Posts by 0laf

An unbearable itch to migrate your OS to the cloud? You might have a case of Windows VD

I can see it now, we spend £100k setting up with this and after 6 months Nedella doesn't like the colour or decides everyone is going to use iPads and pulls the plug.

'Six' in the city: Kiwi sportswear shop telly beamed X-rated flicks for hours over weekend

Think you're missing the 'w' on 'hacker'.

Paris coz' well, I'm sure tehre has been a bit of hacking done over her home movies.

Hold up, ace. Before you strap into Firefox's latest Test Pilot, ask yourself...

I think the question is really "Are you safer with this than without it?".

But even more specifically "Are you sometimes safer to use this?"

It might be that in some circumstances "new coffee shop with unknown wifi" you will be much safer with this even if Cloudflare is mining you for 24hr.

But then you'd be safer overall if you didn't use unknown wifi and wait till you get home to do anything that involves shopping or banking.

From pen-test to penitentiary: Infosec duo cuffed after physically breaking into courthouse during IT security assessment

Re: Naivety...

What was the scope of the testing? If the company didn't make it clear that the testing could include measures up to and including physically breaking and entering premises then they could be in trouble.

Unfortunately I'm guessing that the customer here has probably given a vague scope of works, "we need a security test", and the supplier hasn't made it clear within the contract documents what that will entail. Howeve I'd have hoped that this would soon become a case between customer and supplier and the employees will be taken out of the firing line.

Infosec prophet Bruce Schneier (peace be upon him) is only as famous as half of Salt-N-Pepa

Re: [None of us made it – Ed]

There is no chin behind Bruce Schneier's beard. There is only another pseudorandom number generator and he's gonna use it to encrypt your face.

https://www.schneierfacts.com

Oops: Rockets lighting their tails is a good thing – but not three-plus hours before lift-off

Danger

Never return to a lit firework

In Hemel Hempstead, cycling is as bad as taking a leak in the middle of the street

Sounds like the problem isn't cyclists or cycling but people.

A large proportion of people are twats.

Some ride bike, some drive cars. But fundamentally they are twats and would irritate and annoy the rest of us no matter what they do.

(To cite an example from today, we've received a complaint from a parent for not feeding her child whilst the school was on fire. Oddly the HT took the position that getting wee Johnny out of the burning school overruled his need to get sausage and mash)

Look, we know it feels like everything's going off the rails right now, but think positive: The proton has a new radius

I opened that story and saw words on a page. Individual words made perfect sense to me but as a whole this article served to inform me that there are some things in the universe I will never understand in the slightest. I am now comfortable with this.

Boffins please continue.

If any of this quantum doofery will affect the price or taste of my ale please let me know.

OK, let's try that again: Vulture rakes a talon on Samsung's fresh attempt at the Galaxy Fold 5G

Re: Why?

It's at the top of the hype curve right now. In 2-4 generations we'll see something affordable and useful. But not right now. I'm happy to see something different and dare I say innovative.

I can see more use for the folding screens on netbooks than on phones. Say a 6" square device with a 3 fold screen to give ~18" wide screen with a similar fold out keyboard. It wouldn't fit in your pocket but it would take up less space in a backpack.

MAMR Mia! Western Digital's 18TB and 20TB microwave-energy hard drives out soon

Re: Feeling Old...

I'm clearly a young wippersnapper since my first PC (in 96) came with a 20Gb drive.

Cooincidentally I got a new laptop yesterday with 16Gb of RAM, for pretty much the same price as that 1996 PC which had 16Mb of RAM. But it came with Theme Hospital therefore was better (bloatyhead FTW).

But not too much

Sounds good, no idea what it means

HD tech always seems like something written by a scifi author.

However, 20Tb on a 3.5" drive. Crazy.

Tesla Autopilot crash driver may have been eating a bagel at the time, was lucky not to get schmeared on road

Re: What a complete plonker!

Beat me to it. He basically states "I was not in control of the vehicle and I was not engaged in the process of driving therefore did not see the object I crashed into".

Your vehicle, you are in control, your fault.

As I keep saying, I'm not interested in 'autopilot' until it is legally responsible for driving the car.

Devon knows how they make it so steamy: Phantom squatter of Torquay curls one out on bloke's motor

Re: £2000...

Long and absorbant as well?

Divert the power to the shields. 'I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain!'

Re: Another Place, Another Time

I am aware of one Local Government that in the spirit of greenwash filled it's emergency generator tanks with biodiesel.

