Posts by herman

Medic! Orangeworm malware targets hospitals worldwide

Re: Security

"hadn't actually selected any data to backup" - I am unable to select any decent response to that one.

"It isn't clear that "upgrades" are that easy. For example: if the XP machine is the interface to a 10 year old MID (medical imaging device, i.e. X ray, CAT Scan, MRI), the XP machine may be literally the only way to access data coming out of the MID." - That is one of the things that virtual machines are good for. You can run XP with the network interface disabled, configured to store all data on the host file system and be pretty safe against malware.

UK consumer help bloke Martin Lewis is suing Facebook over fake ads

Follow the money

It is totally clear cut actually.

Does FB get paid to publish an advert? If yes - then they are responsible.

Chinese web giant finds Windows zero-day, stays schtum on specifics

"something they are good at" - The Microsoft Mouse was pretty good...

Twenty years ago today: Windows 98 crashed live on stage with Bill Gates. Let's watch it again...

Re: My first laptop ran WIn98

Yup, WIN ME wasn't too bad. It could run for 49.5 days without crashing.

Hmm, why is it that whenever MS completely rewrites Windows for a new major release, all the old bugs are also faithfully rewritten?

We are now on W10 and it still BSODs for many of the old reasons and the USB subsystem still doesn't work properly - What a bunch of sad sack developers, developers, developers...

BT pushes ahead with plans to switch off telephone network

So what happened to ISDN (Innovation Subscribers Don't Need) and ATM (No not a bank machine)? Those were digital successors to PSTN too...

Whois is dead as Europe hands DNS overlord ICANN its arse

Whois is useless anyway. What is the point of a database filled with fake data?

Birds can feel Earth's magnetic fields? Yeah, that might fly. Bioboffins find vital sense proteins

Re: How would it feel?

If you can sense polarization, then you can sense here the sun is even when the sun is below the horizon. This is the origin of the "philosopher's stone" (feldspar) used to navigate in northern latitudes.

Re: How would it feel?

W0t? "Finch-Rodriguez" is human? I thought he is very smart for a bird brain...

My PC makes ‘negative energy waves’, said user, then demanded fix

OK, so now the Lawyer is OK, but the psychiatrist is poor. Obviously he flunked economics 101.

An easy-breezy attitude to sharing personal data is the only thing keeping the app economy alive

Personal data is toxic. It should not be stored. It should be deleted as soon as it was used for a purchase or service. Companies should figure out how to make money from real trade, not the spy trade.

£12k fine slapped on Postman Pat and his 300,000 spam emails

The solution is to ensure that all your important things are done online. Then, instead of a mailbox, put a mail slot on your garbage bin. La voila!

NUC, NUC! Who's there? Intel, warning you to kill a buggy keyboard app

VNC on Linux???

Use the Secure Shell on Linux. That is what it is for.

SUSE bakes a Raspberry Pi-powered GNU/Linux Enterprise Server

I have a 1TB solid state RPi server. It works well.

1TB NAND storage would have been unimaginable a few short years ago on anything, nevermind an RPi.

India: Yeah, we would like to 3D-print igloos on the Moon

Moon Fills

I have this strange feeling that there just might be enough craters on the moon to use as land/moon fills. Any garbage will be sterilized by the sun in short order.

Sneaky satellite launch raises risk of Gravity-style space collision

That would be the first real vacuum cleaner.

OK, who is shooting at Apple staff buses in California? Knock it off

Re: "Who is shooting Apple staff buses in California?"

I'd love to see the Trebuchet used to fling a bus.

Full shift to electric vans would melt Royal Mail's London hub, MPs told

Electric milk float comeback

Until 40 years ago, electric milk floats were very common in the UK.

"...doing things we used to do - they think are new..."

--- Sir Micky

Trump buries H-1B visa applicants in paperwork

No problem

The outgoing sysadmin will be required to write a small Perl script to generate and file the paperwork for his H1B successor.

Flappy Friday for Stack Overflow as outage woes run on

Hmm, if you want to know how to print 'Have beer in pub' in Brainfuck, then that is the place to ask.

Australia joins the 'decrypt it or we'll legislate' club

Comply without complying

Yes, sure your honour, I'll decrypt it. You may be lucky and have the plain text tomorrow, or it may take a while...

HomePod, you say? Sex sex sex, that's all you think about

Nope - they give them super expensive sugar pills, which work every time.

Re: >> Antibiotics for flu?

Note, your ex-better half probably got prescribed placebos instead of anti-biotics. Doctors and pharmacists know how to handle people who self diagnose and insist on medication.

