* Posts by nigeb

13 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2014

BT Tower broadcasts error message to the nation as Windows displays admin's shame

nigeb

Wrong. Unless yours fell off.

Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams

nigeb

Re: Amiga Iomega Zip

Strangely I also had no problems with my scsi zip drive, used it for years on Acorn and PC platforms

2001 set the standard for the next 50 years of hard (and some soft) sci-fi

nigeb

Re: Still Waiting...

I second that, and add "A Fire Upon the Deep"

NatWest customer services: We're aware of security glitch

nigeb

Yes! I've had this happen, twice, but not recently - probably over a year ago.

When I queried Natwest they suggested that I might have mis-keyed the customer number and thereby attempted to log into another customer's account - one with a longer password than mine.

I guess this is possible so since then I've been very careful to get it right. If it happens again I'll know it's their fault.

Virgin Media spoof email mystery: Customers take to Facebook

nigeb

Definitely VM

When this first happened I figured out for myself that it was spoofed email, not being sent from my own account. But I downloaded my entire email database and searched it for received email addresses - and sure enough the long list matched up with what was in the bounce reports that I received. Note that this isn't a contacts list, it's way more than that.

So without a doubt someone had access to my email and was able to mine it for addresses. I know you can never be perfectly secure but I do have up to date security software, patches etc. So I feel justified in pointing an accusing finger at VM.

Virgin's assertion that we "might not have seen" previous attacks due to the configuration of the new mail service is invalid - None of my relatives ever called me to complain before that date. And those on other services such as Sky, also began to see strange emails with my address spoofed at the same time.

So now my account is being randomly rejected by the smtp server, every time I try to send email it asks me to update my password (on all my devices), then later on it randomly starts working. It's been going on since the breach (could it be a sign of further hacking attempts?) - trying to get any sensible help from their helpline is a waste of time - they didn't seem to understand anything beyond basic client settings and they were confused about which protocols were for send and which for receive.

I've used that list of email addresses that I extracted to find any & all web sites that I have accounts with over the years and either closed them down or changed the passwords (a huge task) and I've purged the server to avoid any further leaks.

When customers try to be programmers: 'I want this CHANGED TO A ZERO ASAP'

nigeb

Re: Any chance of a solution?

Just to be pedantic :) you should probably get into the habit of reversing the test ie.

while (SUCCESS == status)

Assuming you actually remembered to make SUCCESS a const, or a #define, this stops you causing another disaster by accidentally omitting one of the = signs - you'd be stuck in the loop again.

Eighteen year old server trumped by functional 486 fleet!

nigeb

Well, I still have my Commodore P50 programmable calculator. Mind you it needs a 3 phase supply and takes _forever_ to calculate 69! :)

Even Microsoft thinks Outlook is bloated and slow

nigeb

I'm on Office 2013 and it's always been broken for me too. There's no gap to place your cursor above the table. So you have to insert a new row, split the table and then convert the top one to text. Doh!

Polish chap builds computer into a mouse

nigeb

keyboard

How about a keyboard?

Oh, wait a minute...

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm//wp-content/uploads/2012/08/x665.86p-03-032.jpg

Dongle bingle makes two MEELLION cars open to exploit

nigeb

Re: Crash to stop insurance price hike

Most CAN transceivers have a passive mode for read-only but it's a software controlled feature. So your hackers could change it to get write access. I don't see what you could do in hardware to prevent this.

It strikes me there should be a manufacturer-provided port for this function based off an additional can-bus with copies of the relevant data. Anything writing to that would have no effect on the vehicle.

You stupid BRICK! PCs running Avast AV can't handle Windows fixes

nigeb

Re: Anti-virus

Trend Micro. Doesn't nag much, uses less resources than Norton, Mcaffee, Kaspersky imho.

Of course you're now going to scroll down & see a big argument...

Planning to fly? Pour out your shampoo, toss your scissors, rename terrorist Wi-fi!

nigeb

My hotspot is call Mos Eisley Spaceport. Maybe I should change it; after all it is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Lumia 830: Microsoft hopes to seduce with slim 'affordable' model

nigeb

I have a 735 too, but I haven't had any random crash/resets. What are you all doing? Maybe it's calls, I haven't made many yet.

In general I'm very pleased with it, but a couple of things to note:

The battery takes AGES to charge, at least on USB from a pc. However it lasts about twice as long as my previous Lumia 620.

And the sound quality from the headphone socket isn't as good as the 620. Sounds like there's a hole in the frequency response towards the bottom end, playing with the eq doesn't fix it.