Posts by Steven Raith

Re: How MS could really help

Tannin is quite correct - getting the SP1 install for Win7 32 and 64bit on some portable storage is a major timesaver - although even then, getting all updates over a fast internet connection will take a solid three hours and about three reboots (more if you go for optional updates like .Net etc)

As an aside, Vista will, in many cases (from OEM builds - Acer, Dell etc) fail to install the standalone service packs without having all previous updates installed in the Usual Fashion - so if you can't get a Vista Service Pack to install, just go through the updates normally, rather than trying to 'troubleshoot' it - I've never managed to get one of those machines to take the SP redist without having the preceding updates on it (Which sort of defeats the object, I know....).

HTH

Steven R

Re: Too Old

"For what it's worth though, pretty much everyone I know uses it, and I'm not that young that we're talking about kids. University lecturers, solicitors, health professionals, and quite a few IT professionals."

Yeah. Well, I'm cool as fuck, and no-one I know uses it. And because no-one I know uses it, that means no-one cool as fuck is using it, which makes you a square.

We're all sending messages to each other by writing them on cheese and ham toasties and posting them through DPD.

Get with the times, homes, etc.

Steven R

PS: WhatsApp will die with everything else ad-sponsored (which it will be, if it's not already) when the true value of targetted ads is revealed to be a Quarter Of Fuck All. I look forward to that day. Hands up who clicks on ads in anything...

I rest my case.

PPS: in groundbreaking, breathtaking research, Old Speckled Hen makes Raith SWEARY. News at 11....

Re: Jeeceeaitchcue: "We do what we must because we can!"

To play devils advocate, how many social network sites or systems of this ilk (IM, email, video chat, etc) can you name that have been SSL by default or enforced SSL for more than the last five years (when pretty much all CPUs can encrypt on-the-fly with no major loss of performance - IE it's become acceptable to enforce it).

I think FB and Google only went HTTPS default (or HTTPS end to end as an option) fairly recently.

I'm not giving Yahoo an excuse - they're pretty crap IMHO - but from memory most parties with the exception of finance-related outfits (banking, paypal, shopping sites) are generally guilty of this sort of lazy-arsed attitude.

Not attempting to be a smartarse, I'm genuinely curious - anyone got any numbers or know an easy way of finding out?

Has FB video chat always been encrypted, for example? Skype? How many other potential vectors have there been?

Steven R

Ps: On the subject of blanket webcam snooping? That's the sort of crap that you'd think would cause a full-blown revolution, as they are almost explicitly (not like that) private communications - to be mass monitoring that sort of thing without a warrant against a particularly individual is utterly, utterly reprehensible from what proclaims to be a first world democracy. It makes the 'Axis of Evil' seem almost fluffy in comparison when it comes to intrusion by the state into the private lives of individuals. Although, obviously, they have other parts of their regimes that are far worse, natch...

Someone needs to put the OS from a Nokia 3210 in there - I could use that by muscle memory, literally with my eyes closed. I had mates who could send texts with their hands in their pockets, just from memorising the steps to the SMS section and knowing T9 off by heart...

Given how utterly, devestatingly broken the damping is on the G-wizz (I've been in a couple, both exhibited this) I genuienly wouldn't be surprised if this impact was caused by someone hitting a speedbump too fast, the car launched into space of its own accord from poor bound/rebound control, and the moon just happened to be in the way.

Seriously, I've been in 350hp Exiges, 400hp Porsches, and all sorts of fast metal over the years (I am lucky to have some well heeled friends who are only to happy to have passengers on trackdays!), but nothing terrified me more than a G-wizz around Islington. They are abominations against nature and logic.

And I don't mind electric cars (or even quadricycles as city cars) as a concept - it's just that G-wizz's are that bad.

Re: The title is too long.

Have a look at re-windable e-cigarette coils - if you can make a low enough resistance one, you should be able to get a couple of hours of of a standard 1000mah cell (which weights somewhere in the region of a hundred grams or so).

Might be worth a punt if it's of real concern, and the bits to test with are cheap enough.

Steven R

Re: have to agree

Re saving private ryan - it might be realistic, but I think it's fair to say that WWII was pretty unhinged in and of itself....

Re: I keep looking at these NAS devices

Oh, I won't deny that Ubuntu is good - I use it as a primary OS at home. I'm running the alpha or 14.04, and the performance and stability is better than 13.10 so far...!

