Posts by Sandtitz 1711 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2010
"If they just give you one IP address, it will be on a network with other IPs and thus accessible from other users. Surely you don't want this, do you?"
Why would this be a problem? The ISP likely filters broadcasts and prevents using other users' IP addresses, and everyone is expected to use NAT and/or firewalls in any case.
"I expect BlueCoat's business to go the same way as did QuarterDeck, Norton Ghost..."
Ghost - I agree.
But Quarterdeck? They offered the best memory management and multitasking software for DOS, but their wares became irrelevant when Warp (1994) gained some mainstream status and especially once Windows 95 and NT4 (1996) was released. Symantec seem to have bought the company in 1998 when the company was already dying.
I don't know how Talk Talk has conducted their Teamviewer connections in the past, but here's an example how the intruder might have gained access.
Normally, upon installation Teamviewer creates a unique ID and a 4 digit password that changes every time the TV application is restarted. (The ID can't be easily changed by the end user since it is generated from a MAC address)
If Talk Talk has a) customized the Teamviewer application to never randomize the password and b) enabled the host module to start at boot, and c) Talk Talk customer support has written down the ID and the password in the breached customer records then it is trivial for the hackers to invade computers without any user action.
The above is dependent on several conditions but I've seen worse decisions when managers are contemplating between ease of use and security. Is it possible that someone at TT has made those decisions? Yes.
Microsoft is leasing the hardware. It is not atypical for companies to lease computers, MFPs and such. Some companies prefer not to spend on permanent assets but to lease their equipment.
This is not about Microsoft changing their business model, you're still free to buy the equipment, but I'm afraid my point will be lost in the tsunami of MS haters.
"Many devs choose Android (over Apple) specifically because it's open-source."
Some do. Some select their platforms based on the developer tools. And some select the platform based on maximizing revenue, user base or just goodwill.
Choosing Android because it is open source is kind of a problematic point since most Android phones (>99.9% ?) have the Google core software installed which is not open at all. Not to mention the drivers which AFAIK are usually just closed binary blobs.
If openness was a major factor for devs then Firefox and Debian phones would have had a huge app market. That didn't happen.
"Parked in poorly lit car park at night, turn on headlights to improve things a little, or even just to locate the car if you are the sort who forgets where they parked."
I'm not convinced. If I press the lock button on my ignition key the turn lights blink for a few times. That feature is several decades old and doesn't need a fancy app. Some cars may even honk the horn for easier locating.
[Google spokesman]: "Many of our security bugs are detected using AddressSanitizer, MemorySanitizer, Control Flow Integrity or LibFuzzer."
Begs the question: why doesn't Google use these free tools to check their code?
Is it cheaper to dish out perhaps $200K a year to these hackers than to do it in-house?
"Attach an Xbox to your network and it will trawl it, reporting everything you have on your network to M$."
I think you should NOW produce some credible evidence to back your claim.
I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not really sure why I even bothered replying in the first place since you're constantly using 'M$'. How juvenile.
"Microsoft has a well worn track record of abandoning hardware."
I'd like more examples since the hardware I associate MS with is keyboards, mice and joysticks. And they've worked just fine for the 20+ years I've used them. (well, not the joysticks)
With Zune Microsoft had an uphill battle against Apple who was already dominant in the MP3 player market. According to Wiki they sold Zune players for 5 years before discontinuing. By that time people were starting to just use their mobile phones to listen to music. Apple had great marketing back then ("it just works", "I'm a PC. - I'm a Mac. Macs are immune to viruses" and people just are used to buying anything Apple, including Watches.
"The only hardware that seems to have a heartbeat is the Xbox. Even that is being outsold 2-1 by Sony's PS4."
Windows is outselling Linux on the desktop 90 to 1, what conclusions would you draw out of that?
"What is running on the Xbox? Windows 10, so I'll never buy one."
I'm a bit perplexed since the operating system is in the background and AFAIK users are not exposed to it. Does the Xbox work poorly because it is running Windows 10?
"If they're open source, though, they can be audited without need to consult the author."
They can, and that's the best part of open source.
The worst part is that it's an academic point and just never done.
