* Posts by stu 4

775 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

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ZX Spectrum reboot promising – steady now – 28MHz of sizzling Speccy speed now boasts improved Wi-Fi

stu 4

Last night I loaded a tape of a programme I wrote 38 years ago, aged 12..

Bought a tape deck last week (general wish to listen to old mix tapes I made), found tape of a program I nearly got published in 1983.

Loaded it into emulator last night and saw my loading screen graphics for first time in 38 years! Unfortunately it's the only copy I have, and it corrupted before fully loaded, so all I can do if look at 30k of basic.... but the loading screen was awesome!

speccy all the way!

What's a Google Play? Huawei talks up fledgling AppGallery store, shows off another voice assistant with a female name

stu 4

This is great news

A great way to get an android phone with an almost guarantee of being free from google's spying minceware. Previously you had a few basic choices or a custom firmware. Or iOS - but if you've a problem with privacy I've never seen how giving all your data to apple is any better than giving it to google. Now you can get a top quality phone, with no google anything. sweet. sign me up.

OK, which Dombås stuffed Windows 10 to bursting at Swedish flatpack flinger?

stu 4

8gb for a security update

Why do people put up with that sort of mince ?

Gasp! Google Chrome kills uBlock, Adblock ad filters – grab the pitchfo- no wait, it's OK: They were evil fraud clones

stu 4

@Cuddles - both stories are a bit more complicated than that. And both Adblock Plus (sells 'pass' to advertisers to let their ads through), and ublock (stole code from Raymond) are nasty bits of work. I advise everyone to go with uBlock Origin - it's great. even if on my mac it now tells me 'it will slow down web browsing' - will it buggery - it cleans up a massive amount of trash tracking and ads that safari is otherwise happy to allow.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/32mos6/ublock_vs_ublock_origin/

Horn star Sudan, last male northern white rhino, dies aged 45

stu 4

the Chinese are the real arseholes

poachers are scum. but there will always be scum feeding demand.... it's the millions of arsehols demanding this 'traditional'/quakery medicine that are the real pond life.

New Google bias lawsuit claims company fired chap who opposed discrimination

stu 4

cisgender

using that made up word in a sentence is reason enough for dismissal imho.

SJW/snowflakes are just as bad as right wing neo-nazis. each are extremists.

Extremists are bad - it's really irrelevant what they are extreme about.

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

stu 4

Musk Space Ship

I reckon the real reason Musk is being a busy beaver is so we have our very own Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.

We need to start the ad campaign soon - Mars lets you tan in seconds... you weight so much less..red is the new black....

Helicopter crashes after manoeuvres to 'avoid... DJI Phantom drone'

stu 4

Re: It's time...

bullshit.

you know nothing from this. a helicopter can fly a damn site faster and longer than a legally flown drone. why assume it's the drone pilots fault ? He could have been flying in a field quite legally at a couple of hundred feet, and then next moment a helicopter flies through for all you know.

weekly at heathrow.... I can smell the shite from here.

A Hughes failure: Flat Earther rocketeer can't get it up yet again

stu 4

Re: 1,800 feet

ah... for those unfamiliar with what has now become, like belief it invisible friends, MASSIVE* with our transatlantic cousins - this youtuber is a good summary of what they believe in...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgY8zNZ35uw

*I get comments from the flatards on my paramotor videos claiming it proves you can see the edge, etc... the ignorance is astounding.

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

stu 4

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

"One thing that will absolutelty prevent me flying long-haul on an airline is if they don't permit my seat to recline"

hear hear.

To me the wonder is why they just are not all set to a comfortable reclined level - then you have no issues with idiots trying to stop you reclining (but usually happy to recline themselves).

Web searching died the day they invented SEO

stu 4

yahoo

yeh.. not as it is, but as it was.. waay back early 90s - it was an index of the internet for those of us that remember.

When I set up my fansite for sarah alexander, back in 95 or whenever, you registered it with yahoo, and then folk found it by looking up fansites on yahoo.

if you wanted to buy something - you went to yahoo - companies - bookshops (or similar)

and there were the 2 or 3 bookshops on the internet.

