Posts by Tim99

Google's unloved plan to fix web permissions gathers support

Hmm... Google

It's a trap.

LibreOffice adds voice to 'ditch Windows for Linux' campaign

Re: No real reach

Years ago, I was supporting our product (often used by volunteers) - When I asked what version of Windows they had, I was often told "97" - When I explained that was MS Word, they sometimes had no idea and would say something like "No it's Windows, it's what I use all the time". I'm retired, the product is still sold by the new owners and will run on Windows 11.

Re: As I've said before

If a casual punter needs a new computer, the Pi 500 may be worth a look. The kit at £115 appears good value - except the couple of official 32GB μSD cards I have tested appear to have significantly slower write speeds than their 64GB alternatives (measure at 74 MB/s write 90 MB/s read - Command Queueing on).

The matching 15.6" monitor looks neat, but locally, a standard 24" FHD 100Hz 1ms Monitor with built in speakers is only about 2/3rds the price. People are complaining about the lack of an NVMe M.2 interface, but with desktop Pi5s we have noticed little practical difference for web and light office tasks.

Tape, glass, and molecules – the future of archival storage

Re: Predicted in 1961*

I liked 'The Nine Billion Names of God" - Arthur C Clarke "without any fuss, the stars were going out".

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

Productivity?

Over lunch with our Microsoft Rep (that dates it) I asked why MS didn't include a spell check in Windows. I was told "the truth" "We wouldn't sell many copies of Word or Office". It was a liquid lunch for him (I was driving), so I believed it.

Our user base was mostly engineers and scientists who were still not coming to terms with not having a typing pool and audio typists who could recognise arcane words. The older and more senior staff were **really** not happy about having to type up their own stuff. All they needed was paragraphs, bullet points, headers (that they put in themselves by using underline), and bold; and for the more adventurous, numbered lists and red/blue and italics. Anything involving graphics was literally cut and pasted in with scissors and glue, then copied.

Trump administration's whole-government AI plans leaked on GitHub

Re: Gov and AI: What could go wrong?

Maybe he saw edited highlights from the film, and decided Big Brother was the good guy?

Apple tries to contain itself with lightweight Linux VMs for macOS

So far, my lightweight Linux with my iMac has been a Lite Raspberry Pi on the same network on my desk. For travelling, a cellular iPad Pro with keyboard and power supply, and a Lite Pi Zero 2W powered and tethered with the iPad. The Zero uses so little power that even with no mains supply, I can get hours of use. Termius or RaspController both work well for me on the iPad.

I'm retired and no longer have access to multiple machines, so I'll wait for MacOS 26 to come out of beta before I try the official VM...

Ship abandoned off Alaska after electric cars on board catch fire

Re: Tesla that burned so hot, it melted part of the road

Often called FOOF, because it does.

Re: Tesla that burned so hot, it melted part of the road

When the Lotus Elan was a new, and wonderful, thing; one caught fire near our house. The fire station was a couple of miles away, and by the time they arrived the fire was pretty much out. About all that was left was the engine, gearbox, ladder chassis, and wheels. The rest had burned, including charring and melting the road surface. No one was hurt.

The story my father got from our neighbour, the village constable, was that it was one of the kit versions, and the new owner may not have constructed it properly. Apparently the fire started in the engine compartment, the engine stopped, and the car came to rest by a pedestrian island, blocking the road.

Thunderbird is go: 139 follows closely on Firefox's heels

Re: And still no iOS/iPadOS version

I find the free version of Proton a bit limited but OK. If you don't mind paying, the full version is better and has an included desktop version. I've set mine up to deal with a very old Gmail account, which is less hassle than Google's stuff. I used to host my own Linux server, but now I'm too old to bother with the faff.

Best pricing model for AI? Work in progress, says Salesforce

Can we ask how much they are going to pay us for all our lovely data that they have used?

Barclays Bank signs 100k license Copilot deal with Microsoft

Re: I didn't think Barclays could get any worse.

