Posts by SWCD

Hello Slackware, our old friend: Veteran Linux distribution releases version 15.0 at last

Re: my first distro

I'm pretty sure my "first time" involved a Computer Shopper CD, but maybe it was downloaded. I know I had Internet access 25yrs ago. It probably wasn't anything Linux-y I was downloading at the time, but I'll pretend it was to keep on-topic.

Huge download, pay per minute Internet access (pre-0800), was going at least 12hrs then dropped. The phone then rang saying my aunty had been trying to call but the line had been engaged so she thought there was a fault. She'd rang 100 for the operator (are those guys still around?) who must've done some test on the line causing the drop, then rang through.

A costly session with zero at the end of it. I'm still bitter now.

Good work...

...Pat and team. Slackware was the first distro I used around 25yrs ago and still what I use on my own kit. At customer sites have had to install other flavours for various reasons over the years, but I stick with Slack. A now very raggy penguin still sits on my monitor too, still smoking his pipe.

Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram deplatform themselves: Services down globally

Re: WTF

You'll only hear MILLIONS and BILLIONS being used when the subject is number of active members.

Guntrader breach perp: I don't think it's a crime to dump 111k people's details online in Google Earth format

Re: denying their actions amounted to a criminal offence

Was only a few months ago the musket was weapon of choice for the bloke on Jersey warning off the French boats. If they're adequate for national security, they'll be fine for the odd random threat.

Can't get that printer to work? It's not you. It's that sodding cablin.... oh beautiful job with that cabling, boss

Re: Time was...

Couldn't you just order it from Amazon?

Synology to enforce use of validated disks in enterprise NAS boxes. And guess what? Only its own disks exceed 4TB

Re: very unfortunate move,

Stoneshop is correct, overunder, however I don't see this as being any different to having physical access to a PC/server etc - pop drive out, or boot in single user mode/via "live CD" etc.. all is there for the taking.

In my job it's the done thing now to get Bitlocker up and running in case a laptop goes walkies, but I'd imagine the majority of machines are unencrypted with the users thinking their password is enough.

Same with a Synology box - can't speak for others - but to make it not so, there's encryption on there too. If you've sensitive stuff just switch it on. Some limitations come into play re: filenames but using it will ensure no-one gets access by working around DSM.

Family wrongly accused of uploading pedo material to Facebook – after US-EU date confusion in IP address log

Re: Though that one is easier to fix

Tranzatlantic, surely? :-)

UK Home Office seeks suppliers: £25m up for grabs to build database to keep track of crimelords' ill-gotten gains

No guarantee..

From my experience in SME's nowadays, there's not a massive amount of difference between ensuring availability of Windows/.NET, or whatever browser a "cloud" provider chose to use.

One business needs to use Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox. Then of course the FD has a MacBook. No IE, or dual-booting, or.... :-( Just browser-neutral nowadays would be nice.

Smoke on the Tyne: Blaze at BT exchange causes major outages across North East England

Re: A&A

Spot on, same here! Can't use them at home any more (they don't supply FTTPoD), but still have some customers on there so get their updates via them. Twas indeed A&A who'd updated me before anyone else had a clue what was going on.

Nominet shakes up system for expiring .uk domains, just happens to choose one that will make it £millions. Again

Re: From the 'consultation'

"Brilliant, so if you forget to renew your domain you'll be blocked from purchasing it to make sure the squatters have a chance to bid for it."

Well, not quite...

Once you’ve gone over your expiry date, you’ll still have time to renew your domain before it gets cancelled, so there’s no need to panic. But if we don’t receive a renewal request within 30 days of the expiry date, we’ll suspend the domain name. This means all services that use that domain name, such as your website and email, will stop working. We’ll send you a suspension warning seven days before this happens, and will also send you a suspension notice when it takes place, unless your registrar has opted you out of receiving these. It’s still possible to renew your domain during this time. When your domain has been suspended for 60 days without being renewed, we’ll schedule it for cancellation. We’ll send you one final reminder to renew your domain 83 days after the expiry date. As this is just seven days before your domain is scheduled for cancellation, you’ll have to act quickly if you wish to renew it at this last stage.

