Posts by Tim Bates

100% agree... The problem is the Google hardware is very locked down. I think someone managed to get one model to accept some injected commands at boot, but no one has been able to build custom firmware or store custom Configs or data into them yet afaik.

My Google Home Mini is still mounted to my ceiling, but power has been off since the news that Google was storing way more recordings than they said (years ago now). I'd love to boot it back up and use it even if just as a speaker. But I'm very hesitant to use it with Google's software anymore.

Can't exceed 149 hours before it is *parked*. They still need some of those systems to taxi, and airports handling larger aircraft are usually too busy to just leave it sitting on a runway exit for 30 minutes to get started again.

Re: Profit Margins

> So the solution is just to give up and do nothing, is it?

No business is giving up and doing nothing. Saving energy has always saved costs. Saving costs (generally) increases profit.

Re: Who Cares?

I honestly would love a common Linux distro as my phone OS... I'd be OK with losing Pokemon Go and Minecraft PE in exchange for "apt-get install nmap" and similar.

I know I could use a chroot thing, but it kind of feels like driving a Ferrari on the back of a truck. And the truck driver is telling me where I'm allowed to go.

Re: I had some luck with this

I was silly enough to check the MS site for instructions. My first thought was system restore, but I figured MS would have any additional info.

NOPE!

All MS is providing is a link to a generic BSOD diagnostic guide. Not even a suggestion to simply roll back with system restore.

Re: Tell me now

A fair number of BIOSes/UEFIs allow you to disable USB. Some allow it right down to per-port configs.

Re: No ...

I was hoping someone would finally point out that even MS Office can't correctly open MS Office documents without screwing the formatting.

Only since 2010, when they correctly implemented their own ISO standard, has it been fixed. And since Open/Libre Office have also implemented that standard (ironically before MS), things have been pretty sane between platforms.

The last time I had formatting go horribly wrong in Open Office was about 2004. Some minor issues crop up from time to time, but usually dealing with old .doc/.xls files.

Re: How long before...

As long as it's not Poettering... Your binary stored filter rules would be incompatible with kernel updates and exploitable filter bugs would be ignored since it works as designed or some such shite.

Re: Why?

Win 10 IoT Edition can run on the RPi3 as far as I understand. Unless they've killed that off too.

Re: Just why?

Part of it is content licensing, and part is to do with broadcast area laws.

The registration says which region you are in, which they use to restrict which channels you get. Content licensed for NSW can't be broadcast to WA, for example. And commercial stations can't broadcast outside of their area either.

I dont know if they actually enforce this - my old Aurora (the predecessor to VAST) card let me access every Aurora channel. And I'm not eligible for VAST (not that I was eligible for Aurora either - I got the card from a remote school I worked for at the time who were chucking stuff out).

Same here. I personally don't care whether I have sysvinit, upstart or systemd, as long as it works....And systemd simply does NOT work.

I have had so many random and weird failures with systemd that I can not trust it. Sysvinit might not be cool or super fast, but it works reliably.

Re: Seriously needs an upgrade anyways...

People run that on Windows? I mean I gave it a trial run on Windows before I bought any gear... But it went straight to it's own VM running Debian when it the equipment arrived.

Re: Another option (if you really want to stick with Windows)...

I realise this is old, but Google got me here....

The answer is yes and no... With modern virtualisation, the guest does basically directly talk to the CPU. But decent virtualisation software does let you limit what CPU is announced to the guest, which usually helps with stuff getting upset with newer cpus.

KVM/Qemu lets you set the CPU type, and I've had instances where I've had to do that. Not sure if it blocks invalid calls and such, but makes he OS think it's on a 486 or whatever you choose.

That said... The main trouble seems to be driver support. Virtual video card, USB, netowkr, etc solves that problem.

Re: Self appointed Mythbuster to the rescue!

"And unless you have Pro or Enterprise you don't have GPedit and cannot rate limit the downloads."

Even if you have Pro, it looks like it just ignores that setting now. My box is set to 128kbps, but the other day I spotted it doing 5mbps (which broke web browsing, which is why it got set to 128k in the first place).

I've not done much testing, but it worked on 1511, and doesn't work on 1607. I suspect their changes that stop the Store blocking GPO working on Pro may have broken BITS too.

Re: Only keeping what they already keep

"Brandis and co keep telling us that the new law dictates that telcos/ISPs need only to retain the data they are already keeping for internal purposes."

They do keep bring that up. I do wonder if George and Malcolm know the difference between storing 1 number (bytes used), and storing the names, addresses, bytes used, time it started and stopped, etc.

Something tells me these clowns last looked at a phone bill about 20 years ago.

Re: The private investigator can be asked to leave.

"Someone who is seen loitering about a premesis can be asked to leave the area"

Perhaps what Turnbull means is that we can ask our ISPs to stop collecting data on us then? ;)

"How does a gov going collect metadata when SMTP these days are via TLS and TCP payloads are encrypted ?"

I think they're wanting the SMTP server logs packaged up and stored.

I'm still curious what will happen with storage of things like ICMP and UDP traffic. In some cases, the metadata will take more room to store than the size of the content. I seriously don't think anyone who voted for this legislation actually understands how traffic flows on the internet.

Re: Apples values.

"I doubt you can still buy standard laptops / PCs with Windows 7 pre-installed?"

