Posts by Rob Moir 232 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2008
“If I get what I pay for , I don't care if someone doesn't clean the bathroom or takes pictures of me”
Ah that’s ok then. I’ll be sure to let all the people who *do* mind know that it’s ok because you don’t mind.
Yeah, there's some missing logic there in order to arrive at the conclusion someone wanted, I think.
Also, I could say "41 per cent of customers surveyed agreed [...] that they would never buy an iPhone, compared to 15 per cent who responded the same way for Samsung."
So more than half of the customers _would_ buy an iPhone then, but that's bad for Apple somehow? I strongly suspect Apple won't mind that "loss" too much.
Regardless of which platform you prefer, these kind of half measures will end up bringing the worst of both worlds. It _will_ make collaboration more difficult and information that shouldn't be in g-cloud will almost certainly leak into it.
And several someones on the side that's intending to move to g cloud will throw tantrums about the change being forced on them and will claim (rightly or wrongly) to have several MS office-specific processes they rely on, a vital macro or template or suchlike.
I'm not sure they should be pre-installed at all.
One of the advantages of an app store built into the system is that it's trivially easy to add the stuff you want from the store. If someone wants to play solitaire they could easily find and add it in the app store.
Fact is, Microsoft don't have any confidence in their own store and the constant shovelling of this stuff onto PCs in the way they have been proves that.
Interestingly enough, they're putting more weight behind command-line accessible app repositories like chocolatey for installing apps.... another good idea 'borrowed' from Linux. (Just to be clear, Chocolatey isn't a Microsoft project, someone else started it a while ago, but Microsoft are adding support to make using it easier in newer versions of Windows.
It was quite nice to rebuild my PC last time by just doing the normal windows install then running a powershell script for all the apps (https://itsalwaysmyproblem.com/2017/09/09/easy-pc-rebuilds-with-chocolatey/)
I switched to Pale Moon in light of Australis but actually think that the new version of FF is a big improvement on that in a lot of ways. Not sure where it's getting its settings from if this is different to what the rest of you are seeing but I'm seeing a much cleaner UI, and the browser itself seems pretty fast. It's also loaded my adblocker and password manager just fine. Still not sure I'll be switching back fro Pale Moon but that'll do me as a start.
I'm really happy with my iPhone 8. It all works well, screen looks good to me, camera works great, system very quick.
I can't justify the money for an iPhone X to myself and I will freely admit to being an Apple enthusiast normally. There are some ideas in the X that might work really well one year but I'm not convinced that year is now. Next year isn't looking promising either. I just don't think I'd like Face ID very much, and I actually find Touch ID to work very well in all circumstances for me, and lets be honest, falling back to PIN is hardly the end of the world either.
What if the iPhone 8 turns out to be a better iPhone than the iPhone X. Given how Google seems to also have a few problems with the Pixel 2 (I helped my step-daughter buy a Google Pixel last year, lovely phone but I just don't like Android personally) and Samsung's recent problems, maybe the pace to keep up with each other on on systems that aren't about to have a fundamental change just yet isn't helping.
I agree that you can't trust the OS itself afterwards, but with Linux at least it would be possible to...
And the 'average person' type who might typically be running Windows or OSX isn't going to know how to do that. It's arguably better to give them "over the top" advice which they can follow and which will result in a clean machine than something they won't understand and won't do anything with (having said that, I'm far from convinced that the 'average person' would wipe their machine no matter how simple it was...)
I work for a college and we're looking to finalise our W10 image for a rollout over the summer break.
We have two "windows store" apps in the image, one of which is the calculator app now they've abandoned the old calculator app.
Most of the windows store posts I see from other Edu establishments on the likes of edugeek are all along the "how do I disable the #@!~%* store" line.
If Microsoft thinks education is keen to use the windows store then from where I'm standing they are in for a nasty surprise.
If your network is small enough to be described as "my LAN" then its entirely possible that there are issues at large scale that you're not seeing on "my LAN", as Microsoft have quite a large, diverse and complex internal network.
It's also entirely possible that some of the coders at MS who worked on the network stack are idiots, in fairness.
My money's on a little of both.
For better or worse, usually worse, it's common practice in large chunks of uk education. I've been trying to move my place away from using initials as usernames for years because it doesn't scale. There _are_ collisions and people do want to change their username/initials when they get married or divorced or whatever and it causes bedlam in many systems that link to AD account by username string instead of guid.
Because you couldn't have possibly included (de)compression code for both algorithms in all versions of the OS, and you couldn't have possibly used an extra bit or byte in the volume descriptor or in the directory entries of files to signal which particular method was used to compress them.
And get more complaints about "Windows bloat"? Especially when there's more than one CPU instruction set involved. Windows NT supported x86, PowerPC and Alpha around the NT 3.51/NT4 days iirc, and developments of that system subsequently went to to Itanium, x86-64 and ARM (windows RT)
Yes you can create your own DC. But you can't run a DC on my domain without already having credentials that allow you to promote a server to a DC and if you have those credentials already then you already own the network and don't need help from this kind of attack.
