Posts by Doctor Syntax

Cloud vendor lock-in is shocking, but there's a get out of jail card

Re: Why stop at cloud?

The problem is that procurement doesn't take the issues of single sourcing seriously.

Once you specify compliance with open standards it's up to the supplier, including, Microsoft, to compete on a level basis.

Engine cover flies from Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 during takeoff

"Passengers were unharmed and continued their journeys on a different aircraft about three hours later."

An entirely different aircraft or just one more of the same?

Re: Shared on social media ??? WTF ???

In fact, from TFA, it was well beyond the point where it could abort: "The engine cowling struck the wing flap as the aircraft left the runway".

A cheeky intern nearly turned MS-DOS into NSFW-DOS

Re: This is fairly common...

"worked for the Government"

A lot of people have thought that after looking at their tax deducions.

404 Day celebrates the internet's most infamous no-show

Nothing to see here. Please move along.

VMware customer reaction to Broadcom may set the future of software licensing

There'll also be a hard to quantify long term effect as the smaller customers they say they don't want eventually become bigger customers - of other vendors.

US government excoriates Microsoft for 'avoidable errors' but keeps paying for its products

"You might think that when a government supplier fails in one of its key duties it would find itself shunned"

It's a balls in vice situation - and it's not Microsoft's balls.

Ransomware gang did steal residents' confidential data, UK city council admits

"and have also notified the Information Commissioner"

When? When they were supposed to within the prescribed time limit or when they could no longer hie it?

German state ditches Windows, Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice

Re: Let's see...

Getting a few more states involved Germany should be able to give Microsoft a good game of Whack-a-mole.

Re: The damn buttons and ribbons in MS products change all the time

I assume in this case Schleswig-Holstein might look at how their users do things and tailor the UIs appropriately.

"Having worked with users, anything new that does not look and operate exactly like their previous gui will be classified as rubbish and blamed for anything that goes wrong."

So once they've finally been moved over onto something that doesn't need to change every few years when Microsoft and its H/W vendor mates decide to screw the world for another H/W & S/W refresh then life will get a lot easier, won't it.

Re: Outlook/Exchange ?

"If they have managed to move to Outlook365 (which is the logical move)"

What part of "sovereignty" did you not understand? They will be moving to a FOSS email server. TFA mentions NextCloud which provides calendar and contact servers which work perfectly well with ThunderBird, also mentioned.

Comingsoon:a large Microsoft office opening in Schleswig-Holstein.

Cyberattack hits Omni Hotels systems, taking out bookings, payments, door locks

" I can't believe that anyone would think that it's a good idea to have hotel door locks controlled centrally, via the web, with no option for handover to local control"

I think there's an hotel chain that's just discovered that. But when your business process development consists of believing what the salesman said...

Iowa sysadmin pleads guilty to 33-year identity theft of former coworker

Which maked the child a basterd along with the father.

In the circumstances I'd have hoped that someone would latch onto this being a bit different from the normal run of things and needed a bit more investigation before the Iowan bank. At least kudos to them being on the alert.

Assuming he could have performed the Sysadmin gig under his own name it sounds like the only reason for this is just plain nastiness. He deserves to serve every one of those 32 years and whatever he has should go to compensating the victim rather than paying a fine. It sounds as if all those other places that didn't investigate properly should also owe Woods.

Want to keep Windows 10 secure? This is how much Microsoft will charge you

Re: Microsoft are doing everything they can....

"I'm on a waiting list for a tree surgeon"

Yup, forget plumbing, this is the thing to retrain as.

"no chance of ever seeing a dentist again"

Was there this morning. Icon seems appropriate.

Thanks. Bu I wonder if my local chippy will upgrade when the time comes.

Re: Per installation cost

If you join in year 2 you'll pay the $122 for year 2 AND the $61 for year 1. To be fair people might not realise each year costs twice as much as the year before or else, not even after a pandemic, will they realise the meaning of "exponential". Just as well it's only 3 years.

Over the course of 3 years that's going to be $305 because the 2nd & 3rd years will double up.

Re: If only there was some technology

I think mentioning "security for windows" should be enough to tell you he's having a laugh.

Re: gog/linux

Providing you have some spare space (including what could be gaied from shrinking your Windows drive) you could try installing Linux as dual boot. Alternatively install Linux in VirtualBox That would let you test it.

Re: Year of Lunix desktop

You also mentioned user familiarity with OS. Microsoft has a habit of requiring users to familiarise themselves with a new version every few years. I mentioned my SiL sticking with W7. She looked at W10 and decided it was too different.