Barclays and Microsoft have both given me a lot of grief over the years. Initially, they were okay. I wrote some shrink-wrap software for Windows 95+. After looking at the Vista code base, I realized, to keep what little sanity I had left, I needed to plan for early retirement. I turned off my last Windows version (in a VM) over a year and a half ago. My grief level decreased.

I had a Barclays account for 51 years. Initially it was my only account; my salary went into it, and I had a linked Barclaycard. A few years ago, I found that many of my dealings with them required a phone call to their support in India. They wrote to me because they were closing it. Apparently, I wasn't creating enough activity. Over 12 years, it typically went from about £4,000 down to £500 in a few transactions over 2 years, then I would top-it up again to the original amount. They closed it, and I made other arrangements. My grief level decreased further.

Do I miss either of them? Yes, but only in a good way.

Aussie rocket foiled by premature fairing pop

Link...

That's one of my favourite Clarke and Dawe sketches - The Front Fell Off, YouTube.

Royal Navy freshens up ships' electromagnetic warfare defenses

Re: Archimedes and Wallis

Sod em?

US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired

Require a 2/3rds Senate majority for a prospective candidate?

The final bookworm-based Raspberry Pi OS update arrives

So far so good...

Tried it out on a 2GB and a 16GB Pi5 with microSD cards. No particular problems found. Lock Screen looks useful. Printing a bit faster? uBlock Origin Lite "adequate"...

Computacenter IT guy let girlfriend into Deutsche Bank server rooms, says fired whistleblower

Re: any security? ?

There might be the odd bricks and mortar Branch left in Braintree or Colchester...

New Intel boss is all about ‘deleveraging’ the x86 giant

Re: "Intel could shed up to 20 percent of its current workforce"

It's the centralize/decentralize cycle which used to be repeated about every 5-10 years.

Re: "Intel could shed up to 20 percent of its current workforce"

There used to be a metric for workers/managers. It may have come from the early days of Hewlett Packard. For technical types who had experience, it was: ~ 1 tech manager for 10 techs. The trick was that this worked its way up the pyramid, so 10 of these managers had 1 manager - i.e. The structure was: out of 111 people there were only 10 managers with 1 senior manager. In a larger workforce that works out to 1 boss, 10 seniors, 100 managers, and 1000 tech workers - Roughly 11% of the staff in a highly technical business are managers. In my days in the UK Scientific Civil Service, that ratio was about right. The salary ratio was probably ~1: 2: 1.5, indicating that wages/costs for management might have been ~20%.

In a standard business where staff turnover could be higher and less training was needed, the rate could be 1:50 (Like a large Supermarket chain?) - Or 2,500 workers, 50 managers and 1 boss/board; although typically there would be, say, 5 senior managers between the boss and management. So ~ 2.2% of staff are managers, but their salary ratios may be closer to 1: 1.3: 1.5 indicating that management costs are closer to 3%?

These days, the S/VP and C level staff might be on 10-50 times staff salaries, with some CEOs on >200 times?

BOFH: The Prints of Darkness pays a visit

Re: Sheer genius!!

Like Richard 111's Dad; In the early days of microwave ovens (1982?); I, too, used our brand new one to heat a Christmas pudding. There were no microwave instructions, and the standard way of heating said pudding was by steaming it in a bowl, in a partially filled pan, for 1-2 hours. I'll give it 10 minutes I thought, then have a look to see how much longer it needs... Just before the 10 minutes was up, there was a strong caramelly odour from the microwave. When I opened the door the pudding caught fire.

After unplugging, and dowsing the flames, cleaning the caramelized inside took perhaps half an hour.

Not a total loss, the cat carried off and ate the remains of the pudding.

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Re: Please do not all power on at once

We had a monastery as one of our customers (Not really a customer, as we had donated our software and supplied the hardware at cost). The "IT" was in a small two-room annex with a single power line to one of the rooms. The line terminated at a single socket that had another line with a switch going to a single 100W bare bulb. The mains socket had an adapter going to the PC and its CRT, and a small LaserJet (5L?) printer. They could only run any two devices before the circuit breaker (in another building) tripped out. There was no heating or cooling (an austere order) - I suggested that they move the equipment to another building, but apparently the layperson who was driving it liked the "peace" and "solitude". They solved the problem by only using the equipment on clement days with natural light.