I got emails in those days (as site admin) from people reading the sarah alexander site:

- her mum asking her to call

- her sister asking he if she was coming over tonight for dinner

- her brothers friend asking her to give him a call.

the average joe hadn't quite worked out how it all worked yet... I suppose I'd like to say things have changed... but er... its actually turned out more like Idiocracy http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

Capita contract probed after thousands of clinical letters stuffed in a drawer somewhere

stu 4

Re: How? Why!!!

"No-one asked Capita to do anything with this paperwork, no-one paid Capita to do anything with this paperwork, so Capita didn't do anything with it.

Doing something with this paperwork would have cost money, and by outsourcing you saved that money!"

got it in a nutshell.

similar situation with TCS at BA (building the quality ticketing system):

- requirements ask for service that processes the scanned ticket giving you access to gate.

- requirements don't have non functionals (like... max response time)

- TCS spent 2 months building service that takes 120 seconds on average per scanned ticket.

- Not one of the geniuses asks the question 'er... I know there's no sla.. but it's like for scanning tickets..maybe as part of being a supposed professional I should ask'

- service delivered into NFT where we (me) finds for the first time it's useless and has to be thrown away.

- you pays peanuts, etc...

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

stu 4

95% bullshit ?

My parents live in central Scotland.

So not the highlands - 22 miles SE of Glasgow. In a village on a main trunk road.

They get 2Mb at the fastest sync speed - sometimes 1Mb.

Perhaps they are just some isolated island of crap copper in a sea of optic fibre...

or perhaps the 95% figure is about as trust worthy as... well BT or a politician.

Perhaps if BT could only CHARGE for broadband over 24Mb and it was free with phone rental below that, that would be the kick in the arse they need to sort it out.

For now. they pay the same per month that others pay for 10x that speed.. so were is the incentive for BT to make it any faster ?

stu

Google slaps mute button on stupid ads that nag you to buy stuff you just looked at

stu 4

startpage search

startpage is available for most browsers. no ads at all - always over https. no tracking, no adverts, no recording and selling everything you do.

YouTube turns off cash tap for automatic video nasties

stu 4

youtube bullshit

I've been with them 10 years plus. 800 subs. 3000 hours in last year.

So as of next month I lose the $100 a year - but really that's not the issue - it's the utter bullshit reasons they give - they are quite happy for arseholes like Logan Paul to make millions. Quite happy to pollute the channels with unboxing crap and clickbait - that all makes them tons of money so sod whether it's worthwhile or not.

How the flying fuck do the changes they make to cut off the income to small guys solve any spam problems whatsoever ? they don't. they just take away the small feedback I had where I thought I was achieving something.

Well yesterday I cancelled all monetizing on my channel - which at least stops youtube making the 90% over the next month on adverts they don't give to me. If there was a viable alternative with a good reach I'd move in a shot.

I bloody hate google in all it's forms - I've been with youtube long before it was google, but now they've managed to add their corporate crap to it too.

'Mummy, what's felching?' Tot gets smut served by Android app

stu 4

santa

Google - 'do only evil.'

At xmas I noticed this behaviour with google (on google chrome on android, but I imagine it would be the same across the all google.co.uk at least (note this was on my sisters tablet - I use startpage an no auto suggest shite)

- thanks to auto complete - type into search:

- 'is'

- google auto suggest 'is santa real'

so - this is the number one mostly likely question - so likely just two letters pop it up as the default question...I mean there's one reason for this - millions of kids are asking google if santa is real.....

ok I though - maybe this is a google easter egg - asking it takes us to the northpole or summit...

nope - same shite google search result page as always (i.e. 80% adverts and paid promotions) but the first non paid result is an article saying 'no of course santa isn't real'

nice. top work guys.

I would imagine this xmas, google managed to kill of belief in santa in millions of kids in the UK, if not the world...old enough to type 'is' into a browser - your childhood is over.

twats.

