Posts by Evil Auditor

The power of Bill compels you: A server room possessed by a Microsoft-hating, Linux-loving Demon

Re: No FreeBSD daemon?

That reminded me of a time, yonks ago, when I ended up having supper with three guys, who, at that time unbeknown to me, were some Evangelical Christians. The discussion arrived at music and, inevitably, at my favoured hard rock and metal. Oh lord!

They came up with satanic backwards messages in rock songs and I, still, thought it was all fun and stuff. Until I started to realise they were all serious and moments before lynching me. Obviously, they didn't. But I made a rather quick escape.

Ireland unfriends Facebook: Oh Zucky Boy, the pipes, the pipes are closing…from glen to US, and through the EU-side

Re: OT - "Facebook spokesman Nick Clegg"

Holy ****! And I thought you were joking.

Any chance you've misunderstood the article? Specifically, where FB's spokesman is quoted: there's a total lack (or rather unwillingness or neglect) of understanding EU's data protection regulation on the side of FB.

Happy birthday to the Nokia 3310: 20 years ago, it seemed like almost everyone owned this legendary mobile

All fine and well. But can you please elaborate on an ...ancient mistake in the order / shipping...?!

Zuck says Facebook made an 'operational mistake' in not taking down US militia page mid-protests. TBH the whole social network is a mistake

Re: Still he doesn't get it.

While I certainly agree with what you write, I think it is even worse. FB's business model is not "everyone can post whatever they like...". It rather is: keep everyone as much involved with FB as possible. That is, keeping them on the platform.

How do you keep people involved? An effective way seems to foster splitting of people into groups/bubbles, mutual incomprehension, hate, disunity. Zuck knows this much better than I do and very much lives on that crap.

Techie studied ancient ways of iSeries machine, saved day when user unleashed eldritch powers, got £50 gift voucher

Re: What do you get given .....

I fully agree with you! But please, don't tell my clients. I make quite a good living with that.

_{Btw, I mostly see that you only get more shit but no bigger shovel.}

Re: What do you get given .....

...and more shit.

Scary shit indeed. I can only imagine how "well-tested" that SQL was. In my experience they mostly come with side effects, usually severe ones. Which, of course, may well be because I'm crap at SQL.

Conflict of interest? We've heard of it. Amazon on selection panel to choose UK.gov's chief digi officer

It's me!

I should seriously consider to apply. Due to covid I'm sure that working remotely is not only a possibility but rather a must - otherwise I'd have to move back to Blighty. The only thing missing is a (prior) conviction. Although I'm sure I will fulfil that with corruption-related activities once I hold the position.

The Viking Snowden: Denmark spy chief 'relieved of duty' after whistleblower reveals illegal snooping on citizens

Re: Corruption,... again

...rather than about ethics or empathy

There's only a veneer of ethics on the human society. And empathy probably doesn't extend further than everyone's own tribe (i.e. the contemporary equivalent of tribe).

This PDP-11/70 was due to predict an election outcome – but no one could predict it falling over

Re: The elevator did it

My screen still flickers when the mobile phone is too close to the USB-C/HDMI adapter.

Norfolk's second-greatest cultural export set for return with 3-metre monument in honour of the Turkey Twizzler

Re: My dog refused to eat it.

I fully agree. And I'm impressed and likewise disgusted by what you have tasted. That makes we wonder: is there any significant difference in taste between vegans' and a non-vegans' dump?

You weren't hacked because you lacked space-age network defenses. Nor because cyber-gurus picked on you. It's far simpler than that

Re: Too hard, too frequent, too unreliable

While I partially agree, how about updating the test system to 4.10.122b first?

I wouldn't be too happy either to sign off a patch that hasn't been run on a test system.

Chinese ambassador to UK threatens to withdraw Huawei, £3bn investment if comms giant banned from building 5G

Re: Of course Huawei are independent of political pressures

Solved. A sign I recently came across:

You are right. It's all fake. We've ruined the whole economy just to convince you to wear a mask.

Because you are ugly.

My personal observation confirms that most if not all people look better with a mask over their mouth and nose.

