Posts by Craig Foster

23,000 HTTPS certs will be axed in next 24 hours after private keys leak

Re: Would that we could shut down Symantec entirely

Norton Commander

Sysadmins rebel over GUI-free install for Windows Server 2016

Re: and in the real world...

is not in any way command line based - including IIS and Exchange for example.

Do you want to put money on that? Exchange 2013 does not have a management GUI as such (web and powershell). I haven't required a GUI on web machines for a while (powershell or IISAdmin remote), and most DCs I've deployed use core (with powershell or ADUC on a desktop or "management" machine).

Actually it's a good thing. From the opposite angle, VMWare requires GUI using the full desktop experience role because of Flash. Even down to their file-based restore in VDP. Why the hell would I enable DX on a server for file-restore purposes on a VM guest machine?

Apple to devs: Watch out, don't make the Watch into a, well, a watch

Given Apples inbuilt software quality of late

Outlook gets a pass because it actually works...

Face it

If the primary purpose for buying an Apple Watch was the knowing the time, you're not the target market...

Let downloads roam free, says ACCC

Based on form...

"Not that I expect the government to actually ban such access "

Based on form, I wouldn't rule out Murdoch's handwritten notes still being on the bill as it gets cheered on by our News Corp subsidiary "Liberal" government. So much for "letting the market decide"...

Close encounter: Apple Macs invade the business world

Just ask the colleges and private high schools...

ARD is used in a hurry, Casper Suite is used for *everything* else.

Australia tries to ban crypto research – by ACCIDENT

Re: ...everyone follows all the laws

This was a law Labor passed.

The only difference is the Liberals can only get this type of half-arsed law passed by signing up to secret treaties.

Dotcom 'saved' Xmas for Xbox – but no one can save Sony's titsup PlayStation Network

Slack Sony

Note that the "PSN Status : Offline" message last modified date is Dec 25th.

It's like they shrugged their shoulders and decided to leave it until Monday when their holidays end.

At least XBox Live updated every half a day or so.

Australia to block piracy sites if Big Content asks nicely in court

Hollywood Accounting

Hollywood Accounting will mean movie and music industry "costs" will be astronomical.

I have no doubt ISPs will end up reimbursing the studios in the long run.

"Fly on the wall"

Walking fly's don't last long.

Everything so far has indicated the Liberals are firmly planted up the arses of Big Media and Rupert in particular. "We'll make our own" if you don't, may end up more onerous than what's on offer now.

Lastly, I don't hold hope for Australia wising up, since the existing policies have been discussed behind closed doors, with NDAs, and excluding independent rights-holder representative groups, and all but the big two ISPs.

Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS server will be taking a hammering shortly.

Oz gov lets slip: telco metadata might be available to civil courts

Australia's Liberal party do what the Fox says.

Well, Rupert anyway...

iiNet trial killed ISP-content talks, says Brandis

Wow

An Attorney-General who doesn't like a trial result based on common sense and sound legal reasoning?

I bet the closest Choice or ACCAN got to pay-to-meet Brandis is a message left with his PA.

Meanwhile expensive lunches have guaranteed the MAFIAA got their point across during face-to-face time.

Telstra asks users to be its next backhaul network

It may work in your favor

"Your honour, I have a public Telstra WiFi connection. It could have been *anyone*!!! Won't someone think of the children?!?!"

Telstra 'issue' hid ADSL availability from rival carriers

Wrong way...

1) Register the line anyway, with an ISP like iiNet.

2) Request a Telstra DSL service.

3) Wait for the codes to become active and iiNet's previous application kick in.

4) Laugh when Telstra send you connection advice and a bill for a service that automatically connects to the iiNet Walled Garden :)

Strictly speaking, Telstra's system should have picked up the prior application, but like management, it doesn't actually do anything.

Web data BLEEDOUT: Users to feel the pain as Heartbleed bug revealed

Check your vulnerability here.

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html

It's a good test of your SSL setup as well...

Cherry-pick undermines NBN business case: Switkowski

Of course cherry-picking hurts...

If NBN had been allowed to go full-tilt instead of enduring FIVE inquiries with unqualified people asking dumb questions to mess up their days, maybe they would be further along, and the "high value" sites would be in the bag.

Nice to see Switkowski's old company is doing the cherry-picking too. Did they have insider help?

Does Apple's iOS 7 make you physically SICK? Try swallowing version 7.1

Re: Another triumph of designers vs. common sense

Maybe they had 10,000 unread emails, and only use iPads?

NBN backbone passes TERABIT test

Cmon, Turnbull!

Can the ex-Telstra copper do THAT?!?!?

Or will you bury your head in IPA and yes-men reports, like an ostrich.

