Posts by david bates

City council rejects inquiry into £130M Oracle IT disaster

How many of those 7000 actually use the system? If those that do how many are actually going to need meaningful training as opposed to a cheat sheet?

101 fun things to do with a locked Kindle e-reader

I buy my books from Amazon, carck them and put them on my Kobo, because the Kobo store is an unusable abomination. It doesn't even handle changes of resolution gracefully.

So far I've been able to continue downloading and cracking Kindle books, even though I have no Kindle device. We shall see how this proceeds.

Amazon have already lost me as a Prime member due to changes to Music and Video. When my Alexa devices start to fail they'll be replaced with something else.

IBM return-to-office order hits finance, ops teams amid push to dump staff for AI

Re: Watsonx?

Having tried to read the Holmes books I've come to the conclusion that Holmes was NOT a genius but, instead, insufferable.

It was simply easier and much less painful for everyone to agree with his nonsensical gibberings and give him a jolly good pat on the back for being so clever even if it was while they were on their way to the gallows.

Mind you thats not as bad as the preposterious garbage pumped out by a modern author who would have you believe that gallium killed a pond full of fish due to its toxicity after someone dissolved a small amount in the water (I forget why) and Holmes did some ad-hopc chemistry to find out what killed the fish. And sensible person would have noticed the pond was steaming merrily and appeared to have a giant boiler heating it parked alongside to get it up to the temperature required to melt gallium and perhaps this had killed the fish...

Intel has officially missed the boat for AI in the datacenter

Re: Granite Shores, Lunar Lake, Gaudi3, Jaguar Shores

Quite why you would use Jaguar in your name i cannot imagine.

The console was a flop and the car company seems hell bent on suicide.

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Re: All true, but one thing must really be mentioned

And also, as the Society of York Magicians would have it:

"It is a WRONG question..." Why would you be trying to do what you're trying to do when you could do this, which does not relate to your hardware or your end goal at all...?

Google's 10-year Chromebook lifeline leaves old laptops headed for silicon cemetery

Re: Phones

The last time I worked for a bank testing websites we still had to do Safari - on Windows 7 - in 2015. Safari on Windows had been dead for 5 years and pointing out we shouldn't be testing it but instead refusing to countenance allowing it to log in at all cut no ice...

How the OS/2 flop went on to shape modern software

Re: I remember reading Letwin's post

When I started out I always though working for IBM would be a great thing, and a big star on my CV.

Then I contracted at IBM....

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

Re: Another good reason to stay with Windows 10 for now?

Sounds very much like moving from Windows 10 to Windows 11....

Ambitious overclocker cools Raspberry Pi 5 with liquid nitrogen

Well....a Pentium 4 would be a good place to start...

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

Re: Car thing

It bricked a few Freelanders when Landrover found they no longer had a source of engines for them...

Re: Car thing

Not even things that are bricked.

I'm on my third tablet. Teh first two are fully functional, but on the final version of Android they got are unusably slow. Theres no usecase for them unless you go into esoteric things like home automation hub (Alexa does that fine...) car touch screen (much more trouble than its worth) etc.

The latest tablet is 10" and £70....it'll never get an update and when it gets too old its cheap enough to slat without worry.

Re: If it requires an app to function or control

And look at the trouble that led to...

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

ePubor will strip DRM from Kobo, Google and Amazon (never tried MS). You might have to wait for an update as the standards change, but it gets there.

I have a Kobo eReader, and seeing as removing ones eyes with a spoon is less painful than using the Kobo store 90% of my books are from Amazon and de-buggered. If I can't strip it it gets returned.

Kindle sputters out: Amazon's e-readers couldn't download content for a short time

Re: Is this the same kindle

Likewise. I just wish the Kobo store wasn't so disastrously bad. Bad to the point that I'm willing to pay for software to remove Kindle DRM and buy straight from Amazon.