Black hole destroys corona

Re: In Real Time?

emphasised zero lag

That sounds like pseudo real time: throwing enough computing power at a problem so that it appears to the human to produce results with zero lag.

Re: In Real Time?

Actually, technically, in computer science it does.

That's in fact PRECISELY what it means.

Actually, no. Real time in CS is about the time predictability of getting results.

The reluctant log trawler: The buck stops with the back-end

Re: Fault at both sides

I couldn't agree more.

Some 20 years ago I've learnt the lesson that the back-end should validate what it receives and even more so when the front end is not under your control. It was the case of an online arts shop where you could simply change the quoted price of any item to whatever you wanted. (No, it was not my mistake and neither did I stock on artwork on the cheap.)

PC printer problems and enraged execs: When the answer to 'Hand over that floppy disk' is 'No'

Re: Ah IT 'managers'

IT manager? I thought those people end up in the audit department.

From unmovable boot screens to dead certs, neither are what you want to see in a hospital

I'd definitely go for the SATAn device.

'One rule for me, another for them' is all well and good until it sinks the entire company's ability to receive emails

I see! That's how it's done today. 'bout 15 years ago, some "boomers" attended an MS Excel training. They did get home work and exchanged it between students: printed the spreadsheet on paper and then faxed it each other.

Re: Good riddance

Know the skills of your staff and put them to good use. If someone is "useless" they probably are in the wrong position.

And there I was, a couple of days ago: running into an 19yo who did not have any clue what to do with a word (.docx) file she received via e-mail. Apparently, with today's youth it's all "cloud documents".

Microsoft's own operating system should finally start working on its own hardware ... 'in the coming weeks'

Re: Sums up Microsoft's quality control

Simple: market power. And, I have to admit, some of their products are not that bad, especially considering alternatives. But nowadays I can merely comment as a desktop user for my times as developer or sys admin are long gone.

Re: Sums up Microsoft's quality control

Really? Assuming that people buy their crap anyway, they don't need to hire anyone, being it tester, developer, analyst, engineer etc. That would only botch their bottom line.

Ooo, a mystery bit of script! Seems legit. Let's see what happens when we run it

Re: Last time my car stalled...

Should I plug the drive into my personal computer or a company server?

What a question?! Obviously, you plug it into the personal computer of that colleague of yours.

If Daddy doesn't want me to touch the buttons, why did they make them so colourful?

Re: But I didn't touch nuthin!

Usually I do not condone violence. But would happily make an exception there.

Re: But I didn't touch nuthin!

Should give an additional thumb up for [0]!

At least, one of my (internal) clients back then would happily confess that he did something and usually was able to point roughly in the right direction. This didn't help much to fix the issue since I would also thoroughly check if he borked something else as well which he wasn't aware of but it went a long way for having a very pleasant relationship with him.

Worse then kids: the type of client (PHB?) who believes they know lots in IT but in fact are clueless monsters of destruction. They will not leave with a "simple" disk crash but can inflict truly great system borkage. They happily make use of direct database access and cleverly manipulate some field deep down without any idea of its implication or consideration for consistency.

But what do I know - I left that life many moons ago and it _must_ have change for much better since.

Hey Mister Prime Minister ... Scott! Can you get off my lawn please, mate?

Same here: in a tram or train you might just as well bump into the countries president as into any other person. Then again, there is, afaik no history of assassinations and certainly far less exposure.

To your question, my best guess is because the people should be frightened of them? Considering what POTUS have been doing, rightly so (in differing degrees depending on who or where you are).

...US prez Donald Trump might well receive a flaming trash can...

Nope. For the landowner and anyone nearby would have been kicked off long before the Trump arrived.

Trump issues toothless exec order to show donors, fans he's doing something about those Twitter twerps

Re: So how long before ...

It is quite amazing: whenever you think it can't get worse, time and again the Tremendously Stable Genius proves that it can do "worster".

Now I start to wonder, when will the time be that the gun toting libertarians draw the conclusion: this is why we have the 2nd amendment, this is the tyranny our founding fathers feared. Well, it's not going to happen for the true tyranny is state-imposed health insurance etc. _/sarcasm

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

Our industry will come back, but it will take some years to return to what it was just two months ago.

