Posts by WolfFan

The end is in sight for Windows 10, but Microsoft keeps pushing out fixes

no, we won't

We will stay with Win10 or move to Ubuntu/other Linux or buy Macs.

My somewhat more aged desktop at home can't go to Win11 even if I wanted it to (I don't) as it has TPM 1.2, and I have no idea if it can be updated, nor do I want it to. The laptop this is being typed on shipped with Win11. I put Win10 on it (it wasn't easy), and when Win10 goes out of support, I will move to Ubuntu, assuming that I don't just junk the laptop and get a MacBook.

The desktop machines at the office are mostly capable of running Win11. They all run either Win10 or Ubuntu or are Macs. Again, when Win10 goes out of support, we will either push forward with Win10 and no support, go to Ubuntu, or replace the machines with Macs.

We will not be implementing Win11. We ran a few tests, including this laptop. We did NOT like what we saw, and all Win11 machines are now either Win10 or Ubuntu, depending on how annoying it was to move to Win10. Microsoft really doesn't want you to move to Win10 from Win11; they really don't.

Things that we didn't like included the requirement for a Microsoft Account; even Win11 Pro tried to ease you towards using a Microsoft account, which was NOT going to happen on office machines, and one reason for not having Win11 at home, ever, is the hoops you have to jump through to not have a MA in Win11 Home. See, for example, https://www.howtogeek.com/836157/how-to-use-windows-11-with-a-local-account/ Fuck you, Microsoft; it's my bloody computer, and I do NOT want a Microsoft Account. Period. There were some task bar and Windows menu annoyances as well, and a few other bits of MS idiocy. The main reasons for rejecting Win11 were the hardware requirements, particularly TPM 2, as most machines that couldn't install Win11 didn't have TPM 2, and the insistence on having the damn Microsoft Account.

Trump taps Musk to lead 'government efficiency' task force

Darth Cheney

You _do_ know that Darth Dick, the French Texan, has said that he's voting for Harris, don't you?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/dick-cheney-kamala-harris-liz-cheney-rcna169979

LibreOffice 24.8: Handy even if you're happy with Microsoft

Unfortunately LibreOffice still, after all these years, cannot be installed on iOS/iPadOS devices. I suspect a licensing issue. This means that LO simply cannot be deployed as the standard Office suite, as a substantial fraction of our users use iPad Pros on a regular basis. Further, LO cannot save in the native formats used by Apple’s iWork. LO can save in MS Office formats, and iWork can read/write MS Office formats, but, frankly, if you’re going to use MS Office formats it would be a better idea to just use MS Office. As there is a version of MS Office that works on iOS/iPadOS we can deploy MS Office to all users except for Linux users, who are mostly doing admin stuff and don’t need MS Office. Except for email, of course. Which is another problem. LO does not have a replacement for Outlook. I would love a replacement for Outlook. The closest is Thunderbird... which also is not available on iOS/iPadOS, probably again due to licensing issues.

As things are, we have LO on Linux systems and MS Office everywhere else. Accounting refuses to be parted from Excel. They get feral and start to growl whenever anyone even suggests that there may be other spreadsheets out there.

It does not matter how good LO might be; if it is not compatible with user hardware, and if the spreadsheet is not superior, and visibly so, to Excel, it ain't gonna fly in many environments.

Chrome dumped support for Ubuntu 18.04 – but it'll be back

Just use Firefox

Get rid of Chrome and have done. Firefox forever!

Disney claims agreeing to Disney+ terms waives man's right to sue over wife's death

This should be good

Searcy-Denny are major ambulance-chasing shysters, ah, that is ‘injury attorneys’, in the top five, possibly the top three, in Florida. The Mouse has very good killer shark lawyers, but a very bad case. The combination should be popcorn-worthy.

