utterly kills it.

How this thing costs more than a chopper to maintain is really incredible. This thing had to be cheaper to be worthwhile.

VFM

Its likely that the Seahawk may be better VFM in a loose generic term.

The problem though is this. The Americans, or indeed some others can create and design an aircraft (or other vehicle if you will), from early stage through to in service use. Because the sheer numbers ordered are large, they can drive the price per unit downward. They also can spread the development load in terms of costings across larger orders. Its the ford model T approach if you will.

So yes, on paper, it can be cheaper. However, I think there is a balance here. You could just go and buy all your equipment from the worldwide market, and some will be better, some will be cheaper, some will be worse, and none of it was made by you.

Also, if in the case of Britain, you cut the production at home, you do lose an amount of knowledge, skill, and capability. Many of these things are not merely a few guys on some production line being thrown out. Much of this really falls into the research and development area, and of being an advanced, skilled country.

It has been a detriment for Britain to have cut its ability in manufacturing, our equipment made at home costs more because we procure in small number and requirements are high. The fact is we produce only handfulls of warships, planes and helicopters. The same goes for tanks, and other areas, and even when you go to an outside supplier, when you start talking small numbers, you can start waving bye bye to lower costs in many areas. You'll get a large discount ordering a thousand, you won't much for an order of 20. Its partly why when you only order 232 Typhoons, that they end up being so expensive. Had an oder been placed for 2000, the unit price would have been vastly lower.

The politicians as I said earlier believe in a La La land idea. Where you can rule the world as part of a new order, send 4 warships, 20 helicopters, 50 tanks, and a couple of battlegroups. Operationally, everyone is chipping in, so we all work together. We all send in that sort of weight and we can work it out.

Only real world operations show the anglo-world and a small number of friends working hard, while many in the EU/NATO sit back and refuse to fulfill the obligations required.

And in future, the real problem is easy to see. Nations like China are going to laugh their arse off when they are presented with a world order that walks loudly, and carries a very small stick.

I'll add one more thing. I look at the country, and frankly, it could use a kick up the backside. National service of some kind would certainly be a positive influence on a portion of our populace that have little direction, and are falling into misery, gun crime, knife crime, drugs, and unemployment. It would not harm Britain at all to up the numbers in the armed services, and place some decent sized orders for equipment - and by doing so, drag down the price so its competitive within a world market.

Well

I sure hope they fixed some of the screw ups they made when I last tested. On the machine I tested, we installed on a box that had FF2. We made sure that 3 went in its own directory.

Post install, FF2 no longer worked, which is forgivable, but plugins and other areas of FF2 were 'meddled' with - and it took a while to correct these. But worse, after installing and then un-installing, FF3 had wrecked a little havoc in registry, to the point that third party applications and tools were affected. You could no longer click on links to open web pages, and other nasty little 'tweaks'.

Anyway, I'll wait till full release and hope its better. I was far from impressed with the registry screwing around, so I hope they changed how they handle that.

Good riddance

Not that this will change DW.

They brought it back. They filled the thing with pathetic, stupid politically correct nonsense, and gay heroes, garbage stories, appallingly bad effects. I know - I know, DW is reknown for it, but its not excusable today.

Its a BBC primetime blockbuster, or should be. It lacks totally the true quality of real sci fi - by that I mean the sets and effort applied to other sci fi. Battlestar G and Star gate show far more depth and quality in the sets they use - the equipment, and backdrops.

The real problem is the BBC thinks its making a drama, and all the card board toilet roll and gaffa tape special effects are cute. It meant to be sci - fi not drama, and the bog roll and gaffa tape went out in 1970.

They struggled to sell Dr Who with the sci fi channel taking it in the end with reluctance. That says it all.

It reflects fully everything that sucks royally about the stinking BBC.

