In Tech News
The BBC had a couple of interesting stories up today –
Microsoft acknowledges Xbox problem with disc drive:
Microsoft has acknowledged that owners of its new Xbox One console are experiencing problems with the disc drive.
Some users say the drive is making very loud noises when they try to insert a disc and in some cases is not reading discs at all.
Microsoft says only a very small number of users are affected.
The Xbox One was launched on Friday and sold more than one million units in the first 24 hours.
I betting on the healthcare.gov site being fixed before this is.
And the latest US export – NSA ‘infected’ 50,000 networks with malware:
The US National Security Agency (NSA) infected 50,000 networks with malware, Dutch newspaper NRC has reported.
The Tailored Access Operations department used it to steal sensitive information, according to a censored slide leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
NRC said 20,000 networks had been hit in 2008, with the program recently expanded to include others in Rome, Berlin, Pristina, Kinshasa, Rangoon.
There is nothing like spreading malware to make the Internet more secure. The last I knew people go to prison for doing this sort of thing.
7 comments
It should be unbelievable, shouldn’t it? *SIGH*
You and I have enough experience to know that the scope of the NSA’s arrogance and stupidity isn’t surprising at all. Even if one assumes the NSA hackers programed their malware with care, it’s extremely irresponsible and criminal. Given that I most certainly do not assume they were in any way careful, it simply makes it worse. I’d certainly hate to think what havoc it could case if it goes rogue, or possibly worse, it’s subverted by some third party (which could be either another Government, a Corp, or criminal) for their own ends. Absolutely inexcusable! If I were a Government, I’d be screaming for head’s on a platter, and squillions in compensation!
OT: I just got an eMail from a s/w vendor I use that may be of interest to others here.
As well as using Libre Office, I use an inexpensive but quite good suite called Kingsoft Office Professional 2013. They are offering the suite *FREE* but only from this d/l link for one day (Thanksgiving special):
Download Kingsoft Office Pro 2013
It’s not very big, 61.5 MB (which proves M$ office is insanely bloated!) Simply install, run one of the app’s such as ‘Kingsoft Writer’, enter your name, initials and organisation (can be anything, like ‘Home’) and it’s registered. 🙂 You can check by going to the ‘Product Management Center’ in the Help/About menu. You should see a serial number as ‘*’ (*****_*****_*****_*****_*****) and under ‘programs that can be activated’: Kingsoft Writer(not limited) Kingsoft Presentation(not limited) Kingsoft Spreadsheets(not limited)
Which means that you have unlimited use (ie. fully unlocked and can be updated). 🙂
It’s a good office suite. Small, very fast and versatile. Heck, it’s FREE! Why not grab it and give it a shot. 😉 😀
I should have mentioned that Kingsoft have been developing their Office suite since 1989. It’s also available (for free) for Linux (Open Source Community), Android and iOS. So you can have it on all your platforms (something you can’t do with M$ Office!) 😛 😉 😀
Also, as well as checking the registration in ‘Product Management Center’, you can simply go to the ‘About’ sub-menu under the ‘Help’ menu and it should say it’s registered to whatever name/org you gave it. 🙂
The arrogant jerks don’t think anything through. It will be just like Stuxnet, as the real hackers pull it apart and make it even nastier while making the rest of the world less secure than ever. They still don’t have a real success to point to that would even come close to justifying what they have been up to. They have created a system designed to generate a lot of false positives, and waste resources trying to check them out.
If I find the time, I will check it, but I don’t have a lot of spare time these days, in case you haven’t noticed.
LibreOffice does the job for me and it runs on all my platforms too, so (shrug).
Optical disk drives? Who uses optical disk drives anymore? They might as well have put an 8″ floppy on the side of the XBox One, LOL! Crap, I can’t recall the last time I stuck a disk in the disk drive of my computer. When I want to play games, I fire up the Steam client and pick the one I want to play off the menu, and it downloads off the Internet if it’s not already cached locally, then I play it. Just more proof Microsoft is resolutely stuck in the previous decade. Heck, I don’t even use optical disks to install Linux anymore. That’s why they invented USB keyfobs.
BTW, your “Friends Disaster Service” icon goes to a parked domain, and shortly to a spammer I’m sure. Might want to check on that.
– Badtux the Modern Penguin
There have to be copied protected disks to thwart piracy [among people younger than 12 or older than 70, because everyone else who is interested knows how to crack them, or refuses to buy them because they have copy protection].
When I was into gaming I bought the games I liked, but wouldn’t buy games I hadn’t played. It was the same for any piece of software.
I hated copy protected software when I was in the business, because I knew that clients would trash the diskettes, so I gave them working copies of the original software to use and stored the originals in sealed containers inside metal filing cabinets.
[I changed the link to FDS. They are totally decentralized, and don’t actually have a single point of contact. They are good people who do good things after disasters.]
Uhm, Steam games are quite copy-protected, as are IOS applications. Neither requires a disk for copy protection. They’re encrypted, and are encrypted specifically to you. They won’t run unless decrypted by a key fetched from the Internet when Steam starts up or when your iDevice is activated, a key that won’t decrypt anybody else’s applications. The fact that the XBox One even has a disk drive is just more proof that Microsoft is sooo last decade… heck, last *century*. Sheesh!
If it is a system that doesn’t mess with my equipment, and doesn’t affect other applications is tolerable. There is nothing worse than dealing with crap like a damaged DVD after you have paid for something, and then having to manually hunt down and uninstall things if you want to get rid of it.
That sounds like a reasonable compromise.