Posts by Somone Unimportant

BMC's $1.6B victory over IBM is TKO on appeal

BMC still around?

Hmmm - I thought that they went out of business in the 1970's after some particularly poor vehicle design choices.

The P76 was a real stinker...

(I wonder - is there a statute of limitations on reuse of an Initialism?)

The real significance of Apple's Macintosh

Re: Hierarchical Flle System

Yep - that's my recollection.

I started 1985 with a Mac 512k that had been brought home for me to use for my final year of school, allowing me to type up essays in MacWrite (disk version) before printing them out painfully slowly on an imagewriter.

Then an HD20 arrived at the end of 1985.

I remember hooking it to the floppy port, starting the Mac, popping in the HD20 boot floppy, then the boot disk ejected and HD20 took over.

It was like all my Christmasses had come at once.

I don't have that Mac anymore, but I still have an SE/30 that works nicely.

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed

Re: The problem with Notes

Another long term Notes/Domino user here - Notes 2.0 on Windows 3.11 client with OS/2 backend circa 1993...

So yes, I'm biased a little :-)

Notes did - and still does - the work of so many other products, and if you know how to code databases and scripts, or know someone who does, it craps over everything else.

It was and is a piece of software that can fit to your business - you do not need to fit your business to it. But it requires effort.

Yes, it was and still is ugly. With an interface that only its mother could love. But it is consistent across versions, and given its heritage included DOS clients and servers with V1, it had to do all of that lifting itself.

These days I run it at home out of nostalgia more than anything else. And I do have a client that runs a notes database - replicated between server and workstations for offline use - that was custom written for them in 1996. They became my client in 2021 when their orgs 25 year cert.id expired. I got them out of that pickle and they are still running domino 4.5 server on a windows 2000 VM and notes 4.5 clients on windows 7 and 10.

And they have never used it for email storage, though it does generate and send emails.

What are our top picks from the vast world of retro tech? Let's find out

Re: Lotus Notes is still being developed

Heck yeah!

Recovering a user's email file from a set date and time in Exchange? Recover the entire mail store database from around the time you need it to a dedicated offline Exchange server (or very carefully to an online one) then use Powershell tools to extract a .PST file of the user's mailbox.

Recovering a user's email file from a set date and time in Domino? Recover a single database file SPECIFIC TO THE USER that you want from the backup taken on the required date and time, then open it in your Notes client with an Admin ID.

And Notes Client v15 can open a standalone Notes Client V1 database file. That's 32 years' difference.

(of course, far more backup and storage is required to do this - but you want the benefits of simplicity, you have to pay the piper!)

Thankyou for your comments on Lotus Notes

Gentlemen - thankyou for your honest and accurate comments on Lotus Notes, and thanks for these Kettle chats.

I consider myself a Notes "tragic", in that while I was aware of and agree with everything you said about its downsides, to me it's still the best software system ever developed.

It is so much more than mail, and so much more than workflow - it is a replicated, distributed, application and database system that can work in a single office or scale and work at a global level.

The first time I saw it - 1991 - I remember the presenter being ridiculed by the audience. Looking back though, I think that this was because even the presenter from Lotus didn't really know what it was all about and what it could do.

The following year, I started using Notes 2.0 on Windows 3.11 with OS/2 server backends (at one of the big five, er, big four firms) and have used it ever since.

To me, it's a tool that with some effort can fit to a business, rather than other tools that seem to require that the business fit to the tool.

It's good that HCL are still developing it - there are many big companies that are using it at a national or global level - though their support for anyone other than a global organisation leaves a little to be desired. It took me two years to get quote from them for a Domino upgrade for a small business that I support, and in the end I decided against the upgrade because their existing system was still working perfectly well..

...and that system was coded and deployed in 1996 and still running on Notes/Domino 4.5 on an isolated Windows 2000 server instance.

California approves lavatory-to-faucet water recycling

"Pursuing direct potable reuse for a portion of the supplies produced at our Pure Water facility will allow us to better manage the weather extremes we face from a changing climate."

That's an unfortunate name for a water facility, given that the Victorian-era had a completely different meaning for the word "Pure", as in "Collector of the Pure".