After banning Chinese comms bogeyman, UK asks: Huawei in this mess? It was a failure of capitalism, MPs told

Re: Obvious

What percentage of all that is done for British owned companies, if you have the figures?

Rip and replace is such a long Huawei to go, UK telcos plead, citing 'blackouts' and 'billion pound' costs: Are Vodafone and BT playing 'Project Fear'?

Sex Change

"Andrea Dona, head of networks at Vodafone UK.... She said Vodafone would...."

Blimey, come on Register, Andrea Dona is a bloke.

Smartphone shipments plummet in Q1 as users, er, lock down their spending

I genuinely don't think many have thought that far ahead from what I hear from people I speak to and the shite I consume on Facebook. A majority are still happy to be at home and want more of it, mention money, it doesn't seem to have registered it'll all need clawing back.

At least in my pool of contacts, I think the reason is simply phones have reached the peak of what they can offer. People can do everything they need to, and they can do it SIM-free. My current phone from EE is unlimited minutes/text/data for £28 a month (ex-VAT). Another is about £14 for unlimited minutes/texts and about 20GB of data. A phone that does everything Joe Public wants to do is on eBay for less than a hundred quid. Gone are the days people are willing to sign up for 3yrs and pay £60 a month.

Re: Or

The 10-15 people in my immediate/close family wouldn't have a clue what 5G is or what came before it; two of them I've shown how to use WhatsApp to in the last month so they can send photos back and forth. My family can't be that dissimilar to everyone elses? I work in the tech field and am into year 25 of owning a mobile, and I've no idea without looking what the max speed is of 4G vs 5G. All I know is, I can hotspot my phone to my laptop when needed, I can HDMI or mirror it to hotel TV's, and I can watch Netflix/YouTube unhindered. That's on top of the usual phone calls and emails.

Point being, I think you overestimate the draw of 5G?

Academics demand answers from NHS over potential data timebomb ticking inside new UK contact-tracing app

What could go wrong

Look, this is the government, not some shonky ham-fisted private outfit. The quicker the database is online the better.

It could issue each user with a UID, like a number plate for a human. Then, via a search form, government approved personnel could query said database, and look for locations of where each user had been, and how close they'd been to anyone else. For security, it could be hosted on a really high IP address where no-one would ever look, it wouldn't even have to have a URL pointing at it. Sheffield council would be game to trial it I'd bet.

Why should the UK pensions watchdog be able to spy on your internet activities? Same reason as the Environment Agency and many more

Honestly, you're too kind to the general public.

In the house a bit more than I am of late, so with a burner Facebook account I started flicking through what was there. Facebook is overflowing with idiots unable to think logically, and who sweep each other along in emotional bursts of "Nothing to fear, nothing to hide".. Or "What do you mean we shouldn't be locked down indefinitely, are you trying to kill your own granny/mother/sister/cousin".

The level of intelligence/ability to think sinks to the lowest common denominator - it definitely isn't the other way around!

Re: Sunset clauses and jury oversight are needed.

Installing Windows the other day, after I'd set my "super memorable password" (cringe), I chuckled when the girl helping out said if I put my wireless key in I'd get my cat videos.

I promptly pressed "Yes" to get to them that bit quicker (God knows what I was agreeing to, I doubt anything important, I've got nothing to hide anyway so I've got nothing to fear).

'Non-commercial use only'? Oopsie. You can't get much more commercial than a huge digital billboard over Piccadilly

Re: Free for non-commercial use?

Try RealVNC's offering.

For one person, £150 (pretty sure that's inc VAT) to be able to connect to remote machines on demand.. The usual ask remote party to download client, supply them a 9 digit number... Up to three concurrent sessions allowed... You can "elevate" the session when required to which the user must confirm the other end, but I'm just in the habit of doing it immediately after connection just in case.

Device access for unattended dial-in to to server or whatever is about £30 a year.

Billionaires showered with wealth as experts say global economy set for long and deep recession

"And now we all know why governments around the world have devestated the economies. Welcome to perpetual severe austerity and exponential income inequality"

Certainly, if it wasn't the intention this time around, a lot of people will have noticed how we've meekly hidden ourselves away, begged for more even, and aren't in the slightest concerned about long term pain. The "financial crisis" emptied our pockets but created a wee bit of hate towards banks and governments. A pandemic every decade or so... hmmm... they don't seem to mind that. Chuck some of their wages at them for a month, do it in the nice weather... Bread and circuses.