Russian man who sold logins to nearly 3,000 accounts gets 40 months in jail

he's probably Georgian or South Cacusus something or the other

I suspect that m'man might be a Russian national, but has roots in Georgia. Georgian criminals have a long history of having fun in Russia, dating back to Stalin (Dzejughashvili) and even earlier. Georgian and other Cacusus criminals are to Russian crime as Italian/Sicilian, Irish, and Jewish criminals are to American crime: the Gold Standard to which others are compared. Infamously Mark Twain noted that there was no distinctively American criminal class, except for Congress.

Report: Tech misconceptions plague the IT world

Re: Flawed Logic

Hmm. I disable the webcam and microphone through firmware (BIOS/UEFI) or utility software (this Lenovo laptop has software that allegedly kills the camera/mic.) If doing it in software seems problematic, I kill it in hardware by physically disconnecting things. Either way, I plug an external webcam/mic into USB when I want/need a camera/mic and unplug it when it is not in use. It's really hard to access a camera that has been disconnected.

And if some admin really doesn't like my taking steps to block his snooping, he gets his laptop back, and I use _my_ hardware... or I just find a new job. Or _he_ finds a new job. Hint: I haven't had to find a new job in quite some time.

Err... if you can access the system using a standard user account, you can access almost everything important on the system. You really need something to keep naughty people at arm's length. Defender will help. It's not perfect by any means, but it's way better than nothing.

Running as a standard user causes problems for most users. Running as a standard user merely slows down attackers who know what they're doing.

Certain software (stuff from Intuit, most especially) won't run correctly (or at all) unless you have full admin privileges.

If you really want to be secure, disconnect from the internet entirely.

School gets an F for using facial recognition on kids in canteen

Re: What about the staff?

I’m sure that the vendor was well aware of the law. I’m also sure that money talks and that the vendor knew that most of the splash would be on the school. I would expect that the installed price included a surcharge to cover fines, etc, and that the sales guy is long gone, commission in hand.

Windows 11 is closing the gap on Windows 10

Countdown to the end

At the office we are slowly transitioning as many systems as possible to Mac and Linux. There will be some machines which must run Windows; they will continue to run Win 10, and will be placed on the secure network, beside the other legacy Win 7 and XP systems which we must run in order to use certain ancient, but very expensive, hardware. Those units will have no Internet access and quite limited access to the other parts of the network. It’s not ideal, but that’s what will happen. Once we retire certain hardware (management does NOT want to fork out $150,000, $250,000, or even, in one case, $350,000 to replace hardware that is working.) starts to fail it will be replaced… with something that talks to Mac or Linux if we have any choice at all. Apple kit is more expensive to purchase, but costs less to maintain, and ends up cheaper overall. Around here, anyway. Linux kit usually starts out as Windows kit. Some things are cheaper on Linux. The main advantage is that it’s not from bloody Microsoft.

T-Mobile US joins suppliers on $2.7B DoD contract for next-gen comms services

Re: DoD T-Mo

I’m on the East Coast. WPB, Florida. I have four bars right now. That's a pretty good joke. Where are you?

Hmm. I have both T-Mob and AT&T devices. At the moment my T-Mob devices (the iPad this is being typed on, and a iPhone SE 2nd gen) have four bars. My AT&T device (iPhone 12) has one bar. West Palm Beach/Greenacres, Florida. (Jog and Forrest Hill, for those familiar with the area.) T-Mob has pretty good coverage as far south as Homestead, as far north as Melbourne, and as far west as Tampa, by actual observation. Where are you?

At Apple, AI stands for 'Apple Intelligence' – and it's coming to everything

The Musketeer has a hissy fit

All Apple/OoenAI devices to be banned from all of the Musketeer’s companies. They will be placed in Faraday cages at the door.

In other news, the Musketeer is suing OpenAI. Apparently they want to make a profit, and he disapproves.

In other news, the Musketeer used to be part owner of OpenAI, and has started his own AI thingie, which very few have heard of and even fewer care.

