* Posts by Kiwi

4368 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Sep 2011

Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

Kiwi
FAIL

Re: Bah!

Remind me: how much did the Register raise for the same relief effort?

fuckerborg and farcebork collectively raised a whopping $15mill. Note what a poster above said about the UK raising over GBP 104mill, 78mill of that in a weekend. Population of UK? "Population" of freakbonk?

As to El Reg, if only one staffer gave 1 pound, that'd probably mean as a %age that El Reg gave a shitload more than MothaZucker. Certainly, looking at total turnover OR total staff/users, to give twice the amount per capita El Reg would've had to give fuck all. 20 pence maybe? (late-on-a-Saturday maths).

$15mill is useful, sure, and no doubt the victims of the quake were grateful for it.. But given the resources available, I'd say it's actually a very shamefully low amount. What says even more, is that Messedup Zanyburg can only use that pitiful little amount as an example of just how wonderful fb is - they haven't given a larger amount to another charity, nor have they given more to charity than that 15mill in the years since. Been a lot of nasty disasters in the world since then, but their best effort is that 15mill (assumption based on his not saying "we gave $x to y and z" (and also assuming El Reg's writer didn't skip too much there).

Kiwi
Thumb Up

Re: We salute you!

I would like to recommend the Reg staffer that actually had to suffer the full idiocy of the Zuckerdork be given a medal, or at least several days off to lie down in a dark room.

Mr Bryant, I never thought this day would arrive but.. I wholeheartedly agree with your post, and am saddened that I only have one upvote to give!

El Reg, give that man (the staffer) a medal and some time off, and give that man (Mr Bryant) another upvote or few.

Kiwi
Thumb Up

Re: meh

I can't wait for Zuckerbergs first actual miracle...up his own arsehole on a Live Facebook videostream.

Still won't make farttalk worth visiting1

(cue cries of "but millions of others do!)

1 'k so I've gone there a few dozen times to look for someone or look at something someone has really really really begged me to who I haven't felt like telling them to go and do an impression of Zuck disappearing up his own.... I have no idea how many now, but thanks to 10minutemail a significant number of the claimed trillions of "user accounts" are throwaway ones I made for the moment I was there)

Kiwi
Facepalm

Re: meh

Humans are hard wired to be status-seeking little monkeys, and a system that lets them believe that they have oodles of friends who hang upon their every word is always going to sell on the basis of self-delusion.

So.. What does this say for the silver badge I am oh-so-close to getting (yet still so far away!)?? I thought you all loved me so much!

But overall.. Have an upvote...

(---> /me crying in anguish...)

Kiwi
Pint

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou

I might've been tempted to read such a document had I stumbled on it from another source. Thank you for doing it so the rest of us don't have to!

---> A million of your favourite beverage! (though that lot sounds like Zuck beat you to it!)

I guess it goes to show.. When you sell your soul to the devil, you get what you deserve. Guess Zuck is starting to unravel?

(And he must have sold his soul, how else could someone who writes stuff like that do so well in this world?)

Talk of tech innovation is bullsh*t. Shut up and get the work done – says Linus Torvalds

Kiwi
Trollface

Re: Innovation NEWS!

"Disruptive Technology"... Is that when you take a perfectly functional application and modify it to where it no longer works (as in "disrupting" it's functionality)?

No. That's called "Windows Update".

Ex-FBI man spills on why hackers are winning the security game

Kiwi
FAIL

Re: I can suggest a guaranteed fix:

For any company that suffers a data breach, the CEO must serve a ten year jail sentence.

And where the breach comes about because of the myriad vulnerabilities even in the best software? Where the breach comes because MS changes their policies on EMET (Extremely Massively Excessive "Telemetry") and starts slurping data from all those enterprises who foolishly trusted them? Where an employee who passed all the best testing available turns rogue and steals data?

Even the best protected with the best practices in place can be vulnerable to the unexpected. You can do your best to prevent, but then even the best driver in the world would fall victim to a sink-hole opening up in the road a heavier truck just drove across.

All for people further up the food chain facing serious penalties for anything that could be their responsibility, but that is over-ridden by a very severe hatred of innocent people doing time, even a little bit. Those who advocate such things perhaps should give it a few months trial first?

Munich may dump Linux for Windows

Kiwi
Linux

Re: Adam 52 - Linux not easily fit for purpose

1) I have been unable to connect my laptop to my employer's wifi (Eduroam), because Mint will not accept the security certificate, claiming that I do not own the appropriate folder, even when logged in as an administrator. The University's Linux guru has been unable to sort out the problem, and so have several, usually reliable, online sources. I have now given up

This is an odd one I'd love to know more about. I've never heard of this but then have never tried to use WIFI at that level, only general household routers. I don't suppose you've tried "chown -R [your user name]:[your group (leave blank if preferred)] [folder in question] have you? (eg chown -R kiwi: /home/kiwi/certs or wherever such things are stored). That said, as always be careful playing with folder ownerships and permissions - a typo can cause a world of pain (same can happen in Windows!)

2) WINE works when it feels like it - not particularly helpful when ...

