Posts by Christopher Reeve's Horse

Microsoft Surface 7 laptop: Nice hardware, shame about the OS

Windows RT Anyone?

Seems to have all the same kinds of hallmarks...

Millions of age checks performed as UK Online Safety Act gets rolling

Re: Madness

What? You want parents to install per-device certificates and sniff HTTPS traffic? What percentage of readers of this site can even do that successfully, or even have the time to?

Re: Madness

DNS filtering is trivial to bypass, just by switching on DoH (DNS by HTTPS) for example. It also does nothing to protect you from any devices using hardcoded IP addresses.

Microsoft's many Outlooks are confusing users – including its own employees

Re: Baffling

But when you stream Apple TV (as a subscription service) it's Apple TV+. Clearly.

Cheap 'n' simple sign trickery will bamboozle self-driving cars, fresh research claims

Why would it have to rely on having seen the sign before? Surely the answer, or part of it at least, is to have a publicly shared and up to date digital twin of the roads, permeant signage, and speed limts?

Satya Nadella says AI is yet to find a killer app that matches the combined impact of email and Excel

Re: Sad

And even its wetting effect isn't particularly wet, many other liquids are significantly wetter. Petrol, for example, wets itself all over the place very rapidly.

Amazon sued for allegedly slurping sensitive data via advertising SDK

Re: Blokada is your friend

DNS Filtering only goes so far... It's defenceless to the use of pre-prescribed IP numbers, or DoH (DNS over HTTPS).

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

Re: Why?

There are actually a few things that the New outlook does better than the legacy... No, I can't do it, I can't keep a straight face... It's utter garbage.

I could go on about loads of things, but the thing that gets me THE MOST is the sudden change to expected user behaviour for spell correction. Red underlined words now respond to mouse left click instead of right click (that is, when the spell check has actually managed to identify a misspelled word!) Every other application in the world - including all the other MS products are right click. WFT Microsoft! Are these changes just randomised?

Microsoft rolls out Recall for Intel, AMD-based Copilot+ PCs

Re: Are they gonna recall the Recall?

I'm personally waiting for Total Recall. Or maybe this is all just a dream?

Who had Pat Gelsinger retires from Intel on their bingo card?

I think that's a serious consideration for the market future. I've got a high spec i7 11th gen Win 11 laptop, and more recently acquired a second hand base spec M1 MacBook Air. The MacBook runs rings around the intel device performance wise, and is completely silent and lasts potentially days/weeks between charging. It's a no-brainer, I won't ever buy an x86 based laptop again, Intel or AMD. Same probably goes for desktop machines TBH.

WinAmp's woes will pass, but its wonders will be here forever

Its not free, but...

By far the best software I've ever experienced in this area is JRiver Media centre. It's in active development and has a huge and engaged community of users. In fact, if more software was half as good as JRiver is, the world would be a better place.

AWS claims customers are packing bags and heading back on-prem

Repatriation?

Missed an obvious opportunity to call it 'precipitation' - as an obvious opposite to 'evaporation' of on-premises infrastructure to the cloud.

What is this computing industry anyway? The dawning era of 32-bit micros

Meanwhile, at home...

All very business orientated, but you've also got a generation of people who grew up with 8bit and then 16bit machines who loved the variety and mix of productivity applications, programming, and gaming - and had got used to a GUI OSs courtesy of the Amiga 500 and the Atari ST.

By 1993 or so these machines were long in the tooth, and once desktop PC's started emerging with 'multimedia' capabilities (SoundBlaster cards, CD roms etc) and a basic GUI OS or Windows 3.1 the transition into becoming aspiring PC owners was the only reasonable proposition. At the time the equivalent mac was much more expensive and significantly less capable. I think the consumer space was a huge influence on what was also going on in parallel in small businesses and offices.

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Re: Colour and the PET

No Microtan, but my attic collection spans Ohio Superboard 2, Oric Atmos, C64, Speccy +3, and a 1040 STE. Not sure what to actually do with any of it these days though...

European Space Agency to measure Earth at millimeter scale

W24W

I'm already looking forward to being able to use 'What 24 Words' to precisely geolocate things

What are our top picks from the vast world of retro tech? Let's find out

My company used to have it's entire QMS and document management system implemented via Notes. This was actually the least fun I've ever had using a computer in any context.

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

Re: "The interview scores are stored in an Excel spreadsheet"

You're probably not going to like my own personal spreadsheet example then. It's currently using 3 Workbooks, >200 Worksheets, >700 Structured Tables, and >11.4M cells (counting only the cells that exist in structured tables, to keep it simple).

95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers

Well, fortunately, the classic, old fashioned way of making digital art non-fungible still exists, and what's more it doesn't require a ridiculous amount of compute power and energy costs to process. Simply render the art as a single instance into meat-space. i.e. print it out.

Purpose

For crypto investors NFT's fulfilled a vital purpose - for a while at least. They provided the liquidity to the market that investors needed to sell their crypto currency assets. The whole thing is effectively a 'find an even bigger idiot' scam, and the people that are left holding this shit at the end have really lost out.

