[Dave Rice]

How many U turns is that now? I’ve lost count and she’s not been leader for that long.

Clearly has no sense of what the public find acceptable and seems to manage by keeping things to herself. A bit like Trump. The faithful come out on the morning after to defend the latest ill thought through move only to have the rug pulled out hours later. the Brexit election? I never thought it would be, that’s last years news.

I’m also getting weary of the character assassination of Corbyn. OK we get it, he’s a tosser. But if that is your only strategy, to slag off the opposition rather than promote your own policies, then there is something wrong with those policies. And it seems there is.

I love watching politicians squirming and lately it’s all being done by the blue party.

[Dave Rice]

Just found out about the not recording. What a dirty trick. Might as well flog your box and put the money towards a Humax.

Didn’t realise that about not owning a Q either, but I’ll never be getting one.

[Dave Rice]

I was in a hurry this morning so just looked at Buffalo as I had an inkling it was an easy target.

Just looking now at Seagate Personal Cloud 3TB Home Media Storage (£121) and there is no technical information worth finding. But it does say you can access via File Explorer so that says SMB. Likewise WD My Cloud 2TB Personal Cloud NAS Drive. No SMB settings anywhere. At least the Buffalo allowed you to turn on ver 2.

My Synology comes with SMB turned off by default, and you can set a minimum and maximum of SMB1, SMB 2, SMB2 with large MTU or SMB 3. Plus lots of other SMB related settings I don’t pretend to understand.

As Ed says, the default is always the lowest common denominator.  It’s the backward compatibility issue. Just think what IoT has waiting for us  :wacko:

[Dave Rice]

Richard, it’s not so much in the Windows world that SMB1 is prevelant, it’s in devices like NAS boxes.

I’ve just looked at the manual for the Buffalo LinkStation 210 (£85 with 2TB on E-Buyer) and SMB2 is disabled by default.

[Dave Rice]

I agree Bob, the number of channels seems inversely proportional to those you want to watch ?

But the channels you do want to watch are probably the same and the SKY EPG is probably the best I’ve used, with the exception of “roll back” or Catch Up TV as Sky call it. Not a problem that I think £200 needs to be spent on fixing it!

[Dave Rice]

EDIT  In Jay CeeDee’s link ZDNet describes a very MS centric world where we all  buy the latest MS products. This is so far from the real world of both business and home it’s amazing they can tout such  a situation.

SMB = Server Message Block, also known as the Common Internet File System (CIFS). It’s Microsoft’s protocol for sharing files, printers and serial ports via a network. You can read the history and techie stuff here

SMB ver 1 is very inefficient and also written in the days when security was not the issue it is today. The likes of Cisco brought in WAN Acceleration products to get around the performance issues on high latency links (such as t’internet) which adds to the “it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality. This is also when port 445 started becoming important.

MS brought in SMB ver 2 with Vista and ver 3 with Win 8. But as you can see from this table

any business running pre W8 has no choice but to run ver 1 because who the hell was using Vista? Also some of the cheaper NAS boxes would have only run ver 1 and provided a “solution” when Vista PCs could no longer see their shares. That solution wasn’t to provide ver 2 on their products but a regedit to put your product back to using ver 1. Problem solved, but as we found out later, hole opened.

SMB is a proprietary MS protocol so the SAMBA project has to keep up to  provide interoperability for Linux and Unix and the NAS provider has to implement those changes. Another reason to buy Synology or QNAP. As “business” products they have to keep up as fast as possible or they lose their credibility as a solution (to whatever) in a Windows world without actually running Windows.

So to answer Tippon’s question of should I disable it? The answer is Yes if you have nothing else that relies upon it. But TBH modern o/ses have plugged the hole and modern AV products are watching the plugged hole just in case. That’s why the vast majority of systems were not affected.  Don’t panic Mr Mainwaring.

[Dave Rice]

Sky don’t want it back, you paid for it, it’s yours and worth about a tenner.

You don’t need to buy any new kit either as there is also Freesat from Sky which will only cost you £25 for a new viewing card. Freesat from Sky is not Freesat What is Freesat from Sky? – Which?

[Dave Rice]

He can’t change the password, the account has been orphaned i.e. TT have disowned it. If it’s been compromised it’ll stay compromised.

If this is a business email you cannot run a business from a compromised account, that’s sheer madness. Yes changing a business email is a PITA but with some planning it’s not exactly difficult. The charity I look after (20 users) had to do it in an emergency when they lost control of their domain (long story involving a dismissal) so didn’t even have the old addresses to either send or receive.

