Posts by FuzzyWuzzys 702 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Feb 2016
"Great! I personally use Ubuntu myself.
But at the present, I would NEVER install Linux - either Ubuntu or Mint on my Aunt Lucy's PC. Her old desktop could just not take the excitement of those interminable problem fixes via a list of arcane and lengthy commands.
YOU love Linux and so do your 3 or 4 geeky friends. And so do I."
HELLO?! HELLO?! Are there you are! I'm sorry to ask but I think 1995 wants its Linux references back!
I'm guessing the "plank" in question, accidentally loaded a config into a live box instead of a POC/dev/test box?
I can't begin to image the "white fear" ( the blood draining from your face ) as it suddenly dawned on them what they had done! "Hello love? Yes it's me, I'm going to be working late...assuming I still have a job at the end of the day!"
When are we going to stop ramming "programming" down kids throats? I tell you what kids need, it's more common sense training. It's the ability to logically problem solve, then on top of that programming and/or systems admin is a doddle. I've found that most people who struggle in IT, struggle because of a lack of ability to problem solve using common sense.
Classic example I see a lot of is making self-service password reset apps internally on intranets. Young and/or dopey people make interfaces that request free-entry username and password to perform a password reset, not having the nous to realise that someone will simply put "root" or "admin" in the username box!
Rather than simply ramming programming down kids throats, "You must learn the syntax to Python, Java or C#", how about we teach you how to problem solve why a browser can't connect to the internet. Teach them to logically check each step of the network chain, how to traceroute, check DNS, check the sodding cable is plugged in and not busted!! These are the basic life-long, core skills that will turn out sensible, intelligent young people ready to take on any task. Once you have these core life skills in place, you can layer on any technical skills you like and these kids would fly.
Stop with all the sexy "Our kids must learn IT so teach them how to code!" bullshit and get them thinking like most top quality IT people, using common sense and logical, natural problem solving abilities.
This is the annoying thing about the "security theatre", these agencies that don't need these details but governments demand they pass them on for security purposes but the travel agencies keep them for marketing. So now you have travel agencies that have no business storing these docs and governments, whose track record for security is less than stellar, losing all our details and then they all have the bloody nerve to tell us to be more careful with our personal info!!!
I agree, my understanding from my own H&S brainwashing sessions is that it's always about you AND the employer, you both have a duty to each other to ensure the work is carried out safely and ultimately you're both responsible to ensure that the correct surveys and precautions are in place, it's never you OR them.
My thoughts too. If this nasty piece of work and others that will no doubt come along, infect everyday devices then when average Joe Public gets pissed off that their new £6000 4K TV shuts down in the first week. If enough devices have to be returned, profits will be hit and then maybe we'll finally see the various manufacturers start to get some common sense when it comes to device security and stop trying to make everything easy at the expense of proper security.
...but you have to hand it to someone with the balls to try this and get away with it!
Just for the kiddies: NO! Stealing is wrong and these are very, very bad men who should be taken out back and have bullets put through their skulls. This is a worse than rape and they need to be taught to never do it again!
Get the rights you might like up front, then you don't have to ask to be "upgraded" to better privs later on!
If you work in backroom server tech circles this is the oldest developer trick in the book and usually the first trick you learn to say no to when you first start in backroom tech!
"...or marching down the street dressed as Nazis, carrying guns, and wearing swastikas."
Never been to a WW2 recreation event then? Plenty of people dressed as Japanese, US, British and German troop uniforms. That's just a much entertainment to people as a football match. You don't don the uniform of a genocidal master race without considering it carefully.
I appreciate this is money and companies will lose trade but as usual it was a group that ruined it for everyone. If the ad men had held back and made sure we weren't bombarded every 0.3 secs with ads on every website then maybe we'd have more sympathy. Instead they abused our trust and now they'll have to reap the rewards of what they've done, and sadly the collateral damage with be companies further down the chain who may lose out because of the stupid, shortsighted, greedy ad men.
Irrespective of whether you think Hollywood's output is shite, and I completely agree with you it is shite, it doesn't give you or anyone else the right to redistribute it. It's copyrighted material that creative people have made and therefore they deserve to be paid for their work. Granted most of the money goes right into the pockets of the fat cats who run Hollywood and the hard working people get a pittance but that's life in general.
So if you made your living writing code at home and selling licenses to companies to use the software, it's not making a fortune but it's enough to be comfortable. Now I tap into your wifi connection, I'm taking copies of each of your projects, putting them up on torrent sites or simply handing them over to anyone who might be able to make use of your software. I'm cutting off money that you make a living from, that's money that's topping up your pension, that's money that means your kids get a new phone for their birthday that year, that's money could mean you could get a nicer car and thus when you go to meet clients, means you stand a better chance of making more sales. Instead I'm giving your hard work away and cutting of some of the money that's yours. As people so rightly say, it's just copies it's not stealing, it doesn't really exist does it? No it doesn't but the consequences to you, your family and others in the industry are very real. You worked your arse off through college to make the grades, get the skills so you could run your own software business, through your own hard work and I'm preventing you from being able to run your business as well as it could be, I'm taking money away from you. You know what, I don't give a shit about how long it took you to code it, I couldn't a rat's arse if your kids starve, I've made a little cash selling your work and got the satisfaction of giving your hard work to someone else, other people can copy your ideas and recode them as theirs too, that's even funnier 'cos they might sell the same software cheaper than yours, now that is funny! You laughing now?
