Posts by Wensleydale Cheese 1381 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Jan 2011
"Symantec are million times worse, I have read their recent scare stories about android security."
Similarly, I read their recent scare story about OS X. One attack they emphasised could of course be remedied by using their products, but they managed to omit the simple truth that if you don't have Java installed, that attack is a non-issue.
Java hasn't been a part of the default installation of OS X for several years now.
I rest the case, M'Lud.
"Perhaps you meant "VMS and BSD", but that does undermine your argument a little. There hasn't been any DOS in Microsoft's OS products since Windows XP came out, whenever that was (I was still Mac-only in those days)."
Not quite. The culture of DOS malware simply moved to Windows as a target as the original DOS elements disappeared.
"The NT kernel was modelled on VMS."
"Modelled" is a far cry from "implemented like". The practice of passing arguments by descriptor didn't make it into NT, and new attack vectors such as Autorun were introduced.
Running everything from the Adminstrator account by default was never a good idea.
Unless anyone has more accurate information...
Wki: Significant BSD descendants
"Apple Inc.'s Darwin, the core of OS X and iOS; built on the XNU kernel (part Mach, part FreeBSD, part Apple-derived code) and a userland much of which comes from FreeBSD"
"The only website we could get was Google - we couldn't even reach our own web server which is in the same building. Bizarrely, in the next room, the only website they could get was Bing... how does that work?!"
I had a similar problem several years ago on my home web server. If I restarted the server on some other port than 80 it was fine, but restarting it on port 80 brought the problem back. I couldn't even get a connection from the same box.
I was later told it was a SYN flood attack. More recent switches and routers than I had then can protect against this attack.
"Not all members of this forum live in a country with a mild climate like the UK's. "
My first lesson with screen wash in a colder climate:
1. Do buy screen wash that is advertised as coping down to minus 30°C (or whatever). Think wind chill.
2. Don't add water to it.
"Surely the standard boot order should NOT be USB or removable devices before the HDD?"
The HP MIcroServer N40L has USB Priority set to High by default, and simply plugging a new backup drive in will cause it to look at that on the next reboot, even if you have previously set the boot order to look at the internal disks first.
Simple answer: Set the USB Priority to Low in the BIOS.
Not quite so straigtforward when you want to use the internal USB socket for booting on a permanent basis. Net booting or a hacked BIOS seem to be the real answer here.
"Just emboss or raise the symbols so they are black on a black background because we just know everyone has bright lights pointing directly at the front panel and it's never dark there, no siree."
Anyone tried finding the supplied screwdriver plus drive mounting screws in an HP MicroServer in a dark corner of a server room?
Black on black.
And yes, mobile phones were banned in that server room.
The gazillion optical drives with the insert/eject button underneath the tray are a testament to saving 5 cents per drive.
The manufacturers probably saved a few million over the years with that design, but every single user pays a price when pushing the button with the tray in the ejected position.
the Bean Counters ... want you out at the first opportunity, in order to "reduce the cost of IT"
The whole reason for my biggest project in the early 1980s was that the customer wanted to get away from the high costs of using a third party data processing service.
Just see what happens once the "cloud providers" think they have got you well and truly locked in.
"That all said, I absolutely believe North Korea has the capability to do this."
Agreed. Dunno about North Korea, but many developing countries have programmes to send their brightest students to Western universities for a start.
"Anyone who has the resources to hire a full-time research team and a pair of decent developers can build credible offensive hacking capabilities. This means that most 50-individual companies on the planet theoretically have the resources to build both malware and network-based deployment capabilities."
I'd actually put that at less than 50. A team of a dozen developers/testers can produce some very sophisticated software. Add admin, sales and managers to get to 20-ish. That figure is based on my own experience.
"What's interesting is that they've pitched this at €200 a year - one annual payment, no monthly option."
I much prefer that to monthly payments.
"Maybe the idea is that you value things you've paid in one go for more than something that gets taken away in unnoticeable monthly payments."
Blame the bastards who make it difficult to unsubscribe from monthly payments, or ignore your cancellation requests for my dislike of monthly payments. They cease to be "unnoticeable" when they represent a charge for a service you either don't want or cannot use any more.
