Posts by DJV

We don' need no stinkin' bounties: VirtualBox guest-to-host escape zero-day lands at GitHub

I suspect many long-standing VirtualBox users were as dismayed as I was when Sun bought the original VirtualBox company. I bet many were also horrified when Oracle bought Sun - I certainly was. At least MySQL has been (sort of) 'rescued' from Oracle's clutches in the form of MariaDB. I really hope VirtualBox has some sort of escape plan in place as well.

Macs to Linux fans: Stop right there, Penguinista scum, that's not macOS. Go on, git outta here

"I never could get the ZX81 ROM to work on my Commodore 64"

Back in the 1980s I wrote a small Spectrum program that would change the display to two shades of blue and display "**** Commodore 64 Basic V2 ****" followed by "64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BYTES FREE" and then "READY." and a loop that generated what looked like a flashing cursor. Leaving that running in the computer depts of department stores confused a good number of people. I once managed to convince someone that a Spectrum running the program had had a C64 ROM installed by mistake.

UK computer dealer Aria PC loses £750k VAT fraud appeal attempt in THAT case

I hope he paid the VAT on all those spades he must have bought for digging that hole deeper and deeper!

The nights are drawing in. Pour a cup of cocoa and join us for Windows 10 Autumnwatch

Re: Action

The MS Autumnwatch has video of people running around like headless chickens screaming, "My files, my files!"

British fixed broadband is cheap … and, er, fairly nasty – global survey

Re: Downloads

I test various operating systems - the ISOs for those are generally in the region of 2 to 4 GB. The largest I've seen recently are Devuan 2 at 4.5GB and the DMG file for macOS Mavericks at 5.1GB.

ICO poised to fine Leave campaign and Arron Banks’ insurance biz £135,000

£135,000

Is that all? It should be far more, and he and his cronies should face a prison sentence for their underhand dealings and the trouble they are inflicting on this country.

Heart Internet stops beating, starts Monday with big portion of FAIL

Interesting...

I once used them for hosting but wasn't that impressed by the lack of value for money. However, I have been using them for some of my domain names for a few years now. The general resilience of DNS appears to prevented any problems with my sites today but, given that they are now part of GoDaddy (who I've clashed with and abandoned before), I'm now wondering if it's time to start moving my domain names elsewhere. Any recommendations?

Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too

Re: James Clerk Maxwell

And he had a silver hammer!

5.1 update sends Apple's Watch 4 bling spinning into an Infinite Loop of reboot cycles

Re: It's time people stop buying these things.

How do you know that it's time to do that? Did your watch tell you?

£220k fines for dodgy dialling duo who didn't do due dil on data

@Sonny Jim

Whooooosh!

Bomb squad descends on suspicious package to find something much more dangerous – a Journey cassette

Crimes against music

How do Journey's crimes against music compare to those of, say, Justin Bieber?

E.g. the damage caused by 1 x Bieber.CAM could equal 1000 x Journey.CAM

Maybe this could be the start of a whole new El Reg unit of measurement!

Shift-work: Keyboards heaped in a field push North Yorks council's fly-tipping buttons

Re: Examine them

The crud in there says a lot about the user...

...and so would the inevitable DNA that's very likely to be present as well.

Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads

Re: Would they allow it if...

Not impolite, but apropros in an IT mag, is this French village: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DloNTEnW4AAeA9d.jpg (perfectly SFW, in case you're worried)

Yes, but do visitors find it unexpectedly inaccessible at apparently random times?

Microsoft to staff: We remain locked and loaded with US military – and will keep adding voice to AI ethics debate

"including from Microsoft"!!

"we want the people who defend it to have access to the nation’s best technology, including from Microsoft"

Did they really say the "including from Microsoft" bit with a straight face?

Sorry friends, I'm afraid I just can't quite afford the Bitcoin to stop that vid from leaking everywhere

Re: Have fun with scammers!

That would be good, but wouldn't work in this particular case as the "From" email address is your own.

One day we may have an unspoofable email address scheme running worldwide, but don't hold your breath in the meantime. And, regarding spam in general, I seem to remember many years ago (14 to be exact) that a certain person was saying that spam would be dead within 2 years. Oh yes, here it is:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/26/well_kill_spam_in_two/

Looks like he may have been a tiny bit out with his predictions!

