* Posts by Wade Burchette

1250 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2007

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Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

Wade Burchette

Re: "make their websites dependant on Google's proprietary features"

One of my biggest complaints is when a website doesn't work, the answer I get from the company is, without exception, "just use Chrome". In other words, "just be like me". They use Chrome, therefore you use Chrome too. They have powerful computers that can easily handle javascript from 1001 different places, therefore you have a powerful computer too. They have ultra-fast internet, therefore you obtain and afford fast internet too. They understand how to use the web site, therefore you do too.

None of these new developers seem to understand that there are people out there who are different than them. If it works for them, they don't care about the people for whom it does not work for or the people who don't understand it. This goes beyond websites too ... I'm looking at you Microsoft.

Lenovo debuts AI PCs that have specs a lot like vanilla PCs with this year's accelerated CPUs

Wade Burchette

Re: "enabling the interaction with physical objects"

What value does an AI PC, Microsoft Co-pilot, Chat GPT, or any of the other AI ideas actually bring to my life?

AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war

Wade Burchette

Re: Unsurprising....

I recently saw a documentary (I think it was on Netflix) about killer robots. The US military is the most well-funded in the entire world. And they are all-in for expensive AI killing machines.

Peace is not profitable. Therefore, politicians love war because you better believe they get their slice of the pie. It does not matter which political party, they all profit off war. In my lifetime, Joe Biden became involved in war, Barack Obama did too, and so did Bush Jr (remember Dick Cheney and Halliburton), and Bill Clinton, and Bush Sr, and Reagan, and ... do you see a pattern here? Peace is not profitable. So the politicians will go on TV and cry Ukraine needs more money and how evil Russia is just to keep that war going. While it is a fact that Putin is an evil person, I am sure there was some way to prevent that war from happening. Billions for war, exactly $0.00 for peace.

As I watched that documentary on killer robots, I couldn't help but wonder why no money was being spent to help poor and disadvantaged. People with mental health problems sleep on the street, but at least we have a robot that can kill on command. At least our senators got a little richer, though. People are dying from dangerous drugs, but we cannot afford to help them get clean because we are too busy building more tanks to replace the ones we gave away to Ukraine. At least our current and past presidents got a little richer, though.

People are suffering and dying in stupid wars; yet, the people who will never experience its horrors are getting richer because of war. AI war will just mean more innocent people suffering and more rich politicians.

Wikileaks source and former CIA worker Joshua Schulte sentenced to 40 years jail

Wade Burchette

I don't know about that. But Thomas Sowell once said: "People will forgive you for being wrong. They will not forgive you for being right, especially when your being right proves them wrong."

Microsoft's vision for the future of work is you trusting Redmond to get AI right

Wade Burchette

Siri often gets things wrong.

Several times a year, Siri will give out my phone number to random businesses. And never any business in the city where I live. It is annoying to hear "Are you Motel 6?" or, "Are you Wal-Mart?" It is never the same business and has never been a local number. I don't know who to talk to stop it. Apple support is just as useless as Microsoft support. When it first happened, someone helpfully said to me: "Siri is not always right." Ever since then, when I get these calls asking for random businesses, I make it a point to tell them I know you have an iPhone.

Japan's lunar lander is dying before our eyes after setting down on Moon

Wade Burchette

Apollo mission

With all the recent struggles of getting anything to the moon, this makes you appreciate the Apollo mission all that much more. The work those scientists and engineers did without modern computers is simply amazing. (Or, maybe, they could do it because their computers were simple.) If an object gets stuck on the moon, you can move past it; if a person gets stuck on the moon, that is a catastrophic failure. Yet, the Apollo engineers were able to get everyone home from the moon. And they did it all without any prior experience to draw from. That was amazing work.

NASA Juno probe to produce 'firehose of data' during close flyby of Jupiter moon

Wade Burchette

Re: What's this miles and kilometers nonsense?

Posh. The metric system is the tool of the Devil. We need to be measuring in rods. My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I like it.

