* Posts by Tim99

2001 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2008

Linux Mint 18.3: A breath of fresh air? Well, it's a step into the unGNOME

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Linux

systemd install?

That is all.

Open-source civil war: Olive branch offered in trademark spat... with live grenade attached

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Coat

Re: The most disturbing thing...

Feaces? Book, Time... more faces.

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Linux

I have donated money to Eben Moglen's lot

I would tend to side with them, although I am not sure that their more "reasonable" approach is always the best way of dealing with powerful organizations. The initial BusyBox disputes and the ongoing "freedom" offered by Google and Android may be a case in point. A Google groups forum thread indicates the potential depth of feeling.

The respective Wikipedia entries for Moglen; Kuhn; and Sandler make interesting reading.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the data centre temp's delightful

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Beyond code PEBCAK lies KMACYOYO, PENCIL and PAFO

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From Minicomputer days

ID 10T Error.

NAO probing Capita's sickly £700m GP support gig

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Facepalm

I'm assuming that everything is going to plan. Put in a crappy system at the core of a public organization, watch it cause total chaos, then use the resulting mess as a justification for further privatization?

Facebook: Who needs millennials? The cops love us more than ever!

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Big Brother

Eben Moglen - Quotes about Facebook

“Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record. He has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age... Everybody needs to get laid... He turned it into a structure for degenerating the integrity of human personality, and he has to a remarkable extent succeeded with a very poor deal. Namely, ‘I will give you free Web hosting and some PHP doodads, and you get spying for free all the time.'”

Facebook, Google and Government Surveillance: YouTube Link.

Murdoch's Fox empire is set to become a literal Mickey Mouse outfit

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Re: A very rich mouse

"Probably hoping to do a deal to buy immortality... with whoever can supply it...

I thought that after living a very long and evil life serving the dark side, he was killed?

Oh, sorry, I got confused, that was the Palpatine Emperor; an easy mistake to make.

nbn™tries to ease peak hour crunch with cheaper bundles

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Re: 12 Mbps for $22 per month.?

For most normal punters there is a significant access connection charge too. We live in a retirement village where we currently have about 150 units connected that share the same nbn fibre connection to our central comms room. We each pay $33/month for 100/40Mbps with unlimited downloads. As we all share the same wholesale CVC our measured performance can vary during the day. The busy times are ~5:00-9:00pm when we all seem to be on our smart TVs. The worst that I have seen has been about 28Mbps up and down, currently (8:15pm) Speedtest shows 53/33Mbps.

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

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Re: Never again!

You should have used the traditional leather Wellington boot.

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Re: Traditional

Turkey may be more traditional than you think. They and brussels were around in England in the C16th.Turkeys were bred in England from birds that had been sent to Europe from Mexico by the Spanish. The pilgrim fathers may have eaten turkeys from Norfolk: More on turkeys.

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Re: Yorkshire puddings

My Yorkshire rellies have it with gravy and onion sauce before the meat and veggie course, and for afters with jam or golden syrup. Possibly because it helped fill you up before the expensive meat course, and if you were still hungry afterwards.

Oregon will let engineer refer to himself as an 'engineer'

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Coat

Apocryphal college graffiti found in men's lavatory

Yesterday I couldn't spell "Engineer", now I are one.

Disk drive fired 'Frisbees of death' across data centre after storage admin crossed his wires

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Musical Data General

In the 1980s I ran a DG Nova with a 5+5 removable Phoenix drive attached to a very large, expensive, scientific instrument. I got funding to replace the drive with a Winchester. The new drive was mounted in a 19" rack enclosure contained in one side of a of a knee-hole desk unit that housed the CPU etc on the other side. The drive could be slid out on rails for servicing and we all admired the platter and drive head beneath its transparent top cover. The read-write head had an electromagnet "voice coil (So called because it made a pleasant melodious sound when it operated?). The head had an aerofoil cross-section and "flew" just above the surface of the rotating disk.

I found out the reason why a common failure of a hard disk was called a "crash": I was listening to the musical hum as I ran an experiment when there was a faint bang followed by a loud scraping sound. When I turned the DG off and opened up the rack, the inside of the transparent plastic cover was coated with oxide and I could see a large spiral radial gouge mark on the platter. I called in the service engineer who told me that the repair/replacement cost was our problem as it was an "normal" event. I think the cost was about the same as my new car.

Would-be startup crew charged with stealing employer's tech

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The cycle of history

So China is now doing to the USA what the USA did to the European powers in the 19th century? Ignore foreign patents and "steal" technologies, initially to develop products for use in your large domestic market. After you overtake your competitors, then you need to protect your technology, so you become a fervent protector of "intellectual property"?

Australia to probe Web giants' impact on news, ads, competition

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Meh

Impact

"Australia's government has fulfilled a promise to probe Web giants' impact on the media, news and advertising businesses." How dare they not cater to the needs of the Murdoch empire and the LNP. They have worked hard to put the right people at the top of the ABC, and now they need to do something with these apparently powerful upstarts.