There may be a connection between the three items above.

See https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/elon-musk-says-ban-apple-204647804.html

Memo to self: reason #2187 to never buy a Tesla.

CIO who dropped VMware 18 months ago now feeling thoroughly chuffed

Re: non-native here

Hell's Cargo knows a thief when they see one.

VMware giving away Workstation Pro, Fusion Pro free for personal use

Re: still no access

It's up now. But you have to register.

I don't care that much.

Re: broadcom downloads ... KLAXON tangodown

Some of us don't care enough to bother hunting it down. If it's not available from the vendor after they promised free installers, I take that as a hint and stay far away.

Apple on track for quarter of all iPhones to be made in India by 2028

Re: So nothing on this side of the Pacific is planned.

The Indians can double their production in a matter of months. A maximum of 18 months after dumping China would see Apple back where they were. Plus points for taking a principled stand against Communist thuggery. It's not as though they don't have the cash reserves to ride out the storm.

Re: So nothing on this side of the Pacific is planned.

It's supposed to show the CCP that they can be replaced. ‘Strength’ has nothing to do with it. The ability to get product out the door even if the CCP goes all thuggish again has everything to do with it.

Re: So nothing on this side of the Pacific is planned.

The main point is to fire a shot across the People's Republic’s bow. Just letting them know that they can be replaced. The local population is almost as big as China’s, Indian tech is at least as good as China’s, and India's government is NOT a bunch of murderous Communist thugs. True, they are murderous Hindu nationalist thugs, but they're not anywhere near the level of the CCP, and they can be voted out, something not happening in the PRC.

Cops developing Ghostbusters-esque weapon to take out e-bike thugs

Re: Because you don't want to accidentally brick a Tesla

Feh. ‘Kids on scooters’ who do stupid things near trucks are in need of lessons from the two greatest Englishmen ever: Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. And will get them. Lucky kids will learn about Newton’s Laws of Motion. Unlucky kids will learn about Natural Selection. Either way, the average intelligence of humanity will increase.

Yes, I used to play Carmaggedon. We need more wholesome, family-friendly entertainment like that. Why, it would keep the kids off the streets.

Hey, Reddit. Quick question. All those clicks on my ads. Were they actually real?

Idiots

I am currently connected to Ye InterTubes thanks to a connection at an IHOP (their coffee is both better and cheaper than Starbucks, not a high bar, and the pancakes at this location are pretty good; some IHOPs and every single Denny’s that I've tried manage to do the impossible and fuck up pancakes, so this is not a given,) while using a VPN. A check without the VPN says my IP is in Miami; I am nearly 100 miles away. IHOP seems to have centralized its internet connections. With the VPN, I'm in Kansas. I'm really in Florida. It's trivial to screw with those wanting to see your IP. You know VPNs have gone mainstream when a VPN company (Nord, not the guys I use) runs ads on the Super Bowl broadcast. And they say straight up that they would prevent others from seeing your actual location. Free VPN-like things are built into Apple OSes and available from CloudFlare and others. As far as I know, Apple’s stuff is turned on by default, while it's trivial to set up CloudFlare. Free VPNs tend to be limited; if you need more control, pay up. I suspect that Microsoft and Google have something like Apple’s stuff, but I trust them even less than I trust Apple, and I can't be arsed to go look. There would be a reason why I use a 3rd party VPN…

Not to mention that if you use institutional internet, your IP will be that of the institution. A large college-level institution here in Deepest South Florida might have tens of thousands of users; Miami-Dade College is the largest tertiary-level institution in the US, with 170,000 plus students. Broward College has maybe 50,000, and Palm Beach State has over 60,000. A lot of housing developments and condo associations have deals with various IDPs, so everyone who lives there will be coming from a limited set of IPs. There will be a lot of duplicate hits. Lots of people will be hiding their IPs. Getting the IPs of those who clicked on ads would not necessarily generate the data the admongers want.