I only wish they'd put some decent people into it, make longer shows, and darken the thing up. Oh, and real special effects, backdrops and a little effort would not go amiss. There is so much rich background that could be used in the WHO universe, and all they serve up is this garbage. They did bring a few things back, like the daleks, but even then, their insipid desire to meddle lead to caring, sharing daleks, and stupid idiocy. The BBC is a global media monopoly, its one sci fi show looks like it was made by a bunch of playschool children in their art class, with story lines little better.

And yes, Tom Baker was the best doctor.

Yes, well, was it not..

a shock to find that Vista, which supposedly changes the GFX driver model wholly to move in the direction of stable operation, hence the drop in performance in Vista Gaming for example, in fact has not resulted in the end product.

You could forgive Vista if GFX operations really became bombproof, but they have not. Worse, it seems to have made writing a driver a very tricky job, the framerates and performance are lower.

Another huge black mark/failure when getting down to discussing wether Vista really is a step forward.

Microsoft, again, what was the point of Vista....

Evesham

Good staff in general, but the units I got from Evesham were questionable.

In particular I did not take at all to the idea that they would ship you a rebadged laptop, and then when you contacted them, would refer you to third party sites, and not know 'their equipment'. I had little choice in going through this, as the machine would persistantly bluescreen care of the audio driver. I'm glad I did not buy more machines, the level of support was below acceptable.

I'd like to shed tears for a 'British company', but if you just buy in re-badged equipment, offer ikky support, then its hard to really feel bad about it. However, I would echo what was said about their staff, helpful, and reasonable. But if the kit is from someone else, and your people can;t help the customer, being helpful and reasonable does not get me anywhere.

Been with F2S for years

When I first was with them, you could actually call Chris or Nick and solve the problem. In their early days they were fantastic. They offered good deals, static IP, and good customer care.

A little of that was lost as they grew and various backend changes happened, Pipex bought them, and you have people who did not know or worse care what your issue was.

They moved my static IP without consultation, and then on far too many days I would lose connection for large chunks. My router was blamed, which seems to be *the* bogyman to pick on when you don't know you ass from your elbow.

*I* don't want to leave F2S, they *were* awesome. But looks like things are changing, and that is a shame :/

Hmmm

I don't like Vista. I don't like the fact that if they had to change *everything* why not break from legacy and actually provide the next level of OS.

The whole shooting match is poor, from having to retrain users to retraining staff because in your wisdom you've changed the deployment, your partners, suppliers and vendors were left facing yet another change in how the OS works, so the end users suffered with lack of drivers/bad drivers - the list with Vista goes on and on.

The best MS OS thus far, putting security aside, is Windows Server 2003, as a workstation.

Vista like ME before it is just an MS release to simply skip. Windows 7 or whatever the son of Vista gets called will probably actually be a very good OS, and some of the basic ideas in Vista will get ironed out.

Lets hope that this time they actually fix the MEMORY leakage from copy and the crashing when you have 64k of files in a directory, and the other howlers.

Lastly, I know this won't happen, but Windows gaming is now such a screwed up place that if someone *nudge* got their gaming support, API's and other offerings in place, its plausable that gaming on PC could escape 'windows'.

That bike will not do 189MPH

This is the problem with people throwing out their opinion. There is no proof from the speedo, that can be tweaked. The bike itself, if the model is right won't even get close to the speed those claiming to complain about it wish to claim.

There is no law on this (well there is, but its stupid) as if you wish to nail someone speeding, it should be by properly tested and calibrated equipment.

That aside, I grew up on the IOM, I find the speeding culture (or rather the attacks on it) to be stupid. The government lies about speed, its primary action is to skim drivers for additional money. Most of its actions in terms of traffic calming or control make things worse. We lose 5,000 people a year, and there are 60 million every year taking trips care of the road. More people are being badly treated in the healthcare system than by drivers, but drivers face punitive stupidity every day.

Now, all that being said, if you want to ride a bike, and take it way above the admittedly stupid speeding limits, go and do some track days where the environment is clearly better for Hi speed antics.