Posts by Jelder

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

Re: Wouldn't Happen Here

The reason given is that it's a really effective way to both launder money and make profits, and is popular among various groups of people that think the best way to promote their particular religion or politics is to blow up unrelated people or buildings.

So it's more about disrupting the cashflow to these organisations and gathering evidence of supporter and supply lines that might be used for semtex the next time.

Apparently. Not 100% convinced raiding 'dodgy Dave' down the market is going to affect ISIS that much.

Re: whether if they'd had their sidearms they could have shot the lock off instead

For outward opening secure doors, you are supposed to fit these little sticking out nubs to the door or the frame. In normal operation, they don't do anything, but if you pull out the hinge pins or grind off the hinges, it prevents you opening that side of the door.

Been standard on fire doors for decades.

A real head-scratcher: Tech support called in because emails 'aren't showing timestamps'

Not to mention thermal prints...

I Remember opening a file to find some *very important* faxes from 18 months earlier. A file that was now full of curly, but blank paper.

Because, unlike diamonds, cheap thermal prints are not forever...

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

Re: Two stories:

Yup - squat on the ground, in a ditch or dip and keep your feet together - even the differential between your feet can be dangerous.

Shopper f-bombed PC shop staff, so they mocked her with too-polite tech tutorial

Re: PC world

I think you will find that it's 'never overestimate users'

Mappy days! Ordnance Survey offers up free map of UK greenery

Most of that's not accessible to the public, though. Which is what this is.

Re: mafia

'OS Maps' app by 'Ordnance Survey' . It's on Play and App store - you can subscribe in-app but it's cheaper on the web.

Fresh cotton underpants fix series of mysterious mainframe crashes

Re: Mobile Phones

Thereby creating a rules paradox that will keeps some very expensive lawyers occupied for weeks!

US judges say you can Google Google, but you can't google Google

Re: If Bing was more popular

You mean like https://osmaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/

Behind a paywall, admittedly. Does add more features though.

PC repair chap lets tech support scammer log on to his PC. His Linux PC

Re: professional scammers

Could have been a spearfishing attempt, which can be way more profitable than bogus support calls. Companies have lost millions through clever social engineering, and they may have been building a target profile. The scammers for these types of events are often highly capable, with inside knowledge and decent skills to sound convincing and launder the cash fast.

eBay denies claims it's failing to thwart 'systematic fraud'

They end up with the goods from the second round of ordering. They could then sell them on an unrelated ebay account or just flog them at car boot sales or down the pub. They may even end up in slightly dodgy high street retailers who don't ask where the job lot of cheap tablets comes from.

Panicked WH Smith kills website to stop sales of how-to terrorism manuals

Re: What's the thinking?

"Got any proof of that?"

Hah. Proof is so 2015. What you need are groundless lies said VERY LOUDLY.

Re: TNT

Are you a dangerous subversive spreading banned knowledge!!!

How dare you demonstrate an understanding of chemistry. Ban him!!!!!!!!!

And since he posted anonymously - ban everyone who has ever posted anonymously just in case. Or anyone who has thought about doing it. And their pets.

Add it to the tab: ICO fines another spammer as unpaid bills mount

Re: The law is there for a reason, it’s to stop companies inundating people with unwanted messages

Got that. It's called BT Guardian, and runs on the phone handset, so no ongoing cost (aside from needing CallerID).

Unrecognised and withheld numbers get a mandatory whisper announce, numbers in the address book get straight through. So far it has blocked 100% of spam calls - the automated ones detect it as an answerphone, and the manual ones move on to an easier target.

It's a really simple fix. Takes a bit of time to enter all your numbers manually.

Mythbuntu busted as last two devs working on media centre distro quit

Re: Mythbuntu has been stable on my kit for years

Sad to see it go to. I'm not great on Ubuntu, and my first attempt to set up MythTV on top of Ubuntu took days and a couple of bits, like the web interface, never worked.

After a drive failure I used the Mythbuntu ISO and it was up and working in a couple of hours - it just made life a lot easier. I then used it to create a second front-end which was up and connected in about 30 minutes.

If Ubuntu and similar ever want to be mainstream, they need to do the kinds of things the MythBuntu team did, and move more of the stuff you need to an actual GUI that works. Typing in long strings of commands from dodgy forums with no indication of how up to date the information is is a lot less user friendly than going into a control panel and updating some options.