But for the average SMB with limited IT skills, setting up an Ubuntu server to serve files properly, with redundacy and backup, loadbalanced NICs, replication, etc should they need it will take a couple of hours if they get someone in.

A Synology or QNAP device will have that done by the average rrasonably IT aware user, reading the instructions, in under an hour, with expandable RAID and the option of one-tick replication to another device, with no real hardcore IT knowledge needed beyond the basics. If you know what an IP address is, you can set up one of these. And it can also manage a few CCTV cameras, too, with very straightforward config that you set once, then never touch again.

I agree with you - I really do - but in the real world, in many cases, a QNAP/Syno device is far, far easier to set up than a basic Linux box. That's why I bought a DS214+ for home; it does everything I need, and more, and I could have set it up in my sleep. My brother could have set it up, and he's about as IT savvy as a kumquat.

And that's what I mean - these devices are now viable, nay aggressive competition, to an ATX workgroup server that isn't running Active Directory or other vendor specific services.

For well under a grand, and comparable in cost to a good server platform with RAID etc (such as the T20 above) from a whitebox/branded ATX supplier, you can handle up to 50 users (or more, depending on workload) and have some very advanced options for future use should you need them, which can be enabled by someone who hasn't lived and breathed this stuff for years.

If you want good, (comparatively) cheap, expandable and flexible storage, it's never been so good!

Steven R

Re: Toyota Update?

ODBII sort of has a way of doing this - most cars allow a different ECU map - or at least different 'safe values' (air to fuel ratio, etc) to be dropped in over the ODB connector (see Bluefin etc).

It's probably all they'll be doing at the dealership, it'll just be a signed key that's required before it'll allow you to modify the value.

Re: Tin Foil Hats

They stopped using mind control rays when targeted advertising was developed.

HTH.

Re: Upgrade o Linux

To be perfectly frank, porting entire apps to native Linux (as noted above, web apps aren't practical for everything) would probably be easier than trying to hobble them into WINE once you take licensing into account - if you use any Windows binaries in WINE, you are supposed to have a valid license for that OS.

Then you'd have to get the device vendors to provide drivers and software for Linux too, etc.

It's a doozie alright. Especially as the end-of-life for MS has been extended once already back in the Netbook days - they should have been all over this, kicking suppliers arses to get NT6 software and drivers, etc.

I'm willing to bet breach of contract charges for a CAT scanner etc and it's requisite control software cost less than XP extended support accross the entire NHS estate...

Just FYI...

Re: Schol Reform

Upvote because I agree with most of what you've said (particularly re PE and BMI, two things I hate with a passion for multiple reasons, some of them related; I'm in great shape...round is a shape) but mainly for the laser guided vehemency.

Did you help write Falling Down by any chance? ;-)

Steven R

Re: While you're logged in...

I'll read the Daily Mail by choice before I use Yahoo for...fucking anything, thankyouverymuch.

:-)

Steven R

(for our international commentards - the Daily Mail is like the Weekly World News, or other schlocky, lie-filled, made up tabloid rag in your locale, except it passes itself off as a real newspaper. And even more tragically, people actually take it seriously)

Re: Few people who are still running XP are running a machine that would be happy with Win 8.1

Davidoff, survey of one and all that, but I can count on two hands the number of machines I've seen in the last year that have had a decent Core2Duo in them, are capable of taking more than 2gb of RAM, and also have XP on them. The sort of people who bought high end XP machines like that - and they were high end machines - have already upgraded years ago.

Yes, in the geekerati (IE us lot) there are plenty of holdouts, but in the general retail world, most people bought budget machines ten years ago and never upgraded them because MS kept on extending support and extending support.

Those machines now are no longer fit for purpose for current Windows OSs - and I'm not being hyperbolic in that; a Celeron with 1gb of RAM will not run Windows anything from Vista onwards in any meaningful sense - hence why if you still have XP, and you want to get off of it because of end of support, and you still want Windows, new hardware really is the most sensible way to go in, from what I see, around three quarters of all cases that cross my path.

There is no economically viable way to update a machine like that to run anything newer than XP from MS, period. Hell, bad blocks and XP SP3s larger footprint than SP0 means that even some of those machines are pretty much unusable as it stands for XP itself...there's more of that than you'd believe...!