Still, good to see CA doing more to conserve water.

Switch to hit the fan as BT begins prep ahead of analog phone sunset

Been there, lost that

Folks in OZ have had this forced upon themselves over the last ten years as NBN was pushed out and copper was removed.

We have a landline for business reasons, and it was converted to VoIP/NBN.

The process was fairly painless, however I noted a few issues.

1 - Some consideration was given to emergency landline support, but it wasn't made clear that in the event of a power outage upstream that one's landline would also go down.

2 - My landline is at the mercy of NBN infrastructure, which for us is HFC, which itself has multiple single points of failure.

3 - All customer service guarantees were thrown out the window when PSTN over copper was removed, and Telcos now have no legal responsibility to maintain landline-equivalent VoIP to the same level as the traditional POTS servivces.

4 - My DECADIC (rotary) dial phone no longer works - a beautiful 1920's wall phone, fully refurbished. But that's just me.

and lastly

5 - If all you want is a landline, such as my parents do, it's still an NBN installation and NBN monthly charge.

It's five steps forward, three steps backwards sometimes.

Oracle Cloud, Netsuite, and Azure go down, hard, Down Under

I seem to recall a Sydney-based datacentre being flooded some years ago, with much the same effect.

tap tap tap...

Yep. AWS Sydney, June 2016.

Wonder if it's the same site?

Oracle's revised Java licensing terms 2-5x more expensive for most orgs

From the "Definitions" section of Oracle's price list...

"Employee for Java SE Universal Subscription: is defined as (i) all of Your full-time, part-time, temporary employees, and (ii) all of the full-time employees, part-time employees and temporary employees ofYour agents, contractors, outsourcers, and consultants that support Your internal business operations. The quantity of the licenses required is determined by the number of Employees and not just the actualnumber of employees that use the Programs."

erm...

Charging license fees for people in an organisation who will never even touch a computer sounds a little bit illegal to me, but IANAL.

Near Field Communication to get longer, stronger – better at contactless

Re: Back when NFC was new

A cut in the loop may stop tap and go, but it won't stop insertion of a credit card being approved for payments up to a certain amount without needing a PIN.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Good thing

I believe that this is a Good Thing (TM), but should like to see it go further and just as a standard for connectivity has been determined, so too should battery form factors and outputs.

I know that it would cramp design further, but even one supplier having the same battery form factor for more than one type of phone would make repair and maintenance that much easier, cut costs for phones and allow a healthy market in after-market spares. Which of course is what the Apples and Samsungs of this world may not want.

And it would provide a fairly sure-fire way to know that your phone is indeed turned off!

I am writing from a position of bias though. My standard day-use phone is a Blackberry Z10 (don't laugh - I get 4 days' standby and only use it as a phone anyway), with a snap-on back plate that provides access to a removable battery. And the looks I get when I say to someone "hang on, my battery is flat", followed by me removing the flat battery and installing a fully charged second one that I keep on standby are priceless!

Data leak at major law firm sets Australia's government and elites scrambling

Maybe its time to go back to some old ways?

Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way around.

Data breaches and leaks are now a fact of life. Deal with it. If a system is on the Internet, or has any capacity to send data to the Internet, it is a potentially leaky bucket, and just because you patch some holes it doesn't mean that you have patched them all, or that new holes won't appear.

So instead of putting all of our eggs in the "stop the breaches" basket, why don't we do something at the other end - the point where breached information is used as inputs to other processes.

Simple things, such as banks only being allowed to transfer more than a certain amount of money from an account upon attendance of an account holder at a branch with suitable forms of ID.

Or banks only opening new accounts/increasing credit limits/writing loans with similar "in person" requirements.

And yes - it would require banks to re-open closed branches.

Similarly with government departments. If you apply for a benefit and have to confirm ID, require in-person attendance with suitable physical ID. Allow taxpayers to speak to tax officials and lodge hand-written forms. This used to work - why doesn't it work now?

Do something to hinder the use, or slow down the speed of use, of stolen information.

Society functioned fairly well before the advent of online everything.

