Why bother...?
The phrase "This is the Lock-Picking Lawyer, and what I have for you today..." should make worrying about the existence of manufacturer reset codes for electronic locks somewhat moot.
Posts by James Dore
77 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Aug 2007
Forget TikTok – Chinese spies want to steal IP by backdooring digital locks
After nine servers he worked on failed, techie imagined next career as beach vendor
Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop
Fujitsu re-org sparks alphabet soup splatter: GSBG splits into GTSBG and GBSBG
Microsoft warns: Windows 11 update breaks provisioning
Friday 7th October 2022 09:36 GMT 
Kerberos Cross-Realm trust logins also borked...
We saw all our W11 22H2-updated machines fail to log users in if they were using Kerberos credentials. There was an error message about time discrepancies and then a refusal to log in. AD credentials worked ok, but most of our users use their University SSO (Kerberos) credentials. Total Phuqage ensued.
Rejoice! System Administrator Appreciation Day (SAAD) is nigh
New audio server Pipewire coming to next version of Ubuntu
Google Docs crashed when fed 'And. And. And. And. And.'
Chill out to the sounds of an expert typing on a variety of mechanical keyboards
There's only one cure for passive-aggressive Space Invader bosses, and that's more passive aggression
Remember when you thought fax machines were dead-matter teleporters? Ah, just me, then
To have one floppy failure is unlucky. To have 20 implies evil magic or a very silly user
I work therefore I ache: Logitech aims to ease WFH pains with Ergo M575 trackball mouse
Not exactly the kind of housekeeping you want when it means the hotel's server uptime is scrubbed clean
Friday 13th March 2020 13:41 GMT 
Had similar. Cleaners dusting the top of the portable AC units we had been given to cool the server room in the back of the IT office. Said AC units had touch-sensitive controls, and the dusting switched them off.
We got proper AC installed on the back of this, and a lock on the server room door.
Tech can endure the most inhospitable environments: Space, underwater, down t'pit... even hairdressers
Friday 7th February 2020 12:53 GMT
Library Catalogue very terminal
I used to do tech support in the Bodleian library, Oxford. They had some ancient Compusys 386sx pc's that loaded DOS, an IP stack, and Telnet to present the OLIS catalogue to readers. These had been there so long that they were full of dust. We only got asked to upgrade them when one started smouldering and set off the smoke alarms.
Bet you can't guess what I'm wearing, or where I'm wearing it
BOFH: What's the Gnasher? Why, it's our heavy-duty macerator sewage pump
It just wasn't meant toupee: Bloke nicked at Barcelona Airport with €30k of blow under wig
Veteran vulture Andrew Orlowski is offski after 19 years at The Register
NHS: Thanks for the free work, Linux nerds, now face our trademark cops
Ubuntu 17.10: We're coming GNOME! Plenty that's Artful in Aardvark, with a few Wayland wails
BOFH: That's right. Turn it off. Turn it on
Ubuntu 17.04 beta FACT: It's what's on the inside that matters, not looks
Virgin Media goes TITSUP* in South London due to painful piles
Chaps make working 6502 CPU by hand. Because why not?
Day 2: UK research network Janet still being slapped by DDoS attack
Wednesday 9th December 2015 10:30 GMT
Re: Need to get back to my assignment but
They fail then - they're attacking the wrong level. University internal networks were unaffected since the DNS attack only affected requests for stuff outside of the local DNS servers' domain(s). Since any University worth its salt would have their own internal DNS serves handling their domain requests, internal traffic was unaffected. So submitting your assignment from a University's email server to a user on the same server would have worked as normal!
Hurrah! Doctor Who brings us a bootstrap paradox treat in Before the Flood
Bloke cuffed for blowing low-flying camera drone to bits with shotgun
Thursday 30th July 2015 10:43 GMT
Re: He should go free...
