Posts by Mage

Windows Phone dives into irrelevant-like-BlackBerry territory

Re: The reason it has died a death

Symbian 60 was poorer than other OSes Nokia had. They went bad around 2002 / 2003 killing off S80 / Crystal. Then BUYING Trolltech rather than just paying them for an S60 GUI replacement was doomed.

Nokia must have killed off 3 to 6 better alternatives than S60 for GUI before adopting Win Phone.

Nokia knew the phone handset business was doomed. They got a good deal selling it yet keeping name and all IP. Nokia still exist and have eaten Motorola and Siemens Telco Infrastructure companies..

Re: Apple need to innovate

The only useful innovations were bought in at the start, Multitouch and the GUI from Fingerworks.

Innovations like no SD card, glued in battery, cut down SIM and changing the dock are not consumer friendly.

Proposed future "enhancements" such as no 3.5mm jack socket or no physical SIM are to suit Apple, not consumers.

They tried doing a watch that needs an iPhone (many others don't need a phone or work with any BT device).

Unless there is some successful class of consumer product where is the Apple innovation possible? Replacing Mac OS and Mac Air with an iOS product that has a keyboard and stylus? Oh they did already.

New science: Pathetic humans can't bring themselves to fire lovable klutz-bots

Psychology & Science

Some of it is science

This on the other hand is snake oil. The article is a whitewash, but critical information is removed, see talk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrics

Most of Psychology is too subjective to be science. Psychometrics is 100% fake snake oil.

The study of the robot report is horribly flawed.

CERN staff conduct 'human sacrifice' at supercollider site

Re: CERNs true purpose: destruction of the Earth

Oddly if you view page source

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com

Also strangely though the page content is just

Nope

It wants to run a bunch of javascript.

Comment in the page:

<!-- if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn't yet updated

please email [e-mail] to receive a full refund

___

/ / \\\ Has the great lazer eyed bunny

\ \ \\\ destroyed the world yet?

\ \ \\\ _______

______________ \ \ \\\__ / \

____ _/ (O)\--------------------------------------------- / \

/ \/ ( __| | |

|____/ | ------- \\ status: In Progress \ /

|______________/_______________// [73%/100%] eta: ..Soon \________/

check out our exciting new social media presence at http://twitter.com/htlhcdtwy

-->

View in fixed font.

He can't spell Laser

Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell for Linux, Macs. Repeat, Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell

Re: Have you used Powershell?

It seemed a Latte alternate to traditional use of .cmd files using all those lovely Admin utilites on the MSDN / Tech disks, for people that had never bothered to automate creation of 2,500 NT Domain user accounts automatically from the student admission database. I didn't use a Unix shell on Windows, though I had one since 1998, but couldn't see the point of Powershell for people that had actually learned how NT and all the 32 bit NT console utilities worked rather than pretending it was a DOS console.

NT3.1 came out in 1993. By 1995 some people were quite expert at Admin of NT3.5, how do you think people PROPERLY did NT Administration using script / console / automation before Powershell came out, TWELVE years later? Without Services for Unix either.

Re: Geeks bearing gifts?

Yep. After 20 years supporting and promoting Windows I now promote Linux Mint with Mate Desktop. Easier for Windows users or admins than Win8 or Win10 if you are used NT3.5 to Windows 2008, Though even Vista was a backward step and Win7 was only a fix of it.

Re: Might be better to...

Since Unix Services for Windows in 1990s

Brit cops cuff Sage employee at Heathrow airport

Password

letmein

Windows 10 needs proper privacy portal, says EFF

Facebook already offers a “single unified screen"

Others lead MS copies ...

Oracle cloud Subscriptions

Google data slurping and "cloud"

So called "Cloud" Computing.

Certainly they might be happy to copy Facebook. They are doing very well.

Wanna build your own drone? Intel emits Linux-powered x86 brains for DIY flying gizmos

Re: Typical Intel

Also doomed.

x86 can't compete in portable, low power or IoT. Too expensive and too power hungry.

We're going to bring an asteroid fragment into Lunar orbit

What can go wrong?

Andromeda strain?

WD: Resistance is not futile

Re: Promises

I remember Bubble memory in the 1970s.

They did actually make real products, but it quickly was surpassed by Flash. It was always too expensive. Certainly clever.

I've wondered if using new materials it would ever come back?

China launches quantum satellite to test spooky action at a distance

Re: Three Body?

missing l on rumour link

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/second-earth-discovery-nasa-esa-space-solar-system-scientists-a7192341.html

Can't be used for the instant transmission of data

Lies for children explanation as to why it doesn't give Instant communication:

Essentially you have two randomly shuffled packs of cards that you have NOT looked at. The change to the entangled particles essentially is the same as if both packs of card are re-ordered (and still match).