We paid bills in person at post offices, or at the local branch of our utility provider.

We still got mortgages and paid them easily enough in person, or by cheque (oh horrors!)

I know it's a pipedream and that our world has been engineered around online everything. But it wasn't always that way - maybe there are some areas where it doesn't need to be that way too.

HCL proves Lotus Notes will never die by showing off beta of lucky Domino 14.0

Remember please - eMail was just ONE use case for Notes/Domino.

I'm going to hold up my hand and say that I've been using Notes, then Notes/Domino, for just on 30 years now, and for so many things other than eMail.

I've worked on global deployments (50,000+ seats) of Notes/Domino that absolutely rocked when it came to custom written applications. SharePoint and their ilk are not even in the ballpark for some of the things I've built and worked on.

But I've also worked on small deployments, hundreds or tens of users, and in the case of one client that I now support, three users.

Those three users run a custom written application that they currently put $50 million of transactions through per year. It's part CMS, part tracking system, part inventory, part contract management.

The app was written in 1996, and was deployed on a Notes/Domino 4.5 server running on NT4 Server.

After 25 years of use, the server failed due to an expired certificate. It took me less than half an hour to fix that problem, then move the server to a new O/S and restore the server to operational status, and that same Notes/Domino 4.5 server is now running on Windows 2019. And the staff use Notes 4.5 to access the database from their Windows 10 systems.

Now if only HCL would return my calls when I ask them for upgrade pricing...

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Re: Banking apps

Your BankSA passbook may have a BSB and account number attached to it, however you'd need to contact BankSA - sorry St George - sorry, Westpac - to find out what that is.

BankSA accounts were converted to St George accounts some twenty or more years ago (still a good number of years after the Dragon bought the old State Bank of SA) and all received new numbers. Westpac have - wisely IMHO - retained St George accounts "as is" in the main, probably having read about the dog's breakfast that the St George assimillation of BankSA accounts was.

And I lost my BankSA passbook at the time too, because "we no longer do them".

Dell down under dinged for dodgy display discounts

Re: Big company problems

I'd have to say "yes" and "no" to this...

There are a large number of companies (ebay, amazon, iherb etc) that show bundle pricing at the bottom of their pages for products - stuff like "people who bought this also bought..." - with links to add both items to one's basket. In some of these cases, I have mistaken them to be discounted prices for bundled items, when in fact they are just the same cost as adding the items separately and it's more a push from the site to get you to buy more. I'm believe that is what the seller is trying to impart, if not imply. Nothing illegal, questionably immoral perhaps?

But I grow weary of any strike-through pricing on any web site, especially if one really has to take the seller's word that the item once sold at the struck-through price. That is definitely not on, and in bricks-and-mortar world lands companies in hot water very quickly. Or at least it can in Australia.

I do grow weary of sites that tout "you saved $0.15 on your $128.99 order" when checking out - iherb, I'm looking at you here.

Just give me your best price up front - forget crappy discount codes that I can obtain by looking them up, or filling an order with a disposable email address to get the 20% "new to our site" discount.

YouTube's 'Ad blockers not allowed' pop-up scares the bejesus out of netizens

It must be remembered that YouTube are like any business, they need to earn income to operate.

The question, of course, is how much income and how they obtain it.

I too used to be OK with the 15 second pre-run advertisements that were shown, or the single ad at the end of a video. I'd never try and skip, though I would often do something else for 15 seconds.

But as with others now, being forced to watch upwards of 45 seconds of two or more advertisements pre-roll and then being subjected to mid-sentence breaks so that YouTube can stuff more ads into their stream forced me to look into blockers.

And then reading content creators' stories of how little of the advertising revenue they get for their works and the ludicrously high thresholds that they must now meet in order to receive any of the funds that YouTube collects from advertisements shown over their content, well, I began to actively avoid YouTube advertisements.

Advertisements are necessary to help YouTube stay online. I get that. But perhaps they could charge fewer advertisers more for the ads and drop the volume of them?

Aussie tech worker payroll scheme operators found guilty of tax fraud

next up...

