Posts by Hans 1 3797 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Aug 2009
IE is the most dangerous piece of vulnerable crap there is, up there with flash ... almost EVERY bloody month for the past 20 YEARS have they been fixing remote execution vulnerabilities in various IE versions, ALMOST EVERY MONTH for 20 YEARS ... considering that some months they fixed several, I think we can agree, that shite should not be on production systems ... sadly, there is no way to remove Mshtml.dll, as it is used by Windows Explorer and a whole bunch of other software.
The pre-school of my daughter recently had a PC outage, CPU overheated on the library computer, kids could no longer borrow books. I dunno if you know French council policy, but, being ALMOST summer holidays (end of next week), the school was out of luck ... this was two weeks ago ... I had a pi lying around ... bought a 15 euro charger, one of the more reliable ones, came along with those, plugged them in, the library software is web-based, teachers could not believe the little box I was holding was actually a computer ... AND, it was faster than XP with a pentium 4, 1Gb of RAM.
Everybody happy ... I still have a few pi's, a print server and a media center .... the one I gave them B+, was originally used to play antiquated games, from the days I was much younger ... however, total failure, the kids did not enjoy them as much as I did ... :-(, so a library PC it became.
When you switch to Linux, it is NOT FREE, NEVER, cheaper than Windows, YES, OF COURSE .... every box you install beats a Windows Server Data Center Edition is EVERY RESPECT. No anti-features (This is not availabl in Home editions, you need Pro/Enterprise for that, or Server, Advanced Server, no, Datacenter edition), features that require additional licenses ... of course, you need to hire some trained staff for the project to work ... more people in the community get jobs ... instead of sponsoring Redmond Cancer ... d'oh!
Ok, where I live, the cost of an employee is 2x the net salary of the employee ....this means that with 10m, you can hire ~200 staff, each @25k a year, after taxes! You will need managers, paid more, and a couple of kernel hackers, paid even more, so, lets say you hire 120 ordinary support staff, 6 managers, 4 highly paid kernel hackers and 10 well paid package maintainers ... you can do this easily with 10m, and have some change for bonuses ... multiply by 10 for 100m (status co) and you could easily fund your GNU/Linux distribution, note that in this case, you even get "help for free" (contributers). Worse, you have FULL CONTROL over the software you deploy.
Sorry, I know this shit!
For those on Windows, hit the "Windows" key, the one with the four squares, type "c" followed by "a", followed by "l" (lower case L, and you are almost there!!!!!), followed by "c" and divide 10 000 000 by 200.
How MS get away with this is beyond me ...
“Ultimately, open source allows you to be in control of you own destiny.”
Strictly speaking that's also true of closed source, but it just might be more painful to change one's destiny.
Where do you come from ? Closed source, BY DEFINITION, means the software is OUT OF YOUR CONTROL, AGAIN, BY DEFINITION!!!!! I think that was the stupidest sentence I have had the leisure to read on this site AND I have been here many years. Crikey, where do you come from ?
The important thing is to use open standards for one's application
Well, that means you avoid MS, entirely, and most other proprietary vendors I have heard of, if not all.
official blessing for Mono is at least some evidence of that.
Mono ? Listen, NOBODY USES THAT ON Linux/macOS ... Mono is cursed, despite MS' blessing. No, I grant you, there are a bunch of .Net fans around here who are sick of WIndows 10, they might ;-).
Open source with no support merely makes one solely responsible for one's destiny.
Hm, 100m ? how many support staff can you hire for 100m a year ? Nahhh, let's say, 10m, it has to be 90% cheaper .... Again, this is licensing, not IT staff doing maintenance, who call MS, desperately, to get lousy support, and see no patch but a promise that some Tuesday next month, if they are lucky, they might get a fix ... that is, if the MS support guy understands your problem ... Again, with that money, you can hire one or more kernel hackers + a fully staffed support team!
I think we are getting damn close to Office 320, and it is still June ... I have issues, quite random, but every other week, switching browser user agents is sometimes futile ... I would rather not touch ie/edge, I had to the other day because I "really" wanted to access something and it failed nevertheless... so ...
I do not use Word online, though, tooo sloooooooooooow, I only have 100Mbit Internet, i5, SSD, 16Gb RAM, does not seem to be sufficient for MS' Internet-based word processor. I could use my i7, but I use that as a host for my VM's, headless, and I do not know what kind of bandwidth they expect, these days, the CPU/RAM might not be the bottleneck.
The Chartered Institute of IT has joined forces with the Patient’s Association, the Royal College of Nursing, BT and Microsoft to produce a blueprint that outlines steps NHS trusts should take to avoid another crippling cyber-attack.
