Posts by darklordsid

Smuggle mischievous JavaScript into WinRAR archives? Sure, why not

Re: WARNING: Executable code may execute code

The issue is the code is sneaked in due a fault in the way sfx "text and icon" data is assembled by WinRar.

I agree that no one is in error if distrusts any unknown executable from any unknown source, but the point is that the vulnerability allows to easily add executing code where it should not be.

In any case I would generally recommend Open Source software like 7-Zip, PeaZip (can open also RAR5 archives), p7zip... rather than closed source ones, as code audit is easier (not burdened neither by i.p. issues nor hampered from unavailability of the full code base) and security issues are usually found and fixed faster.

Oh BOY! The MICKEY MOUSE Apple Watch is no heart-throb

Re: Pebble...

Even best battery degrades with time/use, of course some months it is not a satisfactory lifespan if the darn thing is glued (or, in other devices, fixed with arcane proprietary screws).

About problem in hot water, IMHO fitness smartwatches are meant for dealing with some water drops (or swimming in cold water in best cases) without electrocuting the user, rather than taking long hot baths or sauna, and in any case the watch is subject to be constantly heated from 37°C body contact so it should resist to less-than-burning water.

Pebble...

Capt. Obvious says: "unless they get closer to Pebble in terms of battery life, it will be an hassle to use such watches. Oh, and btw Pebble integration with iOS is quite satisfactory."

Apple uses "Marketing" against Capt. Obvious

Marketing is super effective...

Ten excellent FREE PC apps to brighten your Windows

Re: Peazip question

In PeaZip the encryption is featured and the function is called "enter password" (correct, but maybe quite unintuitive).

WinRar is probably still the best of the bunch, although not *technically* free, anyway PeaZip is a good companion as it performs a lot of other useful little things, like hashing and file shredding.

GIMP flees SourceForge over dodgy ads and installer

Re: I don't see the problem

I see what you are saying there.

As soon as most users will be on the "web of apps" rather the "web of websites", in site ads market will crumble and in apps ads market will skyrocket, much more invasive than any googleads-filled page or bundled installer.

I already see this happening on most free Andorid and iOS apps, and MS Store is heading this way... not too fast, it seems, but only as people don't really like what is happening, and consumerization is a big drawback for corporate users; anyway it is where IT is heading to.

But if it is not good news for traditional - legacy :P - websites, I think it is not a good thing for apps developers too, as Store-centic distribution effectively transform a indie developer in a marketing research drone for the Store owner.

Is your app successful? Does your app threaten one of my apps (Office, IE...)? Ok, now you can do business solely from MY store, so be ready to be flooded by one stars, being placed in second page, the key API you use to be deprecated, or your software to be outright banned.

Plain and simple.

This means software will be less free as in freedom, and less "business" to.

No fun nor magic, it is profiling.

Ads are served to be relevant to end users (you and me) depending on the website (what are you looking at/for) and, what's more invasive, on the history (what had you looked at//for) of your searches, visited websites, clicked ads, probably hot keywords on your gmail etc...

On a download website you get a lot of download ads.

On ElReg you get a lot of tech ads, and on hardware pages, you get a lot of devices ads.

On sports sites you get a lot of sport events or performance enhancing drugs ads.

It is how GOOGLE ads works.

Re: Installer wrappers - just say no.

Sir, GIMP installer does not have any wrapper.

The problem is right on download pages, well before you can start the real download, showing GOOGLE ads containing large flashing download buttons that tricks inexperienced users in downloading unrelated software from scammers using GOOGLE advertising platform (software that quite obviously is crapware most of the times).

And unlike in-installer bundle that are loaded only when you start the installer, GOOGLE ads are loaded as soon as you open the download page, you have not even started the download (you can also quickly run away and close the page!) but you are already profiled and served a tricky ad!

How fun they put all the blame on SourceForge, while the scam ads are from Google Ads!

