Posts by James O'Shea

Qatar’s $400M jet for Trump is a gold-plated security nightmare

Re: And then there was 2

if you look really closely you might be able to detect just how much I care about whether or not one or both sets of murderous savage barbarians get their feeling hurt.

Microsoft facing multibillion legal claim over how it sells software

Re: I find...

Trump speeches are easy to stop. Change the channel.

So your [expletive] test failed. So [obscene participle] what?

Re: No Comment!

Feh. Amateur. I was once present when a young (US) Marine spoke at length about an M60 machine-gun which apparently displeased him. He spent five minutes. Mere sailors, even chief petty officers and warrant officers, listened in awe. (Remember always: chief petty officers sit at the right hand of god. Warrant officers are god. If you forget this, even if you are an admiral, you will be made to remember and it will be painful.) (Yes, the M60 was that bad. The US basically filed the swastikas off an MG42, stamped 'Made in USA' on it and made a few tweaks because of Not Invented Here. The few tweaks Did Something. It's noticeable that the Belgians tweaked the MG42 to be the FN MAG, the GPMG in the Land of Hope and Glory, and the (West) Germans tweaked it to be the MG3, both of which worked where the M60 had Problems.)

OS-busting bug so bad that Microsoft blocks Windows Insider release

"I'm sorry, Satya. I'm afraid I can't do that."

Update turns Google Gemini into a prude, breaking apps for trauma survivors

Don't get caught.

Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

Re: To channel a certain class of reader ...

Our Supreme Twit Donald spent 23 of the first 92 days in office playing golf at his course in West Palm Beach. He's getting tired of the same old course, especially as his Honduran and Guatemalan grounds staff have all departed one step ahead of ICE and the hedge outside the property is looking a bit shaggy.

Someone forgot to pay their 'lecy bill?

What the **** did you put in that code? The client thinks it's a cyberattack

Re: ?

He doesn't have his pet mouse with him.

Hmm. Does he speak using small caps?

Windows profanity filter finally gets a ******* off switch

I am reminded of Eudora

Many, many years ago I used Eudora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_(email_client) for my email needs on Mac and Windows. Eudora did many things very well, notably POP mail. It did NOT do some things at all, or very badly indeed, notably IMAP mail. (Yes, I know, Wiki says that it did IMAP. I was there, and no, it didn't.) The guys behind Eudora at the time (Qualcomm) got lots of feedback on this; it was one of the more common points raised about Eudora on numerous sites, not least at least two mailing lists dedicated to Eudora, one of them run (briefly) by Qualcomm. Instead of fixing the known problems, especially including the extremely broken IMAP implementation, Qualcomm elected to change the way that Eudora was supported and also debuted 'peppers'. If you paid up for an upgrade, all upgrades for a year would be free. Strangely, major upgrades started to appear at 13 to 14 month intervals. Funny, that. Worse were the 'peppers'. Eudora would 'evaluate' your email and put up little chili pepper icons if the post was 'too hot', the max being three peppers. I was then on a history mailing list (I have a history degree...) and we were then talking about one Guillaume dux Normandie, possibly better known as William the Bastard. (Denizens of an obscure island off the coast of France may also know him as William the Conqueror, but that's a minority title.) Many of the members of the list used Eudora. You would not believe the number of peppers the typical post generated. Several members of the list started a competition to see who could accumulate the most peppers in the shortest time. There was also an adware version; you could have free, but crippled, email, you could have full-featured but expensive, email, or you could have full-featured email with a honking great ad in the corner, an ad which detected if something was in front of it and screamed bloody murder; at the time, there were certain popular Mac add-ons which put small floating things up on screen, one of which was normally exactly where Eudora put its ads, giving the users the choice of a useful add-on and a crippled Eudora, or a working Eudora but no add-on. I picked no Eudora and went with an email client which understood IMAP and didn't try to feed me ads and peppers.

