Posts by Al fazed

Japan lets its banks and other entities issue stablecoins

Re: "only banks and other registered financial institutions"

The hidden value is in the "real" investors money that they can consume in their R&D into digital exchange mechanisms.

Yes it doesn't matter what the currency is when you stick your card into the ATM, I can use my Debit Card all around the world, (except Russia at the mo) and get the relevent cash or make a purchase.

The only reason for this malarchy is the extra grime they can sqeeze into their coffers for just thinking about crypto or digital anything.

The fact that they haven't got a clue, should be glaringly obvious to anyone capable of reading the Register and comprehending the actual exponential number of way things will go wrong - 'cos no one at the top knows what the fuck is going on ........... Wahey

ALF

Arm CPU ran on electricity generated by algae for over six months

Re: I, for one, welcome our power spewing* algal overlords...

Apart from large hadron colliders, football stadiums and cryptocurrency mining, who needs massive amounts of electricity on a daily basis ?

No one......

So why produce so fucking much just to see it disipate over the miles from source to consumption ?

Better to produce at home, what your home needs............

Saying no more

ALF

Emotet reestablishes itself at the top of the malware world

the great misunderstood ?

The story says this bunch were established in Ukraine, not in Russia.

One of the languages used in the eMails is Russian.

Russia is not cut off from using FOSS solutions...........did someone forget that Russians can code as well, so why are they fucked up by the American (non socialist) software vendors pulling the rug ?

Fuck me, some of the facists (non socialist) company's which depend on this shit at this end could do with pulling the rug on their chosen vendors software ...............

When will the world WAKE UP

ALF

Zlib crash-an-app bug finally squashed, 17 years later

Well that solves that little issue then .................

Thanks be given that the cause of this "issue" with Open Office and Libre Office on this machine, has at last been discovered.............. maybe I'll be able to get some work done without the damn things crashing and losing some of the previously Saved data.

Not being a Dev, I didn't feel that I had any right to complain, not even certain if the fault lay with the hardware, the OS or some FOSS dependency which only shows up with this hardware/software architecture.

In my mind, this issue was a fault of my own creating for using Microsoft's Windose 10 .......... and may still be the culprit as this issue doesn't occur when using the same FOSS office applications on my ancient MacBook, or the rather older XP box.

As a purely End User I am particularly grateful to all FOSS contributers, 'cos otherwise I could not afford to take part in the Information Age. Praise be for Open Office, Libre Office, GIMP, Linuxii etcetera......

Cheers everyboby ....

ALF

A Snapdragon in a ThinkPad: Lenovo unveils the X13s

Is this price tag correct ?

WoW WTF ? Is this chopped down little brat the same price as the old bugger of a MACBook Pro of the same screen size ? Well again I have to say WTF ?

Go for it muppets..........

Gob agape........

ALF

Hello Slackware, our old friend: Veteran Linux distribution releases version 15.0 at last

So much praise for someting unavailable today

I read about Slackware with great enthusiasm and read quite a bit about the installation etc. Thought OK I'm going to see how much it costs to buy the supported distro on CD. Unfortunatley the web site is MIA (missing in action).

First Firefox and Brave give "Secure Connection Failed" message even though the url is https.

Brave eventually says, "This site can't be reached".

Not a good advert for the OS. I hope things improve.

ALF

Facebook exposes 'god mode' token that could siphon data

Re: And people still use this clusterface?

Maybe you just don't understand "normal" people. I hope you are not a developer.

ALF

This malware gang plants incriminating evidence on PCs, gets victims arrested

Re: Nasties

Is now on the SO register

Hmmm

Are you sure that group on the Indian Govermins isn't an extension of our Common Wealth Orifice which is still in operation, still responsible for exporting the old faithfuls, hashish, opium, etc.

ALF

Re: Nasties

Oh it does happen here. I have witnessed corruption like you would expect in Soviet Russia in the 60's being conducted in the Crown Court in Oxford not too long ago. Yes, it was on the rising tide of disgust at kiddie porn users and involves someone that I know quite well, someone who didn't know how to set up an email account at that time. Believe it or not, the CPS used Internet Exploder download logs as evidence to prove Uploading and got away with it, despite my protests to my friends lawyer. My evidence was not going to be accepted as relevant by his lawyer or the CPS, despite my having a BSc in Information Systems. It was obvious from the evidence provided that the owner of the device had logged in to an mobile phone account whilst waiting for the nasty video to download to that device. The owner of the device claimed to the police that her partner had downloaded the dodgy video. There was no evidence of uploading anything (which is the illegal activity) to anywhere by my friend or anyone else. He was still convicted and is not on the sex offenders register for uploading kiddie porn.

