Posts by Doctor Syntax

Windows 10 market share stalls after free upgrade offer ends

Re: Elderly relatives

"if you have elderly or vulnerable relatives"

Don't be mean. Let younger relatives use it as well.

Re: "Windows is far easier to use for non technical people."

"So, you'e suggesting that if a Windows user switches to Linux, not only will they need to run any software not supported in Linux through a third party software layer and hope it runs with no issues, and they'll need to buy a console to be able to play games?"

I think he was suggesting that if you want to play games doing so on a console would cost you less than upgrading a Windows PC to do it there.

"The internet is full of Windows programs to download to do what you want, it is not full of linux programs. Few people want to run commands to install software, they just want to double click an icon and it gets installed and creates a nice shortcut on their desktop."

The trouble with posting this sort of bollox is that it immediately identifies your lack of experience. What you probably mean by "the internet" is the web. Mostly Linux users don't even have to go to the web to download stuff from the net. What they need is right there in their distro's repository and they already have what they need to access that. And that's access with a click or two because their distro already provides a GUI interface to the repository.

What's more, if I were using Windows I'd always be a bit dubious about anything I'd download from the web.

Re: "a new version of OS used to trigger purchases of new PCs."

"Up to and including Windows Vista each successive iteration of Redmond's OS virtually mandated a new pc (or a significant hardware upgrade) in order for it to run with anything like decent performance."

Yes but, of course, you didn't buy the new PC unless you wanted the new OS. The change is not wanting the new OS.

Re: "It looks like users won't adopt it if they have to pay for it"

"The overwhelming proportion of sales of Windows licenses to the private sector has always been driven by the purchase of new PCs."

So the lack of growth is due to lack of purchases of new PCs. But it used to be the case that a new version of OS used to trigger purchases of new PCs. Recent versions of Windows seem to have changed that behaviour.

Re: I'm not surprised...

'Let me see you install Fallout 4, Dragon Age; Origins or Skyrim Special Edition in "one click"'

It depends on what you want to install. I have no interest in installing any of those in any number of clicks.

Survey finds 75% of security execs believe they are INVINCIBLE

Re: optional title

"a bit Dunning Kruger really"

Make that a lot Dunning Kruger. With extras on the side. I posted the other day that paranoia is the prime requirement for sysadmins & DBAs. It should be even more so for security execs. Eternal vigilance is not enough.

Arch Linux: In a world of polish, DIY never felt so good

A systemd-using distro being touted as the last refuge of Linux purists? Really?

Microsoft ends OEM sales of Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8.1

"They will enter the job market with next to zero influence from Microsoft"

I'm not sure about that. They put a lot of effort into the education market.

Re: When the time comes

"The only question is whether the 'Linux' community can get together and create a credible offering in the next couple of years."

(a) Why the quotes?

(b) Some organisations have already found the existing offering quite credible. They're apt to find MS piling on the pressure (e.g. Ballmer found he just had to pay Munich a visit without even waiting for Oktoberfest). But in the end MS will find they can't twist all the arms.

Re: I don't hate Win10

"Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age"

Sounds like it. Go and read the new MS "privacy" policy. Note what it enables them to do and how it avoids putting any limits on that. Compare that with the GPL or BSD licences. Then start frothing at the mouth again.

Re: And it still makes you wonder...

"why is it then still (almost) impossible to buy a machine without an OS?"

Because the cost is largely or even more than offset because of all the crap trial-ware (or trial crap-ware) the vendors are paid to install.

Stiff upper lips and sun glasses: the Chancellor bets on Brexit feeling

"However, science, technology, and academia must now get in line behind car manufacturers and other sectors of the UK economy – and the regions expecting the Treasury to make up the shortfall in spending that would have come from the EU or to offset any trade tariffs with states in the single market post-Brexit."

What that means, I suspect, is that the sectors and regions that voted Remain are going to be bled dry to protect those that voted Leave from the consequences of their actions.

UK will retaliate against state-sponsored cyber attacks, Chancellor warns

Re: Oh no...

"I'd have more confidence in this committee if it was chaired by a cyber security expert, not the Bean - Counter - in - Chief."

Chancellors of the Exchequer aren't generally bean counters. In Hammond's case he's been both Defence and Foreign Secs. But the most impressive thing about him was what happened when he was first appointed to the cabinet as Transport minister. He announced "the war on the motorist stops here". Can you imagine the consternation in the DoT? He was promoted to Defence PDQ. That's a politician who really knows how to get the Civil Service to take action.

