* Posts by Muskiier

27 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Jan 2013

Remote code execution flaws lurk in countless routers, IoT gear, cameras using Realtek Wi-Fi module SDKs

Muskiier

Realtek OMG PTSD

LOL. True. Realtek .OMG. Truly low end. However, the price point was always amazing! We used to use their Ethernet boards (ISA, BTW). and they were CAD$12 vs the next closest at $30 and worked pretty well. But, if we were building X white boxes, we'd always order 20% more because, guaranteed, we'd have that many DOA. It was our first lesson in you get what you pay for. Driver updates, if you could navigate the website to find them, were kinda sparse.

Lessons have not been learned: Microsoft's Modern Comments leave users reaching for the rollback button

Muskiier

The best product doesn't always win

Every time I fight/use Word I long for WordPerfect with Reveal Codes on. If Word were not bundled with Office (Excel) I don't think it would be anyone's choice.

JavaScript developers left in the dark after DroidScript software shut down by Google over ad fraud allegations

Muskiier

There's nobody listening

There really is nobody sentient at the other end. Just last week I wasted time following incorrect Google Map directions going to a long-established local business. When I finally got there and apologized for being late and why, the owner told me "a lot of people tell us that, and we've contacted Google but we just get a canned response". This isn't the first business in our area with the same story.

No JavaScript, no trackers, no SSL security: Retro computing boffin gives Google News a Netscape 1.1 makeover

Muskiier

Just finished a refreshing read of 3 articles; what a joy without the clutter. I remember I originally started to use Google vs. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and other search engines was Google was clean and fast-loading. Not so much now. We need some alternatives. Clearly Microsoft doesn't get it, as evidenced by MSN and it's click-bait.

Muskiier

Just finished a refreshing read of 3 articles; what a joy without the clutter. I remember the reason I originally started to use Google vs. Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and other search engines was Google was clean and fast-loading. We need some alternatives. Clearly Microsoft doesn't get it, as evidenced by MSN and it's click-bait.

If you own one of these 45 Netgear devices, replace it: Kit maker won't patch vulnerable gear despite live proof-of-concept code

Muskiier

Re: Netgear flew off of our list years ago.

And who's your new vendor may I ask?

Nervous, Adobe? It took 16 years, but open-source vector graphics editor Inkscape now works properly on macOS

Muskiier

Reminds me of CorelDRAW

Like CorelDRAW on the PC, still great software but AFAIK it still doesn't run on iOS.

Microsoft attempts to up its Teams game with new features while locked-down folk flock to rival Zoom... warts and all

Muskiier

One would think, but not if you want to use your Office 365 domain emails, person@xyz.com. And we've tried repeatedly. You have to get each unsubscribed person to use their xxx@xyz.com personal email to sign up, which might be OK in a small environment but gets complicated quickly. We heard about the free offering, but information on it is confusing and doesn't appear to resolve our problem.

Muskiier

Teams is great but way more costly, with a big roadblock for hybrid Office 365 shops

We have a hybrid Office 365 environment, a select few of our most mobile users are on O365 while the majority are on-premise Exchange and Office. We tried to roll out the free Teams version for the on-premise group but cannot use corporate email addresses without subscribing all at significant cost, or using personal addresses in-office - which has too many complications to list. The COVID-19 momentum to Zoom has taken all of us to that platform. Zoom is way less costly, users love it and it's not an admin burden. Yes, Teams is great but with no on-ramp for us that is not exorbitant (since we are hybrid) we cannot make it work. We have tried for a couple of years to get Microsoft's attention on this but have been told that's just the way it is. Frustrating that we are a mostly-Microsoft shop and Office 365 subscribers. If we were not, we'd likely all be on Teams free right now. If anyone has a work-around we'd love to hear about it!

Scandal-hit Toshiba cutting 7,000 jobs, heads for $4.5bn loss

Muskiier

Toshiba's Tecra laptop product is great

The Tecra product line was and is good. Silly bloatware aside, like all the other OEMs, it is and was great product. Until weeks ago we had ten year old Tecras that I hated to put in the bin because they still worked. Not so leading edge in the last few years, however; plus I agree their website needs an overhaul, it is not easy to research. It's a tough and changing business in the PC world. I wonder how the numbers are for their other business units?

LastPass got hacked: Change your master password NOW

Muskiier

Got an email this (Monday) evening. If the hack was Friday why such a delay? Perhaps there is a reason but the email did not explain this.

Barracuda: It's like the IKEA of backup and security

Muskiier

We have a couple of Barracuda appliances, one a load balancer for our two WAN connections and the other is their web filter. We got the web filter based on the performance and excellent support we got using the load balancer. Support is easy to get hold of and talk to, No wonder this company is doing well.