Not that Sourceforge is not part of the problem, but the problem is wider: it starts from scammers and goes through Google's poor control of advertisers, and ends in Sourceforge or any other website partner of Google Ads (like ElReg...) being flooded by poor quality ads - yes Google Ads claim partners website can blacklist unwanted ads, but the scam/cr4p/low quality ads flood is simply too much and facts are that such filters are not efficient unless Google do proper screening on advertisers before letting them go through Google Ads network.

Bottom line what Gimp staff did is choosing the easier option

1) "if we put the blame on scammers, it will be a sort of useless Captain Obvious statement"

2) "if we put the blame on Big G, it will be a sort of painful way to suicide, as they can make us irrelevant on the www in a nanosecond"

3) "if we put the blame on Sourceforge, we will have some free good PR"

and they obviously went with the last one.

Google Chrome: Extensions now ONLY from the Company Store

Do you understand that what you call crapware does exactly what BigG and Bing does?

Do you understand that in a Store-only model of distribution who control the store can preemptively kill any effort of enforcing user rights (i.e. Adblock) or even competition (i.e. will MS store be neutral on Office, IE and Skype competitors? will be Big G store be neutral on Chrome/GoogleApps competitors? will Apple store be neutral over iWorks competitors?)

Do you think a false sense of security (yes, false, you are going to be ad profiled and NSA spied, and it does not meet my definition of being secure!) worth your user rights AND the life of non-monopolistic capitalistic free market?

FREEZE, GLASSHOLE! California cops bust Google Glass driver

We live in the era of smart glasses and stooopid people.

FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS: Microsoft faces prising XP from Big Biz

Re: Or

Oh, rly?

That's why over 50% of servers runs Linux.

That's why over 50% of embedded devices runs Linux.

That's why Google framework runs Linux and it even chose to based Android (that already have as many active machines as wintel ones) on Linux kernel.

Your Win+Office+somethinginMSandNSAcloud is not the whole world.

Microsoft: Surface is DEAD. Long live the Surface 2!

Re: Can't see the point if

Think about "Surface" and "Surface Pro" brands for incompatible platforms... how would average customer would react if iOS was called "OSX" and OSX re-branded in "OSX Pro", and find out that the platforms are incompatible?

MS utterly derided users ever more dropping "Surface RT" (already synonym of failure) and branding it "Surface" only.

PATHETIC!

Re: Can't see the point if

You are so right! 100k+ apps are too many, indeed, let's close submissions to the store!

Re: How much an Ultrabook costs?

Yes, and tell me again how well did wintel Ultrabook sold?

Re: What lack of app?

Yes, too bad MS is so eager to call them "legacy" and hide the desktop under tiles, just to turn win32 developers away!

Microsoft to unveil new Surface slabs at September 23 event

MS: vigorously striving to match its business plan with "beating a dead horse" quote.

Windows 8.1 to freeze out small business apps

Someone think it is strange? Developing for RT-API is developing for MS, their the store, their your customers, their your business.

Thought the PC market couldn't get any worse? HAH! Think again

Not until tiles are gone

No hope of recovery until that smoking pile of sh1t of Windows 8 is around.

Recover plan checklist

fire Ballmer: done

kill Metro, Store and RT API with fire: to do

taunt and diss W8 as the epitome of failure: partially done

re-label the desktop from "legacy" to "mature, capable and dependable environment for content creation" and re-label Metro from "future" to "unsupported legacy we hope never existed": to do.

Silicon daddy: Moore's Law about to be repealed, but don't blame physics

Re: Human Brain 1000000x more powerful than a computer

Human brain is 1M or 1B faster than any computer in reasoning as an human, as for 4B years of evolution as living being and as for 1M years evolution as Homo.

But I'll not bet on the human for factoring prime numbers, or indexing the www.

That is the downside of benchmarks, how you define "power"?

How you define intelligence?

A dog is far more "powerful" than me in processing odors and in path finding, a bee is far a best citizen than me, a tree may be far more intelligent than me in ways I cannot imagine (think to chemical message passing...), a computer definitely compute faster.