BT dips toe into liquid cooling in quest for a chill network

Re: Even better

Even better is to tie in to a localised heat demand. A combined datacentre / swimming pool would seem to be the ideal candidate?

John Deere signs right to repair agreement with US ag lobbyists

Re: Who is the liar?

The key words are at the end of the Heads line - "they need". What Deere think that the customers need is entirely at the vagary of their whims.

Cisco’s Talos security bods predict new wave of Excel Hell

Re: Workaround

Avoid flying altogether, and strip a massive risk of being in an aviation accident from your life. Cheaper too.

I mean yeah, but...

Yes, yes, I know there are many alternatives to a lot of MS products, but they ain't always possible, feasible, practical, etc.

In praise of MIDI, tech's hidden gift to humanity

Re: Nice to have.

And the absolute quality and timing of the ST's MIDI is still revered to this day. Take that, Amiga fanboys!*

*This whole ST/Amiga thing is so amusing, its still like a kind of cultural identity badge. Although, after all these years I'm even prepared to concede that the Amiga was probably the better machine, especially for games. However, I'll still maintain that the ST was significantly more likely to be used as a multi-purpose home computer for all kinds of fantastic hobbies, and as such it has much more in common with PC's nowadays. I'm not saying YOU (whoever you are) didn't use YOUR Amiga to do interesting things, but I think fewer Amiga owners generally did. The End.

Yes, but the article doesn't mention MIDI 2? Although it's not a case of MIDI 1 being broken, more a backwards compatible set of improvements from what I understand.

Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged

Re: "Hybrid"

I think the important part of 'Hybrid' (as I'm sure it means lots of different things to different businesses) is choice. I can now go into offices should I choose to, or when the need arises. I can choose to WFH, and without any obligatory justification. This is ideal really.

The Catch-22 is that one of the main benefits to being in the office it to meet and catch-up with people that you wouldn't ordinarily need to meet online - but for this to work other people need to be in the office too! This is why corporately organised social or training events that can draw people together are now crucial. With staff churn levels at an ever increasing rate, hopefully most sensible businesses will realise the carrot is better than the stick.

You can hook your MIDI keyboard up to a website with Firefox 108

MIDI Web input

Does that mean we can now programme the web directly using C# ?

Apple preps for 'third-party iOS app stores' in Europe

Absolutely this. I'm not arguing the app store is perfect, but the alternatives are far worse, generally.

OK, sure, there'll be IT bods and enthusiasts who may benefit from this, but for the general population, no thanks. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple conceded this in a particularly Applesque way, such as hobbling the permissions or system resources of anything not originating from the app store - perhaps even sandboxing them entirely.

Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users

Re: Lights, FireTV and heating

I think the most use our ever got was my children asking it to make animal noises. This then descended into the inevitable burps and farts, which even the kids got bored of this eventually.

Fundamentally I think they fail because there's no reasoning with them. There's no prior knowledge in the conversation of anything you've previously asked. It makes the same mistakes over and over again, and every instruction is a new separate command.

One thing I think they're undervalued as is as a basic radio - at least once you've found a station you want there's no more needing to arguing with it.

A brand new Linux DRM display driver – for a 1992 computer

Re: Good.

I got my ST out of the attic a couple of years ago, and after sourcing a nice new RGB Din plug to SCART cable it booted straight to TOS, first time used in over 25 years! Unfortunately, the floppy drive had failed, but finding a replacement wasn't too hard.

It was very nostalgic and everything, but also a fairly bleak reminder of how far we've come. Back in 1991 I was amazed at the loading speed of floppy disks, but then my previous computer was an Oric Atmos with a cassette tape interface.

Anyone else remember The Carebears demo discs?

About time

Could 2023 finally be the year of the GEM / TOS desktop?!

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

Re: And to think that 30 years ago...

One of the things about these forums I find is when I'm just about to make a profound, well formed and intelligent contribution [obviously], is that someone else has already said it! This is where the voting buttons are really useful.

Twitter set for more layoffs as Musk mulls next move

Requirements

Even if the vote was fully legitimate, there's still the very strong likelihood that 50% is not an adequate enough result to justify the action. Yes, there was a small majority in favour, but surely the barrier should be higher, especially considering the quite appallingly obvious pretensions.

It reminds me of another, similar, close to 50/50 vote that had disastrous consequences and left strongly divided opinions in the UK's recent history.

OpenPrinting keeps old printers working – even on Windows

Never have any problems printing ever again!

You want one simple platform agnostic ubiquitous transferrable solution that works for practically every version of every OS that has ever existed?

Simply screenshot with a polaroid camera!

Meta accused of breaking the law by secretly tracking iPhone users

Re: "We have carefully designed our in-app browser"

And they're not the only ones with this shady type of behaviour. Every link I open from Gmail in iOS opens a prompt to select a browser: Google, Chrome or Safari. I don't have Google or Chrome installed, Safari is the only browser in use, and furthermore, the option to 'ask every time' is set to off but gets ignored.

That's not quite as bad as directly opening an IAB, however every attachment from within Gmail opens firstly in a Google equivalent software (in app), completely ignoring system app defaults.