Hmm. Gee. MS is trying to feed its users ads and censorship. Hmm.

Back online after 'catastrophic' attack, 4chan says it's too broke for good IT

Here's the world's smallest violin, being played just for them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/twosetviolin/comments/b3yh14/worlds_smallest_violin/#lightbox

Microsoft 365 Copilot gets a new crew, including Researcher and Analyst bots

Re: The question most often asked of "embedded" AI & LLMs in consumer products

for the definitive method on deleting AI, see John McAfee's method for deleting McAfee AV. That way always works.

https://youtu.be/yIaNZXgDtRU

Warning: NSFW.

I like his backup methods.

John Connor and Kyle Reese have methods which work, too.

Who needs phishing when your login's already in the wild?

And this is why I have several throwaway email accounts, used specifically on sites that don't need to know valuable accounts. And why those sites which allow me to use something other than an email get something other than an email, and I have been... creative... with some sites.

Note that El Reg wants an email. El Reg gets a throwaway email.

Because it's easier and, more important, cheaper, that way.

Microsoft: Why not let our Copilot fly your computer?

not a chance in hell.

Microsoft OneDrive file sync apps for Windows, Mac broken for 10 months

Heh. MS does it again

For the record... I have several 'Personal' OneDrive accounts, because I have several Outlook.com email accounts which I use as throwaways when a site I don't trust insists on getting an email account. Each Outlook.com account has a OneDrive account. I have never even logged into most of them. I logged into one just today, after reading the El Reg story; yeah, it's fucked, and if I had had actual content in there I would have been Very Annoyed. For reasons of Microsoft, you can log into as many 'Business' or 'School' accounts at the same time as you wish; I have two 'Business' and two 'School' OneDrives open right now. You can only log into one, just one, 'Personal' OneDrive at a time. I'm not usually logged into 'Personal' OneDrives. If it wasn't for El Reg I might never have noticed this particular fuck-up, as it doesn't seem to touch 'Business' or 'School' OneDrives. The fact that someone is paying for 'Business' or 'School' accounts while 'Personal' accounts are free may/may not have something to do with this fuck-up. The observer may be able to guess what I think is likely. It should be noted that the 'Business' and 'School' OneDrives came as part of an Office 365 sub; the 'Personal' account keeps nagging me to get, and pay for, Office 365, that being one of the reasons why I usually don't use it. Hmmm. One wonders if the users who paid up for Office also have this problem...

Windows Recovery Environment update fails successfully, says Microsoft

Possibly he meant this: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16904-gnoll

Microsoft total recalls Recall totally to Copilot+ PCs

Re: Resistance is futile

Do they have a plan?

Don't worry

This is _Microsoft_ that we're talking about here. They'll fuck it up. It depends on WinHell... ah, that is, Windows Hello, which they just fucked up on Patch Tuesday. More of the same to follow.

Now, how do you create a stand-alone admin account again? No MS Account, no WinHell. No WinHell, no Recall.

Trust in MS incompetence. They haven't let us down about _that_ yet.

Microsoft resets 'days since last Windows 11 problem' counter to 0

Re: M$

They just fucked up _again_. https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/09/microsoft_hello_patch/ and this one's all MS all the way.

They either don't test at all or they're very bad at testing and have been very bad at testing for over 40 years.

Re: M$

Dave, m'man, it ain't a 'bad driver' if it worked on all previous OS versions it was supposed to, going back to Win10. It's not the bloody driver that's the problem, it's bloody Microsoft FUCKING AROUND with the internals of the OS and NOT TELLING ANYONE until something breaks and NOT TESTING A DAMN THING until something breaks. Microsoft has done this with earlier versions of Win11. And Win10. And Win8.x. And Win7. And WinXP. Indeed, MS has done this at least as far back as DOS. Microsoft have been silently fucking things up for OVER 40 BLOODY YEARS. And it's gotten WORSE over time.