This is, of course, over and above any privacy questions. If the admongers did force Reddit to cough up the IPs, it would be difficult to do as the admongers aren't cops and will have difficulty getting court orders; furthermore, they are setting themselves up for massive class-action lawsuits—lots of them. Be careful what you ask for; you might get it.

US broadband internet: Now with mandatory 'nutrition' labels

Re: Three ways to make this idea even better

AT&T gives me 1000 Mbps up and down for $55.00/month. (The real values are closer to 800, naturally.) Of course, that's because:

1. I got an upgrade to 1000 from 300, same price, for moving from Uverse tv to Direct TV Streaming; AT&T really wanted to be rid of all copper-based products.

2. I got 300 up/down (really about 240) with a $5 price cut from Uverse 75 (really 60) down/20 (really 20, I nearly had heart failure) when I moved to AT&T fiber (yes, they can't spell).

3. Comcast has an ‘aggressive’ pricing structure locally.

Allegedly these prices will ‘never change’. We’ll see.

YMMV.

US 'considering' end to Assange prosecution bid

Bah, humbug

Send him directly to Oz, on two conditions:

1. Oz has to feed him to drop bears or salties, whichever is easier.

2. The Blessed Event would be televised. Pay per view. That should pay for a nuke sub or two for the Oz matelots.

Just do _something_, and never let St. Jules darken the pages of El Reg ever again. Except with a link to go to the pay-per-view.

Re: “The Land Down Under's”

Hmm… no, Scotland.

Re: “The Land Down Under's”

“Land Where Everything Wants To Kill You”?

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

Re: Is AI choosing the "More Context" links for the Reg?

Hmm. For those who have read Graydon Saunders’ Commonweal books… was the sheep named Eustace? And how much of a death wish do you need to have before you try to arrest Halt?

For those who haven't read Saunders’ works, Eustace weighs five tonnes (Saunders is Very Canadian) and eats all kinds of things, including demons. Halt created him. Halt is a sorcerer. She is on the Short List, the list of wizards that the Commonweal Line would send a battalion to deal with if they got out of hand. In Halt’s case, make that a brigade. Or two. Maybe three to make sure. Given that in The March North, an understrength battalion of terrertorials aborts an invasion of the Commonweal by a corps-size force and about half of the territorials get home afterward while there’s about a company of the invaders left, it might be said that annoying Halt is a Very Bad Idea. (True, the territorials did have Halt and Rust and Blossom and Eustace, but the opposition had dozens of fire-priests and over 100 demons. The fire-priests made the error of angering Blossum, who deployed FOOF. Look it up. There was a line about the water vapour in the air catching fire. Say bye-bye, fire-priests.)

Academics probe Apple's privacy settings and get lost and confused

Hmmm

I turned Siri off with one click. I did it with the initial setup on installation.

It is true that I had to repeat the turn-off for each device, and again if I made a major OS update. But again, just one click each time. I have never had Siri running on any Apple device in my possession. Period. Getting rid of Cortuna on MS devices was considerably more annoying. My current Apple desktop, watch, and the phone which talks to that watch no longer get major updates, so Siri is forever banned from them. I may replace the phone this year. Or maybe next year. Maybe. The battery still works acceptably, so there's no rush. Same with the watch.

Perhaps I’m Doing It Wrong?

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

Re: You need to use the magic words

Unfortunately, AT&T is not the worst. Comcast is worse. I used to have Adelphia, which was literally a criminal organization; the father-and-son team at the top spent time in a Federal pokey. Comcast got the Adelphia customers in my area; Roadrunner got many others. Later on, Comcast bought Roadrunner. At the time, Roadrunner was rated the #1 worst cableco in America, and Comcast was #2. They instantly got the #1 rating all to themselves and showed every intention of keeping it.

