* Posts by Chris Evans

663 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jun 2008

Page:

Remember it'll cost ya to keep the lights on for Windows 10

Chris Evans

$30 Option for consumers

From ElReg's first posting on this subject: "The ESU program for consumers will be a one-year option available for $30." https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/31/microsoft_windows_10_support/

Intel pitches modular PC designs to make repairs less painful

Chris Evans

Re: WTF

Only the A3000 was an all-in-the-keyboard Archimedes. The A300 and A400 series had separate keyboards. For the later all-in-the-keyboard A3010 and A3020 the name Archimedes had been dropped.

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Chris Evans

Interface that looks a lot like Windows 10?

With most? Windows users on Windows 10 what is needed is an interface that looks a lot like Windows 10

Also I use 7+ Taskbar tweaker to let me reorder my Firefox windows, is there anything that would do that on linux?

First all-Indian chips to debut this year, 25 more local designs in the works

Chris Evans

40 years out of date, they were making chips in India back in 1984!

In 1984 SCL were making 6502 CPUs and building them into an authorised BBC Micro clone the 'SCL Unicorn'! I bought and sold one a few years ago. More details and photos at:

https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/SCL_BBCB.html

In 1984 6502 weren't that far behind the curve I expect India couldn't keep up with the vast investments needed for chip manufacturing.

Tech support fill-in given no budget, no help, no training, and no empathy for his plight

Chris Evans

Re: Prejudice in fiction

Wikipedia lists no 'Biggles in the Sud'. Biggles in Africa & Biggles in the Gobi are the closest I could see.

BT unplugs plans to turn old cabinets into EV chargepoints

Chris Evans

Re: the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge surrounding EVs

Many people will sit in their cars whilst they are being charged, they will want WiFi

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

Chris Evans

Will Trump last four years?

I think not. If his health doesn't get him first I predict he will do something that gets him impeached or is that just wishful thinking.

Chris Evans

Request

Can I go to sleep now and be woken in four years time or whenever sanity returns to the planet please?

Naïve Reg hack thinks he can beat Christmas food comas once and for all

Chris Evans

MWIS?

I had to google MWIS!

https://www.mwis.org.uk

Mountain Weather Information Service

They don't cover Sussex where I live.

Re pessimistic forecasts.

As a cyclist I check the forecast so I can be prepared.

The Met office are even worse than the BBC. Google weather I find the most accurate.

Apple Intelligence summary botches a headline, causing jitters in BBC newsroom

Chris Evans

I can't make up my mind if the downvoters think I should trust AI-generated info or they just didn't realise I was being very sceptical! I might have expected the former from the general public but surely ElReg readers are more clued up an AI than most people.

Chris Evans

I follow the maxim 'Just because something is AI-generated doesn't necessarily mean it is rubbish!'

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

Chris Evans

Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence!

Google blocked 1,000-plus pro-China fake news websites from its search results

Chris Evans

Example please?

For a laugh I'd like to visit one of these sites. Anyone known of a typical one?

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Chris Evans

Re: Colour Me Shocked...

A Plus1 added a parallel printer port to an Electron as well as two ROM cartridge slots and an analogue port. There may have been a Serial port cartridge but it certainly wasn't common. n.b. I've taken delivery of an Electron & Plus1 today!

O2's AI granny knits tall tales to waste scam callers' time

Chris Evans

Please please set it up so I can redirect the scum to it.

If automated i.e.

Caller: This is your credit card company Please confirm the following payment to Amazon.... or other scam. Press one to speak to an agent...

Me: Redirect call to Daisy

If a human i.e.

If automated i.e.

Caller: I'm calling from your credit card company Please confirm the following payment to Amazon.... or other scam.

Me: My wife does all our finances please hold the line and I'll get her

I then Redirect call to Daisy

Japan's wooden cube-shaped satellite rockets to space

Chris Evans

Photo?

Some very good photos of it are here:https://www.nanosats.eu/sat/lignosat

UK watchdog hints Voda-Three merger will likely pass

Chris Evans

Why not long term safeguards?