That dreaded syncing feeling: Will Microsoft EVER fix OneDrive?

Muskiier

If I find it like learning Klingon, how can I ever roll it out to users

I guess we could suffer all the bugs and come up with workarounds and go for budget to increase support staff to deal with frustrated users but why. I don't understand what whoever is in charge of the file management piece at MS is doing. Did anyone even ever figure out how to make libraries work for users in Win 7? As for OneDrive in the Sky; who needs that Sunday afternoon call from an exec looking for the proper version of a file that you've got to rush back to your computer to hopefully find on the server and send to her. It just goes to show that, really, this part of the cloud is still smoke and mirrors on stage behind hype and marketing. BTW, Box has been very reliable for me personally and a limited roll out corporately with it's ability to support AD I'd do that before OneDrive. Maybe Box is the purchase MS should make (no I don't work for Box).

Ten Linux freeware apps to feed your penguin

Muskiier

Nice article

Nice job. Reminds me of the articles in Byte magazine in the olden days when trying out utilities and apps was fun. BTW, IMHO there is really no email client as good as Outlook or email server as good as Exchange.

It's the WORST game ever, just pulled from a desert DUMP ... now ET can be yours for $500

Muskiier

According to the Hamilton Spectator this game was authored in Burlington, Ontario by Skill, Inc. which was part-owned by a now retired professor at respected McMaster University in Ontario. I'm a proud Canadian: http://www.thespec.com/news-story/5031472-burlington-made-e-t-atari-game-cartridges-dug-up-from-u-s-landfill-hit-pay-dirt-on-ebay/

Sun of a beach! Java biz founder loses battle to keep his shore private

Muskiier

A worthy cause and a great victory!

In Ontario, Canada, there's proportionally little public access to the main accessible, populated, lakes that are within a reasonable distance of major cities. Public shoreline is confined to relatively few parks and beaches.Hooray for the surfers in San Mateo! Keep up the fight.

James Bond's metal-toothed nemesis Richard Kiel dies at 74

Muskiier

He was a nice humble guy

I had the honour and pleasure of doing a couple of very pleasant and fun public appearances with him way back in the 80's - he was the star guest and I was a young radio host doing the promotional cut ins. He was a very nice guy, easy-going, congenial, nice to spend time with. My condolences to his family and friends.

BOFH: We CAN do that with a Raspberry Pi, but think of the BODIES

Muskiier

Regulation and monitoring from all levels

Then comes the request for the smartphone app for remote control and monitoring. You quickly create one using an open source library for encryption and security. A hacker uses a zero-day exploit to change the code and strobes the lobby lights, inducing mass epileptic seizures which are recorded and posted on social media. They go viral and the ensuing media hyperbole forces the government to strike a commission which hires highly paid consultants to, after many years, recommend that implementation of such devices be regulated and overseen by a new branch of bureaucracy which requires a great deal of paperwork for regular provision of compliance and monitoring data. All corporations must hire an "IOT supervisory officer" to oversee compliance. Once you finish your criminal sentence for having perpetrated "LightGate" a condition of your parole is to provide volunteer services for the department developing the specification for the mandated middleware which will automate monitoring, collection, and submission of this data using series of interconnected sensors. You instead fake your death and flee to a third-world country.

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

Muskiier

Technivorm Moccamaster and a good grinder

Tried many and found the Technivorm Moccamaster. Makes great coffee in any quantity from a couple of cups to 10. We're lucky to have a good local roaster - and don't forget a good grinder which seems to help.

HP 'clarifies' firmware/support contract rules

Muskiier

As went IBM so will go Cisco and maybe HP

We know what happened with IBM hardware: I remember a customer back in the 90's with a newer IBM desktop that had those proprietary Microchannel slots in it. He wanted to run an external SCSI drive, and wanted an internal dialup modem (his serial ports were all used up for other applications), so he needed a couple of Microchannel cards. As I'm sure readers will recall, it was cheaper to buy another machine instead of the cards. Ironically, I think we got a Compaq. Same thing with Cisco. In spite of the fact that most Cisco hardware is pretty solid, once you factor what Cisco or a Cisco partner wants for the support and updates on older hardware it's often cheaper to just buy something else new. Perhaps the same will drive people away from HP. Having said all that, I think the price of HP hardware has come down so much over the last 5-ish years (their margins must be pretty tight) maybe picking up one of their "support packs" will be worthwhile. And, to be fair, the Proliant stuff is very reliable. But then, so is Dell - with BIOS updates and drivers available for free.

BlackBerry BLOODBATH! Company warns of nearly $1bn quarterly loss

Muskiier

Too bad about the current losses. Love my Z10.