There is simply no excuse for this kind of thing, not this late in the game. Microsoft needs to fix their processes. Microsoft needs actually to TEST THINGS; minor, unimportant stuff like, oh, networking (wired and wireless), printing, and, oh, ENTERPRISE-LEVEL SECURITY. It's one thing if a one-man band putting out an obscure Linux or BSD variant fucks stuff up. It's an entirely different thing when the LARGEST SOFTWARE COMPANY IN THE FUCKING WORLD fucks things up. Repeatedly. See, for example, lots of El Reg stories such as https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/26/microsoft_deborks_usb_printers/ and https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/02/scanner_canon_windows_update/ and https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/11/microsoft_windows_11_escl_fix/, and that's just the last few months. There're a lot more where those came from. There's a reason why many admins let someone else be the first to apply Patch Tuesday patches; no one, including MS, has the least idea what will break this time. Because MS DOESN'T BLOODY TEST A FUCKING THING.

Yeah. I got shouty. And profane. Not sorry. Microsoft should be.

Pharmacist accused of using webcams to spy on women in intimate moments at work, home

Hmm

The cameras on my laptops all have little shutters. In addition, they, and the front-facing cameras on phones and tablets, have little pieces of black electrician's tape across them. Rear-facing cameras are, well, rear-facing and can't usually see much that I don't want them to see. My nice new iPhone 16 has a case which has a little hatch for the rear-facing cameras; that has black electrician's tape across it. Besides, the phones are usually in my pocket when not in use, and the tablet is usually in a bag, next to the laptop, when not in use. Right now someone who accessed the tablet would see a close-up of the window outside this room. I'm on the fourth floor, the only things in line of sight are trees and the building across the street. And clouds.

Note that the electrical tape on the laptops also does a nice job of muffling the microphone.

I have dedicated webcams for two of my desktops. In both cases the webcams are disconnected from their USB ports when not in use. The monitors themselves don't have webcams.

UK data watchdog seeks fresh blood as more complaints lie unanswered for up to a year

Hmmm

If they'll allow very remote work, I would be perfectly willing to work for them from here in Deepest South Florida. For a price, of course, in £ or €, not $, and deliverable to an account in the Caymans or the Turks & Caicos. And I won't tell the Orange One or the Musketeer if they won't so it'll be tariff-free.

Samsung trumps USA's tariffs by making displays in Mexico, and elsewhere if needed

Re: Already occurred in 2007.

Antigua doesn't give a shit.

China sells their cheap tat to Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Latin America, even Africa instead. There's a _lot_ of money hanging around in, say, Brazil or South Africa. China also doesn't sell its samarium and other rare earths to the US, and the US can't make modern electronics even if they had the factories, which they don't. And Canada doesn't sell its cobalt or aluminum to the US; no specialty steels (kiss goodbye to, oh, tanks and aircraft carriers, there is no appreciable source of cobalt in the US and no real replacement for it, either) and no aircraft or missiles without aluminum alloys. (The nearest non-Canadian cobalt is in Cuba. The Orange One would have to patch things up with Cuba, alienating the Island Mexicans in Florida so that no MAGAt wins an election in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, or Munroe counties ever again, or invades Canada or Cuba or both, which will piss off a _lot_ of people, while turning enraged Canuks and Cubanos loose. Vietnam, squared, only on the North American mainland. Fun, fun, fun.) China and Russia kick back and get out popcorn while they watch the fun.

Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after

Err... the tilde has been option-n on Mac keyboards since 1984. Most Mac keyboards also have it up on the upper left, but not all by any means. All of them show the tilde as option-n. The tilde, various accents, the umlaut, and others are burned into my muscle memory by over 40 years of hitting option-something. And there's a keyboard viewer available on the menubar to show you exactly which keys are used for what. It's the last remaining item from the original Mac Control Panels.

um... I'm familiar with US English, UK English, French, Latin American Spanish, and German keyboard layouts. It's usually perfectly clear where the | key hangs out. (Okay, so it might take a bit of searching to find it on some German and Latin American Spanish keyboards, made by, of course, Dell. Kill it with fire and get a real keyboard. I hate Dell, and Dell keyboards aren't even a major reason.) What language was that keyboard? And how long had m'man been using the keyboard?