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Re: Qualifications

A relative retired from IBM and became a Vicar. At a family "do" I asked him how the new job was going; and that it must be very different. He replied that they were very similar; particularly the organisational structure, bureaucracy and paperwork. The difference was the product - He reflected on that for a moment, and then said that most of his previous colleagues probably thought that the product was the same...

Southern Water uses Capita's AI tool to flush customer complaints

Re: Southern Water uses Capita's AI tool to flush customer complaints

That great source of truth "Yes Minister" ("The Bed of Nails") accurately describes Regulatory Capture: Wikipedia.

...regulatory capture (also called agency capture) is a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as a particular geographic area, industry, profession, or ideological group...

Tech CEO: Four-day work week didn't hurt or help productivity

A sad Australian drinking tale

Half the size, with a quarter of the alcohol content of this >>======>

About 30 years ago, I had a favoured customer who was also one of our suppliers. They usually wanted something picked up or delivered on a Friday after lunch. Almost everybody was in the "staff room" drinking - Except for one of their two receptionists who alternated at the desk/drinking. I had a 35km drive home, and got quite adept at keeping a single middy of low-alcohol IPA going for 2 hours (Australian beer is warm and pretty unpleasant by then). Fortunately, nobody noticed.

Windows intros 365 Link, a black box that does nothing but connect to Microsoft's cloud

OK, not exactly the same

I have set up Raspberry Pi5 2GB systems for my fellow retired seniors that work fine with standard MS online stuff (Excel, Word, Mail).

The first time they are fired up it takes the browser about 4-6 seconds to be responsive, after logging back in 2-3 seconds; in the same session, ~1 second. Users can normally keep at least ten tabs open - But most of us wouldn't know what to do with that many tabs open at the same time :-)

Cost excluding keyboard, VGA cable, and screen US$50 plus <$20 for a case. The 4GB and 8GB run hotter than the 2GB (~12C with a passive case) with a small increase in performance. The 16GB Pi at $120 may be overkill, but runs as cool as the 2GB.

Generative AI app goes dark after child-like deepfakes found in open S3 bucket

From history: "Gambling".

When even Microsoft can’t understand its own Outlook, big tech is stuck in a swamp of its own making

Re: Outlook

The Mac ones are reasonably OK. BUT, today Mail introduced me to "Categories". Two minutes later I turned them off.

Maybe I need to go back to: mail "subject" [e-mail]... when the world seemed simpler.

Now all I have to remember is: was it [Enter] two or three times to send? [Ctrl]+z should work...

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Those who can, do?

A bit before Alfred (mid-late 80's) I was charged with networking a specialist division of a very large organization. I had experience of DECnet an LAN Manager, and sort of learnt NetWare in a similar way by reading the Red "bookcase" and installing it on a Netware 86 and a 386 server. The organization was standardising on Netware everywhere. After trying it out, and putting it on couple of our networks, it was time to train relevant staff.

I knew that I needed a professional for this, so I asked our training contractor to set it up. A few weeks later I had a room, equipment, and the trainer. The trainer had a set of his company's notes, and the first couple of days went well. The trainer asked if he could borrow the red bookshelf for "advanced training" as the notes didn't cover that, and we could run an enhanced course for our engineers and scientists. I had several copies, and lent him one. About a month later the courses were complete and he gave me the books back. He said that he, too, had wingied it on the advanced course and hoped that it had gone OK, as he had never read them before. I asked him why his employer hadn't provided them - He said that they thought that if their trainers had the books, they would leave and get jobs as expert installers.

A few months later, I was setting up a new department and contacted the training company. They sent a new trainer. I casually asked how the previous trainer was. He said that he had left, and was now working for a medium sized company as their NetWare expert. Apparently the money was much better.

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Re: Tyrant sounds familiar

My father used a good one (ex RAF) - " I cannot speak too highly of this officer".