HP TV ads claim its printers are 'made to be less hated'

Wade Burchette

Re: Missed the target

In addition to the ink, HP printers also requires personal information to work. No printer -- correction, no product -- should require any personal information to work. New HP laser printers are big bricks without an email address and a constant connection to the internet, even if all you will ever use is a USB cable. I find many all-in-one printers will not scan with the awful HP smart app (more on that) unless you give HP personal information. Even when HP still wisely had standalone drivers, you had to be careful because it tried to snatch too much data from you.

And speaking of ink, HP printers also will not scan if the printer is out of ink. Why does a scanner require ink?

As far as the one ad about no more installation fails with the HP smart app ... I think we need to file a lawsuit against HP for that because in my experience, that app makes installing printers harder than ever and has failed more times than the standalone driver.

Oh, and another thing that makes HP printers so hated is how they replaced easy-to-understand screens with confusing buttons and confusing instructions. HP self-healing Wi-Fi may be a thing, but the hardest thing is to make the printer even connect to Wi-Fi to begin with! What is the point of self-healing Wi-Fi when your product is so difficult to even connect to Wi-Fi? The first HP printer I ever saw with those confusing buttons made the person print the instructions using their own ink and the instructions had obvious spelling errors and was wrong. I had to go the website to get the correct instructions.

These HP ads conveniently did not address the real reason why HP printers are so hated -- overpriced ink/toner, a gimped product without personal information, a confusing app that makes things more difficult, and confusing buttons instead of an easy-to-understand screen. A pox on HP's house! I always loudly tell everyone I know to avoid HP printers like the plague.

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

Wade Burchette

Re: Honestly....

I know two people whose HP laptop did not last a year before it died. This was last year. And since Windows 11 foolishly encrypts a hard drive without your permission, I had a terrible time recovering the files.

And the HP printers ... a pox on HP's house. No one should ever buy a HP printer ever again. Their laser printers require an email address and an internet connection to work, even if it is connected by a USB cable. The other alternative is their ink printers which once had easy to use screens. But making the product easy to use for the customer is bad for profit. So now these printers have confusing buttons that require you to print the confusing instructions using your own ink or you have to go to their website and download the confusing instructions. On one printer I helped someone with, the printed instructions had obvious spelling errors and were wrong. And if that was not bad enough, each require their equally confusing app to get the printer driver. If you are lucky, the scanner will work without an email address. But only if you are lucky because many HP printers gimp the frustrating printer app without personal information. Nobody should ever buy a HP printer for any reason, no exception.

HP once had good products. I once only looked at HP laptops. But no more. Now I do not even think about their printers or computers. If anybody asks me -- and a lot me do ask me -- I clearly tell them why they should not buy anything HP. (However, I will say that I did help a family member get a business monitor from them and it has been great. It was a 16:10 monitor with excellent color accuracy. Still going strong after 4 years.)

Google dragged to UK watchdog over Chrome's upcoming IP address cloaking

Wade Burchette

Not to worry, advertisers

You don't need to worry, advertisers. For you see, people are still being tracked. Google is just making it hard for you to track people, not for them. Google is working quadruple overtime to make sure they can still track people. If you advertisers still want to track people, you will just need to pay Google for it. Their browser does, after all, track browsing history for marketing purposes.

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Wade Burchette

Advertisers still do not understand why people use ad-blockers

Many people don't use ad-blockers because they are moochers; they use them because of web advertisements do. They are creepy, in-your-face, and far too often malicious. It is none of your business what I click or what I like. Nothing -- not an advertiser, not an operating system, not even a government -- should track me in any way. (The government would need a warrant issued by a judge to track me, no exception.) No company at any time should ever know my physical location. The only relevant part of an ad should be the content of the page, never ever to me. No ad should cover over a large part of a website, nor should it match the content of the website, nor should it pop-up or pop-under; all ads must be small and distinct from the rest of the page. No ad should ever anything dynamic code for any reason, no exception. The only code allowed on ad is plain HTML -- this is to prevent malicious ads.

When the internet went from luxury to necessity, web ads were static and only a small part of the page. And they worked! If that worked once, it can still work again.

Until advertisers address the why, they will never win the war on ad-blockers. Calling me a mooch will not work because the advertisers is the one who is morally wrong, not me.