I've never understood when they decide short-term safeguards are needed what is going to change to make long term safeguards unnecessary?

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Chris Evans

How long will Putin live

I did wonder if there was something to look forward to, so looked up Putin's age, he is 72.

I am disappointed to report that according the UK's ONS a 72 year old's average life expectancy is 86 years/

"However there's a chance you might live longer. There is a 1 in 4 chance you will live to 92 years.There is a 1 in 10 chance you will live to 96 years.There is a 2.8 percent chance you will live to 100."

So no comfort there, I do wonder if he keeps away from windows and balconies...

JPMorgan Chase sues scammers following viral 'infinite money glitch'

Chris Evans

The glitch may have been...

The glitch sounds to me like there was an update to the software that allocated the cheque value to 'cleared funds' balance of the account holder rather than the uncleared balance.

RAC duo busted for stealing and selling crash victims' data

Chris Evans

The accident claims management company should have been in the dock with them

In this and the 2021 case It shouldn't be too hard to find out who the accident claims management company was! Even if they were paid in cash surely they just need to ask those people who's details were stolen who contacted them?

I know many people will just have put the phone down or ignored the email but a significant proportion must respond otherwise it wouldn't be worth the money.

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Chris Evans

You actually trust ChatGPT?

"Nowadays it is just as easy as opening a web browser, go to google, chatgpt or bard (or whatever) and asking for assistance, and most of the time you'll have the answer." I wouldn't trust ChatGPT to provide an answer that involved several steps and trying to use google search to confirm it, would probably be a self fulfilling prophecy whether correct or not. I'm reminded of: "Just because it's in a newspaper doesn't necessarily mean it is wrong!"

What is missing from the web? We're asking for Google

Chris Evans

Re: Search in images..

"For example many years ago I read an article on audition that used an image of a bear on a bicycle to illustrate that all of the hearing spectrum is important."

I must be a bear of very little brain as I've no idea what that means. Please explain?

Chris Evans

Re: My starter for 10

On the one hand Google probably knows more about me than I know myself and will sell it to anyone. On the other hand they do provide some very useful services. I'd be rather lost without their search, maps/street view/Sat nav directions & youtube!

Choose Your Own Adventure with Microsoft 365

Chris Evans

Re: Do you have access to an IT professional for advanced support and services?

"(And then there's the "we are in the cloud" where they just run the same workloads on VMs in a cloud, instead of VMs in Hyper-V / VMWare on prem - again, not cheaper and mostly the same people needs)"

And adds a single point of failure that you have no control over!

South Korea creates $445M bailout fund after payment glitch trips up e-commerce giant

Chris Evans

Possibly not fraud!

"It is impossible for such a business to not have the money to pay all merchants in full without there being some sort of fraud going on... right? " Well that is how it should work but many companies don't use a separate 'Clients funds' account to their own account and even if they've not been profligate with spending they could end up with cash flow problems. It could be fraud, extremely bad management or just poor management we just don't know yet which.

Second NHS IT system confirmed to be affected by CrowdStrike issues

Chris Evans

Re: Which Windows PCs are effected and should you turn on your PC!

I know that but it is only affecting Windows PCs and many users won't know if they are using CloudStrike's anti-malware product. If it would be correct to say this will probably only be effecting organisations that are big enough to have an IT department then stating that will reassure many people!

Chris Evans

Which Windows PCs are effected and should you turn on your PC!

It's not affected our 4 Windows 10 PCs (mix of home,pro,32 & 64) it might be helpful to know which systems are failing!

If a Windows PC hasn't yet been turned on today is it safe to turn it on now?

I suspect old Windows xP, 7 & 8 might not be effected, if so that might help people with old normally unused systems.

Singapore's banks to ditch texted one-time passwords

Chris Evans

.. you don't carry it around with you..

" physical number generator... you don't carry it around with you..." how does that work? I don't work on the move myself but I do do 2FA at home and work, on the same accounts.