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

Re: "You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. "

perhaps due to contamination in the oil - it may be 60-70 years old, and it uses oil for both cooling and electrical insulation, as well as paper for insulation - I used to do this stuff routinely. Interestingly, the condition of transformers from the 1920s-1930s were often better than newer ones (value engineering?).

The cost of an oil condition monitoring scheme is trivial. Examination of materials entrained in the oil give a good indication of how it is performing - e.g. furfural levels in the oil is an indicator of the extent to which the paper insulation of the windings has deteriorated.

Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment

Re: PDP-11? Pah! Too new!

Pedant alert: FORTRAN IV please.

A failure to push Unix, because of a fear of cannibalizing VMS? The UNIX wars? The attempt to use more expensive micro/mini hybrids like the Professional, DECmate, and Rainbow?

We might forget that Microsoft had a license to sell and distribute Xenix because they didn't have anything until Windows NT? I had a conversation with a NetWare consultant when NT came out - I used and wrote software for it. I predicted that MS would dominate that arena - He said it wouldn't, I said that, yes, it was better; but people were using MS software throughout their businesses and that would soon include networking.

I was trying to connect and network PDP/VAX/DG/Unix/CPM/Apple and then IBM PCs in the 1980s; and quickly realized it was cheaper and much easier to connect and utilize PCs on a LAN than the other "superior" systems.

Ubuntu 25.10 plans to swap GNU coreutils for Rust

Er, Ubuntu is an ancient African word, meaning "I can't configure Debian" Urban Dictionary.

Or, An African phrase meaning "humanity towards others"

Or, If possible, "Use Devuan"?

China's EV champ BYD reveals super-fast charging that leaves Tesla eating dust

An average, not an exception

A few guesstimates: In Australia, we think we all drive huge distances; we do, occasionally. The average is about 30-35km a day. A reasonably efficient EV with regeneration uses about 15 kWhr/100km (particularly for urban use) - so about 5 kWhr/day to top it up. A "granny charger" (a normal 10 A 220 Volt domestic socket) can generate 2.2 kWh an hour, or ~2.5 hrs to top up. I have 3.6kW solar panels on the roof which generate ~25 kWh in summer, and ~8 kWh in winter. I'm retired, so the car would be at home for much of the day, and would get charged "for free" (not quite as there is a "lost opportunity cost" averaging at about AU$0.01 to AU$0.26 per kWh (depending on the season). The average "fuel costs" for a day averaged over the year are therefore about AU$0.33 or about AU$120 a year ( ~£59). If I didn't have solar, the cost would be about double that. A similar size ICE vehicle (like a VW Golf) doing the same 12,000 km at an average consumption of ~6 litres/100km would need about 720 litres of PULP at ~AU$2.10/litre (today) or ~AU$1,500 (~£735, or at least 6 times as much).

Having said that, many of my neighbours drive huge ICE 4x4 SUVs; which at best get 10 litres/100km. Some need those vehicles (tradespeople etc.), but for many a challenging drive is to go to the supermarket <5km away.

Europe's largest council kept auditors in the dark on Oracle rollout fiasco for 10 months

Re: Having worked in a UK based software house

Yes, I probably could. It was shrink-wrap with published list prices and there was an ethical or reputational question?

Re: Having worked in a UK based software house

We sold a specialized management system to councils, heritage organisations, not-for-profits, and small government departments. A medium-sized council requested a tender. We offered "list price": A stand-alone single seat for <$1000, a 4 user network for <$2,500, and an unlimited version for <$7,500. We knew the officer wanted our system as it was "a standard" on >350 sites. Our nearest competitor (based in another country, with a local agent) had a system that started at probably ~$18,000, often requiring a custom install, adding at least another $5,000. The tendering department wanted $500,000 liability insurance for the network version, which would exceed the software's profit (or cost!). I told them that we weren't interested. The officer was upset and suggested including it in the quote, but found that their rules didn't allow it.