P.S. I do disable my ad-blocker on El Reg, but I do not disable NoScript. Because I keep NoScript enabled, I do not see any ads here. With the sheer number of malicious ads out there, NoScript is a must have.

Apple slams Android as a 'massive tracking device' in internal slides revealed in Google antitrust battle

Wade Burchette

The creepy line

"Google's policy is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it."

Well, that was the old Google policy under Eric Schmidt. The new Google policy is to smash right through the creepy line and dare you to do something about it.

Wade Burchette

Google to Apple: "Here is $18,000,000,000. Now make Google the default search engine for iphone."

Apple to Google: "I guess you really are the best search engine after all!"

'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.' -- Upton Sinclair

Clippy-like AI at forefront of Windows update previews

Wade Burchette

Re: Wait... autosaving NotePad?

This is the new Microsoft. Everything that should be disabled by default is enabled, and to disable it you must navigate through a confusing menu or hack the registry.

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

Wade Burchette

Re: What's with

The only reason I keep putting up with the nonsense Microsoft is foisting on us with Windows is so I can keep playing my games. If ever I am forced to go ARM, I will dump Microsoft faster than you can count to 1.

55-inch Jamboard and app ecosystem tossed into the Google graveyard

Wade Burchette

Google probably discontinued Jamboard because it was not making any money tracking you.

Google on trial: Feds challenge deals that set your web search defaults

Wade Burchette

Default search engine

From my experience, only two things change the default search engine in a browser: Malicious add-ons and inferior antivirus products that won't stop annoying you to change to their "safe search".

There are exceptions. I have seen a few change to Bing on Chrome and a few install the duckduckgo privacy add-on. But most people don't even go into the settings. They don't know Edge starts when the computer starts even though you did not give it permission to and they also don't know Chrome now sells your browsing history to advertisers. They don't take any steps to reclaim their privacy because they don't know. The ignorance plays into Big Greed's hands. The proper solution would be to force Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc to require people to opt-in to be tracked, never opt-out.

Nvidia just made a killing on AI – where is everyone else?

Wade Burchette

Re: The end of the call centre

At least you will be able to understand them and it will be quicker. Unlike now, where you have to go through several menus just to talk to "John" whose first language is not English.

I know what you did next summer: Microsoft to kill off Xbox 360 Store

Wade Burchette

Re: Ffs

We are not bashing Microsoft for not supporting new downloads on an old console; we are bashing Microsoft for pushing downloads instead of physical discs for any console. A disc cannot be taken away at the whim of a greedy for-profit corporation. A disc cannot be taken away if the copyright owner gets in a dispute with another company. The article also states that non-game downloads will no longer be available, and conveniently enough, must be re-purchased for the newer console. That is what we are bashing all cloud downloads for, whether it is from Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.

Judge denies HP's plea to throw out all-in-one printer lockdown lawsuit

Wade Burchette

Re: I ditched HP printers

They have only become worse. Some of their printers literally will not work until you provide an email address, and then the printer has to have a connection to the internet, even if it only the USB cable is used. All of their new printers require their unhelpful, confusing, difficult app. Many of them no longer have a helpful screen and navigation buttons. They only have buttons, and you have to read the manual or waste your ink and print two pages worth of instructions just to guess what to do. And all of them are desperately trying to get you into their printing subscription plan.

No one should ever buy a new HP printer, no exception.

Logitech reports broad declines as pre-pandemic buying cycles return

Wade Burchette

You and me both. I found one remote on Amazon from a company called Sofabaton. But I think it is inferior. There are other really good ones, but they only sell them through Best Buy or a professional installer, never to the general public direct.

Microsoft kicks Calibri to the curb for Aptos as default font

Wade Burchette

I don't care about this new font. I will stick with Courier New any day of the week!

LG to offer subscriptions for appliances and televisions

Wade Burchette

Re: Rent seeking

Welcome to our glorious future. Where everything is rented and ads are plastered onto everything possible.

You turn on self-driving mode in your car ... oh wait, the subscription for that lapsed. So you stop at the nearest Qwick-E-Mart and call BMW to re-activate self-driving mode. Of course, subscribing to self-driving mode also requires a subscription to cooled seats, which requires a subscription to heated seats. A few minutes later, a message on your car displays a message thank you for your payment. You continue on your journey and now activate self-driving mode. A few minutes later, you see an advertisement on your windshield for a new BMW. Later on, you see an ad for McDonalds with a message telling you that it is along the route you are taking and asking you if you would like to stop by there before you finish your journey.

