* Posts by Tim99

2003 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2008

Microsoft drops early Chrissie pressie on Mac Office fanbois

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

Sorry, too little, too late

I never bothered to upgrade from the previous version. I'm retired and really don't need it.

On the Mac, TextEdit, Pages, vim, and nano do most of what I want. I am also sad enough to type: echo Put text in a file by echoing from the CLI. >>somefile.txt

If I need a higher fidelity copy of a Microsoft file, starting up the free MS Word or Excel viewers in a Windows VM in Parallels then printing the file through a PDF printer does it for me.

The free iPad versions of Excel, Powerpoint, and Word are also handy...

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Masala omelette

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Don't forget

For emergencies, keep a roll of lavatory paper in the fridge.

You'll be sweating so much, you won't need a coat >>=========>

Coming clean: Ten cordless vacuum cleaners

Tim99 Silver badge

Dyson stick

We have the new model Dyson stick without the animal head (no pets). We both have back trouble and I have a duff neck caused by a RTA. The old cylinder cleaner was too heavy and its wheels kept getting stuck in the deep-pile carpet, causing it to fall over. We replaced it with the Dyson and are very pleased with it.

I can clean our 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, small office, hall and living/dining/kitchen unit with a single charge. Not having a cable to trip over is a real bonus. The docking station is screwed to a wall in the garage, and is easy to use provided you remember to lift the cleaner slightly before pushing it into place.

Google Contributor: Ad-block killer – or proof NO ONE will pay for news?

Tim99 Silver badge
Big Brother

Insufferable Smug Git Mode

I use DuckDuckGo.

On the occasions that I use Google (DuckDuckGo is not perfect) Google has to fight through a private mode browser, AdBlock, Privoxy, Ghostery, and a hosts file on a connection with a dynamic address.

So, to them, I would appear to be a paranoid tight-arse who doesn't buy anything - Well the paranoid bit may be right...

Azure TITSUP caused by INFINITE LOOP

Tim99 Silver badge
Headmaster

Where is the P?

"The TITSUP (Total Inability To Support Usual Service)" - TITSup what?

TITSUP - Total Inability To Support Usual Service Processes/Procedures/Practice?

VINYL is BACK and you can thank Sonos for that

Tim99 Silver badge

Wot - No LP12?

My wife bought us a Linn LP12 in 1974. It became a bit of a Trigger's broom, but still had the original base, bearings, lid, suspension, and top plate until I had to sell it a few years ago after a motor accident. It is still going strong with its new owner.

There real bugger was having to buy the Naim 250, speakers, radio, etc., to go with it...

Consumers start feeling the love as Chromebook sales surge

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Samsung

@Big_D

My iPad Air takes just under 20 seconds to boot from off, or less than a second from Sleep...

Sign off my IT project or I’ll PHONE your MUM

Tim99 Silver badge

Nomenclature

Do you remember the prediction in the late-1970s that by the turn of the century we will have entered a push-button age? Apparently, computers and robots would take over all our hard work and society would be struggling to deal with all the leisure time with which we’d be left to endure.

Leisure time? I don’t think so. Even by Tomorrow’s World standards, this prediction turned out to be a real turkey.

Alistair, I was helping this stuff happen back then. We just used the wrong words like "leisure time". The correct ones were "necessary structural unemployment", or "labour is too expensive, even when it comes from low-cost countries". The exception is for people with the required skills who we will work even harder.

Have you noticed that C18th capitalism is making a return? The idea seems to be that businesses should have fungibility of their workforces - If they can't be automated.

FYI: OS X Yosemite's Spotlight tells Apple EVERYTHING you're looking for

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

Is it faster?

My iMac was getting slow. I am an old fart with the attention span of a gnat, so I often have 5 Safari windows open (each with about 10-15 tabs); 4 Firefox windows; iTunes, Mail with 3,500 messages in the Inbox; and Terminal with 4 tabs etc... A week ago I upgraded the 4GB of RAM it had to 8GB. No surprise, everything worked better: 5+GB App memory; 1.4GB File cache; No Swap used, no Compressed memory.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was, if anything, even faster under Yosemite than Mavericks.

