* Posts by russmichaels

58 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2015

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Microsoft really does not want Windows 11 running on ancient PCs

russmichaels

Re: Alternative

yep and all those "just use linux" fanboys are the first to take the piss when one of those people tries and gets stuck and cannot be bothered to help anyone who doesn't just magically understand command line.

I have tried to switch to Linux several times, but every time I get stuck when there is a driver or software I need to install which cannot be done via the software app, and waste weeks trying to figure it out, when it would take me minutes on windows. You get no useful help on the communities as they simply cannot comprehend that someone doesn't know linux already and give them instructions that can only be followed by someone who already knows Linux and all its commands, and what they do and how to use them.

You cannot just download and install software as you do in windows, again it requires command-line knowledge, which the average person is never going to have or want to learn, and the attitude/response you get from the arrogant linux fan boys just put you off ever wanting to bother, and I bet the responses to this will prove the point.

Ex-Amazon exec claims she was asked to ignore copyright law in race to AI

russmichaels

> documents allege Krishnakumar made "numerous discriminatory and harassing comments" such as "Take it easy, I have young daughters, so I know it's hard to be a woman with a newborn," or "You should spend time with your daughter," or "You should just enjoy being a new mother."

seriously?

there is nothing discriminatory and harassing about that, it's literally the complete opposite of that.....

Judge demands social media sites prove they didn't help radicalize mass shooter

russmichaels

They definitely cannot claim they are nothing but message boards, as everyone knows they push targeted content to users.

If you view posts on a certain topic, your feed will then push more similar posts to your feed,

Social media is full of racist content, although TBF, 99% of what I see is blatant racism and hate toward whites, but I rarely ever see anything the other way round, so it is clear that any filtering that does happen is prejudiced.

FCC gets tough: Telcos must now tell you when your personal info is stolen

russmichaels

telling a company they must do somehting doesn;t mean it is going to happen, and why only telcos?

what about the hundreds of other companies that are being hacked on a daily basis but do not tell their customers that their data is stolen and many don't even know they have been hacked.

I am constantly find compromised details on the dark web, and when I contact the company they had no idea.

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

russmichaels

This article is very clearly misleading, ok just downright lying, as it obviously did not take him less than 1 minute to do this.

Zoom CEO reportedly tells staff: Workers can't build trust or collaborate... on Zoom

russmichaels

Ignorance is bliss

These ignorance and stupidity off this pussy and shines the comments is just shocking.

It literally says at three start "only to recall employees living within 50 miles(!!!) back to the office this month for at least two days a week."

2 days a week..... Not 5, not full time, just 2... And only those who live close.

Because anyone with a brain knows full well that people need to actually interact with each other occasionally. Working remotely 100% of the time and never ever physically interacting with other humans is deteimental.

Afaik zoom has never claimed that it can 100% replace all human interaction, not does the xto wanting stay to do this mean zoom doesn't show what it says on the box, which it clearly does.

Get your staff's consent before you monitor them, tech inquiry warns

russmichaels

It's fine to monitor as long as you tell them you are doing it, permission should not be required, that is just nonsensical.

Back in early 2000 i worked for a company called London web, who were secretly monitoring all staff, recording every keystroke and taking snapshots of desktop.

I was mortified when i found out, as this meant the boss had been reading my personal email, messages to my girlfriend, had all my login for my online banking and everything else I did from my work pc.

Obviously had I known, i would never have done anything personal or logged into anything from work and I would have been fine with that.

Before you start with all your troll comments about how those things shouldn't be done from a work pc, yada yada, wind your neck in and take note of the fact this was over 20 years ago, everyone was oblivious to such things back then, including me and most people still are, which is the point.

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

russmichaels

The only people who talk like that are the marketing people and the bullshitters who don't actually do anything. They just like throwing out lots of buzzwords to make it seem like that know what they are talking about and have something to contribute.

I would suspect that most meetings today went like that would result in nobody doing anything whatsoever stay leaving the room, since nothing useful was really said at all.

NASA: Yup, thousand-pound meteorite exploded over Texas

russmichaels

2 feet wide and weighed 10000 Llbs, that's half a ton. That is like the weight of 5 very large men.

if that is true, then what the heck was it made out of, something very dense?

Still hardly a big danger compared to all the dangers right here on earth that kill thousands of people every single day.

They need to put more effort into solving all the issues on the planet first.

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

russmichaels

Other risks

Here are some other things you may not have considered, such as the indirect risks caused by other users who you have shared logins with an or who use LastPass and have access to your systems.

https://michaels.me.uk/lastpass-hacked-how-serious-is-it-things-you-may-not-know/

Twitter set for more layoffs as Musk mulls next move

russmichaels

the sheer ignorance of almost all the people commenting is astounding.

