Posts by xenny

The last PC replacement cycle is about to start turning

Get a decent hardware supplier. 1920 x 1200 is still perfectly well available.

The NO-NAME vuln: wget mess patched without a fancy brand

Re: Am I the only one who doesn't have wget installed?

IIRC, the Centos 6.x minimal install has wget but no sftpd, and if I were an attacker, I'd rather be trying to attack sftpd than hope the target will run wget carelessly.

Microsoft has Windows Server running on ARM: report

Are you sure? NT 4 was available on MIPS, PowerPC and Alpha as well as IA-32 wasn't it?

UNIX greybeards threaten Debian fork over systemd plan

Re: systemd to incorporate a shell too!!!

To be contrarian, I can see an argument for systemd on a desktop, where I may reboot it often. I typically don't reboot servers frequently, so I'm unconcerned about a fast boot, but I value being able to debug the startup process of a broken server with a shell and a text editor, which I can do with sys V init scripts, but can't do with systemd.

Want a more fuel efficient car? Then redesign it – here's how

Re: Cruise control

ABS was outlawed in F1 as a performance aid, which tells me that the best drivers can't outperform it on dry and presumably wet tarmac. Outperforming it in snow however is essentially impossible.

Windows 10: Forget Cloudobile, put Security and Privacy First

Re: Many of us are forced to use MS Software

> There are many many jobs out there that don't involve using Microsoft software, or even computers.

most of the latter are on borrowed time until people in the former finish writing shell scripts.

Revealed: Malware that forces weak ATMs to spit out 'ALL THE CASH'

Re: "32-bit Windows-powered ATM"

I think I'd rather have no network connection and out of date AV signatures. One less way in for thieves.

Xen security bug, you say? Amazon readies GLORIOUS GLOBAL CLOUD REBOOT

Re: First BASHing

It needn't necessarily, but a kitchen sink approach might reboot the host, which would at the very least require a VM to be suspended. What BTW has KVM got to do with XEN ?

Re: First BASHing

There's presumably also a bash vulnerability on the host....

Re: First BASHing

I doubt it, that shouldn't _require_ a reboot, and the top entry at http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/ looks deeply suspicious.

Cutting cancer rates: Data, models and a happy ending?

Reading this article - which I found fascinating, I'm left wondering how many of the health issues associated with breast implants are actually due to the silicon implants, and how many due to the surgery disturbing near sleeping dogs. :-(

Brit Sci-Fi author Alastair Reynolds says MS Word 'drives me to distraction'

I've worked on late stage proof reading of novel length documents (admittedly generally technical documents). Paper and a pen is rather more flexible than track changes.

Re: Personally ...

Ahem.

If you read this post by Charlie:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/writing-tools.html

he mentions having written several novels using vim (vi improved). I've read at least two of those novels. They're pretty good.

Microsoft KILLS Windows 8.1 Update 2 and Patch Tuesday

"Won't happen, simply because of the rage it would cause from Microsoft's large corporate cash cow customers, many of whom will only ever install security updates."

How would you describe the new IE patch/release/support policy then? There's Enterprise mode as a mitigation, but I suspect it won't be 100% - even the MS web site describing it says " designed to emulate Internet Explorer 8,"

I suspect that the next step from this will be to remove the separation between feature updates and security updates. That will make development easier, and going forward, MS' internally perceived competition is rather more nimble than they are.

If they don't do this, testing a growing complexity of interaction between different levels of installation of security updates and UI/feature updates will become a huge problem. Look at the way they're dropping support for 8.1 pre update 1 - they're trying to manage the variety of system configurations they need to test against.

Time to move away from Windows 7 ... whoa, whoa, who said anything about Windows 8?

Re: How many zeros?

I think the death of a thousand cuts may be better. Infrastructure left alone for a decade builds up all sorts of odd undocumented dependencies and peculiarities (only fred in accounting has the serial key for this software for example). Organisations also lose the skills to perform platform changes over a decade of stagnation.

A steady rolling refresh over every few years reduces these problems. Compare eating a sensible diet and going for a walk each day to eating nothing for a month while running 5 miles each day. Either approach will leave you thin, but one is much more pleasant than the other.

Stalwart hatchback gets a plug-in: Volkswagen e-Golf

Maybe not the whole car....

I couldn't live with the range, but I'd love to be able to buy that windscreen as an optional extra.