So don't get carried away thinking this sort of fucked up shit cannot happen here. It can and it does.

ALF

UK government opens consultation on medic-style register for Brit infosec pros

Ditto

The legal/justice industry has taken a similar step recently. Which means as you guessed, in order to continue providing Advocacy for disadvantaged and disabled people, I now need to be a legal professional of some qualification first. So it looks like the end of disadvantaged people having an Advocate with them when they are being grilled by DWP, or the Housing Benefit people, or those very nice Personal Independence Payments Assessors.

Maybe it is time to get me coat ........

ALF

First they came for Notepad. Now they're coming for Task Manager

OOPS!

Thoght it said, anaesthetic......

ALF

UK data watchdog slaps Ministry of Justice with Enforcement Notice for breaking GDPR law

If only it were the DoJ

I am currently the subject of legal proceedings where my landlord took 6 months to reply to my SAR. When they did respopnd, I received the paperwork several weeks after the trial I had needed the SAR for. I received several hundred pages of printed documents containing my name but, where every other piece of informatin - like the date, the person who wrote the letter etc, had been fully redacted.

In the same case the landlords legal counsel produced the Court Bundle in printed format, only with several pages of my evidence having been altered. Pages containing flow charts and dev ops diagrams had been removed entirely from the document. Other pages were freshly presented now spanning over several pages, separated by many other pages without any refence made that would join the columns back to the tables they belong to.

Neither organisation has held up their hand to alteration of information GDPR (ii), except for the legals who wrote a letter saying "they did not alter anything, the missing pages were like that when they picked up the document before printing, and ANYWAY, I did not rely on the evidence during the hearing".

So much for the ICO, who did confirmed that these companies had broken the Data Protection Act but also informed me that they (the ICO) cannot do anything about it, it is up to me to bring these very powerful bodies to book over their DPA - GDPR breaches.

SHEESH what a loada sh*t UK Data Protection Law is.

ALF

Version 7 of WINE is better than ever at running Windows apps where they shouldn't

Considering

the unconsiderable, my Windows 10 machines have never been capable of running an office or a business, not like earlier version of that damned Operating System.

No Linux OS that I ever installed made itself a complete replacement for Windose XP/2000/7. I still had to run Windose machines for some work as the Linux distro was experiencing issues which I could not resolve.

The most annoying of all these experiences was Open Office and/or Libre Office falling over every so often. Microsoft Word was not beautiful and their devs thought it cool to keep redesigning stuff until it finally broke altogether.

So even though I own several incarnations of Microsoft Orifice I had to keep investing in rebuying the same programmes and Oses, only to accept less functionality and the none ownership of Office software, only re-paying again to write a fooking letter, but now of course much more slowly than I could using Word 6.

I can see not that development in Office applications is digging it's own grave on all fronts, Linux, Google, Microshite, why can't I write a letter or use a small spreadsheet without the damn thing closing down "bad allocation" seems to be the excuse I get these days from either Apache or Libre......

Bad allocation indeed....................

Canon makes 'all-in-one' printers that refuse to scan when out of ink, lawsuit claims

DITTO

My Canon MG 5450 is a few years old and I mean two or three, but it has "developed" this issue of late.

I am used to being told that the printer has run out of ink and that I need to order new stuff before I can proceed when printing. I got used to ignoring the message, and I wait 5 minutes or more rather than pressing CANCEL. Wahey, the printer noisily gets it act together and knocks out another 100 or so pages in full colour.

Not to be out done the scanner had a go at pulling the wool over my eyes just the other day.......talk about intelligence.....no it wouldn't let me scan a document into the PC because I had run out of ink.............

Not to be out done by Canon's AI updated shaftware, I popped the offending ink cartridge under the cold tap then popped it back into the printer, and Wahey no.2 the scanner duly jumped to and allowed me to scan 40 odd pages without any complaints.