GoPro exits drone market and slashes jobs amid sales warning

stu 4

fix

"faces margin challenges in an extremely competitive aerial market. Furthermore, there's seems to be no market for a substandard piece of shit that falls out the sky and has the same number of 'smart features' as our president, at the same price as the best drones out there"

stu 4

They are vastly overpriced I agree. I've been using Gopro since the first HD model back in.. I dunno 2010 ?

But since they added 4k with the gopro4, it's been downhill. Up till then, if you required quality you went with gopro - consumer or professional.

I think a lot of pros stuck with the 4s for the same reasons.

The cheap ones vary between utterly terrible and ok - but of course with Chinese bullshit packaging/claims you don't know what you are getting.

A few mid-rangers were reasonable, but few ever got the quality of the gopro4 - close though, and frankly that's all most folk need. Most folk started with gopro as the only horse in town, and migrated to cheaper horses (donkeys?) when they became available. The pro market can take the premium pricing IF they get something for it, for they've got nothing useful really in the 5 or 6 they wanted - hence sony stepping in with products like the RX0.

As an excuse to show what even a feckit amateur can achieve with a gopro, here's ben nevis last year - in 4k.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n44SO2a2v8&t=1s

'DJI Mavic' drone seen menacing London City airliner after takeoff

stu 4

mince

unless this was a flyaway* it's 'fake news'...

mavic's a restricted to 500m max ascent from take off. 1640 feet.

that is a long way off 3000 feet.

*and, as far as I'm aware there has never been a mavic flyaway that has simply went into max ascent mode -ever.

whatever they saw wasn't a DJI mavic... and quite how you can identify a 12 inch drone while flying past it at a minimum of 150mph is a mystery to me too...

Metal 3D printing at 100 times the speed and a twentieth of the cost

stu 4

er....

shilltastic.

Perhaps sending a reviewer than understood current 3d printer technology would have been an idea ?

Statasys have been doing 'inkjet style' 3d printing for years - nothing new there.

The innovation here is purely to do with that 'ink' now supporting metal. If that works it could be an interesting advance over DMLS for sure - but if that's all it is, then they'd be no barrier to the big boys like stratasys adapting there polyjets to print it too surely ?

Our oldest mammalian ancestor named after British pub landlord

stu 4

palaeontology

Ah yes, one of the many 'ologys' that bear only a passing sniff of any rigorous scientific method.

2 teeth, and a whole animal and back story are concocted.

egyptology, scientology... it's a bit like when a country calls themselves a democracy or a republic - you know the last thing they are is democratic or a republic...

the incredible face reconstructions they do are another favourite - this is what he looked like... ok.. where's the one you did of the skull of the guy who died last year, whom we have photographs of... and the 100 other samples which would form the basis of the proper double blind experiments that shows your reconstruction to not just be fanciful unscientific pish ?

Note: I am not some creationist. dinos existed, the earth is 4.5 billion years old. I just wish we could get rid of these unscientific disciplines or bring them into the fold of proper science (i.e. physics/maths end of frankly).

This could be our favorite gadget of 2017: A portable projector

stu 4

450 quid

yer having a laff.

jesus. I mean, I know it's better than the cheap chinese stuff, but still... 40 quid and this one has a 1 hour battery life, but I use it plugged in, and gives me a 40" cinema in my motorhome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRs11ykq5hE

Hardware has never been better, but it isn't a licence for code bloat

stu 4

Unacceptable

None of this addresses the strange postulate you make at the beginning - that you almost EXPECT an OS upgrade to be slower, and accept that ?

why is that sensible ? I certainly don't think it is so - in fact about the ONLY OS upgrade I'm interested are ones that make things QUICKER - not adding 100 more pieces of social media pieces of shite I have no interest for.

To stay with Apple - Snow Leopard was the last good OS upgrade - 64 bitting things and speeding things up considerably with GPU stuff, etc. Since then it's all being about adding more crap I don't want.

iOS is of course even worse. I made the mistake of 'upgrading' my ipad air to ios11 a few weeks ago..

it ran like a dog, changed or broke things all over the place - moving bits of UI around for no reason for example (e.g. ios - watch full screen video in browser, scrub bar at the top where I hold the screen..ios11 moved to BOTTOM of screen. these changes for no good reason get right on my tits.