I occasionally saw the officer at conferences and learned they had bought the competitor, as they were the cheapest that had tendered. They paid about $45,000 for a 3 user system they didn't like (about 18 times as much as our system). Much of the extra was for building a data transfer model to upload data to our federal government, which was already standard in our software. I assume that the extra probably covered the liability :-)

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Raspberry Pi and iPad

I often connect a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W to my 13" M4 iPad Pro. The iPad is cellular, the Zero runs bookworm Lite 64bit. The iPad connection is over WiFi to the iPad hotspot with Termius or RaspController. They, with the GitHub app do most of what I need with Python etc. particularly when travelling with Magic Keyboard. The keyboard can charge the iPad, and at the same time the iPad can power the Zero.

Still can't get to your Outlook mailbox? You aren't alone

Re: Refunds available

Around Christmas, for about 3 months, I was regularly getting a request from MS to reset my iPhone Mail password. Apparently my Apple Mail clients are deemed to be "unsafe". The messages always had a link to the MS mail client, and Office 365 with a recommendation to "upgrade". Similar message from Mail on my iMac have turned up a couple of times in the last few days - Presumably related?

I have had the mail account since the 1990s, and only use it for less-critical stuff and a few individuals that use MS Mail. Fortunately it only takes a couple of second to reset with "Passwords". I'm debating pulling it as the annoyance level is approaching "I really can't be bothered anymore"; and "Is it worth emailing my MS contacts to tell them to use another of my accounts?".

So … Russia no longer a cyber threat to America?

Not original to me, a definition of evil is "treating people as things".

Microsoft blames Outlook's wobbly weekend on 'problematic code change'

Re: On the bright side...

Why not both?

Mega council officers had no idea what they were buying ahead of Oracle fiasco

Re: Formula 1 Scam

I found the use of the standard list combo/drop boxes on forms was often the cause of scalability problems. They would initially try and pull the entire table column across the network, 10 rows were fine, 1,000 rows were not. The simple fix was to change the initial row source to empty, and then start to populate it after the punter had typed in a couple of characters. A default to the equivalent of a LIKE 'xy%' clause was much faster than LIKE '%xy%'.

The locking problem may have been caused by using Data Access Objects (DAO) which normally used page locking, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) could use row-level locking. A work-around was to use ADO on the user's first opening of the database and then use DAO connections. Ironically the smaller the record, the more likely the problem as more were contained in the page.

The 10,000 component rows should have been easy. One of our customers had a system where a price list needed to be updated every year, the initial prototype system "only" had 70,000 rows in the table. It worked with a standard Access back-end on a wired LAN for 3 test users. The production system needed last year's, this year, and next year's data (200,000+ rows) and 8-15 concurrent users, all of whom were retrieving prices, and adding and updating rows in "customer", "order" and "line-item" tables. As I recall, the whole system initially took about 4 man-weeks to prototype, and a bit longer to put into production. It worked well with SQL Server. The back end HP Tower server hardware used the MS Small Business Server. The customer also ran Exchange, a fax and modem server, proxy-ISA, and a small IIS server on it, normally at <20% capacity.

Most network file systems do not support the ability to do simultaneous reads and writes to a file. Microsoft's solution for a shared database was a "phantom" locking file (.LDB) that was created, updated, and deleted appropriately. If everybody had logged out, and there was still an LDB file, you knew there was a problem. Any networking issue, like latency, or dropped packets caused problems, hence my comment about not using WiFi networks. The MDB file also had to be on a simple standard share, long folder names and filenames could also give those sort of problems (>200 chars).

My late father was the Treasurer of a local authority. He oversaw the successful installation and operation of one of the early Local Government computer systems in the mid-to-late 1960s. As well as being very bright he could run rings around almost anybody, if he thought it was the right thing to do (in the interest of the general public). I suspect that his skills were enhanced as he had been an aircrew squadron Navigation Officer, and later a Bombing Leader in WW2. Then, after flying considerably more than a tour of operations, he was tasked with helping coordinate RAF, Coastal Command, and USAAF missions; as apparently the "senior commanders" could not get on with one-another.

