Posts by PaulWizard

Thieves jam key-fob lock signals in mystery car thefts

Not always a criminal

My neighbour, my partner and I were all unable to lock our cars when we returned home last night. Turned out not to be malicious. You don't need fancy tech off the net, just a faulty wireless doorbell it seems :| It was stuck in transmit and has rather an impressive jamming range. Felt like a right plum in front of the coppers who came round to investigate. I now have to get my key resynchronised cos I pressed it too many times :( Good timing on the article Reg! you weren't playing with my doorbell yesterday were ya?

Do the Webminimum

ALL OSs/Apps are hard initially

...if you don't know how to configure it from learning or experience. Most people can turn a desktop PC on with Windows/X/Gnome/OSx/CDE and reasonably navigate to USE it, but how many OSs actually make administration of complex tasks easy. you HAVE to learn regardless, it's just different. I may joke about windows pointy clicky being for those simple windows admins, but the reality is if I were to go into exchange or IIS in the same degree that I understand exim and apache I would have a learning curve.

Pick a hard one

That's a typical example of software install isn't it? no. Perhaps you should also show an example of a standard app install, or an equivalent "Application that doesn't have a real windows version" on doze. I put my Aunt on ubuntu a couple of years ago, having never had her own computer before, and only using word on windows on work PC's, and she's got along just fine. She even managed a distribution upgrade when prompted by the system, without me even mentioning it (I'm so proud :)). Can't see her having the same ease with a service pack can you?

Perhaps

if you need to stick a "dumbed down" interface on *nix, you should stick to administering Windows.

Natural selection

Yup, there are lots of people writing variants of the same thing. Everyone can write tools to do a job, but eventually the ones that are the most useful/popular/some other metric continue to grow whilst others fall behind. This applies to the distributions and the applications. I don't think choice is a bad thing.

Windows doesn't need manuals?

You must know intuitively where each setting in windows is then, cos the GUI is only helpful to a point, and that point is usually quite basic. I would say that administering Exchange and IIS via a gui is no more or less complicated than configuring exim or apache via configuration files. You still have to know what you are doing, and you don't get that without reading and experimenting. I also find hostile admins on all sides, certainly not just *nix. HornyBill - to bring balance to the thread

Reasons to be cheerful

What could possibly go wrong....

"The administrator password on all joined systems, newly built or ported from the old domain, was reset to the new company standard."

I'm guessing it was something easy to remember like "password"

Server-based botnet floods net with brutish SSH attacks

It's not just China

I see attacks from all over the world, China, Mexico, Amsterdam, France etc etc. Perhaps we should just ban bloody foreigners

Re: Passwords still a problem

The passphrase is only to protect the private key. It has nothing to do with the communication with the host that has the public key. Think of it as a little key that lets you get to the big key (hence idiots or the uninformed can have passphraseless keys). They would need to have your private key for the passphrase to be any use to them.

These attacks have been going on for ages. Even though I only use keys and have password access disabled, I still use fail2ban on FreeBSD to block after 3 failed attempts cos I'm fed up with huge logs. I get about 2-3 unique attempts to each of my hosts every day. This figure hasn't really changed much recently.

Are plasma TVs killing radio?

Not got my beard yet

But then I guess that is due to me only having an Intermediate HAM licence. Perhaps I should grow a goatee.

ID card astroturf - No2ID beats the truth out of IPS

now now Nero

It might be old news, but I think its worth reminding people just how fare NuLabour were prepared to go to push this monster upon us. Mind you, if you read this site, you are probably already well aware.

Broadband advertising speed gap widens

@AC 11:28

You'll notice that car brochures give you the *average* MPG, usually for Urban, Extra Urban and combined. Unless your driving is awful you should expect to see results close to that. I certainly do.

Cameron promises yet more Avatar

I think I already know the plot!

A father and son Navi get seperated and the father spends the rest of the film searching for his lost son, facing many perils and challenges. Along the way the father meets another, rather ditsy, female Navi, who has a very short term memory. Of course father finds son in the end and all three live hapily ever after. Yes yes, I know, coat

Red Dwarf's Kryten exposes iPhone number

To coin a phrase...

OOOOPPS