Now, let's see if the authorities go just as hard after the politicians and bureaucrats that were involved in the 400,000 victim crime of fraudulent invoicing, i.e. "RoboDebt"

Former Facebooker alleges Meta drained users' batteries to test apps

Re: contract requires him to take the case to arbitration

Not only forced arbitration, but forced arbitration AFTER the person has been dismissed by Meta.

I'd have thought that dismissal would result in automatic annulment of any and all agreements, including the request to remain silent.

At least it does in some advanced countries.

And how can it be an internal arbitration? The person in question is no longer internal to Meta.

HCL to end all support for old versions of Notes and Domino in 2024

Trying to get Domino/Notes information from HCL...

...is like pulling teeth!

I've a client who is running Domino 4.5 circa 1996, with an application of similar vintage. An application that puts through over $50 million worth of finance business (loans, leases etc) per year.

And before you ask, they are running Exchange separately for eMail...

It is rock solid, but needs a Windows 2000 VM to run on - not something nice in this modern day and age - and the only time it has become unusable was when the original Domino certificate expired. It had been set for a 25 year expiry in 1996, so expired in 2021. I renewed it... for 99 years, so next time it expires it won't be my problem!

So I want to upgrade it to something that can be run on newer operating systems, as well as provide better access to the users. But trying to engage HCL (at least here in Australia) is proving difficult, if not impossible.

If anyone has any contacts at HCL, particularly in the Asia/Pacific region, I'd love to speak with them...

Linux may soon lose support for the DECnet protocol

Long live StreetTalk!

Motorola-powered Mac from 1989 used to write smartphone apps

Re: Pascal on a Mac

Pascal on a Mac?

Lightspeed v2 if you please...

...or ThiNK v3 or later...

...or Mac Pascal (interpreted - yes - interpreted) on a 128 or 512...

My SE/30 is still running strong and runs Mac Pascal 1.5 and THiNK Pascal v4 under System 6.0.5

This'll make you feel old: Uni compsci favourite Pascal hits the big five-oh this year

Mac pascal -> Lightspeed Pascal -> Think Pascal

Started using Mac Pascal (interpreted, no less) on a Mac 128 way back when, then graduated to Lightspeed Pascal on an SE and Mac II, before finishing off with Think Pascal v4 (post-Symantec acquisition). The last "4.5" release lives on in emulation on my iMac...

And my copies of "Think Pascal: User Manual" and "Think Pascal: Object-Oriented Programming Manual" sit on my bookshelf next to my copy of "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs".

Pascal was a great language for teaching and exploring data structures, and with object libraries was powerful (and easy) enough for commercial-grade releases.

Dumpster diving to revive a crashing NetWare server? It was acceptable in the '90s

NLM's weren't THAT bad

Well, unless you were running ARCServe - those NLMs were as buggy as hell.

Having spent two years before NetWare 3.0 was launched working with NetWare 2.11 and VAPs (Value Added Processes) that had to be bound into the kernel during the NetWare 2.x NETGEN process, the ability to LOAD and UNLOAD an NLM from the command line was amazing.

Animal crossing? Nah! Farmyard frolics, courtesy of Novell and pals

Ahh yes - the Netware "SEND" command. First thing I removed from every SYS:PUBLIC folder on every server I ever built from Netware 2.1 to Netware 5.0.

Not sure I agree with the writer's description of NDS as being as painful as that - for the site I worked with it allowed us to establish login accounts for 25,000 students - and this was in 1995 running Netware 4.11. By mid 90's everyone should have been running Netware 3.11, release data I believe was Valentine's day 1991, after 3.0 came out in late 1989.

We regret to inform you there are severe delays on the token ring due to IT nerds blasting each other to bloody chunks

Ahh - the joys of token ring.

Used 4Mbits/sec on the wonderful clunky old IBM connectors to genuine IBM concentrators right through to 100 Mbits/sec on Cat5 just before Madge Networks disappeared for good.

warning - Gratuitous TR joke coming up.

"We have a token ring network because we can't afford a real ring network".

The delights of on-site working – sun, sea and... WordPad wrangling?