HP clampdown on 'unauthorised' server fixing to start in January

Dumb move.

a) I have gone through the rigmarole of the blue-screening firmware on DL360 G4's. Those clients had issues with customers buying bare minimum support, so they wouldn't have been covered, even though the unit was running faulty firmware out of the box.

b) My Dell PE2950 II can get firmware updates. Ditto for the IBM X-3550M2. Don't need a contract for support of those...

HP has decided protectionism will save it's bacon, while offering voluntary redundancies to all the capable people - during Christmas. This smacks of corporate whitewashing of it's issues purely for a temporary share price hike.

Aussie boffins can detect orbiting SPACE JUNK using rock gods' radiation

Satellite equivalent of a snowtruck?

What's the issues with having a bloody great downward-facing ram on the front of a pong-like satellite, with it's only purpose to be deflecting small debris earthward?

Will things smaller than 75cm, even get to the ground?

Given the telemetry, angle, etc, would it be as simple as warning flights to divert from an area?

It wouldn't have to move far, just left/right (and height given the rebound two colliding space objects would cause) and let the debris approach it...

I would patent it, but I can figure out how to put "with a phone" in the description...

Here comes the SAN: HP gives away virtual one

Re: It's pretty cool...

If you can afford 10GbE infrastructure, why play with freeware?

That said, 1TB storage is woeful. Make it properly free like the other 1 & 1TB VSAN "trialware" products and let us judge for ourselves.

Malcolm Turnbull throws a bone to FTTP boosters

Weasel words.

Turnbull (like any good politician) will throw a verbal bone to the opponents to take the sting out of their arguments. It will not make a real difference to FTTP's outlook because it breaks the war down to many battles each with it's own pros and cons, each which is likely to fail due to lack of media attention and loss of focus for the opponents of FTTN.

Of course it could be incompetence since Turnbull has a habit of sticking his foot in his mouth.

When I say a "good politician" i mean one well versed in double-speak, weasel-words, and bread and circuses for the masses. It has nothing to do with morality.

Turnbull to NBN contractors: Dance, baby, dance!

Re: I hope there are penalty clauses

There needs to be balance here.

There's almost no contingency costs factored into the original quote, e.g. to allow for hazardous waste pumping of pits which is required when a pit is full of water and Telstra's funky toxic water resistant gloop.

While splicing contractors are being given ~$35AUD per splice, a couple of pit drains at $5000AUD each, can send a job deep into the red rather quickly. Asbestos filled pits shouldn't cost anything except a delay, as Telstra should bear the cost of fixing up their decision on pit materials.

Contractors (and subcontractors) are not happy, the original Visionstream quote had no contingencies, the government didn't specify work rates or responsibilities, and all three groups should fire their lawyers...

D-Link hole-prober finds 'backdoor' in Chinese wireless routers

We've asked Tenda for its reaction but have yet to hear back from the firm.

Maybe they run their company off a D-Link?

Storage rage: Like getting a nice steak and being told to only eat 80% of it

Best practice for a reason. Snapshots, emergency clones/backups, fragmentation - all can grow your storage quicker than your CAB can authorise a RAID extend.

In fact, you're losing an extra drive or two in each RAID set. Why waste all that space?!

Australia's anti-smut internet filter blueprint lasts LESS THAN A DAY

This is from the same political party that wants to re-edit school curriculum to whitewash the left-of-right Labor party from history. Or espousing Christian values while cutting refugee intake and humanitarian aid.

I think this document was a planned release from the Department of Newspeak, just it was prematurely released before the DoNS could reveal itself.

IiNet creates cut-price diffusion brand 'Jiva'

Wouldn't the dance version be called...

JiiVA?

Icahn sues Dell's board over Big Mike's buyout bid

Nothing says snooty entitled prat...

...like suing the company you want to buy.

Unless they're not in it for the long-term.

tldr;Icahn-a believe it could get any worse...

Virtual brownfields: Microsoft's push to woo the VMware masses

Re: Why, not How?

And if you look at the Linux console based ESX, then of course it's much higher: http://secunia.com/advisories/product/25985/ - over 700 vulnerabilities!

And if you look at the Windows underneath, then of course it's much higher: [integer overflow]

If you're going to pull out stats, stick with the one (direct competitor) product...

The future of cinema and TV: It’s game over for the hi-res hype

Pirate content solves some of these problems

You'd be surprised how good a 720i broadcast re-encoded to 720p and played on a media player capable of 720P@60Hz with motion-interpolation can improve the picture.

Still can't compensate for the scenes with confetti or a flock of seagulls. Actually, nothing can improve the look of A Flock of Seagulls...

Clearwire to pull Huawei from network

"Having one snoop is enough"

Say the NSA with their unnamed rooms in US Telcos...

Intel Centerton server-class Atoms: How low can you go?