When you look to see the order the entanglement is lost.

Thus by being clever you can tell if quantum entangled communication has been tampered with (a man in the middle attack may be impossible), but actual transmission of actual information is limited by light speed.

So an "ansible" or other faster than light communications isn't stopped by practical limitations but by basic physics. Only entangled particles ever "know" there has been a change. The two observers can agree to look at the same time and compare results. Obviously the agreement to look and the measurement of state are both communications limited to light speed or slower.

Like all quantum mechanics, just when you feel you've grasped it, you realise it's not comprehensible.

Flipping heck! Virtual machines hijacked via bit-meddling Feng Shui

Samepage Merging feature,

Daft to have such feature across VMs.

It's good to hear it can be turned off, though if you are using the so called Cloud?

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook ads

Re: Going for the 'DownVoted' World Record!

I'm also always reminded of the guy in Fifth Element.

I have Space Merchants here too.

The curious case of a wearables cynic and his enduring fat bastardry

Re: Two words

Eat Less

Not "low anything"

Re: Fat chance: women's or kids jeans

Make sure they open the correct side though.

UK Size 12 OUGHT to be 30"

Take a tape as sizes are completely inconsistent between brands or seasons.

Children's jeans may be too short and too lacking in bum/hip.

If you are 32" or more you are at higher risk of heart attack. BMI is too coarse a guide due to muscle vs fat and different body types / bones / ethnic origin.

Re: Do you even lift?

Lifting is dangerous and poor exercise. It will add muscle, but may not make you fit.

There is only one way to be less fat. It's not more exercise, though for fitness a minimum of activity is needed. It's eating less than you burn, gradually over a long period, a fast diet lowers the metabolic rate and later you put on more weight.

Fatness, bulk, fitness and muscle are different things, though related.

Lifting is probably the worst way to lose weight or fat. Even situps does no better than a corset, it just adds muscle to pull in the fat tummy, unless there is eating reduction and some overall exercise too.

There is no magic solution (diet or exercise) other than a reduction over a year and permanent reduction in food intake. If you are very sedentary, then separately you need also some regular daily activity (even if just using the stairs frequently each day), a weekend gym workout is actually worse!

Russia is planning to use airships as part of a $240bn transport project

Helium supply

They just found a huge reserve.

Weather (wind) is the biggest issue for airships, this is what destroyed the ingenious USA airship based aircraft carriers.

Hey, turn down that radio, it's alien season and we're hunting aliens

Won't work

See Cosmic background noise vs Frequency (rises sharply as frequency reduced), Shannon's Law (Information) and Inverse Square Law. Also dish gain is related to the cube of frequency, thus 1/10th frequency gives 1/1000th gain on same size dish.

Only spectroscopic analysis is likely to give results, starlight affected by planetary transits. Radio is good only to a few light years or a bit more if someone is pointing THEIR massive array with Gigawatts of power at us.

Bungling Microsoft singlehandedly proves that golden backdoor keys are a terrible idea

Re: Surface RT with Android sounds good.

Linux Mint, Mate Desktop (change some default settings) and "Redmond" theme. More like windows than Win 8 or Win 10.

Re: Ouch

Unless this is a deliberate mistake?

Discredits the FBI policy they hate.

Reduces howls of indignation about the orphaning of ARM Surface tablets.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update crashing under Avast antivirus update

Re: Ahh yess

Education and proper configuration and external firewall beats ALL AV for effectiveness. 30 Years of testing proves it.

AV is part of the problem, not a solution. False sense of security substitutes for users actually paying attention and learning how to use Windows safely. UAC is also pointless.

Brit network O2 hands out free Windows virus with USB pens

Win95

Didn't version b of Win 95 have USB?

I've been disabling Autorun on CDs, Network Shares and USB since they existed. I remember in 1995 wonder who had the the stupid idea of Autorun. (Though maybe MS copied the idea from Amiga)

Re: Windows NT???

Win2K (NT5.0), XP (NT5.1), 2003, Vista etc are all NT.

NT4.0 actually did have a engineering release USB stack. It worked with Windows 2000 devices/drivers, if you hacked the installer to accept NT4.0 or your NT4.0 to report as NT 5.0 (Windows 2000)

Classic Shell, Audacity downloads infected with retro MBR nuke nasty

Re: There is much more software available for Windows

Used to be true. However most of the engineering stuff I use hasn't been updated for years and doesn't work on various versions of Windows since XP (depending on application and version of windows).

