* Posts by James 29

52 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2009

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Firefox 72: Floating videos, blocking fingerprints, and defeating notification pop-ups

James 29

Re: Pot, kettle, black

As that only happens (now) every 4 weeks or for point releases like 72.0.1 which was for a 0 day vulnerability

For 99.99% of users automatic updates are a very good thing. For the 0.01% edge cases it should be very difficult.

UK ISPs must block access to Nintendo Switch piracy sites, High Court rules

James 29

Re: When DNS over https become the main

Depends. DoH isn't a full solution as the ISP can still deep inspect the SNI part of the packet to see what website you requested.

ESNI removes this problem (but is not yet widely supported or switched on in broswers), and combined with networks like Cloudflare, the ISP has no idea what website you are trying to reach

https://www.cloudflare.com/ssl/encrypted-sni/

Dixons hits back at McAfee's £30m antivirus sueball: Your AV didn't work on Windows 10S

James 29

I for various reasons had to get a laptop from that insidious place

First thing when opening the box was to create a USB stick to erase the factory/DSG crap and install a vanilla copy of Windows

It's official: Deploying Facebook's 'Like' button on your website makes you a joint data slurper

James 29

Facebook container

I use Facebook container on Firefox for this reason. Facebook works perfectly, but all these buttons/widgets are blocked

Great if you want to be able to use FB but not have all the rest of the tracking

https://github.com/mozilla/contain-facebook

How do you like dem Windows, Apple? July opening for Microsoft's first store in Blighty

James 29

Yes probably there waiting to run sfc /scannow for you, as we all know that always fixes the problem

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

James 29

Glad I still use Firefox, the last browser that hasn't waved the white flag to Google

Sur-Pies! Google shocks world with sudden Android 9 Pixel push

James 29

Installing this now on my Pixel :)

Thanks Google for the early suprise

OK, this time it's for real: The last available IPv4 address block has gone

James 29

Re: It's bad to say....

Thats why we have name resolution. I never bother remembering IP addresses when I can just use a name

You can survive the migration from Windows vCenter server

James 29

Re: Pro tip...

Yep our dev environment failed miserably when I attempted the vCenter migration.

Ended up just doing a clean install of the VCSA. Which for simple environments isn't that much work

Farewell, Android Pay. We hardly tapped you

James 29

Re: Ahhh technology...

I pay with my Google Pixel all the time and Android Pay has never crashed or had an issue. Sounds more like a dodgy phone.

The only time i've had issues is when the card reader itsself was broken and wouldn't accept my phone or contactless cards and I had to do the old fashoned chip and pin to pay.

James 29

I have all my cards on Android pay. Its the contactless cards I dont want. Too insecure and after handing them over too many assistants have dinked them on the reader without even letting me check first.

Least Android Pay uses a pseudo card number and requires the phone to be on or unlocked

Oh yes and Paypal are the biggest load of shysters in the world with their fees and habbit of charging back your account. They are unaccountable and the quicker they die the better.

Lenovo's craptastic fingerprint scanner has a hardcoded password

James 29

Yes on my work and personal devices

Because swiping my finger on the sensor is much quicker than trying to remember a complex password, then having to type it in!

GoPro exits drone market and slashes jobs amid sales warning

James 29

I think for me when they changed the apps to not be a simple remote control but forced logins to get you hooked to their online services was the last straw.

I'll never buy one again

HP Inc – the no-drama one – is actually doing fine with PCs, printers

James 29

Re: Credit where credit due

Yep, their business laptops are second to none. Good quality and easy to repair/service/upgrade

Firefox 57: Good news? It's nippy. Bad news? It'll also trash your add-ons

James 29

Palemoon isn't the answer. Its development is moving at a glacial pace, and Firefox which its based on is moving further away - Firefox is what people are developing and testing against... not PaleMoon

Mainstream people care about speed and stabliilty and security. WebExtensions brings that. The old plugin archtecture wasn't fit for purpose. I know it will break some liked addons but Firefox needs to improve otherwise it will die.

James 29

Re: Arrrgh!

This is one of the thing WebExtensions should improve. The browser shoudn't break addons anywhere near as much.

