Posts by James O'Shea

Re: just use base 64 or so and you get 64 years of 262144 days

“A ten year shelf life is unthinkable”? They no longer sell Twinkies® where you are?

Oh, please... a mere 100 GBP? A pitance. Here in Deepest South Florida, at my local Best Buy they have $300 to $400 HDMI cables _in stock_ and can special order $600-700 cables. My fav Best Buy HDMI cable, the $1095 one, doesn’t seem to be available any more. Or maybe they’re just too embarrassed to admit that it ever existed.

I go to Best Buy mostly to get a laugh, those boys are living in a world all their own.

Re: I'm So Pleased That Brits Recognize Adam Sandler Has Not Talent

This is incorrect. Adam Sandler is a very talented man, very talented indeed. However, his talent is not for acting, at least not in the way that most people would think. No, his talent is in extracting lots of money while creating utterly unwatchable messes. He approaches Uwe Boll levels of skill for that kind of thing.

That's not a hipster, that's a Canadian, one of the Men In Plaid.

Re: Firewalls?

I'd kinda like to know if this would work, too...

Re: Splooge!

I thought of Flesh Gordon. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068595/

It just doesn’t show on some systems.

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is left as an exercise for the student.

Re: Interesting

Have a look at the Affinity products at https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/. Affinity Photo does most of what Photoshop does, and is cheaper than one month's rent of CC. Affinity Designer does pretty much all of what Illustrator does, for less than another month's rent. Allegedly they're working on replacements for inDesign and Dreamweaver. iStudioPublisher http://www.istudiopublisher.com might also be something you want to look at.

Acrobat, unfortunately, is a lot harder to replace fully than I'd thought. PDF Expert and other apps of that type replace some features, but right now only Acrobat Pro does everything. It's very annoying. Acrobat Pro may well be the only Adobe application on my systems going forwards. It appears to be 32-bit, so it will have to be replaced when Apple and Microsoft take 32-bitness behind the barn, but at least it doesn't depend on Java 6.

Re: Does this mean the distro is no longer condescending ?

They're still zealots.

I have a number of servers at this location. Some are Windows, running WinServer 2008 R2 and WInServer 2012 and 2012 R2. Some are various Linux distros. One is an old Apple XServe which Tim Cook's minions will pry loose from my cold, dead, fingers, and only after I lay waste to Cupertino and sow the ruins with radiocobalt. I also have a few desktop systems, Windows 7, Windows 10, a few XP, a lot of Macs running 10.6 and 10.9 and a few running 10.13. No Linux desktops. Why? Hardware and software incompatibilities. Linux does not talk to many of the various scanners, printers, imagesetters, and so on around here, or at least doesn't talk easily, and if it does, lacks the featureset of those devices when talking to Windows or Mac. I'm in the middle of dumping all the XP and some of the 7 and 10 systems and replacing them with Macs... because it's simply easier to get Macs to talk to the other hardware, and where I _must_ use Windows-based systems, in many cases it's simpler to get a Mac-based VM and still a Windows license on that. Macs and Windows boxes don't argue with me about video cards, network cards, printers, and imagesetters, scanners, floor-standing multifunction devices etc. (We have several Canon floor-standing copier things. One of them supports Linux... in theory. In reality, getting adequate hardcopy out of it from a Linux system is painful. Scans ain't happening, though they should, in theory. The other units simply aren't supported. All work perfectly with Windows and Macs, even ancient versions such as XP and 10.6, even though Mac OS X 10.7 is, officially, the lowest supported version of Mac OS. Yes, I can use it on theoretically unsupported Macs, but Linux systems balk. Perhaps someone who actually gives a damn might be able to coax good behavior out of the Canons and Linux; I just point a Mac or a Windows machine at the print or scan or fax job and It Just Works(tm). I've never got the Canon to send or receive a fax using Linux; we fax things on a semi-regular basis using Windows and Macs, without problems, and so simply and trivially that we no longer have stand-alone fax machines, we fax over the network from desktops. Can't do it from Linux, or at least not from any version of Linux we have using any of out Canon copier things.)

We have reason to use certain software which is simply not available on Linux, including MS Office and image-editing software like Photoshop and Affinity Photo. No, Open/Libre Office will NOT replace MS Office; I mostly use Word, and could probably make do with LibreOffice instead, but there are those who use Excel (a lot!) and simply cannot make do with LibreOffice. We have tried. No, it won't work. Not here. Pretty much everyone uses Outlook, even though most hate it. Tests with other email/calendaring systems show that the users here hate pretty much everything else (yes, especially Lotus Notes) more than they hate Outlook. It takes talent to be hated more than Outlook; the competition has lots of talent. No, the GIMP is not an adequate replacement for Photoshop or Photo. In particular, given that Linux systems have problems talking to the scanners we have here, the GIMP is crippled out of the box 'cause it can't scan. It can't even bloody scan from some of our directly-attached large-format high-resolution scanners, though it can detect the el cheapos. Problem is, we don't want scans from the el cheapos for production work; el cheapo scans are fine for me and the beancounters and admin, but the art department would have collective cows at the thought, and that tends to leave a mess which I would be stuck with cleaning up, so no thanks. I usually scan either from the el cheapo no-name scanner in the department or from the Canon floor-stander over the way, because 150x150, 300x300 or at most 600x600 scans are plenty for me and the el cheapo or the Canon can manage that without problems... except that the Canon won't scan to Linux. Then there's output. Assuming that we get scans in, somehow, despite the good scanners not supporting Linux, output is a bitch 'cause the good printers, including the imagesetters, don't support Linux.