Once used Norton diskedit.exe to let me remove all security from a netware 3.11 server so that critical files could be read.

Just edited server.exe, found the name of the file that stored security information and changed it. Restart server, new security file is empty. Walk on in.

Y2K, Windows NT4 Server and Notes. It's a 1990s Who, Me? special

notes, y2k and nt 4

Potent mix that saw me get three hours at triple time on Saturday January 1st 2000.

Donated it to charity but got the tax deducton.

Them were the days...

Using WhatsApp for your business comms? It's either that or reinstall Lotus Notes

the worst unstoppable sound...

Playing an old version of a Star Trek game on a Televideo terminal connected to a Northstar Horizon running CP/M back in the early 1980's, every time a torpedo or phaser hit a vessel, the software would send CTRL-G to the terminal to play the BELL character.

After playing a few games, my father popped the lid of the Televideo terminal, cut the speaker cable and silence reigned supreme.

After a few more games, I got into the CBASIC source code with Wordstar of all things, removed all the CTRL-G prints from it, recompiled it (well, converted it back to its pseudo-code - anyone else remember typing "CRUN237 STRTRK.BAS"?), reconnected the speaker and lo - my father never knew.

It's also what started me off in my career of reverse-engineering other's code.

Trying to log into Office 365 right now? It's a coin flip, says Microsoft: Service goes TITSUP as Azure portal wobbles

Yes, we had quite a few people affected by this ourselves.

Took out One Drive, Azure portal (but not our Azure hosted services thank heavens!), Sharepoint online and Outlook, and got services back just over 2 hours into our working day.

OWA appeared OK and thankfully our primary file storage is still on-prem so it wasn't affected.

With 200+ staff, that's 400+ lost hours of productivity, so a conservative $20,000 loss to our business.

So Microsoft - where's our refund cheque?

Backup Exec console goes AWOL

WSUS also got borked

Patch 3210132 also borked my WSUS server with "failure to contact database" style errors.

Only the second time this year that WSUS has been killed by its own patches.

It's time for Microsoft to revisit dated defaults

I think that the biggest difference was that the original version of AD would synch a group change by synching the entire group, whereas NDS only ever synched deltas, and did so from day one. By AD 2003 I think this was resolved and it became less chatty and less of an issue.

Though I think that AD 2000 had options to replicate directory data by SMTP didn't it?

NDS always had far better tools for directory querying and consistency checking - good old DSREPAIR.NLM would do for most things.

Anyone remember selecting "Cancel all timestamps and declare a new epoch?" - guaranteed to fix any and all NDS problems, provided you ran it from an NDS server that was healthy. Kind of like saying "You WILL replace what YOU know with what I have".

‘Inflexion point’ BlackBerry washes hands of hardware biz

Re: Yup

My 5820 was made in Canada I think.

My 7230 was made in Hungary

My 8210 and 8220 were both made in Mexico

My Classic was made - you know, I have no idea where it was made.

Time to stock up on Passports, Classics and Privs methinks.

Are you sure you want to outsource IT? Yes/No. Check this box to accept Ts&Cs

Ahh cloud computing...

An expensive resource that you have no real control over located on the far end of a network connection that you have no real control over, and if anything does go wrong on the cloudy system at the end of the unreliable link the best you can hope for is a partial credit of your monthly service charge...

What's not to like about that?

'Oi! El Reg! Stop pretending Microsoft has a BSOD monopoly!'

Re: BBC Master

1770 DFS was original BBC Micro wasn't it? The Master ran ADFS I thought.

Florida U boffins think they've defeated all ransomware

...or use honeypots

Our file server is pretty much open to write by all (loooong story but we are moving to a new filestore system) and cryptolocker has had a big hit on us in the past.

However I've found that placing honeypot files around the file system and checking their integrity every minute or so by comparing them to a known secure copy of the file and flagging an immediate alert if there are any differences does the trick pretty well.

Some of the cryptolockers are getting smarter and randomly targetting files instead of iterating through a filesystem, or encrypting two or three files and then sleeping for an hour, then waking up and repeating, so this method is becoming less useful.