Unfortunately the colour scheme does look as though it was designed in 1996 by a web-site designer who had just transitioned from writing DOS applications to an EGA screen.

Apple SILENCES Bose, YANKS headphones from stores

Tim99 Silver badge

Buy Other Sound Equipment

My wife has a pair a small Bose speakers running off the headphone socket of a 21inch TEAC TV, and they are OK - There is too much, badly controlled, bass; but if you turn the TV's bass down it is OK. We got them because, although the 1920x1080 screen gave a great picture, the TV's internal speakers sound similar to what you hear from a teenager's earphones when they have them inserted in their ears and turned up to full volume.

Happiness economics is bollocks. Oh, UK.gov just adopted it? Er ...

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: And it only remains...

@Gert Leboski

Single oar sculling? Wikipedia Link

Marriott fined $600k for deliberate JAMMING of guests' Wi-Fi hotspots

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: There be dragons here

Not necessarily. The post didn't say $13bn of market cap, it said $13bn of annual turnover.

Yes, I saw that. I have run busnesses and, frankly, $500m on a turnover of $13bn suggests that they are in a difficult market (or they are incompetent, or the executives might be taking more than a shareholder would like). Microsoft used to make a profit of >$0.80 on each $1.00 of turnover, Apple recently declared $7.7bn on a turnover of $37.4bn. One of the Australian banks I referred to reported a profit of $7.67bn on revenues of $44.87bn...

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: There be dragons here

That is a pretty pitiful rate of return for a shareholder, so maybe that is why they are acting like scum.

I can get a similar rate from one of the big Australian banks for a simple 3-4 year term deposit!

Welcome the world's new Most Phished Country: Australia

Tim99 Silver badge

Or not?

The most gullible and trusting nation in the world perhaps?

Or, perhaps, the country in the highest 5 ranking of GDP per capita with the highest population?

Google+ GOING, GOING ... ? Newbie Gmailers no longer forced into mandatory ID slurp

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Yet again

... An enormous number of people over the age of 35 will have no use for anything except email. They will have no interest in YouTube and telling them about Drive is pointless. Few people have use for it. ...

I'm retired, but volunteer to teach computing to retirees. Many of our pupils do use e-mail, but almost all of them like and use YouTube. Mostly they had heard of YouTube but (Perhaps because their children and grandchildren think that YouTube is not for old people), we have to demonstrate that you can get real music (from the 1950s-1980s) on it for free. Other YouTube resources that are appreciated include demonstrations of DIY, knitting, handcrafts, etc.

Not so much interest in G+ news and discussions though.

Hot Celebrity? Stash of SELFIES where you're wearing sweet FA? Get 2FA. Now

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: guessed password-recovery questions

@Tom 35

If there is no Apple weakness why is it that as far as I've read it's all Apple users that have been hit?

Because this collection of material seems to include selfies that show Android and Blackberry devices too?

It appears that the material has been leaked from a privately traded collection obtained by a number of different people over a period of several years, that mainly includes Apple stuff. As an observation, as many celebrities have iPhones, that is where more of the material is likely to originate?

A modern version of the "private" 8mm movie and Polaroid film pictures that would only become publicly available if you were burgled, or one of the participants leaked it. Technology can change quickly, human psychology not so much...

Britain's housing crisis: What are we going to do about it?

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Economists solving the problems the last one caused

@Alan Brown

The hypocrisy about "saving our village" (most of which is 1930s era housing) lumbers on and on and on - and the most fundamental objection raised to allowing new housing is that "it lowers property values"

My late father was a (very) senior local government officer. He said that the most strident NIMBYs were always the most recent people to move into a village. He thought that their attitude was "I have moved here, now nobody else should be able to, and nothing must change". The people wanted new housing and new employment opportunities were almost always those who were born there.