This doesn't matter for servers; I rarely need to scan or print from a server and if I do, or if I need to fax, it's easy to print to a PDF on one of the shared volumes and then print or fax the PDF using a machine which can print or fax, or to have another machine do the scan and save it as a PDF or whatever on a shared volume and access it that way. The lack of support for some hardware and software isn't a problem, with a server. It's a big problem with desktop systems.

I expect lots of screaming from zealots.

feh

P@55w0rD is so much more secure. It's got _three_ numbers and _two_ capitals, it _must_ be secure.

Re: Since the EU can't for Google to erase searches worldwide

for a small fee I can look up those who have been forgotten in the EU. no need for the VPN, just an email or a text with the request and where I can get my payment will do. This way users can honestly say that they never performed the offending search, and a check of their browser history will confirm this.

Hmmm... a new business opportunity... Crook-Finders LLC, motto 'We find what they don't want you to know'. I wonder if el Reg would carry ads for us?

Re: countless issues

Because they used to be on networks connected to the Internet, a very long time ago, and I've never bothered to delete them as they don't take up much space and I simply don't give a damn. Why do you care?

Re: "Frnech goivernment"?

Something which hasn’t existed since about 1789.

Re: Not Good Enough

What matters is how long it’s been since the files were encrypted, a.k.a. since the ransomware starts working, not when the ransomware is installed. Having ransomware sitting, not working, and not detected, on your system is pretty bad, but if it starts working users have 30 days to notice and restore the affected files. And once it starts working it should be easily detected and killed.

Frankly, if ransomware got onto a system _I_ was responsible for, I’d reformat the volume and restore from known good backups dating from prior to the malware’s install and would be very careful about restoring from backups made after the malware was present. Such backups would have to be extensively sanitized before they went anywhere near a production machine. Yes, this would take time. Yes, this would add costs. Yes, some data might be lost because I couldn’t be sure that it was safe. Certainly I’d just dump the whole thing back onto production machines, if ordered to, in writing, by a senior exec. Otherwise, no, it’s stays offline unless sanitized.

Impossible. No schools in the US teach a subject called 'geography'.

https://www.pri.org/custom/files/styles/original_image/public/TrumpMap.jpg

It has been that way for quite some time now.

https://liberalvalues.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/the-world-according-to-ronald-reagan.jpg

Re: Finally somebody said the truth

I’ve never been to Manila. I have been to Cuidad Mexico. There is no way, no way at all, that Manila can be worse than Mexico City. In particular, there is no way that driverless cars can survive in Mexico, not with the way that the jaguar knights driving those VW taxis drive. Taxis in Mexico City are the fastest things on four wheels, despite the awesome traffice, because Mexico City taxi drivers aim for where there had better be a hole when their made-in-Mexico German-designed terror device arrives. And that VW will be trailing Cherenkov radiation... okay, I exaggerate, it’s only a sonic boom. I understand that they’re retiring the VWs. No doubt they’d be replaced by F1 racecars, except that those would be too slow. Anyone attempting to operate a driverless vehicle in Mexico City would find themselves in serious trouble, shortly before being rammed by one of the 140,000 taxis. Probably by more than one.

What’s the name?

Sounds as if I might be interested

DDMMYY-XXXX

Hmm... that seems to put a hard limit of 10000 IDs/day, assuming that they start with 0000 and push straight through to 9999, something which sounds... unlikely, if only for the way that it’d make life easy for certain elements of society. Adding two more Xes would make things much harder to fake. And would leave space for popuation growth.

Re: This is the tweet that got him silenced

The Germans considered that it was in their national interest to arrest Puigdemont. Perhaps there is something that Germany, or a large German company, might get from Spain if Spain were tossed a bone. Perhaps Germany looked at the way that Catalonia is breaking away from Spain and considered what might happen if certain parts of Germany got the breakaway fever. Perhaps both are true. Perhaps the Germans simply don't give a shit about Catalan independence. Perhaps there is another reason. Meanwhile, the Belgians and the Finns didn't think that it was in their national interest to arrest Catalan whatevers. At least not yet. Give it time. The Belgians in particular may have their problems with breakaway regions, too.