Microsoft ? Dump the losers! With the money NHS spends on MS licensing alone, they could fund a NHS distro, including kernel hackers. I would go for a support team, a bunch of kernel hackers, and a few devs working for the chosen distro ... s/b roughly 10 times cheaper.
I imagine the discussion:
NHS: So Mr Slurp, what can we do to avoid this ?
Slurp: Well, Windows 10, Office 365, OneDrive, no more problems.
NHS: Oh, Ok, and how much would that be ?
Slurp: Ohh, it's cheaper, much cheaper, because we get access to all your data and sell it on, as much as possible.
NHS: Even patient records ?
Slurp: Yeah, we are already selling the details of every French secondary/college student, but that time, we paid them 30 million ... you see, we have the private personal details of every single kid in secondary school/college in France (including French overseas).
NHS: Ohh, ok, well, our patient data is surely worth more than that, right ?
Slurp: Oh, no, here, we are talking kids who will be adults, we get a whole generation ... you have mostly ill people, about to die ... not that interesting ... besides, Ripoff Britain, heard of that ?
NHS: Well, Ok then ...
Despite a rash of scientifically inaccurate movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, mankind has no way of stopping an approaching asteroid even if we spotted it in time.
I could explain why this is a load of bollocks, but, I am just a commentard, so let me introduce Neil deGrasse Tyson:
https://youtu.be/c3fxdEmfyOQ?t=24m57s
Besides, since the USian administartions are so full of shit, the Russians have offered to help you ensure it misses us ... ;-)
https://youtu.be/xaW4Ol3_M1o
The thing I find really weird is this:
systemd depends on glibc
a part of systemd, for some obscure reason, needs to do DNS lookups
systemd re-invented the wheel instead of using road-worn glibc code
I sincerely hope this is a one-off, if their policy is to re-write everything from scratch, refrain from using standard library calls for standard stuff, systemd will destroy GNU/Lunix's high reliability image.
tell them its an experimental new laptop that Apple has asked you to beta-test.
Ohhh, come on, thinkpads look nothing like polished MacBooks. Like bringing a Lada to a Range Rover gathering ....
PS: I might buy a MacBook when they sell them without soldered RAM/SSD.
I thought the last version was Windows 3.11 for Warships ... even if they upgrade to Windows 10, they will be vulnerable next week ... use OpenBSD, seriously ... I do not pay taxes in Britain, but as a British tax payer, I would blow a fuse.
I will repeat once more: Windows has NOTHING to do in production systems, regardless of version; nothing to do in production systems .... AND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO in defense systems ... if you run Windows in production, I consider you an idiot ... you know where the down-vote button is, if that can help you feel better :D
I, Hans 1, also would like to "pay tribute to [the] staff who responded incredibly well, ensuring patients continued to receive care during our busiest time of the year.”
Above all, I think that these guys/gals deserve the greatest respect of all, even with a failing IT system, I am 100% sure they tried their best to get patients treated!
Thank you!
Love from hans1
Microsoft MHP
Adobbe MHP
Every time Skype has an incoming update the old version suddenly becomes incredibly unstable, in fact on my system this is usually how I find out my version needs upgrading, before the program itself notifies me officially/just updates.
Sounds like an improvement, in my experience it would refuse my login details, after some troubleshooting (even resetting the password did not work) I tried the latest version at the time and all was back to normal again... have not used it in a while, though, MS have, once more, totally F'd up a piece of software that was working perfectly at the time of purchase.
Never let Redmond anywhere near your business critical stuff ...
If you don't care about down-voters, why do you care enough to tell us you don't care?
Because I don't, however, this time I was not trolling and, imho, my comment made a hell of a lot of sense! I do not understand the downvotes this time, I just don't understand ... all I was saying is that they need to hire competent staff ... D'Oh! Seriously! WTF?
@downvoters
1. Don't care about down-votes, that is why I often troll ;-)
2. WTF ?
8 char a-z is OK ? Must be Microsoft fanboys ... listen, you have no F'ing clue.
I really think Virgin Media need to get their act together and hire competent staff, ANYBODY who signed off, implemented, tested "8 char a-z" as a password have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do in IT.
I heard they were looking for Window cleaners in Hull!
My default one was 40 characters long, [a-z0-9?#@$%^&*()@!] .... and yet, still memorable ... I changed it to something else, of course ...
VirginMedia, tell me, who lets those flawed loonies design routers ? Fire the entire team, in-ex-cusable, shit, pay up, get some decent staff, YES, they are more expensive, but savings across the board!
DT: What, tell me, what is an eclipse.
Aid: Well, Mr president, it is the moon getting between earth and the sun, so it will be somewhat darker for a few minutes.
DT: Ohh, come on, those scientists just want more money, naaah, that is fake news. Which agency came up with this folly ?
Aid: NASA, sir.
