Posts by Alan W. Rateliff, II

Glassholes beware: This guy's got your number

My network...

...my rules.

Still watching DVDs? You're a planet-killing carbon hog!

Cost of ownership?

Okay, I have not read the report, and I am making a knee-jerk, uninformed post. That said, I am willing to bet the report does not take into account the ownership factor of physical media and the convenience of being able to watch whatever movie or show I want once I own it without being subject to the whims of the content providers and rights holders. (I mean, DVD rental? Is that still a thing?)

Sure, ownership does not affect the so-called environmental impact of DVD manufacture and distribution -- although my Futurama DVDs all say they are "carbon neutral" -- but that ain't my focus, now is it?

I am not just one of those "dark social" people, I am also one of those "dark watchers." (I can do better... come back to me...)

Fat-fingered admin downs entire Joyent data center

Re: that unique sinking feeling

A bit like that feeling you get just as you let go of the car door and at the exact moment realize your keys are on the front seat, innit?

Re: Jheez, poor bastard. :\

... really go all of us. Even the snotty it-won't-ever-happen-to-me RegTards.

Still using e-mail? Marketers say you're part of DARK SOCIAL

Re: For added irony, on the story's page

Interesting. I am only showing four in Ghostery (with everything turned on for blocking,) on the forums:

Data Point Media, DoubleClick, Google Analytics (obligatory), and Taboola.

The story has 11: Data Point Media, DoubleClick, Facebook Connect, Google Analytics, Google+ Platform, LinkedIn Widgets, Outbrain, Reddit, StumbleUpon Widgets, Taboola, and Twitter Button.

I have ABP turned off for El Reg so I can help pay my way.

I wonder if your ISP is injecting additional trackers? Or maybe I have some being filtered up-stream. (I am posting from a hot-spot without a threat management device, so who knows.)

Windows XP fixes flaws for free if you turn PCs into CASH REGISTERS

Re: Even better idea

I will not argue that XP is out-dated and Windows 7 is a very viable replacement in most scenarios. However, I will argue that I have a Dell Mini 9 (NetBook) running Kali Linux and it runs very well and is quite usable.

("Out-dated" is subjective, and I have made posts in the past regarding situations when moving away from XP or older operating systems may not be effective or cost efficient, so I will not bore with them here.)

XP x64 screwed?

If it is true, I am pretty pissed about this. XP x64 has always had a different update and support road map than XP, being that it is built on the same core as Server 2003 (for instance, the latest service pack for XP x64 is SP2, matching that of Server 2003.) XP x64 and 2003 have always used the same updates, but if Microsoft is preventing new 2003 updates from loading on XP x64, as indicated by the website offering the registry tweak, then that is another big "screw you" to its users. Yeah, so maybe not many people are actually using XP x64, but that seems all the more reason to not deliberately prevent updates.

Apple haggles with ISPs for fast lanes to its own websites – industry guru

Re: Like a motorway, perhaps?

No, it's not. Here's the real road-way analogy.

ComCast City residents want products from Apple City and NetFlix City. More product starts to flow in from Apple and NetFlix city as the residents of ComCast City consume, and ComCast City gains revenue and new residents as a result.

The roadway from Apple and NetFlix city is paid for by their respective traveling residents, including more capacity from source to destination, and bigger better on-ramps.

But ComCast City says not so fast, you too. Our population has increased because of the product you are selling to us, and instead of using the funds we receive from our residents we want you to pay for our off-ramps and maybe even build up our infrastructure.

Now, if the residents of ComCast City who are there because of the easy access to Apple City and NetFlix City product, they will eventually move away. At least, this is how it used to, and should, work. Instead, ComCast City places additional tariffs payable at the city limits for the incoming product. History readily reveals what happens when onerous tariffs are put in place on imports, and ComCast City will eventually realize the deleterious effects.

The whole thing as ComCast wants it is ass-backward.

Paying extortion...

