[secretmessages]

(Original post by Dez)
Just unsubscribing from some Symantec mailing list thing, and was told that it would take 10 business days to complete.

Guess I'd best add them to my spam filter for the next two weeks. But ten days? Anyone want to venture a guess as to why on earth it takes 10 working days to delete a single email address from a database file somewhere?

Mmm I hate it when that happens. I assume it might be a logistical thing - perhaps they prepare some of their emails and its recipient list a few days before actually sending the email, and so there might already be an email waiting to be sent to you?

[mikeyd85]

(Original post by Dez)
Just unsubscribing from some Symantec mailing list thing, and was told that it would take 10 business days to complete.

Guess I'd best add them to my spam filter for the next two weeks. But ten days? Anyone want to venture a guess as to why on earth it takes 10 working days to delete a single email address from a database file somewhere?

At a guess, so they can manage the load on their servers when maintaining their mailshot db. Build up a load of removal requests and blast them during quieter hours instead of having a steady stream of DELETE requests hitting their servers.

If it's not that, then I have no idea.

[Dez]

(Original post by mikeyd85)
At a guess, so they can manage the load on their servers when maintaining their mailshot db. Build up a load of removal requests and blast them during quieter hours instead of having a steady stream of DELETE requests hitting their servers.

If it's not that, then I have no idea.

Mail servers spend most of their lives doing essentially sod all, until a newsletter send comes along and takes up the entire universe for a few hours, then it's back to quietness again. Even if it's processing a steady stream of automated response emails, it really shouldn't take two whole weeks to find a slot to run unsubscribe requests. I'm pretty sure they're just doing it so they can advertise to me a bit more, whilst still technically complying with my request and (I assume) the law.

[mikeyd85]

(Original post by Dez)
Mail servers spend most of their lives doing essentially sod all, until a newsletter send comes along and takes up the entire universe for a few hours, then it's back to quietness again. Even if it's processing a steady stream of automated response emails, it really shouldn't take two whole weeks to find a slot to run unsubscribe requests. I'm pretty sure they're just doing it so they can advertise to me a bit more, whilst still technically complying with my request and (I assume) the law.

Would they not have to remove your email details from their db server though? I can't imagine they'd store DB.Cust.Details on their mail server box.

[Dez]

(Original post by mikeyd85)
Would they not have to remove your email details from their db server though? I can't imagine they'd store DB.Cust.Details on their mail server box.

Possibly. Knowing Symantec, they probably run their mailing server on Windows and it has to restart in order to update mailing list details.

[mikeyd85]

(Original post by Dez)
Possibly. Knowing Symantec, they probably run their mailing server on Windows and it has to restart in order to update mailing list details.

I try to rep you far too much for this site to allow it.

[Dez]

(Original post by mikeyd85)
I try to rep you far too much for this site to allow it.

If I wanted I could grant myself rep now, but that would be cheating. More to the point, Fleur would kill me.

[secretmessages]

(Original post by Dez)
If I wanted I could grant myself rep now, but that would be cheating. More to the point, Fleur would kill me.

I know you obviously have adminny powers, but do you have moddy powers too? i.e. Can you move stuff?

[Dez]

(Original post by secretmessages)
I know you obviously have adminny powers, but do you have moddy powers too? i.e. Can you move stuff?

I have full access to AdminCP and ModCP, so yes, I can do all the moddy stuff. I haven't used those powers though, since it's not my job to moderate the boards and I really don't want to be stepping on the toes of the real moderators. That said, if a mod needs something adminy/techy doing, I don't mind helping out. If I see something that needs moderating though I'll still file a report, since it's better for someone who's familiar with the rules and moderation techniques to deal with most things I think.

[secretmessages]

(Original post by Dez)
I have full access to AdminCP and ModCP, so yes, I can do all the moddy stuff. I haven't used those powers though, since it's not my job to moderate the boards and I really don't want to be stepping on the toes of the real moderators. That said, if a mod needs something adminy/techy doing, I don't mind helping out. If I see something that needs moderating though I'll still file a report, since it's better for someone who's familiar with the rules and moderation techniques to deal with most things I think.

