* Posts by caffn8me

6 publicly visible posts • joined 23 May 2012

DNS cockup locks Virgin Media customers out of ntlworld.com email

caffn8me

deleted - typo

Yes, the BBC still uses FTP. And yes, a Russian crook hacked the server

caffn8me

"Err.... how else do you upload data to a website?"

HTTP upload, SCP or SFTP perhaps. Even shared directories over VPN.

Lots of options

caffn8me

ITN hacked via FTP too

Many years ago (about 1999/2000) I was called in to deal with a hack via FTP which defaced ITN's web ste. That was a Solaris box to - a Sun E450.

It wasn't a technically difficult hack though. FTP was world available, the username was ITN and the password ITN. This account had root privilege. Doh!

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

caffn8me

Re: Huge flaw in article

"Number6

Modern photocopiers often contain hard disks, so it's quite possible that a photocopier might contain sensitive information."

...and if those photocopiers are Xerox a good deal of that information could be wrong ;)

Master Beats: Why doesn't audio quality matter these days?

caffn8me
WTF?

Sound quality was better in the 80s ;)

A while back, a friend got a new home cinema system with some nice B&W speakers and a good receiver. She wanted to see how good it sounded with music so I suggested Peter Gabriel's 'So' album. When this came out in 1986 (an original analogue recording) it caused a stir in professional audio circles because the sound quality and production were so good. It became a reference recording for many engineers.

Unfortunately I couldn't find my CD of it so we downloaded it from iTunes.

I couldn't believe how dreadful it sounded. It even had what sounded like mains hum! It was lifeless and muddled. I could honestly say it was impossible to enjoy.

I finally managed to find my CD and the difference is incredible. It's back to how I remembered it.

If people these days only know music from downloads and poor stereo systems they really are missing out.

Speaking to someone the other day they had never realized that if you had a decent stereo set-up and a good recording you could close your eyes and point to all the instruments :)

Windows XP update fails in infinite .NET patch loop

caffn8me
Alert

Workaround

I found that this problem disappeared after I went manually to Windows Update (from Start > All Programs > Windows Update) and did a custom install of the three .NET updates.

Doing a custom install from the tray Windows Update icon failed to solve the repeated requests to install.