Posts by steviebuk

It's cool for Brit snoops to break the law, says secretive spy court. Just hold on while we pull off some legal jujitsu to let MI5 off the hook...

Re: 007 ... license to kill

No one rolls over for Spain but I am sure Scotland would roll over for American.

El Reg presents: Your one-step guide on where not to store electronic mail

Still an issue today

I still see this today. About 10 years ago saw someone using the recycle bin as another folder. They'd put sub folders within it. Nuts. Its why I always double check before I empty someone's bin.

'For those that have been spared the delights of Outlook and its ilk, the .pst file can normally be found lurking locally on a user's computer or network share, and isn't necessarily subject to the same size restrictions as an Exchange mailbox."

PST files shouldn't be stored on a network drive. Had an issue 2 years back of Outlook randomly freezing on a users laptop and wouldn't recover. Ran a trace when it did it with Process Monitor and there it was. Despite having full access to the network drive the pst file was on, outlook was stuck unable to connect to the path. File wasn't required anymore so I got rid of it but was also I confirmed my suspicions with MS site that pst files shouldn't be stored on network drives.

Boeing, Boeing, gone! CEO Muilenburg quits 'effective immediately'

And..

“operate a renewed commitment to full transparency, including effective and proactive communication with the FAA, other global regulators and its customers” ...maybe do some proper fucking testing.

Microsoft: Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, my PowerShell has gone RC

I really...

...need to stop being lazy and try and learn Powershell. I was looking back at the Commodore 64 the other day and thought "I want to finally learn Basic" :) why? What use will it be, I should really learn Powershell.

The only thing is sometimes the Powershell environment annoys me. Only just having discovered the & command in cmd so you can do

Gpresult /h a.html & a.html

Which runs the first command and then the 2nd. Couldn't do this in Powershell. Then someone pointed out you do

gpresult /h a.html; .\a.html

Which wasn't obvious to me considering Powershell had alias for other cmd commands

HPE goes on the warpath, attacks AWS over vendor lock-in

Re: What lunch?

But that fibre line into your building also provides you with your cloud service. So put a spade through that and your cloud access also goes down.

Capita unfurls new consulting arm. Hmm, what shall we call it?

Re: Sad to hear about....

Probably not. I believe the CEO this year gave lots of people pay rises. Lots of us object in the yearly AGM meeting but not everyone bothers to vote so their votes just get used as an agree.

Sad to hear about....

....national trust. Heard about that earlier so need to force myself not to renew next year in protest.

Patch now: Published Citrix applications leave networks of 'potentially 80,000' firms at risk from attackers

Is this by "breaking out"

Most of the Citrix setups aren't setup properly. So from a dialogue box, such as a save box, you can browse the local server, run cmd, then run IE or whatever other browser is installed. Then use their server to browse the Internet bypassing any local filtering. Also download all your exploits to that server from itself.

No one would leave a server so open I hear you say. Yes they would. A finance department were using a very small company to supply them with their finance app. With the main company we were at forcing a move to "cloud" for every department this small company didn't want to loose business so said they now had a "cloud" version of their app. They didn't really. It was just stuck on a server in one data centre. I said I wanted to test it before fully going live. They hadn't implemented 2fa, which they put on after my suggestion. Then once on the server it was easy to break out of the app, browse the server, run whatever you wanted and surf the net to your hearts content. They originally were gonna make it live in that state!

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro handsets will not ship with Google Mobile Services, Richard Yu confirms

Re: Maybe not such a bad thing

Because if you attempt to compete they'll either buy you out (no one is gonna reject several million to not have to worry about work again) or bury you in patient lawsuits. Shouldn't stop people trying though.

Fresh docs detail 10-year link between Geek Squad informers and Feds

Geek Squad should never be trusted...