FCC: T-Mobile US unit gave blind customer the runaround in massive tech support fail

Chris Evans

Re: The comments in this thread

I see no posts blaming the victim! There are posts pointing out not all blind people are the same!

Guess how much stored data is ever used or accessed

Chris Evans

Backups! Unused data should be 90% plus

I follow the rule that there should be three copies of current data, so 66% should be backups and then when you take into account historical copies I'd expect over 90% was unused. I'm sure many organisations have a lot of 'Unwanted' old data and many won't have a system in place to cull old data.

Raspberry Pi prepares to boot up a London listing

Chris Evans

.... Not sure how “interesting and profitable” slots into that.

If the original Raspberry Pi organisation (before it split into Pi Trading and Pi Foundation) didn't make a 'profit' they couldn't have expanded and if it wasn't 'interesting' why would anyone buy their products or work for them?

Splitting into 'Pi Trading and Pi Foundation' is designed I believe to ensure the educational side can be focussed on its aims without needing to consider 'profit'

Is the long awaited Raspberry Pi flotation about to happen?

Chris Evans

Re: Zero Pi

Today I could buy 1000 RASPBERRY-PI RPI ZERO_W_V2 from Farnell UK

Flexing financial muscles, Arm aims to elbow into Windows PC market

Chris Evans

Re: Wait, you tried this before

I wonder how many Apps do most people actually use. I've just looked at what I have installed.

In the last month I've used: FireFox, Chrome, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Acrobat Reader, Word & Excel viewers

I would not expect any problem running those. Also Basic PAYE tools which I'd hope would run.

In the last year I've also used:

Garmin Connect. My new Garmin watch now uploads via my phone so no longer needed

Andica Tax Self Assesment for Partnerships. I'd expect it to run o.k. under emulation

File Zilla FTP. If it had a problem I'm sure another FTP client would be available

Datapower Reader. Gives me access to various old databases it would be a pain if it didn't run o.k. under emulation but that is the only program that might be significant

I have a few other Apps installed that I've not used in the last year.

The ones I anticipate to need again are:

Irfanview & Zoom

I think my wife only ever uses:

FireFox, Chrome, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Acrobat Reader & Word viewer.

I think there is a bigger market than many IT professionals think.

UK's National Cyber Security Centre entry code cracks up critics

Chris Evans

Pattern/Muscle memory

"...juggle the numbers that are displayed ..."' I've only ever seen one of those myself and I see "no over the shoulder pattern opportunities." is good BUT without Pattern/Muscle memory many people won't be able to remember the number and will resort to writing it down and reading the paper copy before entering the number, making shoulder surfing a doddle.

I think it was Peter Cochrane ex of BT Research who talked of an inverse law of security. Something that needs little security will have a high level and something very important will have little e.g. Guest WiFi password in a small hotel being f%gUJ*"GlWbO9£4&rfH"@v and the Bank of England main vault having a four digit access code on a Post-It note stuck on the wall next to it.

Horses for courses!

Open Source world's Bruce Perens emits draft Post-Open Zero Cost License

Chris Evans

Re: 1% of what? revenue

Why would anyone vote down what is basically a request for clarification?

Chris Evans

1% of what? revenue

"pay 1 percent of their revenue ... That would cover all Post-Open software used by the organization."

I can't see that working if I've understood it correctly. It would mean that if one small division of IBM used Post-Open software in one small project then IBM would have to 1% of global turnover.

Even it only applied to that particular division then companies would set up a division just for products that used Post-Open software.

I can't see a way round this! Have I misunderstood it or do you have a solution to this.

Chris Evans

Pay who first?

"The difference is that Spotify is a for-profit corporation. And they have to distribute profits to their stockholders before they pay the musicians." Surely they should be paying their suppliers before their shareholders! They would have nothing to sell without the musicians.

ASML ships another high NA EUV lithography machine to mystery client

Chris Evans

Re: Hmm, who has enough money to buy that

The 10 to 20 machines ordered probably comes from just one or two customer.