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Re: Not magnetic field, more star field?

He didn't graduate from a Service Academy. And he had actual experience. A look at casualty lists suggests that Young Gentle(wo)men tend to get smarter if they get shot at, as the stupid and/or unlucky ones die quickly. In HM Forces, dating back to the days of the Tudors, the most likely casualties were the most junior Other Ranks and the most junior Young Gentleman. The RN tended to send very young gentlemen to sea as midshipmen, a.k.a. apprentice officers. Nelson went to sea before his 13th birthday. Young gentlemen at the time were encouraged to be seen and not heard, and if they irritated a warrant, they would get to 'kiss the gunner's daughter', the gunner being a very senior warrant, and his daughter being a gun. That is, they would be bent over a gun and beaten until they wised up or got out of the service. The RN was a meritocracy; Nelson was the son of a rural clergyman, but was damn good and was rewarded accordingly. The Army wasn't as strongly meritorious as the Navy, and tended towards slightly older young gentlemen, many of whom were junior members of the peerage. Especially in the cavalry and the Guards. The differing methods of the Army and the Navy meant that the Navy got Nelson and others like him, and the Army got Elphinstone and others like him. Elphinstone is possibly the very worst general officer of all time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War

Re: Not magnetic field, more star field?

You haven't encountered many Young Gentle(wo)men, have you? Treasure that one; s/he's smart enough to know that there's a problem. It's the wrong problem, but at least s/he knows something may be wrong. I have assorted relatives in assorted armed forces from India to Australia to Canada to the US and UK, and they can tell you lots of Young Gentle(wo)men stories. Admittedly, the female varieties tend to be slightly smarter than the male versions, and all tend to smarten up over the first two or three months. There's nothing as stupid as a Young Gentle(wo)man who just graduated from <insert name of major military academy> and thinks that s/he's God's Gift to the Service. Young Gentle(wo)men are why God (that is, the senior warrant officer present) invented senior NCOs who can... properly guide... the Young Gentle(wo)man in a way that will not annoy the senior warrant. The First Commandment is Thou Shalt Not Annoy The Warrant Unless Thou Wishes To Do Every Shitty Duty The Warrant Can Think Up, And The Warrant Has Been In The Service Longer Than Thou Hast Been Alive And Knows A Lot Of Shitty Jobs Just Perfectly Fitted For Annoying Young Gentle(wo)men. Fear The Warrant. Especially before he has his coffee. The C.O., having encountered senior warrants before, will listen to the senior warrant and assign the Young Gentle(wo)man the appropriate duties. In addition to their normal duties. Really, fear the warrant.

Windows 11 poised to beat 10, mostly because it has to

Re: When October comes

My main desktop at home is a 2014 Mac mini. It seems to be working quite well. And it got some updates last month, so I don't know where you get that 'six years' bit.

I also have an aged eMac which could be updated beyond where it is, but will never go further than how I have it set, as updating it would kill Classic and I want to play some aged classic Mac OS games. It's old, it's slow, it's heavy, it still works. How many Windows machines of that era are still operational? And, if you somehow manage to match the eMac, I also have a beige G3 from the 1990s which still runs. It's older, slower, and heavier than the eMac, but it still works. Got any Win95 machines running?

In all three cases I had support from Apple for _years_ beyond the official EoL. _Free_ support from Apple.

There would be a reason why I would buy Apple gear.

When October comes

This machine will be running Ubuntu.

And when it finally dies, it will be replaced by a MacBook.

Bite me, Microsoft.

UK convicts five romance fraudsters who stole millions from duped singles

String them up

by their balls. Using barbed wire.