When you finally make it home, your brand new NS-9 welcomes you. It welcomes you to your home and says that since you didn't stop at McDonalds, it made you a nice meal. Later on while you are eating, your NS-9 tells you about this wonderful new drug it heard about. Since it noticed that it might help with some of your health problems, your NS-9 asks if it would be okay to call your doctor and make an appointment. Before you go to bed, your NS-9 reminds you that your subscription to US Robotics expires in 13 days and that if you want to keep your NS-9 you will have to pay for another year of service soon.

Welcome to our glorious corporate future. Our leaders will be powerless to stop this because their NS-9 is ad-free and permanently paid for and their BMW is ad-free and self-driving mode always activated. This isn't a bribe, it was a "gift" from big corporations' lobbyists to help them win the election.

Microsoft puts out Outlook fire, says everything's fine with Teams malware flaw

Wade Burchette

The teams flaw

Something tells me that the flaw in teams is not a flaw, but a purposeful design decision. The cynic in me thinks Microsoft did this so that they can push out spam to the poor souls who actually use teams. In Win11, teams installs and starts without your permission. That would be another way Microsoft can push ads onto people.

TSA wants to expand facial recognition to hundreds of airports within next decade

Wade Burchette

The issue is not the bias on a computer; the issue is what the computer does with the image. I am certain a computer will be more accurate and less biased than a person; I am uncertain what the computer will do with the data it gathered. The TSA is a power-mad US government bureaucracy. They will use this technology in ways that are objectionable. Pesky things like the constitution or the law will not matter to the TSA. They will take away your rights and when caught breaking the law, will only change for a short time before they go back to doing what they want to do. Or even worse, they will break the law and the power mad people in the US congress will make a law making the unethical actions legal.

You don't know the full details of the facial recognition program. A little bit here, a little bit there, and pretty soon you have no rights. A person can forget and misremember. A group of people cannot easily track your actions. A computer has none of those problems.

Microsoft's Activision fight with FTC turned up a Blizzard of docs: Here's your summary

Wade Burchette

Same old Microsoft

A leopard can't change his spots and Microsoft has not changed who they are. From the beginning, they bought or copied someone else's idea. MS-DOS -- bought from Seattle Computer Company. Windows -- stole the idea from Apple, who licensed it from Xerox. Word -- stole the idea from Wordperfect. Internet Explorer -- stole the idea from Netscape. DirectX -- stole the idea from OpenGL. Zune -- stole the idea from Apple. Windows Phone -- stole the idea from Apple and Google. And so on.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. The Simpsons made a joke about Bill Gates -- "Buy him out, boys!" The joke rings true because that is who Microsoft has always been. Microsoft does not want Activision because they care about us; they want it to hurt the competition.

"Redmond also talks about developing custom silicon to ensure that Windows and Surface remain competitive."

Gee, I wonder where Microsoft got the idea from? Oh yeah, Apple again with their custom silicon. The only good original idea Microsoft had was the start button, and they have doing their best to ruin that since Windows 8. The Ribbon ... please. That idea should have been cast in the fires of Mordor before it was ever introduced in Office 2007. Windows 8. That interface was good on phones/tablets, but beyond dumb for large interfaces like laptops and desktops.

Microsoft hasn't changed. Even if they make a written guarantee, expect them to quickly that promise and dare you to do something about it.

Kinder, gentler Oracle says it's changed, and now wants you to succeed

Wade Burchette

Re: Yeah, right.

I really believe Oracle has a factory dedicated to punching puppies and kicking kittens because they are just that evil. I really don't believe that a company like that will suddenly have a change of heart without a complete overhaul of the top management.

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Wade Burchette

Re: Don't know what you've lost till it's gone.....

They are being phased out because they are not profitable for banks.