Content providers need to tell ISPs to go fuck themselves. No, really. If ComCast customers cannot stream from iTunes, YouTube, or NetFlix, but someone on AT&T can, seems to me the market would adjust to the fact. If everyone would band together against extortionists like ComCast then ISPs of that ilk will check themselves.

I see notices on satellite and cable networks every so often about how such-and-such channel will not be carried by such-system and to call to get them to carry the channel. The consumers then call and force such-and-such cable or satellite system to get their act together. Of course, if the channel or network is being bitchy, well, they lose out. It all balances and the consumer wins.

But then, we see on a nearly daily basis how ComCast feels about its customers. (To some degree I wish I lived in one of those countries where a post like this could get me in the hot-seat for disparaging the company, because I have plenty of stories and personal experience with ComCast to make its collective heads spin. To the point that I will never have ComCast service in my home if my life depended on it. I left cable TV eight years ago and have never looked back.)

(This could be an opportunity for a competitor, like say Google Fiber, to mosey on in with service which does not extort content providers.)

Of course, it's people like me who are the target: the cable cutters. The ones who do not subscribe to a 189 channel bundle on cable or satellite of which on average 17 channels get watched, instead choosing to cherry-pick what we want from Internet content providers.

Once again, the aging, dinosaur, antiquated business practices run to Daddy Government for protection against the big bad consumer who no longer wants their product. I cast off my wool cap long ago, and thankfully we have a few elected officials who actually get it.

Hey, ComCast and others who would follow in the same steps: adapt or die, asshats. You can only abuse your customers for so long. To you extortion victims: grow a pair, for crying out loud.

'My house is on fire m8 lol' ... 911 texting tested in the US

Re: Meanwhile . . .

Wait, are you talking about ObamaCare?

Victim -> "Sm1 brk in2 hm husband shot I'm hiding in basement"

911 -> "Police on the way; does your husband have bronze, silver, gold, or platinum Healthcare plan?"

Victim -> "WTF?"

911 -> "We can only send an ambulance if he has a Gold plan or above. If he has lower, please enter your credit card number or verify your DREAM status."

Victim -> "FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!"

Okay, okay. This may seem to denigrate our emergency and health services, but that is not the case at all. In fact, it is to poke at some of the stupid regulations and requirements our providers have put upon them for various situations and scenarios.

Re: There are some abuse scenarios too

Forget phone calls, the next mobile phone virus can DOS emergency services with SMS. I did not see anywhere (admittedly, I did not look very closely) that this service will support MMS, but I suspect it possible. I wonder when some baddie will DOS 911 services with anonymous SIP calls as well as SMS.

In any case, I see this as a good supplement to 911 calls, but at the same time a phone call can contain valuable investigative information in determining time-line of an event, such as ambient sounds, gun shots, voices of perpetrators and (though we are loath to think it) dying declarations of victims. Perhaps phones could be configured to start a video recording (including audio, of course) once a text is sent to 911.

Or an app. Send a text to 911 and the phone begins sending regular MMS video clips. The idea of recording is good, but the phone has to then be retrieved in order for the video to be useful. Never mind me, just thinking aloud.

Next Windows obsolescence panic is 450 days from … NOW!

Re: Virtualisation

I did a lot of your second migration path there: virtualized 2003 (especially SBS, R.I.P.,) then migrated to 2008R2 (or SBS 2011.) At this point I have all but three customers on 2008R2 or SBS 2011. One customer actually already bought SBS 2011 but will not/cannot purchase upgraded hardware, one customer is planning their budget in-line with the 2003 end-of-life, and another customer just does not care.

For myself, I figure I will have replaced my aging Core2Quad system running XP x64 by the time 2003 is retired. I have already moved to Windows 7 for just about everything else. And, for those of us El Reg reading-types, seriously, a Microsoft Action Pack really is worth the $400 a year. (Mind you, Microsoft has been rather bitchy these past few months and removed ALL previous software versions -- if you would rather use 7 over 8.1 or have a machine that cannot run 8.1, too bad.)

US mobile firms cave on kill switch, agree to install anti-theft code

Re: Only in America...

Sure, but only early adopters. Eventually the product will become so commonplace that it will become a standard feature.