Australia to make Google and Facebook disclose ranking algorithms and pay for local content

Huh

In one breath, praise for the Mail Online.. In another you can't wait for the end of clickbait journalism? That's what the Mail Online excels at, along with it's daughter, Metro.

Oh Hell. Remember the glory days of Demon Internet? Well, now would be a good time to pick a new email address

Re: Sad to see it go

P&P will have moved on since those days as well. Everything back then was "Please allow up to 28 days for delivery". Now if the delivery window text message is 28 minutes out we get in a fuss. How times change :-)

Re: Sad to see it go

Don't suppose you've any of those 1.7GB hard drives still in stock?

Bargain at £155+VAT, and I'm in dire need of an upgrade!

Switchzilla? More like Ditch-your-staff-zilla: Cisco back at the layoffs as revenues shrink

Can't stand them..

I dare say their fancy kit is required in certain places.

From a wee guy's perspective though, we put a load of their Meraki stuff into schools (despite their licensing costs being sky-high; the schools weren't keen on using names they hadn't heard of incase the LA frowned on it, or wouldn't support it). They'd happily take the sales until one day the carpet was whipped out from under us, either we'd have to buy from a bigger seller (losing a lot of margin), or we'd have to do some training to become "authorised". In other words, "This Meraki stuff is off the ground now, thanks for the help, now naff off".

So, Ubiquiti all the way now. An AP is the same cost as a year of license from Cisco. The number of old Meraki AP's on eBay continues to increase as others realise same - it's overpriced and Cisco can go screw themselves.

Bada Bing, bada bork: Windows 10 is not happy, and Microsoft's search engine has something to do with it

Re: Pfft...

Almost correct, don't forget:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths

The BlackBerry in your junk drawer is now a collectors' item: TCL says no more new keyboard-clad phones

Re: No comment...

"No comment" is half their problem.

I remember having had my KeyOne a while, thinking I wonder when they might release a Two. Looked online, it'd been out about a month.

Great advertising! :-/

Key2..

..has a dual-SIM version.

Too big, too big!

Fxtec Pro 1.. Unihertz Titan..

Cosmo Communicator..

1 and 3 - far too big, folding/flipping things, too much work to pull out and just fire off a quick message on.. Necessary as well (I'd imagine) to use two hands.

2 - the Titan - have one here after supporting it on Kickstarter. Man, it's HUGE, and the thing weighs a ton. Worst thing about it is the keyboard layout; Shift above the keyboard, making it difficult to press at the same time as a key underneath it.

The BlackBerry keyboard was perfect.. The form factor the same as the majority of other phones :-(

I'm stunned they didn't take off again to be honest. Everyone who ever asked about mine got same "Well, I get sick of making mistakes on touch-screens, pressing DELETE DELETE DELETE" etc.. They'd knowingly nod acknowledging it as a problem. Then they go buy another touch screen :-\

Go on, eat your fibre, new build contractors. It's free! OpenReach lowers limit for free FTTP connections

Re: Wow, what a pain

Quite correct of course.

Mind, my VDSL provider managed all that for £30/m, which included the OR charge for the bare line.

And my current FTTPoD provider charged less for the install, less monthly, and only a 1yr contract.

In other news.. Shop around for your bread.

Re: Wow, what a pain

OpenReach definitely publish prices. I remember having a flick through them before ordering my fibre product. Was surprised at the sheer amount of profit one outfit wanted from me, charging literally thousands over the OpenReach cost.. And wanted to hold me to a 3yr contract when OpenReach's was 1yr!

https://www.openreach.co.uk/fodpricing

They could do it over poles of course, as my FTTPoD.

No chance of it being dug up, but there's a pair of trainers hanging over mine about 100m away :-\

UK Home Office opens AWS cash firehose even wider with £100m public cloud services deal

Re: Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

"...sensitive data or certain government functions is that their data has to be retained on servers hosted in a domestic DC."

