Posts by DJV

Windows Notepad fixed after 33 years: Now it finally handles Unix, Mac OS line endings

(Just off to check to see if hell has frozen over...)

Apple to devs: Give us notch support or … you don't wanna know

Re: why nothing about the iMac's 20th birthday?

They tried to type it on their MacBook but the keyboard kept breaking...

Zombie Cambridge Analytica told 'death' can't save it from the law

@Jack of Shadows

Fully agree with you. The CA "individuals" are probably hanging out with the likes of Kent Ertugrul (Phorm), Darl McBride (SCO) and Andrew Crossley (ACS:Law) - look them up if the names don't mean anything to you. All total scumbags.

Admin needed server fast, skipped factory config … then bricked it

80186

My first professional programming job was on a Burroughs B21, which was a rebadged Convergent Technologies system - Burroughs later took over CT with they became Unisys. The B21 used the 80186 with (I think) 256K memory and the luxury of a 5MB hard disk - well, it was 1985!

Cookie code compromise caper caught and crumbled

Just glad I've been doing this web programming lark for so long now that I've built my own framework (probably started before any of the current ones were even thought of). Anything I now add to it has to have a damn good reason for being there. If I need to add new functionality I investigate implementations elsewhere, rip them apart to see what makes them tick, so that I fully understand them before constructing my own (usually far smaller and less bloated) version.

MacBook Pro petition begs Apple for total recall of krap keyboards

"We also asked a brick wall"

Lego or real bricks? Playmobile reconstruction of said event, please?

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

"So I will try in a few weeks again to see if it improves."

It won't...

Apple's QWERTY gets dirty, leaving fanbois shirty

Re: I Have A Fix

Back in the 1980s they used to stick a whole computer under the keyboard!

That's the trouble with...

...keyboards that are designed more for looks that practicality. I loath short-travel keyboards - the one that came with my 2009 iMac is just about tolerable for small amounts of use. For normal work on my PC I'm using a 20-year-old Microsoft* keyboard with nice chunky keys that have lots of travel. It has to be ripped apart and de-gunked every few years but it survives that and is still going strong.

* One of the few decent things MS has ever built.

IETF: GDPR compliance means caring about what's in your logfiles

"What if my local shop website is using Fasthosts"

Fasthosts? Then it's your sanity that needs checking and logging!!

Two's company, Three's unbowed: You Brits will pay more for MMS snaps

Pure concidence...

...I tell you!

</sarcsm>

Cutting custody snaps too costly for cash-strapped cops – UK.gov

"You'd be employed by the Home Office?"

Or by Mark Suckallyerdataburg...

Scissors cut paper. Paper wraps rock. Lab-made enzyme eats plastic

Re: PET

Yep, I also believe it may have been one of the reasons Commodore changed the name of their original PET computer (which, they said, stood for Personal Electronic Transactor) to the CBM range. Later on they had to call the VIC-20 the VC-20 in Germany as VIC was apparently a swear word.

It's April 2018 – and Patch Tuesday shows Windows security is still foiled by fiendish fonts

@Updraft102

Yeah, the Silverlight "updates" are notorious for that. They seem to come along like buses - 3 or 4 at a time, each of which needs hiding/clobbering before the nag goes away.

@paulf

"KB2952664 has oddly re-enabled itself"

Ah, so MS have now upgraded it from a "plain patch" to "undead zombie patch" that, no doubt, staggers around groaning, "telemetreez, telemetreez!"

KB2952664

Uh oh. They are also offering the above crock of shite yet again. Previously, this has been part of GWX (though they've been stating for a while now that there's no GWX functionality in it any more). However, that patch has been proven to bork computers in the past, see:

https://borncity.com/win/2018/02/09/windows-7-8-1-updates-kb2952664-kb2976978-02-08-2018/

YMMV

Sysadmin’s worst client was … his mother! Until his sister called for help

"people won't be told"

Yeah, absolutely.