I've had good success with WINE on Linux Mint + Mate. The only newer programs I want are English QQ, which doesn't exist on Linux (nor work on WINE), Digiguide, Kindle Reader and Notepad++ (which all do work on WINE). Compilers are no problem. LibreOffice, Inkscape, Thunderbird, Calibre, Celestia, Gimp, Audacity, Filezilla, PuTTY, Eagle CAD, Xchat (or clone), Scratch, Stellarium, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Skype, etc are all on Windows and Linux "natively". Many programs have less bloated Linux alternatives. I guess maybe Sage Accounts and Payroll might be a problem, I don't know as I don't do IT support any longer, thank God.

Intel's smartwatches are so hot right now – too hot: Basis Peak recalled for skin burns, blistering

Re: CPU and power consumption? @ diodesign

Bizarre

That's amazing they can make it run too hot. After all most gadgets the CPU/GPU consumption is related to screen size, decoding (i.e. H264 video) and refresh rate. A watch screen should use less power than the the radio, unless it's madly bright.

CPU and power consumption?

What on earth was in it?

The 1998 486 based Nokia communicator N9110 didn't get too hot. Though after that they used ARM.

Windows 10 grabs 22 per cent desktop market share in a year

Re: 22% in a year isnt bad for a free OS

Actually was NT3.51 free to some or all NT3.5 Users? Though a true 32bit OS and Win95 wasn't (and maybe Office 95 wasn't a real 32 bit application), it could not run Office 95 as MS deliberately added new APIs not in Win32 on windows 95, to stop people running newer applications on Win3.x + Win32s. So MS had to bring out a patched version of win NT3.5, called NT3.51 basically to run Office 95. Later there was even a free Explorer Shell preview for NT3.51, which was more stable than NT 4.0 as it stupidly moved GDI into Kernel to improve video games (hardly seen on NT till XP due to Win9x being more suited and much cheaper for gamers).

So I guess MS stupidity dates back to Win9x vs NT feature drift in 1995-1997.

Re: 22% in a year isnt bad for a free OS

It would be amazing for a Free OS. But we are talking about the first free upgrade version of Windows, and it being PUSHED, not people choosing to actually go get it like Linux or Firefox. Windows is not a Free OS, even though for a year people almost forced to have a free upgrade

So it's abysmal performance from the company that once had 20% of smartish phones in USA (CE based), most PDAs and about 98% of desktop. Their Server share too has plummeted since 2006.

Basically they lost the plot in 2003-2004. Vista didn't meet expectations of what was promised in 2003, it was so bad that Win7 was really a bug fix. Windows 7 SHOULD have been free to Vista users. Win8 was to converge Desktop and phone/tablet, a truly stupid idea given the radically different screen size, touch inappropriate on a desktop and serious multi-window applications vs full screen applets of phone and tablet. So they damaged the desktop product for a market (phones) that they have now lost utterly. Win10 is attempt to combine Google slurping and Adobe rental in a Cloud infrastructure, more appropriate for a phone or tablet than a desktop, turning desktop OS into a Chromebook!

It was ALWAYS stupid having ONE branding (Windows) for different form factors and use cases. Amazon is making this mistake now with eBooks and eReaders as Kindle eInk devices can't now read all content sold under Kindle eBook branding, and "Kindle" Fire (an Android Tablet with Amzon instead of Play Store) and "Kindle" Apps have quite different functionality and are not simply other device simulations of real eInk based Kindle eReaders. There seems now to be three different kinds of eBook sold under "Kindle" branding. Only one kind works on real eReaders. IDIOTS. They need DIFFERENT branding for things that are different, even if under the eBook/Amazon Umbrella.

Microsoft has learnt NOTHING from the débâcles of Win ME, Vista, changing Win Phone Internals, confusing Surface brand and strategy (ARM and x86). The surviving MS pro Tablet is basically a form of x86 Ultrabook.

Russian spy aircraft are flying over Britain – and the MoD's cool with it

majority still use antiquated film cameras

Ha...

Maybe officially?

Cortana expelled from Windows 10's new school editions

Re: K12? Google Docs

Frying pan to Fire.

They should be using Linux and Libre Office. Certainly Linux Mint + Mate + Wine + Redmond Theme is maybe a little poorer than XP, still, but it's MILES better than Vista, Win8 or Win10 for Education.

Then there would also be more money to spend on teaching. Maybe 20 years ago there was some argument to have Apple or MS rather than Linux/UNIX for Education, not now. Google, MS, Apple and Amazon are trojan horses in Education.

Remix chomps Marshmallow, updates its Android for PCs

Internet

" Samsung 3G one - so your WiFi argument is out of the window. Or, I could just tether my phone via USB, or use a MiFi."

Rich person that can afford mobile data

Lucky person that has decent mobile signal.

Google Docs? Not Private. It's for collaboration of stuff that's going to be public. A truly stupid solution for a programmer or novel writer.

The whole use case of a Chromebook is to harvest user data even more than Android. Linux works fine on stuff better than a tablet / phone. There is no reason at all for ChromeOS other than Google exploitation.