How do you compare apples and oranges?

That reminds me the statement about Britain not needing telegraph because had plenty postmen, or the other statement about all important scientific discovers being made by the end of 19th century.

What Surface RT flop? Nokia said to be readying WinRT slab for September

When will they release a daring Bob-phone?

Top 10 Steve Ballmer quotes: '%#&@!!' and so much more

The absolutely best one is "I'm going to bet the company on Windows 8".

Nuff said.

Lenovo to ship all new PCs with Start Menu replacement

Re: And I thought Lenovo were a safe choice.

Yes they preload it with Windows 8, a real crapware!

Re: Why?

Yes, today Ballmer was fired. That was a real evolution.

Hi Ballmer, Lenovo makes more revenue that other OEMs you are talking about, because refused to follow crazy MS business plan and have 1) downgrade friendly policies for 7 2) button/store replacement (and don't forget fix for metro full screen madness) for masochists buying w8.

And I remind you that most of the fabs of other companies you are talking about are based in China, and most components come from China, so you point reduces to nothing.

Btw, Ballmer was fired today. Good riddance, good luck to the new MS.

Re: Windows 7?

Lenovo is known for very permissive downgrade terms, and good drivers support for 7. No wonder they are the only OEM to have good revenues in late quarters!

Re: Is that the same...

... put Bing as default full system search engine without asking, forces you to load a brand new api to run their adware network, design an entire system around making you use their services, hose an UI to constantly bring you back to a gigantic launcher filled by ads of their services, kindly asks every now and then to register their services, and in last update kindly try to trick you to save data on their cloud, so NSA can spare some connectivity money directly having your files on their servers...

oh, sorry, this is MS

Not going to happen, Lenovo is now more powerful than MS due to W8 debacle.

Steve Ballmer was fired instead.

MS and Nokia quotes skyrocketed: guess why.

Re: FFS

That is the really hard blow to MS: its pathetic effort to create a new API as basis for another decade of monopoly and halted innovation is so laughable to be considered fungible with the store of any other third party by the largest OEM (and by far, the one making more revenues)!

I'll laugh even harder as soon as some big OEM will start providing out of the box BlueStacks to bring the largest Store to windows users.

Re: ¿Malware?

Why on hell MS is no longer capable to deploy an IDE that avoids embarrassing bugs like the one you reported?

Re: Pokki...? Seriously?

Because of the bigger picture: Pokki has a start menu AND a Store.

Everyone is p1ss3d off of MS trying to snuff software market saying everytime all is legacy apart from its beloved Metro/Store environment.

Lenovo did not only slapped MS in the face providing an out of the box solution for missing start menu (on par with most other 3rd party solutions), but also kicked MS in the nuts, very HARD, showing that the "revolutionary" idea after 8 and its "daring" business plan and the billions dollars spent to enforce it... has NO HOPE to become the next MS monopoly and it is actually on par (or sub par) to what any middle sized softwarehouse can do in spare time!

Re: Just awesome

Agree: Windows 8 is a real piece of crap, and it is better to uninstall it as soon as you have got the new machine.

BALLMER TO RETIRE FROM MICROSOFT

"At an end your rule is, and not short enough it was!"

Microsoft unveils push-button app generator for Windows Phone

Oh, nice, so flexible and powerful now I'm going to write Office, Photoshop, and Blender replacements for RT/Store during lunch time! Or just another f*rt app...

Climate change even worse than you thought: It causes war and murder

It could be worse: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2724064/

Beam me up? Not in the life of this universe

... unless one does not get zipped ^___^

Microsoft haters: You gotta lop off a lot of legs to slay Ballmer's monster

Don't underestimate the power of Ballmer in sinking the Metranic...

SkyDrive on par with C: Drive in Windows 8.1

Re: ?