I have the iTunes agreement in front of me, for example. It specifically says I cannot use it outside my country, so what do I do if I get seconded abroad for a couple of months?
"A source told The Reg customers had paid Telecity for the use of dual, fully independent power suppliers to avoid outages but the fact their service was down indicated they hadn't actually got what they'd paid for."
Who'd have thunk that from an internet company?
Well I'm shocked I tell you, totally shocked!
"I've never used it myself but always heard it wasn't as performant as some of it's less feature rich cousins."
I went looking for MySQL versus PostgreSQL comparison several years ago and the best observation I came across was that folks from either camp were typically comparing a tuned version of the one they were currently using against an untuned out-of-the-box installation of the other.
There's also the usual compromise between performance and reliability. it doesn't matter so much if the post I am currently writing disappears into the ether as a result of a hardware hiccup somewhere between here and hitting the disk serving the El Reg forum, but it's a different story if I'm ordering swag from an online shop.
"if I allow the installer for FrogSpotter Plus to run FrogSpotter Plus for me before it closes, FrogSpotter Plus is typically running as Administrator."
I've come across a similar situation myself, though in my case it it led to file ownership problems.
Unfortunately some developers don't seem to test installations in non-administrator accounts (or maybe they did, but only several versions ago).
"I don't know how you feel about Windows, but personally, I'm sick of it. It's a constant battle,"
It's way too labour intensive and always demanding your attention for something or other.
Typical OS X application installation: Drag to /Applications. Progress bar. Done.
Typical Linux application installation: sudo apt-get/zypper/yum. Progress log. Done.
Typical Windows application installation: Prompt, prompt, prompt, prompt, prompt, and then a final prompt called 'Finish', which may itself churn for ages. Possibly reboot required as well.
Like I said, too labour intensive. Like a spolied child: Me, me, me, me, ad infinitum.
"10 whole seconds to find soft core core porn? Pah!"
You've got it wrong.
You may be after instant gratification, but a proper reporter has to verify his sources, for example by following the links to check that they do indeed contain what their descriptions purport to offer.
"Announcing that the beta would have telemetry that would monitor keystrokes and usage patterns was akin to shooting yourself in the foot with a small calibre pistol."
How to Shoot Yourself In the Foot - Developer's Insight, December 1991 (approx version)
And when you get to the end of the list, go back and read the first entry again :-)
"So you still run windows then ?"
That box has been sitting in a corner, unused and unloved, for the last 2 years or so.
As I recall it got into a loop downloading the same patches again and again, at which point I switched it off, intending to have another go.
To be frank I couldn't be bothered.
The next scheduled version of openSUSE is Leap 42.1, which is scheduled to be released Nov. 4, 2015.
Those computer systems are likely to be under attack by various interested parties, not forgetting spooks from all nations.
In the context of a war zone, any app or OS which slurps private data could put the aid/health workers and the folks they are helping in physical danger. Geolocation services are probably a Very Bad Idea.
" It's almost exactly equivalent to short-stroking disk drives to get a faster response from a disk drive array by having many spindles do the work at the expense of poor disk capacity utilisation."
Having used multiple spinning rust spindles myself I'd say not really, And nowadays we have SSDs which come in relatively small capacities.
And the submission form to get their paper doesn't work in Firefox.
Bah Humbug.
"Gotta love the way our government is opposed to state ownership - except, apparently, when the state isn't ours."
This.
Not only did our electricity get sold off, but it got sold off to the French State.
"Put simply: there are really good economic and national security reasons for every country in the world to nurture a cloud sector internally."
Well said sir. Much has been spouted about the security concerns of hosting abroad but the economic side is also important.
Consider what happens if your currency plummets against that of your cloud provider. Multiply that to a national scale and your country has a balance of payments problem to address.
Just stick "about:plugins" in the URL to see what plugins you have installed ...
Many thanks. Despite having things like NoScript and ad blockers installed, in "about:plugins" I only see a couple and those are from Cisco (web conferencing stuff).
IMHO muich confusion is caused by the way FF itself lumps stuff together as Add-Ons.
"Even some British sellers seem to hide behind multiple different sellers' names - while the product and shipping location details are identical."
That one can be explained by wholesalers who will ship direct to the end client.
It saves the resellers the hassle and cost of handling the physical goods themselves.
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