One of SWMBO's female relatives got stung by some of those fraudsters, despite being warned by SWMBO and myself. She is now much wiser... and if she ever gets her hands on the fraudster in question, he will wish that he was only being strung up by the balls with barbed wire. She would try to recover some of her losses by producing a little informative video aimed at warning would-be fraudsters as to the possible consequences of being caught.

Mozilla is rolling Thundermail, a Gmail, Office 365 rival

Re: I would love to have old email

I use my ISP's email (AT&Totally Useless) to log into their system. I use that email nowhere else. I have never used it anywhere else. I get a truly amazing amount of spam in it. Gee. I wonder who, oh, who could have sold my info? 'Tis a puzzlement.

AT&Totally Useless is always asking me for more info. They want phone numbers other than those they know because they're AT&Totally Useless numbers; they want alternate emails. They want all kinds of things. And they get so hurt when I tell them to fuck off.

Re: Wake me

The only reason I use Outlook on Macs and iOS/iPadOS is that while Outlook sucks, Apple Mail sucks harder.

Re: Wake me

Few of the iOS clients work on iOS/iPadOS _and_ Macs _and_ Windows. Fewer of those have acceptable behavior. The vast majority of mail systems want some variant on webmail. Webmail is unacceptable. Period. Security problems.

If Thunderbird worked on iOS/iPadOS, it would be ideal, as it already works on Macs, Windows, and Linux. (We're dumping Android so I don't care if it works there or not.) As it is Outlook works on Macs, Windows, and iOS/iPadOS. it's shitty, but it's there. I suspect that Thunderbird will never work on iOS/iPadOS.

Re: Wake me

I don't usually do email on a phone, though there are those around here who do. What I do, a lot, is email on a tablet. An iPad Pro with a keyboard is a handy semi-laptop and much better behaved than many Windows laptops, particularly in regards to responsiveness. I can get an email client up and fire off an email in the time it takes for a Windows laptop to load. If Thunderbird is not available on iOS/iPadOS but Outlook is, we will use Outlook. Not because we like it, we don't, but because it's there. The very best ability is availability; and Thunderbird doesn't have it. And almost certainly never will.

As for cloning... a lot of MFA system require authentication from an app, and not one on the device being authenticated. Log in with the right username and password, then enter the auth token, usually a six-digit number, generated by the auth app elsewhere. My phone is authed by my iPad, my iPad is authed by my phone. Bad guys would have to clone both at the same time. And due to the way the auth app words, I _would_ notice immediately.

Wake me

when there's a Thunderbird client for iOS/iPadOS.

No, I don't mean a webmail client.

The only thing, I repeat, the ONLY thing which keeps me using Outlook is that there are clients for Mac, Windows, and iOS/iPadOS. Shitty, annoying, massively buggy clients, but clients non-the-less. There is no iOS/iPadOS client for Thunderbird, and, frankly, I suspect that there never will be one. And I hate webmail.

And, no, I don't care about what may/may not be available for Android. When we started allowing smartphones and tablets onto the office network the majority of devices were Android, and it wasn't close. Over the years, various Android annoyances have dropped the number of Android devices down to single-digit percentages of the total. We will be dropping Android support for various applications which run on smartphones/tablets at the end of this year. It would have been at the end of last year but there was a one year extension. There won't be another.

Microsoft patches patch that broke USB printing in Windows 11

Re: Speedy!

Would that be the 'Widows & Orphans' 'feature' or is it something else? Pagination problems with Widows & Orphans continue, except where I kill the 'feature' with extreme prejudice. I can think of a few other long-standing problems..

Note that the Widows & Orphans problem also affects Word for Mac, and may indeed have originated in Word for Mac and been migrated over when MS ported Word for Mac to Windows. (Yes, the original version of Word for Windows was a port from Word for Mac. Note that this is no longer the case, Word for Mac is usually a port from Word for Windows. God help us all.)