In the Gmail import settings you should have the option to delete the mail from TT as soon as it’s been imported. There’s probably a tick box that says “leave mail on server” which you would untick.

re your worry about “infected” emails. Just opening an email isn’t going to trigger anything, the virus would be in an attached file or they will try and get you to click on a link. Google will scan all email attachments for viruses as the emails are received. Your antivirus will scan an attachment as soon as you open it. The links are easy, never ever click one unless you are 100% sure of it’s provenance. So no, you don’t need a Blackberry and encryption wouldn’t help any way. The fact it’s not Windows would mean nothing could run.

You are right to be cautious but avoiding clicking links, routing the email through Google and running a decent AV with a “safe browsing” type browser add-in is about as paranoid as you need get. Do the tidy up Steve suggested of the old TT account and plan to stop using it from Day One for sending and to stop importing the emails from say 3 months time.

[Dave Rice]

I can’t see how it’s vital that he keeps the email address and I’ll bet TalkTalk will not do a thing. If someone insists on using a compromised account they’ll get what they deserve.

Just as well he isn’t an Orange customer, their email service is closing completely at the end of May.

[Dave Rice]

Here’s an explanation I found about orphaned accounts and it’s not good. “If you are not an active TalkTalk customer, then your account is “orphaned” – it goes on working but you can’t manage it, which means you can’t change the password or delete the account.”

You set up his new gmail account and then Choose settings (top right hand corner), Select ‘Accounts and Import’, Select ‘Import Mail and Contacts’.

You’ll need the TT email account & password and mail server details from https://help2.talktalk.co.uk/email-settings-imap-pop3

That will import all emails and also get any new mail sent to his TT address, but Gmail will not check them for spam. As far as viruses go, just do not click on any link whatsoever.

[Dave Rice]

You don’t need a second PC, just a different user.

[Dave Rice]

The “older” generation, and I mean generally older than me (57), got good at mental games because they they had to. I grew up in the more metric than imperial world and I’m very glad of that. The “new money” came in when I was 11 and I soon felt no need to compare what half a crown could buy to what 25p could. You got 4 black jacks or fruit salads for a new penny , end of.

My Grandparents wrestled with these conversions until the day they died 25 years later. But even before that their house cost them £1,100 to buy but nice furnishings were costed in guineas. Purchase tax was  33 1⁄3% on 12 pence to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. All this with no calculators; yes there were slide rules but only engineers like my dad used them.

Today’s generation are not lacking in anything other than they have no need to indulge in such stupidities. From their perspective the older generations are lacking in the skills required to operate in today’s world, which will soon belong to them. It’s called social media.

“But the world has wondrously changed, Granny, since the days when you were young;

It thinks quite different thoughts from then, and speaks with a different tongue.”

That’s from a Victorian poem. Get over it, your skills are no longer relevant to today’s world and it was ever thus.

[Dave Rice]

If the cabling route is easy by all means DIY, but if you’ve ever tried to get a cable through a cavity wall it can be a total PITA without the proper gizmos that make an installers life easier (and you’ll probably be doing 2 or one double width “shotgun” one).  I always have issues getting the F plugs on too. What I’m trying to say is a pukka installer may be your best option. If you need a new dish then the alignment tool they will have is worth the cost alone.

The Humax EPG deals with catch up TV better than Sky IMO. It has a “backwards”  EPG called Freetime where you can go back 7 days and the Humax automatically fires up the appropriate broadcasters IP service. I wish Sky did this as slickly, you have to go to the catch up TV section then choose your channel and trawl through that. Mostly (with Channel 5 especially) I actually use my Fire TV as it has the full apps that Sky doesn’t. However I can’t comment on how well the Humax deals with >7 days, but having owned Humax products I’d bet it will be good.

[Dave Rice]

Wireless wise, the TalkTalk Huawei routers are the best ISP provided kit I’ve laid my hands on and I’ve seen plenty of BT Hubs of all flavours. Where BT get this “UK’s most powerful wi-fi signal” from is probably the same place as “strong and stable”. Although I now see they’ve had to add “vs major broadband providers”. it’s still a lie IMO and in my experience of living in a 4 bed 3 story town house, this interactive illustration is somewhat stretching the truth, and that includes the Sky hub.

[Dave Rice]

You’re thinking of Old Les.

[Dave Rice]

It depends on what channels you want https://www.freesat.co.uk/channels

I use a basic £50 Freesat box from Manhattan on the kitchen TV and it does the job. But if you want catch up, on demand, recording and a much slicker Sky like experience get a Humax box

Picture quality wise even the basic box is excellent.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve used it on a W10 PC this year.

[Dave Rice]

Mozbackup http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ I’ve used it a lot over the years to migrate TB from one PC to the next.

[Dave Rice]

I don’t see why these MRI scanners cannot be isolated on their own network with some kind of bridging third party machine performing a routing type function.

[Dave Rice]

No, I can’t see how it would affect the router. Let the engineer have a look.

[Author]

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