But if you had enough disk storage I'm sure that you could do something like a disconnected RAID-1 and watch for weirdo changes like the authors propose.

New phones rumoured as BlackBerry cans BB10 production

Re: :-t

Nope, you're not the only one.

I'm using a Classic now myself as my work phone, and will probably buy another one as a spare when the prices drop.

As my personal phone I have a Pearl 8200 Flip Phone. It's a bit plasticky but its in showroom condition because I look after it, and I get looks of "oh wow - is that a new phone?" when I pull it out. Then I tell onlookers that it is from 2006...

This replaced a Pearl 8100 phone that gave me years of sterling service and still does if needed, but the trackball is getting a bit hard to keep clean.

This in turn replaced a 7230 with the weirdo form factor and the funny colour screen. Don't know where that one is, which is sad because it was a quirky phone and was the first phone that someone walked up to me and asked "what is that?" when I got it in 2004.

And in the bottom drawer of my tech desk is a BlackBerry 5810 monochrome screen system that is now 15 years old, yet still holds a charge. It's great for playing snake, or sending SMS messages, or typing mini-essays on. Crisp screen, though the backlight makes an annoying fluorescent hum.

RIP BlackBerry. The Priv just isn't the same.

Thunder struck: Apple kills off display line

ADB was ill-fated?

Just because it wasn't used by any other vendor than Apple does not mean it was ill fated.

It had a very good life - from the //gs in 1986 until the last of the pre-Imac systems 12 years later, at a time when PC compatible devices still required their own connectors (the old Canon keyboard connector) or blue and green PS/2 connectors.

Devices (ok, mice and keyboards - and the damn Quark XPress copy protection dongle) could be daisy chaned and it was a doddle to have a left or right handed mouse because the Apple keyboards had left and right located ADB connectors.

It did the job, and it did it well.

Firewire was, IMHO, way ahead of its time, a pre-USB interface that absolutely screamed along in comparison to others. It too did the job well.

...though thinking about it, "doomed to never be used by other vendors to any real extent" does sound a bit like "ill-fated".

AWS blames 'latent bug' for prolonging Sydney EC2 outage

OK, so they knew that bad weather was coming...

With bad weather forcast some time beforehand, would it have been hard for AWS to have one generator actually up and running in advance?

Would have helped avoid this outage and also provided a test for the UPS system.

If I had stuff on AWS, I'd be spitting chips over this, if the outage was indeed due to a UPS issue. But if I were on AWS, I'd also have systems ready in another availablity zone to take over should one go down.

Microsoft phone support contractors told to hang up after 15 minutes

It's the same with those scam support callers from the sub-continent and such areas

I seem to be able to keep them on the phone for no more than 15 minutes before they summarily end the call.

Next time one of them calls me I'll tell them that I was unhappy with how they hung upon me after 15 minutes as it's not my fault that it took my Windows system more than 15 minutes to boot up. After all, they are calling from Microsoft Windows, so they should know that anyway, right?

Walmart sues Visa for being too lax with protecting chip cards

and therein lies the problem for Aussies

The credit card providers have forced tap-to-pay technologies on the Australian banking system, and there is no way to opt of it and demand that only a PIN be acceptable on a credit card.

We've gone from "low" security (a signature that placed the onus on the retailer to verify) to "some" security (a PIN) to no security (just tap here sir) for purchases below $100.

My wife's cards were stolen on a Friday night, the thieves racked up $250 worth of purchases in the followng four hours - mainly petrol, ciggies and late night Maccas - we cancelled the cards at 8am when we realised the cards had been stolen and it took us 6 weeks to get the charges reversed. And because one of the stolen cards was linked to her savings account, we were really out of pocket for that 6 weeks.

Telstra hauls in Cisco, Ericsson, Juniper to explain TITSUPs

And let's not forget a patch that Telstra loaded onto their core 4G network switches on Australia Day that resulted in ACKS not being sent during some VoLTE to SIP calls. Took them two weeks to confirm the issue and another two weeks to fix it, during which time we had thousands of one-way only audio calls.

Clients thought it was our system at fault, and so did telstra at first. We lost clients because of this...