Re: Formula 1 Scam

Not much wrong with Access if used correctly. About 30+ years ago I wrote an Access based shrink-wrap product - My previous background included writing stuff with Oracle, Rdb, Informix, Sybase, and R:Rase - It was split into a front-end with the code, forms, and reports, and a back-end for the data. We shipped it with the Access Runtime Engine, and many people probably didn't know it was Access. It worked well for about 20 tables and a few tens of thousands of rows on a wired LAN with up to 5 concurrent users.

The initial development time on this was very fast, but required more RAM than was typically shipping on a low end PC. Costing it out, we showed our initial customers that we could ship a much cheaper product; even allowing for the hardware cost than our competitors, particularly as we were also selling a "package" were we would spec and install the LAN, etc. We used it on our later, different, products as you could show the punter what they were getting; and could quickly make changes based on the "prototypes". For larger systems we replaced the back end with MS SQL Server with stored procedures, transactions, optimised views etc. The SQL Server products were also OK on the early Wireless LANs, the Access back-end stuff was not. I'm long retired, but the company continues to sell descendants of the original products using the latest versions of Access and SQL Server.

uBlock Origin dead for many as Google purges Manifest v2 extensions

Re: uBlock Origin dead for many as Google purges Manifest v2 extensions

The DuckDuckGo browser with the Duck Player setting"Always open Youtube..." enabled works for me on a M3 iMac. If pasting from another browser you may need to remove everything at the end that starts with "?"

LLM aka Large Legal Mess: Judge wants lawyer fined $15K for using AI slop in filing

Re: when courts are run by LLMs

I think we all know how the follow-on case of Coyote v. Acme c. 1958 went.

DIMM techies weren’t allowed to leave the building until proven to not be pilferers

Re: Apocryphal?

In the 1973 oil crisis a colleague was fired (but not prosecuted) for fuelling his motorcycle with chemical grade pentane and toluene ordered through the stores. He might have been OK, but someone noticed that he was also buying isooctane (by definition 100 octane) which wasn't normally purchased by the site.

Open source maintainers are really feeling the squeeze

Re: Take a tip from a…

Yeah, it's just that the hair is no longer where I want it to be.

Techie cleaned up criminally bad tech support that was probably also an actual crime

More than light fingered

We used to buy a lot of genuine IBM XT and ATs. One day I was told that several XTs in a large office were not working. One was showing the well known message "Keyboard not found, Press F1 to continue" - No keyboard. Another wouldn't boot - No HDD. A few days later another room had a PC that didn't work - No motherboard. A few days later one had no screen and Hercules graphics card. About the only thing that didn't go missing was a case - Perhaps they already had one? I, too, had a "dodgy" co-worker, and wondered about him. A few months later similar things happened to several ATs, the co-worker was then working at a different site over 100 miles away. Perhaps he was innocent, and it was a cleaner, or security.

In the end we decided that whoever it was, took them out that way thinking the bits wouldn't be recognised. The irony was that if the whole device was taken, we probably wouldn't have noticed until an audit; as we moved equipment all of the time. I suspect that routinely moving a PC and its monitor by carrying it with the keyboard held down on the top of the monitor with my chin may have contributed to my knackered back.

Some workers already let AI do the thinking for them, Microsoft researchers find

Re: Is this a piece of your brain?

Yes, This. A long time ago, when I was checking and authorizing results, I invariably used mental arithmetic. A checkee said that he was impressed that I could quickly do that in my head. I disillusioned him by saying that I was just approximating - e.g. a calculation like 3.73 x 1000/40 is approximately (a bit less than) 4 divided by 4 multiplied by 100 or ~90. He said that isn't accurate - I said that all I was interested in was the reported number ~90 and not 9.3 or 930 or 0.15, particularly as the uncertainty on the "correct" number was probably >± 3.

Does DOGE have what it takes to actually tackle billions in US govt IT spending?

Re: Going after federal government tech spending ...

"never to be seen by the intended recipients" - After having been around this stuff for a long time, I'm pretty certain that it **is** seen by the very small group of the "right people" who actually are the intended recipients.