I use WINE for the likes of some games. Doesn't always work I admit, but then these games don't always work on Windows either. Have been playing a remake of Descent in recent days but currently have SOASER running in the background. Also played several of the CnC games (including Tib3 and Renegade) under WINE without an issue. As far as actual productivity software goes, have only ever installed MS Office (03, 07 and 10) and Photoshop Elements under it to show it can be done. And TeamViewer uses it for the Linux client. Never a problem.

(Just a minute, one of my capital ships is in trouble, just gonna check on it)...(S'allright, level 10 Akkan still got plenty of hitpoints)

3) ... Libre Office reformats everything that was previously made in MS Office, and then MS Office reformats everything again

Try using different versions of MS office, you'll often find the same thing. Tried getting MS office to open a very large presentation? Thought not. (Ok, not tried since 2010 - the disaster that was Office doing presentations was so bad I wouldn't bother again).

4) Oh, and don't suggest VM - VirtualBox is as bad as WINE for deciding not to work.

I use VB just about daily, with a number of different OS's from Dos 5.something to WinX recently (only for some testing stuff, have then removed the 8 and X versions since I don't really need them any more). Never had a problem with it, and I often push it quite hard. But there's also VMware and a few others, all seem to be OK. I think even modern Fedora or Ubuntu distributions have something pretty nifty and quick and easy to get going built in these days.

Maybe I or someone else can help with the issues you're having? Doubt I could though because I've had to do very little to "fix" VB for some years.

5) Oh, and installing software is a bigger job than it needs to be - okay, perhaps Windows is too easy, but the Linux route is a pisser.

Getting something out of a centrally managed repository with a nice GUI manager/search tool, and a few clicks, knowing it will install everything you need once you click that final "install" button, is in your view harder than going to Google, searching for whatever you want, going to some hopefully not drive-by infected web page, downloading something hopefully not malware ridden, trying to install it, finding it installs a bunch of other stuff you never really wanted (malware stuff I mean, not dependencies), hoping your AV actually catches it this time and cleans stuff, reinstalling your corrupted OS, realising you forgot to save out some data you really wanted to keep and now it's lost forever, realising the stuff you did save is infected so your new OS is already compromised.... ? Can you tell me what weird concoction of drugs you're taking so I know what to avoid?

I really don't have the time to mess about finding the nearest thing to do something easy in Windows (let's say, rotating a video 180 degrees), find out there is nothing that actually does the job,

2 minutes ago I'd never given the need for this a thought. Open video in VLC, have a look for what might be an option, - right-click and a quick squiz at the video options. Nothing there. Ok, try the Tools menu. Hmm, "Effects and Filters", have a look there. Hmm, "Video Effects", might be worth a gander. Nope, nothing there. Oh wait, how about under "Geometry". Oh look , "Rotate" with a dial so you can rotate the video to pretty much any of 360deg. Of course, may not be what you want since it was plainly obvious, in one of a couple of places you'd expect to find such a thing, labelled in plain English. (and yes, I wrote this part of my reply first, so the 2 minutes holds :) )

then try some command-line technique that may (or not) work, but which takes an entire evening.

Why would you use CLI for video editing? I admit I have done very little video work, but still CLI seems a bit odd for that?

Kiwi
Linux

Re: Replacing Linux with Windows, based on *cost*?

And Linux refuses to drop it's love of the command line!

You mean like how you need to use CLI to restore network functionality after it randomly drops out?

Oh, no, wait a minute. That was Windows 10.

CLI is not a bad thing, and as someone who has fixed a lot of Windows machines, there are some things that are much better done via CLI, especially wrt repair and maintenance. Complaining about CLI just shows how lacking you are in IT knowledge. (Disclaimer: compared to most on El Reg I'm less than a clueless noob!)

Bruce Schneier: The US government is coming for YOUR code, techies

Kiwi
Paris Hilton

Re: Motivation?

(well not now, with Trump being in Vlad's front pocket.)

You BASTARD! As soon as I read that this horrible "auditory mental image" came to mind.

[Apols to the Def ones]

"Skin on skin, let the love begin.. Putin"

Hey, something that evil has to be shared.. (Is that why the yanks are quickly booking so many overseas visits for chump?)

Kiwi
Boffin

Re: Well, maybe we should not put software in everything

e.g., services like On*Star need to detect airbag deployment and be able to pull trouble codes;

That sort of thing doesn't need write-access to other system memory though! Back in my BBS days my autoexec.bat file looked for various "flag files" which would be created before the machine was rebooted for various events, eg weekly system maintenance - effectively "If exist maint.flg call maint.bat"

The content of "maint.flg" could be anything, the existence of the file was the critical thing.

Of course, things like pulling codes can be done just as easily - the OnStar tracking system can monitor the content of files that get updated by other systems as needed - RO to OnStar but writeable to what needs it. And FFS check sizes. If you're expecting a single byte then read no more than a byte.

(Yes, I do know bounds checking etc can be tricky and there can be things you never consider that become common place in RealWorld situations - but some limits aren't that hard to code and decent effort should be taken!)

Actually much of the concerns over car computer failures would be quickly dispelled if this drive-by-wire sillyness was done away with. Steering and brakes directly connected please, and if necessary a "hard stomp on brakes shuts off power to fuel pump, injectors, and (for petrol engines) ignition system" system. Physical isolation, not some electronic jiggery-faultery.