The... Windows... XPocalypse... is... NIGH

Glue USB ports?

Given the Ghostbusters bit, I guess Trevor might be exaggerating about gluing the USB ports. I could just as easily disable USB in the BIOS. Saves me the trouble of hanging a PCI USB card anywhere and having to pull out the screw driver to open a case.

In most environments I am able to keep cases fairly clean. In others, opening a case is an archeological expedition through layers of dead skin cells, the mites eating them, hair, dander, fur, spider webs (sometimes owner-occupied,) dead bugs, maybe a small rodent, etc. Ick.

VMware patches man-in-the-middle vSphere vuln

Likelihood of attack minimal...

Right. TJX and Target were both protected networks, not exposed to the public, too.

'Yahoo! Breaks! Every! Mailing! List! In! The! World!' says email guru

Re: Yahoo shmahoo YES THIS

"Otherwise, one is constantly playing with the filter to let the spam leading domain traffic through, then catching merry hell for the spam coming in."

This is pretty much what I have to face. Though I catch hell either way: someone's legitimate email gets blocked because of a very poor reputation of the delivering server, or a shit-storm of spam from those servers. It is difficult to get the affected customers to understand either scenario, so I just lower my head, say "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir," and try my damnedest to keep things operational.

I believe this is the lot of the email administrator.

Re: Yahoo shmahoo

Not to mention just ridden with spammers. No other service trips up our anti-spam system as much as Yahoo!, to the point that eventually Yahoo! servers just get blocked out-right because the amount of spam coming from them is far greater than the amount of legitimate email. I clear out the scoring cache and blocks, and within 30 days the internal reputation is so bad I have to do it again.

I contact Yahoo! in the past and the response was chilled. I was told that Yahoo! email is a free service and their users are free to use other services if the outbound mail servers are over-weighted for spam filters or just plain blocked. I also tried to obtain a list of their outbound servers to try to introduce balance. Crickets.

The problem is Yahoo! does not just provide free accounts. It also provides egress for SWBell, AT&T, SBCGlobal, and other email accounts for paid services. But they all route through their standard Yahoo! servers, and even worse they wind up going out through servers which seem to be marked for bulk email transmission. Unless its definition of bulk in email context is different than the rest of the world.

It is difficult to care about a service which does not seem to care for its users.

SPARC and Solaris will live until at least 2019

Re: Better than I expected

Customer service: yup. Still can't get a support contract for my machines.

@Evil Auditor: I have a few Sparc machines which I still have fun with. An SS20 with dual 200s for home play, a SS20 clone (Axil 320) with dual Ross 100 and 512MB RAM which is an actual production machine, and an IPXstation which runs like a champ but takes FOREVER to compile anything useful (and is also limited to Solaris 7.)

Really fun stuff. I feel more comfortable with Solaris than other Unixes, for whatever reason.

I QUIT: Mozilla's anti-gay-marriage Brendan Eich leaps out of door

Re: Animals

"If not, can you see how this man's bigoted beliefs, publicly expressed and acted upon negatively impact his employer!"

Your statement assumes that his opinion on gay marriage is, in fact, bigoted.

What took you so long Apple? 26 remote exec bugs die in OS X Safari

Re: Yet no updates for many working apples

I thought Apple pulled Safari for Windows back in version 5, anyway?

Microsoft's failure with Vista in regard to drivers wasn't necessarily the driver model not being supported (vendors don't really have a choice in that matter,) but that Microsoft kept letting the release date slip so few vendors were willing to invest in drivers for the release. ISTR reading that a lot of the native Vista drivers in the RTM release were Vista-wrapped XP drivers.

Later on I found that a lot of x64 drivers were interchangeable between XP x64 and Vista x64. And so far as that goes, even Windows 7 has limited support for some XP video drivers, which allows older systems (laptops running 845s, etc.) to have at least functional video which doesn't prevent the system from going to sleep. Just no Aero. Darn.