I don't have the skills to contribute, but I hope some who do pick up on it and continue development. It's a great, legal way to build a video library from over the air broadcasts in a way than an average computer user can get up and working.

Password1? You're so random. By which we mean not random at all - UK.gov

Re: Re:drowssap

Upvote for the nerdiest password generation system I've ever heard of.

Good luck securing 'things' when users assume 'stuff just works'

Re: Sleeping through a robbery

I used to be, pre-child. I could sleep though anything.

I got so used to waking up in the middle of the night that a fly coughing in the next room now wakes me up, 10 years later.

However, if you left the keys on a wall outside the house, with a note saying 'help yourself' you would have little comeback when the car was stolen / emptied / trashed. No insurance payout, and no-one would be impressed by 'but it never said i should not leave the keys right next to the car'

Which is pretty much like using an easily hacked device.

A robot kitchen? Whatever. Are you stupid enough to fall for this?

Re: Marmite

Some clever marketing wonk. By doing this you encourage lots of people to try it and see where they fall, and potentially get new long-term customers.

Moron is late for flight, calls in bomb threat

Re: This is a real fine

From memory the fines were based on your income, to make it reasonably painful for both the wealth and the not-so-wealthy. Hence if you are super-rich and get caught speeding the fine can be...significant.

On the plus side, the local police donut fund is in good shape.

'Please label things so I can tell the difference between a mouse and a microphone'

Re: The old joke about the blond Executive Assistant...

"You can tell she's been using the computer, because there's white-out all over the screen"

Fixed that for you.

User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert

Re: A whiter shade of pale?

And also likely to earn them a 'cloaking' penalty from google search...

Stop resetting your passwords, says UK govt's spy network

Re: Best password advice I ever had?

I tried that for a little while, but in too many cases ran across problems with my chosen system:

Systems with min/max/character requirements that blocked the 'generated' password

Systems that required changing regularly (no way to change without using a different formula)

Once, a change in the URL

I gave up and now use a random string generator and a secure way of saving them, but it's no use when I'm not on my main PC.

At last: Ordnance Survey's map wizardry goes live

Re: Footpaths?

If you are on the free/non subscriber 'standard map' it only shows roads and streets. For footpaths you need to take up the 7-day free trial to access the 50k and 25k maps.

Then you should be able to see them all in the same detail as the paper maps.

Ordnance Survey unfolds handy Mars map

Re: Those damn Martians....

Nah - OS hasn't been taxpayer funded for years.

Unlike, y'know, the space program.

Re: Those damn Martians....

Nah - the OS hasn't been taxpayer funded for years.

Unlike other things, like the European Space Program - but I'm sure you think that's a waste too...

Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

Re: Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

My current big bugbear with Linux (on Ubuntu at the moment) is that something that should be easily doable through the GUI is generally done on CLI.

I know there are good reasons for using a CLI. But manually copying an esoteric command character by character from a help forum to do something simple is stupid. Unless you are a frequent user, the CLI is much slower, harder to use and less precise.

Compare a windows user support page with a similar level question for Linux, and for the average user the windows one will be easier to follow. Even stupidly simple things like creating a permanent file share generally require memorising or looking up commands - while in a GUI I know it's to do with drives, I can look there and find a menu item to do it - I don't need to memorise anything.

Linux will not go mainstream until it is easy to use for people that don't use it often, and are not interested in learning how to use a CLI at all.

Google accuses SEO biz Local Lighthouse of false claims, robo-calls

Re: Honest cold call company's?

There are, of course, some legitimate uses.

If you work in a specialist industry, or target a specific type of business calling is often the cheapest and fastest way to market - especially if you offer a service that's new or they don't know they need.

Of course, lying to get sales is fraud - but cold calling itself is not an issue if targeted to the right people, at the right time, with the right offer. I get sales calls pretty regularly, and some are useful. It's the untargeted ones who go for high volume, low quality that give the rest a bad name.

Google robo-car suffers brain freeze after seeing hipster cyclist

I'd love to see the config panel:

Hipster avoidance: on/off

Drive style: old lady/tourist/normal/effective progress/joyride

Speed limits: 0 / +5% / +10% / ignore

Tyre screech: off / dramatic moments / always

Wheelspin: never / two lane traffic lights / always

Priorities order: pedestrian / cyclist / other vehicle / GoogleCar: drag to edit