The Register's guide to protecting your data when visiting the US

Kiwi
Boffin

Re: Silver lining

"...in renting out laptops/tablets/phones for visitors with a genuine-wipe on return."

I don't think I'd trust one, nor the genuine-wipe on return.

Not to hard to get around.. "You bring a CD/DVD with a copy of the OS of your choice, tick a box for the size HDD you wish for the machine to be loaded with, we rent you the machine. You install the OS yourself, and when you leave you take the disk with you, or smash/sell/bin it, your choice."

Now if only my country's government were a bunch of untrustworthy twats wanting to steal other people's data and.. Oh, wait... KACHING!

Kiwi
Trollface

Re: Don't accept it, act on it

The USA will see a dip in foreign visitors. Will it be enough for some to take notice, not sure.

They may not notice, given the rather large dip they have as El Prez...

Kiwi

Re: I strongly believe it's time to strengthen the Schengen border...

Christ LDS. You do a lot of postings!

Maybe he transposed the S and D.. And, well, just watch the old biddy in "There's Something About Mary" for what that stuff can supposedly do to someone's productivity levels :)

Kiwi
Boffin

Re: Timely advice

are well-versed in how one can build all sorts of weapons from those parts,

Whoops, forgot to reference their great training manuals - the stuff that comes out of Hollywood et al. Kinda nervous about how the new McGyver series might be showing this stuff, and daren't watch it in case it really ruins my memory of the old series. And of course many of them believe CSI:CRAPFEST, NCIS:INCEST, Scorpion and so on are realistic portrayals of what a few intelligent people can do with a can of baked beans (minus can and beans), imagination, and 2 minutes to crack someone's 4,096,000,000,000 key while they download a petabyte of data in 3 seconds over a 1200/75 modem.

Kiwi
Big Brother

Re: Timely advice

I am going to see the eclipse, as I had booked tickets already. I am wondering what they will make of all the kit I will be carrying to record the event, but in my experience the response to carrying telescopes and the like is generally that you get put into the category "Harmless nerd".

Might I suggest you look at hiring equipment while there and only take the bare minimum? After all I am sure the US customs people, and likely lots of their cops, are well-versed in how one can build all sorts of weapons from those parts, from using the scope tube as some sort of cannon or casing for a nukleaaaaar bomb or using the scope as a high-power laser simply by turning it backwards and pointing a laser pointer at it the wrong way (after all if it makes the sun ignite paper, just imagine what a laser pointer can do !!11!!!!!1!!1!!!!1!!1!).

Besides, while you might be considered "mostly harmless nerd" by most, there are some bullies who wind up as baggage handlers who like to be "mostly harmful" to expensive kit. Would hate to see any 'scope getting harmed by these twits and their less-than-gentle handling of stuff.

Who's behind the Kodi TV streaming stick crackdown?

Kiwi
Flame

Re: Home streaming is killing..

given that sports were largely free (minus tv license fee) before subscription telly and pay-per-view, i'd consider this restoring the balance.

Yup. There's one sport I like, but so often Sky has the rights to it and won't broadcast it, not PPV not delayed not ever. So I have to either NOT support my national team in any fashion, or "illegally" cheer on these people who don't get much air time. Other channels used to air them as filler, but Sky NZ didn't like others having better quality broadcasts than them.

Kiwi
Alien

Re: Said it before, will say it again

Well, that is where the bulk of the profits come from, a streaming service showing new releases would cost a fortune to be able to compete with cinema revenues.

Erm, Popcorn Time? Kodi? Lots of others? They seem to be able to handle this stuff. A monetised version of PT could work quite well.

I go to the cinema quite often, what's the reason you don't go? Is it cost? Because many cinemas offer memberships that are a flat rate and you can go as often as you like, for around £20 a month you can go to the cinema as often as you like... So really cost can't be a factor, so either you don't like the experience, or you just don't want to pay for the content you consume?

I've never heard of that. Looks like the closest we have here is "Cinebuzz" which is a "loyalty program" where you "watch 6 movies, get one free". Some discount movies as well with their "movie of the week" - but what's the chances it'll be a movie I like, at a price I am willing to pay, at a time I am able to see it?

Your $20/month is about the same as our standard movie ticket I think. Might still be cheaper on a Tuesday night, maybe $15 or something like that. One person, one ticket. And I've seen 2 movies advertised in recent months were I've thought "wonder if it's worth the effort seeing it in the theatres". Many movies I've seen have been the sort of thing you regret ever paying money for, and never want to risk something like that again - can you say "jar jar"? (might've been the last movie I paid to see, but probably was LOTR:ROTK - but the JJB factor means I doubt I'd go to a theatre again, just not worth the risk - certainly if I had paid to see any of the new star-wreck garbage I'd never visit a theatre again!)

PS: My local cinema? The brand-new multiplex built at a huge shopping complex a few years back? That replaced or put the other multiplex out of business? Well, it's not there any more. A couple of the Wellington ones also broke, so I have to travel to see any new release.

Kiwi

Re: Said it before, will say it again

Companies need money to pay for better services and need usage data to make sure they are showing the movies people want to see.