...considering way back before Wininternals was purchased by Microsoft, Mark and Bryce released some extra tools of theirs under a license. Went to Geek Squad to show them, at Mark's and Bryce's own expense, the tools and gave them free training. Geek Squad said no thanks then continued to use the tools without a license anyway. So Mark and Bryce sued and won :)

https://sysinternals.d4rk4.ru/Blog/2006/04/why-winternals-sued-best-buy.html

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

Re: Question for the community

I guess true. If none of it was illegal then was none of their business unless of course the policy they sign when they join up states they shouldn't have it on company machines. If it was found on their laptops, that said CEO would of had them fired. You could also argue the point of going to HR was to cover yourself. You'd now seen it, he'd realise later that you'd seen it and panic and because no one has been told, blame you for putting it on there. So you're covering yourself before that happens by just mentioning it to HR "We had to copy files of the CEO's old machine. Just thought you might want to know there appears to be porn there".

But you could also just argue "As we were in the folder ready to move it, thumbnails were on so it was impossible to not see the files. Besides. We had to make sure we'd got everything the CEO wanted so obviously had to check the folders in case he'd saved files in other areas of the drive you normally wouldn't save too".

It's a difficult one. Very difficult as you could then give the same defence to Gary Glitter who took his PC in to repair at PC World. At which point they obviously had a look through his files and then found the shit they did and rightly reported him. Could he argue "Why were you looking through my files in the first place?"

IBM tailors Swift relationship after 'review of open source priorities'

Re: IBM's specialty

Not if you're stuck with cocks hiring other cocks to carry on the cockness. A place I worked at used to have cocks but luckily for them they hired a CEO who isn't a cock and they began to remove all the old cocks to replace them with ones that weren't cocks. So the culture changed for the better. There were actual non cocks over the years before that and they stayed, they were just drowned out over the previous years by the main cocks so couldn't steer the company away from that attitude until the new CEO arrived.

I suspect IBM has clearly, never managed to get rid of all the main cockness.

Chinese e-commerce site LightInTheBox.com bared 1.3TB of server logs, user data and more

Re: Just wonderful

鼓勵別人

Apparently.

Amazon Germany faces Christmas strikes from elf stackers, packers and dispatchers

Re: Amazon is Evil

Not talking about stopping using capitalism, was saying it is possible to stop using Amazon. Shop elsewhere and don't using their streaming service would be two areas. But you'd need millions of people to agree to do it for it to have an effect.

Re: Amazon is Evil

True. As much as we hate them, the only way to stop them is to stop using them. The problem is, this Christmas I was sat on the bog ordering stuff via Amazon as it's quick and easy, but still dislike them.

Buzz kill: Crook, 73, conned investors into shoveling millions into geek-friendly caffeine-loaded chocs that didn't exist. Now he's in jail

Sounds like...

...quite a lot of "Startups" on Kickstarter

GlaxoSmithKline ditches IR35 contractors: Go PAYE or go home

Sod ya then...

...if only I'd had the confidence to say that years ago. Anyway. That's what these contractors should say, if they can afford it, know they are skilled enough to easily get work elsewhere then I'd up and leave and let Glaxo be stuck in the lurch when they realise all their knowledgeable contractors have left. Because of their bullshit "Be perm or else" threat.

Ever wonder how hackers could possibly pwn power plants? Here are 54 Siemens bugs that could explain things

Difficult..

"So far, Siemens says it has only been able to patch three of the bugs. Siemens recommends administrators lock down the server from any sort of external network access."

....with certain software vendors pushing more and more of their stuff to the cloud.

Why is the printer spouting nonsense... and who on earth tried to wire this plug?

Re: It's a four lettered word!

That's probably just what they said to make it seem like they didn't need you. That's why I got out of the NHS because the IT culture in the NHS is nasty. Too much back stabbing, ignoring contractors who make sensible suggestions like "Why don't we get our own hard drive crusher so we can do them ourselves. Then we can guarantee no drives will go walk about". I was ignored, then a few years later, after I'd departed, a certain trust struggled to find someone to crush their drives for them in the timescale they wanted. So gave those drives to a "small company" that claimed they would (not vetted). That company sold the drives on EBay without wiping. Someone bought them and reported it to the papers. That trust got hit with a MASSIVE fine. I returned several years later to find "the importance of this incident" and "We now have our own hard drive crusher". The knobs.