Credit cards typically have a 2%-4% processing fee per transaction. The bank keeps some of that, the processing company keeps some, and Visa/Mastercard/etc keeps some. My bank waives all bank fees if I use my credit card 6 times per month. In the United States, Paypal started the thoroughly wrong trend where they keep all that processing fee on refunds. Others are now doing the same. Greed greed greed. (I wish Paypal would go under already!)

The only fee for a check/cheque is the fee to purchase them. And I can purchase them from any third party. Banks make nothing off checks. That is why banks want to phase them out. It has nothing to do with what is good for the consumer or security. Because of the credit card fees, I always try to pay by cash or check to small businesses.

Why you might want an email client in the era of webmail

Wade Burchette

Re: DNS-over-https

Just change your DNS over HTTPS server to your Pi-Hole IP address and it will work just fine. Unlike Chromium browsers, Firefox allows you to enter only an IP address for your custom DoH server. Chromium browsers require some long website, such as https://security.cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query

Privacy Sandbox, Google's answer to third-party cookies, promised within months

Wade Burchette

Sounds worse

Google answer to "privacy" sounds far far worse than third party cookies. Look at some of them:

* Protected Audience for remarketing (showing ads based on past website behavior at other websites) - Deleting cookies are easy and relatively painless. But clearing history ... Often I need my history. Clearing that is not trivial.

* Topics (showing targeted ads without identifying people) - I guarantee that it won't be difficult to identify people.

* Attribution Reporting (measuring ad interaction without third-party cookies) - Why isn't clicking on the ad enough? Nothing and nobody should ever know if my eyes or mouse hovers over or near an ad.

* Shared Storage (sharing data cross sites without sharing identifiers) and Fenced Frames (a related cross-site data mechanism) - Why are two cross-site mechanisms mentioned?

All web ads should be static, non-tracking, and not in-your-face. And no ad should ever have any scripting code so that malvertising can never work. That strategy was quite successful when the internet went from luxury to necessity. If it worked once, it can work again. If Google ever implements this, I am going to loudly tell everyone I know about it and tell them to switch to Firefox or Brave.

Nvidia's RTX 4060 and 4060TI are actually priced like mid-tier cards

Wade Burchette

Still too expensive

The 4060 should be $199 and the 4060 Ti should be $249. These prices are still far too expensive.

Beijing raids consultancy, State-sponsored media warns more to come

Wade Burchette

Translation

What China said:

"In recent years, certain Western countries have increasingly engaged in intelligence activities aimed at stealing confidential information in key areas such as military, defense industry, economy, and finance in order to implement strategies of containment and suppression against China."

What they really mean:

"How dare you do the things we ourselves do! Who gave you the right to do the exact same things we are currently doing?"

Strike three: FTC says Meta still failing to protect user privacy

Wade Burchette

Re: Jail or injuctions

The Simpsons had it right:

"I should put you away where you can't kill or maim us. But this is LA, and your rich and famous."

Go ahead, forget that password. Use a passkey instead, says Google

Wade Burchette

Re: Oh boy here we go

For some reason, my fingerprints never work on any fingerprint reader. Not the ones on the phones, past and present. Not the ones on the computer, both the old swipe and new ones. Not even expensive ones where you place your entire finger in. I can't be the only one. I bet the people behind this passkey thinking never even thought the people whose fingers for some reason do not work on fingerprint readers.

Unlike your iPhone, Apple's batterygate controversy refuses to die

Wade Burchette

The outcome I would want with any lawsuit against Apple is to require them to make the battery user replaceable and the device must allow any battery that is fit for purpose, even if it was not made by or bought from Apple.

I would also require Apple to provide repair manuals and parts for all their products. And if I manage to get that result, I would immediately set my sights on Samsung too.

Colorado sends agricultural right to repair bill to governor

Wade Burchette

Loophole

"Deere and other manufacturers have expressed concerns that right to repair laws would require them to expose trade secrets, a carve-out for which was included in the Colorado bill."

This loophole will cause John Deere to claim everything is a trade secret, and thus exempt. There should be no loopholes at all. The only people who are a threat to their "trade secrets" are large companies who can be sued for copying these secrets. Farmer Bob isn't going to make his own tractor from the trade secrets in John Deere's documents. Still, given how angry John Deere is, this bill is an excellent start. Next up, we need to expand this law to electronic devices too. Take that Apple and Samsung!