Re: Racist?

Nope. Your editor needs to get new glasses, or a life!

The best way to screw the competition? Do what they can't, in a fraction of the time

Re: Doesn't work for us

I hope you eventually managed to convince them of the error of their ways or, at least, charged them a "hassle fee" to make up for their idiocy.

Ethernet 10base2

Yep, when I first worked in IT for the local Training & Enterprise Quango the whole place was 10base2 so each cable from the server room connected a dozen or more PCs together.

It was always fun tracing which of the many connections in the pile of spaghetti behind the desks had fallen apart when half an office had suddenly gone off line. These events were usually accompanied by the manager of said office breathing down YOUR neck because one of HIS/HER staff had moved their desk and brought the whole thing crashing down.

Word up: Embedded vids in Office docs can hide embedded nasties, infosec bods warn

Typical Microsoft

Microsoft will no doubt keep up the "head in the sand" attitude until the loophole starts being used for some massive web-wide nasty that can't be ignored.

Yer a solicitor, 'arry! Indian uni takes cues from 'Potterverse' to teach students law

Re: Ralph gets an 'F'

Be proud, Ralph - that's better than most Llamas get! Most of them can't even get the hang of using a keyboard enough to post on El Reg!

Regarding wands

I expect the manufacturer will attempt to cover any legal liabilities using the small print in the WEULA (or should that be EWULA?).

Worrying Windows 10 wrecking-ball weapon weirdly wanders wildly on worldwide web

Security

But... but... but... Microsoft have been telling us for years that their latest OS is the fastest, best, most secure etc.?

I'm beginning to suspect that they derive their levels of fastness, bestness and most secureness something like this:

secLevel = abs (get_security_level ());

if (secLevel > previousWindowsSecLevel) printf ("Hey look, it's more secure!");

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

Re: Who even uses Windows ZIP handling?

Normal, non-techy users who don't even realise there are better tools out there. Unfortunately, that probably means most of them.

I ship you knot: 2,400-year-old Greek trading vessel found intact at bottom of Black Sea

Yep...

...the ZX-400.

'The inmates have taken over the asylum': DNS godfather blasts DNS over HTTPS adoption

Re: Who needs DNS anyway?

Doesn't work where you have multiple virtual servers all running out of a single IP, which is most of the small to medium sites nowadays.

Can't get pranked by your team if nobody in the world can log on

Rotate the monitor

In another life I was a trainee TV engineer back in the last days of valves and swap-out printed circuit boards. When engineers worked on a TV in the workshop there was always a mirror built into the workbench so that you see the screen while working on the TV's innards - of course, the view of the screen was always back to front but we got completely used to that (which probably explains why I can still write backwards). On many TV sets the scan coils that drove the CRT beam horizontally were connected by a couple of single wire connectors and swapping them around would show the picture back to front, so that it became the right way around in the mirror. Pranking this swap while the engineer happened to not be working on a set was not uncommon situation and there were several instances of a set getting as far as the customer's house before the prank was spotted (usually by the customer who was unused to seeing things the wrong way around).

Is this cuttlefish really all that cosmic? Ubuntu 18.10 arrives with extra spit, polish, 4.18 kernel

"the system has a more modern and 'flatter' look"

Oh, good...

</sarcasm>

Apple to dump Intel CPUs from Macs for Arm – yup, the rumor that just won't die is back

@TVU

"sliver-thin lifestyle toys fit only for making Facebook updates and watching cat videos"

...and keyboards that snuff it upon encountering a microscopic speck of dust!

Microsoft points to a golden future where you can make Windows 10 your own

@NealOKelly

Either:

1) You forgot the <sarcasm> tags.

or

2) WAIT! You were really serious? (goes and lies down...)

"builds may contain bugs that might be painful for some"

"Windows 10 will contain bugs features that will be painful for all"

FTFY

In Windows 10 Update land, nobody can hear you scream

"whole W10 system is completely borked"

You mean they've even managed to bork Notepad as well!!?

Installing Windows 7 on Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs

It may be worth exploring a few articles like this:

https://www.windowspasswordsreset.com/computer/how-to-install-windows-7-on-intel-skylake-laptop-and-desktop-computer.html

I haven't tried this myself but I gather people are repoting successful installs.

"incorrectly"?