Anyway, yes, XP is a cooked goose. Not that it isn't a capable stable operating system in its current form, but in my experience Windows 7 is a much more capable (and compatible) OS on all hardware I throw at it. I appreciate there are some instances where moving to 7 is impossible -- Trevor Pott lamented in an article today about a CNC machine, and I have seen a couple of old plotters running an XP-based controller.

I see this a similar to back in the mass movement to 2000 and XP with older systems which could not run anything newer than Windows 98 or NT. Eventually those systems were replaced as they broke down beyond repair or newer replacements were offered off-lease or otherwise less expensively, but in the meantime special policies and rules were put into place for those machines. Granted, the threatscape has changed drastically since then, so more special provisions need to be taken.

Heck, if the coming Windows 8.1 update does indeed fix up the UI, it may wind up installed on my six year-old Latitude D430.

IBM PCjr STRIPPED BARE: We tear down the machine Big Blue would rather you forgot

Re: Floppy drives

Right, the Amiga can handle a lot of formats and there are tons of examples on AmiNet. The DSDD format for Amiga is 880k via MFM with more sectors and no sector gaps as the controller reads a full track at once. DSHD in the Amiga is 1.76MB, but the speed is 1/2 normal as Paula is limited to 250kb/s. This requires a special drive to reduce the rotational speed when an HD disk is inserted, as well as communicate to the OS that the disk is capable of more sectors per track.

I have copied over plenty of CP/M, MS-DOS, and 1581 disks using my Amigas, including modifying the hell out of the 1020 5-1/4" drive to read 1541 disks and other formats. I have a third-party 5-1/4" drive which is capable of HD floppy reads. Fun stuff.

Also getting to play with TI-99/4A stuff these days, which are really throw-backs in terms of floppies: original SSSD 90k and what-not on the original WD1770-series controllers. Woohoo!

The Commodore 64 shares video and system RAM, but things seem to work much better than the PCjr, even at a lowly 1.02MHz. Could be because the VIC-II video processor was designed specifically for this purpose. It also asserts ownership of the RAM buss when needed against the 6510 and the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide talks about this contention. I think the only time it really becomes a problem is handling tapes as the timing is extremely critical, so the VIC-II display is disabled.

I had a brief flirtation with the PCjr as my aunt had one. I picked up one up later in life after I had move on to the Commodore 128. A cheap home-made circuit board and I was able to use the PCjr monitor with my 128's RGBI output. The PCjr wound up somewhere else. "Shamus" simply did not hold the same fascination as before. Not to mention the flat double-row of pins disguised as peripheral ports with nothing to differentiate between components other than the number of pins in a block -- made it feel cheap to me, like IBM said "let's put a lot of technology through this beast, but here at the very end we'll just make it seem like poor version of a Heathkit."

Mozilla takes Windows 8-friendly Firefox out back ... two shots heard

Re: @ Not That Andrew

"You have no idea how relieved I was when my custom GUI migrated with the latest FireFox update from my 3+ years old layout/images etc."

Not for lack of trying, mind you. Every major "Nightly" release changes something in the GUI which moves stuff around and resizes other stuff on me. The new curved tab "feature" does not really sit well with me, though I handle it. What I really miss is the add-ons bar at the bottom, as now I do not have access to some of my favorite add-ons which still otherwise work even after over 9,000 iterations of Firefox, and the page title in the window title bar.

DOH! I take the latter back... I just found the "title bar." Now if I could just as easily stumble across a way to REALLY disable to built-in media player (directshow and the other media layer setting just didn't fix it.)

Firefox alphas -- adventure waiting to be discovered!

Re: no surprise here

"It solves a nearly nonexistent problem (boot sector viruses -- I haven't even seen one since I owned an Amiga!)"

Oh, thank $_DEITY! I am relieved to know pre-loading rootkits were just figments of our imaginations.

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

Un-salvageable?

I am curious whether making the Titans un-salvageable will affect the game economy. This move would also prevent the ships' owners unable to regain parts and ISK, would it not?