WHAT IS GOING ON ?

I know Canon do not want me to print in B and W when I have run out or am about to run out of one colour of ink. I have two fucking full black cartridges in this noisy beast but I am not allowed to print using it..............

BUT why the f*cking hell is WINDOSE 10 unable to talk to my USB scanner when GIMP et al can. Even Canon's Image Garden dries to a crisp weedy yard if I invoke it's scanning services under WINDOSE 10.

A BSc in Information Systems has not helped in thihs instance. I just won't buy Canon or HP or (x,y,z) printer scanner in future.

ALF

No defence for outdated defenders as consumer AV nears RIP

Re: AV "protection"

I have been using Sophos products since before I graduate at Oxford Brookes in 2006. Sophos has always produced a Home User product which is free and has over the years stopped pleanty of unwanted applications from ruining my computing experience.

Today I shell out a paltry sum to the same company as their Home User product now provides protection for up 10 different computing devices owned by my family menbers. It also provides end point security for all of our mobile phones. It works on all major OSes. They also produce a stand alone Firewall.

I am very grateful for the level of protection that I believe that I and my family are getting via Sophos products. I recommend the company's products to my clients and friends.

I know that this isn't the Final Solution but please don't burst my bubble...........

ALF

Intel's mystery Linux muckabout is a dangerous ploy at a dangerous time

Does this mean

that in the near future - Intel's customers will be faced with the dire need to rip out and replace all of their recently purchased Intel produced hardware, just like we did with the Huawei 5G stuff.

Maybe it's a trend, Intel closely followed in third position by NVidia .............. someone is losing gound on the straight.

FFS it's a sign of the times, the software we must use is almost totally shit (Win 8/10/11) and the hardware it's running on is f**king unreliable with baked in backdoors and undisclosed instructions sets. Well no one actually knows about that anymore ............. just what we all need on the back of this Damnpanic, eh.

ALF

Government-favoured child safety app warned it could violate the UK's Investigatory Powers Act with message-scanning tech

Here we go again "were doing it to safeguard children"

So what's wrong with using Pegasus if you are a parent who has a level of NO TRUST with their children.

For fucks sake just take the plug off their PC or take away their mobile phone. It's the cheaper option, it'll work, save you loadsa money and won't break any UK Computer Misuse Whacks.

ALF

Re: Solution

were doing it to safeguard children

?

ALF

Re: not what it seems

There may be something wrong with the way you are attempting to train eejits who probably shouldn't have been employed in that eMail reading/sending role in the first place.

Do you use a "ready made" training software for the eejits ?

ALF

No.........

Maybe they're Americans ?

ALF

Alleged Brit SIM-swapper will kill himself if extradited to US for trial, London court told

Hmmm

A lot of sound and rational arguments, however what if the miscreant blags their way onto devices with common or garaden software, say like Facebook. They get caught in the act, then should they go to stand trial in every country that has a victim involved in the scam ?

This seems like the behaviour of a pack of dogs to me.

It's also seems obvious that if someone bombs Russia from a computing device in the USA, that the Russian Government would want the US culprit to show up in court in Russia ........

Don't it get confusing ?

If you hack someone in every country, it could become another World Tour tea shirt slogan.............

ALF

Infosec bods: After more than a year, Sky gets round to squashing hijacking bug in 6m home broadband routers

Re: Oh, ther joys of running unverified code ...

And you can't change the default password in another, very widely distributed home router, one which I am still waiting on the ISP's advice on how it can be changed, if at all.

ALF

Re: Oh, ther joys of running unverified code ...

The fact that any User can write html via a WordPress/GoDaddy/et/al App, without having any knowledge of object oriented programming etc. is leading to a majority of business web sites - which in the main - do not work. Or in other cases are working fine, BUT in ways that the creator never intended and FFS - the "owner" is totally unaware of any unwanted activity, because they are a CEO's of small business/charity/notforprofit/educational/health organisation etc., and have many other pressing CEO type issues to deal with day to day.

Which means that - we are going to be subjected to more and more of this zzz.zombieware.html as time goes by.

A computer driving licence was touted once in the UK - in the days of yore, but I've heard nothing more about it.