According to the software giant, the Intel driver was “incorrectly pushed to devices via Windows Update”

So, which idiot or system allowed non-validated code through onto Windows Update? if a person, then why didn't the system prevent this? Let's face it, the whole WU system is completely borked.

Once more with feeling: Windows 10 October 2018 Update inches closer to relaunch

Re: Congrats to the Windows Insider team

Interesting that the build number with the specified problems was 17763.17 and the new release is called 17763.104 - does that mean that it took 86 internal builds between 17 and 104 that didn't fix those particular problems?

Scanning an Exchange server for a virus that spreads via email? What could go wrong?

Yes

Very common! A short while after the ILOVEYOU outbreak I was working for a "famous insurance company" that was (mainly) based in and named after the city I lived in (Norwich). We used remote access from our base in the city centre to the servers in the "lights out" data centre server farms four miles away out on the outskirts. It was fantastic!

Well...

...only for a weird value of "fantastic" that meant that...

...the lights in the server farm were never actualy out because remote access was bloody slow and, for "security", sessions were set to always time out after 15 minutes which, due to the slowness of the network in general and remote access in particular, meant that you barely got more than 20 mouse clicks and 10 fields filled in remotely before the whole thing shut down on you (if it had managed to stay up for the full 15 minutes, itself a rare feat). So, it was often quicker to catch the regular company-provided shuttle bus to the data centre and go and access the server non-remotely (hence the lights never being out as the data centre was full of pissed off people all doing the same non-remote thing).

Huge ice blades on Jupiter’s Europa will make it a right pain in the ASCII to land on

Attempt no landing there...

...unless you fancy [a close shave / a Brazilian / castration without anesthetic] or all three on the way in!

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 owners: So, about that other broken update…

Far too many times...

Apache OpenOffice, the Schrodinger's app: No one knows if it's dead or alive, no one really wants to look inside

using Apache for several years to open .doc attachments

I usually use Apache to open web pages...

(hee hee!)

I find your lack of faith disturbing, IBM: Big Blue fires photon torpedo at Pentagon JEDI cloud contract

Re: “IBM knows what it takes to build a world-class cloud.”

Atmosphere and water...

...or, in IBM's case, maybe the sweat of about-to-be pink-slipped workers and management hot air.

UK.gov withdraws life support from flagship digital identity system

keep the vegetable alive

Hah, that immediately reminded me of this!

Microsoft has signed up to the Open Invention Network. We repeat. Microsoft has signed up to the OIN

Blimey!

Did hell just freeze over?

Remember that lost memory stick from Heathrow Airport? The terrorist's wet dream? So does the ICO

Yes, but...

...more importantly has a HAL PR drone issued a press release saying something like "security is our highest priority" so that we can all snigger and laugh even more at their expense/lies/bulllshit?

Which? That smart home camera? The one with the vulns? Really?

Funnily enough...

...I've just had an email from Which asking me to do a survey. One question was: "If you could pick one consumer issue you would like to see Which? campaign on, what would that be?"

I replied with: "Improve the accuracy of articles on your own website. See: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/08/smart_camera_which_wtf/"

First it came for your desktop, now Windows 10 1809 is coming for your Things

Machine Learning

Looks like it's learning very fast about how to delete your documents!

Microsoft yanks the document-destroying Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Re: Insiders - should be better than this

My input to the Insiders programme has on most occasions been to say "stop fucking this or that up" - but they don't, they quite happily continue to fuck more and more things up every day.

"Their management needs Linus to give them a lecture about not breaking things."

Hah, I'd love to see that! And just when Linus has promised to tone his language down - this would (quite rightly) get the sweary fountain running at full blast again!

@mage

"MS developer best practice"

Best joke of the day!

Convenient switch hides an inconvenient truth

Blimey, I thought everyone knew that one!

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=12%20inch%20pianist

Day two – and Windows 10 October 2018 Update trips over Intel audio

"problem with its shiny new OS and chips from Intel"

Well, that's probably because Intel chips are so rare they didn't think of testing them with the latest release...

</sarcasm>

California cracks down on Internet of Crap passwords with new law to stop the botnets

every device in someone's house beeping like mad

Hah, that reminded me of the "12 o'clock flashers" of (the rather ancient but still funny) "Internet Helpdesk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLTsSnGWMI