* Posts by rndSheeple

22 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Aug 2014

Motorola appeal over £200M price cap for Airwave service rejected

rndSheeple

The market comment though strikes me as odd

As a non-uk person, what strikes me as interesting is the comment "if the market were functioning correctly".

So the legal judgement is to drop the price of a service for company X, because IF there was a WORKING market, the price WOULD be lower.

Does this not strike others as a really corrupt practice from the government. Market economy? Yeah unless we have to pay market price, then we just call the market broken and pay less.

Who broke the market? How is it broken? If it's a cartel or monopoly, there should be legislation to manage that.

Making a judicial decision like this is quite... smelly

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

rndSheeple

Interestringly enough, from let's say a realistic OS user point of view, I have tried to find the features that would be an improvement over my win10 experience.

Alas I have found none for me personally that I would use, or want. Lots of "oh look we broke scanners" "oh look we broke this" "oh look more ads" and that kind of stuff.

Sadly though I do game on win10, but am looking at older apple M chips with crossover I think it's called that can run most games.

WordPress forces user conf organizers to share social media credentials, arousing suspicions

rndSheeple

ICredibility was lost

at the "give us your credentials" be it "for the children" or anything else. Literally a dealbreaker.

White House thinks it's time to fix the insecure glue of the internet: Yup, BGP

rndSheeple

The white house indicated?

well let us hold our breath? Pls focus on actual things and not political parties ambitions that they don't understand a thing about....

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

rndSheeple

control panel? BOFHS use the good stuff

unless one can be arsed it is usually compmgmt.msc which gives some / many of the basics on windows in one place.

Or then on win10 (dont know or care about 11 sry)

- make a new folder on system drive root

name it (witth the final dot)

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}.

then open it with windows exploder or something.

Mainly admin stuff of course. I guess that was the point that the unwary F things up with admin tools.

Well we like to provide options so there ya go!

Suits everyone from aunt Martha to "power users"

AI query optimization in IBM's Db2 shows you can teach a tech dinosaur new tricks

rndSheeple

AI optimizing SQL err well

I haven't worked with db2 for a while, however on power architecture I would say it's at least competitive for "power" and efficiency.

Like an earlier comment kind of stated, if you opttimize your queries which one should for goodness sake, then I do not see how an AI can make "organization specific" queries more efficient.

Even if we look at large software like say anything. First of all changing queries on commercial sw is probably not supported, maybe, just maybe you could get more efficient reporting and other "outside the box" queries towards anything like say dynamics as least on-prem. And other bloatware. But this could probably be done by any optimization.

So adding AI, well I guess anything is possible, however just tuning queries to bring some kind of magical power is highly unlikely. Also if the AI is on-prem (or on-system for hybrid and cloud) since almost all business data is not for public scrutiny by the DB provider, I do not believe that the quality of any AI in 2024 will be good enough to allow it to work changes on queried under my responsibility area. If AI's with online connection keep messing up all the time, how would a non-online one be magically better.

Imagine this: you buy something like remedy. Then some queries totally fail. Then you analyze them and report to the software vendor and they issue an emergency patch.

Imagine your AI tuning the queries towards any DB. No comments, no documentation just "AI knows it". Imaging trying to find what the actual problem is when something goes wrong.

Versioning? Timelines? When did the AI decide to run the query like that? Why? yes it was faster but it fucked up some data....

Personally as service owner for various database services and environments, I would not like to be the one trying to explain this to my stakeholders.

So until "proven" AI needs to be an option, and NOT priced into the software since "it will automagically make everything better". I will just recommend the stakeholders to stay on the old, or migrate to another database without AI or as a minimum without the cost of AI.

Claims emerge that Citrix has doubled price of month-to-month partner licenses

rndSheeple

Interesting yet likely to be non-inclusive ot all the "channel"

If memory serves; for a reason I never understood SAP is by far the worlds largest citrix reseller.

If a change like this were to hit them, we would see some really dramatic stuff.

Therefore I find it 90% likely that this move will just hit SMBs and maybe sure some enterprise customers.

Though even hitting service operators like fujitsu, atos, would very likely create waves we would see, so again; evidence so far suggests this move does not include "channel" partners with a certain status (I do not know if they have levels like gold etc) yet rather all the "smaller" players.

And my personal recommendation with deep insigfht into various citrix tools would be to please move away from them.

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

rndSheeple

Bad jokes / dark humor by

Artificial General Intelligence will spawn, but 1st only by realizing the jokes it tries to make are bad, John Cleese will train it to do bad jokes which actually work.

Also it might develop a functional sense of dark humor.

Probably not even kidding.

North Korea's Lazarus Group linked to Atomic Wallet heist

rndSheeple

unclear language?

since the operatives won't be arrested the funds aren't coming back?

Many issues with this sentence, as a non-english native speaker.

#1 so the funds are tied to physical persons? I really don't get that bit

#2 so arresting the persons behind this and getting funds back means by logic that the persons have the funds? And the hacking group is not state sponsored with gains taken by that state; rather they split the funds among themselves? I also do not get this bit..

Google's Go may add telemetry that's on by default

rndSheeple

well from a financial / audit point of view

having done some big 4 work,

Many people view the Go team considering collecting data as a sign that the Go team is not necessarily more trustworthy than its parent company

Fiduciary dependency i.e. getting your salary from the larger company does in fact yes make you their "bitch". thus given the volume of money they have, means that by choosing to increase or decrease the flow thereof they do in fact cause a situation of "not more trustworthy than the party you get the money from". Please do change your auditors mind that giving someone more money gives them more freedom and makes them more trustworthy. Call me when done. Also hold your breath until this becomes == true.

Microsoft boffins contemplate equipping Excel with AI

rndSheeple

aand what about security; reqs to store and handle locally and on certain devices

I don't know about everyone else but I have customers who handle sensitive info in excel, on certain devices with certain requirements and security.

Any automatic crap that is not explicitly transparent is not now; nor will ever be allowed.

Bringing in all kinds of AI shenanigans is nice and sexy yet to me displays a lack of customer understanding. Though I work in both segments (financials, telcos, infraprovicers, healthcare) and with solutions (identity management, financial and health info management) for other customers where security is paramount. So my experience might not be valid.

Still I believe if there is automatic / forced pushout of stuff like this we shall se a return to lotus 1-2-3.

Rufus and ExplorerPatcher: Tools to remove Windows 11 TPM pain and more

rndSheeple

Overall new computer setup is still the same as 20 years ago

Helped my dad set up a new hp laptop (win11 and all).

Still loads of pointless crapware, including but not limited to 3 different monthly priced McAfee products....

And overall win11 == win10, I am aware of no useful new features.

So I do not believe that I will need to help him out any more, or less, with things like printers, wifi etc than with win10 (or earlier versions)

I do believe more and more folks will opt for fresh install of some linux variant; as HW support is pretty much there these days.

Setting up win11 as a consumer on a new laptop is very much same shit different day as win95, 98se, XP, 7, 10.

Even McAfee was the same shit hard to get rid of, rest in peace though not the man's fault that his SW legacy craps on.

Your data was 'taken without permission', customers told, after personal info accessed in O2 UK partner's database

rndSheeple

6 years past customers names and birth dates etc... nice

I am quite sure that as it was a "backup" they never harassed (marketed?) their ex customers and just kept this for the sheer joy?

Even though I am not blighty based I would wager 30% of my right testicle that they will not get fined for GDPR breach due to backups being difficult to access and partially delete afterwards. Except for the magical hackers who just got access passing all the difficult bits by with a wave of the black hat.

Hawaii governor: I wanted to tell everyone nuke alert was fake – I just forgot my password

rndSheeple

so if one were to go back to the BASICs. which drill and kindly link.

FBI says it can't unlock 8,000 encrypted devices, demands backdoors for America's 'public safety'

rndSheeple

Re: Face Palm

Well it's not like the embassies of most countries would not contain diplomatic courier delivered one time pads up the kazoo in their safes even today.

And tbh any criminal organization could do an xor DDV-25 encryption with the "salt" being just the byte where to start from. (DDV-25 is of course debbie does vegas 25 year anniversary official dvd from which the bytes are just pulled). More secure would be copies of someones vacation dvd, or whatever self-made never published video content that is not available online or elsewhere, and cannot really be claimed to be an offense to be in possession of. Like a phone directory.

Of course that's not *real* encryption and easy to subvert in various ways, however in the end one time pads tattooed on someones head and the hair grown back (ancient) etc cannot really be prevented. And the more serious folks are about their data, the more serious the protection. This would probably go for criminals as well I would guess.

So this is indeed, just the usual blowing in the wind up the wrong tree.

Report: Underwater net cables are prime targets for terrorists and Russia

rndSheeple

So these are then the same cables the NSA has been tapping for 10+ years.

Is there some kind of 2nd come bonus?

Australia to float 'not backdoors' that behave just like backdoors to Five-Eyes meeting

rndSheeple

Pointless blather from pointless ID-10-T politicians. I can have a WhatsApp discussion in a group with 20 people for years until the day I state "the strawberries are excellent this time of year in Suffolk" and those willing to do whatever was agreed upon respond with "yeah going to the market Saturday in xxxxLocation".

