Just Computers

They should go back to dial-up modems (or something similar). Imagine how much more difficult it would be to to exploit malware if the computers weren't always connected.

What do you mean, "they should go back"?  Aren't you already?

I am proud to say that my internet speed is two to three times as fast as the average speed in California or Washington.

Programmer from hell plants logic bombs to guarantee future work

I find this case unbelievable. Modern software development has been a team sport for - what? forty years? fifty years? longer? And yet here's a big company that let one developer write and maintain some software and nobody else looked at it.

I think they got what they deserved.

richard09 wrote:

I find this case unbelievable. Modern software development has been a team sport for - what? forty years?

MAJOR systems, but a lot of minor systems are still the work of lonesome individuals.  

I know.  I built & maintained one of them.  I had ample opportunity to insert 'time bombs' but resisted the temptation out of some sort of misplaced loyalty (turned out they didn't have any to me!)

What I found noteworthy in the article was this:

Quote :

...his attorney argued he did this to guard his proprietary code rather than to make money.

Are you telling me Siemens didn't contractually stipulate that the contracted programming became THEIR proprietary intellectual property?  That's de rigeur.

NoCoPilot wrote:

MAJOR systems, but a lot of minor systems are still the work of lonesome individuals.  

I know.  I built & maintained one of them.

That's just incompetence in management and an inadequate process. Even individual programs (never mind complete systems) should receive QA from someone not the developer. That has been widely known for at least forty years, and was known to at least a subset of the world well before that. And that's talking about in-house development by your own employees, never mind contract work.

Kind of interesting.

EvilGnome – Linux malware aimed at your laptop, not your servers

richard09 wrote:

Even individual programs (never mind complete systems) should receive QA from someone not the developer.

Assuming anyone else in the company has any familiarity at all with the product. In my case, nobody did.

And when they fired me, they found this out.

No assumption necessary. The first task of the QA Analyst is to become familiar with the requirements, in order to build his test strategy and test plan. And don't try to tell me "there were no requirements". There always are, even if it's just an email from the principal user (who automatically nominates himself as the main resource for defining the requirements formally, whether he likes it or not).

I've had some amusing conversations when (subsequently) discussing the programmer's design, and discovering that his interpretation of what the user wanted was not actually what the user really wanted. It really is helpful to find this out somewhat near the start of the development process, rather than near the end.

Tale o' woe.

For a few years I've used a graphics program called "Disc Cover 3" to make CD and DVD covers. It's nowhere NEAR as powerful as the Windows program I used ten years ago, WinDraw, but it's been serviceable.

Thursday, for reasons unknown, I got a dialog popup that said my copy of Disc Cover 3 was out-of-date and I needed to update it. It'd been working just fine for years. Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, I downloaded the new version.

Then I made a mistake. The install procedure asked me if I wanted to install over the top of the old version, or create a new installation. Foolishly I chose to replace my old version.

The new version is unregistered, and prints a watermark on every output. I have NO IDEA what my registration number was, seven years ago (and I looked). I have NO IDEA what version I had before. The new version has several operational glitches in it -- things that don't work right -- and almost NO advantages I can see (a few more useless fonts -- that look like every other font in there).

I'll be goddamned if I'm going to re-register the product -- which is defective -- for another $25. Fuck no.

I contacted the maker, asking how I fall back to the earlier version. They said I can't.

I asked why this version has glitches. They said I need to be on an earlier version of the OS (remember, it worked fine before I "upgraded.") [Customer Service Rule #1: Always Blame Somebody Else's Software.]

I asked if they could send me the registration key so I can at least unlock this abomination. Still waiting for a reply.

Fuckity fuck for fuck's sake.

Okay, their website actually does have a download for an earlier version, 3.1.1.  

Downloaded.

Installed as separate program.

Now to see if it works.

Grrr. 3.1.1 (which is the only earlier version available) looks and works exactly like 3.1.3, same glitches and everything. I must need to go back father.

It occurred to me that Apple has something called "Time Machine" which takes snapshots of your setup every few hours with the ability to fall back if something goes sideways. I looked at my setup on Thursday 7/25 and it still shows version 3.1.3. The overwrite procedure must be total. Grrrr.

BeLight software finally FINALLY got back to me last night, and recommended I uninstall the program and go out to the Apple app store where I initially bought it, and gave me a very complicated procedure for recovering the registration key.

I said fuck that, I ain't uninstalling nuthin' until I KNOW I'll get a version that works!

Apple app store had Disc Cover 3, with a little cloud icon indicating I owned a copy in the cloud.  I clicked on the cloud to download it locally, and voilá.

The program (current version, 3.1.3 v700) now prints without watermarks.  The 'sharpen luminesence' feature works like it used to.  I can see all of the hundreds of covers I've created previously.

Looks like I'm back in business.

Sophisticated iPhone hacking went unnoticed for over two years

Quote :

Imagine that an iPhone could be turned into a surveillance tool capable of sending hackers a record of its owner’s entire digital life, including their location in real time, all their emails, chats, contacts, photos and saved passwords.

A showstopper of a compromise, and yet according to Google Project Zero researcher Ian Beer this is exactly what’s been happening to thousands of iPhone users, for more than two years.