I am genuinely in two minds about this - Google and Facebook really need looking at, but the LNP's track record on regulation of the media and the internet suggests that whatever they come up with will be worse than the current situation.

Stop us if you've heard this one: Russian hacker thrown in US slammer for $59m bank fraud

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Re: Crime pays

Until you steal from the rich.

Jingle bells, IBM tells more staff it is D-day ♫

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Facepalm

Insanity?

Repeating the same thing and expecting a different result? Declining revenues over 22 quarters, reducing the local headcount, and revenues have not increased. Amazingly, cutting costs by offering a service that customers might consider suboptimal have not turned things around.

Wait, did Oracle tip off world to Google's creepy always-on location tracking in Android?

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Big Brother

They would

"Google claims the collection is part of an experiment to optimize the routing of messages through mobile networks."

Mandy Rice-Davies applies...

Royal Bank of Scotland website goes TITSUP*

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"New Technology"

Because I am old, I remember what banking was like before it was improved. Bankers called it It "The three threes" - Borrow money at 3%, lend it at 3% more, and be on the golf course after 3 o'clock.

We were told that ATMs would make everything more convenient, faster, more efficient and cheaper; and our charges would come down. They lied.

We were then told that going on-line would make everything more convenient, faster, more efficient and cheaper; and our charges would come down. They lied.

Originally banking required lots of staff, paper, ledgers and competence - It worked. Then it required a few less staff, who knew how to use 3270 terminals - It still worked pretty reliably.

Now that everything is electronic, and IT is the core of the banking business, how come that all of them are unreliable and incompetent? Oh, that's right they are friends of whomsoever is in government, and are "Too big to fail".

Now Oracle stiffs its own sales reps to pocket their overtime, allegedly

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Coat

Re: Did Larry Need a New Yatch?

One Rich Arsehole Called Larry Ellison - Allegedly.

Thousand-dollar iPhone X's Face ID wrecked by '$150 3D-printed mask'

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Gimp

Security

Passcode: Obligatory xkcd link.

How do you like them Apples? Farewell sensible sized phones, forever

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Re: As predicted (again)

@Dave 126

I should have mentioned that where I live, sandals, a polo shirt (without pockets), and shorts are normal attire. Sitting down with a large phone in the pocket of my shorts is not something I want to do.

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Re: As predicted (again)

As an "older user" with presbyopia, I am now finding my 6 too small. A phone big enough to see is probably the 8 Plus, but then I can't fit it in my pocket. The X might do, but £1,000 for a phone? I am debating an SE and trying not to use it to look at websites. The keyboard will be too small for older fingers, and speaking softly to Siri does not seem to work too well either.

Maybe get a better case for my iPad and use that with a VOIP and mobile client? Anybody know anything better than Skype that might do?

System Center's first semi-annual release debuts

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Windows

Please

Don't try any of this unless you're signed up for Software Assurance it is with test/redundant stuff! ®

IBM's next turnaround tool is ... a new open-source font?

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Pint

@Michael H.F. Wilkinson

"if you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should be."

Have an upvote, and a beer >>===============>

Those IT gadget freebies you picked up this year? They make AWFUL Christmas presents

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Re: Evil green liquid

On the LP introduction according to Flanders, Swann thought the song was about cake, and so it was...

SCO vs. IBM case over who owns Linux comes back to life. Again

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Big Brother

Will Groklaw come back to life as well?

I believe that PJ stopped active contributor involvement when she learn (through the owner of Lavabit) about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court/FBI/NSA/DOJ/TLA letters giving the government unlimited authority to obtain data, and making it illegal to disclose the existence of the letter: Groklaw forced exposure link.

First iPhone X fondlers struggle to admit that Face ID sort of sucks

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Gimp

10"- 20"

I'm a pensioner with sub-standard eyesight, and an iPhone 6. I just held my phone at the distance from my face that I use for Touch ID and then to read the phone; the first distance is roughly 25" and the second is about 15". I can't read the screen in bright sunlight, and feel like a prat using Siri outside, so Facial ID would probably work OK for me. The main problem that I can see is that I am unlikely to spend £1,000 on the new phone when I would expect my 6 to last another 2 years.

According to Apple, Face ID is designed not to work unless the phone is roughly in front of you and your eyes are open, so if you are nicked, try to keep your eyes closed if the officer starts waving it in front of you.

Google lets Android devs see nanosecond-level GNSS data

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Big Brother

Google

So does this allow Google to determine the location of your phone accurately enough to determine which part of a shop window you have paused in front of, and then try to sell you stuff based on what you might have been looking at?

Robot takes the job of sitting on your arse

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Stop

We're calling it Seat-3-P-O

Please don't...

Licensing rejig and standard price rises set for Windows Server 2016

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F-35s grounded by spares shortage

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Re: Let's make planes that can't fly......

The problem is that their primary purpose is not as a weapon system. Their purpose is to take large amounts of tax payers money and make certain that most of it is directed to a very small number of the right people. In the UK the right people are not only British but American/Multinational.

