Posts by Spindreams 62 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Mar 2011
Over many many years I went from Netcape, IE, FF, Chrome, Edge (As I actually preferred it to Chrome), and now moved to Vivaldi after trying it and loving it, it's my browser of choice now and SO configurable compared to any other I have tried. If you like to customise things like in the old days then this is the browser for you and it still works with full fat Ublock Origin. :)
I tried installing it a few days after it released, it totally messed up my desktop, explorer would not run, no access to any program, errors everywhere almost like the windows folder was missing. I managed to use an windows 10 install USB to access the update rollback and bingo everything was back to normal. I just hope it is fixed when they force the install on me.....
If YT paid creators based a viewers ability to buy the products being advertised then none of these guys would get a look in as their viewers are 3-9 year olds. There is plenty of good, informative, interesting and worthwhile content on YT, advertisers think viewer numbers are what counts, maybe one day they will learn.
Cookie permission laws by individual countries are pointless, the very people who you would rather not allow cookies from are the very people who don't give a shit about it and won't offer you the option. Until the option is baked into the browser all it does is make the experience worse for those sites that bother to implement the rules.
Every time I see an announcement about a meteor shower I think, okay lets give it a go and invariably I wait up till 1am and go stand outside in the cold looking up at the sky (causing myself massive neck pain in the process) and occasionally see what I think might be a shooting star but could just have been a stray tear in my eye from the pain in my neck and having not blinked for the last 10 minutes. Then after an hour I say fuck this and go inside to warm up and get on with my life again. Next time I better see fire balls streaking across the sky every second or I am calling bullshit to this stuff.
So why did the technician not ask what the issue was on the phone before he drove all that way if it was so minor a problem as to not warrant a call out? Sounds like poor time / job management to me, not a problem with the pub land lady. In any case the machine was not in full working order no matter how minor it might seem to the technician and why is traffic on the m25 something to moan about, it is normal and should have been expected.
I installed it once and hated it, at least as a email client (Never really touched the other parts of it). But if the core part of your product is pants then it does not matter how many other groupware features you bolt onto it, people will still feel like they have a crap email program which is what they are going to use the software for 99% of the time. It is a shame because there really is a gap on PC for a really good email client. Thunderbird is about as good as it gets ATM and that really isn't saying to much especially as it is "officially" ceased development.
The mobile phone companies have no interest in stopping these scams as they make lots of money from them, I have had two mobile phones on tre.it (Three italia) where I have been charged for premium SMS content without ever subscribing to anything or visiting any websites etc (scammed out of about €200 of credit) You don't need to, they just pick your number randomly and subscribe you, it is then down to you to cancel the subscription if you happen to notice (they hide it well) it which will repeat every day or week if you don't. This sort of thing should be simply made illegal...
They should definitely at minimum split out Google search from everything else Google does. Google has such a dominant position with it's search engine and such an impact on the success of all online business that favouring its own services essentially means it is very hard for anyone else to compete. How much better would it be if Google search was run as a not for profit or even subsidised by an ISP tax to remove all paid adverts and only allow organic search results to be listed.
I installed the 30 day trial of the previous version, it installed 3 auto-startup programs and 1 startup service without even asking and didn't even give me the option to change the install location. Never again... :( Pile of crap, I so wish they had never purchased Macromedia otherwise I wouldn't want to touch them with a barge pole.
The biggest problem with remote administration of a Windows server is that well its so damn difficult to do unless you have all your server on the same AD Domain. I have many Windows servers that are scattered around the globe that I have to administer, RDP to a desktop is just the only easy way to do it.
Sensationalist headline, made it sound like they forced customers to find our info on Facebook which is totally not true. Most companies that deal with consumers including mine own use multiple systems to inform customers, some customers prefer communication via Facebook, others Twitter, others our website or email etc etc, it's not a bad thing, it is a good thing for the customer.
By 7Kw/h and 10Kw/h I naively assumed this meant it would be able to output up to those levels of power continuously for as long as the batteries lasted. If it can only offer 2Kw then its not going to be of so much use, here in Italy most people have a 3KW maximum before there power is cut so being able to exceed this would have been a good seller, and as a lot of us have PV it could store our power rather than selling it back to the providers for less then we pay them for it.