I've just updated LastPass so all my addons now a ready for FF57 so can't wait for next week!

Please activate the anti-ransomware protection in your Windows 10 Fall Creators Update PC. Ta

James 29

I tried enabling this, then an hour later was draging a URL from the address bar on Firefox to the desktop t (just an odd way of bookmarking I use sometimes) and Defender stoped it in its tracks. Feature now switched back off (or until I can be botherd to reconfigure it)

Google rushes to curb Oreo's massive appetite for your 4G mobile data

James 29

I have a Pixel XL and ran the RC build, not seen this issue so it's not universal.

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

James 29

Re: The end

I can recommend Paint.net for a simple to use, free and reasonably powerful editor without resorting to Gimp or PS

Firefox 54 delivers sandboxes Mozilla's wanted since 2009

James 29

Re: Unusable

No Firefox dropped XP support in March, you should be on the ESR version now

Apple fans, Android world scramble to patch Broadcom's nasty drive-by Wi-Fi security hole

James 29

Pixel XL updated last night (now on 5th April Android patch level). Hope i'm OK!

Good luck for all the peeps on landfill Android

As Microsoft touts Windows Insider for biz, let's take a look at W10's broken 2FA logins

James 29

Never heard of Windows LTSB

Backup Exec console goes AWOL

James 29

Backup Exec

People still use that? Switched to Veeam and never looked back!

Intel Basis fans burned again: Refund checks for scalding smartwatches bounce

James 29

Cheques?

I'd have thought in this day and age, they would simply deposit the money into my account - unbelievable

Acronis beats Veeam

James 29

Yes, but I care more about backup software then speed... Acronis is a POS compared to Veeam, and more complex to setup and use. Since we've switched i've never looked back.

Patch Java now, says Oracle. Leave the Easter chocolate until later

James 29

Ditto runnning safely inside a VM only powered on for the purpose of managing Cisco cruft (I hate you ASDM)

Swedish publishers plan summer ‘Block Party’ to thwart ad blockers

James 29

I'd love to turn off ad blocking

However sites, including El Reg, cause the page to slow down so much with video/animated ads

Reasonable ads please, then more of us wont be forced to block them!

Time acquires Myspace, creates 2004's most fearsome media giant

James 29

Just tried the site

And it said I needed to install Flash player, thats me done then! Surfed elsewhere

Who wants a quad-core 4.2GHz, 64GB, 5TB SSD RAID 10 … laptop?

James 29

No... Will it blend?

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

James 29

I upgraded (clean install) friends and family to W10 and have had no problems at all. I expected some issues but they are very happy with their OS.

Other tech people, you dont need lots of silly tools, set the 2 reg keys in this article and you will get no upgrade or notifications

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

I can't understand why people are obsessed with using 3rd party utils, or hiding updates to do this when the process is documented and easy

Also the magic bullet it to use Windows 7 or 8.1 Enterprise. These are not eligable for the upgrade and never download the W10 nagware in the first place.

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

James 29

Re: Shock Horror new CPUs won't support 7 year old OS

You may not realise, but new CPU generations generally introduce issues with Windows, generally these are fixed quietly by Microsoft via Windows Update.

MS is going to stop doing this, which isn't unreasonable for such and old OS

When was the last time you used a 6+ year OS on a brand new:

Nexus

iPhone

Mac

Windows has been a bit of an odd one out here. I wouldn't be suprised even if a old version of Linux wouldn't work properly on a brand new system.

All the other moaners: its not exactly hard to configure the privacy settings. There are various other 3rd party apps which wll allow you to disable these settings (and telemetry) if it bothers you so much.

Windows 10 is a pretty good sucessful OS. The bashing and 'Use Mint' etc comments here are getting tiresome

James 29

To be honest, buying brand new hardware and expecting it to downgrade and run clunky old OS versions is something you shouldn't expect anyway.

Win7 and 8.1 OEM downgrade rights end later this year, so all new PC's will come with 10 out the box. All MS is saying is that if you choose to change this, your're on your own.

Alternativly I would stock up on Broadwell era systems now if you wanna keep 7 around.