DT: Ok, now, we'll cut their budget by 95% to teach these overpaid idiots.
Aid: sir, you cannot be serious ?
DT: You question the president ? Fired! Security, escort this intruder, NOW!
We need a Donald icon ... using Paris though I think it is unfair, Paris has two working brain cells ...
William famously gets to the bottom of his patients’ misunderstood illnesses and helps them heal using wisdom passed on to him from a divine voice he calls Spirit.
src: http://goop.com/why-we-shouldnt-dismiss-iodine/
cf icon ... this one will do: https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/maximus/
PS: People who hear voices usually suffer from Schizophrenia ... just sayin'
SMB* are closed source, so inherently insecure, note that the tools 0wned all versions of SMB and they chose to rip out SMB1 ... sshfs is not, for example. NFS ? The 80's called, they want you back ;-)!
As for WebDAV ... ohhhh, boy, you got me started ... MS have extended it ... OneDrive for business groups, aka SharePoint (Shit, sorry, I was not supposed mention that publicly), supports WebDAV, well MS' extended, incompatible form of it, which requires an auth token that can only be acquired by a browser ... embrace, extend ... B@st@rds!
MS are so borken they should just ditch Windows ... no, their entire software devision, their code sucks golf balls through garden hoses ...
@MS fanboys, oh, come on, rejoice! Edge has beaten Safari in the browser market share!
MS needs to know when it can upgrade the Windows 10 XPerience, you need to install a "readiness" update that checks hardware, software etc are expected to work with the new version.
Now, prior to updating, it should say: Please update software x as the new Windows 10 version we are about to install will not work very well with this ... easy. I guess they do not want that, because it is a way to cling to the Windows 10 version you currently have.
Uninstalling software without consent clearly falls under the Computer Misuse Act.
Sue them to hell!
Personally I think it was compounded by telling students not to read it and delete the email. What better way of making an otherwise dull email rather fascinating?
My thoughts exactly.
I would have thought of something along the lines of: "A previous email of ours contained a contaminated Excel spreadsheet. If you have opened it, please come to the IT department asap, your data is at risk. If you have not opened it, delete the email and the attachment."
why is this sensitive information kept in a apparently locally stored spreadsheet
why is this sensitive information kept in a spreadsheet
TFTFY
Store data in a SECURE database, create a ODBC/JDBC link to the database, use that in Excel .... don't have link to the database ? Cannot read data .... still locally stored excel file everyone is used to ...
YET, why Excel ? Are they adding ailments, dividing by age, multiplying by date of birth or do they need pivot tables on this data ? Thought not ...
Stop using Excel for stuff it was not designed for.
And people wonder why I never took any of the Microsoft exams...
My thoughts exactly ...
I once saw an MSCD print out her program and stick it to the wall ... the longest program she ever wrote ... 800+ lines of goodness ... after a quick look, I knew I could shrink it to 200 if not less and reduce the length of the lines, crikey, some were very, very, very long ... ohh, the beauty of VBS ... she had, apparently, not been told about [private] sub's and had large chunks of duplicate code ... at least she knew how to copy-paste and indent....
The secret courts are above the law.
As George Carlin once said: In the US, you have no rights, just TEMPORARY privileges that can be taken away whenever a government sees it fit, citing US Americans of Japanese decent in the 1940's. Think that is old, look at Guantanamo. Most inmates were held for years without sufficient elements to open even the slightest investigation, said a US president!
Transparency cannot come too early, I tell ya, a.secret court is anti-constitutional, you can tell me whatever you want, it is anti-constitutional. Claiming a secret court upheld the constitution is non-sense, it goes against "establishing justice" because a secret court is BY DEFINITION unfair, it has no balance.
Suppose you are in NY and you open up a Fast Food joint called 'Bullet Burrito'. You've gone thru all of the legal filings, paperwork, established a brand, and a web site.
But suppose you find out that 10 years ago, there was another place in West Virginia that was also called Bullet Burrito and was shut down because of a case of food poisoning and not being up to code.
1. Awful analogy
2. WTF ???? Your damn fault, do some research on your chosen name, you have to, for trademark reasons ... next, SOME IDIOT is gonna name his boat Titanic and sue the shit out of anybody mentioning the Titanic story ... And anyway, even IF there's a Bullet Burrito, say in Mexico, that opened AFTER YOURS as you did not trademark your name there, they poison 200 people, you cannot sue others for reporting/commenting on the story ... you had to make sure you were the only Bullet Burrito world-wide and get the necessary trademark protection if you wanted to protect your name.
Back to the article:
Some site mentions the fraud investigation, apparently, without clearly stating what type of fraud is being investigated, I guess they may ask the site to change that, if a court says it is libelous, they can force them to. I guess they found it easier to bully Google into "hiding" the sites in question ...
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