Posts by dwrjones87

Car-crash IT: HUGE write-off for Universal Credit - PAC

A blind person with a blind guide dog could've seen this coming

Govt spaffs £170k to develop the INTERNET OF SHEEP

Jesus christ, I live 2000ft from the centre of the biggest town in Conwy, and still have trouble getting a 2G signal, let alone 3G. They really they're going to have much luck with this?

New voting rules leave innocent Brits at risk of SPAM TSUNAMI

Conwy Council used to put on their forms that you could permanently opt out under s. 11 Data Protection Act, and apparently still give you the option. I must admit, it's a level of enlightenment that I thought was beyond most councils

https://www.conwy.gov.uk/dr-erole-optout.asp?cat=6755&doc=24178&Language=1

Linux Foundation flings two full-time developers at OpenSSL

Quite curious as to why they don't devote the resources to LibreSSL. I've been keeping an eye on the commits and they've lead me to the conclusion that OpenSSL is a pile of crap that will never be bug free or secure unless it's completely ripped apart ala LibreSSL

British Gas 'in talks' to outsource tech services desk, whispers insider

"[We] are working closely with them to reach a proposed outcome later this year.”

ie. we'll look at the figures, decide how many to chop and then tell them they're losing their jobs

Facebook splats in-app chat, whacks brats into crack yakety-yak app

I could do with something to make it harder for people to contact me and to quieten my phone down a little bit. This will do nicely

Zuck: Web drones, not balloons (cough, cough Google) are way forward

Growth for the sake of growth is the mentality of a cancer cell

Hackers force innocent mobes to join crypto mining gangs

Even if they only get 20p a month per phone, times that by 100,000 infections and you get 20k a month. With alt coin mining you can also increase profit with a coin switching pool. Could turn out very profitable for them...

US saves self from Huawei spying by spying on Huawei spying

"To save ourselves from Huawei spying Maybe this is why the USA is so certain Huawei is bad news Snowdenistas at The New York Times and Der Spiegel have reported another communiqué from their source-in-exile, this time to the effect that the United States National Security Agency penetrated Chinese networking equipment vendor Huawei and monitored its communications."

The lack of punctuation in that paragraph makes my eyes bleed!!!!!

Is Microsoft hinting at a fully fondleslab-friendly future for Office 365?

Re: What?

I do believe you are getting file formats and applications confused.....

Yes, majority of data may be in MS Office files. Open/Libre Office does a reasonable job of reading them, and actually supports a higher version of the file formats than MS Office does.

Equally, you can open Open/Libre Office files with MS Office

Sysadmins and devs: Do these job descriptions make any sense?

Soooooooo, they cut out the 'technobabble' by replacing it all with wish-washy don't really mean anything but make this whole exercise sound worth it words, or as I like to call, Management Bullshit (c)

Plusnet goes titsup for spectacular hour-long wobble

Am with Plusnet here and not noticed any problems at all.....

But... you work in IT... Why aren't we RICH?

I use it for the more often than you'd think occasions where there is WiFi but no mobile signal and to send pictures without having to pay extortionate MMS charges, and that's what most people I know use it for (about 1/2 to 2/3 of my contacts have it)

Australian bureaucrats to journalist: 'Give us back our bits'

Maybe these people should *insert search engine of choice* the Streisand effect...

Facebook gobbles WhatsApp for SIXTEEN BILLION DOLLARS

Shame...

I rather liked WhatsApp. Pretty much everybody I know with a smart phone uses it. However, I know people that are wanting to abandon Facebook (me included).

If Facebook even so much as think about taking WhatsApp the direction of Facebook accounts needed, then I'm ditching it and suggesting to everybody I know they use BBM instead.

This might just be what Blackberry ordered....

HTC offers FREEBIE repair on new models with cracked screens

I've had a HTC One X since around when they came out, and I can't fault it...

Bitcoin value plunges as Mt.Gox halts withdrawals and Russia says 'nyet'

Re: I wonder if it was deliberate?

They're crude but yes :)

ICO to focus only on 'serious, repeat' data-protection offenders

So basically, instead of the usual next to nothing, they will be doing nothing in future....

I despair. I've got a case ongoing with them and they don't seem to have done anything in the last 3 months. It would be quite pointless telling this company to deal with my complaint because it's a telemarketing parasite and they weren't listening to me in the first place......

Maybe the courts should become the first port of call instead of the ICO. I imagine they are more scared of court costs that the toothless ICO

US Department of Justice details Kim Dotcom evidence

“the Mega Conspiracy measured the throughput, or bandwidth, that files on the Mega Sites were consuming. Files that demanded higher throughput, which meant that more users were accessing those files simultaneously, were stored on faster servers located in Washington, D.C. The preliminary analysis of the databases shows that the vast majority of files on these computers are infringing copies of copyrighted works, and the Mega Conspiracy has purposefully made their rapid and repeated distribution a primary focus of their infrastructure.”

Looks like anybody that serves a large amount of content over the internet needs to watch out. Looks like managing your resources effectively is criminal nowadays......

Drobo tarts up storage boxen: Now they're APP SERVER platforms

I want a Drobo 5N, simply for the simplicity of it (just a shame that I can't afford one).

Why can't things just do one thing and do it well nowadays? (Says a 26 year old...)

Unlocking CryptoLocker: How infosec bods hunt the fiends behind it

Re: Sensible to Suggest Ways of Blocking The Spread?

As far as I know, DropBox allows you to revert a file to a previous version, a functionality that this beast can't alter, so therefore I would be tempted to class it. Offline your computer, clean it, go back online, go through all your files on DropBox and revert them or perhaps email support and ask them to do it en-masse for you, and then download, and be more bloody careul about what you open in the future

Apple's spamtastic iBeacon retail alerts launch with Frisco FAIL

Re: "Comfortable with that?" Er, well now that you mention it, no.

Don't think I've ever come across an Android phone that needs bluetooth on for anything. Mine is permanently off, as is my partners, mothers, brothers, mother in law, father in law etc etc etc and pretty much everybody else I can think of that uses Android

New York Times, Twitter domain hijackers 'came in through front door'

Isn't MelbourneIT the registrar for Microsoft too?

Stop excluding vulnerable Brits from digital agenda - MPs

You'd be amazed how essential an internet connection is in finding a job nowadays. It would be money better spent than this stupid Work Programme