Has twitter gone down or even faltered as a result of all these people being fired?

no is the answer

in fact I have seen improvements.

Tweetdeck for example has not changed or improved for a long time, yet this week I saw some long awaited new features and improvement.

Twitter is now also more profitable than Facebook or Apple...

All this in just weeks....

It is clear that Twitter was just a moneypit and the previous execs did sweet FA and most of the people they employed, sat at home doing sweet FA, except prejudice, biased and unethical moderation, banning, and deleting.

Despite over 7500 staff, support tickets never ever got answered.

I have one ticket that I have been waiting a whole year for a reply to, and that is with me sending 35 follow up emails....

So Musk is just getting rid of useless dead weight that is sucking up money.

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

russmichaels

Incompetent support is standard these days

If I were to list all the incompetent support people I have dealt with, I would be here for hours.

This kind of incompetence is standard these days, especially with most large companies outsourcing all their support to India.

Any support ticket requires you to explain the issue at least 10 times and tell the support agent to go back and read previous replies properly at least another 20 times.

Software developer cracks Hyundai car security with Google search

russmichaels

thats what happens when you use freelancers

I bet they hired some freelancer to do the job, probably cheap and based in india.

this is a common problem i'm afrid.

I do a lot of website work on freelance sites and I find security issues on almost every single website I work on.

Bank had no firewall license, intrusion or phishing protection – guess the rest

russmichaels

how ironic

Indians getting scammed/hacked by someone outside of India... quite ironic really....

There's only one cure for passive-aggressive Space Invader bosses, and that's more passive aggression

russmichaels

Haha this is quite lame, I have seen and done far worse.

Although my fave kharma was when I warned a boss about one of his managers and how he would end up costing the company a lot of money at he was a total bullshitter and a sociopath had no idea what he was doing.

I finally had enough and went to the boss and said it's him or me.

He chose the other guy, of course.

I eventually got a call from that boss begging for my help, as that sociopath had done exactly what I predicted and cost the company a lot of money.

To the point that they had to downsize, lay off half the staff and move to smaller offices.

I did go and help him, but I also gloated and made sure everyone in the office knew what had transpired.

It turns out this guy was a total numbskull and didn't learn from his mistakes and continued to make the same mistakes. He thought he was some Uber business man, but had a string of disasters over the years and continued to never listen to my advice.

Facebook sues scraper who sold 178 million phone numbers and user IDs

russmichaels

its a bit pot calling the kettle black isn;t it....

we all know that Facebook sells our data to everyone who wants it.

84-year-old fined €250,000 for keeping Nazi war machines – including tank – in basement

russmichaels

Someone clealry didn't think before writing that BS title.... how would he get a tank into the basement...

Audacity fork maintainer quits after alleged harassment by 4chan losers who took issue with 'Tenacity' name

russmichaels

So you do realis ethat Forums are not the only way that people can communicate right?

there is email, numerous messengers and of course the classic, the telephone.

Spy agency GCHQ told me Gmail's more secure than Microsoft 365, insists British MP as facepalming security bods tell him to zip it

russmichaels

duh!!!

kinda obvious really. everyone knows that Office365 security is rubbish, thus why you need to use 3rd party solutions to make your email secure, protect from phshing, malware and take backups.

You don't need to do that with gmail/gsuite as it has that built in. Even the companies that provide the 3rd party security/backup solutions admit this.

The curse of knowing a bit about IT: 'Could you just...?' and 'No I haven't changed anything'

russmichaels

early viruses

generally a wireless printer should be connected to the owners wireless network, so nobody else would be able to see it or connect to it unless they also had access to your WIFI as well.

Although some do seem to also act as their own WAP, which is kinda strange. Not really sure what is the point in that, as it means you have to disconnect from the WIFI to connect to the printer.

My neighbours have a couple of these, although they are secured.

As Amazon pulls union-buster job ads, workers describe a 'Mad Max' atmosphere – unsafe, bullying, abusive

russmichaels

scum

how on earth are they still getting away with this. It has been well known for years how they treat their employees and break just about every single employment, discrimination and health and safety law going.

Bezos must be lining someones pocket to get away with this.

Log us out: Private equity snaffles Lastpass owner LogMeIn

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

If the user is incompetent enough to still be using a weak password for the password manager, then all your suggestions are moot. Such a person is likley to have bad security everywhere, so storing it locally won't be any more secure for them.

Storing it in the cloud encrypted with a strong password, which multiple levels of back/redundency is fine for the rest of us who do not want to risk a local disk failure and losing all our data.