A proper audit costs time and money and I'm not aware of open source audits except the Truecrypt case. Truecrypt is/was widely used, and while I'm not using it I'm still thankful for the effort. Unlike TC, OpenSSL is made by full time employees, funded by tech giants, used by countless companies to provide crypto and nobody cared about the quality until the horses bolted. Several times.
All coders can read the source, but deciphering it and finding obvious or obscure vulnerabilities may be beyond them. If the code is implementing its own cryptography (yikes!) it would need someone really proficient in maths and crypto to spot failures or even to understand what's going on in the code.
"Only four new Lumia devices have limped out of the door in the past year, all running Windows 10 mobile."
Presumably the author writes about phone models and not the total number of sold devices...
Anyhow - how does this compare to other manufacturers? Have Google and Apple produced more models in the past year?
"Yes, stiction was a serious problem back then. Disks without load/unload ramps had to rest their heads on platters, so any types of percussion had to be administered very carefully."
When was 'back then'? I parked my hard drive heads back in the 80s before turning off the PC. There was a distinct clunk and then it was appropriate to reach the power flip switch - located handiy behind the PC.
Or are we talking about different things here?
I've also succesfully used the rubber mallet technique with hard drives that refused to spin up. Obviously you needed to hit the side - sometimes rather hard too.
"There are full system backups, but I don't even trust them for a bare metal restore."
You're right, you shouldn't trust them. You should be testing them every now and then.
"i'm an utter knob...i'm on the fast ring and there's not been a relase that hasn't broke something."
Windows Insider is a beta test program and the fast ring is more like alpha test program. I agree on your assessment about yourself.
Windows 8 and 10 included the Flash plugin and it's kept up-to-date with Windows Update.
To disable it in IE: disable ActiveX. The Edge browser has a simple on/off setting for it.
The built-in Flash plugin doesn't work with any other browsers, so her Firefox is safe in that regard.
"Just to give you an example, it still runs an outdated (almost 30 years old) filesystem -NTFS-, while others have made enormous progresses and also taken into account new things like SSD. Look at HFS+ (Mac), ext4, zfs, etc (Linux), how far superior, feature full (snapshots for example) and adapted to modern hardware they are."
Your comment is laughable.
Ext4, ZFS, HFS+ have no SSD specific features. Only ZFS supports snapshots, ext4 and HFS+ are just general purpose file systems with no extraordinary features. HFS+ only gained features like transparent compression and encryption until quite recently.
Age of technology is not important if it just works. NTFS was introduced in 1993, 23 years ago. Not 30 years ago as you falsely claim. That's the same year ext2 was introduced - and ext4 is just an extended version of the original and ext3, not a rewrite. In the same vein NTFS has had numerous revisions, the latest version is only 15 years old.
HFS+, which is just 18 year old tech is based on HFS which actually is 30+ year old tech.
You claim that all these file systems are adapted to modern hardware but NTFS is not. Please give us some examples or crawl back to your cave/under the bridge.
"1) When the license key stops the product from working unless you keep paying for it."
Unless it's O365 or some other "cloud product", I'm not aware of MS products ceasing to work when the license expires.
"2) per call support costs."
The prices are per incident, not per call.
What competing products do you use where you get free phone support?
"3) Inability to speak to a real person who actually understands the product rather than someone from south India called Joe who can't really speak English even though they are reading from a script."
My experiences with MS phone support haven't (yet) been transferred to Far East. The last person I received support from was actually a Dane who spoke English fluently. I'm sure MS has call centres in India too. YMMV and so forth.
FTFY:
"1% market share for quarter of century of free download is NOT a success."
"If Linux was indeed the bee's knees as we have been repeatedly told, then everyone should have downloaded it".
"The program has demonstrated that Linux cannot capture more than one-hundreth of the market with a free upgrade."
"I count that as a failure."
"Because it's Cyanogenmod which isn't plain Google."
It isn't Android, but the Obi website states 'The MV1 comes in two OS versions: Android Lollipop 5.1 and Cyanogen OS 12.1.1.'
So you can also have the real Google Android if I read that sentence correctly. CM 13 is available for many other devices already, so is there a valid (technical) reason why Obi doesn't offer the latest?
"Obi will also roll out regular monthly-ish updates – something Chinese rivals are notoriously bad at."
"The specs for the beast: Cyanogen OS 12.1.1, Lollipop 5.1"
Marshmallow was released 6 months ago. If this small shoppe can't offer the latest OS on their new phone what are the chances that updates are ever coming?