Some years ago a friend of a friend showed me a laptop he'd borrowed off someone else. The "someone else" had said he could buy it off them. I looked up the spec: not exactly new and used a Pentium 4 CPU. My advice: "Don't touch it with a bargepole - what he's asking for it is too much and, being a P4, it will probably overheat and die at some point" (as a lot of P4s had a habit of doing).

Of course, he ignored me and a few months later asked me to look at it as it was no longer turning on. As far as I could tell the CPU had died. "Told you so," I said, handing it back.

Worried we'll make ourselves extinct? Let’s be scientific about it

Re: But aren't we supposed to be dead by then?

Ah good, that will save having to do anything about all that GDPR crap!

There's security – then there's barbed wire-laced pains in the arse

"Once upon a time, IT security was easier"

Very true, on my Commodore PET I only had to make sure no one stole my C15 data cassettes!

Wanna work for El Reg? Developers needed for headline-writing AI bots

Was about to rush off my CV...

... and then noticed the date...

Microsoft patches patch for Meltdown bug patch: Windows 7, Server 2008 rushed an emergency fix

@diodesign - SoL?

What's all this got to do with Scottish Omnibuses Ltd?

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SOL

Hackers pwn Baltimore's 911 system?! Quick, someone call 91– doh!

Re: Hacking 911

...using a Vic-20

PwC: More redundos at HQ of UK 'leccy stuff shop Maplin

heads

"made no comment about the fate awaiting the 2,000 plus heads employed across the group"

Yeah, but what about the fate of their bodies?

UK watchdog finally gets search warrant for Cambridge Analytica's totally not empty offices

Given the time it's take to get the warrant...

...bet they'll find little more than a pile of well used paper shredders...

We sent a vulture to find the relaunched Atari box – and all he got was this lousy baseball cap

@AC

Yeah, I know. Total clusterf**k squared!

As someone who started off in 1979 on a CBM PET (original chiclet key version that I managed to upgrade all the way to Basic 4) and at various times owned a C64, C128D, CBM-500 (no, not the Amiga 500 - that came later), CBM-600 (B Series in the US), Amiga 500 and finally a 2000, I watched in horror as CBM crashed and burned in the 90s and was then tossed around like a seal amongst killer whales. I always wonder if it would have turned out any different had Commodore UK managed to buy the whole kit n kaboodle before Escom got hold of it.

Re: Have they the rights

"The Atari brand has changed hands so many times, I don't think the brand owners have a clue who owns what now."

Sadly, that's pretty much the same situation with Commodore.

Microsoft starts buying speculative execution exploits

..broke by now..

..as illustrated more than 20 years ago in Dilbert: http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-13

Maplin shutdown sale prices still HIGHER than rivals

Re: I remember Maplins from when I was a kiddie

Ah yes, still got a catalogue from the 1970s around somewhere - full of projects, examples and useful information. Now THAT version of Maplins would have been worth saving.

Too many bricks in the wall? Lego slashes inventory

"sell off excess stock on the cheap"

"sell off excess stock at a much more realistic price"

FTFY

My PC is broken, said user typing in white on a white background

Mouse balls

When I worked in IT Support back around 1998 we used to get numerous complaints about mice not working due to the build up of crap on the rollers and balls. I used to remove all the balls and take them to the nearest "gents" and give them a soak in a basin of warm soapy water. Other staff entering the loo would ask, "What are you doing?"

"Washing my balls," I'd reply.

Google powers up latest app it'll cancel in two years: Hangouts Chat

Two years?

Blimey, I doubt it will even last that long!

Dutch name authority: DNSSEC validation errors can be eliminated

"too many half-baked standards"

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/

Intellisense was off and developer learned you can't code in Canadian

"How else do you spell colour?"