Elderly Bletchley Park volunteer sacked for showing Colossus exhibit to visitors

The ridiculous thing here is that Colossus (Which is what the computer museum has) is arguably a computer; a Bombe, which is what Bletchley is exhibiting, isn't.

It's almost as if the wrong organisation is getting all the sponsorship.

What is the difference between a drone, a model and a light plane?

Re: xenny That's no Hellcat

I want your anorak :-)

Re: That's no Hellcat

Are you sure it's a 'B' ? There's precious little visual difference between b,c or early d until the bubble hood was introduced part way through d production.

That's no Hellcat

It's a P-47 Thunderbolt..

Mexican Cobalt-60 robbers are DEAD MEN, say authorities

Re: Moral of this story: Don't handle pellets which give off a pretty blue light.

"Metric" College?

Beijing leans on Microsoft to maintain Windows XP support

Re: Unusual Case.

Given how many security vulnerabilities XP, 7 and 8 have had in common, calling XP a decrepit pile of old code is also a comment on 7 and 8.

Bring Your Own Disks: The Synology DS214 network storage box

Re: Drive sizes?

http://www.synology.com/en-global/support/hd/model/DS214

lists up to 4TB.

Re: What have I missed?

Synology offer an awful lot of addons, such as a VPN server, which at a quick glance, doesn't appear to be available for the D-Link.

Look at http://www.anandtech.com/show/6157/western-digital-red-review-are-nasoptimized-hdds-worth-the-premium/2 in the Power Management section WRT the suitability of WD Greens for this kind of application.

GAH: Now it's INSTAGRAM and Windows Phone 8

Re: Enough with the number of apps

My other half has a Lumia (which she loves, and I quite like).

I've spent some time poking around the app store. It is disappointing.

The first result for a timer app search was an app originally written for Win Phone 7.x, which cheerfully said in the write up that due to API limitations in 7.x, it wasn't able to offer sub minute timer accuracy.

There's no equivalent to Android's wifi analyzer app to give another example.

It's a better place to be than the Playbook's app store, but it isn't as good as iOS or Android, which is a pity, as the phone as a phone is pretty good for speed and battery life.

3D printing: 'Third industrial revolution' or a load of old cobblers?

Re: They have some serious uses

Some kind of 3d scanner/camera that fitted in her mouth. She's petite, and it was a rear molar, so it must have been relatively compact.

The print took about 12 minutes , which seems pretty reasonable.

They have some serious uses

I've literally just stopped speaking to someone enthusing about her 3-D printed dental crown. No making impressions, no temporary crown while the permanent one is made off-site, excellent fit.

She'd spoken to the dentist, and they'd had the device for some 7 months, and would buy another if this one broke down.

How to relieve Microsoft's Surface RT piles problem

Not entirely retarded.

I think MS identified the near immunity of iOS from malware infestations as a key marketing feature.

The only way they could see to achieve that. as well as the access to Office that they considered a USP was to produce the compromise that you see with RT.

With this perspective, and if you then treat WinRT as an iOS competitor with the added bonus of 'proper' office (albeit with no macros, again to prevent malware), then it all makes a decent degree of sense, although it'd help if there was rather more in the app store.

VMware releases hypervisor INCEPTION tool

Re: Windows 8 and 8.1 are to force the masses to want Metro UI

Or who want lots of cores/VM, or did want more than 32 GB of RAM.

You also get VMotion like capabilities without needing the equivalent of a VCenter host

REJOICE! Windows 7 users can get IE11 ... soon they'll have NO choice

Re: Meh

That's one of the things I like about Chrome.

Built in flash player and PDF viewer, combined with a really reliable auto-update - often updating before adobe has released flash updates to the public.

combined with a fairly scary looking prompt if you try and run out of date Java, and it's much harder for people to accidentally get malware on their machine via a browser/plug-in compromise.

Win 8 PC sales plunge as retailers, disties shave orders by HALF A MILLION in Q3

Re: PC installed base

Cloud based Photoshop still does all the processing locally AFAIK.

Met Police vid: HIDE your mobes. Pavement BIKER cutpurses on the loose

Re: Ho Chi Minh City - biker snatch capital in VietNam (China worse)

Actually no, push forwards or backwards hard on a handlebar end is the quickest way.

Re: Locking people up is a staggeringly ineffective measure

Rehabilitation of offenders is remarkably infrequently successful for many classes of offender.