Option 1, my preferred choice - a pay system. Pro : Artists etc get some money. Con : Have to sign up to a lot of subscription services in the hopes of getting what you want, little option for a service that only charges if and when you watch something. Also, providers can buy the licences to some things and hold a show for as long as they have the exclusive license. If you want to watch Breaking Bad in NZ, but TVNZ holds the license and won't show it, tough - you can't stream it, buy it on DVD or see it in any fashion within NZ. Finally, the content on all streaming services is fairly limited for various reasons.

Option 2: Piracy. Kodi, Pirate Bay, Popcorn Time etc etc etc. Pro : Virtually unlimited content, on demand, for free. You want to watch it? It's there now, for free. 20 year old series no one wants to show or sell because they're doing an ultra-shite remake using imbeciles for scriptwriters and un-trained monkeys for actors? There for the viewing in all it's original 4x3 glory. The only limits are some rarer things where no one else wants to watch them.

Con : Nobody gets paid.

Your argument doesn't work. The pay services provide SFA despite the amount of money they rake in. The free services give you more-than-you-can-conceive-of-eating on demand, for free.

Kiwi
Pirate

Providers are largely responsible.

I want to watch a certain series. Problem. TVNZ or Sky or whoever has the rights to that show in NZ

They won't show the program. They have the rights, so no one else can show it.

They won't show the program. They have the rights and haven't shown it, so you can't buy the DVD's even if you want to.

They won't show the program. My old ISP had a sort-of VPN system aimed at overseas visitors but the rest of us could also use it to watch stuff local providers weren't interested in showing. But the local providers sued them and got that stopped. How dare they provide a service to paying customers who wanted certain content!

No wonder people are happy to get their content from other sources. Sky, TVNZ et al, if you won't want to show a program then don't buy the rights to it, let someone who will show it have it.

IT guy checks to see if PC is virus-free, with virus-ridden USB stick

Kiwi
Coat

Re: Not work but...

True, but Ive never come across a laptop that takes more than an hour to completely dissemble...

Even faster with a decent axe. Much more satisfying too.

Though, a functional re-assembly may be a bit harder and take a hell of a lot longer. Then again, the person who can re-assemble a laptop after axe-based disassembly will have a hugely satisfying result. And something bordering on God-like powers. Or at least patience.

Kiwi

Re: seriously??

And how does that NZ$80-120 compare to your hourly rate, given that trying to disinfect and verify it's gone is something you can spend a long time on ?

Since you're going to be re-imaging the machine anyway, the time is actually nil. It takes moments to re-write the partition table, and unless you wish to go to the effort of running recovery tools, creating a new table effectively wipes all data on the drive.

Even in a small company if you can show the person with the chequebook that it's clearly saving money, they should either scare up the cash, or you should look to find somewhere who will be able to pay the next payroll.

Seems you picked an appropriate name, since you seem to be quite mad. Do you know what "SMB" is? Well, most commonly they're <u>SMALL</u> businesses of 1-5 people, though I'm not sure what qualifies as "medium". As such, they often have only one person involved anyway. How is that person going to complain to whoever handles the payroll, stand in front of a mirror?

As to quitting a perfectly good job because they won't buy a new HDD when the old is perfectly OK, do you not know what the job markets are like for most of the world especially IT these days?

You might need to spend some time elsewhere - like in the real world for example - before you speak to much on such subjects.

Also, yes, the possibility of the drive firmware being tampered with by a virus is now non-zero, so nothing you do through the SATA interface can be trusted absolutely, including reflashing the drive's firmware.

Given that, and your statement that the drive should be replaced because you cannot trust it once it's had an infection, how often do you think we should replace the drives? Hourly? Every 10 minutes? As soon as they're flashed they're untrustworthy? Because there's no way of knowing if a drive is OK after all. Maybe the manufacturer has an as-yet undiscovered issue. Maybe there's something somewhere else on my network that I haven't yet spotted (I don't have the time to be hunting it and as you say I cannot be sure even when I really am sure)? Maybe someone infected a HDD at MS and their updates are now malware [no comments on the obvious redundancy!]? Maybe some new (or old) driveby in a popular website that is yet undetected - perhaps just reading this comment you've stumbled on a drive-by infecting El Reg that has now infected your drive's firmware. Better replace it just in case.

Or is my over-stressed coffee-lacking day taking it's toll on me today?

Kiwi

Re: Not work but...

Not all laptops have easily accessible hard drives, even especially these days. :/

FTFY

Kiwi
Linux

Re: seriously??

If the malware in question hid itself in the boot sector somehow and you couldn't tell for absolute certain that you got rid of it, it's not necessarily a bad option. Hard drives cost peanuts compared to the time spent by people.

Must be great to work in a massive coporate with a ton of spare IT cash.

For many SMBs, HD's are quite expensive still - at least here in NZ (where you're looking at $NZ80-100 for a cheap 1Tb laptop drive, maybe under $150 for a 2tb Desktop (I don't have the spare funds for drive space atm so not looking at prices).

Is there any way a virus could survive creating a new partition table on the drive? (assuming of course you're using a *nix machine or suitable boot disk). Takes seconds to create a new partition layout.