I mean, what is the difference between a "radio button" and a "tick box" when you are throwing together a Googledocs "form" in your tea break ? Which is of course vitally important to business knowledge and is going to be circulated amongst your actual Subscribers. You are asking them to complete said webform by clicking on the link in the eMail message .................... sent from a person who doesn't know how to "correctly" use the "form fields" provided in the eMail client and so compounds their meagre attempt at clusterfucking - and sends VIP message - from their private mobile phone eMail App.

I could go on - but what is the point ?

This point is that this issue is not going to go away or get any better is it ? When anyone and everyone can circulate really crap code at the drop of a hat, we'll carry on getting everything that we really really really deserve.

ALF

Russia's orbital insanity is almost beyond redemption – but there's space for improvement

Russia bashing

Ahem, it's not too long ago that NASA proudly announced it's abillity to toss old equipment ( 1 piece = 9 tonnes apparently) into space using a robotic arm.

Well score none for the fucking robots............

I wonder if Artificial Intelligence is at work !

OK, I'll get my space suit..........

ALF

UK Telecommunications Act – aka 'power to strip out Huawei' – makes it to the statute book

If you trust the USA, UK, Australia, Isreal etc..

ALF

Re: Meanwhile, at Cisco's lobbyists...

And Nokia is a trade name that anyone can buy, if they got the right contacts of course..

Oh yeah,

We have all been reliant since day one of the digital evolution - on crappy code from the likes of Micorsoft, Adobe, Apple, Cisco, FaceBook, You Tube, ..........et al, and not forgetting a couple of Computer Security software applications I won't name ............. the list is close to inexhaustible and shows no sign of stopping.......

But the Growvermins of UK and USofA think fit to name and shame and ban the only technology company to have got 5G hardware sorted, (whilst we get our own world beating hardwhere manu f.. a.)

Oh fuck it........ you know what I am saying

ALF

Future of the three NHS bodies managing health tech in doubt after £2.1bn cash injection

Re: Another one

Which has always been troubled by recalcitrant staff who refuse to use the digtal system, or worse still, decide to fuck it up by entering spuriouis data, or supplying the real data too late, etc..........

Re: Has yet to produce a business plan

Take to go vermins twats out of the equation ?

ALF

I wish these idiots would stop their IT spend wanking...........

That amount of money could have been spent on more doctors in the GP surgeries and Health Centres, so that when you need a prescription for antibiotics say, you don't need to embark on a 20 mile drive to your nearest A&E because you cannot get an appointment sooner than two weeks time at your local health centre.

That amount of money could be spent chaparoning all those really ill people who turn up at the health centre at 7:30am so they can hope to get an appointment to see a doctor for their health that er, needs them to see a doctor........................, so they can be allowed to sit down inside the atrium instead of being forced to stand outside in February's rain - whilst they await the receptionist telling them, "computer says no" there arent' any appointments left for today.

The problem is twats wasting public money of funky IT projects that fill the pockets of their mates without ever delivering anything besides bad news.

IT, it isn't IT, it's financial corruption, none of these fucking projects will ever be delivered for the public good, it wouldn't make fiscal sense to do so...........

ALF

The inside story of ransomware repeatedly masquerading as a popular JS library for Roblox gamers

Re: Sympathy?

The targets are under 13 years of age.

ALF

Survey shows XP lingers on while Windows 11 makes a 0.21% ripple in the enterprise

Re: But I just got Windows XP yesterday!

Or play proper Solitaire !

ALF

Re: Security

Running XP is probably more secure than Windose 11 ?

I'm assuming what I read is plausible, that cracking a Windose 11 box is more attractive proposition than Windows XP, as there are more Windose 11 Users, er .......... but that isn't the case.

Will it ever be the case ?

ALF

Re: Which OS

Since I went over to Windose 10 boxen for the daily grind, office admin has become a nightmare. Open Office and Libre Office both do the same unexpected crashes every half hour or so and have to re-cover the docuemt I was working on, had saved but the saved work is not evident and has to be re created !!!!!

Is this an issue with both Open Office and Libre Office ?

I do not think so. They work fine under Linux, XP, Win 7.........

So I would expect that neither open office software will work properly under Windose 11 and so my next OS change will take me back to using Debian for my daily administrative grunt work.