You need to use the magic words

I just ‘upgraded’ my TV service from AT&T U-Verse (a.k.a. glorified DSL) to Direct TV Streaming. I had requested four units, one each for the four TVs. So… one unit had problems. It buffered endlessly. When I removed it from the TV it was on and put it on a different unit, it was dead. The little LED was dark. The TV showed a black screen with ‘no signal’. Meanwhile, the unit which had been on that TV worked just fine on the one which had been buggering. So I call AT& Useless. The support guy wanted me to go to a site, allowing him to use my phone camera to see the screen. I told him that that was not going to happen, the unit was dead. I wanted a replacement. M’man said that he could not do that. I told him to transfer me to a supervisor, or if that were not possible, in the morning, I would proceed to the local AT&Useless office and hand in the defective unit and demand that it be removed from my account… and that the agreement with AT&Useless specified that I had 14 days to ‘love’ the service or I could return it. The 14 days were not yet over. He caved and sent a replacement, which works. The dead unit is on its way back to them, using their packaging and their mailing sticker, at their expense.

If you threaten to cost them revenue, they cave. Especially if they can be certain that I really would return it, mostly because I would. Indeed, I might have just canceled Direct TV altogether and gone with Hulu or similar. Money talks.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Re: Something I have yet to grok...

Demonstrating that the owner has far more money than sense.

Windows 11 24H2 is coming so we can all shut up about Windows 12 for another year

Re: Reviewed our 30 user estate earlier this month

There are, unfortunately, some things that Excel on Windows can do that Excel on Mac can't, or can’t easily do. Ninety-odd percent of users would not have any trouble. Some would have to employ work-arounds. Some would just not need Windows.

OpenAI's GPT-4 finally meets its match: Scots Gaelic smashes safety guardrails

Re: Back in the day

The Anarchist’s Cookbook was an excellent guide to suicide. And I speak as someone who actually made nitroglycerin. Just not the way that was in the book, as that's an excellent way to blow your hands off. If you don't get dissolved in conc nitric first. One Puerto Rican nationalist did try to build bombs the Cookbook way, and did blow his hands off.

Re: Back in the day

Back in the day, my high school chemistry text offered interesting insights in all kinds of things, as did history texts with details on black powder (flour), black powder (corned), brown powder, and guncotton, (Corned powder was made starting with flour powder, and a liquid, which when properly applied would form solid cakes which would then be ground down. Allegedly many mercenary arillerists insisted that the best liquid for the purpose was a wine drinker's urine, employer to provide the wine. No further comment.) Note that gunpowder, all forms, and guncotton, early forms, was notoriously unstable. Allegedly one French and one American battleship blew up because of problems with guncotton. (The Yankee might have had a problem with its coal which then caused the guncotton to go, but the Frog was definitely killed by guncotton.) At least three of HM Battle Cruisers blew up in large part because of their new, improved, guncotton, assisted by German naval rifles. If professional weapons guys could make battleship-killing errors, why then amateurs had best be really careful, eh?

Note that proper research could reveal how to make nitroglycerin, dynamite, two different types of plastic explosive, napalm (napalm’s easy, and relatively safe), nitrogen mustard, phosgene, and, a personal favorite, sarin. Hint: the guys who thought up sarin were looking for a new insecticide. Be advised that careless actions would have negative consequences. It is incredibly easy to blow yourself up making gunpowder, guncotton, or nitroglycerin. Not to mention that if you're playing with guncotton or nitroglycerin, you're playing with nitric acid. Go ahead. Fuck around with that stuff. In my distant youth I did. How I managed to not blow myself up or get severe acid burns is unclear to me at the present. I wouldn't be messing with it now. (You would also be playing with sulphuric acid, even better than nitric.) If you need a warning before playing with war gases, you're beyond hope. Note that one Japanese suicide cult made sarin twice, so it's easily made even by idiots; the first time they turned it loose no one noticed, so the second time they did it in a subway train. People noticed.