IT contractor has £240k bill torn up after IR35 win against UK taxman

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

HMRC screw up, lie, overcharge, harrass and threaten people for money they do not owe every single day.

My wife is a bookkeeper and regularly has to deal with these problems on behalf of her clients.

Yahoo! customers! wake! up! to! borked! email! (Yes! people! still! actually! use! it!)

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

That is actually just a silly misconception, the UK is not like at all.. The summers here are unbearably hot, just as hot as any other holiday destination most of the time. We actually have very little rain.

OneDrive is broken: Microsoft's cloudy storage drops from the sky for EU users

russmichaels

backup your cloud storage

If you do not want to be caught out by such problems, then I suggest backing up your cloud storage to a second location.

I have GoogleDrive as well, and I sync my onedrive and googledrive storage, so if one goes down for any reason, I can still access all my data on the other one.

Microsoft Surface kicks dust in face of Apple iPad Pro in Q3

russmichaels

LOL, that is such a daft and ignorant comment. It would make no noticeable difference at all because barely anyone uses Linux on desktops. Last time I checked it was barely 2%.

And most Linux users hate Windows and Microsoft, so wouldn't buy a surface anyway, so you are probably talking 1% of that 2%.

F***=off, Google tells its staff: Any mention of nookie now banned from internal files, URLs

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

LOL, the irony... they ban swear words, but then behave like complete c*nts :-)

In Windows 10 Update land, nobody can hear you scream

russmichaels

I have been defending Windows for years on the basis that it is only a small minority who have issues, and it is impossible to account for all possible setups, hardware and drivers.

But even I have reached the end of my tether with all the Windows 10 problems. While it may still be considered a minority, every issue is still affecting millions of users.

The whole point in Windows 10 ecosystem is that it was supposed to be easier to maintain and avoid these types of issues.

I now have a backup system running Linux

Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid

russmichaels

Re: Calls and Email

I think most people who use their devices for business would rather have a phone that lasts for days instead of hours and will carry a tablet or laptop for the other stuff.

russmichaels

Re: Calls and Email

It means you link your tablet to this phone and use it as a wireless access point, and do all the other stuff on your tablet.

I really wanted somehting this simple to give to my kids, without all the social media crap and security issues. Albeit cheaper and with GPS tracking.

US and UK Amazon workers get a wage hike – maybe they'll go to the movies, by themselves

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

Not sure why Bezos is being congratulated, he only did this due to all the bad publicity and harassment he is getting for being a tight-ass and screwing his staff. If it wasn't for the Stop BEZOS Act, he wouldn't have upped anyone's salary.

As one Microsoft Windows product hauls itself out of the grave, others tumble in

russmichaels

As much as I liked Windows Phone and preferred it over both iPhone and Android, I don't see how WileyFox are going to make any money from another Windows Phone, the number of customers is minute and even Microsoft have given up on it and are killing of the phone OS and nobody is making apps for it anymore.

A better idea would have been to build an Android phone that looked and worked like a Windows phone.

Spent your week box-ticking? It can't be as bad as the folk at this firm

russmichaels

someone needs to learn to proof read his articles before posting.

A boss pinching pennies may have cost his firm many, many pounds

russmichaels

I once worked for a hosting company whose racks and servers were your worst nightmare, so much so that the engineers in the DC would not even touch them.

Cables everywhere, all tangled up, you could not tell which power cable or ethernet cable was for which server, and you couldn't touch anything without accidentally pulling out another cable.

Tracing a cable to a switch port was almost impossible.

Servers with dual power supplies used split power cables. So if the fuse went in the plug, both PSU's still went off. Some split cables were used to power 2 servers.

If a PSU died, there were no spares, so the on-call IT guy was sent to PC world to pickup a desktop PSU, which was then retrofitted into the rack server. Meaning the case was then left open with a PSU sticking out the top. So the 1U server now took 4U of space.

more than 50% of the servers were actually not even in use. They were retired servers from ex-customers who had since left, but were never removed from the DC. Most of them were still left online for years draining power and running unpatched Windows OS. The company actually got fined every single month by the DC for exceeding power quota.

The Firewall was an EOL product with software that was outdated and unsupported for several years.

The main router was so old and outdated that it couldn't cope with packet sizes or the IP tables requirements. Which could have been solved which a cheap memory upgrade.

How this company stayed in business for so long was a complete mystery. The only reason they had customers is that the accounting was just as bad. Most customers were undercharged, and in a large number of cases, not being charged at all. Hundreds of dead domain names still being renewed each year, which should have been cancelled long ago, with no record of who they ever belonged to.