It's quicker and much less painful

Microsoft really does not want Windows 11 running on ancient PCs

Re: Alternative

Those corporations are massively outnumbered by small companies who are doing no such thing, and companies is what we're talking about here.

Re: Alternative

If Windows was so easy to use without retaining why do I, having used everything from 2.1, have to Google less commonly used functions for Windows 10 and 11 when I could find them with a couple of clicks on 7?

Re: Alternative

Serif stuff doesn't either.... But both it and Solid works are edge cases. Most companies use neither

Re: Alternative

You know Linux can multi-task, don't you?

You know all those plumbers, builders, hair dressers, etc that make up the bulk of businesses? They don't need Windows..... Most of their need is probably browser based by this point

Re: Alternative

I suspect you'll find the majority of businesses dont need anything beyond Libreoffice.....and for gaming Steam has you covered.

Hyperfluorescent OLEDs promise more efficient displays that won't make you so blue

Re: Monochrome World

"Amstrad"

Well that your first mistake...

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

Re: The wheels are coming off at Boeing

"VW management put in prison" - Knowing what we know of VWs, ahem, creative approach to emissions control I couldn't argue with that.

Scrapping all the Bentleys would also take a lot of ugly off the road.

Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

Re: Sucks to be a medieval tech company

Its particularly galling when people were told that we all had to pull together and people were expected to reorganise their homes and lives to do their jobs and allow the company they work for to actually survive.

Re: What are they good at?

Im surprised to hear about the build quality.

I've just replaced a Thinkpad which died in use, and then refused to post with a Vostro. The Vostro, despite being cheaper is far more robust and actually has a keyboard that works.

Admittedly the Thinkpad did itself replace a Vostro that decided it didn't like chargers and throttled the chip in retaliation - a known issue and one I hope Dell have fixed. The original Vostro lasted at least twice as long as the Thinkpad though.

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

Re: No corruption here.

As far as I'm aware neither ANPR or CCTV can say "We've found out you've been thinking unlicenced thoughts... No electricity or gas for you for the next 24hrs"

HP reveals bonkers $5k foldable tablet/laptop/desktop

I used to be of this mind until I got given a power users laptop that apparently was made out a hollowed out paving slab.

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

Did you re-write their contract when you had to close your office and everyone had to work from home to stop the company collapsing under COVID?

When the next lockdown hits (and it will) do you think that all the workers being forced back to the office will be willing to upend their homes lives again to help an organization that has no ineterst in quid pro quo?

Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?

Re: (debits still go in the column nearest the window).

Why would that be a problem when being called out for wasting millions on vanity projects only leads to payrises all round?

Linux on the Arm-based Thinkpad X13S: It's getting there

You forgot the obligatory "Why would you want to do that anyway? You should be doing THIS, which does not give you the result you're after but I misunderstood the question"

Google Chrome Privacy Sandbox open to all: Now websites can tap into your habits directly for ads

Re: Another win for Brexit

Jesus Christ its been six years and we can implement any rules we like. If you don't like Brexit perhaps you should have worked a bit harder to prevent it.

Re: Sneaky

Try telling that to the NP&I website if you try and use Firefox Mobile. Spoofing the user agent works so it really is a case of "We can't be bothered to test this".

UK rejoins the EU's €100B Horizon sci-tech funding program

Re: "it wanted to pursue a domestic fusion energy strategy"

There are multiple companies "going solo" on this. Do you believe there is only one possible way to achieve fusion?

Concorde? Pffft. NASA wants a Mach 4 passenger jet

Re: The real problem with Concorde.....

It always amazes me that even now there are about 8 supercruise capable aircraft according to Wiki, and Concorde could supercruise faster than any of them.

Re: Civilian spend on, uh...

"Reaction Engines' revolutionary pre-cooler."

It seems to have gone quiet on that front in the last few years, which suggests to me its being used in a black project. Skylon was always a red herring when the real market was always going to be military.

