Posts by phuzz

Re: AC cos I'm ashamed of saying something nice about Vista

The problem with graphics cards and Vista, was that Microsoft were trying (as with UAC) to undo their sins of the past, and move on to a sensible display driver model (WDDM).

Unfortunately despite several years of warning, hardware vendors were slow to adopt it, leading to hardware that either ran slowly, or not at all. These days it's standard and works fine.

That's Vista in a nutshell really. It was Microsoft's attempt to fix various problems with previous versions of Windows, and the only way to do that was by making some things incompatible. Win 7 was really only a very minor upgrade (it probably could have been called Vista SP3), but the extra years gave hardware manufacturers and developers time to move to a more modern OS design, and there were many less problems when it launched.

Re: Pork cycle

"I am not involved in bacon or semiconductor production though do purchase both."

Ham and chips?

Re: Anything based on phone is not

"It's closed source so we have no clue about the internals or the protocol."

Most 2FA uses TOTP (RFC 6238) and/or HOTP (RFC 4226), so we do indeed know the protocol.

The original versions of the Google Authenticator are open source (later versions are not), but if you prefer, there's many different programs, some of which are open source, that all support the same authentication protocols. Here's a (open source) Python version if you like (as an example).

If you don't trust anyone else, you could code your own implementation based on the RFCs, which would work with a Google/Microsoft/etc. account.

Of course, if they're running through the same ducting, then they're equally vulnerable to someone digging through them whilst trying to lay a new driveway (eg).

The central locking is a bit dodgy on my knackered 206, and recently every time I tried to lock the car, the locks would pop back up again after a second. Turns out the fix is an easy one, simply SLAM the passenger door closed hard, and it works again.

Weirdly, the problem crops up even when I've not used the passenger door.

Re: Don't stop with the app maker

As it says in TFA:

"Although Pharma Co X was not named, Reuters reports it is understood to be Purdue Pharma, a pharmaceutical conglomerate facing intensive legal scrutiny over its drug Oxycontin" *

They're already looking at the pharma companies. I suspect the case(s) against the pharma companies are still ongoing, where as the one against the software company was a little more cut and dried.

* I'm sure I wasn't the only person who immediately thought of Purdue as the sort of scummy company that would likely be involved in this sort of thing.

Re: so much fail

I can neither confirm nor deny that I did that just the other days with a failing UPS...

Re: Thanks for the clarification, Smooth Newt

Just turn off image downloading, (which is already off by default in Thunderbird, and Outlook, and probably some other clients too). That way you can still view an image if you decide to.

Re: So we'd FSCK'd the USA?

They've definitely got some integrity problems...

Re: You still do not understand why we voted to remove FoM.

Hey now, it's not racism.

Sorry, I mistyped, I meant, it's not just racism. There's xenophobia too!

Re: Getting to the Moon is no walk in the park

"which is something hardly any country has these days"

China does. India and Israel both seem to be gearing up for their respective second attempts. ESA and Japan both have plans, as do Russia.

Pretty much ever country with space launch capability seem to be working on landing on the Moon, and several private companies too.

Re: RAM clear on power off ?

This is basically how the 'secure erase' function works on modern SSDs. The drive is encrypted on the fly from factory, and running secure erase just changes the security key.

Re: All washed away like tears in rain

In the same way you might be proud of a particularly gnarly scar?

None of the people who I know who develop for linux do so using linux. Most of them use OSX on the MacBook Pros.

And that's part of the answer to your question; if you buy a laptop, chances are it'll either run Windows or it'll be a Macbook*. Most likely, they'll keep that OS, because it's just easier than having to try and work out what set of binary blobs you'll need to get the wireless to connect, or to get suspending to work, or to get sound**.

So they develop on Windows or OSX, and they push it to the server running linux.

(I'm not a developer, but I work on a Windows machine, to administer many linux boxes).

* and yes, System76 et al. do exist, but I'd be surprised if they sell in a year what Apple shift in a day.

** I jest of course. Everyone knows that you can't get audio working on linux.

Re: Lazers

As an alternative, you can fit IR LEDs to your hat, which should dazzle most CCTV cameras without being particularly obvious to the ol' Mk1 eyeball.

Re: This can be summed up in one word: Profit

Try putting a bigger disk/SSD in it without the T2 chip throwing a fit.

Oh wait, the SSD is soldered on so you can't upgrade it even if you wanted to. Oh, and don't even think of getting it repaired at a non-Apple shop, because, yep, that pesky T2 will brick it.

Re: UEFI boot... DO NOT!!

There has been computers sold to the public, which only have Microsoft keys in the EFI, so they can only boot a Microsoft operating system. They were Surface tablets.

As far as I've heard, the newer ones allow the end user to add their own keys (so you can boot linux).

Re: VisualBasic developers are daft enough to fail to realize this

I've never manually installed any version of .NET, so presumably this is the version that's installed with the OS. As another commenter pointed out, you might have to switch it on in Windows Features.

Re: Well, looks like that migration to Linux is getting cheaper and cheaper

Snapshots aren't much help when a GRUB update hoses your disk. Waiting until it wasn't bleeding edge wasn't much help easier, as it was a weird bug that only occurred on a specific CPU/chipset.

Still, at least installing an update marked as 'security' was my choice eh?

Re: The Way We Live Now

Possibly someone at the NSA heard about the case, and this was the way they managed to put pressure on the situation?

Re: Balkanise

I'm pretty sure China could cope if the entire rest of the internet went down.

And that pretty much tells you all you need to know about 'balkanisation' as a solution. It's only possible in countries where the government holds complete control of the communications infrastructure, and countries like that aren't much fun to live in.

(Unless you always agree 100% with what your government gets up to, in which case you probably don't really know what said government is actually getting up to).

"Yes, you can use Encrypting File System (EFS) to encrypt files on a BitLocker-protected drive."

From here. And yes, EFS is for individual files, Bitlocker is for whole disks.