So of course then I had to spend hours working out how to restore ios10 back on there, because fuck me, apple don't want you doing that.... finally got there, re installed all my apps, and made sure I have insufficient free space for it ever to download ios11 and bug me to upgrade again).

imho there has been a dramatic change in what 'upgrades' mean since the advent of 'apps' and it seems to affect OSs and 'real computers' too.

In the past application upgrades could be pretty much relied on to add features, never take any away and 9x out of 10 optimised and make things faster, using GPUs, multithread, etc - maybe not major jumps, but not things you had to ask yourself 'what is this going to fuck up', just 'is it worth the money'

Now, starting on mobile app upgrades started to mean:

- taking away key features you relied on

- changing the UI radically

- adding need for accounts and logins where none existed before

- breaking compatibility with older devices

and of course all while making it as difficult as possible to uninstall or revert the upgrade.

It only took this to happen a few times for me to switch off auto upgrades on my mobile devices now - I look at what the upgrade says it offers, and only if I really really need it do I upgrade.

Which of course assuming others are doign the same thing means we are all less safe, because app makers have destroyed any confidence users have in upgrades, so they don't get bug fixes, or security fixes either.

Now that attitude has expanded to OS upgrades (mobile and real computers), and real computer applications too - again lead by Apple - FCPX is a good example of this - a point release upgrade sometimes only being available WITH an upgraded OS, and then you find that it totally changes the UI, stops various plugins working, etc, etc.

It gets right on my tits.

Why are we disappointed with the best streaming media box on the market?

stu 4

4k

Having just bought a 75" 4k LG thing last week I can chip in here (and also savvy with rokus, android boxes, kodi, yada yada).

1. the LG has a 150ms sound lag unless using built in speaker - LAG - so adding delay on the amp won't fix it. across all content. how the flying fuck that got through QA I have no idea... so basically using the TV for anything other than a monitor is a waste of time... luckily thats my main use case..

2. I use it via a mac mini - and kodi. kodi lets me view H264 4k content fine, but the mac mini hasn't the oomph for H265 4k... and of course netflix, amazon won't display higher than 1080p via safari, and even then you won't get HDR or DD5.1 which is kinda shitty.

The LG does play H265 stuff, VP9, etc. It plays 4k netflix HDR, etc, etc - all good except for the 150ms sound lag which makes it all for nothing unless you want to switch you watch it all with the shite sound out the built in speakers.... its the sort of thing you wish you could bash some engineers heads together at LG over.

So - alternatives for H265 4k or netflix 4k+DD ? well, a cheap 30 quid android box would do the H265 4k and DD ok - but the problem is that only a few 'authorised' devices are allowed to access netflix 4k streams - apple tv, LG and other big tv companies, and roku, etc.

None of the chinese android boxes are allowed - so your limited to 1080p max streams on them.

what a pain in the arse. why something has to be as complicated I don't know. It's like they want people to pirate stuff.

Drones thrown a bone: Americans can ask nicely to go where FAA says they can't roam

stu 4

Re: Stop it!

>IS NOT COMMON SENSE AND SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED.

sigh.

If the operator is skilled, trained, and can show his drone has sufficient redundancy to be safe then of course it should be allowed.

most countries (including this one) have similar schemes:

http://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Unmanned-aircraft/Recreational-drones/Permissions-and-exemptions-for-drone-flights/

Drone's really don't tend to just fall out the sky. Is it possible ? yes. likely. not in the slightest - the assessing of the risk and allowing these flights is exactly what this legislation is there for - to stop fuckwits flying there DJI phantoms over crowds, but to allow professional 8 rotor high redundancy drones to, under specific circumstances.

I bet your ancestor was one of the ones running in front of cars with red flags...