Well, if you have an 8 inch floppy, then 'Insert Carefully' will not really help.

Who wants dynamic dancing animations and code in their emails? Everyone! says Google

Better spam filters

The new craptags will make it much easier and reliable to filter out email spam.

Meltdown's Linux patches alone add big load to CPUs, and that's just one of four fixes

Well, if your video playback is already stuttering, then it will be stuttering more and if it was smooth before, then it may start stuttering after. Also, your electricity bill will be a little higher.

No sh*t, Sherlock! Bloke suspected of swallowing drug stash keeps colon schtum for 22 DAYS

The smell of police food? That explains why he is still stuck up.

You're the IT worker in charge of securing the cloud for your company. Welcome to Hell

Re: Scrambled timeline, anyone?

Have you ever tried to edit a document on a time share system over a 300 baud modem?

The worst was when you accidentally reached the bottom right corner and the screen scrolled up. All you could do then, was sigh and get some more coffee.

Plunk: SK Hynix drops 72-layer 3D NAND on enterprise SSD market

I learned programming in Fortran on a Sperry Univac using punch cards. I honestly cannot say it is a fond memory. Working with old tech was just as frustrating as working with modern tech!

Now, please get off my lawn, eh.

No, Windows 10 hasn’t beaten Windows 7’s market share. Not for sure, anyway

On my own web site, Windows is about 40%, Mac about 10% and about 50% is Linux, meaning that UNIX-ish is at 60% share, which is 50% more than the Windows 40%.

Web searching died the day they invented SEO

Re: Actually, NASA has the code.

Well, a dead bird can be very dangerous: https://globalnews.ca/news/4004192/dead-canada-goose-knocks-hunter-unconscious/

NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it

Re: Need help, NASA?

OK, so that is why the satellite reboots every 49.5 days!

You can't ignore Spectre. Look, it's pressing its nose against your screen

Sir Mick said it best

Hey, you! Get offa my cloud!

User stepped on mouse, complained pedal wasn’t making PC go faster

Re: How do we survive?

Baby pictures on cans... I take it that you haven’t seen an African Muti shop.

Re: Reminds me of a story

Pong is very old. It goes back to about 1975, so more like 40 years.

Re: At the other end of the spectrum

Ayup - it is all Algol to me...

Bear in mind that it is today’s senior crowd who invented TVs, computers and space ships and actually went to the moon also.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Tokyo crypto-cash exchange 'hacked' for half a billion bucks

Occam's Razor

O'l Occam tells me they are claiming "Hackers Stole My Homework! (TM)" in a bid to confuse matters, while they try to run away with the loot.

Perv raided college girls' online accounts for nude snaps – by cracking their security questions

Re: Inevitable Consequence

The funniest thing is when the password field limits the characters that can be used, but the questions do not. The obvious improvement then is to treat all these fields as random passwords stored in KeepassX.

Microsoft whips out tool so you can measure Windows 10's data-slurping creepiness

If you run Win10 in a VM with host only networking, then the data leaks are not a problem.

H-1B visa hopefuls, green card holders are feeling the wrath of 'America first' Trump

Re: Go Trump Go.

Silly you. You should have taught him the Remark command 'rm'.

Re: i am wondering about unintended consequences

Indian Business Machines? Why, they are based in India. What is your problem?

Death notice: Moore's Law. 19 April 1965 – 2 January 2018

Re: so Desperation

It is all ALGOL to me.

Drone crashes after operator failed to spot extra building site crane

Why do they waste their time investigating toy crashes?

Transport pundit Christian Wolmar on why the driverless car is on a 'road to nowhere'

Re: It's too Black and White

Err... you mean the non-killer app.

Leaky credit report biz face massive fines if US senators get their way

If they don't back date the law, it won't be much use.

UK exam chiefs: About the compsci coursework you've been working on. It means diddly-squat

So, interest declined from 60000 to 64000...

That seems like disk drive size mathematics.

Mystery surrounds fate of secret satellite slung by SpaceX

W0t? Nobody even alluded that it is all Trump's fault?

This must be the only forum on the intertubes with no US Liberal readers.

WD My Cloud NAS devices have hard-wired backdoor

I made my own 'NAS' from a Raspberry Pi and a couple of flash memory sticks in about 20 minutes. For any self respecting geek, there is no reason to use off the shelf exploit kits.

Some simple New Year's resolutions for vendors – lots of love, suffering IT grunts of world xox

Hmm, is this the sister of the EEE PC lady?