Of course, but the whole lot could still be switched off from the US? It may not be a new situation, but increasing reliance on companies outside of our control surely can't be wise? I suppose there's the special relationship though so it won't ever be an issue :-\

Re: Should be hosted in the UK by a UK organisation

Added benefit... The US can't switch the lot off.

I mean honestly, a country putting their critical data in the hands of a company from another country...?

Have we lost the plot or what?

Why is a 22GB database containing 56 million US folks' personal details sitting on the open internet using a Chinese IP address? Seriously, why?

Re: CheckMate

Happy to, but can't help imagine it'll get to the point where someone with deep pockets will have a lawyer arguing something like -

"It's true X data was stolen, BUT, there's some very similar datasets out there already! Yes, the baddies got name/address info from us, but that was already public knowledge! All they got from us in addition to that was the amout of their last phone bill. That's hardly private information!"

Re: CheckMate

"Companies just won’t start taking privacy, safety and security seriously unless there are _serious_ consequences when they fcuck up badly enough."

Hee hee, they're in China! :-D Different if they were in the UK of course. Here they'd be fined an astronomical amount, then close the business to avoid paying the fine... Meanwhile, the data is out there anyway.. Don't waste the time worrying about it, and give up the shredder.. They're so 1990's.. No-one's going to root around your bin for papers when all your info is online. Free up that hour every-other-Sunday for something more productive.

Accept that your personal details are out there...

...and hope that intimate details DON'T get out there!

Get used to someone knowing your name, address, DOB, etc.

...and hope that Red Tube et al are never broken into :-\

Re: late capitalists

"....routine testing of cosmetics etc on animals was a legitimate part of their business operations?...."

The cosmetics MAY have stopped, the etc almost certainly hasn't - to the tune of millions of operations per year in the UK. It's likely animals are abused just as much as they ever were just <whisper>folk know to keep it quiet now!</whisper>.

Windows 7 and Server 2008 end of support: What will change on 14 January?

"Windows 10 doesn't force it if you change the options..."

Hee hee. Have you actually used Windows 10? This will stop your restarts, anyone who's had their machine reset through the night and lost a load of stuff :-(

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]

"AlwaysAutoRebootAtScheduledTime"=dword:00000000

"AUOptions"=dword:00000002

"NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings]

"UxOption"=dword:00000002

AND!!

Task Scheduler.. Task Scheduler Library.. Microsoft.. Windows.. UpdateOchestrator.. Disable the REBOOT task..To stop Windows re-enabling it, modify the security on...

C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Reboot

.That'll do the trick! :-)

Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways

Poor Windows 10 lad, it gets a bad press.

I can't remember a single time this year my install has crashed though.

Denial of service kingpin hit with 13 months denial of freedom and a massive bill to pay

Re: Protest via DDoS ?

"They earned less than 50p an attack?"

True, but Visa/Mastercard earn less on some card transactions and they seem to do okay. Earnings per attack aren't relevant, nor is someone's salary for 1 minute. It's what you walk away with at the end. And if that sort of wonga is there for the taking, it'll get a lot of folk interested.

Re: Protest via DDoS ?

"DDoS is practically only used by pathetic losers who, not being able to handle real life....."

We can demean all we want. But in this case, they raked in £426k in a couple of years. Divide by two, and again, that's a tax-free income of £105k-ish a year. That's getting on for what I make in 3 years, so it'd be difficult for me at least to label them "pathetic losers". To suggest only misfits would go after a £100k a year prize isn't accurate - there'll be a good few willing to give it a go, just hoping the bit they do differently is enough to escape the law.

Comcast-owned Brit telco Sky to hire 1,000 new staffers, half of them engineers

Re: employs 3,500 engineers to service

They know how to drill holes? Maybe a few of them, but not all. Let one loose on my wall a few years back, his blow hole was around 15cm in diameter. Shiney silicon completed the saucer-sized spectacle.

I suggested he slow down a bit, and for the last part, just stop/start stop/start - gently does it. To prove the advice was sound, I pointed at a couple of holes I'd made for security lights some months before.

Looked at me like I was an imbecile. Who was I not to want enormous gouges out my walls :-(

Hundreds charged in internet's biggest child-abuse swap-shop site bust: IP addy leak led cops to sys-op's home

Re: Bitcoin anonymity

Why did you think that?

Googling "bitcoin anonymous"..