Vodafone, EE and Three overcharging customers after contracts expire

stu 4

They're all the same

They seem to all manage to have the same amount of confusion on their websites, making it as difficult as possible to find basic information.

The actual bundle prices with a phone are almost always more than buying a phone outright + a phone plan by a considerable margin too which is insane - you'd expect a discounted rate.

I've never really understood why anyone does it - but I imagine it's to do with the effective ease of the credit, plus the fact that many people really really don't understand what things cost - my friend for example changes his car every 3 years 'for free'...

"I pay £500 a month for my car loan. when it's finished after 3 years, I change to a new car and it still just costs me £500 a month) so it's free - why wouldn't you change"

that's their logic.. the fact my car was paid for 5 years ago and costs me nothing a month (in loans) is irrelevant apparently..

"no no you are missing the point - this new car is costing me no more than the old one"

IT'S A LOAN YOU ARS$HOLE! YOU JUST SPEND ANOTHER 15K ON A NEW CAR FFS.

sigh.

and yeh - we're talking about a 'smart' guy - degree, good job...

now think of the young folk buying these 600 quid phones... it's them more than the oldies that the telcos are ripping off - but they seem too stupid to care.

UK.gov: Who wants £25m... *cheers*... to trial 5G? *crickets chirping*

stu 4

3d videos

3d videos eh ? are we supposed to use the 5m to built a time machine to travel back 5 years to when anyone gave a shit about 3d videos ?

The Google Home Mini: Great, right up until you want to smash it in fury

stu 4

sheeple. in their unwashed hoards I would think.

The same ones that twatter every breath they take, post to people they've never talked to on facepuke, and see nothing wrong with store loyalty cards, google, and every other big brother poc out there.

it will no doubt be a roaring success...

Concerns raised about privacy, GDPR as Lords peer over Data Protection Bill

stu 4

Re: Confusing and unworkable

The problems are in interpretation - what claim needs to be made that it is relevant for you not to delete it for example ?

As an example I used to use paypal - they have all my details, credit card, bank details, etc.

When I'd had enough of their complete disregard for any oversight process, and realised I did not want anything further to do with them as I did not trust them (as a US company AND as paypal) to look after that personal data, I asked for my account to be closed.

At this point they said 'sure - just give us a full copy of your driving licence and password so we can 'identify you'.

Now they were quite happy I was 'me' up to this point - debiting my CC when I make purchases, sending me shite spam, screwing me over as a seller, etc...

And as the whole point is that I don't trust them as far as I can spit, I was damned it I was going to give them copies of 2 important documents - probably the 2 most important ones I own, neither of which they have any right to view AT ALL.

So they refused to close my account. On talking to the Financial Ombudsman I was told 'tough - we can do nothing'.

That was 2 years ago - and still they won't close my account and remove my data.

So - will GDPR force them to do so ? I'd like to think so, but I don't see how it will. They can still claim either:

- prove who you are by giving us even more personal info that we have no legal right to whatsoever then trust we'll delete it after cause like we have a great track record for that....

- claim it's still 'relevant' for some shite reason or other they make up.

So frankly I won't be holding my breath on anything changing AT ALL with GDPR with big foreign (usually US) based companies/wankers like PayPal.

Dumb bug of the week: Apple's macOS reveals your encrypted drive's password in the hint box

stu 4

OSX updates

I used to enjoy new updates - they brought great new pro features - I remember putting snow leopard on and getting so much better performance on CPU tasks, GPU tasks, etc. It was what you EXPECT from mac os upgrades - making everything better by taking advantage of the tight HW integration and leveraging real time GPU encoding/decoding, etc, etc.

Since then it's been downhill - adding useless shite every year that I have to disable (launchpad, game centre, notifications, flat icon bollocks, daemon services for facebook, icloud and various other crap I have no intention of every using)

My approach is now to not upgrade the OS version AT ALL (security patches aside) , until one of my key program's updates has some killer features that I need - and is tied to a more recent OSX version. Even then it pains me to have to, as 9x out of 10 there's no technical reason for the restriction.

