Posts by Chrisni

Microsoft Teams gets off to a wobbly start as the world and its cat starts working from home

Teams is new, but uses recycled code in some components. Large parts of the Teams Phone system component are recycled from Skype for Business, so it inherits some of the issues.

Galileo, here we go again. My my, the Brits are gonna miss EU

Re: NATO...

Long range ordinance (cruise missles etc) use Satellite based navigation systems for most of the journey (assisted by other onboard systems) before switching to terminal guidance systems.

You can block satellite navigation signals only over relatively short distances, as it involves literally blasting out static on the same radio frequencies to over-power the signal, so Galileo for military uses is still an important keystone to move EU countries away from solely relying on the US owned GPS system (Russia by contrast has it's own GLONASS system).

El Reg deep dive: Everything you need to know about UK.gov's pr0n block

Age Verification is Simple

Just play the sound of a dial-up modem, and ask the user what it is.

From July, Chrome will name and shame insecure HTTP websites

Re: Good Strategy?

Thank you kind stranger, I've been looking for the view certificate option for months now!

Wannacry: Everything you still need to know because there were so many unanswered Qs

Re: Great analysis - thanks

The vast majority of affected systems were corporate, not personal systems. These end up being maintained by corporate IT departments, which usually don't automatically patch the desktops.

This is usually because they need to ensure that any patches released will not prevent software used by the company from working. They'd want to regression test it before rolling out the updates.

This all sounds reasonable to a degree, but you get cost saving measures whereby corporate IT department's use a static patch deployment cycle of their own (maybe every 6 months) rather than every time an update is released. As such, security updates can go many months waiting to be deployed in corporate networks, increasing the level of vulnerability to pretty much every type of Malware.

The solution of this is for corporations to change their procedures. Interim security patches like the March patch doesn't require batch regression testing as they might when a large feature patch is released.

Do we need Windows patch legislation?

No. The concept of doing so is ridiculous. The blame here is firmly on those still using an operating system that is 16 years old. Microsoft gave them plenty of warning, offered specialised upgrade programs and eventually resorted to nagware to try and get people to upgrade.

If anything, the vendors of the bespoke software holding back OS upgrades should be held accountable, as well as the inept IT management that think CAPEX savings outweigh OPEX savings. In IT, they almost never do.

Help-desk hell

Business Idiots more like..

The following conversation took place between myself (Networking) and two members of the 'Business Intelligence' department.

Them: Can you open port 3306 on this server (lets call it Server-A)

Me: You need to specify a source and destination for me to open a port on the firewall. What's the source?

Them: (Confused looks to each other) ..Server-A...

Me: Ok, and the destination?

Them: (Confused chatting among themselves, that went on for quite some time) ...localhost...

Me: (stunned silence, then): So it's connecting to itself?

Them: Yes, can you open the ports on it?...

I proceeded to explain that it was nothing to do with the network, complete with an explanation on what a network is (using two cups and string as an example), and then asked them for the 10 minutes of my life they'd wasted back.

Consumer Reports: 'We were wrong about the iPhone 4'

Is it just me...

I live in the UK, and have an iPhone 4 on the network O2.

I've never had this problem, even when i try to recreate the issue, i can't get it to drop signal by anymore than one bar (which is probably unrelated).

The only way i can get my phone to drop signal in an area with signal, is to stand inside a shipping container and lock myself in.

However that issue affects any mobile phone, not just the iPhone 4...

In a nutshell: Sucks to be with AT&T!