I thought that would've been the case, was just wondering because I've noticed you continuing to report things

[ch0llima]

Any hacker who gains root on your servers has powers far higher than that of the vBulletin Admin user group The shoddily built and overly convoluted (I've used it - was a supermod on another forum ages back) vBulletin AdminCP is nothing when they can just lift your database, your /etc/shadow file, your hidden stash of 'classy erotica', you name it

[mikeyd85]

(Original post by ch0llima)
Any hacker who gains root on your servers has powers far higher than that of the vBulletin Admin user group The shoddily built and overly convoluted (I've used it - was a supermod on another forum ages back) vBulletin AdminCP is nothing when they can just lift your database, your /etc/shadow file, your hidden stash of 'classy erotica', you name it

Kinda goes without saying that though.

[Dez]

(Original post by ch0llima)
Any hacker who gains root on your servers has powers far higher than that of the vBulletin Admin user group The shoddily built and overly convoluted (I've used it - was a supermod on another forum ages back) vBulletin AdminCP is nothing when they can just lift your database, your /etc/shadow file, your hidden stash of 'classy erotica', you name it

Big sites like TSR have more than one computer serving them. Any sysadmin that leaves the database server accessible to the outside world is a complete and utter muppet.

[Gofre]

(Original post by Nick Longjohnson)
Please tell us what it's like. I'm really liking the look of WP7, and the Nokia is a sexy beast.

Right, after my first day of using the phone I've got a few major likes and a few reservations.
-Windows Phone 7. The OS itself has proven for the most part to be excellent, it's ticked all the boxes in terms of what I was looking for. It's also gorgeous to look at, it's obviously not going to suit the Android fans who like to customise anything and everything, but coming from an iOS background it's a breath of fresh air that's nicer to look at than any Android skin I've seen.
-Lovely screen. Great colour contrast and while I didn't think I'd notice it, the ClearBlack tech Nokia have been touting really does create pitch pitch black. This, coupled with the black bezel and black unibody, almost give the appearance of a far larger screen when browsing the menus.
-It's bloody quick. I don't know what it is about Android that sees manufacturers diving into insane spec wars with each other, but this single cored phone is running software and applications just as quickly (And a lot more fluidly) as the Galaxy S2 my course mate's let me use for the sake of comparison. I'm yet to run into any noticeable lag whatsoever.
-Good quality music. The loudspeaker isn't any different from the tinny boxes you find in every other phone, but the player itself is putting out a good standard of Audio when I whack in my Sennheisers.
-Design. As well as looking bloody lovely, it's a pleasure to hold and use as well. The curved back sits nicely in the hand and is just the right size that I can reach anywhere on the screen with my thumb (For the sake of comparison, it's about equal in width and depth to the iPhone 4, while being slightly taller and heavier). I've heard a couple of reviewers comment on the more angular corners being uncomfortable to hold, to whom I wish to ask why they have the phone in a death grip, because it's certainly not an issue for me.

Onto the gripes;
-Screen Resolution. This is most likely something I'll be alone in, and the display really is excellent quality, but when it comes to web browsing I realise why exactly Apple go on about the Retina Display so much. The difference is night and day, text looks very pixelated until I've zoomed in. Again, this is probably something exclusive to me coming from a 960x640 display because 480x800 is perfectly decent (Identical resolution and a much higher ppi than the Galaxy S2, for example), but if you're a fellow iPhone 4/4S user thinking of getting this, I'd seriously recommend getting a live demo and checking out the web browser (I know Phones4U have test models and there are also Nokia reps touring at the moment).
-Physical button responsiveness and position. Only a couple of minor things. First, responsiveness- I've had a couple of instances of the lock button not recognising the press whilst locked, which is annoying. Also the camera button is a two stage button (half-press to focus, full press to shoot), but the camera app only seems to open on a full press (Most likely intentional, but it gripes me slightly regardless). As for positioning, this may once again simply stem from my time using an iPhone, but the lock button appears below the volume rocker, whereas above seems much more sensible, and is placed closely to volume rocker as well, leading to a few instances of incorrect presses. Not a major issue if you drop the volume down slightly, could be an issue if you lock yourself out in the middle of something. I'm sure this will fade as I familiarise myself with the device.
-Music player volume and settings. Or rather, the lack thereof. The maximum volume seems somewhat on the low side compared to my iPhone, and there don't appear to be any EQ options. Granted these can be fixed by editing the files themselves pre-sync (The WP7 Connector App microsoft have made allows for easy syncing from iTunes and iPhoto on my Mac which is nice), but because I use a pair of bass-heavy in ears and more balanced on ears I'd like to be able to switch EQ on the fly.