So I only moved to El Capitan late this year when FCPX and a few other apps wouldn't install updates on Yosemite, and I decided it was worth the hassle. Sierra was out, but I saw no point in moving more than I needed to.

Queue 1/2 a day of updating all the low level utils that then break once El Capitan on, and disabling various pieces of crap I have no interest in (social media shite up the wazoo for example), disabling SIP cause like... I'm a big boy... if I want to use XtraFinder because after 17 years your shite Finder still doesn't allow proper cut and paste,and right click to create a text file where I want to, I'll fecking well do it.

Sierra continued this approach by offering nothing new other than trying to make my mac look and work like an iphone. And having never had any issues at all with AFS, I've no desire for high sierra either frankly.

Java security plagued by crappy docs, complex APIs, bad advice

stu 4

Java plagued by crappy docs, complex APIs, bad advice

there - ftfy.

So. Should I upgrade to macOS High Sierra?

stu 4

time machine

using a mac as time machine server for other macs has always worked fine - you just need osx server for 20 quid. I use my macmini as my media server, entertainment system and backup server for the 5 macs in the household.

Apple: Our stores are your 'town square' and a $1,000 iPhone is your 'future'

stu 4

Selfie hell

So now

1. everytime someone uses this they need to selfie themselves. wtf

2. want access to your partners phone ? fine, just point it at there sleeping face.

3. lets see how it's gonna work with burkas.

what a load of emperors new clothes mince. My S7 has higher res, a finger print scanner that works, and an SDcard slot. Oh.. and cost be 350 quid.

DJI strips out code badness, reveals some GPL odds 'n sods

stu 4

Re: Wondering ...do you

modern drones or any other RC havn't used 25-35Mhz since the 90s....

DJI uses 2.4 and 5.8Mhz.

Most RC these days use 2.4Mhz.

the days of 27Mhz and 1/2 meter long aerials with flags on the top ended nearly 2 decades ago.

Drone complaints to cops are up twelvefold in three years

stu 4

Sheep

The unwashed will believe whatever the press tell them to.

Drones bad. So they see drone now and it's bad.

If the daily fail told them it was good luck to be in their wash, they'd be jumping about under them claiming there ain't enough of them around.

Areholes.

In the land of Google, Holocaust denial, death threats – all fine. LGBT? Oh, no, that's sensitive

stu 4

hardly surprising

google, like all american companies, enforces it's Judaea Christian fucked up morality wherever it can:

slaughter, violence, hate speech ? sure - have all you can eat (it's in the bible after all)

female breast or heaven forbit, a man's meat and 2 veg - hide it away !! think of the children.. perverts perverts !

Amazon S3-izure cause: Half the web vanished because an AWS bod fat-fingered a command

stu 4

Re: Funny, this should have finished while I was at lunch

I did similar thing about 2 months ago on my mac while trying to tidy stuff up in the root drive.

UserTemp

Usertemp

...

sudo rm -rf User*

hmm.that's taking an awful long time to delete some temporary crap....

..argh!@!!@#!@^#^

CntlC CntlC CnltC

Luckily good old timemachine got me back to an hour before and I had a 'Users' directory again.

I have to say, in 10 years of mac ownership... one of the many many many times timemachine has got me out of a deep deep hole.

I also remember one time, about 20 years ago - working for a large UK telecom company...needed to reboot one of the live boxes that handled 30% of the load of UK non geographic phone calls (0845, 0800, etc)...

sudo shutdown now -r

....

...

hmm can't seem to connect to that... doesn't seem to be coming back up..

It was in an unmanned exchanged 30 miles from the nearest engineer.... had to get one of em to go out there, and press the ON button again.

Pence v Clinton: Both used private email for work, one hacked, one accused of hypocrisy

stu 4

What's more important -

1. this arse-piece used a personal email account for business email (and AOL..wow..u couldn't make it up)

2. said arse-piece believes world is 6000 year old and was created literally in 7 days by a magical invisible fairy, gays can be electric-shocked straight and women should be jailed for having abortions.

It's like picking on hitler for having shit hair cut.

