Posts by colin79666

Vodafone and Three permitted to tie the knot – if they promise to behave

I see this as a good thing overall. One big well backed operator (BT/EE) with 3 smaller operators isn’t really working. The smaller players simply don’t have enough to fund a decent 5G rollout. If the CMA really wanted 4 players they should have blocked BT grabbing EE and Ofcom would have needed to have done a better job allocating spectrum.

I do now worry for O2 however. They are going to be much smaller than the other two and have very little 5G spectrum. They also have a mast sharing agreement with Vodafone, will be interesting to see if that lasts.

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

Synology

Synology DSM 7.2.2 update press release:

“ DSM 7.2.2 introduces a strategic shift in offloading media processing to clients and mobile devices, leveraging widespread media decoding and encoding capabilities to reduce unnecessary server resource usage.”

In other words we have removed hardware processing of H.264/H.265 and dressed it up as a benefit. Fair enough if it became an optional thing but to actually remove functionality that many will have bought their NAS for (cctv dev, media server etc.) is disingenuous.

Raspberry Pi 5 revealed, and it should satisfy your need for speed

Queue a load of pitchforks from those who just managed to get a 4 after months of waiting. “ If you’re hoping a new Raspberry Pi will pear in 2023, we have bad news: Rasbposs Eben Upton says work on a Raspberry Pi 5 won’t start until the second half of the year, meaning delivery is a way off yet.”

https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/21/no_rpi_5_2023/

Apple's iPhone 12 woes spread as Belgium, Germany, Netherlands weigh in

Not the first time

Remember the time the iPhone 7 failed against the FCC limits?

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell-phone-radiation-testing-20190821-72qgu4nzlfda5kyuhteiieh4da-story.html

It went a bit quiet after that story…

I’d be more concerned about the watch given it is physically strapped to the body for 18 hours a day.

4 in 5 Chromebooks sold to US students in Q2 as demand rises

The reality is after 4 or 5 years in education the screen casing is beaten up, keys have been picked off and the battery can barely hold a charge so the unit needs replacing anyway. I’m sure vendors could produce better quality hardware that would last longer but the sector won’t want to pay the extra so software lifespan doesn’t really come into it as much as some seem to think.

Microsoft whips up unrest after revealing Azure AD name change

Of course SCCM was SMS. More recently they dropped the “Endpoint” so it has had 4 names since the original incarnation, with many components still referring to the original SMS.

The only thing that seems to stick with Microsoft is Windows.

Export bans prompt Russia to use Chinese x86 CPU replacement

Sounds plenty fast enough for office work, especially since the export bans presumably include bloated Microsoft Windows. Their friends in North Korea seem to get on fine hacking the rest of the work from their Red OS Linux distro.

This browser-in-browser attack is perfect for phishing

Familiar

I thought this seemed familiar… Back in late 2003/2004 there was an earlier version of this whereby an IE6 window was launched with no window chrome and then a fake address bar was put in. In those days browsers let developers hide the address bar with JavaScript.

Over Log4j? VMware has another critical flaw for you to patch

Re: Risk

True, although less exposed. That said VMware have updated the KB for the workaround - this affects the device services role as well and that IS usually public facing. Not good.

Co-Operative Bank today 'terminated' Capita's outsourcing contract years before it was due to expire

Why outsourcing?

Coop must share some of the responsibility for the issues. Too many organisations fail to invest and then expect “transformation” by making it someone else’s problem (outsourcing). Guess what? The outsourcing company sales people told you it would all be wonderful but the reality is they need to do it even cheaper than you in order for them to profit. This is often by sticking rigidity to the contract you signed, charging stupid fees for anything extra and not replacing staff as they leave (usually the good ones go quickly).

Outsourcing of boring business functions like HR and Payroll can make sense but a bank outsourcing a core banking function was never going to end well!

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

Windows for warships

Well at least it isn’t XP. Wonder if that Windows 7 install is on extended, extended support, fully air gapped offline or just a vulnerability? https://www.theregister.com/2015/12/18/windows_for_warships_not_on_queen_elizabeth_class_aircraft_carriers/

Microsoft: Many workers are stuck on old computers and should probably upgrade

Productivity peaked around Windows 2000 Professional, perhaps XP. Having more distractions and an OS that gets in your face instead of letting you actually get work done does nothing to improve productivity,

Capita scores half a billion pound outsourcing contract, but refuses to name (or shame?) lucky 'European telco' customer

Mobilcom would be my guess. Right number of staff but most references seem to indicate 2006 as the key year when the current contract started and that is up in 2022 in line with this extension from January 2023.

Lenovo's latest gaming monster: Eight cores, 3.2GHz, giant heat sink, two fans. Oh, and it has a phone bolted on

Did nobody learn from the Nokia N-Gage?

Holes patched in Russian segment of the ISS though pesky pressure loss continues

Gaffer tape. Fixes everything.

