Posts by Tim99

Google gives mobile operators a reason to love it, and opens rich chat up for business

I told you so...

I began to suspect that Google were going to be evil when "Don't be evil" came out in ~2,000. I knew that the probability was much higher with their IPO in 2004 - But this, really? >>=========>

IT peeps, be warned: You'll soon be a museum exhibit

Re: What job will last forever

Fluffer: Apparently, not since Viagra.

Farewell, Android Pay. We hardly tapped you

Barclays have their own Android payment app. Bloody minded bastards. My Barclays VISA debit card is loaded into my iPhone wallet (ducks). No, that is not an endorsement of them - Generally they are bloody minded bastards.

A print button? Mmkay. Let's explore WHY you need me to add that

Re: And despite all this users telemetry...

What is this "Acrobat" of which you write? A spawn of Satan?

Mueller bombshell: 13 Russian 'troll factory' staffers charged with allegedly meddling in US presidential election

Re: I'm Confused Still

Years ago I heard a commentator say "Half of Americans vole Republican, half vote Democrat, and half don't vote". This seems to be nearly "true".

In democracies with two main parties the outcome of elections tends to be determined by a few people who can be swayed. This is why politicians target them with electoral sweeteners like tax breaks, funding for local projects and unrealistic "promises".

A computer file system shouldn't lose data, right? Tell that to Apple

Re: Cutting back on features? Not exactly.

MacOs is a certified Unix: Wikipedia. I've been around *NIX stuff since the 70s, and a fair bit of what I have used since then works in their bash CLI: ss64.com link.

Re: Photo

See the happy married couple - She looks happy, he looks married?

The one with the 45th anniversary gift for my wife in the pocket. >>==>

BOFH: Turn your server rack hotspot to a server rack notspot

Silent treatment

Our rep from a Huge Peripherals and Equipment supplier liked doing final closures on the phone (That's the bit where they pile on the very expensive extra stuff onto a basic proposal that you had already discussed with them in previous meetings, and send you a "final contract" to approve). His technique was to go silent on a sticking point - The theory was that you (the punter) would fill the silence by agreeing the extras. It took me a couple of calls before I realised what he was doing, so I started doing the silent treatment back to him. My best call was after about 30 seconds of silence when his nerve cracked and I heard "Hello, Hello!, HELLO!!". I apologized and said. "Sorry, I had to cover the mouthpiece - My colleague wondered if I could take an urgent call on the other line from Some Unbelievably Nice supplier, as he thought I was on hold". After that his phone calls were just to arrange meetings, or "courtesy calls" to check that the kit had been delivered and installed.

Roses are red, Windows error screens are blue. It's 2018, and an email can still pwn you

Re: "...a total of 50 CVE-listed vulnerabilities..."

Mighty magnet? Many of the needles have been in the haystack for years and are still like new, so they are probably made from Austenitic steel (non magnetic).

Microsoft working to scale Blockchain for grand distributed ID scheme

Microsoft

...personal privacy, security and control. What could possibly go wrong?

Oracle: We've stuffed automation in 'pretty much' all our services

I read the headline differently

Oracle: We've stuffed the automation in 'pretty much' all our services...

Disclaimer: I started bearing scars from Oracle with V5.

MPs: Lack of technical skills for Brexit could create 'damaging, unmanageable muddle'

Re: But it will be worth it

We're British, so Black Shorts (Saviours of Britain) surely.

Ghost in the DCL shell: OpenVMS, touted as ultra reliable, had a local root hole for 30 years

Re: Wasn't VMS...

Of course this explains Windows problems, etc...

One of the stories that I heard was that the original NT prototype from Dave (VMS) Cutler was designed to be reliable and allegedly "more secure" than VMS, but BIll told him to strip some of the reliable and secure stuff out so it would run adequately on lower-end kit (as a lot of it was written in C instead of assembler for portability between Intel and Alpha chips).

Back in the day

The word around was that we should stick with VMS instead of BSD (particularly) from those with a PDP background. We certainly thought a MicroVAX was a nice piece of kit back in the 1980s.

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

When I travelled on Concorde it reallly did not feel cramped and uncomfortable. There was no headroom when standing (I'm 5'8") but lots of legroom, and you were only on the aircraft for ~3.5hrs.