After the apparent fall of the "Soviet Empire", it was necessary to quickly find a suitable enemy to keep the spending going - The "War on Terror" is ideal because it has no easily definable enemy, no clearly stated definition of "winning", no timescale, and mostly happens a long way away from the people who actually pay for it. Perhaps we will get back to business as normal with Russia and China (and North Korea?). Projects like the F-35, nuclear powered submarines, large aircraft carriers, etc., are ideal ways to soak up taxpayers money.

Older readers may recall a vaguely similar, but smaller, cancelled project the BAC TSR-2. It was rumoured that the mean time to failure for the aircraft was shorter than the time it took to get to V1 takeoff speed down the runway...

Why are we disappointed with the best streaming media box on the market?

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Content

It seems unlikely that the existing content oligarchs would allow a single aggregator to offer a universal service without a disruptive change in the market. Apple nearly managed it with music (£10/month for 40 million songs) - Could someone do something similar for TV and Movies without intrusive advertising?

Australia Bureau of Statistics may wind back internet usage data collection

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"The very best thing about this news is that evidence-based policy is now officially a thing of the past."

Evidence-based policy is certainly a thing of the present: "Here is my policy, now find evidence to support it - If you find evidence that does not support my policy, do not report it."

Apple Cook's half-baked defense of the Mac Mini: This kit ain't a leftover

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Gimp

Servers

The old style mini had a built in CD/DVD and made a brilliant, nearly silent media player. The $20 server add-on was/is an opportunity to install a workgroup/small business server that has a similar function to the old Microsoft Small Business Server line. The Server's Profile Manager is a useful tool to manage iOS devices - Joshua Jung (Medium Link) has a tutorial, and MacStadium (now merged with Macminicolo) host minis and may be worth a look.

Microsoft Azure ████ secret ██ █████ ██ US govt's ███ ███ centers

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Re: Septic

Esteemed Poster» As a septic...

Sceptic [1] maybe?

[1] or skeptic if you are of the Leftpondian persuasion.

Septic Tank - Yank. In Oz a Seppo.

uBlock Origin ad-blocker knocked for blocking hack attack squawking

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Joke

Trust Google?

So Mr Helme likes Google Analytics for this. Can I suggest a compromise that he could suggest to uBlock - Allow anything that goes to his own domain (and possibly Mozilla) and block Google and everything else?

'Open sesame'... Subaru key fobs vulnerable, says engineer

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Re: This won't be addressed

"Subaru are nice cars, but hardly on the hotlist of most stolen cars

"Jack the Lad" likes older Impreza WRX/STI to joyride with his mates.

Drone smacks commercial passenger plane in Canada

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Re: Pedants handbook in my pocket

@Hans 1

Pedant again - As usual, the 'truth' can appear ambiguous. The TURBOProp is a "jet powered" propeller (Mostly 80-95% of thrust from the propeller, with the remainder from the jet exhaust). Early Turbofans generally had perhaps <20% of thrust from the "fan" the rest came from the "jet" - For many modern commercial engines the thrust from the fan is ~90% (or at a similar level to a turboprop). A single fan can be considered to be a multi-bladed ducted propeller - Efficient modern engines use 2 or 3 fan stages. High speed turbojets ("jet engines") typically generate most/all of their thrust from the "jet"; but may be designed to vary the amount of thrust between the turbojet and a bypass turbofan, particularly at lower speed. The term "ducted propeller" is often used for marine thrusters and engines, and "ducted fan" tends to be used for aircraft. The reason that turboprops appear very different is that you can see a large stationary propeller; and that if the blades are rotating, pedestrians need to avoid walking into them :-) Wikipedia Link: Aircraft fans.

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Coat

Pedants handbook in my pocket

"a plane operated by Skyjet Aviation, a charter outfit that despite its name operates only turboprop aircraft".

I don't know if any domestic airlines use jet aircraft. Turbofans power most medium/long range passenger aircraft, turboprops are often used for smaller short/medium range aircraft. Turbojets are normally for faster military aircraft, I think the last passenger aircraft to use turbojet engines was Concorde.

Screw the badgers! Irish High Court dismisses Apple bit barn appeals

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Badgers

OK, there are no snakes in Ireland, but will any endangered mushrooms be affected? Badger badger badger badger.

Oracle’s automated database is a minimum viable release - analyst

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Coat

Ex Oracle developer

I worked with the Oracle platform from V5. A question from back then:- What do you call Oracle customers? A: Hostages.

It's 4PM on Friday, almost time to log off and, oh look, Disqus says it's been hacked

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N/A

Haven't seen anything of theirs for years, thanks to Ad-Blockers.

Mozilla extends, and ends, Firefox support for Windows XP and Vista

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Windows

Shrinkwrap

Are you sure it can't spread contagion by proximity? >>=========>

Hollywood has savaged enough sci-fi classics – let's hope Dick would dig Blade Runner 2049

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Coat

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."

What about the "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion."