Posts by Tim13

If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?

On patch Tuesday once a month

It will not start in the morning, but instead at that very time download and install an update - which you cannot interrupt for an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. During the mandatory update the engine will not start; so the car can’t be used. The download will change the controls at random every time: last week signal was on the left of the steering wheel- this week it’s on the right side. Once or twice a year the update fails. Sometimes it can recover and start all over wasting even more of your time, other times the car is dead and has to be towed to the repair shop. The brand is strong and demands high and frequent payments. There is a large fanclub of people who claim they cannot switch because the other cars are so damn difficult to use,

Seven years later, Airbus is still trying to kick its Microsoft habit

Re: No one ever got fired for using Microsoft

I have to import 2000 rows every year into an SQL database. It is a major pain -even as I load the definitions (200 or so) and create a Formula to check. After the formula check, I have to run a program to report the errors - and fix the remaining issues (many!) manually in the original.

Excel, owing to the buggy 1981 version, still considers an "excact match" with spaces between words ("Sri Lanka" vs "SrLanka") and captialization is ignored as well. Even an "s" at the end is considered an exact match "Sea Bream" vs "Sea Breams". As a Mac user, I have to report that Apple's Numbers software replicates the Excel formula bugs faithfully - because otherwise it would not be "compatible" with the "industry standard".

And yet, there are many users who use Microsoft Office on Mac because it is "better".

Amazon brain drain finally sent AWS down the spout

All very familiar working for a mega-corp myself

The new, leaner, presumably less expensive teams lack the institutional knowledge needed to, if not prevent these outages in the first place, significantly reduce the time to detection and recovery.

HOW COME WE NEVER MET at the IT-dept?

And you absolutely nail the mumbo-jumbo consultant adviser lingo which manager love so much (think outside the box: but say nothing about how I micro-manage every service aspect).

We're all going to be paying AI's Godzilla-sized power bills

Re: Energy

no fish and chips?

Broadcom admits it’s sold a lot of shelfware to VMware customers

Re: Two years

It's usually the banks (i.e. US customers paying fees to cover defaulted loans) because the shareholders have long sold their stocks using a stop-limit order.

If it can’t double our money, we’re not building it, Intel Products chief says

Re: I can hear the laughter now

Extra loud laughter coming from Taiwan ...

Miscreants 'mass exploited' Fortinet firewalls, 'highly probable' zero-day used

Re: switch out modems for VPN

Yes, I am using IPsec VPN, and I noticed increased activity (VPN connection attempts, all failed) after the summer. First deployed filtering rules (/16 subnet of attacker) but was overwhelmed within a few weeks had 25 rules.

Things only calmed down once I disabled Radius and WireShark, and applied geo-rules to block/allow VPN traffic (ports). Then I took the hammer rule and not only blocked VPN ports, but all traffic from snoopers from around 10 subnets /32. Interestingly, now the logs show not a single failed phase1 or phase2, but lots of other ports being probed (blocked subnets) as mentioned in the article above.

Microsoft 365 Copilot goes monthly for a 5% premium and annual commitment

Re: Non-payment

And the month after an invoice will appear for one month of CoPilot service.

If you call and complain, the chap will tell you "we did not generate the invoice, the AI did that", and in case of non-payment it will he handed over to legal, which will incur additional (legal) fees.

If you ask to cancel the monthly service, the friendly chap will tell you that a two-month cancellation fee applies (Adobe did this to me, when I cancelled my Premiere subscription afer more than one year).

Welcome to wonderful AI.

Boeing again delays the 777X – the plane that's supposed to turn things around

Re: He might as well say to Airbus

The stable genius trarrif on washers cost the consumer 1.5b and created 1800 jobs = 800k per job.

And dryers, where there was no tarrif increased price as well, bc consumers usally buy them together.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/opinion/economy-trump-harris-america-president.html

Ironic, that rich folks were less affected than the average Trump supporter.

It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat

Re: "amid growing adoption of competing architectures"

1) Intel already has an ARM licencse, before Windows inside; sold arm cpu.

2) Why is x86 so bloated, well maybe ask a company called Intel. The various extensions, incompaible with each other… but using 64bit extension licensed from AMD.

Oh, let me guess is there any supported OS which can run 8 or 16bit applications (no), but why is validation so complicated?

Fact is, Windows 10 broke all the 16bit code which I had written. Exe format and APIs removed as well, so re-compile not possible in most cases.

Ex-Intel board members make an ill-conceived case for spinning off Foundry

Agree

I think the issue is not technical, but management. Like the fixation on Angstrom, used as a smoke-screen when the 10nm node was „just around the corner“ for something whar seemed like a decade (10 years).

TSMC is in a very lucky position that they can deliver on time, and have a customer willing to pay top $$$ in advance for the latest node. Intel has a track record of too late and bad yield (=high costs), and it has pissed off Apple so many times in the past - starting in 2006 when Apple was laughed at when they asked Intel for a CPU for this new phone. The bad treatment continued … with mediocre laptop hardware, and lots of pre-production bugs. The AppleTV with the Atom chip was hot like a waffle iron.

Even the current Intel CPUs are manufactured on equipment, which Apple used first (aka paid TSMC to install), one node down. Why not, it cost billions to install. Any foundry needs enogh capacity paid in advance to invest 10b into a new node. The report from Qualcomm, that 18A tests did not meet required yield does not bode well for Intel, otoh is deja-vu?