Wait, hold on, everyone – Mozilla thinks Apple, Google, Microsoft should play fair

Re: Amazed that FF isn't used more

The school where I do adjunct instructing is extremely locked down. FF on the desktops on one campus are all v105; the current version is 122. IT will get around to updating the image with a new version of FF sooner or later, just don't hold your breath. No, I can't do the update myself, I don't have admin privileges. I'm sure that a lot of corporate and educational sites are locked down. Mozilla simply won't see tens of thousands of FF users, they're on locked down machines.

I Must Be Doing It Wrong. Highlighting and right-clicking in Hogwasher and assorted text editors, plus Mail, etc., sends me to FF. If it didn't, I would be most irate, perhaps enough to delete Safari.

Hmm. It's been a while since I last got pissed enough at Safari to delete it. I have to see if that can still be done.

Hmm. That does not happen on my home systems. Firefox is the default. I click on links, in Mail, Outlook, and others, and the link opens in FF.

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

Re: Amiga pedantry. Sorry.

I think that you mean 80 MB, not 80 GB. Gigabyte drives didn't exist yet. Not for desktop machines, anyway. Your friendly neighborhood Big Iron might have a gig or two or three worth of storage, but not a desktop, and most definitely not 80 GB. And it would cost several orders of magnitude more than $800.

Around that time my Mac Plus at home had a 60 MB external SCSI drive. It cost $600. I thought that I would never run out of storage. Earlier this month I got an email attachment bigger than that. Ah, the Daze of Youth!

Bricking it: Do you actually own anything digital?

Re: Case in point: Star Trek & Paramount Plus

Paramount cost itself money, in my case.

I wanted the ability to watch certain episodes of TOS, NG, DS9, and even Ent (the Mirror Universe Ent episodes are among the very few Ent episodes worth watching). Yes, I want to see The Doomsday Machine and Elan of Troyius; no, The Omega Glory and Turnabout Intruder can bugger off. Paramount wanted me to pay to stream the lot. I was willing to have a look at Lower Decks; Disco, and Pick A Card can also bugger off. I might have gone for Strange New Worlds… but Paramount hiked the subscription price, and I departed. I have the whole of TOS, NG, and DS9 ripped to MKV. I have select episodes of Ent as MKV, too. The H&I channel on my local cable runs a block of All Star Trek every night except Saturday, with every episode of TOS, NG, DS9, Ent, and Vger, in order. It was trivial to make a copy, delete the ads, and drop them onto the NAS. I could even get Vger, if I wanted, which I don't.

I have Babylon 5 and UFO and several other SF series (Captain Scarlet! Thunderbirds!) on DVD; the rights owners were not insane and the full set was priced reasonably. DRM was defeated, the original discs stored, and MKVs parked on the NAS. Paramount wants insane money ($130 for TOS, last I checked, and $80-90 for Vger) for DVDs. I could probably shop around and find them cheaper, but I’m not going to bother. Fuck them. Not a penny. If they had been reasonable, I would have bought DVDs or would still stream. They weren't. I departed at warp factor 9.5.

'The computer was sitting in a puddle of mud, with water up to the motherboard'

Heh. I have spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. The stuff that gets to England has been cleaned up and pre-processed. That means that most of the rats, roaches, lizards, ants, etc. have been removed and some stuff converted into molasses, rum, and other sugar products… Note that Bukra Massa, in his ineffable idiocy, was deathly afraid of snakes, and imported mongooses from India. Problem one: on several islands, including Jamaica, there are no native venomous snakes. (Some vipers did make it to Jamaica, aboard inter-island shipping) There were lots of boas. On those which do have native venomous snakes, they’re mostly fer-de-lance and other pit vipers. Pit vipers are optimized to hunt small mammals. Like mongooses. Mongooses are highly resistant to cobra venom, but not at all to viper venom. Mongooses also hunt lizards and small mammals, such as rats. Lizards hunt roaches. Vipers hunt rats and, thanks to the generosity of Bukra Massa, mongooses. So there were mongoose and snake bits in the sugar as well. Sugar factories are very interesting (and smelly) places, best viewed from a distance. I found that five miles was close enough. There’s nothing like being downwind from a few thousand tons of molasses.