Also, end of sale on XP was 2010, not 2014 - have a look at when systems with Core2 processors capable of maxing out at more than 2gb RAM started filtering down to the sub £500 price range (I was there, it was towards the end of the decade unless you were spending decent money) and you'll see why most machines still running XP in the retail space, where people spend sod all, need replacing, not upgrading.

I remember speccing machines (DC7800s) in 2008/9 with XP on them - getting a Core2Duo on that was still around £500 per box even then - unless you wanted a celeron or a single core P4 hyperthreading <spits> system, which was about all you could get for under £500, and that was buying 200 of them at a time through a distie for a high school.

And those won't run Win 8 very well either.

Again, survey of one, but believe me, I'm having to explain this to five people a week, and I'm not the only one doing that at my place. And trust me, we'd rather sell a cheap, usable upgrade than tell someone they have to fork over £400 for a new system...

Steven R

Re: console kings Nintendo

Obligatory Futurama reference:

"This isn't a business! I've always thought of it as more of a source of cheap labor, like a family."

Re: Why pay for Google?

MS Rocks - you can talk about koolaid all you want, but that doesn't in and of itself make Mikels point any less valid/invalid.

What people see with Google are compelling products at what they consider to be a good price - whether they know about the data mining side of it is part of that, sure, but I'm pretty well versed in the interwebs, I know about the data mining side of it, and I'm fairly comfortable with it, knowing pretty much what can be taken from it and how it can be used.

It's called a compromise, and if a product is good enough, people will accept it.

It's really no more complicated than that. If you have evidence that what Google do is utterly amoral to a degree that most of us in the know aren't already aware of, please feel free to publicise it - you could bring them down if it's juicy enough.

Don't be surprised if the rest of us just go 'meh' and go googling for cheap gin and porn, though.

FWIW, I've been thinking for a while that the ad-revenue, data mining model simply has to collapse at some point (consider it the second web bubble economy - if adblocking hits a certain critical mass, or the value of advertising falls through the floor as people realise that no-one actually pays attention to them, etc, it'll pop and half the web as we know it will disappear like *that*) at which point we'll see if Google has the chops to survive without it's main revenue source.

That, I believe, will be an interesting day.

Steven R

Edit to say if anyone wants to poke holes in the above that don't involve conspiracy theories, feel free - every day is a schoolday, etc.

Re: THE END IS NIGH! REPENT! REPENT!

Theoretically, yes. There was a very fast network scanner that can map most of the internet in under an hour:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/19/new_tool_lets_single_server_map_entire_internet_in_45_mins/

If you can attach that to an exploit delivery system (IE make a DB of IPs, cross reference that with zerodays for unsupported XP, only attack those that are visible) then you could theoretically do some major damage if you had a chunky enough delivery system.

Practically though? I dunno. I don't know enough about realworld exploit deployment to be terribly certain (any pen testers care to wade in?) but I'd go as far as to say that if you have the opportunity to move away from XP, I'd do it.

That's my understanding of it - and I'll hold my hands up and say I'm not a security researcher or a pen tester - but I've moved away from MS almost entirely to Linux now (not possible for all, I know) so it's of less relevance to me than it was.

Steven R

" Mind you, the missus says they do a wonderful job on my meat & two veg, so there is that ..."

To be honest I find a fork and a steak knife work better than a razor, but each to thi....oh, you meant your cock and balls.

I made myself feel sad.

Steven R

(I concur on the stubblage - you can guess how I know)

Re: Actually...

Are you thinking of the Hub4, with ADSL modem and CAT5 WAN inputs?

I'm positive the Hub5 has a native fibre modem in it, and I can't imagine it being limited to 40mb.

I still tell mates to insist they keep the BTOR Infinity Modem though, so if they get a problem, they can try it on the WAN input of the Hub5, or they can simply use a third party router with CAT5 WAN input to see them through (or get better functionality etc).

I run 80mb fibre through a Draytek 2830, that does me fine, even if I barely use 2% of it's functionality...

Steven R

Re: Wow, it's just skyrocketing!