Google to kill Dropcam, Nest Secure hardware next year

Wade Burchette

Be careful with that too. QNap has a surveillance station too. They pushed out an update that broke the view and playback program for Windows. Turns out, QNap is trying to force people out of the free version and into a pay version.

Microsoft wants to stick adverts in Bing chat responses

Wade Burchette

I can see it now ...

Bing chatbox: "I've noticed you have been asking questions about an irregular heartbeat. Why not call your doctor today and ask about Expensiveall, a new drug from Astra-Zenica. With Expensiveall, you can control your irregular heartbeats with just one pill a day! Side effects include poverty, worry over bills, death, explosive diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, and zombie toes. These are not all the possible side effects. Tell your doctor about all medications you are taking. Take back your life with Expensiveall!"

Me: "How do I get to Lutton?"

Bing chatbox: "From your current address, take highway 25 north then highway 273 east. Along the way, why not stop in at the McDonald's just along your route and try the new limited-edition Big Mac with a new special sauce."

And I am sure I could go on. Your chat history will be tied to personal information, and then Microsoft will find ways to personalize the ads in a creepy way. Simple questions will be ways to interject ads. I think I will permanently ignore all this AI chat.

Chinese defence boffins ponder microwaving Starlink satellites to stop surveillance

Wade Burchette

I don't think China is worried about US surveillance

I don't think China is worried about US surveillance with Starlink, but rather that there is an internet connection that bypass their great firewall. Elon Musk is crazy enough to sell internet service through Starlink satellites to people in China.

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

Wade Burchette

When a product is better, people will naturally switch to it

When a product is better, people naturally switch to it. For example, people did not stop riding horses because Ford motor company used dirty tricks to get you to buy a car. It was because the car was clearly better than the horse, and as soon as Ford made one that was affordable to many, people naturally wanted one.

The fact that Edge has to continually nag and beg you to use it implies that is not better. If it was better, people would just accept it. Edge some serious flaws. First, the homepage is not a simple homepage; it is a Microsoft page with Microsoft ads that obviously make Microsoft money just by opening the browser. Firefox has a similar problem with their "pocket" on the default homepage. Second, has all sorts of junk that just gets in the way. A sidebar. A discover feature that who knows what it is tracking about you. Third, Edge wants to start when the computer starts, even though I did not give it permission to do so. Fourth, make one change in the group policy settings for Edge, and lots of other unrelated changes are locked out unless you delete the group policy setting in the registry.

I know Chrome has mindshare. But Edge could too, if it was naturally better. It would take time, but it could happen.

Google ready to kick the cookie habit by Q3 2024, for real this time

Wade Burchette

Google's new proposal

Google's new proposal sounds like a way to track people that will be harder to block. Clearing cookies is, at worse, a minor inconvenience. Clearing browsing history can make finding a website you visited harder to find again. This can be a major inconvenience. Yet, that is one of Google's proposals, to track you based on your browsing history. You just know it will turned on by default, with the off switch buried deep in the bowels of the settings where few people ever look.

The internet went from luxury to necessity before all this creepy tracking. If those ads worked once, they can work again.

Microsoft locks door to default guest authentication in Windows Pro

Wade Burchette

Re: Observation

That process no longer works on the newest builds Windows 11. Instead, what you have to do is proceed to the screen that asks you to join a network. At that screen, and only there, press SHIFT + F10 (or SHIFT + FN + F10 because idiot laptop builders combine less useful keys with the more useful function keys). A command prompt window appears. You browse to c:\windows\system32\oobe. The type BypassNRO.cmd. That adds an entry to the registry then restarts. Then you can bypass joining a network in Windows 11.

You also need to make whole disk encryption is turned off. On many W11 machines, it is turned on without asking.

Microsoft and community release scripts to help mitigate Defender mess

Wade Burchette

Re: Class Action Lawsuit anyone???

Microsoft is way ahead of you on that, at least in the United States. The terms you must accept to use Windows says that you waive any right to sue Microsoft and that you must use a Microsoft paid arbitrator. This group will not bite the hand that feeds them, so they will always find in favor of Microsoft.