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

DJI

I’ve seen a few reports that this is happening with DJI drone repairs/replacements too. Their repair centre is in the Netherlands.

Drone smashes through helicopter's windscreen and injures passenger

Just to be clear, you need to label it with the operator ID. The UAV itself isn’t registered. Oddly you don’t need a flyer ID to pilot a sub 250g UAV so could be a bit of a grey area should one of those have an incident.

Microsoft tells volume customers they can stay on Windows 7... for a bit longer... for a fee

Education

Hmm 30 months of support sounds like an improvement but still falls a bit short, especially for Education. By the time they have updated SCCM (plus a hotfix), the ADK and MDT you typically have already lost 3 months.

Also Education is difficult to tackle due to the number of sites (schools) and sheer numbers so the reality is mass imaging/feature updating is a summer holiday event. So by the time you are rolling out a "September" update you are already into 9-11 months of the 30 month support window. 30 months doesn't reach for another 2 summers so you are basically still stuck on a 1 year cycle of updating/imaging/replacing.

First there were notebooks. Then tablets. And now ‘book tablets’

Re: Point?

Because then in an education environment you manage it just like your other Chromebooks. Google provide this for free where as Android needs expensive MDM, much like Apple.

Two million customer records pillaged in IT souk CeX hack attack

Particularly complex

If you read their email properly it isn't their system but your password:

"Why do I need to change my passwords?

Although your password has not been stored in plain text, if it is not particularly complex then it is possible that in time, a third party could still determine your original password and could attempt to use it across other, unrelated services. As such, as a precautionary measure, we advise customers to change their password across other services where they may have re-used their WeBuy website password"

Just standard advice really although it may imply they were hashed but not salted, at least not a per user salt. It is easy for people to scoff but remember many of these accounts could be years old and md5 was once considered good enough. Yes CEX have got wrong but at least they have fessed up.

Three posts lacklustre results, angrily mutters over O2 merger rejection

"Dave Dyson, chief exec of Three, said he wanted the biz "to lead the industry on mobile data usage."

Sorry but how does that fit with shutting unlimited data plans and launching new plans at much higher prices and with lower caps?

I'm sticking with them for now as I'm on a reasonable plan but if they try to move me off it I'll be jumping ship. Three used to be a stand out network because of their data allowances but they are now as bad as the rest and they don't have lower prices on their side now either.

Get out of mi casa, Picasa: Google photo site to join Wave, Code, Reader in silicon hell

Re: Good replacement for the app?

The Photos app built into Windows 10 is basic but gets the job done.

Online retail giant Amazon GOES TITSUP ACROSS EUROPE

Down Again

Browsing Amazon.co.uk until about 5 minutes ago and now it has gone again.

Patch now: Design flaw in Windows security allows hackers to own corporate laptops, PCs

Server 2003

Less chance of taking your Server 2003 box to a cafe and hooking it up to a rouge WiFi access point. Assume this affects XP though and plenty of that still going about on roaming clients.

Sink your teeth into OCZ's ARC 100 SSD sizzler with tasty home-grown chips

OCZ Reputation

I know people have (rightly) slated OCZ in the past for their build quality but I can't say I've had the same experience:

Intel 330 120GB: 14 months, bad sectors, Amazon refunded

Crucial M500 mSata 120GB: 10 months, dead, RMA'd and replaced

OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB: 4 years 4 months, dead, binned

Intel 520 180GB: 18 months, alive and kicking

Kingston SSD Now+ 120GB: 2 years 6 months, alive and kicking

Crucial M500 mSata 120GB: 6 months, alive and kicking

Kingston Hyper X 120GB: 2 years 7 months, alive and kicking

Would you recognise the Vans shoes logo? Neither would Euro trademark bods

Lines

How is this any different than a certain sportswear company trademarking three parallel lines?

Nokia Lumia 530: A Windows Phone... for under £50

Re: £50?

I just picked one up from Carphone Warehouse for £39.95 as an Orange upgrade. Not bad considering I just use it as a backup phone and for the 2 for 1 cinema offers.

Next Windows obsolescence panic is 450 days from … NOW!

Upgrade Frequency

"The first is that servers tend to be be upgraded more often than PCs, because the former are cared for by knowledgeable and skilful Reg-reading types"

Erm yes the sysadmin knows it needs to be replaced but the business won't pay for it. Hence why I'm still supporting some 2000 boxes in house...

Security holes in Word, the Windows kernel and Adobe Flash. Party like it's Patch Tuesday again

Java

Don't forget Java 7 Update 51 which fixes numerous remotely exploitable holes.

Recommendations for private cloud software...

Citrix ShareFile

Provides sufficient enterprise grade security, auditing and cost(!) for most businesses.

Backup software for HDD and Cloud

Cloudberry

I'm quite a fan of Cloudberry Backup. The desktop edition can backup to local drives, NAS and almost all the popular cloud services. It can also do encryption before uploading to the cloud to keep the NSA out of your stuff. There is a one off cost for the app plus whatever you pay for your cloud storage. It can do block level backups so you aren't uploading the whole file when only a bit changes and it does compression to save cloud space.