2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies

Re: Interesting

I have listened to RFK Jr in full. He's insane, and he's going to kill a lot of people.

Both of my parents were epidemiologists. I have seen the results of polio, measles, mumps, and, before it was stomped on, smallpox, running wild. This is a relatively mild case of measles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles#/media/File:RougeoleDP.jpg and this is smallpox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#/media/File:Child_with_Smallpox_Bangladesh.jpg Wiki doesn't have a pic of the consequences for adult males who catch mumps; let's just say that it's highly probable that they're Darwined. Permanently.

Go right ahead. Be anti-vax. Take the consequences.

Official HP toner not official enough after dodgy update, say users

Cry havok

and unleash the attack attorneys of war. Hunt them down. Remove their assets. Hound them out of business.

100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk

Re: Blokes (or whatever) acting like blokes

i don't care.

Re: NSA ... not the other meaning?

As that agency doesn't exist...

Re: NSA ... not the other meaning?

Nursing Students Association.

If only

There was some method of long-distance communication, heavily encrypted, easily set up on private (that is, not work-owned) devices which could be used by large numbers of like-minded people in perfect secrecy (as long as the software required didn't touch work systems, including work networks)...

Hmm. I can think of about three possibles without even trying. No, Twitter/X, FarceBook, and What'sEasilySeenByThePRC aren;t among them.

And, if you can live with security by obscurity, USENET still lives (barely) and there are lots of semi-dead newsgroups where quiet conversations may be held while making it difficult to track who said what where and when. Especially now that Google has stopped archiving USENET.

Microsoft's updated Windows battery indicator rollout runs out of juice

Microsoft has problems with battery indicators

I have a Microsoft Bluetooth Mouse. it talks to a Lenovo laptop, currently multibooting Win 11 (not for long...) and Ubuntu. When on Win 11, the mouse indicates that it has anywhere from 22 to 31% battery life left, depending on mood. This is, I repeat, a Microsoft product talking to a Microsoft OS.

I keep a spare battery around, just in case.

Yay, Microsoft.

I would not trust Microsoft battery indications. Period.

Ad-supported Microsoft Office bobs to the surface

Re: Hotmail version

1. go online, preferably using the wireless in the county library. (Free. Good luck tracking users.)

2. download Firefox (other browsers are available) and make it the default.

3. reboot to clear old associations.

4. go back online and download LibreOffice.

5. log out or reboot again. use LO offline. You're golden.

Alternatively... borrow computer from county library, download LO to USB stick, run antimalware to ensure that USB stick is clean, install LO on new computer, never having gone online even once on new machine.

Alternatively, install Ubuntu on Grandma's machine. Make sure that LO is installed.

Alternatively, buy Grandma a Mac. Macs ship with, amongst other things, Pages and _two_ text editors. LO is available for Macs.

Alternatively, buy Grandma an iPad. IPads ship with Pages and a text editor. LO is NOT available for iPads.

I gave my 93-year-old mother an iPad. I didn't have to buy one, it was an older one which I had replaced with a newer one. Her laptop has been gathering dust for at least 18 months now, while she used the iPad daily. The iPad will be replaced by a new M2 iPad Air next month. The laptop will be reformatted and Ubuntu will be installed. The old iPad will be deployed as a portable TV; thanks to the app from her cableco, she can stream everything the cableco provides directly to the iPad; the main problem is that the screen is a bit small. Hence the laptop, the cableco will stream to Linux and the laptop has an 16" display. She would use the iPad for computer stuff and the laptop as a mobile TV.

Harassment allegations against DEF CON veteran detailed in court filing

Right then. Let's see what comes out in court, shall we? So far this looks very bad for Hadnagy. Very bad indeed. I have just got to se what defence, if any, is offered. This looks very Amber Heard-like, with Hadnagy playing Heard's role.

El Reg, please pay close attention to this case.