Overall consensus so far- bloody love it, well recommended. A few minor nitpicks at the moment which could well fade with extended use and software updates, but otherwise an excellent phone well worth looking into. Feel free to drop me PMs if you have any questions Nick, I'll try my best to answer [=

(Original post by Kenny_uk)
Must... have.... more ... pictures?
Please? :P

We recently had microsoft's windows phone camp at our university, wasn't too bad, no new information though

I'll get some up tomorrow, my iPhone's camera doesn't take too well to low-light conditions now that the lens has fallen off XD

[Kenny_uk]

(Original post by Gofre)
Right, after my first day of using the phone I've got a few major likes and a few reservations.
-Windows Phone 7. The OS itself has proven for the most part to be excellent, it's ticked all the boxes in terms of what I was looking for. It's also gorgeous to look at, it's obviously not going to suit the Android fans who like to customise anything and everything, but coming from an iOS background it's a breath of fresh air that's nicer to look at than any Android skin I've seen.
-Lovely screen. Great colour contrast and while I didn't think I'd notice it, the ClearBlack tech Nokia have been touting really does create pitch pitch black. This, coupled with the black bezel and black unibody, almost give the appearance of a far larger screen when browsing the menus.
-It's bloody quick. I don't know what it is about Android that sees manufacturers diving into insane spec wars with each other, but this single cored phone is running software and applications just as quickly (And a lot more fluidly) as the Galaxy S2 my course mate's let me use for the sake of comparison. I'm yet to run into any noticeable lag whatsoever.
-Good quality music. The loudspeaker isn't any different from the tinny boxes you find in every other phone, but the player itself is putting out a good standard of Audio when I whack in my Sennheisers.
-Design. As well as looking bloody lovely, it's a pleasure to hold and use as well. The curved back sits nicely in the hand and is just the right size that I can reach anywhere on the screen with my thumb (For the sake of comparison, it's about equal in width and depth to the iPhone 4, while being slightly taller and heavier). I've heard a couple of reviewers comment on the more angular corners being uncomfortable to hold, to whom I wish to ask why they have the phone in a death grip, because it's certainly not an issue for me.

Onto the gripes;
-Screen Resolution. This is most likely something I'll be alone in, and the display really is excellent quality, but when it comes to web browsing I realise why exactly Apple go on about the Retina Display so much. The difference is night and day, text looks very pixelated until I've zoomed in. Again, this is probably something exclusive to me coming from a 960x640 display because 480x800 is perfectly decent (Identical resolution and a much higher ppi than the Galaxy S2, for example), but if you're a fellow iPhone 4/4S user thinking of getting this, I'd seriously recommend getting a live demo and checking out the web browser (I know Phones4U have test models and there are also Nokia reps touring at the moment).
-Physical button responsiveness and position. Only a couple of minor things. First, responsiveness- I've had a couple of instances of the lock button not recognising the press whilst locked, which is annoying. Also the camera button is a two stage button (half-press to focus, full press to shoot), but the camera app only seems to open on a full press (Most likely intentional, but it gripes me slightly regardless). As for positioning, this may once again simply stem from my time using an iPhone, but the lock button appears below the volume rocker, whereas above seems much more sensible, and is placed closely to volume rocker as well, leading to a few instances of incorrect presses. Not a major issue if you drop the volume down slightly, could be an issue if you lock yourself out in the middle of something. I'm sure this will fade as I familiarise myself with the device.
-Music player volume and settings. Or rather, the lack thereof. The maximum volume seems somewhat on the low side compared to my iPhone, and there don't appear to be any EQ options. Granted these can be fixed by editing the files themselves pre-sync (The WP7 Connector App microsoft have made allows for easy syncing from iTunes and iPhoto on my Mac which is nice), but because I use a pair of bass-heavy in ears and more balanced on ears I'd like to be able to switch EQ on the fly.