You want WHO?! Reg readers vote Tom Baker for Doctor 13. Of course

Kiwi
Facepalm

Re: Correction

Don't forget, it was always a childrens show, hence very low budget. Very, very low. It's quite amazing what they managed considering the constraints.

I was of the understanding it was aimed at families but perhaps a PGR sort of level (not PGR13 but "Kids may freak out at the embarrassing SFX so parents be close by to comfort them1".

They could've at least used different coloured wood/plastic or used some paint or something in some episodes. I remember one where the 2nd Dr was being chased by some giant maggots, and you could see the sticks/rods they were using under the floor to move the "maggots" along. At least use a material that had the same colour as the floor rather than white, which showed up so clearly it detracted from the story line!

[Disclaimer : Have the lot now and am slowly working through Hartnell, then will go through the rest as time permits]

1When I was about 10 we had some re-runs of earlier Dr Who, 2nd and 3rd doctors. IIRC there was an ep with some oversized wind-up tin soldiers. One of my freinds, about the same age, wigged out. I remember him hiding behind the couch, pillows over his head, screaming for his mother and making all sorts of threats about telling our parents if we didn't turn off the show we were enjoying. No idea what hit him so hard, though it could've been a Cooperism (in that maybe he didn't like Dr Who and wanted us to quit watching it and do something else)

Kiwi
WTF?

Re: female doctor

Dear Lord, please, not Hayley Atwell!

OP mentions Grinch in the message and you complain about Atwell?

Kiwi
Coffee/keyboard

Jeremy Clarkson would have been the most offensive thing in Doctor Who since the Amazing Techni-Vomit Nightmare Coat that Colin Baker had to wear.

Perhcance you've never seen the Capaldi episodes?

---> Pro-tip, turn head away from keyboard before watching Cap do Who.

Kiwi
Boffin

Correction

Peter Capaldi cannot be bowing out of the role of Dr.

He never was a Dr. No way no fucking how! Matt Smith was a stretch, but that other fella? No, sorry. Those episodes never happened, it was all a weird dream sequence!

Would take someone of Baker's quality to undo that damage!

(BTW, those of us in the 35-45 age range largely grew up with Baker as our doctor, especially given his 7 year tenure and much better SFX, whereas re-runs of much of the older doctors showed some pretty shoddy SFX efforts, even for the Beeb! :) )

Feds snooping on your email without a warrant? US lawmakers are on a war path to stop that

Kiwi
Black Helicopters

Re: Email is not private

Not the metadata: sender (you), recipient, servers used

If you want to see the value of metadata, take a wander through people's facebook friends lists and the lists of random ones of those, maybe take a wander through this person's family contacts and their contacts and so on. Take a closer look at random people, posts etc to find out all you can about the sort of company these people keep. That's why gubbermint et al are so keen grabbing as much of the "it's only just metadata, nothing at all important, no need to concern yourselves about our new law giving us unfettered access!", there's potentially a hell of a lot of information there!

You can "learn" a hell of a lot about someone and their friends doing this. Even just the "who they know" (1st degree) can be quite interesting at times, if you're looking up the right people. That said, in context a "facebook friend" is often someone they never would pause to give the time of day to, and could be there for family reasons or could be a forgotten one of hundreds.

What can be more telling sometimes is who isn't on their list if you know people well enough.. (No I don't have a FB account, borrowed one trying to locate an old friend, stumbled across someone else I knew a while back and went exploring)

Kiwi
Coat

Question from a Gmail user

Yeah I know.. Anyway..

Year or so back I deleted a whole pile of stuff from gmail, and purged it from trash as well.

Months go by, and I daily log into my gmail account, do whatever mail stuff there is to do, and log out.

All handily done on Imap.

Couple of months ago I was checking gmail from their webmail client for some reason or other, and had a look around the options there. I discovered a "all mail" folder which has.. all mail... Everything. Including every deleted email.

So this is the question. Will this rule cover stuff that was supposed to be deleted, and as far as the user is concerned was deleted? What about any backups that gmail does? Even if I went into the "all mail" folder and cleared that out fully, and there's a backup from gmail that survives long enough, would it count?

(Of course, the real issue is... Intelligent crims/scarerorists are not likely to be using something as easily traced as email...!)

--> That's my coat, and me checking my pockets for my dagger...

Macs don't get viruses? Hahaha, ha... seriously though, that Word doc could be malware

Kiwi
Linux

Re: I've never had an answer to the question

Why on earth is there a programming language buried inside a text-editor/formatter?

I often use Macros (on Libre, none of this MS crap!) to reformat or do other processing on blocks of text. Sure there's probably a number of tools out there that could also do it, including sed in some cases - but I've barely used sed, and while I probably should learn something better creating a macro in Libre can be fairly quick and easy.

That said, in this case the macros are basically recording what I am doing. Others use them to eg grab data from a database (or spreadsheet with all the customer data in it if you're one of those really l33t wimmen techspurts I've had the misfortune of knowning - "you should only ever use spreadsheets even when you're dealing with a few thousand customers, databases are wrong" types) and re-format that into something they can use, and others do combine spreadsheet formulaic functions in there. But I still can't see the need for it to have as much power as it does, especially given the sorts of people who use that power...