Google warns of system-controlling Chrome bug

Quote :

Google is patching a serious bug in the desktop version of its Chrome browser that could let an attacker take over a computer simply by luring users to a website. A fix for the bug, which affects the desktop version of Chrome on macOS, Windows, and Linux, will be available in the coming days, the company said. The flaw doesn’t affect the iOS or Android versions of Chrome.

Latest update of Firefox (69.0) has a new(?) feature called "Firefox Monitor" which keeps a list of all the times your data has been breached or exposed or collected.

I have ten websites I've visited that have been hacked. None of them is anything sensitive (500px, Ticketfly, etc).

And just knowing that the websites have been hacked may not be very significant. I still believe that my network security would probably protect me from anyone using this information.

This article is about a month old.

A look at the Windows 10 exploit Google Zero disclosed this week

Quote :

On Tuesday, Tavis Ormandy of Google's Project Zero released an exploit kit called ctftool, which uses and abuses Microsoft's Text Services Framework in ways that can effectively get anyone root—er, system that is—on any unpatched Windows 10 system they're able to log in to. The patches for this vulnerability—along with several other serious issues—went out in this week's Patch Tuesday update.

Quote :

This vulnerability lurked unacknowledged in the Windows stack for 20 years, and the consequences were even farther reaching than the proof-of-concept exploit—CTF can even be used on unpatched systems to bypass AppContainer Isolation used in the newest and supposedly most securely designed applications, such as Microsoft Edge.

History of computer usage:

• 1979 - first started using mainframes (with dumb terminals)
  
• 1983 - employer switched to IBM 3270 PCs
  
• 1990-1 - worked for computer retailer, selling IBM clones and Apple IIs, early Macintoshes
  
• 1990 - bought first computer (Amstrad PCW) running CP/M
  
• 1992 - bought first IBM computer
  
• 1993 - Win 3.1 came out
  
• 2000 - bought tower computer, first of many hot rod mods
  
• 2007 - bought MacBook Pro
  
• 2015 - bought iMac

History of computer usage:

   1974 - first started using mainframes (with punch cards)
   1976 - received Bachelor's degree in Political Science.
   1978 - bought first micro-computer. 64K RAM. 12MHz Z80 CPU. $5,800.
   1978 - first used DARPANet, embryo of the internet
   1980 - wrote first commercial software for local business.
   198? - switched careers to software.
   1988 - received Masters Degree in Computer Science.
   2000 - retired as senior software engineer for Seagate and VERITAS.
   2019 - old and broken down.
  2019 - I think I'll go have a beer.

As we have an Apple Aficionado on the forum, I am going to plead for assistance.
My wife has taken to listening to pod casts (or is that one word?). I bought her a bluetooth speaker that works great for music, but could use some tweaking for the spoken word. The eq on the iPad mini that she uses only affects music in the music library folder, and there doesn't seem to be any way around it.

So, tell us, please!, Doctor NoCo, is there a way to apply eq settings to everything on the iPad?? I looked at this issue in a couple of Apple forums, and found many people plagued with the same problem, and no solutions. One guy even downloaded some podcast (or is that two words?) files and moved them to the iPad's music library. The eq ignored them.

In Settings, under Music, there's an EQ available with a couple dozen different settings. This affects only music playing from the Apple library.

In the same section with Music is a control called Podcasts. It has a number of options but EQ is not among them. Apparently this is not an option.

So. What do you mean "some tweaking for he spoken word"? More treble, more midrange, less bass? Perhaps by moving the Bluetooth speaker (out of a corner, or into a corner, or on top of something) you affect its sound? Barring that, a different speaker with a more pleasing frequency profile may be your only option.

Apple does not appear to have thought of your need.

What's that thing under the mouse?
Hint: it's 4.6" x 4.6" x 1". Not big at all.
On another side it has three more USB ports and an SD/MMC port.

Looks like an AppleTV.

I have to admit I've had my AppleTV for about 5 years now and never found a use for it.  It allows streaming of several services, but other ways to access them are more convenient.  It allows iOS devices to stream to the TV, but it's such a hassle we never use it.  There are a bunch of AppleTV apps which I've barely looked at, because they don't seem very useful.

It's like the wireless headset I bought for my iPhone.  Seemed like a good idea at the time, but I've never used it.

I guess it is much like an Apple TV. I had never even seen an Apple TV, but I did  a little reading and this does seem to be similar. It even supports AirPlay with Apple devices.

It's an Android TV 4X. It took me longer to unwrap the packing wires from the cables than it did to get the thing set up and working. Now I have to figure out what "working" really is.

I just ran across an ad for it and decided to see what it was. It was only $20.  Including shipping.  From China.

The wi-fi setup was the quickest of any device I've used, I believe. It connects instantly. And the picture that streams from the computer to the tv is better than when it is streams through the BluRay player. My wife even commented on the picture and she doesn't really care much about such details.

I can plug in a mouse and a keyboard and they work fine. It came with a remote control that is completely foreign to me, except for the letters and numbers. There is no instruction book. Just a few 2"x2" pages in tiny type (For over ten years we owned a graphics business where I was the typographer and I still say "tiny type". Okay, I got out my 8X achromatic Type Size Finder: the type is 3, 4, and 5 point - fucking tiny.).

So I may get a few dollars worth of entertainment farting around with it. But I will most likely decide what you did about its usefulness - or lack of it - and stick it in a box somewhere.