Overall consensus so far- bloody love it, well recommended. A few minor nitpicks at the moment which could well fade with extended use and software updates, but otherwise an excellent phone well worth looking into. Feel free to drop me PMs if you have any questions Nick, I'll try my best to answer [=



I'll get some up tomorrow, my iPhone's camera doesn't take too well to low-light conditions now that the lens has fallen off XD

Great review mate, on the volume part, it's possible that nokia/microsoft limited it to avoid causing problems like the ipod had where people complained it could go too loud

[Gofre]

(Original post by Kenny_uk)
Great review mate, on the volume part, it's possible that nokia/microsoft limited it to avoid causing problems like the ipod had where people complained it could go too loud

Thanks, these are all just first impressions so I might put together some sort of actual review (thinking of starting up some kind of blog in my spare time) in a week or so. Regarding volume, while I can appreciate that sentiment, I'd still have thought it would have gotten slightly louder by default. I'm planning to get a FLAC-compaible media player in the near future anyway though so I'm not massively bothered either way [=

In other news, if you count tablets in the figures, Apple are on the verge of overtaking HP as the top PC manufacturer in the world.

[Kenny_uk]

(Original post by Gofre)
Thanks, these are all just first impressions so I might put together some sort of actual review (thinking of starting up some kind of blog in my spare time) in a week or so. Regarding volume, while I can appreciate that sentiment, I'd still have thought it would have gotten slightly louder by default. I'm planning to get a FLAC-compaible media player in the near future anyway though so I'm not massively bothered either way [=

In other news, if you count tablets in the figures, Apple are on the verge of overtaking HP as the top PC manufacturer in the world.

It'd bother me too, since I'm partially deaf in one ear, having it up louder is my only way to hear things such as audiobooks properly

[ch0llima]

(Original post by mikeyd85)
Kinda goes without saying that though.

A lot of the time it comes down to the whole principle of least privilege business. If you're running, say, Apache as root, and somebody comes along with an underground 0day exploit and manages to exploit Apache to access the rest of the underlying OS, they'll be doing this as root. If you're running it as a gimped user account in a chroot jail or similar then the damage and privilege escalation possibilities will be greatly reduced.

It all ultimately depends on what your aims and motives are A lot of this is common sense and you already know it

(Original post by Dez)
Big sites like TSR have more than one computer serving them. Any sysadmin that leaves the database server accessible to the outside world is a complete and utter muppet.

It often only takes one security vulnerability in one of these servers to blow the whole operation wide open, though. You can have 100 servers, but if one of them is unpatched and another one has username admin and password hunter2 then anything on them or anything they are trusted to access is fair game. It could be like welding your front door shut and placing razor wire on your doorstep but leaving the bathroom window open.

As a would-be attacker and 1337h4x0r I just need to make off with the important stuff by any means necessary. Defacing the home page with pure nonsense is a pathetic and skiddy thing to do (can often be done without even touching the underlying OS infrastructure ) and just makes your presence all the more obvious.

Can't argue with the bold bit in principle though I haven't tried in great detail but apparently some DBMSs will warn you if you make the server listen on public facing IP addresses , I know that MySQL craps itself regularly with

[Nick Longjohnson]

(Original post by Gofre)
x

Excellent write up bro. Would you consider WP7 intuitive? I'm thinking of getting this for my father, but he's absolutely crap with technology. There's no way I'm getting him an Android (the amount of hacking and modding I've done to mine would make his brain bleed if I tried to explain it).