You certainly can! Sales of new PCs where I work is almost purely Windows 7. Toshiba, Asus and HP have many an option in laptops with 7 preinstalled still.

Re: Scary to say...

"I've yet to see a development estimate that matches the actual reality"

Yes, but these are meant to be development builds to gain feedback about any stability issues present in the first place. Delaying them means only the issues MS has noticed can be fixed in a timely fashion.

"9-15 months average?! How ridiculous! These organizations either have too much middle management, really bad documentation or just terrible IT staff."

3-4 months for the initial planning isn't unreasonable in a business big enough to label it's "departments". You'd have specific software to contend with, scheduling around important events in different departments, etc. Managers would need to meet with other managers. Teams would need to meet to discuss the plans. It all adds up.

And that's only assuming you have a handful of servers to do - as the number of servers goes up, the time obviously does too.

A smaller business with one manager and a handful of staff could do it in a weekend, or even a quiet afternoon.

Re: Hellooooo UBUNTU...

> Why wait until then? I began the switch as soon as I saw the Win8 preview.

We've been looking for for a suitable "idiot friendly" (from an updates and maintenance POV) distro to sell preinstalled on computers since XP's demise was announced. The Windows 8 preview was an encouragement to that process.

Sadly the most easy-to-keep-updated distros tend to force stupid changes on people, and the ones that don't force stupid changes tend to require a reinstall to update major releases.

Re: It will be a cold day in hell...

"but Linux has a ~2% desktop market "

I never really believe percentages quoted for Linux market shares...

You can't go off sales volumes for pretty obvious reasons.

You can't use browser agent IDs because not everyone uses the internet in the same ways.

You can't do a survey because a lot of people think "Word 7" is an operating system.

I've got a few Linux desktops that never see the internet, or only ever see ftp.debian.org. Who's counting those?

Re: More to do with

" They only slung the DRM scheme to convince the RIAA that Apple was their best choice."

That's what they'll argue in court I expect. And despite my usual thoughts on Apple, I suspect it's largely true, and this time Apple isn't the main problem.

Re: Init freedom

"And the boot time argument? Anywhere needing 99.99% uptime is not worried about a 4 minute reboot."

And most of the reboot time (in my experience) is the BIOS and various controllers doing their random checks and warm-up routines.

"I'd suggest the answer is no"

I'd say so too. Get within wifi range and most would be screwed.

Or just send emails about speeding fines like the Crypto-bastards are doing lately. Seems to work great.

I'd say so - it's the same labels and markings as when HP did it.

Is Toshiba recalling these worldwide like HP? Everyone concluded it was only really a problem for 120v users when HP did it, so odd that Toshiba Australia are worrying about it (240v).

Re: Odd Choice

"From the obscure Browser question"

Internet Explorer started life as Mosaic redressed... That said, the question is a bit odd in a 12 question general internet knowledge quiz. I'd have expected more questions about cookies, email and other such everyday things, not a corporate name guessing game.

Re: Maybe MS should do what Apple does and keep its OS's secret from the press until they're ready

Yeah - cause Apple's failure to test their products correctly never causes any problems, right?

Re: @Roj Blake

"Although even a couple of days would be pretty unacceptable."

It's done over the intertubes - surely it should be able to guess fairly reliably within seconds that the recipient is not available via iMessage. Keep track of failures over a few days, and prompt the sender if there's a run of failures during say 7 days.

Not exactly a hard thing to work around.

>Think of anything you can buy in a metal version or a plastic version.

Like a garden shed?

>And which is more expensive?

The plastic one. Near double the price ($AU460 vs $979)...

In this case, the "premium" priced product is the plastic one.

Re: "differences in reporting"

Brandis's way of lying about his lies.

I sent a letter via my local member a few months ago. No reply yet as to whether the metadata laws actually require me, as a private network admin, to collect metadata regarding the local users.

>One upside to pay-by-bonk is that the means to pay is almost certainly already in-hand (literally),

I'm considering taking my rarely used credit card out of my wallet so the only contactless card left in there is the card I want to pay with... Then I can just wave my wallet across the terminal.

My Aussie bank actually does support pay-by-bonk on Android (has done for about 12 months - didn't hear the media praising that innovation), but rudely only on a preselected collection of phones. My phone has NFC, but no support from them.

Re: More bad research?

>The.berlin works to promote ratings the same way that "www.berlin.example.com" would.

Exactly... Google uses the domain as part of it's scoring. A website with a direct domain keyword match will rank higher than one without. Of course if you fill the page content with obvious keyword spam, it'll de-rank like crazy still, but most genuine businesses don't do that.

Google's rankings are a little mysterious, but not that mysterious.

Re: Newsreaders

Probably there for the newsreaders who live in USA, where they would leave out the "and", effectively making it $2m multiplied by 60,000 dollars when read out loud.

Re: Doesn't a Worm have to infect without user intervention?

It's all becoming a blur now because of misuse of the terms and ever some malware doing more than one "style" of nasty business.

If my memory of my learning days is still OK, it goes something like this:

Trojan - idiot user installs, then it does it's stuff quietly while the user isn't looking (tends not to replicate itself).

Worm - exploits holes in security to "worm" it's way around networks (including the intertubes).

Virus - attaches to other executables and may move to other systems by finding "portable" executables (such as shared disks).

I'm sure I'm wrong in some way, but I spend all day having to dumb things down to "you had a virus" for customers.