"People didn't want what Vista did. They just wanted an updated less buggy, faster easier to maintain version of XP. MS has been going backwards since 2003."
People were whining about XP when it debuted. Too much eye candy and so forth. People were fine with Win9x and W2K.
"None seem to quote screen resolution any more, or does "HD" always mean 1920 x 1080 (Tesco's budget 128G SSD Lenovo Laptop at about €360, with Win 10, what sort of SSD anyway?)?"
No. 1920x1080 is 'Full HD'. 'HD' means something between 1280x720 and 1366x768. Those Tesco cheapies have 1366x768 resolution mentioned in the specs. Many people are just fine with that, believe it or not. And practically any SSD on the market is fine for most home users. IMHO.
"They dropped the ball on this one IMHO."
I'm not aware of Apple ever announcing EOL dates for OSX, IOS or other stuff. As far as I know, Apple doesn't promise any sort of updates for any of their stuff when they release new hardware/software.
They don't have to - Apple users are vocal supporters but don't raise fuss over EOL dates for some reason.
"Windows phone is still failing, as is surface, as is Xbox one (notable by its absence, replaced with Bullshit Xbox live numbers)."
Did you even read the article before posting?
"Surface revenue increased 61 per cent in constant currency to $1.1bn, thanks to the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book."
and
"Xbox Live users rose 26 per cent year on the year, bringing more gamers into the fold"
By all accounts the Surface is generally seen as success for Microsoft. The first iterations were not, especially the ARM version. Please explain how you see Surface as failing.
The 26% rise on Xbox users probably stems from sold Xbox devices, or do people just suddenly start using them? Again, PS4 reportedly trounces the Xbox in sales and profits, but the Xbox is still profitable, and AFAIK the devices are rather close specifications-wise. (I don't play nor own either)
We all agree on failing Windows Phone sales but 1 out of 3 correct answers? Tsk, tsk. No upvotes from me.
Back in 2009 Opera introduced 'Opera Turbo', a HTTP proxy service of sorts where compressed web pages (with much compressed images) were delivered through Opera's servers (in Norway?). I used a Nokia E65 at the time and it really did speed up browsing.
Enabling the Turbo feature essentially routed all HTTP traffic through their servers and you could bypass all sort of blocking on ISP level - downloading Linux Distros via TPB was once again feasible. :-)
It may well be much more than 10 years. "He's now awaiting trial in Colorado, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Kansas"
The guy was probably well paid as an IT boss and used to certain lifestyle he won't be living from now on. He looks like 50+ years old in his mugshot - chances are that after all those other states have piled their sentences over this first one the guy is geriatric or more likely dead before released. The article doesn't state whether the money was recovered, spent or stashed. Likely his current house and belongings are going under hammer to pay for everything.
Reminds me of the chewing gum in plastic matchboxes with pop-music badge you used to be able to get late 70's early 80's (the amount of money I spent on those to collect the badges and 3 out of 5 of them were 'the clash' - then there was the odd 'score' Toyah with her tit out!!).
Hey, I managed to collect the complete set of Mexico '86 and Italy '90 playing cards from those bubble gum packs!
If Putin et al. wasn't mentioned in these papers every single Russian newspaper and TV station would be covering the Poroshenko affairs with great interest. But now that Kremlin has denounced the papers as fiction the media cannot throw accusations at anyone except the evil Western journalists!
"A 15 minute break (now down to 10 minutes I gather) gives one time for a coffee and charges the battery with around 150 miles ranges - all free of charge"
Free of charge, even the coffee? Who pays for the electricity then? Is it magical Green hippie electricity?
"I still want to blame someone somewhere for failing to do something!"
Me too. The problem is that companies that come up with a nice standard usually also introduce licensing which really limits the adoption factor. The other way is to set up a committee to come up with standards in emerging technology - unfortunately these standards always have an uphill battle since committee work is usually slow and more nimble companies may have a working non-standard products ready to capture the market months/years before standards based products appear.
Luckey isn't the CEO.
The question is whether he actually believes the BS he's spouting or whether he is just trying to push the product and create hype. Maybe he knows full well that the product is lacking but needs to keep up the appearances just to appease Zuckerberg and to boost his Oculus/FB share option status.
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