‘I crashed a rack full of servers with my butt’

Just finger trouble

I was doing some development on a test server and had not saved my work. An associated program would only run if "Turbo Mode" was turned off (this dropped the CPU clock rate down to match an original 8088 chip). Some tower PCs had the turbo button next to their push-button power switch. I pressed the turbo button to start the other program, but hit the power button by mistake, immediately experiencing the well known "How stupid am I?" feeling. I managed to keep the button in, so the power stayed on. Unfortunately, I had used my dominant right hand when I had bent down to touch the switch. Unable to see they keyboard, I managed to find the keys I needed to save my work, and then type in the shutdown command. Then I drank coffee and taped a cardboard flap over the power switch to stop the stupid person doing it again.

Edit: That is one reason why I really liked the large red power switch at the back of original IBM PCs, it was almost impossible to turn it off by mistake.

No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

Re: What's a

Bombasic Bob?

An even more unstable than usual UI assistant to VisualBasic 4?

Red Hat tries CoreOS on for size – and buys

Trevor

I can only upvote you once. Have one of these too >>=====>

Ubuntu reverting to Xorg in Bionic Beaver

Yes

But they're keeping systemd? - Mine's got K&R in the pocket >>===>

Sysadmin crashed computer recording data from active space probe

Re: Hmmm ...

You could just about moor a boat with Token Ring cable. We had a small temporary working TR network in our lab that had cabling taped around the walls, back of desks etc. Our company telecoms engineers came in one weekend to "make a proper job" of the cabling by running it in the wall panels and connecting it to wall pattresses. We came in on Monday and admired the new pattresses etc., then we connected the server to the IBM PS2 clients on the ring and nothing worked. We fiddled about for a bit before taking a wall panel off and found that our new network was cabled with standard POTS twisted-pair wire. When we called the installer in, he explained that the IBM TR cabling was "just twisted-pair" and that the POTS wire was the same, so they had used that because the IBM stuff didn't bend around corners easily and needed large holes drilling through the walls. After taping everything back like before, the engineers came back a few weeks later and wired it properly. Less than a year later it was all ripped out and replaced by a new building-wide system using 10-5 and 10-2 Ethernet.

Apple whispers farewell to macOS Server

I can see why they are saying goodbye

The product was actually a lot more capable than people gave it credit for, in the right environment - i.e. to deploy iOS or manage a small business. For places that had Macs, it filled a gap left in the market by products like Microsoft's original Small Business Server which could be managed by someone in the business; or by small/medium business outside contractors and software developers (including my company). Microsoft gutted SBS (partly because of pressure from the larger contractors) when they decided that everything, that they could force, was going into Microsoft's cloud to give them a reliable income stream.

I guess that Apple looked at the revenue and decided that it was not worth continuing with the amount of resources that it needed. A fair bit of the "server" can be replaced by a NAS, but the integration of Mail, Calendar, website, etc for up to 50 users was more than feasable on a Mac mini (until they cut the number of cores down to 2).

Maverick internet cop Chrome 64 breaks rules to thwart malvert scum

This El Reg page.

I have been using DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials (and their search engine as a default) and find it works well for me. This article shows an "Enhanced B" Privacy Grade and the following trackers:-

Google: googletagservices.com; google-analytics.com - Analytics: Twitter - platform.twitter.com - Microsoft: atdmt.com - Tracker network unknown: s.dpmsrv.com (Whois shows this as VeriSign Global Registry Services)

This Comments page only shows googletagservices.com; google-analytics.com; and s.dpmsrv.com

Looking at the Extension in Safari, it is described as: "DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials" can red, modify and transmit content from all webpages. This could include sensitive information like passwords, phone numbers, and credit cards.

What, me paranoid? Certainly not! Even if I am, it does not mean that they are not after me. I always ensure that I am not logged in to any Google product (and check that I am not); funnily enough I see no targeted website and email advertising and only a very small amount of random crap. A couple of small simple text ads on a page is OK; and, If I find that I get value from a site, I do actually try and pay them...

Larry's steely grip on Oracle led to 'conflicts of interest' in NetSuite buy-out, court told

Re: Shock and horror!