The people who did not want a new by-pass around villages were almost exclusively those who did not live there (or did not want it going past their very large attractive 100+ year old properties, on the outskirts, near the new road).

China hopes home-grown OS will oust Microsoft

Tim99 Silver badge
Linux

Red Flag...

...Linux again? Wikipedia Link.

BOFH: We CAN do that with a Raspberry Pi, but think of the BODIES

Tim99 Silver badge
Pint

Brilliant

The first two items to show up on the Weekend edition were Simon and coffee making. Have a free beer >>======>

Please try to avoid stuff that could be construed as work at the weekend.

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

Tim99 Silver badge
Happy

Aeropress with milk

As you say the Aeropress no crema thing can be a bit of a disappointment for espresso fans, although our local supplier will do a special Aeropress grind which can give a small amount of foam.

For the milky coffee drinker you can get a reasonable facsimile of proper foam by putting some skimmed milk in the microwave for a minute or so and then beating it with a small hand whisk (Remember to leave the milk for a few seconds before you take it out of the microwave to avoid boiling milk "bumping" all over you).

I am fortunate to live in one of the world's best coffee making areas, Western Australia - So if I really need crema, and I can afford $5, I go to one of the many excellent coffee places by the beach, otherwise I now use an Aeropress almost exclusively at home. The less fortunate thing about living here is than most people can't make a decent cup of tea...

Trundle, trundle, FLEEEP: iPhone 6 production grinds to halt

Tim99 Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Stock market?

This information has been available since June, and the problem was apparently sorted over a month ago. The stock is at its highest price ever. People who had a short stock position need the stock to be lower by the Friday NASDAQ close of business.

A coincidence?

Ancient pager tech SMS: It works, it's fab, but wow, get a load of that incoming SPAM

Tim99 Silver badge

@John Tserkezis

I believe the actual cost to the telco is <0.005 , so no price gauging there then...

Stalwart hatchback gets a plug-in: Volkswagen e-Golf

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: No spare wheel?

Apparently, you are more than twice as likely to be stranded with a flat battery than a puncture. Not many of us carry a spare vehicle battery.

Help Australia's PM and attorney-general to define metadata

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Metadata IS data

@Denarius

I think the quote you wanted was from Lord Acton, not Lord Melbourne. It was written because of his concerns about the doctrine of Papal infallibility in Vatican 1, but also refers to temporal politics.

A longer quotation from the letter is: ...Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it...

Evidence during FOI disputes can be provided in SECRET

Tim99 Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Nothing to hide, nothing to fear...

..., licence (UK).

iPad? More like iFAD: We reveal why Apple fell into IBM's arms

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Do Apple know...........?

@AC

Or, for employees, International Broken Marriages

Or "I'm Being Moved"

Big Blue Apple: IBM to sell iPads, iPhones to enterprises

Tim99 Silver badge
Unhappy

@sinfocomar

IBM... hasn't gotten anything right in the enterprise least of all software.

Well you might not have heard of z/OS which is only used for trivial stuff like paying salaries, running Fortune 50 companies and banking - But obviously nothing that is really important to an enterprise...

You 'posted' a 'letter' with Outlook... No, NO, that's the MONITOR

Tim99 Silver badge
Pint

Re: @auburnman

Sorry VinceH, the autocorrect on the iPad I was using is a bit over enthusiastic.

Have a beer and an up-vote as a poor consolation.

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

@auburnman

...also James and Vincent.

I am retired now and volunteer to help teach older people computing. A truth, that we might not want to acknowledge, is that it takes less than half the time to teach a pupil to use an iPad compared to an Android tablet. The Samsung may be the techie person's favorite, but it seems to be even harder to teach than most of the other Android devices we have seen. Perhaps the mixture of vanilla Android, Google's apps and Samsung's own stuff causes our pupils the most confusion - Having an apparently different e-mail program appearing, when you are not expecting it seems to be a particular problem.