And the other time I pointed out the flaw in the laptop encryption. I kept a laptop aside that wasn't on very often. When the encryption would lock me out of another laptop for various reasons, I'd boot the other laptop up where my encryption account wasn't locked. That would then unlock the machine I'd just locked. I informed them several times "It's working as intended. It's actually a feature". Oh fuck off then if you're going to continue to ignore me because "I'm a lowly contractor/temp". I left, and a few months later someone more senior reported the issue and oh look suddenly it "Was an issue. The laptops were set to win over the server. We've now changed this so the server wins over the laptops".

Fucking knobs. Can't stand NHS IT but then I've been unfortunate to be in two trusts with unfriendly engineers (they weren't all bad mind you). And one thing you notice when in the NHS is how they piss so much money away in different departments on specialist contractors and so much middle management. One trust I was in there was so much "Jobs for the boys" play going around it was awful. I'm sure if an investigation had been put in place during those years, some charges would of been bought on some of them.

Sorry, went on a rant :)

Re: Not mains but wiring just the same

Anyone got a photo of a token ring cable and a network socket? I'm genuinely curious as having hard time finding it on Google. I wasn't into computers back when those were being used. And in college with had 10 based T and I was mainly interested in programming back then (was shit at it but that's another story) so never got into the networking side.

Revealed: NHS England bosses meet with tech and pharmaceutical giants to discuss price list of millions of Brits' medical data

Where's my money

If you're selling my data, I want a cut of the profits the private companies will make from it.

Although all void anyway, now Boris is free to selling the NHS off bit by bit to the great Orange Knob over the pond.

Post Office coughs £57.75m to settle wonky Horizon IT system case

She took over chair of Imperial College Healthcare Trust, apparently.

Another senior Gov.UK bod makes a dash from public sector, falls into AWS's arms

Re: Why?

It will also be their "links" to old "friends" who still work for public sector and can make a "tender" process work in their favour. That's what I think, not saying its fact though but a possibility.

Apple sues iPhone CPU design ace after he quits to run data-center chip upstart Nuvia

Don't know why the downvotes as you may have a point. Although I hate Apple, and appears shit what they are doing. It feels like "What?! You're leaving? But we need you, you can't leave. If you do, we'll DESTROY YOU".

However, back when Apple started due to the magic that is Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs being the knob he was said something along the lines of (having read Steve Wozniak's book, although might have been also mentioned in Steve Jobs book) "Lets start up a company with the computer you've built." But Wozniak pointed out to him, that Wozniak had to ask HP first, because it was while at HP, on HP's hours that he'd been working on it and designing it so he had to legally ask them if they wanted it first. They had no interest so Apple was born.

Apple need to be stopped in trying to prevent high profile staff into ever working again in the same field, but if he was creating his company during work hours at Apple and they can prove it, then he might be a bit fucked. Equally, if he's deleted all data from devices and Apple "restores" the data and we all find out, they'll be fucking themselves over slightly (appears no matter what shit Apple do, the followers will ignore) because the amount of phones, tablets that die and Apple claim "The data is gone, you can't restore it", then Jessa Jones from iPad Rehab proves they are talking bollocks.

Really can't stand Apple or at least its culture.

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

Re: Andrew, the pedo prince?

But the reg is in the UK so might be different.

Did they get to choose the jury?

Like we see in American court room dramas and film? If so, how broken is that system. He had enough money he could ask him lawyers do go through the process and no doubt they'll have picked all the jury members that were biased. No one should be able to choose their jury members.

What were the jury thinking...

...I really would love to know. The evidence was insanely good for a guilty verdict. I wonder if it was like the time I did jury service in the UK. Deciding someones future. Should he be given prison time or not? Should he really be in a prison hospital instead? Lets discuss. No. One cunt said "He's guilty, that's it, I want to go home early". Should really have reported that inconsiderate cunt. Lets hope he's never had jury service again.

They say its a lottery, wish I'd won the lottery that often. Got called up a 2nd time a few years later but got out of it.

What!!?!?

My faith in humanity isn't restored.

How the fuck did they not find him guilty! Jesus. Although now with the fallout lots on Twitter are calling Musk what he called the cave diver. And South Africans are calling bullshit that its a South African insult.

Two can play that game: China orders ban on US computers and software

Ah the great orange one...

....causes lots of issues. How comes he hasn't banned iPhones yet? Considering they are all built in China. For all anyone knows the Chinese could be controlling the factory so they can implant their own little spy chips. Obviously telling management at the factory, if they so much as whisper what is happening to Apple, they'll disappear from the factory never to return.

