Posts by Richard Williams

You missed...

that most horrible word, almost always used before a lengthy and complex explanation...

'Basically...'

The Rictus

I do like 'woot' very much, and certainly 'fucktard', but the one I'd give my support to is...

Borked!

Borked stuff is my bread and butter, possibly the same for many other readers. Borked stuff is what we live for and earn on...

Faith and one-offs

I'm feeling like having a strange faith that MS might actually pull 7 off well. Whether it's just the fact that they'll make sure after Vista's RMS Titanic impression (icccce-berrrrrrrrg!) or that everyone's gotta have a car crash on occasion. We've all had that one day when we've accidentally clicked 'shut down' on a remote server, rather than 'log off' - and we curse ourselves reinforce the ability to think twice before clicking and get on with it, better than we were before.

Maybe Vista was a bomb just to really make 7 stand out. Maybe it's the big MS purchasers who are to blame for pushing MS for a release that Vista was never finished properly.

Oh and before Mac users bleat that Mac OS has always been great - you can't honestly say OS9 was good. Apple were in serious trouble with that Appletalk mess when Jobs rescued them with X. And I do like X very much and have supported both versions.

Hopefully, we'll see a renaissance for Microsoft desktop OS, something with the simple elegance of OSX and the same amount of attention and quality MS have put into their more recent server OS's and main apps.

Blimey, my cynical streak has taken a hit today! Sod it - go on MS, pleasantly surprise us! Please don't let us down this time, our hearts won't take it!!

voice of experience

I've owned one of these, and I can safely say it is a fantastic beginner's or casual user's SLR.

I had not practiced 'real' photography for some time and when my compact finally died I realised it was time to get serious again. I bought a D40. It seemed a perfect reintroduction to my past hobby. It has enough guts for the interested amateur but easy and light enough for those not too (or not yet) interested in the more manual modes. I have to say I outgrew mine quite quickly and sold it on, upgrading to a D80 for various reasons that had NOTHING to do with the image quality of the D40 - I am now doing some semi-pro work. For the amount it cost me though, if I hadn't made a return to more serious photography, I would not have felt that the D40 purchase was a waste of money. Quite the contrary. Yes it's limited in the fact you can't put all of Nikon's lenses on it, but it's not aimed at people who want to do that!

For a good write-up on the D40 check out www.kenrockwell.com. This guy owns just about every Nikon camera going, and cuts past all the marketing cr#p like 'more megapixels is better'.

Got a video recorder?

Why think about stealing someone's private cake order to get pictures of baby's arses when you can a) Record the Johnson & Johnson advert or b) even more easily (since all paedos are considered to be internet l33ts) GOOGLE 'baby's bottom' - I just did for comparison and you get LOADS of images. Seems a bit extreme to ban a non-public cake LOL. Oh whoops, I've admitted I searched for baby's bottoms on google. It's a fair cop, better go hand myself in...

Spy Satellites

So are they going to start suing the US Government next for having 'homeland security' satellites buzzing over their house, the recruited teen geek ex-hackers who operate the systems getting their rocks off watching their daughters frolic in the lovely swimming pool?!

Paris, cos I think she'd gladly get all the coverage (with lack of coverings!!) that she could get!

What utter hogwarts

Now, I know that Creative do some more funky models of soundcard, and I always used to us them in the old days BECAUSE they were so well supported!

But this recent excuse of 'how hard it is to develop drivers for Vista' is such utter tripe. Every other audio manufacturer has leapt forward and managed just fine. The first thing I did when my Dell Core2 pooter arrived last year was to disable the onboard soundmax or whatever audio (even though it still did surround, had an optical out etc!!) and plug in my SB Live something-or-other. Death! BSODs! and that was under... Windows XP (did try it in Vista too). It seemed that past a certain point even the XP drivers wouldn't work any more and the Creative site had no 'latest drivers' for my model at all. I had originally wanted both soundcards active, one for my headset and one for speakers, and dilligently disabled the onboard thinking it MUST be that one that's bugged. But no. Even disabling my creative card didn't help. It didn't start behaving until I had completely removed the Creative from the system. I've been using Soundmax onboard ever since.

Bill with halo, cos it wasn't his fault this time...

How secure is your OS?

It seems very much from these results that this is no longer the problem... As usual, fingers are pointed and normally falls to the OS manufacturer... It's like saying it's Microsoft's fault if a piece of hardware doesn't install properly...