We have a policy of trying to have the device looking similar to how it was delivered, so that if one of us drops dead, the pupil can at least go to somebody else who can take over.

Experience has shown that one-on-one lessons can get somebody started within a couple of hours, and they can usually look after themselves after about 3 sessions. The main things that people want to know are "The Internet" (usually they mean Google), e-mail, "photographs", YouTube, and books.

We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Sorry, 'audiophiles', only IT will break the sound barrier

Tim99 Silver badge

Is it Enjoyable?

I thought that audiophile kit had two main purposes.

The first, as already mentioned, is to impress other audiophiles. This is not new. Listen to a "Song of Reproduction", Flanders and Swann, 1957 - YouTube Link.

The other is to sound enjoyable, or at least impressive, to the audiophile (almost always male) and his friends. When I was younger, and green in judgement, I bought a pair of Koss Electrostatic headphones to go with my Linn LP12/Naim 250 system. They sounded very accurate, had great specifications, and certainly looked the part, but did not give any feeling of engagement in the music. My apparenltly far too small Linn Kan speakers were fabulous to listen to and, in my normal sized living room, almost nobody noticed that they were lacking in bass - We just enjoyed the music.

I am now old and broken, but still remember how good the direct-to-disk Sheffield Lab recording of Thelma Houston/Pressure Cooker sounded through my old kit.

BOFH: You can take our lives, but you'll never take OUR MACROS

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Access?

How about a bit of truth based on someone who had to develop in Access from V1.1 to 2010 (and Oracle, Rdb, Informix, PostgreSQL, Sybase,SQL Server, etc).

Within its limitations, And IF done by someone who had slogged up the very long and very steep learning curve Acess generally reasonable - IF:

The forms,, code and reports are in a separate front-end from the back-end database.

No more than 5-10 concurrent connections to a shared writable Access back-end.

No more than 50-100,000 rows in a table which should not be linked to more than a couple of smallish tables.

No wireless networking.

If you really, really, need to go beyond this, Access is fine if you use the separate front-end to a SQL Server backend, when experience has shown that 10 million rows, up to 50 or so concurrent users, many more relationships, and wireless clients are OK, provided that you rewrite any queries to be on the back-end and use stored procedures.

Now can the web kiddies who use MySQL because it is scalable and reliable please keep the noise down while I go for my senior citizen's nap?

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Single user PC database might be OK

The worry is that MS Access on a single PC of the sort, and with the amount of RAM, that a bean-counter will have demanded could probably do it with a bit of fiddling.

I don't know about SQL Server lite, MS will have crippled it; but SQLite almost certainly could do this : http://www.sqlite.org/limits.html

Security stock slinger Symantec speeds up with latest Backup Exec

Tim99 Silver badge

Fast?

> /dev/null

Recovery is something else.

Poll: Climate change now more divisive than abortion, gun control

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: Ergo sum

Thanks dan1980, a good post, I reply as someone who has been a professional scientist in one of the core sciences for over 40 years.

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: Ergo sum

Nice sound-bite Diogenes, unfortunately it may not be true. As you post under the name of a seeker of truths, perhaps a look at published work may be helpful. Bob Altemeyer could be a good place to start - Link rationalwiki.org. A link to his book about Right-wing authoritarianism is on his University of Manitoba web page here.

Four-pronged ARM-based Mac rumor channels Rasputin

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: [Citation needed]

I thought the #1 rule in journalism was to print as many people's names as possible in the article, and spell them correctly? That way all of them, and their friends, obtain the publication.

Fuel for jets DOES grow on trees

Tim99 Silver badge

Re: But, but.... Won't anybody think of the koalas?

No worries. The mallee used is from Western Australia, we don't have native Koalas. It seems that the population did originally extend to WA, but it seems they may have been hunted to extinction by humans tens of thousands of years ago, when the climate started to become dry.