I have no evidence of this but if the tit orange knob thinks Chinese kit is so risky, it is curious that he isn't targeting kit of a massively popular American company, Apple, having its kit made in China. All because Chinese labour is cheaper so they can make a massive return on their massive markup.

I wonder if when Trump leaves office, he'll be offered work at a donut shaped office called Apple? Hmmm.

Pentagon's $10bn JEDI decision 'risky for the country and democracy,' says AWS CEO Jassy

Only the big players can afford to sue

So I'm assume AWS put a lot of money in the tender process so now wants it back, so suing is its way of getting it back. But small companies in a tender process just have to accept they lost and move on.

Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup

A good example...

... to use to explain why IoT stuff is bollocks. "Its just because you hate hipsters and their hipster ideas with no real thought for what could go wrong". Its not just that. Its this also:

"After six uneventful months, things started to go sour. On 5 October, the company's servers were switched off without warning. This rendered all previously sold switches and sockets useless."

I'll give you my Windows 7 installation when you pry it from my cold, dead hands (and other tales)

Re: Refined OS or chocolate teapot?

I agree but there are some things I like in Windows 10 that Windows 7 misses. Native ISO support is one of them. I know you can get imgburn etc for Windows 7 but just having it built into Windows 10 makes it easier.

Hating Click to Run Office solutions though. When there is an update you have no control, can't control it with WSUS. So it's update or don't update. And if MS role out a broken Click to Run update then you're fucked and have to wait for enough people to moan for them to role out a patch. A patch you can't afford as it's not part of WSUS.

The dicks.

We've found it... the last shred of human decency in an IT director – all for a poxy Unix engineer

Very rare

To find managers like that. Our Head of is just like that, she's great. It makes you want to come into work every day. And are direct manager is just as good.

When will managers learn, if you treat people normally, they'll want to actually come into work every day. If you treat them like shit, they'll be off "sick" more than in the office, giving you even more of a headache finding people to cover.

Irish eyes aren't smiling after govt blows €1m on mega-printer too big for parliament's doors

That's what I was thinking. Although they've cocked up there might be some sense to it, but I'm not sure you need a printer that fucking big for what I'm thinking. I'm thinking they are either bringing all their printing in house, which is fine and a good idea. But you need to pay your staff more money if they are going to use it as although you may considering it a cost saving, you're now forcing your work staff into essentially doing more work.

Bringing all the printing in house isn't just a good idea, but you can now sell your services as a "printers". All the election ballot papers can be printed there and you can then advertise yourselves as being the best "printers" for all other councils in the area. I suspect they might be considering starting up their own reprographics service.

Take a Big Blue cheque and go: IBM settles 281 UK age discrim cases

confidential terms

So if there was no wrong doing and you have nothing to hide then why have you forced them into "confidential terms".

Something to hide?

After 10 years, Google Cloud Print will finally be out of beta... straight into ad giant's graveyard

The problems with cloud

"We've decided not enough of you use our service so we're canning it. Fuck you that do." At least with my copy of A-Train from the 90s (loved, loved, loved that game) I can still run it in DosBox as it doesn't require any bullshit cloud services or server.

Its why Google Stadia is such a shit idea. Once the service becomes old hat, you'll loose all those games. At least I can still hook my old Mega Drive up and play those old 90s classics and the Mega CD

Totally Sardonic Bank: Well, it must be, to have a TITSUP* the same week as THAT report

No

You clearly, fucking haven't.

"TSB CEO Richard Meddings apologised and he insisted the bank had learned from its mistakes."

You wanted flying cars and colony worlds. Instead, IKEA furniture-building-ish AI robots

I don't understand

IKEA guides are as good as Lego. Quite easy to follow.

Mysterious IT snafu at British Airways causes bunch of inbound flight delays and cancellations

Maybe

John McClane was involved.

A short note to say I'm off: Vulture taps claws on Reg keyboard for last time

Good luck

In the new job

We lose money on repairs, sobs penniless Apple, even though we charge y'all a fortune

Makes me angry

That people still love them and more angry that congress will end up believing all their bullshit. Considering Right To Repair appears to have struggled to get pasted in a lot of states means someone, somewhere must be doing some hard lobbying and the fuck whits are fulling for the bullshit.

"It goes on: “Repairs performed by untrained technicians might not follow proper safety and repair procedures and could result in improper function, product quality issues or safety events. Additionally, repairs that do not properly replace screws or cowlings might leave behind loose parts that could damage a component such as the battery, causing overheating or resulting in injury.”"

And Louis Rossman and Jessa Jones have proved that argument to be bullshit time and time again. With the "Genius Bar" fucking repairs up.

I call bullshit

When you're charging a fortune for repairs how can you possibly be losing money. When independent, legit, using legit dona parts shops can make money from it. You're clearly bullshitting Apple so you can get right to repair block.

Smarmy arseholes.

Questions hang over Gatwick Airport after low level drone near-miss report

Re: Drones

A farting as that's surely chemical warfare.

Video-editing upstart bares users' raunchy flicks to world+dog via leaky AWS bucket

Because hipsters know best

"According to VPN Mentor, VEED ignored attempts in mid-October to alert them to the breach"

Probably why they ignored it. Why listen to sense when we're hipster and unless you agree to our startup plan, we don't want to listen to you.

That's the general way I see hipsters. I've seen a few over the years that were just like that, follow their "plan" and never question their "plan" or be made redundant.

Interpol: Strong encryption helps online predators. Build backdoors

Re: So, now it's back to Think Of The Children

They use the kiddie porn angle as a poor argument weapon. Because no one wants to be associated with kiddie porn they are hoping people won't fight it. Because they hope people will be thinking "I totally disagree with the backdoor encryption idea but I can't been seen to fight them over it as people might then point at me and claim you must support kiddie porn then if you are against the backdoor idea" which of course is bollocks.

Second time lucky: Sweden drops Julian Assange rape investigation

That won't happen

"It is the US that must now be persuaded to drop its unfair and dangerous pursuit of Assange."

They'll never give up because they have to pretend they are all powerful and never learn from past mistakes. Took them.years to admit defeat in Vietnam. Years to realise they shouldn't of been in the Korean war and despite past history showing you can't control Afghan, they tried to do so and again got shown why you can't.

Seem to always win in the movies though.

Iran kills the internet for its people's own good as riots grip the Middle Eastern nation

Re: Connection from fuel prices to Primate Strange.

"Increasing the price of fuel gives people a financial incentive to reduce distance travelled or to travel in a more efficient vehicle."

Spoken/written like a politician. Ignoring the fact a lot of people are stuck in dead end jobs that just about pay minimum wage. Because of this they are still forced to drive the £250 shit box that was all they could afford, for the job that requires a car. They'd love an electric vehicle (while they can still charge them without massive queues at stations due to how long they take to charge) but couldn't possibly afford one. Not only that, when living in a council estate there are two issues. The fact you can't dangle a power lead out of your top floor flat all the way down to charge the car and the fact there are, to put it bluntly, knuckle headed cunts that live in said block who'll either try to nick the electric car or smash it up just because its not theirs & because they can. And you have the politicians or reg readers saying "Just put the price of petrol up. It will force the poor to abandon their car they can't afford to abandon or force them into getting an electric vehicle" when in fact it will just force them into more poverty because they'll be forced to pay the higher price in petrol due to having no other way out. The only people that can afford that electrical car switch are the ones already with money and now they'll have even more money to wave in our face.

Use the courts, Jeff: Amazon to contest Microsoft scooping $10bn JEDI contract

Oracle would be shit I think but would be funny.

Labour: Free British broadband for country if we win general election

So no more CCTV then

"It will also prevent the use of digital infrastructure for surveillance"

20% of UK businesses would rather axe their contractors than deal with IR35 – survey

Re: Third Type

There's a 4th type. That enjoys the job, enjoys the people, is good, wants to stay but cause of bullshit politics gets pushed around for 7 years contracting in the same role despite asking for a perm role. Then suddenly gets dropped due to more bollocks politics. And in all those years never got these high contractor wages people talk about.

Yes I was stupid for staying but when you like the place and people its very difficult to start all over again elsewhere.

Now a perm somewhere else and treated a lot fucking better.