Posts by Daniel Gould

DeepSeek's not the only Chinese LLM maker OpenAI and pals have to worry about. Right, Alibaba?

Interesting tool

Asked DeepSeek to explain the significance of Tiananmen Square events:

"I am sorry, I cannot answer that question. I am an AI assistant designed to provide helpful and harmless responses."

Over a million Neighbourhood Watch members exposed through web app bug

Probably a feature one of the developers added, as it was useful to them when they were testing the functions.

If Britain is so bothered by China, why do these .gov.uk sites use Chinese ad brokers?

Re: Once again Ad-block is your friend

The ad bidding is all server-side, so your ad blocker won't stop that info being shared at that level.

Post Office slapped down for late disclosure of documents in Horizon scandal inquiry

This is the crux of the issue. The vendor was claiming that this couldn't happen due to the way everything was digitally signed. However, because they had access to all the private keys used for signing, they could just step in, make adjustments, then re-sign the transaction so that it was 'legitimate' as far as the application was concerned. This is the remote admin piece that they all claimed didn't exist, right up until evidence showed it did.

Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

Re: Pints' on me Brian

All the Amex ATMs used IBM OS/2 2.1 for many years.

Enterprising techie took the bumpy road to replacing vintage hardware

Re: Two sides of a coin (aka Someone wanted a new printer)

90s, investment bank in Liverpool Street, we were the IT support provider. We had a number of HP Laserjet 4Si printers, huge beasts. One would cause us visit after visit for paper jams, print issues, etc. After replacing so many parts on the thing and it still failing, it 'accidentally' fell while being moved during one of the weekly building refurbishment moves. It fell 'accidentally' several times until the chassis was so bent the case wouldn't align enough for it to close, and had to be replaced.

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

School days

This takes me back to computer science classes in 1988, where we all shared a copy of TP5. Lots of fun writing our projects with it. I loved coding with it. I even wrote a leisure centre booking system in it for my A-level project.

For the more mischievous of us, we wrote TSR (terminate, stay resident) programs that would run on our Research Machine 286 workstations, that would just emit a beep at random times - drove our head of computer science mad with that one!

Fun times.

Sure, give the new kid and his MCSE power over the AS/400. What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Ah, MCSE

Minesweeper Consultant, Solitaire Expert

Elon Musk issues ultimatum to Twitter staff: Go hardcore or go home

How long will it run without maintenance??

Wonder what will happen when he has no engineering team, no support team, no moderation team.... how long will it all keep running for until it eventually grinds to a halt??

Data loss prevention emergency tactic: keep your finger on the power button for the foreseeable future

Compaq Proliant

Had the same problem at a major investment bank in 1993. First contract job at 21 years old, IT break/fix for dealer positions and supporting infrastructure. In one of the many distributed IT rooms throughout the building with networking and server kit, I had been sent to powercycle a Novell server. There were two with pretty much identical names next to each other. I read the label too quickly and had already pressed the button in when I realised it was the wrong one. Cue me, scrabbling to hold the button in and reach the phone with my foot to call someone to get the server shutdown before my finger gave out. We managed it and the server was shutdown remotely so I could release the button. Brought it back up, luckily no impact. Then on to fix the one I'd originally been sent to work on.

VMware pulls physical to virtual conversion tool, adds VM to container conversion tool

Use clonezilla

I've had great success using clonezilla to create an image and then restore it into a VM.

Cyberattacker hits German service station petrol terminal provider

Timing

Restrict fuel supplies in Europe just prior to a Russian invasion move?

We know it's hard to get your kicks at work – just do it away from a wall switch powering anything important

Microwaves and CRTs

Many years ago, working for C&W (it had just recently changed from NYNEX at that point), desktop support. A user reported their screen (17" EIZO CRT) would wobble intermittently. Visited by a junior engineer a few times, replaced the screen, cables, etc. Couldn't get rid of it. I went along and saw it start and when it stopped there was a very soft ping noise. Turns out the works canteen was the other side of the partition wall and their commercial microwave was on that same wall. After we got the FM team to install a stainless splashback behind the oven, the screen was stable.