PS: I have nothing against Intel, was a great chipmaker in the 80s and early 90s.

700K+ DrayTek routers are sitting ducks on the internet, open to remote hijacking

Which idiot enables the web-management from internet?

If you click a checkbox to disable "management from internet",

and enable remote dial-in (IPSEC VPN), then not a single of all these vulnerablity applies.

We live at a time, when people need cloud-enabled shit - because they are too stupid to setup their home WiF (recent garduates in information technology).

Dow-ward spiral: Intel share price drop could see it delisted from blue-chip index

more like Intel loughed at the possible revenue

because the Windows monopoly was just so profitable that shipping one million units to Apple was not profiable enough.

And recall, Intel had - and still has - an ARM license; Windows Mobile/PocketPC used Intel XScale (ARMv5).

They killed it off, beause why bother with something that can earn me $10 times 1 million, when I can make $50 times 230 million?

And this is where they are today: all other product lines closed down. A company run by manangers just like IBM or Boeing.

Microsoft makes it harder to avoid OneDrive during new Windows 11 installs

Re: Check in - but you can never leave ...

If you discover later and turn off OneDrive - then your documents are deleted from the cloud, and as they were never hosted locally this is the only copy.

Intel's effort to build a foundry biz is costing far more – and taking longer – than expected

Re: the driest place

d) plenty of water?

Chandler has 9.8 inch (24.8mm) annual precipitation.

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

Re: Oh, Brother ...

That’s too bad, from what I read the 23xx series does not have PostScript.

My MFC-9840 is 15 years old, and I can print from my new Mac (M1) color and duplex using a generic PS driver (CUPS) …. Now on my third desktop since 2008, still the same All-in-one. Scanned 2 pages today (vueScan)

Got a Brother MFC-9840 in 2008; changed the yellow toner in 2021 because it leaked. Printed about 500 pages, scanned 70.000. Still works, and to print in color generic PS driver works just fine. 15 years the original toner.

The HP OfficeJet ink always dry, and scanning never worked correctly on Mac, in 4 years bought 2 different models. Never again HP.

Microsoft confirms Smart App issue renaming everyone's printers to HP

Re: Microsoft will respond to the Register

Brother MFC-9840 color laser, from 2008 fully functional - has postscript, no funky PCL. Just scanned 2 documents…

Intel drops the deets on UK's Dawn AI supercomputer

Re: Why ?

Not a problem, we just take a whole city off the grid to run this thing

Microsoft pins hopes on AI once again – this time to patch up Swiss cheese security

FUD - marketing as usual

Fear: use another OS, you may be hacked (no one ever got fired for buying MS)

Uncertainty: we are wrking really hard; the next update is coming soon; it will be AI-infused

Doubt: we have really great AI security soon; would you use a product without?

Qualcomm claims its X Elite PC parts can go toe-to-toe with Apple, Intel

Re: Well that's lovely...

And soon (2025) Qualcomm is no longer the only supported choice for Windows (sorry, no Windows license on Mac) - we may have dual boot support?

https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/23/nvidia_pc_cpu/

apparently part of a broader effort by Microsoft to expand the operating system onto more Arm-based systems once its exclusivity agreement with Qualcomm apparently lapses next year.

Asahi Linux goes from Apple Silicon port project to macOS bug hunters

Re: Why, Apple?

The Mini (like all macOS) does communicate with the monitor (using the I2C pin) - and thus can detect what display is connected and adjust resolution accordingly (automatically).

This is an issue one of our meeting rooms, where the very large display has a VGA connector only (don't understand, but Windows laptops used VGA until reccently) and the signaling pin was not connected on the display (tried with another cable). The result is that a Mac will not "see" the display, and it won't show up in display settings. On Windows, were every setting is allowed, you set a resolution for the external VGA plug - and off you go.

The SAMSUNG 17" TV has a similar issue: my old (2011) Mini would often not "detect" the display - and as such not show a pciture. The issue was that the ancient Mini was so bloody slow to start up, that once the OS was running, the TV had decided there was no host, activated sleep and disabled the HDMI port. On my M1 Mini, this is no longer an issue (same TV).

Sorry Pat, but it's looking like Arm PCs are inevitable

Re: Compatibility

On my Mac M1: Windows 11 for Arm, happily runs any x64 software - with about the same speed as the 4-core/8GB HP desktop at work. The software to program my KNX system has never been released on macOS.

October 2023 - what century are you from?

Re: Compatibility

I bought MacPro in 2008, and 6 years later in 2014.

All the while, press keeps comparing annual sales Windows/Mac - but never realize Mac is used much longer.

My boss bought me MacBookPro in 2016, still original battery - will return it next month - after 7 years of use.

I bought a MacStudio M1 in 2022 (to replace an 8 year old MacPro).

Sales tank, sure - because we Mac users all bought new computers, which will last us 6 years on average.

Intel stock stumbles on report Nvidia is building an Arm CPU for PC market

Re: What's with

No, Microsoft shipped a buggy 32-bit only emulation with Windows 10. Only Windows 11 for ARM does x64 emulation.

Windows 11 arm is running smoothly on my M1 Mac, and the proprietary x64 software does not know there isn’t any Intel inside. Hardcore Windows users, of course, will not be convinced: they just love Intel.