Posts by wsm

It's round and wobbles, but madam, it's a mouse pad, not a floppy disk

But the disk is square and the hole is round!!!

Nearly two hours on a support call to remove and replace a sound card driver. Why? Because, after almost one hour and 45 minutes we were ready to put the disk into the drive and load the new driver.

I already knew we were speaking in different vocabularies, but when she told me that the disk was square and the hole for the drive was round, I had to mute the phone for a minute or two while she sobbed.

I finally worked up the courage to ask her if she had one of the round disks. She did! We got the disk in, found the driver, actually installed it and the system rebooted with sound.

She immediately hung up without another word.

Dirty COW explained: Get a moooo-ve on and patch Linux root hole

Live with it, or not

It's been patched and now we all know that there is no such thing as perfect software.

Good thing it's Friday and mine's a pint.

NFL is No Fondleslab League: Top coach says he'd rather use pen and paper than Surface tab

Which technology?

The pictures to which the coach refers are digital photos distributed via fax machines on the sideline. Each team gets the same pictures. If that produces the consistency he wants to see, who will argue with him?

The only problem is that I believe this coach is the same one who has his email printed for him because he couldn't carry his PC to meetings and point at the screen while shouting at his staff.

Pocket C.H.I.P. makers go Pro with cloud-linked ARM-flexing module for IoT gizmo builders

Can't be all bad

After all, there's a /great/ chip in the middle.

No surprise: Microsoft seeks Windows Update boss with 'ability to reduce chaos, stress'

Huh?

Reduce stress and chaos at MS? I didn't think they gave much care to anything anymore anyway.

Real work would be something like returning WinX to Win7 quality.

I know that's all relative--the quality thing. But still...

User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert

Clueless users?

Yes, but they've all been management, so I can't say anything about--oh shi..............

Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong IT defenses

Actuarial tables

I can see the insurance industry and some in-house risk management departments getting a look at this and saying "So what if we lose a few million accounts?" It's all about the bottom line and, despite some politicians making capital on some mild outrage, we might not expect much better security looking forward.

We will most likely see just an acceptable risk formula applied to our very dear personal identities.

Windows 10 now rules the weekend, taking over from Windows 7

Re: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Numbers don't lie--people do. But I don't believe real (intelligent) people really like Windows 10. It's only the ones that think they got something for nothing using it anyway.

Except for those like my least-skilled friends who said "I didn't want it, but it just started being Windows 10. So how do I get my printer to work again?"

As it turned out, we had to download Vista printer drivers because they let us choose a have-disk option and load drivers that actually worked.

Microsoft's HoloLens secret sauce: A 28nm customized 24-core DSP engine built by TSMC

24 cores?

And you still get jittery floating things that disappear at random, until finally your entire world is a blue screen.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay.

All in a days work...

"Engineering and customer support are investigating these on a case by case basis and offering trouble-shooting tips as necessary."

Isn't this just the ordinary users as beta-testers approach MS have been using for the past few years, even more so with Win10?

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

2D first

When learning to draw, most art teachers will begin students with some 2D skills--line, shading, white to black ratios, then color. Perspective and 3D come later.

Microsoft has gone downhill with the UI since Windows 7. What makes them think they can now jump to 3D and get anything useful out of it?

NASA to begin first asteroid sample mission: Seeks 'pristine' specimen

Pristine

If it's anything like their Mars missions, they'll blast the surface with retro rockets, then take their samples from the same spot.

I suppose an asteroid crawler is a little beyond their capabilities at this time.

If this headline was a security warning, 90% of you would ignore it

That was a security warning?

Whatever happens to those pop-ups that disappear as you are typing? Some of us actually use our computers for work and when those little warnings take the focus of our keystrokes momentarily, then disappear, we never know what we did.

There's got to be a better way than something so easily accidental.

Thieves can wirelessly unlock up to 100 million Volkswagens, each at the press of a button

Golden keys

Are VW in groupthink with Microsoft?

AT&T: Money? Oh, sure, no I'm fine – I'm doing great (if you ignore my phone business)

AT&T - the stalwart monopoly

AT&T still has the same mentality they had when they were an authorized monopoly, overcharging their customers at every opportunity with the now laughable "long-distance" services.

They have acquired and reduced to almost nothing credit and phone services, now they are attempting to ruin satellite TV too.

Just a reminder of their past attitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw

Sysadmins: Use these scripts to fully check out of your conference calls

Completely unrealistic video

I didn't see anyone texting or playing Candy Crush. But I'm pretty sure the man who couldn't open the door was my former supervisor. The one who thought he entered the wrong number was his replacement until they found out his visa had expired. He went to work for someone who would pay the visa fees.

So, the faces change but the calls remain the same. Was that a Led Zeppelin number?

Hillary Clinton: My promises to America's tech industry

A Clinton promise?

They are all worth about as much as Bill's promises to Monica. There's nothing much any self-respecting person would expect from such political posturing. Believe them and...well you won't be getting what you expected.

Google bows to Dutch

Which kind of privacy?