A considerable time later (months, possibly years later) a failover test was scheduled. This went 'orribly wrong. The biodiesel had 'gone-off' and turned to jelly in the tanks.

The whole lot had to be chucked and the generators repaired. I assume they were filled with non-green derv with some sort of preservative but then again maybe not.

No it's not Russell Brand's new cult, it's Microsoft's Office crew rolling out their Save Experience

Re: Consistency

I regret I only have one upvote to give you for that comment

fugging MS

Get used to Onedrive saving coz that's where MS want all your stuff and increasing they do everything they can to encourage, confuse or force you to use fucking cloud storage.

I don't even hate Onedrive it has it uses. I just hate the way MS is driving everything towards their flawed strategy which isn't often how I want to work.

Behind time and way over budget, but the James Webb Space Telescope has finally been put together

I for one....

I for one... sincerely hope the whole kit and kaboodle comes together on time and works faultlessly.

I wanna see the science from this big gold bastard

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Re: So, to sum up. . .

10k signatures means a it gets a 'response' from Parliament.

100k Parliament will 'consider' having a debate.

So they can really say fuck off to if they want. Which is what they will do. Will of the people...blah blah blah

Re: So, to sum up. . .

452k. another 10k in the 5min since you posted

Yes, TfL asked people to write down their Oyster passwords – but don't worry, they didn't inhale

Re: RE: Blockchain Commentard

Yes I've also read (here I think) that Virgin ask for full passwords when you request support

Pokemon Go becomes Pokemon No as games biz Niantic agrees to curb trespassing addicts

Yep, people are idiots. We had a few 'players' climb into a recyling centre and were wandering around blindly following their phones while a large amount of heavy plant was driving around.

We emailed Nintendo and the site was excluded from their game.

I reckon we should have left it, Darwin effect etc. Or put a really important (rare?, precious? I dunno how it works I don't pay) pokestop 10m of the edge of a partiuclarly high and steep cliff. Just put a skip at the bottom to catch the spash.

Sueball claims Tesla solar panels are so effective, they started fires at Walmart stores

Re: $deities have a sense of humor

They worked for a year then the inverter packed in about a month out of warranty. But the manufacturer and fitter had all gone out of business anyway. He tried to sell the panels as a 'income revenue" when I bought the house but at £30 a month on a good month I didn't care. Offered to let him remove them if he still wanted them, they added nothing to the house to me. If they were cheaper to remove than to fix I'd consider it.

Re: $deities have a sense of humor

Not just that. The previous owner of my house put on 6 solar panels at a cost of about £8000. They generate about £20 a month on average thoughout the year (£35 on a good summer day, about £0 in January). So they'd have taken him about 33yr to pay for themselves assuming he was on 0% finance (which he wasn't, also he was 72 so he'd have had to live to 105).

Also the inverter is now broken after 5yr. Cost to replace £500 - 1000. So on top of the £8000 plus interest you have say £500 to find every 5yr (probably).

Realistically they'd never have lasted long enough to turn a profit.

I'm not planning on fixing them. They basically act to shield my slates form bad weather and nothing more now.

Here's a top tip: Don't trust the new person – block web domains less than a month old. They are bound to be dodgy

Easier to do than I thought

Quick Google implies that most web filters will have this on almost be default or will at least have this as an option.

TBH sounds likea no-brain option (like blocking most TLD really and unblock by exception). I just need to check we're doing it.

Brit-built trundlebot eyeing up a July 2020 launch as cams fitted to ExoMars mission rover

I like the term "lithobraking".

It implies it was deliberate.

However I'd much rather the probe landed safe and sound. Yay Science

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

Re: Consumer Rights?

I dunno.

That 6.5 years only applies at the point of a new OS release. So if you buy a Chromebook a few years into that release you might only get 4.5yr from it. Possibly less, I'm not a big 'Droid user so I'm not sure how regular the relevant releases are.

But if you bought a more expensive Chromebook (£500+) I think it would be reasonable to epxect more than 4.5yr of use from it especially if the hardware appears to be fine.

It may continue to function but if you have warnings on screen to say that your device is no longer safe then it is arguable that it is no longer usable for many normal functions i.e. online shopping or banking.

Also if it was bought for business (like the one I work for) all of our equipment must be in support. So we would have to dump all chromebooks at expiry. I know these trading laws don't apply to businesses but this clearly needs to be a consideration especially for education establishments which often buy chromebooks by the thousand.

Don't panic! Don't panic! UK IT job ads plummet as Brexit uncertainty grabs UK tech sector by the short and curlies

Re: Sure there'll be some bumps in the road. . .