Just replaced my ageing 32in Sony trinitron CRT behemoth with a tiny little ACER k137 LED projector. The Projector was about £300 and I already had some surround sound speakers and so now we have a huge 120in screen for very little money. It is HD and 3D compatible and leaves a hell of a lot more space where the old Sony used to be. The projector is mounted on the ceiling and so does not get in the way.
Here in Italy if you have a TV you pay a TV licence no matter if you just watch DVDs (Have you ever experienced Italian broadcast tv? well we don't watch it put it that way), so now we even save €150 a year on that so the thing should pay for itself in a few years.
Also as it is so portable and as we get really good weather most of the summer, one thing I am really looking forward to is summer nights when I can take the projector outside and have outdoor movie nights. Don't think i'll be going back to a traditional TV set any time soon.
As someone who runs a host that sells both Linux and Windows hosting neither is much more expensive when you take into account MS Volume Licensing which amounts to about £10/m for Windows web server licence, and then for Linux there are industry standard panels like cPanel which costs about £20/m (Yes there are also free ones I know), Windows has the excellent WebsitePanel which is free. And don't forget there are quite a few .NET websites out there that can only run on Windows servers. So the cost difference is not a lot. We even sell Windows hosting at the same price point as Linux (same spec pretty much).
svchost.exe is a very common windows process and does not necessarily relate to your PC having a virus, this article reads like if you have this process running you have been infected which is very misleading and downright dangerous, if a user deleted this file their OS will likely cease to function.
The problems with wordpress are many, and I personally would not use it for the following reasons
1. It has very little built in security, you need a plugin just to add some anti-bruteforce options.
2. it is so popular and no insecure that every script-kiddie in the land is trying to hack it and NOT finding it very difficult as the typical WP website owner know nothing about how to secure it.
3. For web hosts like myself it is a nightmare as it is very CPU intensive and really badly coded so a couple of Wordpress sites being brute forced can bring down a whole server.
I am a Brit who has lived in Italy for 10 years and have had a Gaggia (Baby) coffee machine for about 15 years and it just works, it takes no time to get your coffee in the morning and it is always exceptional, lots of crema and two cups at a time. Anyone who says instant coffee is the way to go obviously has never tasted good coffee from a proper espresso machine.. One tip I would add is if you want milky coffee (Cafe-latte) then use semi or fullfat UHT/Longlife Milk not fresh milk (it enhances the taste) and use an espresso amount of coffee and the rest is hot milk (So very little water). On the other hand if your doing tea always fresh milk. :)
Before I had a mobile I had a wristwatch to tell me the time, now I use my phone to tell me the time (and much more) and I haven't worn a wristwatch in 15 years, why would I now want a wristwatch to do less than what my phone does, require me to still carry my phone and look fugly at the same time.
My phone is in my pocket and that's pretty easy to access. The only way I would wear a wristwatch again is if it looked fantastic, something like this maybe https://www.behance.net/gallery/Smartwatch-Concept/14929833
In the US a tip is just an expected part of the payment, it is not given as a reflection of the service provided. Which is why yanks tend to think foreigners are cheap as we tip as a tip should be for good service and if we don't get it we don't tip leading to foreigners never tipping when they go to the US. :)
I was in Rome for a shopping trip and took a taxi from the shopping center to the airport to catch my plane home, we new the route was short and should only have cost about $5 but the taxi guy drove us clear around the city to ramp up the price. I didn't want make a fuss while in the cab in case we got stranded by the driver, final fare was close to €50.
I confronted him at the end of the journey and asked him if he thought I was a stupid and explained that I knew exactly how much it should cost, he made the excuse that there were road works that meant he couldn't take the normal route. I gave him €5 and told him where to stick it.
This is just one of many bad experienced I have had with metered taxi cabs both aboard and in London, any app or tool that gives me more choice, better control and helps me avoid being con'ed is good and I am afraid the traditionalist taxi drivers who have what I see as an unfair monopoly should start to move with the times and think of their customers first instead of themselves, maybe then they wouldn't have to be so scared of loosing them..