Do they keep enough information to identify me so they know I didn't agree to their terms? While I was browsing certain sites, when I was in a certain location using a certain device and connected to what network by what provider along with what others when I definitely said no, don't track me?

Geek's Guide to Britain – now a book. Permission to geek out granted

Does it explain...

what things are for and why they are there? That could be dangerous.

http://refspace.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams/Q3463

8K video gives virtual reality the full picture for mainstream use

Just sayin'

All the UHD in the world and they didn't notice that the image of the camera is upside-down?

SELECT features FROM bumf... What's new in MS SQL Server 2016

SSRS, that is all

The only reason we don't use other DBMS is because of SSRS. The report development, options and ease of putting them into secure web sites is why we use MS SQL Server. All the others cost more and offer less.

Microsoft's Windows Phone folly costs it another billion dollars

Re: I might be the only one but...

Not the only one. I have a $30 Lumia 640 which I unlocked, de-branded and turned off the Windows 10 upgrades.

Unlimited talk, text and data for $40 a month makes it complete.

For everything else, I have gigabit bandwidth on a multiplicity of devices provided by my employer. But my no-nonsense phone is mine.

Seattle Suehawks: Smart meter hush-up launched because, er ... terrorism

IOT

Is it the Internet of Things or "everything is the Internet" that spells doom for humanity?

A cracked window on the International Space Station? That's not good

Surely...

Dyson has a solution by now.

Hold on a sec. When did HDDs get SSD-style workload rate limits?

Fast, big, cheap

When it's a business that's buying, it's got its priorities in order: fast, big, cheap. When consumers buy, or when they buy from manufacturers/assemblers that want to please them, it's the other way around: cheap, big, fast.

When SSDs can satisfy both sets of buyers, HDDs with all of their disadvantages will be a thing of the past.

3-in-4 Android phones, slabs, gizmos menaced by fresh hijack flaws

Android Security Bulletin?

Now it all falls into place.

Red Hat bets on RHEL to sell its OpenStack elastic enterprise

elastic enteprise

Is that anything like a stretchy business venture? Enteprise, enterprise; tomato, tomatoe?

Windows 10 Mobile races to summer with useful facelift

Re: Yes, we get it. MSFT BAAAD!

Agreed. I won't update WIn8M either. My $30 phone with all of the mobile bands, WiFi calling and no tracking apps installed works very well and I don't want MS to fix that!

Michael Dell takes $11m pay hit

$46 million?

"The filing also revealed that if Michael Dell's position were terminated, he would be paid $46m."

On Wall Street, that used to be called the poison pill, or the golden parachute, depending on your point of view.

Either Mike really wants to stay there or he really wants to make it impossible to succeed without him.

Perhaps both?

Teen tricks leaky Valve into publishing hot new Steam game: Watching Paint Dry

Removed?

It was the only game I could play without getting killed in the first level.

Spanish launch heroic bid to seize Brit polar vessel

Not to give offence

All floaty things we put on the water will henceforth be named Boat1, Boat2, Boat3...

Surface Hub: A Howard Hughes folly, or a cunning Post It Note killer?

Latest headline--MS now shipping Surface Hub!

The question that came to mind--someone actually bought one? I remember some of our people getting excited about having clickable presentation screens in the conference rooms, nearly 15 years ago. The novelty wore off after some calibration difficulties and frustrations with having to reach all over the place.

Now it's projectors everywhere just to make the picture big and everyone passes the wireless keyboard and mouse to make their point.

Having to wave all over the place to do the same thing? What will the Surface Hub improve over that?

Oh, and Windows 10. That's going to help sell it.

Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

Yes. Can't you hear us screaming? Give us back the desktop!!!!!!!!

Oh, and everything that goes with it---the Start Menu control, the transparency control, the control of the size of windows, organization of all things we add that aren't MS. It's really all about control, isn't it?

But why go on? Nobody at Microsoft is listening.

The bill for Home Depot after its sales registers were hacked: $19.5m

The BORG

The nickname given Home Depot by its competitors years ago was "the BORG" which stood for Big Orange Retail Giant, given that the orange-colored logo coming to your locality indicated the death of the local hardware store with its variety of goods, local expertise and general good will.

Once the credit data of millions was "swiped" the nickname took on another meaning.

How many more compromises of retail transactions will there be for which resistance is futile?

Microsoft Surface Book: Shiny slab with a Rottweiler grip on itself

$$$ for weirdness

The boss has one of these. She likes the latest and shiniest stuff--finally dropped her Lenovo laptop for this one.

The only real problem seems to be that the 3000x2000 display doesn't really translate to anything else and external monitors sometimes don't wake up. The Microsoft dock we got didn't work at all for displays and the Dell dock we got works, but only one external display can be 4K to semi-match the desktop arrangement on the Book.

But the twin 4K externals we got for her do wake on a reboot, just not always when hitting the mouse or keyboard. Definitely irritating when putting in a full day at the office.

Price for this irksome setup? Over $4,000.

Why should you care about Google's AI winning a board game?

Why????????

Because it's smarter than you are.