According to the write up here, you can get around JEA by having the machine you're attacking pull policies from a domain controller you control.
So for this to work you already need to be a domain admin on the domain concerned? If that's true, then sure it's a fault that needs fixing but I'm not convinced it's much of a security hole if you already need to be domain admin to use it. If I leave my car keys out in my house where anyone who lives here can take them, it might be something I need to stop doing if my kids become teenagers with a taste for joyriding, but it's not really a security issue with the car itself.
I actually like Windows 10 so have no problems with installing it on my work or home PCs...
But I'm appalled at these kinds of choices that Microsoft seem to be making. Trying to trick / force people into installing the upgrade is idiotic. People who want it most likely already have it, and those who do not (or _can_ not due to compatibility issue say) are not going to be happy to find it has sneaked onto their machine.
Same applies to the store.
A large part of their hopes from an improved bottom line from Windows 10 will come from moving everyone to the new platform and being able to do away with support for the older platforms.
As for the store, I've not seen a single Windows Store app that is actually any good. Microsoft's own attempts are anywhere between half-arsed and just plain terrible. Build a first-class system that will make people want to use it because of how well it meets their needs and watch the users and the money roll in of their own accord. It's not that difficult to figure that one out.
"who cares when a 1500-employee company is hit by a bug and calls Microsoft ? Certainly not the MS support department as all they'll say is please reboot all computers three times in 3 minute intervals and call us back"
Really? Last time I had to call them they said "We're ever so sorry sir, we'll get a patch sorted and out to you as soon as possible, should be end of this week. In the meantime we have a workaround which you can do yourself, or we can apply remotely if you wish."
I'm actually using Windows 8 with StartIsBack. As long as you stay the hell out of metro then its not a bad set of improvements over Windows 7. We had no choice about upgrading at work because you can't (or couldn't at one point at least) use the remote admin tools for Windows 2012 without updating. There's no technical reason for this of course, it's just one more example of Microsoft trying to push 8 down everyone's throat.
Of course, MS don't want you to stay out of metro so you have to work at it, and if you stay out of metro then windows 8 is not much more than service pack 2 for Windows 7. But I'm comfortable with that.
Being treated with equality (note the different) does not equate to treating everyone the same. It means treating everyone with the same level of respect, opportunity, etc. I don't know why this is difficult to grasp.
For example, while you may be treating everyone on your team equally if you buy them all a bacon butty for breakfast every day, by doing so you are not treating any Jewish, Muslim or vegetablist members of your team with respect. It's a trivial example but I hope it helps illustrate the point.
It *is* impressive, imho and there's some clever stuff being done by people who are 'hacking' the kinect tech into other things.
But as a console add-on, it solves a problem that no one appears to actually have. If I want to take exercise then I'd rather do so outside in the fresh air. If I want to dance I'd rather go to a nightclub (not that i want to do either, these days, but still...).
THEN they discover they've bought into proprietary DRM-saturated Hell.
Oh no, my device is working exactly as described. What kind of hell is this I find myself in.
-- said by no one, ever.
I can't help thinking that the majority of people who buy into a [closed / walled garden / DRM-saturated hell] type device will be perfectly happy with it. It's only us techies who expect to root our devices who might be unhappy, or those who are miss-sold devices on a false basis who will be unhappy.
What sort of cretin buys a Amazon Swindle anyway?
Oh I see what you did there. How... clever... of you.
I've got a Kindle and I'm perfectly comfortable with the decision to purchase it, thank you. I'm considering trading up to a 'paperwhite' or Fire HD model too. Much like the iDevice (yep, own them too), I'm far too busy enjoying the fact that it works very well for its intended purpose to even notice the spluttering about "lock in" from people like yourself.
You and I are both happy with our choices, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, your need to characterise people who disagree with you as having "devolved" in some way says a lot more about you than it does about 'us'...
Not to be harsh or anything but welcome to the real world.
Companies exist to further their interests, and those of their owners and shareholders. Not yours as a customer. Not mine as a customer. Their own. Always have. **We're their customers, not their friends**.
With free products like those from Google, where do you stand? Are those freebies the sprat to catch a mackeral, essentially a loss leader? Are they a way of gathering users and turning data on those users into something that can be sold to other businesses? Where do products like reader stand in this?
This is why I've always been so suspicious of the Google "Don't be evil" thing, because sooner or later that was always going to be overtaken by "sorry, but there's profit to be had".
People sneer at Apple and Microsoft, but at least they've always been relatively honest and up front about the relationship. If we give them money, they'll give us hardware and software and services. At least with those guys you always knew where you stood.
"Disney Research – yes, such a thing exists – has been working on a project called Revel that sends an electric current through your body to your fingertips"
I'm pretty sure another el reg columnist has had working prototypes of this for some time now. Paging Mr Travaglia to the Mickey-Mouse shaped courtesy phone!
The domain thing surprised the heck out of me. Microsoft are playing catch-up and by throwing away domain membership and the manageability that comes with it, they're throwing away one of the areas where they hold an advantage with business and education customers. This product was designed to fail.
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