* Posts by Tommyinoz

11 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Nov 2015

Don't buy Microsoft Surface gear: 25% will break after 2 years, says Consumer Reports

Tommyinoz

Why is anybody surprised?

Why is anybody surprised? Microsoft demonstrated just how reliable the Surface is during their "iPad killer" presentation a few years ago. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1zxDa3t0fg

Blunder down under: self-driving Aussie cars still being thwarted by kangaroos

Tommyinoz

Cane toads

Can the software detect cane toads and automatically steer the car all over the road flattening the little bastards? This would be a popular feature with Queensland drivers.

Sophos Windows users face black screens after false positive snafu

Tommyinoz

Antivirus is worse than viruses

Does anybody remember the big virus outbreak that affected Linux desktop and server machines?

Me neither.

Your wget is broken and should DIE, dev tells Microsoft

Tommyinoz

And MS put a tablet UI on their server products too

Microsoft does not live in the real world. I've been convinced of that for some time now.

IT analyst: Oz census data processed as plain text

Tommyinoz

I'm Batman

I've been tossing up whether I should give my real name in the census or not. I think I have made up my mind now.

Hello, I'm Batman. What's your name?

Australian spooks' email guide banishes MS Word macros, JavaScript

Tommyinoz

User education needed

We had a case recently where one of our staff opened a fake invoice Word document and managed to get their PC infected with a virus. This was an interesting case because the email was caught by our spam filter, but it was only flagged as suspect. The Kaspersky antivirus on the mail gateway did not detect the virus. Therefore users are able to release caught emails themselves from the spam filter. This user released the email and then proceeded to open the attached Word document (fake invoice), the Word document contains a message saying that you must enable macros to view the content. At this stage the Sophos antivirus on the users PC does not detect the virus either. The user dutifully follows the instructions in the Word document and enables the macro, but then doesn't see anything. At no stage does the user suspect that there is anything wrong or that they have been conned. It doesn't end there, the user then reply's to the email to tell the sender that there is something wrong with the attachment.

A day later we detect that there was something strange in that users start up and soon confirmed that it was a virus. We didn't take any risks, we just took the PC off that user and re-imaged it.

Horrid checkbox download bundlers drop patch-frozen Chrome

Tommyinoz
Thumb Up

Re: And we wonder why people still use Windows. FFS

If the command line scares you, you can always use Software Manager.

Tommyinoz

apt-get is your friend

This is an old Windows issue. The Windows culture is to go to a search engine, search for the application you want, go to the website and download the setup file, launch the setup program, type in your admin password and hope hope for the best. You don't know what the hell that setup.exe file is going to do once you give your permission to run.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a simple command that people could type in (or cut and paste) and it would automatically download and install the application from a trusted source and it would just work? Maybe the command could look something like this:

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

Or just use the easy to use Software Manager if you prefer to use a graphical interface.

Anyway, people keep telling me that Windows Store is the answer. So I blew the dust off my Windows 10 laptop to take a look. I started the Windows Store and started searching. I couldn't find Chrome or Firefox. Searching for 'office' returned only mobile versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. So it's totally useless.

Edge joins Explorer in bumper crop of security patches

Tommyinoz

Re: Reboot reboot reboot

Windows is an absolute dogs breakfast when it comes to updates. And as you point out, it's getting worse. I'm not just talking about Windows updates. The issue is, when you install 20 different pieces of software, you end up with 20 different updater programs running on your computer. You have no centralised control over this crap, you find updaters in your scheduled tasks, running as a service, in your startup, in your sys tray, and the software themselves pulling down updates while you are using them. It's a dogs breakfast!

Tommyinoz

Reboot reboot reboot

Microsoft calls it patch Tuesday. I call it reboot Wednesday.

I think my description is more accurate.

Dev to Mozilla: Please dump ancient Windows install processes

Tommyinoz

The whole idea of installing software via an EXE is out dated. You have no idea what the EXE is going to do. Once you have to give the EXE permission to make changes to your system, then you are at it's mercy.

I don't know how you feel about Windows, but personally, I'm sick of it. It's a constant battle, Windows is always doing something that I don't want it to do and it always does things without my permission. I'm constantly removing stuff from scheduled tasks, the registry run location, startup and services. Every-time I run a setup.exe, I then have to search my system to see what the hell it added and changed to my system.

I use Linux at home and I don't have any of these issues, but at work I have to manage hundreds of Windows machines. We use the standard Windows tools like SCCM, group policy etc. I wonder if anyone else here feels the same way, but I always dream of being able to SSH to a PC here at work and just simply typing in 'sudo apt-get blah blah' to install software while the user is still logged on doing their work (and without reboot).