Re: Still prefer a HP 54L

oh, and a much more useful case

Still prefer a HP 54L

While it's only got one 1GB port, the Dual-Core, PCI-e capable HP 54L seems a lot more useful. Sure it's more thermal output, but there's two cores there...

NBN rollout to reach 1.3m new premises by late 2016

The cabler's perspective...

Spoke to a cabler while getting non-NBN fibre installed...

NBN Co set a fixed price per splice and per connection. This disregards the state of the pit, pipe, weather conditions, or other circumstances - they'd have to purely to stop cabler subcontractors rorting of the system. Problem is Telstra's pits are notoriously unkempt and it costs the contractor $5000 to legally drain a waterlogged pit by a certified hazmat handler due to the chemical in their corrosive "waterproofing" gel around their copper.

I can understand both sides, and with the Aussie winter coming, there's likely to be a bucket more delays due to pits.

So the winner will be either the HazMat handlers (if Labor wins) or the lawyers (when Liberals win).

Apple handed victory in Samsung text-selection patent case

O M G!!!

US ITC sides with US courts, finding in favour of a US company's US patent application.

Colour me surprised!!!

Apple exec says music labels, Hollywood, 'old fashioned' on copyright

Pot Meet Kettle

Up until the inquiry, Apple software like FinalCut was nowhere near price parity.

There's no external distributors there, so why enforce the Territorial price difference?

Researcher sets up illegal 420,000 node botnet for IPv4 internet map

ZOMG Running out of IPv4 addresses!!!!

1.3b out of 4.3b is not "running out"

When open-source eats itself, we win

Signal to noise here...

Seriously, why are there few up votes on the three comments saying nginx is used as a reverse proxy and the backend is Apache? They are not eating each others lunch as much as the author purports...

We moved a client to nginx some 5 years ago as a RP for hosting. Between splitting media content to different host names, moving static content to minimal nginx backends, and using nginx in front, the popular sites don't see the anywhere near the performance issues at the busy times. It's not rocket science.

(The backend load balancing is another matter completely - urgh!)

Microsoft Dell deal would restore PC makers' confidence

Re: It may even result in some direction..

Michael Dell will beat him down like the monkey boy Ballmer is.

I'm guessing it'll take one board meeting before MS change board representatives.

YOUR Cisco VoIP phone is easily TAPPED, warns CompSci prof

*Cough*Advert*Cough*

"Your Cisco phone requires antivirus security software, which we're designing by the way"

Seriously, with that much physical access required, why not just plug in a hub and sniff traffic?

The Register lands in Australia

Diiiiiirty

The thought of The Reg handing out Apple!! products makes me feel dirty on the inside.

Luckily I'm not above getting a little muddy! ^_^

Apple demands Samsung flogged for 'unethical' court doc leak

Par for the course...

She's pretty much agreed with everything her masters Apple have asked so far

Apple's new Safari snubs older Macs, drops Windows version

"Frequent Googlers will appreciate the new Unified Search Field, which combines the URL and search boxes into one, much like how it is done in Chrome."

So stealing a method of searching from Chrome and IE is just OK, but when stealing a method of searching on a phone it's an obvious patent violation?

Microsoft lobs licensing liposuction at Server 2012

Just say NO!

SBS being folded into Essentials with "pre-configured connectivity to cloud based services" presumably partly based in the US, thus coming under US laws?

No.

There's a reason SBS 2011 Standard outsells SBS 2011 Essentials, IT can actually be responsible for data leakage, up-time, and privacy guarantees.

Looks like Microsoft swallowed the Apple X Server kool-aid as well :( We refuse to update to Os X Server 10.7 for this exact reason.

Stonehenge WASN'T built by ALIENS - Boffins' shock claim

Surprise...

This must be the first time I've heard the words "shock claim" and "written a book" in the same PR piece.

Cisco bends UCS rack and blade metal around new Xeon E5s

You missed Cisco talking about their rack...

Why talk about UCS refreshes, without talking about Cisco announcing their own R-Series racks? Especially since you can now order the Nexus kit, blade servers, and have it all pre-racked.

I'd flash around a beautiful rack like that...

Apple's iPhone 5 connector said to be a control freak

Re: So when

I've never understood why the iMac and Apple Displays never had inductive-coupling pads built into the base, to charge the wireless keyboards, mice, trackpad, and iDevices.

Especially since the KB/MS/TP combo chews through rechargeables :S

CSC UK touts jobs at RIVALS to techies facing chop

Does their intranet run like NHS IT?

In which case it wouldn't matter...

Social media off to war with propaganda posts

Hello, meeeeeeee!

I guess Eugene's bleating about AV on iOS got laughed into obscurity and he's looking for more angles to get another 15 minutes of fame...

Besides, if the All Blacks were any good, we'd just claim 'em for our own like we do your musicians and artists ^_^