Sleuths who cracked Zodiac Killer's cipher thank the crowd

Chris Evans

Confidential?

I wonder if they are keeping it confidential, though a pity that isn't mentioned if so.

Ker-Splunk! Cisco closes $28 billion analytics acquisition

Chris Evans

Just me?

Is it just me that read the headline as: Cisco has closed down a business it had acquired for $28 billion!

There have been some enormous write downs in recent years.

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

Chris Evans

Re: Perspective

For comparison:

Voyager 1 i 15,134,324,455 mi, 162.81208868 AU, 22:34:04 Light hh:mm:ssi from Earth, moving AWAY from the Earth at a Velocity of 38,026.77 mph

Elon's Telsa Roadster. is: 58,606,261 miles, 0.630 AU, 5.24 light minutes) from Earth, moving TOWARD Earth at a speed of 7,719 mi/h (12,422 km/h, 3.45 km/s).

Ransomware ban backers insist thugs must be cut off from payday

Chris Evans

Governments paying the criminals?

"It would be a painful battle of attrition between organizations legally unable to pay and criminals draining their governments of support funds."

Surely the support funds are to help the organisations who were targeted recover WITHOUT paying the ransom?

Elon and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad legal week

Chris Evans

Just how did he become so successful

Ever since I became aware of Elon (When the cars started selling) almost everything he's said or done seems at best dumb. His pack of cards will come crumbling down if he continues acting as he's doing!

China breakthrough promises optical discs that store hundreds of terabytes

Chris Evans

Compressing already compressed files!

"IBM announced the TS1170 tape drive with 50 TB cartridges, which are capable of storing up to 150 TB through 3:1 compression." I suspect the 3:1 compression statement must have been heavily qualified. With many large files JPEG, MPEG etc having inherent compression I doubt a 3:1 average is possible on the files on my hard drive!

Web archive user's $14k BigQuery bill shock after running queries on 'free' dataset

Chris Evans

Re: It's always the "power users" doing dumb stuff

Dry run would be helpful but not the full answer. "queryDryRun demonstrates issuing a dry run query to validate query structure and provide an estimate of the bytes scanned."

No mention of cost estimate! Though AIUI it could be calculated.

EU wants to make undersea internet cables more resilient

Chris Evans

Re: Good intentions, but ...

Yes after reading "At a top level, the recommendations identify actions EU member states should take, also including any necessary improvements to the security of seabed cables" I wondered what the recommendations were but don't see anything mentioned and struggle to think of any realistic physical protection that can be done. Maybe they are keeping that secret but I doubt it. Disaster planning and redundancy are I think the only options.

When red flags are just office decoration: Edinburgh Uni's Oracle IT disaster

Chris Evans

Will any heads roll?

I doubt it. Taking responsibility for anything negative in most organisations, rarely seems to happen these days.

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

Chris Evans

Power cycling is a bit like fuses

There are two camps: Power Cycling fixes everything AND Power Cycling is a waste of time you have to find out why it crashed.

with fuses it is:

Replacing a blown fuse will fix it AND you have to find out why the fuse went, dismissing a faulty fuse as the cause.

My philosophy is for none critical equipment: the first time it is necessary to power cycle / replace fuse make a note. If it happens again investigate.

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x

Chris Evans

Costs?

Can anyone explain what the costs are being referred to here are: "But as ICANN's proposal for the idea noted: "Operators who choose to use private namespaces of the kind proposed in this document should understand the potential for that decision to have corresponding costs, and that those costs might well be avoided by choosing instead to use a sub-domain of their own publicly registered domain name."

Crippled Peregrine lunar lander set for fiery return to Earth in matter of days

Chris Evans

Cislunar space

Not heard of 'Cislunar space' before. Apparently it is the region outside of Earth that includes lunar orbit, the Moon's orbital space around Earth and the Lagrange points.

The word cis-lunar comes from Latin and means "on this side of the Moon" or "not beyond the Moon"

Page: