Posts by Jabberwocky

Beware the fresh Windows XP install: Failure awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth

Rodent infested XT

Going back to the early 90s a client brough his shiny XT around complaining that the 5 1/4 inch floppy drive had stopped working.

Went through all the usual - check floppy drive controller properly seated (yes young fella, those were the days when floppy drives had their own separate controllers on their own expansion cards), made sure that the data and power cables were properly seated, replaced the floppy controller card. Still nothing.

Eventually I removed the drive only to discover that there was a rodent's nest under the 5 1/4 inch drive (fortunately vacant at the time), and the little critter had been chewing on the ribbon cable going to the drive head. I managed to find another faulty drive with a good head and cable and swapped them over, and away it went!

But how did the rodent get inside? Well that would be due to one of my pet hates: missing expansion card blanking plate... always fit blanking plates!

Outages batter UK's Virgin Media into wee hours as broadband failures spike 77% globally

I'm also paying for 500Mb "Business" service, but I seldom get much more than 200Mb. According to Virgin, that's becasue I have a multi-static IP, and if I could measure and aggregate all 5 IPs simultaneously then I would get my 500Mb.

However, sometimes I get over 500Mb and other times under 200Mb... on 1 IP... even with nothing else physically connected.

I smell BS...

Oz watchdog claims Samsung's leak-proof phones ad campaign doesn't hold water

S8 motorbike SatNav

I use my S8 on my motorbike as a SatNav/Music source/Mobile phone coupled to a Bluetooth headset fitted to my helmet.

I purchased a machined aluminium bracket for it, which I bolted behind the windscreen of my faring, so it's sheilded from the worst of the driven rain, but it can still get soaked in a downpour.

So far so good on the waterproof front, and it does a great job of all three functions.

'90s hacker collective man turned infosec VIP: Internet security hasn't improved in 20 years

9,600 baud? Luxury!

Looking at the nostalgia over speeds like 56k, 28k and even 9,600, I have my own nostalgic moment remembering back to the early 80's when I bought my first modem for my Commodore 64 to connect to the South African version of Prestel called BelTel which was barely more than text with colours.

A mini version of the Internet. We did our banking over that and sent electronic messages all over the place as well as connecting to various BBS - I was even a Sysop on one for a while.

The speed of my modem? Split-speed 75/300! I could type faster than the uplink.

As mentioned, we did all our personal and business banking over that, with never a thought of security, and never any reports of any miscreants stealing data or funds either.

*Sigh* the good old days!

'Windows 10 destroyed our data!' Microsoft hauled into US court

Windows 10 updated without consent

One of my less affluent clients has a workstation as a basic file server. This workstation is headless and I am the only person who even knows how to login to it, never mind the only person who has the password to login to it.

It was built with Windows 7 so imagine my surprise when I logged into it one day and discovered that it was running Windows 10!

There is absolutely no question that nobody authorised this upgrade. It was set to update automatically as many months often go by without me logging into it, but I certainly did not even see the upgrade nag screen on that particular PC.

Several of my other clients claimed that Windows 10 had installed itself, and up till that point I didn't believe them...