Windows for Warships? Not on our new aircraft carriers, says MoD

James 29

Of course XP isn't being used, they're still on Windows 2000!

BBC joins war against Flash, launches beta HTML5 iPlayer

James 29

Re: Confused!

Try about:config

media.mediasource.whitelist disabled

media.mediasource.youtubeonly disabled

FF41 still has a whitelist of sites to expose MSE to (BBC should know better!)

FF42 will remove this whitelist

Sysadmins rebel over GUI-free install for Windows Server 2016

James 29

Re: and in the real world...

Actually Exchange 2013, for a web managed product, requires the full Server desktop, and the Desktop experience feature.

Add other MS products, SCCM etc that also require a desktop. You will find very few products that actually work in server core.

Server core is only good IMHO for Hyper-V installs

Delving into Office 2016: Microsoft goes public with new preview

James 29

Looks like the 2013 grey theme

Just compared the screenshot with 2013 light grey theme and apart from the uppercase menus and blue menu ribbon, both versions look pretty identical.

Watch: China has made an internet censorship THEME SONG

James 29

Dont forget the classic, dont copy that floppy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up863eQKGUI

Still using Adobe Flash? Oh well, get updating: 15 hijack flaws patched

James 29

Using the new responsive BBC news site, i've noticed in Firefox if you change your use agent (to iOS) for example. The 'you need flash' goes away and the videos just work.

Why on earth do they not just let the videos play in HTML on all supported browsers? Flash should only be a option if HTML isn't supported

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

James 29

No real update on changes since end of December. How about an official response to the issues raised, or are we just hoping all the problems (and compliants) go away?

James 29

Please turn it back

The new layout looks very white and dated

This is not modern or fresh

The text and pictures are very large, even on 1080p screens. The site does seem designed for tablets rather than anything else.

Please bring back the old layout

SURPRISE! Microsoft pops open Windows 10 Preview build early

James 29

Erm, dont think this is the consumer preview. Its just an updated build of the tech preview, with some very broken features (start menu).

Adobe finds, patches ANOTHER exploited Flash 0day

James 29

Great idea, but on Windows 8 its part of the system (and part of the browser in Chrome)

My only way to avoid this tech currently is to use Firefox and not install the plugin

I dont miss Flash, and noticed increasing numbers of sites (using videos etc) that work fine without it

The new BBC News site also does if you fudge your user agent

HP is giving away FREE* STORAGE to lucky server customers

James 29

Small

1TB is pretty small fry these days, wouldn't even store my data at home, rather than a customers site. Its basically a way to get people interested to upsell the full product - although the HP VSA is a cool thing.

Patch looks like Microsoft FAIL, quacks like FAIL, is actually quite good

James 29

Did you get the memo?

Vista is in extended support, which means (basically) only critical security updates, rather than general improvements/enhancements. So if your still running Vista (all 3 of you) then no updates for you!

Julie Larson-Green: Yes, MICROSOFT is going to KILL WINDOWS

James 29

Re: A shining example of how Microsoft got it wrong

"There is no easy way to add on the GUI afterwards if need be. If, you opt for the safety of the GUI to start with you have the Modern UI ... on a server!"

Very easy in fact if you bother to read the documentation

Install-WindowsFeature Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra, Server-Gui-Shell –Restart

Just as easily removed as well. Only caveat is you might need the Windows installation files, if you installed core from the go as it saved disk space by not caching them on the system drive.

McDonalds ponders in-store 3D printing for Happy Meal toys

James 29

hmm HP

Does that no mean the plastic for the printer is going to cost upwards of £100 for a gram?

IBM hit hardest in UK server market bloodbath

James 29

CISC

x66 was CISC last time I checked!

Freesat eyes YouView USP for next-gen UI

James 29
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Nice looking UI but very poor on using the available screen space, lots of blank space and very little information shown. Worse than the new Sky HD UI which doesn't allow the planner to show more information when the mini-tv is turned off.

AMD plumps up ATI FirePro line

James 29
Happy

But...

Will it blend?

Microsoft takes on Wet Willie's to punt Windows 7 in Paris

James 29
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OMG!

That video should be banned, definitly cruel and sadistic punishment

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