But that's ok because of all of Bojo's new wizzy fibre broadbad links to every house everywhere we'll never need to leave the house to get to our assigned jobs. If you never step outside you won't need to see the militaristic state of emergency that will be introduced to Airstrip one.

Eggagerated for effect. I doubt any of our politicians care capable of running a functioning dictatorship. We'd need to outsource it.

Microsoft's Cortana booted off yet another service while Google and AWS get a bit catty over licensing shakeup

Re: SpySpeakers

But do disabled people deserve to have their privacy diluted just because they need to use the functions these devices can carry out? Surely there is a way to make and sell these devices without leaching people's data to make yet more money.

Re: SpySpeakers

It's not just that they spy I find all of these assistant frankly crap at what they are supposed to do and using them takes far longer than any traditional way of tapping the screen.

Let's see what the sweet, kind, new Microsoft that everyone loves is up to. Ah yes, forcing more Office home users into annual subscriptions

Re: TANSTAAFL!

Really. I'm fairly sure I could still be using the functions of Office 97 quite happily.

In fact I got through uni using MS Works software I got with my PC in 96. It did even less then Office 97 but still more than enough.

Re: I've been recommending it to people for years

Yeah, I was using Libra Office but needed more storage. I already had used up the 15Gb that I'd wangeled through my WinPho and other strange upgrades they gave randomly over a couple of years.

The Office tax seemed reasonable for the storage space.

I could throttle you right about now: US Navy to ditch touchscreens after kit blamed for collision

Re: Touch screens

OT: Why do cars need electric parking brakes?

They don't but interior cabin designers like not having the handle to get in the way.

Crunch time: It's all fun and video games until you're being pressured into working for free

There are many professional industries like this. Friend of mine is a partner in an accounts firm he reckons his job is actually killing him with stress and that the younger employees are actually getting it even worse then he ever did. The structure of the company mean that effectively those at the top suck the blood of those below them to get their 'due' despite never having had it much easier themselves. The excessive hours and pressure are very similar to the story above for the games industry.

This is apparently the same in the legal services. Young employess are just meat to the machine. If you survive you might get to be in the position to exploit the new blood below.

However my mate has said that is is gettign to the point now wheree the wheels are starting to fall off. The new blood is looking at the culture in these sorts of firms and turning away and it's getting increasingly harder to recruit. Which mean those at the top turn the screw even harder on these they have already. He think many will leave but they've locked to the firm by becoming partners. When he's decribed it to me it sounded very much like a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

I'm sure the games industry being new and desirable has a few years to go before the shines comes off like accountants but it'll happen.

Saying that my 9yr old want to be a 'games designer' when he grows us [sigh].

One person's harmless japery can be another's night of LaserJet Lego

Re: I know the series well...

Me too. I wonder what killed them off. I can only guess that HP refused to make carts for them or stopped supporting the software. Not much else would stop them running.

We had a bunch of Kyocera printers form the same era that survived terrible abuse in car dealers workshops.

Ransomware attackers have gone from 'spray and pray' to 'slayin' prey'

Yep you can't just point your enterprise kit at Windows Update like you can at home.

1Gbps, 4K streaming, buffering a thing of the past – but do Brits really even want full fibre?

I don't pay for 4k netflix so what would I bother about having enough bandwidth for it? Prime has 4k stuff inclusive but I really can't tell much difference between it and and HD. Possibly compression means the quality is about the same but HD is good enough so I really don't care.

I have access to 70Mb broadband but I only pay for 34MB becasue it'ds fast enough and half the cost. TBH when I was on a 17Mb contract I rarely had issue with it.I understand that some people have a need for 500Mb/1Gb broadband but most don't.

I use powerline networking in the house right now and that shares 100Mb across multiple devices. What's the point in having a broadband speed higher than one I can deliver across my home network when I have no issues? This will maybe change in my new house since I've flooding it with ethternet and putting in a Gigabit switch, but probably not.

Reminder: When a tech giant says it listens to your audio recordings to improve its AI, it means humans are listening. Right, Skype? Cortana?

GDPR

Anyone investigating yet?

MS facing a few bootings over weasel worded agreements and assumed consent already.

Off somewhere nice on holibobs? Not if you're flying British Airways: IT 'systems issue' smacks UK airports once again

Re: BA

On previous experience Easyjet service was some considerably margin better than BA so yes, BA 'should' be aiming for Easyjet levels of service. It's a shame that's not a joke.

Re: How are your BC Plans then?