In the source article on Ars Technica [1], he is quoted as saying he used No.8 bird shot in his shotgun:
"Now, if I’d have had a .22 rifle, I should have gone to jail for that. The diameter of those things are going to come down with enough force to hurt somebody. Number 8 birdshot is not. Number 8 is the size of a pinhead. The bottom line is that it's a right to privacy issue and defending my property issue. It would have been no different had he been standing in my backyard. As Americans, we have a right to defend our rights and property."
- So he selected ammunition specifically to avoid injury when it came down. Seems like a reasonable response.
[1] http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/07/kentucky-man-shoots-down-drone-hovering-over-his-backyard/
A gold MacBook with just ONE USB port? Apple, you're DRUNK
Tuesday 10th March 2015 15:41 GMT
All those things are accessible via the network or wirelessly now. Cloud storage and networked printers abound, Bluetooth mice et al are the most requested peripheral we buy. It's only the fact that I've got crap broadband (at the moment) at home that keeps me carrying an external HDD around, but in two weeks time I won't need it, even to take whopping ISO images home.
Part 3: Docker vs hypervisor in tech tussle SMACKDOWN
Structural storage industry changes green light Cisco
Uni boffins: 'Accurate' Android AV app outperforms most rivals
Etsy security rule #1: Don't be a jerk to devs
Thursday 2nd October 2014 09:05 GMT
Do competent sub-editors exist any more?
"The fundamental shift is that vulnerabilities occur in all methodologies, but in *continuously <-ly> deployment* there..."
""How many people *live*<d> through the days of out of band patches?"
"When that vulnerability comes *in <it?> is* world-ending,"
"Continuous deployment *mean*<t> continuous security and allowed "
"A *vulnerabilities* <vulnerability, singular> and its impact... "
"While this appeared to put the burden of sorting real bugs from the many more false ones <on to what/where/whom?>, it ensured ..."
Back to skool.
Leaks point to new mystery Macs 'with Jony Ive's fingerprints on'
Wednesday 5th June 2013 09:33 GMT 
Touchscreens suck on laptops
Touchscreens in the vertical plane are wrist-achingly bad for anything other than very brief use, unless you're standing up. I'd be very surprised to see macbooks with touchscreens, especially as the multi-touch trackpad is brilliant (and far better than any implementation in the Windows world). Now, if they don't release a 13" Pro that can take more than 8GB of memory, I'll be very annoyed....
Now beaming live from Pyongyang: NORKSCASTS!
India uncloaks new thorium nuke plants
PlayBook stock mountain: RIM slashes prices
Friday 30th September 2011 09:17 GMT
Flash? Naa-aaah!
Iknorite? I though that if that was all that was good enough about it to make the adverts, then they were beyond the event horizon of screwed. Blackberry are circling the drain, and have been for months. Release their BBM and mail cleverness as an Android and iPhone app, and leave the hardware and OS manufacture to those that know what they're doing.
BOFH: Beer, shinies, death by fire, rats IN THAT ORDER
A sysadmin's top ten tales of woe
Friday 17th June 2011 15:46 GMT 
Why I buy Big Brand desktops.
When I first started in IT work, fresh out of college, my employer was in the middle of a migrate to Windows 95 (ahh, happy days. Except Win95.) They had to purchase new hardware too, despite having reasonable 486 DX100/120's to run it on. Turns out they'd bought them from a UK system builder that built their own motherboards. Which had a fault. After 30 or so failures, we were informed that there were no more spares, and they weren't making any more. That's the rest of the custom-made 1-year-old machines up the spout then.
Boffins develop method of driving computers insane
Dirty PCs: How much filth can you take?
Monday 22nd November 2010 10:30 GMT
Thank you!
This was part of our risk assessment, which went roughly thus (I'm paraphrasing):
Either:
a) Encase and filter /entire 42u rack/ - Approx £2k, delay project start by two days
or
b) move server: requiring new, temporary, (exposed and vulnerable) fibre laid from current location to new location that's not under refurb or occupied (only suitable area was an unused bathroom, no mains power) Cost unconfirmed.
or
c) If firewall fails replace with spare unit in storage that has same image on it.
Guess which one we did.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