Familiarising users with a new version once and then sticking with it is much easier.

It doesn't matter to Microsoft. Whether on not it's affordable to the punter it's all the same money as far as they're concerned.

Re: Year of Lunix desktop

I have friends running W10 but not Office - yes, it's possible. At least one runs LO, and I think several are on WPS or others. These are alternatives they found for themselves.

Re: Year of Lunix desktop

"(in which case why haven't you ?)"

That's called begging the question.

Re: Per installation cost

It's sneakier than that. It's chargeable by year and doubles each year.

I keep seeing tills displaying a W10 screen Do they really think all the users of those will upgrade - or buy a new till if they don't meet the standard. Perhaps they don't get updates anyway although I suppose they would be on the net to process card payments.

Re: Be careful what you wish for....

For some Windows 7 might be their last version. Unless her laptop dies that'll include my sister-in-law.

Malicious xz backdoor reveals fragility of open source

Re: show how hard this is

Imagine you were running an APT and you'd already got one exploit in place. Would you risk another? Yes, risk, because it doubles the chances of being noticed and once that happens there'll be a search for other incidents using the same MO and you end up losing your existing one. It's not necessarily a good assumption the same crew would have something else in place. OTOH the same APT might well be engaged on designing something that could be eased into your mobile,whatever make it might be, something like Pegasus.

It's a compression library. How do you know it's not used in Windows?

The distros would certainly be a channel but it probably needs actual help as well as money. Perhaps an organisation that can take over the role of the sort of manager who keeps users of the techie's back. An organisation with the authority to look at the pressure Collin was coming under and tell them to back off and have the clout to get an offender thrown off whatever platform they're using to communicate if they don't. An organisation that could provide somebody to discuss tech and non-tech problems with.

Stability AI reportedly ran out of cash to pay its bills for rented cloudy GPUs

Maybe they're ahead of their time. How many years before we look back scathingly on the AI bubble?

US reckons it's about time the Moon had its own time zone

It would make more sense to abandon the EDT. That way you get midday at 12::00 and midnight at 24:00 all year. What should it be called? How about ERT - Eastern Real Time.

Linux Foundation marshals support for open source alternative to Redis

Cash cleared.

Outlook.com trips over Google's spam blocking rules

"due to the very low reputation of the sending domain"

A lower reputation than gmail.com?

Google bakes new cookie strategy that will leave crooks with a bad taste

I thought the idea of cookies was to maintain state on the client so that the server could be stateless. if the server is now having to maintain state (half of a key pair) why use anything else on the client? Or is that the whole point and I've missed it somewhere?

Alibaba signs to explore one-hour rocket deliveries

Take advantage of scale and put the warehouse in orbit. It gives a whole new meaning to "drop off".

X's Grok AI is great – if you want to know how to hot wire a car, make drugs, or worse

Did they ask Grok for its views on Musk?

Re: Guardrails my ass

Musk will tell you that X is never wrong.

Feds finally decide to do something about years-old SS7 spy holes in phone networks

... foreign dictators threaten US national security, human rights and journalists working to expose wrongdoing, That's our job.

Microsoft slammed for lax security that led to China's cyber-raid on Exchange Online

It'll end up as a tick box on some business-wide project document.

"Security has been taken into account [ ]"

Simulation reveals all Japanese will have the same surname by 2531

Making predictions half a millennium into the future is a good idea. Nobody's going to call you on it if you're wrong.

Mine is that by 2531 all the Japanese volcanoes will be erupting, covering all the islands in lava & it will be quite uninhabitable. Just wait and see.

OWASP server blunder exposes decade of resumes

"We recognize the significance of this breach, especially considering the OWASP Foundation's emphasis on cybersecurity,"

This must be about the first ever breach announcement to show evidence of self-awareness.

French lawmakers take a swing at cloud monopolies

There are enough for everyone to have something to moan about.

Happy 20th birthday Gmail, you're mostly grown up – now fix the spam

Requiring one-click unsubscribe - training people to click links in spam. What a gift to the scammers.

Ex-White House CIO tells The Reg: TikTok ban may be diplomatic disaster

Re: Sanity

In practice that would be "everyone except us, the government".

Re: Political suicide.

Those who are of an age to vote but are not normally inclined to do so might do so now and there will be frech cohorts coming along at each election. I doubt party managers of either stripe would welcome the thought of a Tik-Tok party emerging, even as a protest vote.

Re: Mind your footing

Isn't the concern more along the lines of data harvesting by a foreign power? Just the sort of thing we non-USians worry about the USA doing?