Re: "a site that was used to train drug detection dogs"

They were well-trained dogs. They only did that kind of thing on criminals… err, that is, senior superintendents and above.

OpenAI makes it official: Sam Altman is back as CEO

Re: They’re all white men”

Feh. I note the distinct shortage of not-as-old-as-you-might-think Irishmen, born in British East Africa, married to Sikhs, and currently residing in Florida. I think that every Big Tech board should have at least one. Why, yes, I do have one in mind. Going cheap, too.

Irish Africans unite! Rebel against this blatant discrimination!

On a related note: when the next census arrives, I plan to fill in the African-American box. Just to screw with TPTB.

Tesla, Musk likely aware of Autopilot deficiencies behind Florida fatality, says judge

Re: Victim Responsibility?

Not merely a video, but allegedly a Disney animated movie.

Of course, other sources insist that it was, ahem, somewhat harder core. One persistent fellow says that it was Italian, starring a Hungarian who later became a Euro MP. And her horse. I couldn't possibly comment.

How to give Windows Hello the finger and login as someone on their stolen laptop

Kill it with fire

Cursing Dell is always a good idea. Not buying Dell is even better. Nuking Dell from orbit is overkill; there might be something useful (i.e., something not Dell) within the blast radius. A B-52 load of napalm should be sufficient.

Who, me, had one encounter too many with Dell crap? Whatever makes you think that?

Your password hygiene remains atrocious, says NordPass

Re: For best results, use a password generator that can give you a long, random string"

One of the places I must log in to REQUIRES:

1. 10 or more digits

2. At least one capital letter

3. At least one lowercase letter

4. At least one symbol

5. The password must be changed every 90 days

6. Old passwords can not be reused for 12 password change cycles, a.k.a. three years.

I set up a password using five characters, one a capital, then a symbol, then two numbers, then four characters, one a capital. There are three secondary passwords on the system (Single Sign On, they've heard of it ). I use the exact same password for each… except that the system gets paranoid. So I changed the symbol in the secondary log-ins. Now it's happy. Every 90 days, change one of the numbers. I'm fairly sure that this behavior is not what the administration wanted, but I don't care. I have passwords that I can remember. I don't have anything written down. I'm not using a good password, which would have to be changed every 90 days.

My passwords on systems that don’t have to be changed on a regular basis are 12 to 18 characters, typically with a capital or two or three, sometimes with a number, symbols are a pain when using many virtual keyboards, and are not reused.

The letter parts of the password would usually be derived from a non-Indo-European language. Good luck guessing which one. Good luck guessing where I deliberately misspelled something.

Boeing acknowledges cyberattack on parts and distribution biz

Oh, those Russians

I came here to make a similar comment.

Exits, to Rasputin, by Boney M.

One door opens, another one closes, and this one kills a mainframe

Not hamsters

They're gerbils. And they will do anything as long as they are kept far away from Richard Gere. (And Sylvester Stallone.)

Exit, stage right, in a Kia Soul.

India demands social networks 'swiftly' remove all CSAM

Re: Candidly

Money talks.

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

Re: Mem'ries...

I do. Vista, particularly with the service packs, was faster than XP on my hardware, a Toshiba laptop. I couldn't see what all the shouting was about.

Win 7 was better.

Win 8 was an abomination.

Lost your luggage? That's nothing – we just lost your whole flight!

Re: Aircraft Landing In Tokyo, All Luggage In Amsterdam

But Will It Arrive, Better Wait In Airport, and my personal favorite, Britain’s Worst Investment Abroad, was a different, though related, airline. It could have been worse. It could have been Better On A Camel.