Hm, is that a minefield? Let me just throw my magic bomb-sniffing spinach over there

"Then put the sensor in my next phone."

I don't think your selfie stick will be long enough for safety in a minefield.

Botanically interesting. I think it might be missing something in practical terms as a mine detector.

Ransomware victims screwed

20% fail to get their data back after paying ransom? It's enough to make you distrust criminals.

Amazon guarantees bitterly contested Ohio wind farm project

Meanwhile the large turbine on my horizon hasn't turned for months. Admittedly this is an exceptionally long period for it to be out of service. I'd call it TITSUP (Total Inability To Supply Usual Power) but I'm not sure its reliability record is good enough to justify "Usual".

Quest celebrates first day of independence from Dell with layoffs

General manager of network security unit laid off? That'll encourage potential customers.

Cloudflare ordered by judge to help unmask two website owners

Assuming they {Cloudflare) kept the records all they can disclose is what someone, who they don't know and wouldn't be able to recognise, typed into a computer somewhere in the world, something they didn't see happening. From that Elsevier expect them to give evidence of identification?

Smart Meter rollout delayed again. Cost us £11bn, eh?

Re: No tin hat here

"If someone fat-fingers a disconnection, I'll call up and report it like any other power outage."

You'll then be told they didn't do it, it's a faulty meter. It'll be replaced within two working days. There'll need to be somebody there to let the technician into the house.

Re: Free?

so the usual UK energy policy outcome - a costly, complicated change that helps nobody the usual suspects.

Re: What's the advantage to the consumer?

"The CFL are head and shoulders above the others"

That depends on your application. If you want something that gives you your 900-1200lm in little used circulation space, say a hall & landing fitting CFL is going to disappoint. Switch it on when you enter the space & it still won't have reached full brightness when you exit. The older it gets, the worse it gets. You're going to have to leave it on & waste the efficiency. Even your filament bulb is going to be better at that job.

"The gravy train rolls on..."

Continuing to pay Crapita to fail to roll it out might not be the worst outcome.

WebAssembly: Finally something everyone agrees on – websites running C/C++ code

Re: O.K. concept

"there's no reason this shouldn't work.

It's running in a browser.

Re: Safe?

"This code is then executed in what is, hopefully, a safe environment"

Spot the key word in there.

Hope springs eternal.

"Sure it will be different this time."

It always is.

"Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla on Monday announced preview versions of WebAssembly, a low-level safe binary format designed to allow C/C++ code to run in web browsers."

Safe? We'll see.

KCL out(r)age continues: Two weeks TITSUP, two weeks to go

Re: Setting the new standard for FAIL

"KCL also blithely disposed of the *very first* computer worth the name"

What can you expect. It was digital & KCL was into analogue - the Wheatstone bridge.

Re: Setting the new standard for FAIL

No. They did that years ago if the legend I heard in the '60s was true. According to that, after the war we were offered the whole of Somerset House, not just the east wing. And the offer was turned down.

"You have to ask yourself what are you protecting against? Then solve for that."

Complete loss of data storage and processing power. How it's caused is immaterial.

"RAID absolutely is a backup against failed drives."

It's not a backup against flood, fire, theft, accidental deletion, ransomware...

It's not a backup.

Re: Optional

"All these people carrying out a FULL backup.... I take it you also tested that the restore process worked?"

Being a paranoid sysadmin, this goes with the territory.

"But I heard tales of woe from more than one person that they simply slapped in a new HDD into their RAID system, and it borked itself halfway through the rebuild process."

I also heard of someone losing a disk from a mirrored system during a system move. They put in a new disk and re-silvered their mirror. From the faulty disk.

A few simple lessons:

RAID is not backup.

Incremental backups only bridge the gaps between full backups.

Fully backup before you do even the most routine maintenance to your RAID.

A good sysadmin/DBA is paranoid. Technical competence comes a close second but paranoia comes first.

Google drops a zero-day on Microsoft: Web giant goes public with bug exploited by hackers

"Adobe worked fast on its patch because Flash malware was already in the wild."

You wrote that as if it was something new.

Uber drivers entitled to UK minimum wage, London tribunal rules

Re: Bu****it language "This is your invoice but is not an invoice" Contract reads like an EULA

"While common-use language might refer to Uber's (or Lyft's et al.) as taxi's, they are not taxi's, they are hire car's."

And none of the nouns to which you have added unwarranted apostrophes are possessives. They're plurals.

Re: When UBER loses the Appeal

"They will just shut up shop here in the UK. (Maybe)"

Now that CETA's been signed they could move to Canada & then sue HMG.

