Posts by DJV

Google: I don't know why you say Allo, I say goodbye

Allo

Is it significant that the only mention of Allo that I have any recollection about is this article? It's launch and subsequent presence bypassed me completely.

It's December 2018, and a rogue application can still tell your Apple Mac: I'm your El Capitan now

Re: The problem is...

There are plenty of alternative bits of software that claim to be able to do it - doing a search for "iphone data to pc without itunes" brings up lots of results though I have only personally checked out SyncIOS, which seemed to work fine - www.syncios.com

Capita: We are seeking staff to join our board. Just two please

Re: Can

Nah, too overqualified!

Windows 10 security question: How do miscreants use these for post-hack persistence?

"I wonder who at Microsoft is such reference user"

I thought Steve Ballmer had left ages ago...

Ooo shiny! First Visual Studio 2019 sneak peek here in time for Chrimbo

Agreed!

And where the hell have the corner icons gone? Windows Explorer, Chrome and Thunderbird - I'm looking at you! As a web developer I sometimes have tons of windows open across my dual monitors with many half hidden behind other windows. Sometimes have to stare at something for a while before I'm 100% certain it is what I think it is!

How the mighty have fallen: Anglian Water knocks Google off perch as UK's best workplace

Oh pipe down all of you!

(nt)

Why is my Windows 10 preview build ticking? Microsoft reminds users that previews have timebombs

Fluent design?

You sure they're not reading from a book entitled "Flatulent Design"?

Quality

The day the Windows team actually focuses on quality I'll be outside with a large net catching elevated avian bacon!

Gartner to wearables biz: Through failure comes success!

I'm hoping...

...that Gartner predict that I will never become rich...

...which should increase my chances phenomenally.

OneDrive is broken: Microsoft's cloudy storage drops from the sky for EU users

Amazing, my kettle and wristwatch are still working as well. Thank you, Microsoft!

</sarcasm>

Question: How fast is the Windows 10 October 2018 Update rolling out? Answer: Not very

Yeah but...

...have they fixed the network drive mapping problems yet? Or is that "minor" annoyance still only scheduled to be clobbered next year?

3ve Offline: Countless Windows PCs using 1.7m IP addresses hacked to 'view' up to 12 billion adverts a day

Re: "3ve" (pronounced "Eve".)"

I pronounce it "Throatwobbler Mangrove" like any normal sane person.

Yours

Raymond Luxury Yacht.

Doctors join wombats in sh!tting bricks to help parents relax about kids chowing down on Lego

@jake re: 555

Youch! You must have been having the time(r) of your life!

Microsoft suffers the Tuesday shakes as Exchange Online continues to be wobbly for UK users

Re: Two things that are far far away

I'd put money on the Mars lander being being more resilient!

We all fall together. Azure MFA takes a tumble for the second week running

MFA

I suspect some people are beginning to think that MFA should actually stand for Microsoft Fuck All - because that's all its SLA is worth!

Roll up, roll up, HPE's composable infra charabanc is coming

Cloud

"“I think a lot of customers were hopeful, two or three years ago, that public cloud would simplify things but in fact it’s made everything more complicated"

Colour me surprised (not!)

Microsoft reveals terrible trio of bugs that knocked out Azure, Office 362.5 multi-factor auth logins for 14 hours

Re: Scaleable?

Only the outages are scalable!

Capita seeks new networking chief: Up for it?

Hey...

...who wants to drink from the poisoned chalice? Any takers?

Domain name 'admin' role eyed up as latest victim of Whois system's GDPRmeggdon

"unelected Eurocrats"

Oh, you mean MEPs. The ones who are ELECTED every few years by the PUBLIC. Idiot!

Great Scott! Is nothing sacred? US movie-goers vote Back To The Future as most-wanted reboot

Re: Letting people vote...

Ah, I see what you did there and fully commend you.

Openreach names 81 lucky locations to be plugged into its super-zippy Gfast pipe

Re: Darkest rural Spain.

Do you do Airbnb?

Office 365 Exchange enjoys a less than manic Monday. Users? Not so much

"The rest is rubbish"

SNAFU

Barnet Council reckons Capita's dropped the ball on outsourced services

Crapita

"some aspects of our service to Barnet Council have not met the standard we and our client expect"

Well, given it's Crapita, I would have expected a total clusterfuck and I'm sure they wouldn't have disappointed me!

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

"But were they Black"

Give em a week or two...

Well that's just spliffing: UK Amazon merchants peddling Mary Jane

"So at some point in the past there was a time when the British public were all entirely law abiding? When was this golden age exactly? Perhaps back when we were all living in caves?"

Sigh... some bastard stole the cave I was living in...

Microsoft: You looking at me funny? Oh, you just want to sign in

TPM mandatory to run Win10?

No, it isn't. My PC can* run W10 but doesn't have TPM. I think you are getting confused with the MS requirement for NEW devices to have TPM as stated here:

"As of July 28, 2016, all new device models, lines or series must implement and be in compliance with the International Standard ISO/IEC 11889:2015 or the Trusted Computing Group TPM 2.0 Library and a component which implements the TPM 2.0 must be present and enabled by default from this effective date."

The above is taken from: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/minimum-hardware-requirements-overview

Older devices can run W10 (if they must) even if they don't have TPM.

*It doesn't actually have W10 on it at the moment - I am not that stupid! However, I do have an SSD in my desk drawer that has W10 installed (upgraded for free about 2 years ago from a clone of my W7 install) for when W7 goes end of life. Once every so often I put that SSD into my PC just so it can update itself to the latest horror-filled TITSUP version. Then I put it back in the drawer and carry on using W7.

Fantastic!

I can't wait to start using this!

Hold on, you mean I have to use MS Edge? And a Microsoft account? And W10 AWOL 1809?

Bye...

When selling security awareness training by email, probably a good shout not to hit 'reply all'

Nasties?

Shirley, you mean "features" in MS parlance. At least with Office 363.5 there's a good chance your non-BCC, Reply All email will fail to go out because Office 362.4 happens to have just had one of its regular TITSUP sessions.

Merry Christmas, you filthy directors: ICO granted powers to fine bosses for spam calls

Yay!

See title!

Germany pushes router security rules, OpenWRT and CCC push back

"I wouldn't recommend Mikrotik kit to Joe Average"

Agree, especially considering this:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/thousands-of-mikrotik-routers-are-snooping-on-user-traffic/

Finally a platform for train puns: IBM Halt station derailed

IBM Station caught on camera here as part of last year's All The Stations: https://youtu.be/Oe3y1RMhbRM?t=183

Azure, Office 365 go super-secure: Multi-factor auth borked in Europe, Asia, USA

Re: I'm locked out of my account for work

Ah, but do you paid the same?

Holy moley! The amp, kelvin and kilogram will never be the same again

Re: Kibble balance?

"Unfortunately Kibble balances are a) insanely expensive, b) the size of a small room, and hence c) only exist in around five special laboratories around the world"

They forgot: d) have to be replaced often due to cats eating them.

Microsoft menaced with GDPR mega-fines in Europe for 'large scale and covert' gathering of people's info via Office

Re: You paid

Glad you added the final paragraph - I thought I was having a deja vu moment!

Microsoft slips ads into Windows 10 Mail client – then U-turns so hard, it warps fabric of reality

Re: Windows Mail gets worse and worse

"The next iteration will remove the capability to send and receive email altogether."

And MS will promote that as a feature to keep you safe from spam.

France: Let's make the internet safer. America, Russia, China: Let's go with 'no' on that

"we insist you send us a mail for corrections"

Yeah, I did. They've now corrected it but haven't put up an "Updated to say..." footnote as yet.

I hope El Reg isn't following in the path of Microsoft by making the users do all the QA testing!

That amazing Microsoft software quality, part 97: Windows Phone update kills Outlook, Calendar

Re: How long before

Yeah, but would anyone notice?

"very difficult to stop the process and remove bad stuff"

In Microsoft's case that sort of thing is for the official testers* to do!

* i.e. the users.

Brit boffins build 'quantum compass'... say goodbye to those old GPS gizmos, possibly

Re: Had to be said.

Damn, you beat me to it! I came here to post something very similar (though it might have mentioned a certain Boris J by name).

My hoard of obsolete hardware might be useful… one day

I've still got a few original Commodore PET Software cassettes (MicroChess, Invaders, LEM Lander, Super Star Trek).

Re: Guilty!

Some places are still selling that sort of stuff:

http://www.bmsoftware.co.uk/windows/index.htm

How one programmer's efforts to stop checking in buggy code changed the DevOps world

Oracle

"Hudson, alas, foundered under the control of Oracle"

For some reason, I am failing to be surprised.

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

Re: following an update to the freshly released Insider build

"To the relief of the bruised Insider team (but no one else), it soon became apparent that the issue is not just isolated to those brave souls trying out preview code, but over many versions of Windows 10."

RTFA, idiot!

HSBC now stands for Hapless Security, Became Compromised: Thousands of customer files snatched by crims

@Ben Tasker

"U2F token, TOTP or something else"

As long as it's not a TOTP compered by a certain Mr Saville! Shudder!

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

Re: Last Time I Tried Running VirtualBox...

A while back they were adding hardening and this caused a large number of hiccups. They appear to be (mostly) over the problems that caused now.

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.