I spend all week working with users and their Android, Apple, and Blackberry phones and devices. I really don't see any dramatic advantage from one to the next. And, I've personally used every phone platform from Palm to Windows to Android (I've never owned an Apple product) and Blackberry 10 has been solid and simple to set up and use. The current phone marketplace is mostly the result of marketing, and timing. It's true that Blackberry missed the tide/current/boat when the smartphone market really started to grow. Nevertheless, their current product is solid, stable, well-designed, easy, efficient, and fun to use. If I had to bet, I would say that Blackberry will be around for the long-term. After all, a small slice of a huge smartphone market still means very significant revenues.

How the clammy claws of Novell NetWare were torn from today's networks

Muskiier

From my angle it was arrogance that really killed Netware

Interesting take on the story Netware's decline. Way back, I used to support small businesses running Netware, Netware Lite, and LANtastic. All were good fits for different sizes and needs. But, they were all an additional cost and support and licensing was a horrid pain. Digging through paper to find authorization codes, faxing licensing forms back and forth, waiting for days for a keycode to get a server or workgroup back up and running - you know the scene. Calling Novell and - if you could even talk to anyone - paying for support to find out it was a known bug or begging for help when you couldn't find your license documentation or, worse yet, having to phone the exalted Novell Engineer who installed the mess only to let him or her blame everything that was wrong on you. Configuration - archaic. I'm pretty sure I remember having to input IP addresses in hex in some version of Netware back in the 90's. Then, along came Windows for Workgroups and NT 3.x. Lacking some functionality, but out of the box, close enough considering the ease of implementation and Microsoft support and documentation was very good - compared to everyone else. Once the Internet was available, MS really understood how to deliver free support on line. Novell still wanted your money. Plus, you could actually sometimes walk the tech-savvy client through a MS client or server fix on the phone. That was possible sometimes with Netware, but rarely. Yes, a Netware server could stay up and running for weeks, even months sometimes. But, a tuned up NT box could come pretty close for way cheaper. Another killer was that it was very difficult to resell Novell unless you had thousands of dollars and lots of time to buy a Novell certification. So, even if you knew what you were doing you would have to hook up with a Novell person who, if the opportunity seemed lucrative enough, scoop your client. All you needed to get MS products was an account with a distributor and the brains to put it into place. The other side of all this is that, yes, anybody's inlaw could then install a network. But, I'm not sure either that there weren't a lot of "paper" Novell experts back in the olden days who made some equally bad messes.

Microsoft: All RIGHT, you can have your Start button back

Muskiier
WTF?

Windows 8: reliable, fast, feature-rich, horrible to use

I capitulated, after struggling with the "modern" UI, and installed the Start8 start button utility. My next mission is to stop anything from automatically opening in one of those horrid, counter-intuitive, full-screen, "modern" apps. To think that I almost thought writing one would be worthwhile! On the other hand, what a great OS. Fast, smooth, never a lockup or BSOD. I'm guessing there was some bad internal politics that went on as the UI got developed.

Plans for fully 3D-printed gun go online next week

Muskiier
Paris Hilton

What about the trees

We already print too much. It's so environmentally wasteful. Now we're printing guns. Where will we file them all? Can't we just scan our guns and store them digitally? And, what if I'm under attack and I desperately need a gun? Will I still be able to print one if the cyan cartridge runs out but the other colours are still full?

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

Muskiier
FAIL

If I had a dollar for every hour wasted trying to automate Adobe updates work I'd be rich

What a shortsighted move. I have spent hours trying to automate Adobe updates for Reader and Flash so our users (who don't have admin rights) don't have to suffer the incessant nagging and yet can have the latest update. Even the Adobe catalogue for MS System Centre don't work properly. I found Ninite a few weeks ago and was working on a solution - guess I'll give that project up.

Devs: 'Pirates are flogging OUR stuff on BlackBerry's App World'

Muskiier
Windows

Indolence contest:

Is the winner the Android developer who can't port an Android app to Blackberry and then if it makes at least $1,000 get RIM to top up to $10,000? Or, the pirate who does the port?

Drobo B1200i: The heavy-duty array even your mum could use

Muskiier
Paris Hilton

Affordable 10GbE Switches - Do tell!

Yes, please do share. I just picked up a couple of Intel's "converged" dual port Intel Ethernet 10Gig copper adapters that cost me a little more than $500 Canadian. This, compared to the price of dual port 1K adapters, is a current delta of about $275 for the two ports. A bit difficult to justify but, it is "future-proofing" and I will also eventually use them between servers without a switch. However, it would create possibilities if I could find a switch to connect them for a price I would call reasonable.