One Real Arsehole Called Larry Ellison... Allegedly.

Biker nerfed by robo Chevy in San Francisco now lobs sueball at GM

It is only USA which has the grand idiocy of everyone driving in any lane at any speed they please and overtaking on both sides. You can do this in Western Australia. I was "surprised" the first time it happened to me as I was used to checking the offside lane for overtaking traffic...

NASA is sniffing jet fuel over Germany

Re: The real reason for biofuels.

Mine's the one with the tinfoil hat in the pocket. You do know that it should be on your head at all times, because they can get you when you take it off? Unless the one in your pocket is a spare, just in case someone takes the one you are wearing? You can't be too careful!

Re: call me crazy, but...

Yes, but on the ground you don't get to do cool experiments in an aeroplane (and the products of combustion and particle sizes will probably be different).

It's 2018 and your Macs, iPhones can be pwned by playing evil music

Re: "....HomePod, a $349 smart speaker...."

So the Google Home fandroids got their kit for free?

Microsoft gives backup software vendors 30 days of pain

Of course

It also gives "them" longer to slurp your data after it was deleted...

'The capacitors exploded, showering the lab in flaming confetti'

MOSFETs

In the 1980s I was in charge of an expensive instrument that had a DAC controlling a large electromagnet. It cycled from a high current to a low current every second or so. The controller had very large MOSFET power transistors switching about 40A Occasionally when the power wobbled the circuit would become unstable and the MOSFETs would explode. The sound was similar to a large calibre revolver report. As that happened every few weeks, until we sorted out the mains supply, that may be one reason why in old age my hearing is crap.

All aboard the Vomit Comet: Not the last train to Essex, but a modded 727 for weightless flight

Purely academic research

Kate Upton YouTube Link.

IBM kills Global Technology and Global Business Services: It's all ‘IBM Services’ now

Who writes this crap? A sociopath of average intelligence and ability who was fortunate to develop from the right gametes, and attended the right schools and university?

Remember those holy tech wars we used to have? Heh, good times

Re: S**t!

My wife tells me that I'm deeply cynical because it saves time. She may not be correct, it is probably because I am old - I can give an organization or person the benefit of the doubt (once, only).

PowerShell comes to MacOS and Linux. Oh and Windows too

PowerShell?

If God had meant us to use PowerShell, He'd never have given us bash (Apologies to Flanders and Swann) - Having used both, I think I will continue to use a *NIX shell, thank you.

What do we want? Consensual fun times. How do we get it? Via an app with blockchain...

Re: What kind of sick f**k

Doesn't want tea? - Do you put the milk in before or after? Potential relationships have foundered on less.

Apple, quit milking tech-addicted fruit of our loins – shareholders

Definitely not perfect, but has basic parental controls

"Use parental controls on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch": Apple link.

Parliamentary 'puters made 30k tries to procure pr0nz last year

It doesn't surprise me that they are looking at people f*cking it's what they do best.

I think you might have meant "...looking at f*cking up, it's what they do best"...

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

Dual boot iMAc

I'm retired and have a 2011 iMac, it can run Linux distros.

If you want to try some out without making any changes to your iMac, burn a live ISO CD of the distributions that you want to try (Download the Linux ISO file that you want to try and use the Mac Disk Utility app to create a bootable CD). Restart the iMac and hold down the [C] key with the CD in the drive, the iMac will boot to the CD.

An very inexpensive Linux computer is the Raspberry Pi. The latest Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is ~£30, you will need a keyboard and mouse (your iMac ones will do) and a screen with an HDMI port (a cheap TV?). The performance is not as good as your iMac, but is reasonable. If you want to try it out as a bootable CD the download link is here.

It is possible to set up a dual boot system. I have used a number of Ubuntu based distributions which seem to be OK.

systemd install?

That is all.

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

Re: The most disturbing thing...

Feaces? Book, Time... more faces.

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

@Terry 6

New Brutalism: Hunstanton Secondary Modern School.

Beyond code PEBCAK lies KMACYOYO, PENCIL and PAFO

From Minicomputer days

ID 10T Error.

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

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!

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

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

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?

Re: Never again!

You should have used the traditional leather Wellington boot.

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.

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'

Apocryphal college graffiti found in men's lavatory

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