Nearly 3am. Maybe I should be in bed...

Microsoft's DRM can expose Windows-on-Tor users' IP address

Kiwi

Re: You are explicitly told....

If you're valuing your privacy/security enough to use TAILS, you're running NoScript.

From what I am told NS blocks Iframes on TAILS (I don't have it to hand so can't test myself I do have NS installed here and blocking Iframes but what is set on a default NS install and what is on TAILS could well differ). I assume iframes are different to JS since they have different settings in NS.

And the really obviously simple thing.. If you're valuing your privacy and a site requires a script to run, you go elsewhere or do without. Hell, I do that with sites that demand 3rd party cookies or 3rd party scripts (aside from CDN's and sometimes some Google API's). If it wants to run to much I don't trust, I don't run it.

There is no circumstance that requires you to run risky scripts, especially if you're protecting your identity (and have some clue about what you're doing/follow the very clear instructions)

Comcast staffers join walkout over Trump's immigration crackdown

Kiwi

Re: I'm sure it feels great to protest

Most of the US won't miss you much

Oh, I'd say that the vast majority of the US wouldn't miss you when you're gone, and you live there.

But then, unless you're a celebrity of some sort it's highly unlike that even between us there's as many as 10,000 people in the US who knows who we are under any name's we've posted or been known under. So you statement is quite true, quite logical, and applies to any non-celeb (and probably pretty much any celeb) the world over. Most of the US, and indeed most of the world won't miss us when we're gone. Why, there's probably entire countries where no one has heard either of our names!

That attempt to offend failed. Care to try again? :)

Kiwi
FAIL

Re: re: ...protests are starting to turn violent....

Fatman, the Left needs no help from the FBI to become violent.

You have a president who wants to bring torture back and you wish to complain about others perceived violence?

Who was it accusing others of being a troll not to many posts back?

Kiwi
WTF?

You point out how people die in car accidents with no illegals involved, and you believe this is a valid argument against people who don't like it when their loved ones are killed by those illegals. It isn't.

I'm pretty sure the senator/whatever who was out driving drunk and killed a motorcyclist wasn't exactly acting like a law abiding citizen at the time. And what I was pointing out was a hell of a lot of people die on the roads at the hands of people acting illegally, including people in my country who die or are hurt at the hands of people from the US. The person pointing out how nasty the immigrants were because one of them has had a history fails to point out just how many people US citizens harm in like manner when acting illegally, in the US or elsewhere.

What it is, is highly offensive and insulting, especially to our intelligence.

Seriously? You want to complain about being upset when someone travels to a foreign land illegally and kills other people's loved ones? How about all the loved ones being hurt by the actions of youru beloved president? How about all the illegal actions of US citizens in other countries?

A hell of a lot of us (yes, I am included) have suffered from the actions of your government even without Trump's election. It is with good reason that the people of the US are the most hated and often most feared people in the world today.

As to stuff posted in "almost every post" , how about the misinformation you and your supporters so often post about others, eg all the constant allegations you make about Clinton committing crimes? Doesn't repeatedly saying things clearly and well known to not be true come under the term "troll"?

Kiwi
Linux

Re: They really,really and I mean really.....

Hmm, 3 downvotes and no rebuttal at the time of posting this. I guess those downvotes come from people who only want to get their rocks off over the "dem is nasty peoples!!!111!!111!!11!!111!!!!1!!11!1!!11!!1!!1" propaganda and who haven't ever taken the time to travel to or even slightly research (in unbiased sources, not faux (etc) news!) the countries in question, or the peoples therein.

I'd be willing to be good money that the countries in CMIC's shitlist have far lower violence/murder rates than the US, and of course while CMIC is wanting to bring in torture, the US leaders are talking of banning sexualities they don't agree with and so on the chump supporters certainly have no grounds to complain about another nation's human rights issues - not till they take care of the much worse problems at home.

Disagree? Refute! If any of what I said can be reasonable refuted I'll take back what I said.

Kiwi
Coat

Re: THEY SHOULD BE *FIRED*!

If they walk out of their jobs to 'protest' like that, they should be *FIRED*. Companies don't have that kind of money to waste, and passing the cost of it on to the customer isn't acceptable.

Hmm.. The morale and productivity boost, and related profitability improvements you're likely to get from your staff being able to do something they feel they strongly need to do, or the demoralisation, productivity STOP, and inability to provide your customers with the products and services they want when you fire the bulk of your staff.. Yes, I wonder which one is better.

How come you can be so intelligent in stuff about OS's but such an idiot when it comes to politics etc? Hurts my brain upvoting you in one thread because of something brilliant you've said and and downvoting you in another because of the stupidness that spewed forth from your mind!

I need to go out for a while I think.

Kiwi
FAIL

Re: War is fine, closed borders are not

Everything else was just talk, but that was a real thing that led to the horrific deaths of hundreds of thousands.

How many innocent people died as a result of GW2 which was started by GB2 and the false claims about WMD that shrub and the brit prick promoted hmm?

Your sides hands aren't exactly free of the blood and suffering of innocents are they? No..