A user's magnetic charm makes for a special call-out for our hapless hero

Bouncy picture on CRT

Many years ago, working for Nynex as IT support in one of their call centres. User complaining of their picture jiggling on their display. It would do it for a few minutes at a time and then stop. Someone had already replaced the screen, but it still happened. I noted it was worse early in the morning and at lunchtime. I realised that the other side of the wall from this user was the canteen, with an industrial microwave against the wall. Got the catering manager to put their spare piece of stainless steel splashback behind the microwave and fixed the issue :-)

Some assembly required as Dream Chaser mini-shuttle's empty husk arrives in Colorado

Sierra Entertainment

For some reason my mind instantly read Sierra Nevada Corp as Sierra Entertainment.

Cue thoughts of Leisure Suit Larry piloting the first flight!!

FYI: Faking court orders to take down Google reviews is super illegal

And how long is that going to last now then? I imagine that trolls will be on to that pretty quickly :-)

LESTER looks up, spins its wheels: The Register’s beer-butler can see ...

Upgrade

Rather than collision avoidance, add a cattle prod to ensure the bothersome PFY moves faster...

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Another Amazon Key door-lock hack

Re: Still looking for an electronic lock...

I think you answered your own requirement there - a garage door opener, something that has been around for a long time and does the job it's designed for. Of course, those are still seriously lacking in security, but it does what you need in a way that doesn't require an IoT device.

You could even add your own device to it to open it across t'internet if you really wanted - plenty of Raspberry Pi / Arduino projects out there for that.

Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

VMWare ESXi

If people are running their servers in a virtual environment (VMware ESXi), does this issue potentially open VM to VM communication vulnerabilities, or if the hypervisor still effectively isolating privileged memory correctly between VMs? I can understand that this may still leave the issue open inside the VM OS if those are unpatched, but as long as the hypervisor is still providing isolation, the risk is restricted to issues inside the VMs themselves.

Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering 'E' on monitor

Had similar issues with a user who would find the image on her screen (this was 1997, so CRT not LCD) shimmering and bouncing several times in the day, most notably around lunchtime. Microwave oven in the kitchen the other side of the wall :-)

BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on

The power of suggestion

It's amazing and so close to the truth!

Cisco takes on AWS with cloudy desktop-as-a-service plan

MS Desktop licensing

The biggest hurdle to DaaS as far as I'm aware is the MS licensing requirements to keep individual clients on dedicated hypervisor hardware, meaning you cannot have a 5-seat client share a physical environment with another 5-seat client. This limits the scale-down to which you can sell a DaaS service at a cost-effective rate.

Wonder how that will be dealt with.

No anon pr0n for you: BT's network-level 'smut' filters will catch proxy servers too

Who cares!!!

I enabled the service yesterday on my account, just to see what it's like, and I have to report that it's not too bad. The categories are the standard ones that anyone familiar with a corporate web proxy filter product will see, so give it a rest on the Government Conspiracy rhetoric around categorisation of content. There is a custom filter set you can specify too.

If you really want to look at pr0n, you can set a time when the filter is inactive, so just configure it for when little Johnnie has gone to bed. And if you hit a site outside that time that you don't want blocked, you can even put an exception in there to allow it, no great hard work required.

I really don't see what the big fuss is about as long as there is the ability to turn it off, which the account holder has the ability to do. And before you start complaining about not being the account holder, quit your bitching as you're obviously not paying for the connection you're trying to surf on!

There will always be those that don't want the filter, and there will always be 101 ways around it. This is meant as a simple tool to help those that want filtering on their broadband connection to implement it without them having to install lots of software or build their own filter servers.

Cisco warns over warranty discs of EVIL

Tell us the URL then

so we can add it to our proxy block lists!! Or would that just be inviting trouble??

PSN gaming network outage sparks DDoS rumours

Maybe they're on Amazon EC2 out of N Virginia....

'nuf said.

BOFH: Weapon of choice

Class at last...

Only been waiting for what feels like FOREVER for a new episode, but at least it's a good one.

Orange data users turning red as data dries up

That explains why

my Blackberry was showing 'edge' instead of 'EDGE' this morning. I've happily switched to UMA now using my home broadband (non-Orange) and getting full service again

Wonder if it's anything to do with their planned merger with T-Mobile ? Giving us a taster of the level of service we can expect in the future maybe ??? :-)

Government rubbishes ID card hack report

Surely...

the easiest way around this is to ensure that the readers have access to the database these cards are generated from. Then it's as simple as comparing a checksum of the card data with that held on the database. Hardly rocket science, is it ??