Gov wants to make the UK the 'safest place in the world to go online'

stu 4

Re: It ain't that easy

lowwall - amazon fire has kids accounts. I got a few of em for my nieces at xmas. I dunno how useful they are - but you basically 'admin' the tablet, and they get an account that gives them access to only the apps and stuff you want them to have access to. I think it would be pretty limiting to >12s maybe, but for younger kids it might be worth a look ?

Toxic Uber sued after driver allegedly tried to rape passenger in car

stu 4

Utterly dumb simile

First, I agree Uber are scum.

However, that simile is utter bollocks - they have 2 mechanisms that service customers - cars with people, and robots... why on earth would they both need to be treated the same way ?? it makes no sense at all. should the robots get bathroom breaks ? should the robots get paid ? how will they spend there ill-gotten money ? oil like bender ?

If here's something worse than uber, it's lawyers.

Apple to Europe: It's our job to design Ireland's tax system, not yours

stu 4

Re: Fascinating

It's a fascinating insight into the way american corporations think - they THINK the world should fit them, and is there only to help them make money.

They think this for good reason, as it's the way america works - basically a corporate oligarchy where laws exist only to allow corporations to succeed. A democracy of sorts, but only if you agree that at the bottom of a democracy - lies corporations, not individuals.

So they are shocked and astounded when they try these same tactics on 'not america' (the officially recognised name for the rest of the world by americans I think)... WHAT ? I am EvilCorp! I have do what I want. Kill that man! Kill his family! Your laws do not apply to me puny non american moral - it's legal in america, and we dont give a shit about your so called 'country' laws.

Even within american laws you can see this weird 'american's first' bigotry.. there are one of the few countries where your human rights differ depending on whether you are 'emurican' or a filthy foreigner (e.g. right to privacy, rights to search. etc)

How to secure MongoDB – because it isn't by default and thousands of DBs are being hacked

stu 4

Re: Insecure defaults are not capabilities in other modern databases

They just don't get it to they...that's the problem.

In 2017 there is absolutely no excuse for a software package (or OS for that matter) not being secure OTB. Christ even, microshaft realised that.

And yet they still patter out the same mince - 'its the users job'.

No it bloody isn't fuckwits - it's YOUR job.

I had a similar argument with a company who make an API creation product - and by default it exposes them over HTTP with 'basic authentication'... i.e. no security at all... even in the original HTTP RFCs it was mentioned that you should never use basic auth without HTTPS.. and that was frecking 20 years ago... and yet we have a major company doing it by default and hoping the user is smart enough to know that them ticking the user basic auth tickbox over HTTP and thinking there APIs are secure is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

And yet said company stand fast and say 'its not our job to stop the user doing stupid things'.

sigh... there's no winning that argument - it's like arguing with a christian/muslim/<insert faery believer here> - it's a waste of time if they don't get basic logical thought.

Apple nabs smartphone top spot from Samsung, but for how long?

stu 4

WTF 1 in 17 folk on earth bought a phone in 3 months of last year ??

Does that just sound mental to anyone else ?

On the PLANET - 1 in 17 people bought a phone in only 3 months of one year.

That's a pretty crazy stat imho...

true no doubt, but pretty crazy none the less.

Welcome to my world of The Unexplained – yes, you're welcome to it

stu 4

Re: Sounds familiar

I too, do a few training course a year... any more and I think I'd go postal.

Some highlights from the last one - student is a 'sys admin' for a company. very 'windoze' focused. This product was on Linux.

Firstly again and again issues with him typing commands in the wrong case, and then after it being explained to him that linux is case sensitive moaning and complaining.. only to do exactly the same thing about 20 minutes later...