No one gives a flying F whether or not the discussions are listened to by whomever.

Similarly I can encrypt of course any instructions say the anarcheologists cookbook with DDV-25 encryption whereupon the whole thing is just xored with Debbie does Vegas 25 years anniversary edition dvd from 05:39. Uncrackable.

My point is just that these "measures" do nothing but allow the regime in Iran, UK or any other oppressive such, to see into all messaging. They certainly know they won't catch the real ones who actually work on this.

Like the paris event chaps used burner phones to send a single message then toss it if I recall correctly.

So yes, this should be shot down, and instead focus on something real.

I agree with earlier posters that the politicians should themselves opensource all their messaging.... Just to show that normal citizens have nothing to hide?

Unless of course the elite is above all this.

Need the toilet? Wanna watch a video ad about erectile dysfunction?

rndSheeple

Several years back we have the video-enabled urinal

I've actually seen a few of these, or taken a leak at rather. I think the airport in Helsinki has a few also.

Finnish product of course, we tend to be ahead in these penis related things.

http://www.novosan.fi/palvelut_ja_tuotteet/tuotteet/urimat-vedettomat-pisuaarit/

Given the inherently secure nature of most companies self built connectivity, I am sure one could remotely cause quite a few mis-sprays.

Are you the keymaster? Alternatives in a LogMeIn/LastPass universe

rndSheeple

https://clipperz.is/features/

online, local encryption, open source, you can keep offline completely working copies, works with various browsers on various platforms. Mobile version, import/export, one-time passwords for logging in from insecure devices

Sure https is not totally secure, but hey, it's open source so roll your own or use locally only on a mobile device for that purpose only, what ever floats your boat.

Also the open source bit is particularly nice. In security related software.

rndSheeple

clipperz, open source with local store, online, mobile versions etc

https://clipperz.is/features

Time well wasted to read through the features. Been using since testversions personally.

Some might like 1time passwords for logging in from insecure devices, allows for file and other essential data storage on the cards. (I store encryption keys / authentication keys, screenshots for restoring various services if I ever fuck up the password or need to lock down a compromised account)

Also has things like password gen with options, autolock, copy/paste pw without showing them, 1-key lockdown of account, loads more.

Business is back, baby! Hasta la VISTA, Win 8... Oh, yeah, Windows 9

rndSheeple

Good points all,

I like the points about the hidden powers of win8.x, quite frankly our 2000+ pc's organization couldn't care less. But the point was well presented that there are improvements here and there, but I believe most companies dont need that power on their boxes, otherwise would not use 3y leasing cycles.

However, given that, we have loads of win X requiring apps, which run seemingly ok on win7, but with the personnel we have being what they are, the decision was made to skip win8 due to the training requirements. We run near 100ish offices and maybe a dozen sales points (just necessary due to company structure), and most personnel don't give a flying F about their computers as email, document management etc and then a few tools are all that is needed to do the work.

This given, we ARE I believe finally at a point when linux on the desktop should be seriously considered. We run office2007 due to the fact we don't like cloud for security and governance reasons, and newer office versions have F* all to offer above 2007. So given the upgrade path with training to win9 + latest office versions + upgrading all our infrastructure maybe a 50ish servers with crap win2003r2 software that wont run on newer, I believe the time has come to look at alternatives. Just 1500 or so office licenses to latest with SA has a certain cost to it.

There has never been, nor does there now exist, to the best of my knowledge, a good, working, cheap migration path for applications from Win (anything say XP) to Win (anything say 8 or 9), nor on the server side.

This just forces into a constant upgrade path, which is utterly pointless unless you actually want something new but the area we are in does not require anything new for most operational needs.

So a service based environment with linux boxes would probably be quite cost efficient as compared to the client and server side winNt versions 9 - 12 cycle say of 5 years.

So a very good series of Commentards, and quite interesting from the CIO office point of view. Truly MS may very well be losing it's relevance as a tech company.

Password manager LastPass goes titsup: Users locked out

rndSheeple

Opensource, not single point more like user chooseable

https://clipperz.is

Works by open source encrypting using javascript so they cannot decrypt your stored information. At least that's what they say and it's open source so perhaps might even be truish.

Can be offline copied (it's an html page). Works in windows, linuxes, iOs devices (whether or not I would recommend accessing all your secure info there is questionable), at least. It's not really os / platform / browser specific.

I will admit integrations are lacking, and not sure about organizational fitness, delegation etc.

But their service going down will do F-all. Your computer breaking down will do F-all. Just keep offline backups off it somewhere, many places perhaps. Of course the solar storm EMP strike that sets us back into the stone age will break it by breaking every single storage and access node, so it must be bad software. Not resilient.