Users folder vanished after OS X 10.9.3 update? Here's a fix

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

Re: started with 10.7

@Mathew 17

You can just tick an option box or, for occasional use, hold down the option key....Link macobserver.com

Tim99 Silver badge
Gimp

I'm probably being dim, but

Can't you just drag Users into the sidebar when you have made it visible?

Alternatively [Cmd]+[Shift]+[G] usually remembers the last folder that it used.

Oracle horns in on Red Hat's OpenStack party with own distro

Tim99 Silver badge
Pint

@richmd Re:copycat

"Oracle needs to be careful. APIs can be copyrighted now, you know.

I see that you did not put an icon with your post - Couldn't decide between the "I'll get me coat"; "Joke Alert"; "Linux - OS to the gods"; or "Troll" icons?

Have a free beer and an Up Vote.

Canonical teams up with Tranquil PC to deliver Ubuntu cluster-in-a-box

Tim99 Silver badge
Linux

The link says:

No Canonical Commercial Support from Ubuntu.

Nice Box - So, for those of us who prefer to avoid Mr Shuttleworth, perhaps someone from Tranquil PC can tell us how easy it is to run Debian?

Oracle vs Google redux: Appeals court says APIs CAN TOO be copyrighted

Tim99 Silver badge
Unhappy

Oracle and rentier capitalism - A perfect match

As a developer using Oracle since V4 (until I retired), I know the old truth:

Q: "What do you call Oracle customers?"

A: "Hostages"

Perhaps Larry has ambitions to take all business users and developers hostage? I would be looking to avoid Java (and Oracle) in new projects wherever practicable.

London cabbies to offer EVEN WORSE service in protest against Uber

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

London

Ah, but do they "Don't do South of the River" in the rain?

10 PRINT "Happy 50th Birthday, BASIC" : GOTO 10

Tim99 Silver badge

I was spared 8 bit

I started with BASIC on 16 bit DG Nova and DEC PDPs, it looked quite good after using FORTRAN. Now after learning C and SQL, I can still write FORTRAN code in most languages.

BASIC was really useful and inexpensive way to implement instrument and machine control - A few lines in QuickBASIC allowed you to open a serial line and write its output into a file, and send an input back. I know that some power and utility company applications are still out there running this code under DOS.

Firefox, is that you? Version 29 looks rather like a certain shiny rival

Tim99 Silver badge
Coat

Re: Nearly

@Redbaron

Users of real computers call it a "slash", or for oldies a "virgule". To all the newer kids who go with the ISO/Unicode "solidus" - It isn't, that is a fraction slash.

I'll go for my SCAN now (Senior Citizen's Afternoon Nap), mutter, mutter.

Cloudera, MongoDB go on a Big Data date, fall in love, jump in bed

Tim99 Silver badge

So, just how do you say 'the mutt's nuts' in French?

Tim99 Silver badge
Pint

Strine

Sticks out like dog's balls is an Oz phrase for the obvious.

>>=============> Because I'm as dry as a dead dingo's donger...

Audio fans, prepare yourself for the Second Coming ... of Blu-ray

Tim99 Silver badge
Unhappy

Not again

When I was younger, and even more foolish than I am now, I managed to put together a really nice Linn/Naim analogue system. It sounded really good, and in spite of what the digital people tell you, most of the time you did not notice the clicks and pops from LPs.

I have bought the stuff that I like on 45s; EP; LP, cassette, CD, DVD and DAT (I had a couple that I played through a DAT backup drive). I will not be buying any more. I have owned "Help!" on mono LP, stereo LP, digital remastered LP, CD and 5.1 surround sound. The quality did not improve, and after "digital remastering" it was notably worse. So, being an idiot, I have paid for the same music 5 times.

I now have about 12,000 tracks which will probably see me out - When I want to listen to something new I look on YouTube or try streaming internet radio.

Heartbleed exploit, inoculation, both released

Tim99 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: You left out

Err no. You do know that many servers out there aren't secure because the script-kiddy programmer left them running his cut-and-paste code, and has moved on, and because ROR would not run his really cool stuff he turned security off?