Tesla is on fire! Model S car sales are red hot – just like their chargers (yow)

Re: Has potential but too expensive

You mean like an over-valued bubble? Sorry, I'm a tad bitter from my experiences in the last decade.

Target hackers: Woohoo, we're rich! Um. Guys? Anyone know how to break bank encryption?

Re: Er - too much information?

Good info. Now I wonder how that pad interfaces with the POS. The pad is capable of displaying messages and advertisements, which means there is some kind of assertion from the POS terminal. If that data transfer can be abused it could be possible to break a few things.

Re: Er - too much information?

Putting aside whether or not the terminal needs to communicate the PIN to the gateway, think about this: the malware used in this breach scraped RAM used by the POS software to capture data in-process. Since you have to enter your PIN into the terminal to use your debit or Redcard, the assumption is that the pad does not handle the PIN itself but rather hands that off to the POS terminal, thus putting that PIN into RAM. Seems they missed one minor detail and knowing this they will not make the same mistake next time.

I have popcorn waiting for the Great Reveal of how the malware got into the system in the first place.

How the NSA hacks PCs, phones, routers, hard disks 'at speed of light': Spy tech catalog leaks

Re: @Phil O'Sophical

When the iPhone was introduced I knew it would be a stellar success. Not because I am an Apple advocate, but because I saw what happened with the iPod, I know the iFanboi mentality, and I have always noted how Apple just "gets" the user experience.

Top Men came to similar conclusions as I for much better reasons than I.

Re: Ok, not so quick and easy

And from where do you think we will obtain trust-worthy hashes?

Re: hahahaha

"Well it's still less-worse than Russia"

Pfah! Putin expressed his jealousy.

Feminist Software Foundation gets grumpy with GitHub … or does it?

Re: An unsolvable decision problem

Bah! I don't need to eat the bacon, I just need the drippings!

Seems about right. Often times my lady friend tells me "no" when "yes" is the real answer, vice versa, just a "whatever," or the answer is transitory. Many times my answer or "yes" or "no" is not the correct answer. Well, all the time, really.

Silk Road 2.0 busted! At least two arrests as federal crackdown begins

Re: Exactly.

Especially if he *is* a fed...

Look behind you, T-Mobile US: Sprint wants to GOBBLE you – allegedly

Re: Combining GSM and CDMA?

Sprint already has provided CDMA-GSM combined phones which work just fine. So has Verizon, so I do not see this being a problem. Far less so than the Sprint/Nextel-PCS/iDEN merger which was largely a disaster.

I definitely agree that Sprint's own words on the T-Mobile/AT&T merger should be used against it to prevent this. If you want anti-trust then what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

In terms of customer service, I hear a lot of horror stories about every company. AT&T, while sometimes doing stupid things in practice, has always taken great care of me. For my customers and family, I have had to work with all of the others and the experiences were all very good.

I do have to consider Sprint's operational practices which are polar opposite of T-Mobile. Sprint is more hostile toward unlocked phones than Cingular or AT&T ever could have dreamed of being. As well, roaming in a service area is a frequent and annoying thing (ffs, who ROAMS in 2013??) I have friends on Sprint who I can pretty much forget calling if we get separated at an event or even in the same store.

I think the Sprint merger with T-Mobile would be an opportunity to completely scrap its old way of doing business under the guise of merger-related policy changes. It eases the blow to the higher-ups.

Bigger on the inside: WD’s Tardis-like Black² Dual Drive laptop disk

Re: Linux support... well, who can say?

Requiring a "driver" to activate the 1TB rust disc is a fail on WD's part. It stinks of the Good Old Days(tm) when we used a boot wedge (hack, kludge) to activate drives larger than the BIOS could handle, but seemingly less necessary. Since SATA supports multiple devices on a single link, would it have been a problem to provide a SATA hub on the driver controller and allow the drive to be seen natively?

Grace Hopper gave us COBOL, 'debugging' and inspiration. So Google gave her a Doodle

Re: Creating COBOL

That would be Windows 1.0.