That's not to say they're doing the same injection/data skimming activities, but why would they need this functionality otherwise?

Excel's comedy of errors needs a new script, not new scripting

Re: Excel is like any other tool

It's a very useful hammer! Perhaps it's a matter of the user needing to be worthy of holding it!

Re: Make Spreadsheets Better?

Exactly this. Then also factor in continuous development requirements! The cost / complexity step of moving from a Subject Matter Expert managing their own Excel data model to a corporate IT controlled tactical application that the SME can still operate and improve is HUGE.

Re: Oo! Oo! I have one!

Again, the answer here is using structure tables and formulae. This way, the sort and filter controls will always apply to your entire databody range (table). Use 'Format as table' from the Home ribbon, and then reference the table name and columns/rows in your formulae directly using the table1[column1] type format. This table method even keeps column formulae consistent in most usage cases.

Re: first step

This is where adhering to using the structured tables features in Excel can eliminate most of these kind of errors. If someone isn't using structured references in their excel formulae then they really should learn to.

Automating Excel tasks to come to Windows and Mac

Re: People will die

Why indeed.. It's usually because the people tasked with whatever job they're trying to accomplish don't have the training, tools, time, support, resources or funding to create a database management system, they typically have other technical skills and responsibilities.

Additionally, a database represents a certain level of crystallisation of processes which may not yet have settled down yet in an excel model.

Excel @ mentions approach general availability on the desktop

I see the disdain for Excel here so often. So, I ask again, what are the alternatives? (Genuinely, I'd like to know)

There's a lot of IT experts commenting here, and I'm sure many of you could take a big Excel model and develop it into a proper structured database, with a nice shiny front-end and all the bells and whistles etc. But what then?

The point is that this is your jobs, and your skills. The typical Excel user is not usually an IT expert, but has other skills in other disciplines, and is merely using Excel as the easiest tool to get done what they need to do. It takes a big step in needs and complexity before any kind of budget is ever made for taking something out of Excel and moving it into 'IT world', where people with specialist IT skills take over development.

Unless I'm blatantly unaware of something obvious, there's simply nothing else that's anything like as ubiquitous available in this gap. Is there a database and frontend development software package that has a nice GUI, is accessible to non IT folk, and at the same time meets the approval of the IT specialists? Until there is, every business is going to have 1000's of mission critical excel workbooks kicking around.

PS. I know Power BI covers some of this, but it's really just a fancy dashboard, and doesn't overlap with most of what Excel can do with data.

Warning: Colleagues are unusually likely to 'break' their monitors soon

Consumption

So basically, continuing the trend of forcing more & more functionality and features into fewer and fewer devices, which superficially sounds good, but in reality just provides more routes to a quicker obsolescence.

Switch off the mic if it makes you feel better – it'll make no difference

If you can turn almost anything into a speaker, then I have bad news for you...

With the right electronics behind it, a speaker is already a microphone too! Just like any motor can become a generator, any speaker can become a microphone - albeit a poorly optimised one. With the sheer complexity of modern devices who really can tell what the hell is going on though?

Volvo car sales tumble amid ongoing chip shortages

Re: a non chip filled would be bliss

Yes indeed, safety trumps everything else. I own a Volvo with adaptive cruise control / radar assisted braking, and I don't think I'd ever buy a new car again that didn't have similar features.

Oxidation-proof copper could replace gold, meaning cheaper chips, says prof

Re: Why is oxidization a problem?

Well perhaps in the future oxidation won't be such a problem - once we've destroyed the natural environment sufficiently for oxygen levels to plummet that is. Nature always finds a way.

Hear us out: Smartphone lidar can test blood, milk

Re: About Time

That was 'liar', not 'lidar'...

Google expands Privacy Sandbox to Android

Go on, say it...

Google's plan also puts disreputable ad tech firms on notice.

You mean Facebook don't you?

Happy birthday, Windows Vista: Troubled teen hits 15

Re: The main issue...

Totally true, but if Microsoft had more of a customer centric focus on good outcomes, they could perhaps have done more to help smooth things out. Or perhaps the device manufacturers didn't really want them to - who knows!?

Re: At least Vista was not...

Not sure the coke analogy really works as part of that rant. A new fizzy drinks recipe is arbitrary, updates to a commercial OS are not. OS updates are - and always will be - necessary.

There's a brand loyalty with coke, and people want a familiar experience when they buy a familiar branded product. With an OS there's brand loyalty too, but part of the customer experience of using an OS is to want new features and functionality - it's just that getting the appropriate balance of familiar comfort and new stuff is difficult, and won't please everyone.

This will always be the way - If it wasn't I'd still be happy with using GEM on my Atari ST.

The main issue...

...was that all of a sudden, lots of connected devices didn't have working device drivers anymore. Arguably this is the fault of the vendors of that equipment for not providing updates, but more could have been done. Lots of perfectly functional equipment was rendered useless all of a sudden. I'm looking at you, HP desktop laser printers!

Web daddy Tim Berners-Lee on privacy, data sharing, and the web's future

Permissions

Sounds good, but who's looking forwards to the onslaught of dumb-ass users struggling to manage complex permission models with access/denial conflicts?