Vi... oh christ.... it took 30 minutes to walk him through editing one line into a file... no.. press I.. now type the line... no you didn't press I... no you need to start again.. press ESC ! x... ESC - it's the top left... no don't hold it down.. just press it once, press ! then x.. ok now lets start again....aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh

but the best were these 2 gems:

ok, you are on the command line. type ls -al

ok what do you see ?

nothing

you did ls -al.

yes.

in lower case.

yes

....did you press return ?

no.. you didn't tell me to...

aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

But the best one... was setting up a linux VM:

I was on a mac, he was on a windoze box. I took everyone through all the setting the static IPs up, etc - I told them DO NOT COPY MY IP on the projector, use the one your own PC has given the VM (and walked them through ifconfig).

2 painful hours of setup later, this bod isn't working... turns out he DID copy my IP ranges (172.* instead of 192.* on windows)... then of course, being the 'one eyed man' and this being a windows things... tried to changed vmware player to support the new ranges, and fucked everything right up - nothing worked.

We were in a classroom with clean PCs, so I figured the best thing rather than spending hours trying to work out how he'd broke this one, was just to do it again properly.

"OK, it's all screwed up, just go to the PC on the next desk and do that task over again"

I got on with the rest of the class.

An hour later, I checked on him - how you getting on ? is it working now ?

no... same problem.

same.. how ? I mean.. oh ASFASFASS#@$%%@#^%@#^%%%!!!

yup.. he has indeed did the task over again... again using my IP address, again hacking the fuck out of vmware to try and get it to work.

Why software engineers should ditch Silicon Valley for Austin

stu 4

Re: work remote

"I suppose if your a hippy and like the SF scene go for it."

you probably mean Hipster ?

Hippies arguably had some good ideas and helped shape some of the great liberal ideals some of us hold today.

Hipsters, on the other hand, are just cunts.

stu 4

"Would you rather make slightly less and have Google on your CV"

Why the hell would you want google on your CV ? Perhaps it's adds the final touch to the Microsoft israeli child killlers you worked for or that work you did in the 1980s in JoBurg ?

fuck me, I'd rather have Ratners on my CV that Google.

Macs don't get viruses? Hahaha, ha... seriously though, that Word doc could be malware

stu 4

Re: mac AV

"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." - Wolfgang Pauli"

citation required here ?

I will say, I said this as a mac (exclusive other than VM) user. I was informed of this by my work security expert who was looking into whether there was a need to mandate AV software for macs - on finding this out they decided the benefit of mandating mac AV was small.

And note: I'm taking about viruses, not malware - malware is a different kettle of fish... though some software is reasonably unarguably malware, some is controversial - for example MacKeeper is a piece of malware crap, but no current AV product would pick it up as such afaik.

So I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with here ? AFAIK mac AV products effectively check for windows virus signatures in files. That is what they do.

In windows files (exes, etc) they do not present a threat to macs.

In mac files they do not present a threat (since the code is windows code).

So what are you arguing about ? please help me (and others in this thread by the looks of things) understand why you think my statement is wrong ?

Note, I am not aware of any mac viruses in the wild HOWEVER they certainly could exist, and if they did, I'd expect mac AV to detect them. And I'm sure they'd add them if they do exist, but for now at least, as far as I can see mac AV offers ZERO benefit to mac users.

stu 4

Re: mac AV

"Again FFS, what is this COW shit? CO worker, yes?"

yes mate- it's El Reg lingo - get with the programme. unsurprisingly I am aware that coworkers is a word.

stu 4

mac AV

But you know mac AV progs just detect WINDOWS viruses right ?

I didn't till recently. So it does seem kinda dumb. I mean I suppose it stops you passing them into a windoze cow worker, but meh....

IBM's Marissa Mayer moment: Staff ordered to work in one of 6 main offices – or face the axe

stu 4

Teleconferencing

This is class.. I mean.. it's been 15 years since I watched a TV advert,

but around 2000, IBM were the ones flogging remote working, with IBM technology making it all work!

Are they still doing that ?

some message.. look - we make technology that allows folk to work at home (I mean it's shit like.. we don't even use it... but you know.. if you want to buy it we'll sell you it for a small fortune).

(p.s. I happily work 50%+ of my time at home - not for IBM! - and get a shit load more work done than in an office... but then I work for a company where my boss has a real job as well as looking after me..)

DIE IBM DIE.

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