My setup is really simple and works really well. I have a QNAP TS-210 where I store all our media which is connected to our router in the office via GB Ethernet port. On top of the TV we have a WDTVLive set top box which has a pretty good interface and can connect in many ways either directly via network File system or to any DNLA media server running on the NAS box (Twonkey for example). The WDTVLive will connect via wifi but is a little slow for streaming movies and sometime it has problems so we use powerline networking which works much better.
A few to recommend.
We use WHMCS from www.whmcs.com at our site servwise.com, it is a hosting eCommerce system but has integrated Support desk / knowledge base with some nice features but maybe not quite enough for you. The good thing though is the website interface for customers which is highly customisable to allow people to open support tickets and no limit on number of agents. (I should point out there is no need to use the eCommerce part of the software if you don't need it)
The next two have agent limits so you pay for the more agents answering tickets.
Kayako.com (another we have used) works well and probably has more of the features you are looking for.
If you prefer something is .NET then try SmarterTrack (Nice pollished system and includes live chat if you want that. http://www.smartertools.com/smartertrack/help-desk-software.aspx
Using SPF to block is a no no in my book as as has been shown it often gets broken (especially with complex systems using many sending MTAs) and if you do block then the responsibility lies with you for blocking not with the sender for messing up their spf. SPF should be used to give an indicator of spammy-ness or hammy-ness not an excuse to block emails outright by an ISP and it is then the responsibility of the person receiving to decide if to block or filter or whatever and as such also their responsibility if they block legitimate emails.. Its like saying I sent you a letter, you don't like the look of the envelope and so you binned it without opening it first to read the contents, but it is still my fault.
If he was getting his bill by post and the post was lost he would still be liable to pay a late payment fee, email is not a guaranteed method of delivery and the person should take responsibility for paying their debt on time no matter. A feeble excuse for an obviously feeble person.
Their ISP has most to blame as SPF is just a way to score an email as possible spam, and should not be used by default to block / delete emails, as someone who runs a hosting company myself we never block emails, we only provide spam scores to allow our customers to filter and block emails if they wish based on those scores.
Just because a web form yet to be filled is not loaded in a secure page does not mean the form data being submitted is insecurely submitted, it depends on the forms post url which I can't see from the screen shot. If it posts to the non-ssl (none https:// address) then the OP is correct it is highly insecure.
As an Ex-pat from London living in Sardinia there is very little good tea available locally, Tea here consists of expensive weak twinings or equally weak but cheaper Lipton stuff. So instead I get a bi-annual delivery from one of the many expat delivery websites for a pack of 1000+ pg-tips tea bags in a um bag,as well as all my oriental herbs and spices that I miss. British Corner Shop being my current fav (google it / no affiliation BTW). Now all we need here is a good local Curry and Chinese takeaway and all would be well again in the world. :)
We were one of the unfortunate hosting companies (servwise.com) that experienced the server power failure on three of our servers. Luckily they were not our most used servers and the outage had little impact to our customers. I just hope tonight the same thing does not happen when they put the UPS back. :(
The article goes into much detail about how this is a problem specific to IIS, even the title "TALKTALK SUBSIDIARY'S CUSTOMER DATA PLACED ON THE WEB IN IIS WHOOPSIE".
This is NOT a problem with IIS and could just have easily have been enabled on Apache or any other web server software. The article poster is also blaming the anonymous user access when the problem is actually having directory browsing being enabled, if you disable anonymous access then not even web pages can be viewed unless the person logs in to the server. Fail on both the cause and the remedy....
How is the fact that IIS allows anonymous access by default a security issue. It is a web server after all and is meant to be used to publish stuff to the world wide web, if you don't want that data published then you remove the anonymous access user or put it behind a firewall etc.
As someone who owns a hosting business and who administers IIS and Apache day in, day out I can vouch for IIS7 as being a very good web server. I actually think the story poster is talking about having directory browsing enabled and I know that by default that is not enabled in IIS so the server admin must have enabled it.
If it is a fail it is for the person who configured the website not IIS itself.
This sounds more like Linux fan-boys out to discredit something they know nothing about...
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