Re: This project must not be allowed to happen

Boeing have already demonstrated their inability to build an SST, so thats OK.

Time running out for crew of missing Titanic tourist submarine

Re: Transponder

Google 'people killed by their own inventions'

Hubris is a thing

Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

Re: Most harmful thing to children in the UK

I'd imagine getting buggered by Cyril Smith was quite harmful to children, even discounting the inevitable crush injuries, and he wasn't a Tory...

We like to be shown the errors. The man knows his audience.

Florida folks dragged out of bed by false emergency texts

Re: Fancy that

Or if you live in Crewe...

Warning - your house is part of a major development that was built on a site used for building and maintaining trains for 200 years and we didn't bother to make sure the developer did the paperwork around decontamination so we don't know what's going on and your house is worthless.

Capita IT breach gets worse as Black Basta claims it's now selling off stolen data

Re: Reputational damage

Actually Brexit was built on stories of an EU wide armed forces, which we were assured was silly and would never happen.... Care to put your house on it not happening...?

McDonald's pulls plug on Wi-Fi, starts playing classical music to soothe yobs

Re: Your privilege is showing

If you really live that far from the countryside there is nothing to stop you hiking round the points of in your city, in your trainers. Very few people live within walking distance of forests or moors.

As for the maps? Please...Bing even has an OS Map overlay.

Inadequate IT partly to blame for NHS doctors losing 13.5 million working hours

Re: Noooo!

Ah the new government framework or whatever its called that HMRC, Companies house etc use.

One question per screen

On a standard laptop a scroll required to find the Next button

Every.Single.Time.

Brilliant.

Infosec still (mostly) a boys club

Ridiculous.

Do hospitals not have emergency response? Do they not have the concept of things under attack? Are nurses not taught about disease vectors and threats?

Are women not able to get on in the armed forces because of the real military 'machismo' or is it just the pseudo bit they find offputting?

How many areas of IT actually expose one to any of those phrases? Id imagine your average tester, developer, web designer etc wouldnt know a threat vector from a dustpan and brush.

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

Re: Party Smalltalk

"i can try, but Im a tester. I'm LITERALLY paid to break things.."

Removing an obsolete AMD fix makes Linux kernel 6 quicker

Re: We're all wise in retrospect

Are there few of those? My Thinkpad certainly has a Ryzen sticker on it, and it was hardly difficult to find AMD machines from major manufacturers.

UK.gov threatens to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

Re: government

How about if your kids are found watching porn etc, and you can't prove you took steps to try and avoid that happening you face a penalty.

Trio of Rust Core Team members take their leave

Re: Fashions

Thats fascinating. As someone limited to BASIC and bits of python with a bit of context I could understand what all of those code snippets were doing apart from the RUST. I couldn't make head not tail of that...

How can we recruit for the future if it takes an hour to send an email, asks Air Force AI bigwig in plea for better IT

Re: Marked up

Spectrum 128 managed it - no idea if it did bank switching, but if a 1980s home cuptre nailed together in Cambridge could do it I'm sure its not rocket science.

God of War: How do you improve on perfection? You port it to PC, obviously

Well yes, an x86 Mac is a pc.

With just over two weeks to go, Microsoft punts Windows 11 to Release Preview

Re: oh really?

Not QUITE true.

Mint, for no particular reason, has suddenly decided it has no printers installed and throws a error when I try and install the printer it was using quite happily the other week.

Also Mint claims to be adjusting the screen brightness on my Thinkpad, but in reality is doing no such thing.

Google’s made-for-India cut of Android and the one phone that runs it delayed by chip shortages, testing

Re: Should the OS really require so much power?

Android isn't that light.

My Kobo reader has a 1Ghz ARM simply to handle the network connectivity and display a book. It has a web browser, but that's miserably slow, and it runs a cut down version of Android.

Windows 3.1 could do that and multitask on a 25Mhz 386 With 4mb of RAM, and do it with aplomb.