The cleverer they become, the harder they fall.

Send tortuous stand-up ‘nine-thirty’ meetings back to the dark ages

Like the "Rockefeller Habits" crap

We started on these "stand-up" meetings after someone at my place of employment read a book called "The Rockefeller Habits" or something like that.

Seems that good old JD held meetings like this, so we would too.

All the time the executives were glowing about how wonderful this all was, I was seething inside.

Sure, JD may have been a good businessman, but he was also a ruthless tyrannical bastard (imho).

And his business practices drew enough attention that Standard Oil was forcibly split-up by the US regulatory authorities.

People take from history what they want to take, and miss the other stuff.

Boeing's X-Wing 737 makes first flight

Did anyone else think "Australia II winged keel side view?" when they saw that picture?

Expanding ads

Yep - the auto play ads are a pain in the arse!

And I'm on a 3g network link, so these ads are costing me $$$ to have on the screen.

Please don't make me switch an ad blocker back on!

KeePass looter: Password plunderer rinses pwned sysadmins

Re: Extremely Dangerous

Three options spring to mind.

1 - run up keypass on an iPhone or Android device and use the file exclusively there. I have a keypass compatible app on my BlackBerry Classic and do just that, then just use my PC as a backup location for the keypass encrypted data file.

2 - run keypass for windows inside a VM on your desktop, and don't give the VM any network connectivity - almost like an air-gap system. It's harder to backup the keypass file but it can still be done - or you can backup the VM that runs it.

3 - or for the completely paranoid of us, just run an air-gap system for some really sensitive stuff.

I'd be more worried about keyboard grabbers intercepting copy/paste traffic as I paste usernames and passwords into fields myself.

Halo 5: Overhyped, but still way above your average shooter

my son returned this game the same day he bought it

He played through it in 3 hours, was very disappointed with the story line and could not understand why they had dropped split-screen mode.

"Not enough horsepower to do split screen mode" - come on!

So he returned it and got a full refund.

Good on him for standing up for himself and hopefully sending a message to 343 that this release of Halo was extremely underwhelming.

It's almost time for Australia's fibre fetishists to give up

I would be interested to see the speeds that these boffins get with their technology on our copper connection. 400 metres to the silver bullet, 3 kms to the exchange, and everytime it rains heavily our phone drops out because the copper is 50 years old and the shielding has rotted.

Oh - and I am 7 kms from a CBD...

While I respect pushing back the limits of what is possible, touting this as workable is as bad as telcos that tell me I should get up to 22 mbits per second because my line is ADSL 2+ capable.

Cisco Australia bumps prices by 12.83 per cent, for second time this year

Here we go again...

Cisco, listen up.

Your gear is good, your support isn't bad, and you may have set the standard for quite a lot of network stuff.

But I've just had a 143% increase (yes, 143%) in maintenance for our Call Manager/UCCX system due to changes in the way that licenses are charged, effective September 15th. That was on top of a 14% increase back in March as part of the annual price gouge. And now you want to go and bump the prices up AGAIN?

The actual amount of the increase is a substantial chunk of what I could put towards hosted telephony with hosted ACD/IVR.

Playboy drops the butt-naked ladies

What goes around comes around...

IIRC, Playboy didn't have full nudity of their monthly models until sometime in the early 1970's.

Prior to that, the angles used for camera shots were always such that the more sensitive parts of the models' anatomy were obscured or just out of view.

Don't ask me how I know. The only clue I will give is that when somewhat younger than I am today, a friend and I discovered a stash of these magazine at a local scout hall in their recycling bin. My friend has gone on to become a pre-eminent biologist (hi Matthew!), but I'm not sure that was anything to do with what we saw that day...

BlackBerry's tactical capitulation to Google buys time – and possibly a future

Re: App Availability

I agree. My BlackBerry has bugger all applications on it besides the core BB10 apps, and I know what data they access.

And the extra apps I have downloaded - mainly games to help pass the time if I need them - and paid for are BB10 native.

However I'm a realist enough to know that I'm probably in the minority of mobile phone users, that small minority who are happy for phone, email and web use, without wanting apps galore.