NASA overspent $15m on Oracle software because it was afraid an audit could cost more

Wade Burchette

I really believe that Oracle has a factory dedicated to punching puppies and kicking kittens. They are just that evil.

Cisco warns it won't fix critical flaw in small business routers despite known exploit

Wade Burchette

Time to dump Cisco

This is the second story read in the last 12 months about Cisco not properly supporting their products. The other one was about a product with short support. For security products, I expect full support at least 15 years after the last one was sold brand new. With Cisco's greedy disregard for security, I say it is time to dump their products and give our money to companies that won't make you buy a newer one -- and thus have all the headaches of properly configuring a new one -- every 5 years or so.

$69b Activision deal totally helps gamers and saves them money, says Microsoft

Wade Burchette

Re: "$69B Activision deal totally helps " . . . Microsoft

This is the new Microsoft, whose new CEO wants to be "agile".

The next Call of Duty will be released with severe bugs and crashes, because Microsoft laid off all the quality control people from Activision soon after they bought it. You, the paying customer, will be expected to tell Microsoft why and how it isn't work for free. But you will be asked frequently for your feedback, which will promptly be ignored unless it is nothing but praise for what they are doing. And then when you are finally used to the way things are, the whole user-interface will change for no good reason. And then later you find out that some parts of the game that you already played are radically different because somebody at Microsoft thought they could do that level better. Of course, that redone level will be full of bugs.

US Dept of Energy set to reveal fusion breakthrough

Wade Burchette

Re: Only Twenty Years Away...

Meanwhile, the technology for reliable and proven fission energy is already here. But every time one is proposed, a vocal minority believe the lies about it and protest it until it is cancelled. We need more nuclear fission power plants until fusion goes from 20 years away to a production reactor being built right now.

Legit Android apps poisoned by sticky 'Zombinder' malware

Wade Burchette

Greedy advertisers

"The most recent campaign using Zombinder distributed the Xenomorph banking trojan glued to the application from a media downloading company, with the victim lured through malicious ads."

Once again, greedy advertisers put our security at risk. It seems that once they get paid, the ad runs, no questions asked. Between this and malvertising, is it any wonder why people would use ad-blockers? It is real simple, advertisers: you need to verify the identity of the person paying you, verify what the ad is doing, and carefully examine where the link goes to before you allow the ad to run. And once do all that, do not allow anything to change without another thorough vetting process.

Domain aging gang CashRewindo picks vintage sites to push malvertising

Wade Burchette

There is a simple way to stop malvertising forever

There is a simple way to stop malvertising forever: disallow javascript and tracking in ads. When the internet went from novelty to necessity, ads were static. It worked then, and it can still work now.

But I already know that advertisers will never implement this pro-consumer solution. Their greed trumps my security.

HP Inc to lay off up to 6,000 staff, cut costs by $1.4 billion

Wade Burchette

I am doing my part

Many new HP printers are the most frustratingly difficult devices to install. Gone are the days where there was a standalone driver with simple, straightforward instructions. Gone are screens that help you connect the printer to Wi-Fi. Gone are paper instructions in the box. Now there are fancy beeps, buttons, instructions that you have to print with your paper and ink, and an app that was clearly designed by people who grew up with a smartphone in their hand. And one HP printer I had to install, the instructions that printed were wrong and had obvious spelling errors. What used to take 15 minutes to fully install now takes over 30 minutes. So, I am doing my part and will never buy a HP ink printer again.

And I have many friends whose HP laptops did not make it to 2 years. A few did not even make it to 1 year. The reliability of their computer are now garbage. One I could discount as a fluke; but when many have the same problem, it is not a fluke. So, I am doing my part and will never buy a HP computer again. Dell still makes servers and business computers in Texas, Chinese Lenovo still makes servers and gaming computers in North Carolina, but HP makes everything in China. When I ordered a gaming laptop from Lenovo - due to HP's reliability problem - it shipped from IBM's old factory in North Carolina. I couldn't help to notice the irony of a Chinese company building stuff in America but an American computer only building stuff in China.

Your welcome, HP. I used to buy a lot of stuff from you. But not anymore. I am doing my part to make your profits go down. Good job!

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