But hey, keep promoting your bullshit. Someone with a single-figure IQ might believe it.

Kiwi
FAIL

Re: They really,really and I mean really.....

Perhaps you should stop reading the crap propaganda drivel you've obviously inefested your brain with and actually travel to these other places and see just how wonderful, hospitable and tolerant some (not all!) of these people in other places really are?

Kiwi

FIVE DUI's, ONE MANSLAUGHTER, DEPORTED TWICE, BACK IN A COLORADO JAIL YET AGAIN..

I know what you mean. Back in 1979 or 1980 a close friend of mine was killed in a head-on crash. Johnny Foreigner had gotten a bit drunk one night, went driving and ended up in a head-on crash with my friend's family car. Johnny Foreigner had forgotten where he was.

Oh. Johnny Foreigner was a US citizen.

In 2007 a group was on a motorcycle tour of NZ. One of their number took of from a parking spot, forgot where he was, head-on into an oncoming car. No fatalities fortunately but still a lot of pain. A sober yank who forgot that he wasn't in yankeeville.

In IIRC 2005 or 2006 a congresscritter or senator or something like that (someone of fairly high rank in the US IIRC) went through a stop sign killing a motorcyclist somewhere in the US. Mr CG claimed that his diabetes had caused the sugar in his bloodstream to metabolize into alcohol and he should not be done for drunk driving due to that, and, well, he was a high-ranking civil servant and the lowly cops/court officials prosecuting him should be elsewhere.

The US has a pretty appalling rate of road deaths. Has been going on much longer than you've had any fears (reasonable or idiot-prez inspired) about "immigrants". And I'll bet your people have killed a lot more on foreign soil than foreigners have killed in your lands.

(and yes, I agree, people reading articles on cbs does occur all to often!)

Kiwi
Trollface

Re: I'm sure it feels great to protest

No, we feel personally insulted the way the losers are going scorched-earth on the President we picked. That stuff has no place in a democracy or a republic.

That's OK, you don't live in a democracy and I don't live in a republic.

And hey, just be glad. For voting for such a piece of scum, just be glad things are limited to putting you little pansies down. Your prez won't be so nice to you when it's your turn for him to feel like you have somehow wronged him in one of his deluded paranoid states.

In time, probably not long, you will see that he really is the vile thing the rest of the world (and most of the US!) wants gone, you will see that our concerns are legitimate, and you hopefully will not find out just how bad he can get. I hope for your sake that he gets removed from office before he can do much more damage to your nation.

Kiwi
WTF?

Their protests are starting to turn violent, and their rhetoric has turned to the extremes.

Your man has spoken of bringing in torture (despite the very clear evidence it has never worked worth a damn), has sexually assaulted women, has spoken of engaging in acts of aggression against other nations, and you complain that these people - who legitimately fear for the lives of their loved ones and themselves - have turned to violence and extreme rhetoric?

These same people are denying the very legitimacy of the President.

As any decent, intelligent person should. Shame the US had enough people lacking in intelligence that CMIC got "elected".

And all for the sake of a known federal felon who also sold her office and influence to foreign governments for hundreds of millions in 'donations.'

That would be the person cleared by what, 9 seperate investigations? The one who even Comey or whatever his name is has said didn't do anything illegal despite all the efforts he put in to have her charged? Despite how much the FBI et al hates people on the left and would dearly love the kudos of being able to arrest, charge, and see the conviction of such a high profile person - a career event that would see their great-great-great-great-great grandchildren set for life just from what these people could charge for the talk-circuit? That "known federal felon?

Would love for her to start taking some of you people to court, suing for libel/slander as appropriate. Only, the prez you love so much would do things like that but someone I doubt even Shrillarity would sink to those depths.. (Though there's some juicy but certainly false rumours that she could have you killed... We can live in hope something shuts people like you up - I'd prefer it if you got whacked with an intelligence stick but hey...)

[Before you accuse me of being a Shillary supporter, please check my posting history]

God save the Queen... from Donald Trump. So say 1 million Britons

Kiwi
Joke

Re: Let Hime Come

Oh Deity, Trump and Philip in the same room?! There's a scary thought!

Would a brick under each chair improve your thoughts?

--> We don't have a suitable "bashing their brains out" icon so I guess "joke alert" will have to do... Another couple of rows of icons (including some of the old greats eg tombstone) would be great El Reg!

Kiwi

am an atheist, so the "They are the earthly representation of god" makes no sense to me

Makes no sense to me either, and I am a Christian. She's my queen, but she's nothing in the chain-of-command to the big man at the top (the Real One, not the weird orange freak with the weirder freakier hair!). The Bible says we have "one mediator between man and God", and any one else who tries to claim that throne (pope, queen, whoever/whatever) does not belong.

Fellow Brits, as is customary with me, you know where the down-vote button is ... I have 2:1 upvotes vs downvotes and I would like to inverse that so .... be my guest!

Afraid that you would have to write more downvote-worthy material to fix that. Look at BB, TV and a few other posters for advice (not me, I am better than 3:1). Does it mean something that your 13th upvote was from me? (probably not, 13 is seldom anything special especially when it occurs as a natural progression, like the floor between the 12th and 14th)

Kiwi
Devil

Please let them meet, if...