Locking people up works fine. I'm pretty sure that if we then outsourced the prisons to somewhere cheap, it'd not cost much to keep people locked up indefinitely, and offending would fall precipitously after a few fly on the wall documentaries.

Lumia 2520: Our Vulture gets his claws on Nokia's first Windows RT slab

Re: Windows RT

Lower power consumption than x86, and relative immunity from malware make it rather attractive IMHO.

I've got an original Surface RT, and it's got steadily snappier with the release of updates over the past few months, something that the original reviews will never be revised to acknowledge.

It gives me a tablet that is actually useful for creating business documents as well as watching media on in a hotel room for much less cost/weight than a laptop with comparable build quality.

Internet Explorer 11 BREAKS Google, Outlook Web Access

appears fixed now

Rendering was broken until some point yesterday. I've not had the problem since then.

Was the problem there in the ie11preview for Win7 ?

MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross

Re: Who cares

All software sucks, all hardware sucks.

Re: Perhaps

I didn't downvote you, but I support 2007, 2010 and 2013. They each handle complex .docx files subtly differently.

Big data: You've got to spend a dollar ... to make fifty-two cents – report

Translation

Not enough skilled Big Data practitioners

"Raw" and relatively immature technology

A lack of compelling business use case

No-one knows how to do it

We don't have good tools to do it

There's no good reason to do it

Mid East undersea fibre telco hacked: US, UK spooks in spotlight

Thinking back

Weren't there a whole load of mysterious undersea cable breaks at the eastern end of the Med? I wonder if the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_%28SSN-23%29 was playing games?

Devolo dLAN 500 AV Wireless Plus: Triple-tech connectivity for the home

Re: Annoying

You need to sacrifice so many goats to get 100mbit throughput out of 802.11n that a gigabit port is largely useless for that purpose.

Rise Of The Machines: What will become of box-watchers, delivery drivers?

Re: Just the tip of the iceberg

Note also that low interest rates, typically used to stimulate an economy, make the purchase cost of automation systems more affordable, increasing the no of roles they can be bought to fulfil.

A nasty conundrum.

Helium: Can it prevent the onset of Shingles?

Re: Rigid airships

Helium is inert. You're thinking of Hydrogen.

GiffGaff: We've got no iPhones, but here's how to cut down your SIM

Re: ...network run by you

I'd prefer a network run by competent staff. I've yet to find one, so at least I'm nearer to getting what I pay for with GG.

Fans revolt over Amazon 'adware' in Ubuntu desktop search results

Re: CDE?!?

If you view the X window environment as a way of managing lots of xterms, then olvwm has a lot going for it. I don't know how well maintained it is now though....

Smartphone sales to new users 'have peaked'

Re: Still waiting for anything worth spending on

A well rated point and shoot costs >100gbp. How do you expect the economics to work for an unlocked (and hence unsubsidised) phone (which costs money for electronics aerials etc) incorporating such a camera to cost less than the camera it incorporates?

Windows Phone 8: What Nokia and Microsoft must do

lock-in

I think that user lock-in is developing fast.

I've got enough of an investment in apps, either financially for purchased ones, or simply finding/learning a free one that has the functionality I desire, that I'm in no great hurry to change platform.

In a couple of years the smartphone market has gone from the early personal computer days (you accept you're buying a new platform and apps with every system purchase) to the days of the PC and Mac. You buy a new machine and it runs your existing software better, and adds new capabilities.

I think RIM and WinMo have missed their chance at a decent market share in the West, and probably in China.

Africa may be worth a try, but probably isn't that profitable.

Alternatively, MS/Nokia could establish a lunar base and claim 100% market share :-)

Leaked Genius Bar manual shows Apple's smooth seductions

maybe I'm broken..

but I always ask for stuff by part no now. It completely breaks the smooth talking composure of sales staff, and gets down to the nitty gritty.

The sales people don't seem to like it, so it's also a win from that PoV.

Ten netbooks

Re: D270 Sucks

No connectivity whatsoever? Surely a USB thumb drive would work? You'd only need to get a working network driver anyway, and then it's easier.

Flash Player to vanish from Android store on Wednesday

Re: Tool up and go to work

My installation of Lynx sneers at your graphical adverts. The sneer is a bit angular and tricky to visualise to be sure....