For Boeing I hope they will not return to what they were two months ago. Then they would rather pull the plug right now. And from what I've learnt from a far distance, they should not only enhance product quality but also and especially production quality including their corporate culture.

Made-up murder claims, threats to kill Twitter, rants about NSA spying – anything but mention 100,000 US virus deaths, right, Mr President?

trump verb

1 Emit wind from the anus.

2 (trump around or about) Waste time on silly or trivial things.

You E-diot! Formula E driver booted off Audi team after getting video game ace to take his place in online race

Re: Integrity?

Like with like

The Car Of Choice For Cheaters

Record-breaking Aussie boffins send 44.2 terabits a second screaming down 75km of fiber from single chip

Re: Correction

You're young, aren't you?

Das reboot: That's the only thing to do when the screenshot, er, freezes

Re: Funny that

That pretty much was one of the SOPs for unlocked and unattended computers. Others were rotating the screen or sending out invitations for after-work drinks or even the odd date. Thinking of it, I'll have to re-implement some in our office...

Easyjet hacked: 9 million people's data accessed plus 2,200 folks' credit card details grabbed

Re: Highly sophisticated

Erm, yes.

Thumb up for the xkcd reference. Or, maybe it wasn't: in one of my former lives our password policy explained how a "good" password should be constructed and also gave an example. As part of an access security audit we checked passwords. Young and naive I was rather surprised when finding how many users used that exact example as their password.

Re: Highly sophisticated

"That's funny: when you type your password in this comments section, it is transformed to ******** after submitting. Try yourself!"

scnr

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

Re: problems getting started

Shall I tell you how often I place a laptop the wrong way round on a table? I doesn't happen with the wedge-shaped ones. But with the bricks it happens nearly more often than not, exactly because of the logo.

_{anon because of shamewhatever, no one knows me here}

The Rise of The (Coffee) Machines: I need assistance. I think I'm running Windows. Send help

Re: we obviously also cannot trust what it might spit out when asked for "tea."

If you think France is bad - and I agree, it is - don't try e.g. Italy or even worse: Brazil. They might have tea on their menu. When you order it, the waiters' answers vary between "we ran out of tea" and a puzzled look like your an extraterrestrial.

also cannot trust what it might spit out when asked for "tea."

I have yet to come across such a vending machine that spits out anything resembling tea at all.

Incredible how you can steal data via Thunderbolt once you've taken the PC apart, attached a flash programmer, rewritten the firmware...

Re: more of a neat trick than infosec Armageddon

....stolen, yet encrypted, laptop?

Shutting down the laptop would effectively prevent this attack.

'We're changing shift, and no one can log on!' It was at this moment our hero knew server-lugging chap had screwed up

While reading I suspected something differently, but that must be me being biased with prior experience of less well managed environments: a newfangled machine starting its life in development or test and then miraculously being repurposed to production - obviously without ever being re-staged/moved/re-labelled as such.

_{Yes, I fscked this up myself on a small scale, not worthy of such a column. And saw it from save distance on a larger scale, too.}

Looking for a new IT gig? Here are vacancies around the world for developers, cloud engineers, infosec analysts, Jira admin, and more

Re: The "icon"applies to the article, and not to this comment.

I believe you should get some fresh air and sun.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Calling Isaac Newton...

I fully agree on Malta, and any other country. If they handed control of such a laser array over to me, I wouldn't see any issue though. I think I just solved one of their problems.

UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal

Re: sleepwalking?

Good I work from home! Otherwise colleagues might have wondered why I had this hysteric fit of laughter.

_{Pity I can't up-vote you more than once}

India makes contact-tracing app compulsory in viral hot zones despite most local phones not being smart

Re: so what *is* the solution?

Thank you for pointing out its historic context. This does, however, not invalidate nowadays usual meaning. Which in my understanding is not even its opposite if you consider the quote in regard to a "ruling party", whether it's the Penns or the state.

Re: Fool proof!

Foolproof: proof to be a fool.

Watch now the three UFO videos uncovered by Blink-182 star – and today officially released by the Pentagon

Well, I have an actual background of quite an impressive cityscape. That doesn't make me an architect nor an urban planner though.