Is it still a capital offense to lay hands on the HRH The Queen?

If so, then though she's about 9 decades to old for him, given his tendencies to grope any chick he meets, the more famous the better.

Oh the possibilities.. State dinner at 7, public execution at 11..

New SMB bug: How to crash Windows system with a 'link of death'

Kiwi
Linux

Re: Win 10, a complete re-write from scratch!

By the way, Win10 isn't a complete rewrite and noone at MS has ever claimed it is... No idea what the origins of this myth is, but it pops up on Reg forums (and nowhere else!) from time to time. Usually about Win7 though.

I would swear that I had seen some madvertising or other text from MS themselves claiming this (or at least someone from MS quoted as such in an interview or something), but I cannot find it so could be quite wrong on that. It would make more sense that 8 was supposed to be a rewrite.

I stand corrected, and will not spread the myth that Win10 was claimed to be a rewrite until I see something from MS claiming as such.

I personally don't think any OS should be "rewritten from scratch", but rather that code should be improved, new features maybe added (even if you save a pile of them up as a "new release"). As code gets re-visited it (generally) gets tightened, improved in speed, size and security. Re-writing from scratch opens up all sorts of avenues for new bugs to be generated.

Win7 continued and improved, with a couple of new UI options (could've then given them 8x/10 as bolt-on UI's, though maybe the UI is too tied into the core OS in Windows for that?), some tighter code, improved libraries where needed while keeping the base API's the same... I wouldn't be singing MS's praises, but I'd certainly have a lot less hatespeak directed at them! :)

(Would still love the functionality, speed, security and flexibility that Linux gives me, but another 10 years of development on 7 and maybe it would've nearly gotten there :) )

Kiwi
Linux

Re: Yet more Microsoft Innovation ®

"Windows is the only platform with a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible"

That must be that AC we used to see here so often, who no matter how bad MS was would always defend them and would say stuff like ".DOC virus infecting millions of users in 2016 isn't at all bad, Unix is worse coz in the 1970's Unix had some pretty nasty bugs too!" or somesuch..

"We recommend customers use Windows 10 and the Microsoft Edge browser for the best protection" ref

Ah, good ol Dan Goodin. Haven't seen his byline around here in a while and was kinda wondering where he was :) As to using Edge/IE-any-version or Win-any for protection? When a nasty .DOC can still compromise the OS? I got your security right there -->

Former Mozilla dev joins chorus roasting antivirus, says 'It's poison!'

Kiwi
Coat

Re: Problem with Anti-Virus

your data storage may be compromised, but the operating system will never get taken over with something like that.

Ahem.

Kiwi

Re: Problem with Anti-Virus

Having a prescribed dropzone for downloaded files would be a royal ballache for me a lot of the time, though I'm not against it as a default for new users. What would be more beneficial to my mind, would be if downloaded files weren't executable by default and had to be explicitly OK'd as such by the user.

True, I often download stuff to various locations depending on what I am doing at the time. So we could have a few options - have the browser only able to write to the profile folder (so it can save history etc) and where the user sets the download/saves the file to at that time, and /temp of course, for newbies have it default to ~/Downloads or whatever is specified in the config as the download location (they can move it later!)

Killing execuatable-by-default would be great but is not-doable on Windows (an OS that lets you have safefile.txt.exe, that hides the ".exe" and has a wordpad icon, and tries to execute anything that ends in .exe, .com, .bat etc when double-clicked is NOT a safe OS!), and probably too many people would complain. But if you at least limit the browser's access to other folders not it's own. If you're a Windows users, which would you prefer - a few moments moving a file from Downloads to where you want it (and yes you may have to remember to come and do it later if it's a long download), or all your personal data trashed because your browser was compromised? I'd rather the browser could be prevented from touching all but a tiny fraction of the disk! (RO at least!)

Users, btw, can be capable of some quite interesting and scary feats in their attempts to use that "special secret preview release" etc. Make it sound that they're somehow a "l33t haxxor" just by having the file and the mad skillz to circumvent the special security routines ("rename illicitfile.zi_ to *.zip"!) that they can read on some dodgy website and they'll be falling all over themselves to install your malware. Make sure to warn them to turn their AV off before downloading as the installer might not work otherwise...

I've tried in the past to make Windows systems live up to that philosophy, typically by revoking execution permissions on all but one of a user's folders (and crucially not the default download folder) but this just tends to hit problems. 1: some apps have installation/update routines that fail if your TEMP folder doesn't have execute permissions; 2: the stupid-ass Windows permissions granularity where the key permission is "Read AND Execute" whereby if you revoke this permission from a given folder, you can download shit into it and be sure it won't execute, but unfortunately nor can the shell navigate that folder!

um.. Wow.. I think I need to take a while away from the computer after this post! Just.. WTF?? Wow..

In short, a setup whereby the user is required to manually bless the execution of a downloaded file is not a goer without training or seriously crafty system configuration.

Yeah.. So sad.. See above..

Still, such activities kept me fed and in new toys for a few years.. If all our users suddenly sprouted a sense gland, I think we'd see a lot of IT peeps out of a job PDQ.