Don't worry, the AI will take care of your every need and you probably won't even notice it's happening.

Feds tell court: Apple 'deliberately raised technological barriers' to thwart iPhone warrant

Ignorance is an excuse

I have to agree. It seems to be the first resort of the clueless bureaucrats to claim "they did that on purpose" when they can't understand what they are hearing.

It's not that Apple invented security to thwart the feds, it's that the feds don't understand the issues raised by personal liberties.

Spanish cops discover illegally parked flying car

Something like this happens...

...every time my friend's teenage son borrows the car.

Explanations vary considerably.

Google human-like robot brushes off beating by puny human – this is how Skynet starts

Why????????

Why are they teaching it to fight? Aren't these the first steps, teaching it to get back up, maybe to kick butt on that guy with the stick? Asimov must be spinning in his grave.

At least the bot had the sense to leave the building after all of that.

MORE Windows 10 bugs! Too many Start menu apps BREAK it

Another NT4 issue

It's amazing how many Microsoft engineers must not have been around in the days of NT4.

When too many fonts were installed on those systems, the ability to manage fonts disappeared. Even recreating a new Fonts folder didn't help because the original was registered as the system's location of fonts and new folders couldn't replace.

I said registered, because it was an issue with the fonts in the registry. NT4 could not handle more than 512 fonts in the list because the registry key for them was too small. It took them years to fix it.

I wouldn't doubt it's the same thing this time. They can't store more than 512 names of apps in some special place in the registry where they completely broke the new (no) Start Menu.

IT boss gets 30 months of porridge for trashing ex-employer's servers

Sentencing

If this is like most federal prison sentences, he'll be out in about half the sentence time after being given credit for time served during the trial, time reduced for good behavior and time reduced because the prison system needs more space.

The compensation won't happen because, as is obvious, he's got no career ahead of him. Without a big score in Lotto winnings, it's a debt that will never be paid.

So it looks like the sentencing is largely posturing for the justice system. They want the next fool to know what he's in for.

Microsoft quits giving us the silent treatment on Windows 10 updates

A trip down memory lane...

Back in the days of Windows NT4, when the blue screens of death were a joke repeated by the clueless, the numbers on the screen actually meant something. Of course they where unintelligible to users, but us support people could read them and figure out which driver to remove or replace.

When Microsoft introduced Windows 2000 and said, repeatedly and with great emphasis, that they were improving error messages, we knew the days of interpreting the errors were over. What they did was remove the actual error and simply log something like "An Error was reported by asdf_service." All of the detail that could have given some meaning to the message was lost.

It's the same thing now. When Microsoft has all levels of minions repeating their latest "improvement" mantra, you can be sure that they've just disguised their errors in some new package.

In this case, the total package is called Windows 10.

Reminder: iPhones commit suicide if you repair them on the cheap

Bad kitty

It's like having a cat, not a dog. The dog is your best friend and you own it. A cat owns you.

Does anyone actually own an Apple device, or....?

Microsoft gobbles Chipzilla's Havok 3D physics unit in cloud gaming play

Ahh, the memories

I recall being at a Microsoft training session where the head of one of the games units told how he was there when they acquired a popular game--the entire company, staff and all.

At the end of the first year he had the existing MS programmers present awards for the best achievements for the division. All of the awards went to the new people.

I never did hear what happened over the longer term. Probably most of the new people became newer people elsewhere.

Masked men 'steal' £250k of smartphones from Exertis

Could be linked?

“We believe this could be linked to the burglary. If anyone witnessed any suspicious activity nearby then please get in touch,” said Kelly.

Does this mean there are others explanations? Such as the PFY needing some pocket change for the weekend?

Brit censors endure 10-hour Paint Drying movie epic

I'm in trouble

I made a pirate version last weekend.

Samsung trolls Google, adds adblockers to phones

White noise

NoScript it is for me as well. I get a surprising amount of white space in the right column of my browser now.

VMware axes Fusion and Workstation US devs

Re: Will be interesting to see how this pans out

Pity. I actually recommended Fusion over the alternatives because it just worked better. No resolution problems, no windowing weirdness, nothing wrong with the screen orientation.

I'll look for something else, but the loss of expertise at a decent company, as you mentioned, is the bigger loss.

Waving Microsoft's Windows 10 stick won't help Intel's Gen 6 core

Re: Nonsense

"No. hardware and software 'innovation' isn't what;s wanted here. It's an innovation in the minds of twits who think that businesses exist to support MS and Intels bad habits that's wanted. IMHO."

Speaking of which: MS Office 2013 and 2016 have removed vital features that my office use for the reason we exist. The alternative processes have to do with running everything in Excel, which still can't handle large data sources and is as slow as Nadella's wit.

MS is getting to be less and less useful to business users. Without the desktop market they have had for years, they've got nowhere to go but down and out. Soon, they'll be just like the IBM of the 90's--sinking fast and wondering what happened.

IRS 'inadvertently' wiped hard drive Microsoft demanded in audit row

Only in government work...

...is incompetence a virtue.

Plausible deniability anyone?