America has one month to stop the FBI getting its global license to hack

Re: US LAW

"The United States has extradition treaties with more than 100 countries."

So they can extradite from more than 100 countries. If those treaties are along the lines of the US/UK treaty it's likely that a lot of people will be extradited to the US but not many from it.

Re: US LAW

"You are forgetting one little detail - the US insists on being able to extradite people to its courts, but refuses to allow extraditions of US citizens when they need to face the music."

We're holding a convention on international law enforcement in Berlin. Here are the invitations for the top tiers of the FBI administration...

Appointments on hold as (computer) virus wreaks havoc with NHS trust systems

"All adult patients (over 18) should presume their appointment/procedure has been cancelled unless they are contacted. Those who turn up will be turned away."

It's the computer system that has a virus not the doctor.

The patient knows what time their appointment's for and may already have arranged to take time off work.

The doctor knows what time they have a clinic.

In some cases the examination may be impeded by lack of access to the system but that's not necessarily the case for all examinations. Take written notes. They'll need to be put online later and if there were notes from a previous visit they'll need to be compared to those earlier notes and maybe an extra visit to take action that follows the comparison. But a hospital should not be totally dependent on functioning IT systems. It sounds like the decision of an administrator totally divorced from any perception of patients' circumstances. If they can manage without the system for younger patients why not for adults?

"I bet it'll be another old dear of a health visitor"

More likely a dumbo millennial.

Boffin's anti-worm bot could silence epic Mirai DDoS attack army

Re: "prompt the user to reboot"

"How?"

AIUI these are telnet connections. They have a service running on port 23 that offers a login prompt for which the password is a known default. Replace that by a service running on port 23 that offers a message saying "Reboot your webcam and change the password".

Re: go for it

"They deem certain traffic undesirable .... Bye bye connection"

Some of them do it already. They call it traffic shaping. I had that happen when my ISP got taken over by another with a somewhat repetitive name. The traffic got shaped out of existence.

Re: Bright idea

"and next off, the Mirai code gets updated with the nematode code, so that it locks the administrator out"

AIUI it already does that, otherwise it would be easy for someone to log in and de-worm the device. It sounds like the nematode is the worm without the nasty payload.

"any anti-Mirai worm could disrupt inexperienced users who would be locked out of remote device access."

According to previous articles (a) vulnerable devices are attacked within minutes of going online and (b) the attacks usually close the telnet door behind them. If that's so most vulnerable devices must already have their users locked out. A nematode that would, say, prompt the user to reboot and change the password would be somewhat more helpful to the user than leaving the device to be infected. However it's obviously going to be a race to get against the existing botnet to get to new or newly rebooted devices first. Maybe it needs to crash and reboot a device that's already infected first.

WordPress daddy Matt Mullenweg says Wix.com 'explicitly contravenes the GPL'

"Now that Mullenweg has blown the whistle on them, MAYBE the overlords of the GPL will do an investigation and lawyer up if/when they see fit."

Why? They'd have no standing. The GPL is only a legal boilerplate to use as an agreement between the copyright owner and anyone using the code to make derivatives. In this case Wordpress are the copyright owners. They're the ones who have standing in this unless Wix are also making derivatives of the GPL.

Researchers expose Mirai vuln that could be used to hack back against botnet

"If this flaw allows for a more active defence by crashing or otherwise disabling attacking endpoints, it sounds like a reasonable use of force in self-defence."

If I follow the article correctly it's not actually the device itself that's being crashed, just a process that's been placed there by a previous attack. All that's happening is that the device is being returned to its original estate. The only person with a standing to make a complaint is the original attacker - who can't complain without incriminating themselves.

Let's praise Surface, not bury it

Re: Bah! 4 Doctor Syntax (again)

"Plug USB disk drive into said laptop"

See my comments to TangoDelta72, or just read my original posting for why this "solution" isn't one.

See also my comment that I agreed with your points 1 & 2. OTOH my particular requirement was for a compact piece of kit to be used in libraries and archives where excess consumption of desk space would be an issue. That doesn't leave room for an optical drive, a large screen or even a full-sized keyboard. It's not a piece of kit you'd choose for your application. You'd want something more like the HP laptop I'm typing on now but which was a bit of a pain when trying to share a small library desk with other stuff.

There is - or should be - room for a variety of specifications for different purposes.

Re: 2 days of editing interface

"Might as well go Linux with all that buggering about."

I had much the same sentiments after spending a few days getting a newly bought W7 laptop up to current whilst avoiding W10 a few weeks ago. But my granddaughter's school expect MS stuff.