Oh, yea, I already see Jonny Bubba Dude Luser Smith using its new shiny VistaBob 3.1 - sorry, 8.1 - slab (one of the 3 sold in the world) and deleting an important ( = p0rn) file from the default disk, don't know where, don't know when, don't know how was it named, and trying to recover it from SkyDrive "backup"...

Surface RT: A plan worthy of the South Park Underpants Gnomes

Re: Weakness in MS

"Windows has a modern hybrid microkernel - with security and auditing built in from the ground up"

And it is clearly working well, being it still the most frail and virus prone platform.

Too big to fail? I've already heard about that...

1) 1B is only part of the value of the slabs, it is the planned discount... but as they will not sell, the damage will be far larger (x4 or x5 larger)

2) they not wrote off the damages of Pro missed sales, that is going to be much more larger - they sold better, but overall poor, and far less what estimated, and numbers were larger: that is the way hw market works, if you overstimate, you are hosed as the margins are tiny and obsolescence is quick.

Maybe Ballmer thought yelling "we 'r an hardware company now boyz!" dancing and throwing around some chairs would have magically turned 2012's MS in 2005's Apple, but hardware market does not work that way, ask HP, ask Dell, ask Acer, ask Lenovo...

3) Aforementioned hw companies are fighting back...

Too big to fail... I don't think so!

Microsoft admits it's '18 months behind' with Windows 8 slabs

Re: Opening many fronts - oh dear

But now Ballmergenius reimagined the company!

One division to do $anything+dog, and not 1, not 2, but 3 divisions that are "marketing" spelled in different ways!

How could somehting go wrong if 3 on 4 in the crew are busy putting lipstick on the pig?!

MS vision is hosing consumers, snuff oem, take over software market, break compatibility with win32 to force RT sales, spit on the face of pro and corporate users, sell your privacy to Bing advertisers and your freedom to NSA. So sure people are waiting for Ms to be able to enforce ita vision? Market data shows hemorrage instead, people does no longer wants monopoly and is running away in flocks.

An unified market is better if the monopolit allows anyone to live their lives and do business (oem, indie devs, corporate users) as in win32 era, but if the vision is take the cash and insult your customers just because you can (as Ballmer's business pla), anyone prefers a fragmented market.

Fragmented, only if Ballmerclown will be smart enough to survive Google and Apple's assault...

Wow!

18 months behind, after just 10 months from launch! Epic fail x1.8!

Microsoft: Still using Office installed on a PC? Gosh, you squares

A producer that taunts its flagship product to say another of its product is more cost effective...

if true, it is throwing its earnings out of the window(s)

if false, it is Microsoft...

Modern-day Frankenstein invents CURE for BEHEADING

Quick, quick, someone please do an urgent head transplant on Ballmer, being the old w8 head obviously defective. A rhesus head would be a welcome improvement!

Windows 8 apps pass 100K, Windows 8 passes Vista

Woww, howw phantastic. How great is Ballmeros 8.x! That's must be the reason why Apple is now at 56% in the USA ultrabook market.

Win 8 user? Thought that was a CAPTCHA? R is for ruh roh

Re: So, just to make this clear...

No. The code may be on site not known as malicious by SmartScreen, uac may not help you here as for hundred thousands other viruses still running on windows, and the AV does note always stop any threat just because it is here.

3 nice tricks that does not always work, or at least one of them would be out of business...

Final thoughts

a) remote execution exploits are usually listed as most critical security issues, and should not be overlooked

b) that condition you mention is already satisfied if the user choosing VistaBob 8

Magpie Apple plunders the competition for cosmetics, as egos run wild

It kinds...

Alleged ripping off of Metrodern UI recalls me when someone says iPads were going to be ripoff of XP Tablets, and iPhones were going to be ripoff of CE and Palm, and iPods were going to be ripoff of Creative players...

Chrome and Firefox are planet-wreckers, IE cuddles dolphins

IE is perfect. For downloading Chrome or Firefox.

Sneaky new Android Trojan is WORST yet discovered

Privacy and security -wise all malware seems a joke compared to mainstream OS, web search and social media "features"