I'd have a Mexico in Yellow with black decals - it'd go well with my current steed:

Copy/Pasta - direct image link from FaceyB

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t1/s720x720/940819_10200913247330462_1127636444_n.jpg

(for the devoid of copy/pasta, it's a Ford Puma Milllenium edition - retina-searing yellow with black highlights)

(and apols for the FB link, I know some work filters don't like it hence not actively linking it - sometimes I get lazy and FB makes a decent image dump for web stuff)

Re: Elvington

I'd go with those stats - very few accidents are actuallly head on.

Almost no-one realises just how quickly any car - without exception - will bite you if you take the piss without having a decent amount of experience of how it behaves over the limit.

Skidpan days make you aware of that, and make you less likely to get into a silly situation; and if you do get into one (by accident or, er, on purpose, not that I'd suggest that ;-) ) give you more of a chance of keeping it rubber side down and out of a ditch.

Well worth the couple of hundred quid, I'd say.

Anyway, sorry, carry on....

Steven R

I doubt many commentards have a problem with gallows humour. I certainly don't.

However, as noted earlier, as an IT professional it's not outwith the realms of possibility that some of his friends, colleagues, etc might see this article and read the comments. It appears at least one person who has commented here may be connected to him in some manner.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't approve of someone walking into his local cracking jokes about him being a 'high flyer' etc.

Time and a place, and all that.

Steven R

Re: Google+ actually went down a fortnight ago

It's some kind of calculator, I think.

Boom, headshot.

What's the physical limit on a single twisted pair? Somewhere in the region of 150mb/sec in ideal conditions, I'd assume, given than 100mb aggregate seems fairly relaible at the moment given adequate filtering.

I'm guessing we won't see speeds above 120mb down/30mb up until FTTP becomes defacto standard - which would be another massive infrastructure push, and require rather more work inside the home to terminate the fibre and convert it to a 'friendlier' format (CAT5/6) for home routing.

Still, at least it's more bandwidth for the backbone, eh?

Re: Hmm

The irony of it is that Metro + search doens't get in teh way on Server 2012. Hitting the windows key and typing 'users' is quicker than going through the menus on Server 2008. I also dont recall seeing (or at least using) any fullscreen Metro apps on Server 2012.

I agree that CLI knowledge is worthwhile if running a server (it means you can dump the GUI, and reduce potential attack/crash vectors, obviously) but I've not really had a problem with 2012 in that respect.

Windows 8 annoys the fuck out of me though. Which is a shame as it's pretty nice under the skin.

No shilling here - I work on Linux, OS X, and Windows gear in different manners all the time, and lets face it, all of them make you want to put your fist through a pane of glass at some point...

Re: Problem is simple...

"SmashBoxFish, Cow-Hacker Edition"

Well, that's my coffee all over my shirt via my nose. Glad it had cooled a bit first. And that I have another ironed shirt in the cupboard.

Have an upvote.

Re: fuck off

"Crazy Dave's Discount Cloud Hosting"?

Is Coulthard doing cloud hosting now? Perhaps his range of colognes isn't doing as well as we thought, and the FIA can't sponsor enough of his pay?

http://sniffpetrol.com/category/crazy-dave/

(safe for work providing you don't have a swear filter - och aye the noo, mofo!)

Steven R

(with thanks to Richard Porter for writing it)

Re: The only fruity computer which allows any sort of upgrading.

Lusty, yes it's a PCI-e device, but it's not a standard PCI-E connector (m.2) - it's Apples own proprietary connector, keyings and pinouts. If you try to connect a standard PCI-E SSD to it, it won't fit. That's the definition of proprietary; custom for no reason other than vendor lock in.

There's a reason that every single tech site under the sun describes it as proprietary or custom - they all know what M.2 looks like, this ain't it, and Apple are the only people using it.

Steven R

Re: Notro

No trolling? On El Reg forums?

Perish the thought!

Re: Fanny Like a Hippo's Yawn

Like flinging a bratwurst down the Blackwall Tunnel.

Steven R

Re: Also, that Alienware console is gorgeous.

If you can find a video card with UHF output that works in Debian, that's entirely possible...;)

Re: Nova != Supernova

Vauxhall, SR-spec, with twin carbs and a Peco back box.

Re: How inept/lazy/both are they?

They probably think salt and hashes are something you have with a mixed grill breakfast.

Steven R

Re: Am I missing something?

@HKmk23 #omnomnom you taste like burger lol #thugsharklife #yolo