First hit.. bitcoin.org.. "Bitcoin is not anonymous.."

Second hit.. buybitcoinworldwide.com.. "Bitcoin is pseudonymous. Achieving reasonable anonymity with Bitcoin can be quite complicated and perfect anonymity may be impossible."

Seems all the info was there, you'd just missed it.

'Technical error' threatens Vodafone customers with four-figure roaming fees

Re: Coincidence

Do you know many customers who report billing errors that go in their favour?

I've never shouted about mine on Twitter. It would seem counterproductive.

Dry patch? Have you considered peppering your flirts with emojis?

"...bukkake. Awkward to say the least."

Only if you make eye contact I've found.

Bomb-hoaxing DoSer who targeted police in revenge was caught after Twitter taunts

Strange world

..we live in re: sentences, but suppose that's well known.

One example from another open tab: "Dog suffered a slow and painful death after she was beaten, poisoned and stabbed by owners during three days of abuse" - Sentence 10 weeks

This guy 16 months, for erm, making a couple of police websites unavailable.

I'd flip the sentences around quite happily, and still increase the dog abuse one.

Ursula Doyle reckons thousands of people affected, but I'd bet it was barely outside double digits.

Cheshire's site appears to be on Cloudflare now, which common sense step presumably came after this crime of the century?

British ISPs throw in the towel, give up sending out toothless copyright infringement warnings

Dilution of quality too..

As a young pup in the late '90's, I remember OnDigital, buying a card writer, avoiding the subscription fee and helping others to. Naughty - but when you're young you haven't the disposable income :-(

Fast forward 20 years - I'll hand over my money willingly if you make it easy for me to quickly watch something I want to. No interest in clarting about Kodi/Android Boxes/Card Sharing or whatever the workarounds are.. I want quick and easy...

BUT... I also want the content to be half decent.

Gave ANOTHER "Exclusive to Netflix" thing a go the other day.. Shaft remake.. The previous SLJ one I enjoyed.. This same-name remake was utter dog shit. Perhaps I've been unlucky, but I've not yet seen a single movie with the "Netflix" logo on that I've enjoyed, or watched one to completion.

But they want more money off me to keep the great content coming?

Then people twist about paying for a TV license?! :-\

Internet imbeciles, aka British ISP lobbyists, backtrack on dubbing Mozilla a villain for DNS-over-HTTPS support

Would've been better PR..

..had they nominated themselves afterwards.

"We did mean it light-hearted, lack of real thought, the voting didn't get passed via folk who would've pointed out privacy issues, etc"

We'd have known they were full of shit, but they'd have come off looking a little better.

Front-end dev cops to billing NSA $220,000 for hours he didn't work

His Website..

"The contracts, identified in court documents only as CTS and ROADRALLY were overseen by an unnamed government contractor – possibly Lockheed Martin – that hired a different subcontractor for each job."

https://www.smegoconsulting.com says he worked for "Chiron Technology Services, Inc" and "Lufburrow and Company"

No mention on there yet about him having the governments pants down with his big bills.

Trump: Huawei ban will be lifted!
US Commerce Dept.: Yeah, about that…

Re: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

A bit of FUD I always liked was re: the Amstrad PC1512.

Ran perfectly well without a fan (and without noise) but rumours started that the lack of fan would lead to overheating. Later models had a fan fitted which didn't do a thing except hum! Those in the know would disconnect them and have a silent computer.

What do we want? Decentralised, non-siloed social media with open standards! When do we want it? Soon!

Re: Late to the party

Works in real life too. A few times I've had great chat going on with ladies down the pub, and at the end of the night offered access to my mumble server. Pretty sure one day they'll come back to me when they work out what one is.

Suspected dark-web meth dealers caught by, er, 'using real address' when buying stamps

For fun..

If they accepted payment only in Bitcoin, and made $8.8m in sales, post their address(es) up so we can all go look on the blockchain.

Be interesting to see if that figure is inflated at all!

Then to consider.. my single bitcoin or so is worth about £1,000 less than what it was a day or two ago, and several £000's more than it was a few weeks ago.

Factoring in the massive fluctuations of BTC, I wonder what the actual value in cash would be, considering the exchange rates over the times they took payments.