Microsoft: Don't listen to 4chan ... especially the bit about bricking Xbox Ones

Re: Consumer protection

This is absolutely the wrong way to handle it. Instead of going bawling to Daddy Government, you should be indignant enough to sue the company. There are plenty of hungry lawyers out there who would take a case like this on contingency, especially if there is a chance for it to go class-action.

The government invariably screws things up when they get involved with all kinds of unintended consequences of a now suddenly broad legislation attempting to cover all cases, or the intended consequences of lobbying from those who want their bit cast in or given exemption.

Let the people start their own narrowly-tailored case and self-regulate. If they refuse to take care of themselves then, frankly, they deserve what they get. Once a case is decided, given the fear of litigation is not enough to dissuade future transgressions, it is easy enough to translate into an equally-tailored industry regulation by people who are actually involved, rather than those who look down their noses at everyone, lacking the experience of those being scrutinized, passing laws with reckless abandon leaving others to clean up and suffer the mess.

Re: I genuinely do not understand...

Two things on this. First, given surveys for the past decade, formal and informal, in the gaming, virus-writing, hacking, and forum worlds of the Internet, this lone stereotype has not been valid for a very long time. Middle-aged miscreants serve as good portion of the population of these dark corners of the technology world. They may have started out as basement dwelling PFYs and tend to help usher in the same via their antics, but they are indeed middle-aged giving a healthy mix of children of all ages.

And secondly, I noticed this in the DM article, amongst others: that the 4chan thread "has since been deleted." This gives the false impression that 4chan mods or admins actively killed the thread in an attempt to hide it or give them cover. As has been noted by numerous tear-downs of 4chan, threads will age-out of the system and be replaced as newer threads are posted and thrive. Then to be more accurate, this prank originated in /b/, not just 4chan, so give the 'tards credit (or infamy) where due and let the others live in peace.

Not a rally for 4chan, I just prefer factual journalistic analysis.

How Google paved the way for NSA's intercepts - just as The Register predicted 9 years ago

Re: secure?

You are making unwarranted and uninformed assumptions about how his system is set up and communicates with other systems.

Your kids' chances of becoming programmers? ZERO

I love/d working in 6502 and its Commodore 64 and 128 descendents, the 6510 and 8502, but I have to admit that every so often I have a slum tryst with TMS-9900.

I feel so dirty.

Google in PRODUCT RECALL for its Glass spy-goggles

I was thinking Rayban. Imagine "Top Gun" re-shot with Google Glass.

Mac OS X Mavericks 'upgrade' ruins iWorks

Re: If they keep this up...

We can still find "TI Writer" and "Microsoft Multi-Plan for the TI" on eBay.

If there's somethin' strange in your network 'hood. Who y'gonna call? Google's DDoS-busters

Re: Set up a charity in a country that respects human rights for all humans

Of the Centauri Republic? I think not!

Got a mobile phone? Then you've got a Trojan problem too

Re: Smart phones not so smart

Right on, brother. This is why I don't get my flu shot every year like the rest of the medical-industrial complex lemmings.

Re: Only dumb devices are secure ...

The terminal is secure in that manner, sure, but what about the mainframe or whatever server which powers that? If you are expected to be able to run code of your choosing then the terminal server would be vulnerable in some degree.

Beyond the 90s definition of downloading code, even just simple browsing opens up a whole a world of infection vectors. Java, Flash, or other "rich content" plug-ins which the user will want (or need) are not just ripe, but actively being used for remote vulnerabilities. Then we are again stuck with the notion of the black box we use being secured.

The only protection I see at that point is a fully virtualized environment at the terminal server end, where your session is built on-demand from a template and injected with the software you have selected or, in the case of enterprise environments, has been provided to you. You can play all you want, and if you become infected your session is destroyed and subsequently rebuilt from the original template. There is still the concern of your data being affected, such as with CryptoLocker, but good versioning should help with that factor.

Of course, this scenario relies upon the security of the underlying virtualization platform which is going to be a black box to us as, let's face reality here, how many of us perform a full source audit of every open software we deploy?

Hey banks: Use Win XP after deadline? You'll PAY if card data's snaffled

Re: It ain't that damn hard

"Got specialized software you need to run but is no longer compatible with Win 7 or Server 2010. Update you lazy git! You should have done so years ago"

Unless you are using software which *is* prohibitively expensive to upgrade, was made by a vendor no longer in existence but who promised it would be around forever, was bought by a new company who has made the software a shadow of its former self, or moving data to a new program is a prohibitive expense (if possible at all) on top of the extortion charged for the new software.

I have seen all scenarios above. As well as a perpetual license which turned out to not be so perpetual.

That said, I have had great success in running old software in compatibility mode, Windows 7 XP mode, or just plain Virtual PC. It took some time, fumbling around, obscure forum searches and link resurrection, and a smidgeon of intuition, but I have not yet been unable to move a program to Windows 7 or Server 2008R2. Not to say doing so is always possible, I just have not failed, yet, and it is worth a try every time. Yet *sigh*

You put up with CRAPPY iOS 7. You can put up with Obamacare too, says prez

Re: Smartphone users have more choices.

In 2009 I was promised that if I had a insurance policy I liked, I could keep it. Recently, Senator Bill Nelson told me the same thing in an email -- responding to a copy of my policy cancellation letter because my insurance provider would no longer be allowed to contract my policy with me.

The premium for a replacement policy provided through the "marketplace" is lower than my premium, but the policy comes with a deductible whereas mine has a co-pay, and over-all my out-of-pocket expenses will increase.

I have lifetime warranties on my US Robotics 56k Sportsters. During a firmware upgrade, one of them "bricked." When I contacted USR I was told that the utility they provided on the product page was bad and I shouldn't have used it. When I asked about the lifetime warranty, they guy asked me if I had registered my modem. Of course I had, and I even still have the box which notes the lifetime warranty with a serial number which matches the modem. Then I was asked if I still had confirmation of my registration. Well, actually, no, I don't. You see, we moved away from that old system a long time ago and no longer have access to those registrations, so unless you can provide proof of registration we cannot honor the warranty.

A lifetime warranty with no promise of service.

Microsoft relents: 'Go ahead, install Windows 8.1 on clean PCs'

Re: No preservation of data during upgrade?

If you would JUST. USE. OUR. CLOUD. Really! C'mon, users! Trust your data on our servers. Don't worry, Danger never touches them! Put all your files up here, and upgrades to your computer become so much more painless. Use our Application Bazaar and you never have to re-install your programs again.

G'osh!!

Google chap reverse engineers Sinclair Scientific Calculator

I know that feeling. At the same time, though, if you cannot build up the courage now, will you ever? If it's left behind after you, would you prefer that someone with noob hands give a go at it, supervised only by your spiritual presence?

If it's meant to be just a display piece, no problem. But I can feel the niggling in your heart. Deep down in some deep corner of your psyche, eating away... no, screaming... at you every time you lay your eyes on its wondrously beautiful and tantalizing enclosure, even just out of the corner of your eyes, until one day you realize that while in those boring meetings you're doodling it, tracing its silhouette over and over again on your note pad. You start seeing it everywhere you look. It haunts your daily existence. The batteries... they're so close, and yet the distance you put between them is agonizing.

Dude... I know that feeling.

Paris, hooked on a feeling.

Re: One in front of me now.

I know that feeling. At the same time, though, if you cannot build up the courage now, will you ever? If it's left behind after you, would you prefer that someone with noob hands give a go at it, supervised only by your spiritual presence?

If it's meant to be just a display piece, no problem. But I can feel the niggling in your heart. Deep down in some deep corner of your psyche, eating away... no, screaming... at you every time you lay your eyes on its wondrously beautiful and tantalizing enclosure, even just out of the corner of your eyes, until one day you realize that while in those boring meetings you're doodling it, tracing its silhouette over and over again on your note pad. You start seeing it everywhere you look. It haunts your daily existence. The batteries... they're so close, and yet the distance you put between them is agonizing.

Dude... I know that feeling.

Paris, hooked on a feeling.