Happy to know that it'll take only twenty minutes to install and configure Debian, as opposed to - as many days for the Microshite OSes I've dallied with over the years.

ALF

Re: Adieu but not goodbye XP

Indeed, my audio engineering is still done on XP 'cos it has been that way since I got into sound engineering. It requires no internet so isn't at any great risk of anything other than the hardware failing. It still scans and prints documents on the Canon PSC, which is more than I can say for my Windose 10 machine....

I am ever warey of Microsoft upgrading this Windose 10 box to Windose 11 during an update - without my agrreement. They cannot do that to my XP box. NA!

ALF

'We are not people to Mark Zuckerberg, we are the product' rages Ohio's Attorney General in Facebook lawsuit

Re: A Meta spokesperson...

was it really a spokes person or just some more AI shite ?

ALF

Agree

Total agreement, these rich and wanna get richer twats are the fuckers behind most of the IT shite we have in 2021.

So much for Sir Tim's idea of IT levelling the playing field ...............

ALF

Re: Ohio’s Attorney General filed!

They put their monies on the devil's horse then complain when it didn't run true.

Gamblers gambling..............you win some, you lose some, they win the most, somebody somewhere lost a shirt........

YAWN.........

ALF

Red Hat 8.5 released with SQL Server and .NET 6 ... this is Linux, right?

Re: Hmmm

I piss people off just like you by asking that same question.

It's almost unbelievable, but not entirely, and here's another reason for my advice to clients, to NOT buy into Redhat, you might as well buy Microshite Windose, so now you do not have to.

FFS

Alf

Oh well, here goes the bath water

If you must pay for your Linux, why not buy Windows 11 and run Redhat via a Chromebook sitting on your childs bedside cabinet.

Is this move simply entropy at work or is it just idiocy at work ?

Redhat devs must be using AI to help them decide what it's customers want it to get up to next.

ALF

AMD reveals an Epyc 50 flaws – 23 of them rated high severity. Intel has 25 bugs, too

And to put it simply, it just takes too much development time ...... so that by the time they have subjected their code to the rigour that WE desreve and are paying for, their darling of the day has vapourised away ............

Where is the profit in that approach, sorry business case........

ALF

Re: The IoT* Gift that Keeps on Giving ..... for All of the Right Reasons?

Classic, no one could say it better, crack on amanfromMars 1, your waxing lyrical about IT is hysterical, fundamentally, it's the season to keep on giving.

I salute you.

ALF

ChaosDB: Infosec bods could pull anyone's plaintext Azure Cosmos DB keys at will from Microsoft admin tools

Re: And yet STILL ...

The MoD, the Judiciary, the DWP, HMRC, Police, British Rail, etc are using this cruft too in one form or another and have been doing so since, well since Microsoft re-invented Swiss cheese.

ALF

Re: Give me strength

What's the point in running Linux on top of Windows, oh yeah, security !!!!!

ALF

Re: Chaos DB

We could say the same for Microsoft, still.

UK aims for 'openness and fairness' in its AI Strategy – unless we're talking about favoured contractors

Re: "extensive guidance on how firms can use the technology ethically and transparently"

Aritificial Intelligence for everyone, yahey, rolled out by Microshite, you'll need a MACBroke and 6G broadband, yeah, inclusivity brought to you by AI, yeah..

Fork Off

ALF

Re: Hypocrisy rules ok, uk

Just shows what AI can do when the world's future is at stake, no worries...........UK has amazing trains, yer know.....

ALF

Re: Free for all

Booking.com's list of attendees from UK at Formual 1 held in Brazil 2021, during COVID Lockdown, would be good for public consumption, who was onboard those 30,000 private flights out of one fucking UK airport,....and the introduction to UK of Brazillian COVID

Very transparent...........not very Intelligent, dickheads...

ALF

Re: Urgently Wanted ... for Downing Street Office

Yes, of course they do, 'cos if you don't use those exact words, your opinion won't be counted.........AI aye aye aye,

"Having exited the EU, we have the opportunity to build on our world-leading regulatory regime", and we all have enough experience of this day to day to know for sure it's fucking hogwash, greenwash, sleazewash, ITwash........

ALF

I've got me coat and I'm heading for Alpha Centauri......