Windows 8.1: Read this BEFORE updating - especially you, IT admins

SMEs

Can't see it affecting many. Most are still on XP...

Murdoch hate sparks mass bitchin', rapid evacuation from O2, BE

Left

We quit as soon as we could and jumped to BT infinity. It's not just Murdock. It's also the fact that they are migrating off the Be network (and no traffic shaping for legacy customers) to Sky/easynet which doesn't offer the same service levels.

Even with a years free broadband and £50 mobile credit offered we weren't going to hang on and watch the service degrade.

BT engineers - missed appointments

No issue here

BT bod came round yesterday at the allotted time (phoned ahead as well when he was leaving his last job). Installed the new NTE5 socket and filter. Went to the cabinet to patch in the fibre links and came back 20 mins later to check the broadband was up and the phones were still functioning (including the extension). All in all about an hours work and done without issue.

Keep it simple with one-size-fits-all networking

Fibre

There is another reason for using fibre in an office environment. Regular office Ethernet (cat5) won't do reliable transport at distances over 100m. Fibre on the other hand can connect one end of a building to another without repeaters in between.

Locked iPhones still got their ears on

Erm No

WTF this isn't a discovery. Of course voice dialling works without inputting a pin, how else are you supposed to make a hands free call?!

O2 to raise broadband prices by up to 27%

£18 a month?

I'm paying £10.21 for the old "premium" package - going up to £13 a month from 31st March. I'm assuming the price mentioned subscriber received didn't include the £5 o2 mobile customer discount.

Frankly this is the first (non VAT) price rise o2 have implemented and their service is top notch compared to the likes of Talk Talk or Orange so I've no complaints.

Starbucks' iPhone barcode app easily scammed by screengrab

Timestamp

The article mentions timestamping. Eh the screenshot will include the time at the top. So only useful for ordering coffee once a day (assuming an eagle eyed Barista)

Apple to give away iPhone tracking tech

Story is factually incorrect.

"Anyone who owns an iPhone 4, iPad or fourth-generation iPod Touch can now make use of the service by downloading a free app to a second iDevice, Apple said.

"Of course, that's as useful as tits on a bull if you only have one of these iDevices, so we hope Apple will also make the service accessible through the web, as MobileMe is."

It IS accessible at the me.com website. You have to signup on the iPhone 4/iPad/iPod Touch but after that you can track the device on the website for free.

Official exposes govt IT overlaps

Electronic Forms?

"If you can put a form online rather than by post, you're not just saving the postal costs backwards and forwards, but you're also saving the back office processing,"

Not if you are the tax man. The HRMC way involves putting the form online but then the tax payer is expected to fill it out on their PC, print it off and post it in. Presumably someone at HMRC is then employed to either scan or type the form contents back into the tax system. Another half assed attempt at government efficiency...

Is your office World Cup sweepstake legal?

Frankly dear...

...I don't give a damn!

Brit consumers shun the iPad - for now

I can see the point.

I can see the point of the iPad and admire the design. There is no way I'd pay over £300 for it though.

Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx: A (free) Mactastic experience

What Yahoo?

The author states that Yahoo has replaced Google as the default search in Firefox.

No it hasn't http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/08/ubuntu_yahoo_google_lucid_lynx/

Been using Ubuntu 10.04 RC for a few days and its worked flawlessly with a few exceptions:

1. Had to manually drop in the Flash plugin as software center only has the 32 bit version

2. Had to edit out a line in the Grub file which caused the Plymouth splash screen to corrupt with the Nvidia drivers.

3. Had to add a script to stop the wifi light flashing with network activity

None of which were real show stoppers and 2 and 3 were only minor annoyances.

To make Ubuntu properly user friendly will require some moral/legal changes so it supports DVD playback etc out of the box. Trying to find the restricted package and running a script from the terminal is probably past those completely new to linux.

Orange re-bundles broadband

Finally some good Orange BB news

Having lost thousands of customers when they started going down the LLU path and making a right mess of it it sounds like someone at Orange has finally accepted that they simply don't have the skills or equipment to pull it off.

Perhaps this also has something to do with the impending changes to fibre. Little point trying to unbundle with tech that will soon be obsolete.

BT fibre upgrades hit full speed

What about the competition?

It's all fine BT doing the upgrading but when are competitors going to be able to offer services over these new fibre lines? The majority of ADSL connections in this country come down a BT line, only a minority actually have BT as their ISP.

Think software patching is a hassle? You're not alone

Automatic fail

"Automatic patching would only make it better"

Yes and no. The problem is so many updates introduce new bugs. Look at the mess that occurred when SP3 was release for Windows XP. Thousands of PCs failed to boot after an Intel/AMD conflict.

Single automated patching will only be trusted if it proves to be properly tested and not used to push out nasties as "security updates" - WGA anyone?