"A very German thing"
Team viewer was bought a while back by a British (locust) Investment Company. So it's not a German company anymore calling the shots, as it were... (though I suspect they may be drinking the shots right now).
Posts by Mpeler
764 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2012
TeamViewer denies hack after PCs hijacked, PayPal accounts drained
Thursday 2nd June 2016 13:44 GMT
Re: No surprise, it had to happen one day
The product is closed source, so no code reviews.
What an idiotic, bigoted comment. I've worked at a number of the largest computer companies in the world, writing database, OS, and compiler code, and the code reviews would make you blanch. If you could even get through the interview process to get in in the first place.
Assuming open source is intrinsically better is just as foolish as assuming "the nanny state" is always (or even) on our side.
Thursday 2nd June 2016 13:31 GMT
Re: pardon my ignorance but..
Have to wonder if it's only Windoze PCs that are affected, or is TeamViewer only available on that platform?
(tinfoil hat)
Having said that, folks are looking at China and Russia as the likely perps. With the EM coming up, and a certain group making certain noises, having burgeoning skills in the malware department, and looking for alternative sources of financing, I'd look a bit southwest of those two countries...
(/tinfoil hat)
Western Digital to axe 507 California staffers
Thursday 2nd June 2016 19:05 GMT 
Irvine and Santa Ana
Just a note - Irvine and Santa Ana are in SoCal, about 400 miles south of San Jose "Silicon Valley".
And they're probably the only place on earth with traffic jams worse that highways 237, 680, 280 and 580.
Hope things get better for everyone over there.
Seems like they get hit pretty hard every time technology takes a turn, at least going back to the Aerospace industry problems of the 1960s...
US nuke arsenal runs on 1970s IBM 'puter waving 8-inch floppies
Friday 27th May 2016 22:07 GMT
Re: Some Department of Commerce weather alert systems use Fortran
Yep the porting (compatibility mode and switch stubs/mechanism) were quite important to HP and the users (I saw that from both sides - I have a grey wall here to go with my grey hairs some of which came from living deep in the innards of MPE). The system was very well designed (even considering the birth pains so well documented by Bob Green), and the user community was supportive, creative, and downright fun. Where else could you go to a user group meeting and have REINDEER for dinner (RUDOLPH!!!!!! ?).
The POSIX bits came in MPE/XL 4.5, and allowed a certain, shall we say, DB and apps system to run substantially faster than on, erm, similar hardware with another OS (no telling which, but it's probably easy to guess)(neither ALLBASE nor IMAGE). The POSIX additions made life a lot more interesting, especially if people weren't keeping track of which "side" of things they were coding. Those were the days...
Look up Lunch, the HP Way which is a tongue-in-cheek view of HP's ordering systems from the 1980s by Stephen Harrison and Noel Magee. They really captured the essence of those days (and ordering from HP :) ).
Thursday 26th May 2016 18:04 GMT
Re: Mainframe and Fortran > LAMP [suspension bridge]
Yeah. A section of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge was replaced, thanks to WillieBrown™, and it appears that the new part is lower quality than the original, perhaps much lower quality. Gives one pause while considering the possibility of "the big one" occurring.
When they built the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate bridge, they built to a spec of "the best possible, as we don't know just how strong earthquakes can get". Anymore, they build to "cheap as possible, highest margins on lowest bid(s), and hope the customer doesn't notice". Chinese cranes, steel, equipment, and workers.
The real tragedy in all of this (hoping that "the big one" never happens, of course) is that it's not likely that we could build the likes of these two bridges again, as we have neither the equipment, the expertise, the materials at hand, nor the budget.
And I say that as a Bay Area native, and it breaks my heart.
Thursday 26th May 2016 10:31 GMT
Re: Some Department of Commerce weather alert systems use Fortran
@bombastic bob
Yep those HP3000s were really something. Also doing financials in ASK was sometimes exciting, as was the LPORTY routine. I had the joy of creating invoices to the specs of 12 different European countries (this was before the EU) and Japan, who (at least then) provided the forms, and the invoice had to match (I'm not kidding!).
The system ran like a champ. Sadly I can't find my "Don't ASK" button :) Now about that UT, 979...
Shhhh! Facebook is listening
Wednesday 1st June 2016 16:52 GMT
Re: Sadly .....
And sadder still, Farcebork builds a blind profile of you, without your permission or knowledge, if you don't have a "real" one.
Everytime you punch a "like" button, or visit a page with Farcebork code/bloatware/bugware in it, unless you have scripting turned off and Farcebork's IPs blocked, they get info on you.
Total monitoring, total "influence", total control.
But who will watch the watchers?
Another bunch of crooks...
And that's the saddest of all. Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
Intel's new plan: A circle that starts in your hand and ends in the cloud
Not two, not four, but 10 cores in Intel's new PC powerhouse
Tuesday 31st May 2016 23:49 GMT 
Powerhouse - or buy a house
It costs as much as a house. Can't wait for Zen, to get prices (and innovation) back into the realm of normalcy.
Now if we only could get rid of Windows 1 0 and have the new processors and Zen boot on Win 7 (and everybody's favourite distros), things would be great. OK, OK, OK, I can dream...
'Australia tax' doesn't apply to Azure
As US court bans smart meter blueprints from public, sysadmin tells of fight for security info
Monday 30th May 2016 00:24 GMT
Re: Forget the 'terrorist' straw man, it's far worse...
Yep. What the 'leets' are after is "smart" devices for stupid people. People who have been "trained" into sheeple so they trust Big Brother even above themselves, and can neither think critically nor be critical when needed.
Sheeple, v2.0, meet IoT. With regard to home medical equipment, perhaps "smart" meters and the like are an undocumented branch of the LCP...
Friday 27th May 2016 21:27 GMT
Re: I thought I recognized "Sensus"... We have met the enemy and he is (Sens)us
"Every “smart” digital electric meter has what’s known as a “switching mode power supply”...
So do PCs and many other devices. The "dirty power" is perhaps a reference to the bad old days before power factor correction, which, IIRC, meant that you'd draw more power (for your kit) than you paid for, due to the current lagging (or leading? can't remember).
Bigger problem is Big Brother (Big Bother) being able to control said meter and causing instant brown/blackouts. And as various SCADA adventures have shown, it's potentially (sorry) a hacker's paradise...
EU wants open science publication by 2020
Monday 30th May 2016 18:16 GMT
Re: That's eminently reasonable
No wonder Springer Verlag is suing the adblockers. Their "revenue streams" are going to dry up.
Sniff, sniff. Not. I wonder how little of that money makes it through the paywalls, for research already paid for by the public, in one way or another?
I can see them recovering storage and admin costs (basically IT CODB), but the electronic extortion they currently commit needs to stop.
Could also be the paywalls are means to control what we see? Paris wants to know...
Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'
Thursday 26th May 2016 17:31 GMT
Re: The KB article has a "feedback" section
Funny, they have a spell-checker on their feedback window (that doesn't work correctly, as dialogue is correct in both American and British English - maybe not in Indian English?), but they don't have a code-checker for their crap code.
Satan New Delhi. I'm beginning to think Ballmer left because even he wouldn't do what M$ had planned...
Thursday 26th May 2016 17:10 GMT
M$ and the TLAs
Though I fear you're correct, somehow I cannot (without retching) put Micro$oft and intelligence in the same sentence (hurl...).
I'm more inclined to believe that with their extensive (and ultimately expensive) telemetry and "connections", they've gathered enough info on enough people to get pretty much what they want. Bill Sr. was a lawyer, and it doesn't appear that the apple fell far from the tree, in Jr.'s case.
Anyone remember HP NewWave and the lawsuits going around that? Some things never change...
Thursday 26th May 2016 16:56 GMT
Re: MS couldn't even jump the shark properly-
What we need is a condom over Microsoft itself, i.e. the entire Redmond campus (and others, if needed).
Just get Christo (that fellow who'd wrap up buildings in plastic wrap) or someone to cover M$. Maybe use heatshrink film, to make sure it sticks (won't need any "update", har, harr)...
Thursday 26th May 2016 16:49 GMT
Re: so
Good points. Two things come to mind:
Being Micro$oft means never having to say you're sorry.
and, with regard to the window close = OK,
"Heads, we win; Tails, you lose"...
If Microsucks (and Mucked-up-media/Adobe) actually adhered to good coding practices, there'd never be a need for "Patch Tuesdays"...
200TB proof cracks puzzler
Friday 27th May 2016 16:52 GMT
Re: Not enough room in comment
I have also discovered a proof, indeed 151 proof. Sadly, the flask will not fit in this comment box.
I have been rum-inating on possible means of fitting it, but they cola-psed (hic, er, sic)...
(My apologies for the beer icon - Bacardi and beer - just NO. Cola, ahh, for college days, room spinning...).
$10bn Oracle v Google copyright jury verdict: Google wins, Java APIs in Android are Fair Use
Friday 27th May 2016 12:32 GMT
he can homestead it for a quick buck
Seems to be the going thing in Silly Valley anymore, IP trolls and locusts. It's just another case of 'orrible doing what they do best (M$ probably does this too), claim rights to others' innovations. Still true as I wrote when Larry bought Lanai, and when he tried to sue the socks off of SAP:
Larry, Larry, quite contrary,
How does your empire grow?
With IP “rights” and patent fights,
and lawyers all in a row.
HP Inc-eption: Our new 3D printers print themselves, says CEO
Microsoft's Windows Phone folly costs it another billion dollars
HPE spins out enterprise services business into CSC
Wednesday 25th May 2016 20:17 GMT
Re: Once again...
Yep, thanks to the idiot board, Bill and Dave are spinning in their graves again. They've "managed" to create a perpetual motion machine.
Many, many moons ago, when HP was still HP, and flagellant was still a gleam in Dick Hackborn's eye, it was said that they were waiting for Bill Hewlett to pass away so they could split the company.
Out of the one HP in the late 80s, it's become something like 20 company fragments. They all fit together well when they were in the REAL HP, greater than the sum of its parts, but now stick out like pimples and pointers, painful reminders that things were once better.
Almost wonder who or what had it in for Bill and Dave.....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