Re: The Right thing

Chromebooks stink

They are based on the concept of cheap always on Internet / Cloud.

Real local applications are an after thought.

If you don't have reliable 24x 7 Web with back up forget Chromebook

If you want control of your own data and a even just a decent local wordprocessor, forget chromebook.

It's a web client disguised as a netbook.

Apple Watch exec Bob Mansfield 'gets into secret Apple car'

Car?

Apple competing with Tesla is slightly more believable than competing with Ford, GM, Toyota, Nissan or VW.

Still hard to fathom.

But then they did make a pointless watch. I wonder does an Apple car only unlock with an Apple iPhone?

Yahoo! She said yes. Verizon confirms $4.8bn acquisition

what exactly is Verizon buying?

Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Mail and any other user email addresses and IP addresses and "client" usages, for Verizon's targeted ad business.

BBC will ‘retain your viewing history’

Re: It's for marketing...

Certainly if you are not using UK IP address they sell stuff and give you 3rd party adverts.

White House to bung electric car industry $4.5bn in loans

Electric car grants

All the tax payers subsidising the rich.

Electric charging for the masses needs a MASSIVE upgrade of the entire grid.

Free Windows 10 upgrade: Time is running out – should you do it?

Re: Really... you think we should??? Honest???

Because Win7 was bug fix of Vista. It was still slower on same HW as a PROPERLY configured XP.

Re: am i the only one resisting this

I looked at Vista, 7, 8, 10.

I've sorted other people's computers.

Win XP is the last Windows I'm using.

Ages ago we went from Win2K Advanced server -> Server 2003, then back to win2k (for the MS SUS or something), then to Debian.

Using Linux Mint + Mate desktop on main PC now, since last year.

Vista was bad, but really apart from the Win7 SP to fix it, MS has only messed up of the last 10 years. Who wants a Win2.0 flat GUI and MS Office Ribbon either?

Morons.

She wants it. She needs it. Shall I give it to her or keep doing it by myself?

Re: Drag and drop between windows

@Kubla Cant

I do use Linux, since 1999.

No distro has a default FS that does that by default.

The default FS doesn't even let you see file creation dates easily (and only recently did EXT even store them). Yes, VMS was good and NTFS wouldn't have been too bad if they hadn't handed the NT OS over to the students and Interns that wrote Win95, It went downhill after NT3.51.

Drag and drop between windows

Did I update a backup or revert an old version?

Obviously EVERY drag and drop should be to a fresh directory. Now that we have 5T byte instead of 5M byte HDD, why does no FS by default keep all versions of all the files?

World religions stake out positions on Pokemon Go

Re: My tongue is dry from explaining to elderly what Pokemon Go is

Pokemon usage, either the original or the AR "Go" version is really nothing to do with being tech savvy. Replacing a fuse or tuning a TV needs way more tech knowledge.

It's a game.

Apple Watch craze over before it started: Wrist-puter drags market screaming off a cliff

Re: Could be...

No, people have realised that they are being mugged into buying a $25 gadget that's useless without an iPhone. There are models out there under $25 that are actually watches, work as phones on their own and have about x3 battery life, with micro SD and mini SIM holders inside.

Cost of a phone is highly dependent on screen size, then the phone radio hardware and phone patent royalty. A small screen wristlet with bluetooth only is a really cheap thing to make.

I'm amazed Apple are still selling any.

Microsoft to rip up P2P Skype, killing native Mac, Linux apps

Re: What are the real alternatives to Skype

Yes, but I just want reliable PRIVATE cross platform real time text chat, with occasional file drag & drop, image copy and paste, less often voice calls and least occasionally video.

All in one NON-Web client.

It's not our fault we don't hire black people, says Facebook

Alternatively ...

What about that people boycott Facebook.

They are not nice to work for and are a parasite on the Internet creating a walled garden, stealing people's privacy and exploiting it. Perhaps Black, Hispanic and Women care more about the morality of who they work for?

EU eyes flaw in Google’s cash machine

Advertising...

important to Google that EVERY service they offer, "free" or not, feeds into it.

I have sense of deja vu about this.

Microsoft wins landmark Irish data slurp warrant case against the US

Well, this is good.

Finally the USA realises the people outside the borders are not aliens, but foreigners, humans, with their own Governments and laws, even when the USA doesn't like them.

It's not like the USA is at war with Austria, Sweden, Ireland or Switzerland, all I think neutral countries in different ways.

Theresa May & Amber Rudd can make their own arrangements with CIA and FBI in a couple of years time.

Congrats, Linux users – you're finally officially alpha males... on Skype

Re: Pidgin QQ

I don't thnk it has supported QQ for ages, QQ changed API