And St Jules really should have thought twice before making that tweet. Not only did it piss off Spain, it also got the Germans' attention just from the way it was phrased. All other Catalan politicians had best get out and stay out of Germany, or they'll be on the next plane to Madrid.

MS Office runs only under MS Windows and Apple macOS on desktops and laptops, and on iOS and Android cell phones and tablets. ChromeOS is not Android. MS Office will not run under Chrome. LibreOffice will not run under iOS or Android; there is a a viewer. There isn't even a viewer for Chrome. Use Google's offerings.

Because attempting to incite animosity and hatred towards majority groups tends to be self-limiting, when a few of the majority get together and thump them who would incite. After being thumped a few times, and finding that the police or other authorities, being members of the majority group being incited against, are strangely reluctant to do anything to stop the thumping, them who would incite either get smart and stop, or get even more stupid and do something which inspires a really serious thumping, typically good enough to end the inciting one way or another.

Re: We've been through something similar,

Around there there are a few, a very few, application suites which require Windows. One of them is Office. As in Office 2013, and, in a few cases, Office 2010/2011 (the Mac version is 2011) or Office 2016; there was no Mac version of Office 2013, and the Mac version of Office 2016 is... Office 2016. There is no Office 365. There never will be any Office 365. I am in the process of moving all copies of Office to Office 2016 running on VMs, with the VMs having zero Internet access. We simply must have Office. Mostly, we simply must have Excel. Word we can take or leave, though it does do some nice things. Some people live in PowerPoint; I tend to avoid them whenever possible. Access is best ignored. Outlook is a problem; some love it, most hate it with the fury of 10,000 suns. But nothing can replace Excel. Nothing. Not LibreOffice. Not Word Perfect Office. Not Google Docs. And most definitely not Numbers, the alleged spreadsheet app which Apple dumped into iWork as a makeshift. (Pages can replace Word, though there are things that Word does slightly better, and other things that it does slightly worse; Keynote is better than PowerPoint; there is no iWork version of Access, possibly because Apple was too busy laughing their asses off, the Mac guys who need a database use FileMaker Pro. Numbers is just so bad that some have said that it was really created in Redmond to make Excel look even better than it does.) If we tried to remove Excel there would be a mutiny. Deleting the rest of Office would get, at best, a meh.

I'd imagine that a major corporation like Airbus would have to do a few complex spreadsheets. I'd just love to be there the first time that someone attempted to open one of those (we have an eight-sheet, 32 column, 501 row, monster with lots and lots of macros and other stuff beloved by Accounting; I'm sure that it must be just a baby compared to spreadsheets generated at Airbus; no, I have no idea what it does, I don't want to know, I just know that the one time Accounting thought that it was messed up they were prevented from committing mass suicide only by our recovering a backup) and sees the mess that results. And there will be a mess. Excel doesn't like to move some things between versions of Excel, much less to some other app.

Someone at Airbus didn't think this through. Or simply hates the Accounting dept and wants them all to die slowly. Did Simon and the PFY infiltrate Airbus one night?

Re: Finders Keepers

"Plus now I know not to set the dog on any bits of space station as I usually do for pheasants."

Surely you mean 'peasants'...

Re: OTA Updates for Cars

"If the engine runs away on an ICE car you can switch off the ignition (unless its a runaway diesel) , put it into neutral and coast to the side of the road even if the brakes have been disabled and get out ."

Ah... nope. See, for example, <https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/>

"I imagine the power steering in a tesla is a lot more powerful and harder to manually steer against than in a normal car due to the autodrive function so while some 200lb male might not have a problem fighting it a 100lb woman may well do."

read the article above. It is entirely possible to lock the 'user' completely out of everything _now_. Steering, brakes, engine start/stop, transmission, the lot. Down to controlling the radio. Doing it to a Tesla instead of a Chrysler would not be significantly harder or easier. And, yes, this problem affected Chryslers and Dodges as well as Jeeps, they used the same electronics packages. Chrysler has allegedly fixed this p[articular loophole. Given that they're Chrysler, and have been proven to be grossly incompetent over _decades_, I'm sure that there's more stuff hiding in their code just waiting to be exploited. Ford and GM are better than Chrysler, but that's not hard. And Toyota is just begging to be hacked. I own a Toyota; their arrogance is breathtaking.

Re: Keep in mind, Pai *is* a lawyer and you'd think this migh thave been part of his induction

Feh. I am reminded of an old episode of Law & Order. Our Heroes are leaving the office after having been victorious in Defending the People from yet another set of vicious criminals, in this case involving two divorce lawyers. One of the divorce lawyers is going to do serious prison time, and the other will have his license suspended for quite a while. Adam Schiff asks: “Where did they get their ethics?” Claire Kincade replies “Law school.”

Historically there have been remarkably few lawyers with ethics... except for those who are paid to have ethics, such as the FCC ethics legal team. Examples abound, especially as most politicians are lawyers, and tend to have even less in the way of ethics than the average lawyer does.

Re: If PETA is against it

sounds like a plan.