If you say it's all bullshit, then you're just a typical, greedy bastard who thinks "On Internet = Free stuff". I have no love for the MPAA but as someone who shoots a lot of photography and has to fight to sell images in a crowded marketplace, where people will rip off my images and sell them for their own gain, I fully understand how it feels. When someone takes the results of years of hard won skills and knowledge and just pisses all over it 'cos they've got no morals and no understanding of what it's like to be creative person who expects to be paid.
The problem is that there's no penalty for losing or buggering up our personal data for this government staff. Some minor civil servant in dusty Whitehall office loses a USB key with 25,000 IDs on it and all they'll get is possibly a harsh word from their direct manager, a manager who is probably 27 levels below the PM. When you know there's very little comeback if you break something you really don't give a monkey's about it.
They elected Ronald Reagan, they elected George Bush (Jr), they will elect Trump. Then when he turns out to be the Boris Johnson of US politics ( including suitable mop-top ) the Americans will stand about saying, "How the f**k did this happen?! How the hell did we not see this coming?!".
So they spend millions ( billions?! ) on systems that will sit at the bridge-heads of the internet where we connect and they syphon off tons of info about us but then they insist they don't know anything about us and we should prove who we say we are by way of ID cards!
First "server" I had to admin was an install of Concurrent DOS/386, supporting two Wyse dumb terminals. C/DOS would allow, as the name suggests, a DOS program to support multiple users, so you could have multiple users running a database app from a single machine, just a bog standard 386. This was back in the days before licensing was a huge issue and you simply bought one copy and used it, in this case it ran Sapphire's DataEase, where I cut my teeth on a mini version of SQL called D-SQL. The 386 PC in question had 4MB of memory and a 10MB HD that looked like it could be chained up and used to smack down walls! We ran a 3-way networked DB app for 2 years like that on that kit back in the late 1980's.
My mate and I very much enjoy the delights of the harder end of the muscial spectrum, the delights of Decapitated and Amon Amarth are firm favourites.
I well remember heading to Brixton one bright sunny Summer evening to see Slayer play. The dear Scientologists had a little table set up right outside Subway along the high street, selling their snake-oil books and tapes. Well when of the most often used subjects for heavy metal songs is preachers of any faith trying to brainwash people into believing their tripe and nonsense. I waited outside Subway for my mate to arrive and all the while I was there, a good 30 mins, I started to feel a little sorry for those Scientoligists as they looked absolutely terrified every time a group of metallers walked past, sneered or passed comment and walked into Subway, then sneered and passed more comments on the way back. When it came time to pack away their little table I've never seen anyone shift boxes of unsold tapes and books so fast!
The old adage, "Keep friends close but enemies closer.". If you know where the bad guys are, you can lean on them when you want a "favour". Trawl the database of whom they hauled in recently, offer them $500k, dropped charges on current rap, promise to be a good boys/girls in future and a free t-shirt to crack the phone.
"Last year, the president of the United States called me on my cellphone. And we discussed some issues. So if hackers were listening in, they would know that phone conversation. And that's immensely troubling."
FFS, if it's an issue of national importance and should remain private between you and one of the most important people in the western world, then get yer fat arse onto a plane/helicopter and meet them in person. Rather than pissing US tax money up the wall on titty-bars and having your garden landscaped, how about using it for something useful like a business trip, they must have a few grand to get you to somewhere to meet for a chat and then dump you off back home that afternoon?
Any email you send/receive from the company is the property of the company and therefore as an IT employee you're entitled to ensure the company's assets are being used in accordance company policy. Using company equipment for personal use is often allowed but within "reasonable use". In an ideal world you should report this email as abuse of company property and you should be able to remain anoymous as the problem should then be dealt with by the HR dept and the offender's manager as they see fit. It's not your job to pass moral judgements, just act within the bounds of company rules and policy.
Suppose the emails contained evidence of some crime that was later committed? In the financial world everyone, including IT staff, have to take mandatory, annual anti-money laundering training and certification. If you know about potential ML then you're bound by law to report it to the correct company officer else you risk a spell in clinky.
" "When done appropriately, the collection, storage, and sharing of personal information may enhance consumers' virtual reality experience, but we must ensure that Americans' very sensitive information is protected," Franken says in his letter. "
Yep, copied straight off "get-free-boiler-plate-legal-bullshit.com" but means diddley squat until the first hack occurs.
As the world gets smaller through the sharing of information, there are those who seek to take us back to medieval times where what you learned was either from your local cleric ( who usually only learned what he'd been taught in the seminary ) or word of mouth, "My brother, knew a bloke, who knew a women, who knew a bloke, who's uncle say he thinks he once saw a 4 headed, 2 bodied horse!!!".
So no more photos of public art from Sweden, which loony government wants to put up another law designed to stop us learning anything about other cultures and locations?
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