If the reader displays the digital picture on a display that they can view alongside the photo on the card, and the checksum works out, then th card is valid. Any difference, the card is void.

Simples, as they say at comparethemeerkat :-)

VMware's vSphere enters real world, early!

Broken download links

Seems they haven't added the software to the download links yet - folllowing the link to supposedly download the software presents you with a "page cannot be found" page. No vHelpful

BOFH: Spontaneous Legal Combustion

A welcome return to form, Simon

Nice to see a good return to the days of old. Please keep up the good work on a more regular weekly basis. Try prune juice - good for the mind and regularity, I hear.

P2P eavesdrop 'guilt by association attack' developed

And what about the random downloads it does ?

Could be anything from just junk to other copyright works or even kiddie pron? A few trojans perhaps, or the source code for Conficker ??

How would you defend that in court..... "I was trying to quietly download the latest ripped-off movie but ended up with all this other incrimiating stuff instead" ?

If it's truly random, no telling what you could get caught downloading there !

Take a Windows HPC test drive

BSoD anyone

Look here for their current status info .... Nice to see a representation of the quality of the product....

http://rent-a-guru.de/pub/hpc-status.php

Maritz apologises to VMware customers again

Facts...

"His update engineers screwed up big time by issuing an ESX update in August that contained destructive time out code. This caused many VMware users' licenses to abruptly expire and their virtualized server worlds came crashing down to Earth."

If you're going to quote supposed fact, please get it right. The timeout didn't cause things to stop, shutdown or 'crash to Earth'. It simply meant that any powered off VMs couldn't be powered on again. There was also a fairly simple time-shift workaround that many clients were able to employ until a fix was released the next day.

Given that this is the first and only 'major' problem exhibited by this product, and one that didn't in fact cause the hypservisor to 'Crash' as you stated, I think that you are making a mountain out of a molehill.

VMware's fiscal roller coaster tumbles through Q2

'Free ESXi' isn't really free

The zero-price option just means that ESXi will be shipped embedded on various hardware platforms, or available to install on local drives. This will allow the use of ESXi, but if you want to make full use of all the features (vmotion, DRS, HA, etc), then you'll still need Virtual Centre and relevant licenses for it and the features you want to use.

So, yes, the hypervisor will be free, but not much use without the licenses and fee-payable additions.

Prank callers crash Dublin Zoo phone system

And another one

I worked for a support company working for an Australian bank in London. On the trading floor, there was a very pretty but clueless lady who was the admin assistant for the traders, and who had dated most of them. Someone called her and asked her to see if anyone had seen Mark Hunt - when she shouted it out, everyone put up their hands, accompanied by lots of schoolboy-like giggling.... oh how we laughed!

Probably the sort of thing that Paris could shout and get a similar response to!

BT and Phorm secretly tracked 18,000 customers in 2006

If they were genuine....

BT could have just added a proxy service for all their customers to ensure they didn't hit unwanted pages. They could have applied this to any traffic from a customer's IP address, allowing the customer to specify if they wanted filtering, paying a fee to cover the service.

But, no, BT have decided to ally themselves with Phorm to generate revenue by underhand methods, perhaps thinking that their customers wouldn't willingly pay for the filtering service in the first place. Well, BT, if you had actually consulted your customers, I think you would find that most customers with children would happily pay a small monthly fee to filter their connection to ensure their children were safe on the internet, giving you the revenue strem that you seek.

I for one will be ensuring that I stick with an ISP that doesn't employ this technology.

iPhone rubber fingers not a hoax, inventor insists

NOT an original product

These things have been in use in the manufacturing industry for years, used in microprocessor plants, optical assembly work, basically anywhere that requires dexterity and cleanliness. And they sure cost a lot less that €7 for 25!!

SCO files for US bankruptcy protection

A shame

Yes, SCO have made some good products in their time, but they lost their way. It is such a shame that they didn't put the money they wasted on the lawyers into developing products on the back of the growing linux community - a huge wasted opportunity.

Dell's 'Veso' appliance runs on four-core Opterons and thin VMware

Quad-core demo - hmmm, why did it say dual-core then, Diane ?

In the demo yesterday, Diane and Mark made a big deal of this server being the first shipping AMD dual-socket quad-core. However, I wasn't the only one to notice the bios startup screen stating 2 x dual-core processors !! Oops.