No, eight characters, some capital letters and numbers is not a good password policy

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

The problem is that STILL too many websites still encourage poor passwords and even limit the length of the password to a paltry 8 or 10 characters.

You want to know which is the best smartphone this season? Tbh, it's tricky to tell 'em apart

russmichaels

Year after year people throw away £600+ of their salary on a flimsy device that they use to argue with everyone on social media, look at web pages and play simple games like candy crush.

On top of that they then also need to buy a case to protect the flimsy phone because it is so thin.

And a battery charger because the battery doesn't even last a day if you actually us ethe device.

And a screen protector because the screens are so easy to scratch,

All of this can be done on a phone that costs under £200, I have purchased several Chinese phones that do everything and cost less than £100.

I would much rather have a chunky, rugged phone that I cana ctually hold properly, is shock proof, won't break in my pocket, a screen protector as standard, a battery that lasts several days.

British Airways' latest Total Inability To Support Upwardness of Planes* caused by Amadeus system outage

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

Nothing is 100% perfect, despite whatever you big headed know it alls think, and IT systems sometimes fail, even at the biggest companies, run by smarter people than you.

It is hardly like this happens all the time, in fact it is the first time I ever heard of such a failure.

US websites block netizens in Europe: Why are they ghosting EU? It's not you, it's GDPR

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

no they were not, this is been public knowledge for a long time, sites has been posting articles about it for a long time, bloggers have been blogging about it for a long time.

But in typical fashion, lazy companies stuck their heads in the sand and ignored the issue and left it until the minute to take action, so we all get a billion emails in the last couple of weeks about new privacy policies.

BT pushes ahead with plans to switch off telephone network

russmichaels

What this also means is that broadband goes down, so will your phone, so make sure you have credit on your mobile and a signal so you can call your provider to tell them its down.

Gmail is secure. Netflix is secure. Together they're a phishing threat

russmichaels

Re: Google claim this but are incorrect

I also have a gmail address with a DOT only because it was not available WITHOUT a dot, as it was taken by someone else.

So two gmail addresses belonging to 2 different people, the only difference is the dot.

Now I did get that gmail address quite a few years ago, so they must have changed this functionality since then, causing addresses with DOTS to just be an alias of the address without. In which case, hardly surprising that people have started getting other people's email.

russmichaels

If someone creates a netflix account or any account using a gmail address that is actually an alias of yours, then you are going to get the welcome email of the newly created account, which you would have to also completely disregard in order to fall for this. The person who created the account would never get that email because they do not own that email address.

Also doesn't netflix send out an account activation email to verify the email address?

User fired IT support company for a 'typo' that was actually a real word

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

I have fired a few over the years.

We had this one guy who was incredibly rude every time he called, and it got to the point that no member of staff wanted to speak with him anymore. So we told reception to refuse to put any calls through unless he sent us a written apology and agreed to stop being rude, and to simply hang up on him if he continued to be rude to them. He refused to apologise and continued being rude, so his number was blacklisted.

He was not a direct customer, but rather a web developer (who was still running sites on MSAccess no less) who managed several client accounts. We had to contact those clients and inform them of our decision to blacklist their web developer and that they would have to contact us directly.

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

russmichaels

amazing that this thing actually had a 3mhz processor but was so limited and rubbish. To think the C64, the best home computer of all time, only had a 1mhz processor, yet was a 1000 x better.

Bloke sues Microsoft: Give me $600m – or my copy of Windows 7 back

russmichaels

I understand it is frustrating for people when their PC updates and no longer works. But in this guys case I would say it is down to ASUS to have made sure their laptops were compatible with Windows 10.

And you do have the option to rollback if it doesn't work.

But what happens when the people who decide to keep using Windows 7 end up getting infected with malware or ransomware because their OS is no longer supported? As they did with XP.

They blame Microsoft for that as well.

Microsoft are simply trying to get everyone onto the same OS, so that it is easier to support everyone on a unified platform, and have fewer issues. Considering how many millions of devices run Windows it is literally impossible to cater for every scenario, every device, every piece of hardware.

Windows 10 does run on quite old hardware, I am running Windows 10 on several old Intel Core 2 systems.

My biggest qualm is Microsoft terrible support from useless incompetent support staff. Whenever I contact them, I usually end up giving them support and telling them how things work.

From the graaaaaave! WileyFox's Windows 10 phone delayed again

russmichaels

Wileyfox phones are good for cheap phones, I have bought my son 2 SWIFT devices now.

However the comments on customer service are true for any phone manufacturer I have used. Chinese phones have no customer service period.