The fact that both these exploits managed to utilise bolt-on software and that no-one bothered to try and hack the base OS on the first day is surely a wake-up call? All this mud-slinging about which OS is less secure is dried-up in the face of this?

Paris, because I can't pick on any of the OS Mugshots in particular and because the majority of people are as clueless as her to hacking PCs, myself included. I just spend my life being paid to secure the systems I support... hmm... Roll on vulnerabilities!!!!!

War huh! what is it good for!

Excellent - I'd hoped my post would generate some interesting replies so thanks to all. Both interesting and stuff to learn from. However, with people's brains being a massive overhead I still hold that a server should be easy to install and configure as well as efficient - surely that should go hand in hand? I mean, often someone's paying for my time... Why write stuff like Plesk and WHM for ISP's otherwise if it was enough for Linux to be 'efficient'.

I think a more config-file oriented approach a la linux is good to get real granular control - something windows lacks (for now?) - but for quick common functions and flow/layout a GUI is indispensable and I'd argue better for not missing lines in config files sometimes. Not always NECESSARY, but useful at times.

Just because Idiots CAN install servers doesn't mean they should. You should meet the guy who just 'fixed' my car... Making it easier for professionals to get on with their job is no bad thing though.

Oh and tardigrade - fair point, but yes I can use the windows recovery console - I started out on DOS pre WIndows 3.0 :)

Own DNS

I agree with Justin - I run a Windows 2003 box in my case that is my movie/music repository and a DNS server. Works great for me, I don't have to touch the ISP's DNS at all. Of course companies running even Windows small business server are required to have DNS for Active Directory. So in that instance as long as you go into the DNS Server and remove any forwarders (ie your ISP's DNS Servers) this provides the same.

good idea, bad name

I think it's not a bad idea- if they are truly promoting peace and order - hopefully not with a blend of Lucas-style capitalism. I say go for it, but I think the usage of the word 'church' is probably a bad idea. Not only does it suggest some hidden Christian undertone, it may turn people away by association of the word. Jedi Temple, being the description used within the star wars universe, would seem to me to have been a better choice.

Only one thing to say

Friendly Worms? It'll make it even harder to tell the difference... and some hacker will adjust the worm as it propagates... Too obvious... Unless of course, there's some conspiracy here! Hmm, MS have just released their own antivirus products... ;)

Spending money on nails to close the barn door, rather than building a new barn

It really seems about time that record companies and the like quit this stupid war of attrition, spending money on court procedures and illicit 'legitimate' DDoS services to disrupt torrents.

Don't they get it? People are happy (although I tend to wait) to torrent low-quality versions of movies. Doesn't this say 'yes fine, sell your blu-ray discs in the shops to those who have no wish to use the internet for this service, and make a cheap lower-grade copy to download?' The BBC's iPlayer is a great example of how that could work - it's even FREE and it works! The picture quality is not that great (yet) but it's watchable for the majority of people who are not tied up on what'll come after 1080p...

In a world where people are making a profit band-wagon of the environment, taking this non-evolutionary, neanderthal approach to file sharing is daft. Give the ISPs power to offer a slightly more expensive broadband line that includes a streaming/torrenting tax to cover the copyright? Anyone else who wants broadband for email/shopping can have a lower speed and would not be able to stream. I'd buy it!

Oops!

You're going to have a fight to become carbon neutral in three years, seeing as how it's 2008 already ;) Unless the PFY has managed to create an unstable time vortex in the sub-basement. Now THAT'D be a good place to get rid of evidence!

OK OK let's slow down here a minute

OK, it's great to see that pop culture and marketing affect the IMF too, not just us mere mortal consumers. I'm sure I'm not the only person thinking that technology is not causing the gap. The only way that technology can cause that gap is because everyone believes they need a smartphone, four different consoles etc. Facilitating IT in developing countries has been happening for years and they seem to get by with email and an Office suite. Oh, actually isn't that what most companies in the 'developed' (haha) world use their computers for? It isn't technology that is the problem, it's the convincing us to feel we need the latest and greatest to generate massive profit (And this comes from someone in the UK where even we have to pay 60% more for our copies of Office than the US). I know so many people who go out and buy laptops with gaming graphics cards that whack the price up. Will they ever play games on it? No, of course not. It's for surfing the web and writing letters.

It's no different to the cosmetics trade where they produce the best ever product then magically manage to come up with some even more outrageous ingredient to get ahead again. I mean, crushed pearls?! in a Shampoo?!! Their previous product worked great, according to their own adverts... They'll be putting grated iguana in next...