See above. From my humble experience BA have no contingencies for any issues; small or large.

And no staff training to deal smoothly with minor issues to prevent them becoming major issues.

I guess their business plan is to monopolise some route so you have no alternative to fly with them.

BA

It's maybe just my bad luck but BA are the worst airline I've ever used and I've had to use them numerous times.

Last time was on a return leg from Rome just a few weeks ago. It was late, cabin was deeply dirty (just just a few bits of rubbish from the outbound flight) and there was hardly any food on board (ran out of M&S sandwiches by row 5).

Compared to the EasyJet we flew out on. The Easyjet was cleaner, had more legroom and the food was far better quality for the same price.

I get that they are based in the UK and the planes will be cleaned overnight and restocked in the UK. But it was as if BA was unaware that their planes would fly back from where ever they flew to. That seems to be my predominant experience of BA, everything is a surprise. When a plane had a fault it was as if no plane had ever had a fault before they had no idea what to do or how to tell passengers. When the passengers complained it was like they'd never had a complaint before. It's not comforting to see an airline rep wander about shouting "I don't know what to do".

I guess their staff are just thrown in with no training. I just avoid BA now if possible, they're shit.

Side-splitting bulging batts, borked Wi-Fi... So, how's that Surface slab working out for you?

Re: They suffer from keyboard problems too

We have a lot of Surface 4s in the office. Generally they are popular and so far have been reliable. We're also buying the Surface Go now.

Personally I wouldn't touch a device that costs more than £500 and has a glued in battery but that's my own money.

Jeff Bezos feels a tap on the shoulder. Ahem, Mr Amazon, care to explain how Capital One's AWS S3 buckets got hacked?

Re: Please re-read the article, between three lines

The senator may be clueless but unless he's been working on cloud technologies in the last few days following a significant amount of training and previous IT work experience then tbh he's going to struggle to get his head round cloud full stop.

Cloud security is feckin hard. The shared responsibility model seems to work very well for the big vendors, "yeah we're really really secure, unless we're not; then it's your fault".

I know of more than a few significant hacks that have happened because of a single mistake in a single checkbox buried in the depth of a cloud admin console. This stuff might just be too complex and too motile to keep on top of.

It's Friday lunchtime on International Beer Day. Bitter hop to it, boss'll be none the weiser

Re: Bugger me - Fosters?!?!

Ooh god yeah Fosters is nasty. But Castlemaine XXXX was much worse. I note it was withdrawn from the UK market in 2009 probably for humanitarian reasons.

T

Burgh I bloody hate Tennents. Nothing says summer like drinking warm Tennents from a tin.

I like my beer, ale and lager but I'll take a craft ale and a European lager over the cats piss produced by most of our major breweries.

UK parliament sends snippy letter to Zuck and his poodle Clegg as it seems Facebook has been lying again

Re: Quantum Truth

Quantum of Truth?

A statement of fact is in fath both false and true until the point at which it is observed properly.

Schrödinger's cat was in fact a dog.

New UK Home Sec invokes infosec nerd rage by calling for an end to end-to-end encryption

Re: Same old tune

Don't worry the politicians will invent magic unicorn encryption. It will be perfectly protect from all but the pure of heart. The wicked and sinful can't access your data

Unfortunately they will reject that coz clearly none of those corrupted sick fuckers would get near your stuff

People of Britain: You know that you're not locked into using the same ISP forever, right?

Re: Sometimes it's the customers fault

IMHE It's the disconnection team that have the authority to apply discounts not the sales team.

Or maybe they're like me; move supplier, get terrible service making the moving process awful and protracted and then still be locked into the bastards for two years unless you fight tooth and nail to get out of your contract.

Who would want to risk that twice?

Ok I still did but I'm clearly a borderline sociopath with a masochistic streak.

Stones, meet glass house: Mind behind Windows 8 GUI disses Windows 10 over leak

What is this with naming different things with the same name? Eve with enterprise stuff.

I know one organsation that went through months of confusion over a product called SCP (part of 365). One version was £250k a year another was £500k a year. Neither MS or their own resellers seemed to know which was which. Eventually they discovered that SCP (250k) could be bought on its own or as part of a larger pack of services, also called SCP (but £500k).

I've used the acronym here but the full name was exactly the same not just the TLA.

At no point has MS ever admitted that this is confusing or an issue.

And I'm sure non of our dumb-as-a-rock employees will have any issues telling the difference in features between two different products both called 'Office'. I'm sure therte will be no issues at all when they phone the desk shouting about missing features in 'Office'.