I had an issue with my SWIFT and Wileyfox told me to install a new firmware which bricked the phone.

They then told me I had to send it to them to fix, which I did.

They sent it back with a broken screen. Which then resulted in me having to argue with them about them replacing it, they tried to charge me.

User worked with wrong app for two weeks, then complained to IT that data had gone missing

russmichaels

A tale of 2 sites

I had a similar story.

I had a client who for some bizarre had 2 copies of their site offshorepipe.co.uk and offshorepipe.com with different hosts.

The client kept making changes on the .co.uk site and then complaining to me that she couldn't see the changes because she was looking at the .com site. It took me some time to figure this out as I didn't originally know about the 2nd site, and she would keep telling me she was logging in at the .com site, when in fact she wasn't. It took a screen share to figure it out.

This was a recurring issue and happened every single time she updated the site, and each time I had to explain the cause of the problem and that the changes would only show up on the site she changed. I kept telling her that she did not need 2 copies of the site and to just get rid of one of them, and point both domains at the same site, but she never listened. Eventually, they went out of business.

UK government's war on e-cigs is over

russmichaels

Of course, all governments want to ban vaping because they do not make billions in taxes out of it like they do with cigarettes and alcohol. There is no other reason for them to be completely anti-vaping and try to stop it, but still allow smoking to be legal and kill millions of people per year.

Ubuntu 'weaponised' to cure NHS of its addiction to Microsoft Windows

russmichaels

A ridiculous nonsense click bait title and an article full of ignorance, probably on the part of NHS rather than the writer.

This would be a great solution if it was being properly managed and maintained going forward. But sadly history and common sense say otherwise.

Will moving to Linux same some money.

OK so they will not have to pay for Windows licenses, but as we all know from previous articles, most of the current expenditure came from having to pay Microsoft for extended support for Windows XP.

So they will save the ongoing license costs, but they then incur new costs for implementing and maintaining the new Linux systems and training everyone how to use them. So I think that saving will be lost in the first instance.

Remember that the average NHS employee is not going to be very computer literate, and even struggles with Windows, but when Windows problems occur, there might be someone more computer illiterate around who can help. Once they have moved to Linux, that is out of the windows, there will not be a single person who will know what to do with Linux, and we know this because Linux is used on less than 2% of desktops (servers do not apply here, so calm down fanboys), so every issue will require a call to tech support, which will also incur a cost.

Govt not keeping their IT systems up to date is a systematic problem, not just in the UK either. Moving to Linux is not going to miraculously change that. So unless they address the whole issue with maintaining systems and keeping them up to date, then they are still going to have the same issue. Sure they will have some added security through obscurity thanks to that <2% userbase, so won't have much malware to worry about. But once it becomes common knowledge that NHS is running on Linux, hackers and malware writers will likely make more efforts to target Linux, especially knowing that NHS are likely running an older version with known vulnerabilities.

Granted this will probably take years, by which point the NHS bigwigs will have a false sense of security and will probably have adopted the old "We don't need to worry, Linux doesn;t get malware and is unhackable" attitude, so the whole OS maintenance and updates plans and procedures will be even worse than they were with Windows, maybe even non-existent, especially since nobody is telling them "you must update, it is not safe, your OS is end of life".

Now we sit back and await the rantings form the Linux trolls who didn't read this properly and jumped to the conclusion that it was an attack on Linux rather than the govt's incompetence.

Break crypto to monitor jihadis in real time? Don't be ridiculous, say experts

russmichaels

Re: "The former policy wonk -

So you think any non-tech person is a fucking idiot?

Can you do the job of a doctor, dentist, cardiologist, optician etc? DO you know how to build houses, install central heating systems, do plumbing... the list goes on.

No? then I guess by your own logic, you must also be an idiot for not knowing how to do all the things that other people know how to do.

I am a techy as well, the difference is that I have respect for the jobs other people do, and do not arrogantly expect everyone else to be good with computers and technology.

TeamViewer: So sorry we blamed you after your PC was hacked

russmichaels

I would say "careless" was being polite.

If they were using their teamviewer password elsewhere then they are utter morons and should not be allowed to have remote access or be providing remote support to anyone. And the scary thing is that a lot of these people are so called it support people. My wife had a guy like that providing the support for her employer, she was more competent than he was. He used the same password for every system, for every client. And for the clients themselves. he set their passwords to be be the same as the username but with a uppercase first letter.

Any IT competent person knows that sites get hacked all the time, and this is why you do not use the same password twice.

There is no excuse for this kind of incompetence or lazyness these days with apps like LastPass or Dashlane to make it easy to deal with unique passwords.

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