I was informed by a Computer Graphics lecturer years ago that it takes more key presses to type COLOR than COLOUR with the following example:

C-O-L-O-U-R-backspace-backspace-R

Does my boom look big in this? New universe measurements bewilder boffins

@Mark85

"but apparently something (maybe the observations?) has changed"

Yeah, the rest of the universe has woken up to Trump being President - now it can't get away fast enough!

Face, face, face! Apple, TrueDepth and a nose-driven iPhone X game

Nose driven...

I hope there's a "sneeze" filter that prevents you from accidentally calling an Uber or donating £££ to a Nigerian prince when you suddenly let off an unexpected and particularly violent one!

UK worker who sold customers' data to nuisance callers must cough up £1k

I often find that demanding they tell me their company name is enough to make them hang up. Then I Google their phone number and, if I find any complaints from others about that number, I report it to the ICO and/or TPS, and then block that number. I've got caller ID and a phone that can block withheld numbers so those NEVER get picked up.

Adobe: Two critical Flash security bugs fixed for the price of one

Re: Philosophical question

It's a bit like Trigger's broom - they just remove one bug and patch it with another similar one. And that's probably the complete history of Flash since it started.

‘I crashed a rack full of servers with my butt’

Re: Just finger trouble

My main PC is one of those with a power button on the top of the case, which is fine until the cat jumps up and lands her heel on the power switch before sitting down and turning things off with me in mid-work! A strategically placed book seems to have fixed the "problem" now.

When you play this song backwards, you can hear Satan. Play it forwards, and it hijacks Siri, Alexa

Re: Perfect Solution

I struggle to see what you did there...

You publish 20,000 clean patches, but one goes wrong and you're a PC-crippler forever

"Recently we have been improving our products"

That's generally a good idea - except when it's Microsoft's ideas about "improving" Windows by adding telemetry and all the other crap they shovelled into it after Windows 7.

Apple: The exclusive sales channel for an, er, AI toothbrush

Damn you, sjsmoto said "mouth"!

UK watchdog dishes out fines totaling £600k to four spam-spewers

Good

But the fines should be higher.

Cortana. Whatever happened to world domination?

@Mongrel

+1! Excellent!

The ability of Reg commentards to make me spit drink over my keyboard is one of the reasons I keep coming back here!

Don't just grab your CPU bug updates – there's a nasty hole in Office, too

Re: The cesspool that is windows

"Its laughable that so many businesses run it everywhere without question, when in many cases there are far more secure cloud based offerings."

I was with you until you mentioned "cloud"...

Hold on to your aaSes: Yup, Windows 10 'as a service' is incoming

"compelling new features"

Erm, exactly what were these "compelling new features"? Buggered if I can find any REAL improvements over Win7 - and I don't think "improved" telemetry really counts.

More stuff broken amid Microsoft's efforts to fix Meltdown/Spectre vulns

Re: Fix?

Oh, I don't know - how about "Microsoft fixed my computer so that it no longer works at all."

The healing hands of customer support get an acronym: Do YOU have 'tallah-toe-big'?

Re: Opposite effect

Knew a guy who appeared to have the ability to curdle milk. No hot drink made by him was ever drinkable, there would be unidentifiable scum floating on top even when you watched him do everything in the normal fashion.

Another guy I worked with had the abililty to make any screwdriver, pliers, scissors - well, basically, anything metal he came into contact with - start to rust within a couple of days.

EEk! Mobe network's customer services down for more than 24 hours

Re: <Smug Mode Activated>

You're lucky - I went the other way after Vodafone fucked several things up royally!

So, is there actually a decent mobile phone company in the UK or are they all as crap as each other?

I, Robot? Aiiiee, ROBOT! RSA TLS crypto attack pwns Facebook, PayPal, 27 of 100 top domains

Bad robot!

"the researchers have dubbed the bad code ROBOT"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Brd1F1dQc

How fast is a piece of string? Boffin shoots ADSL signal down twine

Re: Caffeine high?

What is this "thing" that's coming? I "think" you should definitely tell us!