Microsoft trims more CPUs from Windows 11 compatibility list

I discovered that BitLocker was automatically enabled on my Win 11 Home system.

1. I didn't know that BitLocker worked on Win Home systems before I made the discovery.

2. I made the discovery as I was preparing to move the machine to Ubuntu. This added a step: Turn Bloody BitLocker Off Right Bloody Now! A search online revealed the following gems:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/deactivating-bitlocker-on-windows-11-home/acde71e5-fc0c-4f12-ae5a-3cc37877e7be

https://www.solveyourtech.com/how-to-disable-bitlocker-in-windows-11-a-step-by-step-guide/

https://pureinfotech.com/disable-suspend-bitlocker-windows-11/

No further comment.

We meet the protesters who want to ban Artificial General Intelligence before it even exists

Re: They'll be sorry. . .

Feh. You're no fun. Whenever I see Roko Basilisk I think of Roko from Questionable Content. https://www.questionablecontent.net/cast.php Scroll down to find her. She's an AI. She's also friends with Bubbles, a Very Large ex-military AI, and Yay Newfriend, a multi-bodied AI with a god complex. Bubbles is retired from the military, has taken off her armor, and is Very Very Good Friends with Faye. Roko likes pastries. Yay, now, Yay's dangerous.

(Yes, I'm fairly sure that Roko got her name because the author of the site knew about the other Roko Basilisk.)

Warning: do not visit Questionable Content if you have issues with coffee, pastries, libraries, allosaurs, dogs, robots made of slime, or robots who are very interested in your butt.

US newspaper publisher uses linguistic gymnastics to avoid saying its outage was due to ransomware

Boyz, many years ago I worked for a newspaper. I was System Manager and Pre-Press; i ran all the computers, and in particular I ran the computers which talked to the imagesetter and the platemaker, and so created the film which was burned to plates which were hung on the press. In other words, without Pre-Press there ain't no paper. The imagesetter and platemaker were NOT on the main network; film for the imagesetter was $3/foot (100-foot film canisters, $300/canister) and we did NOT want some bozo in Editorial 'accidentally' sending something to film. We had a server, running A/UX (yeah, it was that long ago) and we had two primitive RAID arrays attached to it externally by SCSI and a DAT tape drive, also on the SCSI chain. And a SyQuest drive, on the SCSI chain, later replaced by a Zip and then a Jaz drive. Why? Because Editorial and Advertising and so on accessed files on the server, which were stored on the RAID arrays, and backed up on DAT tape... and when we needed to send files to file, we would copy the completed files onto a SyPest disk, later onto a Zip or a Jaz disk because everyone hated SyPest with the fury of 10,000 suns, and hand-walk it to the pre-press setup. This meant that we had three copies of all files in use: on the RAID (with an archive, compressed, so that's four copies), on tape, and on various SyPest, Zip, or Jaz disks. We had a fire-resistant file cabinet with tapes and SyPest, Zip, and Jaz disks, plus we sent older tapes/disks out to a 3rd party, so if there was a fire the older stuff would be safe. Literally the only things which would not be stored in multiple copies some of them offline would be the files being worked on that day. Everything else was backed up, including applications and system software. Doing a complete rebuild of the system from go would have been a matter of hours of effort, bringing up essential items and current work, followed by slowly restoring all the files on the RAIDs. Very important stuff was burned to CDs or DVDs and stored elsewhere, so that's five copies.

I could do this 30 bloody years ago, well before there was such a thing as ransomware; I was thinking of fires, or floods, or theft. There was no cloud; when I started, there was one, just one, modem, running at 33.6 kb/s, replaced by two, just two, running at 56 kb/s, and finally by 500 kb/s 'broadband' to the network. What's these boyz problem why they don't have multiple copies and why they didn't go actively looking for malware or stick their stuff on something unlikely to attract malware, such as BSD? (How much ransomware is available for BSD, anyway?)