[wizard710]

(Original post by Gofre)
Right, after my first day of using the phone I've got a few major likes and a few reservations.
-Windows Phone 7. The OS itself has proven for the most part to be excellent, it's ticked all the boxes in terms of what I was looking for. It's also gorgeous to look at, it's obviously not going to suit the Android fans who like to customise anything and everything, but coming from an iOS background it's a breath of fresh air that's nicer to look at than any Android skin I've seen.
-Lovely screen. Great colour contrast and while I didn't think I'd notice it, the ClearBlack tech Nokia have been touting really does create pitch pitch black. This, coupled with the black bezel and black unibody, almost give the appearance of a far larger screen when browsing the menus.
-It's bloody quick. I don't know what it is about Android that sees manufacturers diving into insane spec wars with each other, but this single cored phone is running software and applications just as quickly (And a lot more fluidly) as the Galaxy S2 my course mate's let me use for the sake of comparison. I'm yet to run into any noticeable lag whatsoever.
-Good quality music. The loudspeaker isn't any different from the tinny boxes you find in every other phone, but the player itself is putting out a good standard of Audio when I whack in my Sennheisers.
-Design. As well as looking bloody lovely, it's a pleasure to hold and use as well. The curved back sits nicely in the hand and is just the right size that I can reach anywhere on the screen with my thumb (For the sake of comparison, it's about equal in width and depth to the iPhone 4, while being slightly taller and heavier). I've heard a couple of reviewers comment on the more angular corners being uncomfortable to hold, to whom I wish to ask why they have the phone in a death grip, because it's certainly not an issue for me.

Onto the gripes;
-Screen Resolution. This is most likely something I'll be alone in, and the display really is excellent quality, but when it comes to web browsing I realise why exactly Apple go on about the Retina Display so much. The difference is night and day, text looks very pixelated until I've zoomed in. Again, this is probably something exclusive to me coming from a 960x640 display because 480x800 is perfectly decent (Identical resolution and a much higher ppi than the Galaxy S2, for example), but if you're a fellow iPhone 4/4S user thinking of getting this, I'd seriously recommend getting a live demo and checking out the web browser (I know Phones4U have test models and there are also Nokia reps touring at the moment).
-Physical button responsiveness and position. Only a couple of minor things. First, responsiveness- I've had a couple of instances of the lock button not recognising the press whilst locked, which is annoying. Also the camera button is a two stage button (half-press to focus, full press to shoot), but the camera app only seems to open on a full press (Most likely intentional, but it gripes me slightly regardless). As for positioning, this may once again simply stem from my time using an iPhone, but the lock button appears below the volume rocker, whereas above seems much more sensible, and is placed closely to volume rocker as well, leading to a few instances of incorrect presses. Not a major issue if you drop the volume down slightly, could be an issue if you lock yourself out in the middle of something. I'm sure this will fade as I familiarise myself with the device.
-Music player volume and settings. Or rather, the lack thereof. The maximum volume seems somewhat on the low side compared to my iPhone, and there don't appear to be any EQ options. Granted these can be fixed by editing the files themselves pre-sync (The WP7 Connector App microsoft have made allows for easy syncing from iTunes and iPhoto on my Mac which is nice), but because I use a pair of bass-heavy in ears and more balanced on ears I'd like to be able to switch EQ on the fly.

Overall consensus so far- bloody love it, well recommended. A few minor nitpicks at the moment which could well fade with extended use and software updates, but otherwise an excellent phone well worth looking into. Feel free to drop me PMs if you have any questions Nick, I'll try my best to answer [=



I'll get some up tomorrow, my iPhone's camera doesn't take too well to low-light conditions now that the lens has fallen off XD

Good write up thank

(Original post by Nick Longjohnson)
Excellent write up bro. Would you consider WP7 intuitive? I'm thinking of getting this for my father, but he's absolutely crap with technology. There's no way I'm getting him an Android (the amount of hacking and modding I've done to mine would make his brain bleed if I tried to explain it).

I'm interested in this too