Posts by wsm

New open-source ad-blocking web browser emerges from brain of ex-Mozilla boss Eich

Google product, privacy

Am I missing something?

Inside Intel's CPU-level multi-factor auth (and why we've got deja vu)

Must be government work

Nothing else would be so complicated, yet have a single point of failure which is next to impossible fix.

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

This can't be right

When found to be a monopoly, Microsoft was supposed to be forced to play nice. How will the entities that enforce the various agreements with regulatory agencies make it so Microsoft actually produces a functional product without the worst of the latest self-serving possibilities we are now seeing?

Most likely, nothing will happen. They're all in it together. It's just that governing bodies have their own way of getting in on the action, with fines, fees and favors that most of us will never know about.

Cisco admins gear up for a late night – hardcoded password in wireless points nuked

Ooops!

Obviously the fault of rogue engineers. Nothing to do with management or the integrity of the company.

Apple introduces new regime, hands more control to investors

Likewise...

Apple wasn't ever Apple without Steve Jobs. Changing to an investor-driven company after having been built up by a marketing genius is going to end in tragedy.

I foresee the next big product launch being an Apple i-ring, with changing colors to reflect your mood.

Chicago cops under fire for astonishingly high dashcam, mic failures

Shorter version:

Is it sabotage, lack of maintenance, bad policy or cheap equipment?

Yes.

Windows' authentication 'flaw' exposed in detail

Never say never

Any server can be compromised, but does MS have to be so insistent on being the easiest? Reminds me of a certain person in secondary school who wanted to be liked too much. There's a moral or a fable in there somewhere.

Electrician cuts wrong wire and downs 25,000 square foot data centre

Wrong odds

If there were two possible wires to cut, what are the odds now? I'd say 50:50.

From Zero to hero: Why mini 'puter Oberon should grab Pi's crown

Pine A64+

That is all.

PRIMITIVE TOOLS found near MICROSOFT headquarters

Something familiar...

Were the tools abandoned after the future MS employees were seen touching a large, dark obelisk?

Primitive tools

I was hoping they found the original Windows .001. It should have been something like a frame of twigs lashed together with rawhide, but it would have fallen apart every 15 minutes and need to be tied up again.

£2.3m ZANO nano-drone crowdfunded project crashes and burns

Just like for reals

I know someone who introduces himself as an "investment banker" or alternates with "entrepreneur." To me, he's just someone who has failed in many a startup business venture.

With this latest crash and burn, the investors are just the type this person is looking for: eternal deniers of reality.

Microsoft chief Satya drops an S bomb in Windows 10, cloud talk

I trust Microsoft...

...to have sold my bio-metric everything to whoever said it was necessary for their security measures. So, if I use these things on a Windows 10 computer, my face, fingerprint and iris are now the property of persons and organizations unknown.

California cops pull over Google car for driving too SLOWLY

The future for Google cars is...

Ever hear of cow tipping?

Pause Patch Tuesday downloads, buggy code can kill Outlook

Directly from Microsoft

They're looking into it:

Reason for Revision: V1.1 (November 11, 2015): For MS15-115, added a Known Issue for KB3097877. Microsoft is looking into reports of crashes from some customers that occur when they view certain emails after Windows security update 3097877 is installed. An immediate review is under way.

Windows 10 is an antique (and you might be too) says Google man

Who would have thought...

that Windows 7 would be Microsoft at its peak. Windows 7 was the fix that people wanted. Everything to follow has been a failure of management to bend their employees to the customer's will. Nobody at MS wants to listen to its customers, corporate or private. They seem to think they know better and BillG isn't there to change that.

Pride goeth before a fall...

Verisign warns new dot-word domains could make internet unstable

This Internet stability thing

Is ICANN talking about the infrastructure, the users, or their ability to shake more money out of the tree?

White House to Feds: Stop buying new PCs, laptops right now

Single-source contract

I can tell you how that ends. A large quasi-governmental organization I knew of once had a non-technical supervisor arrange the best possible deal for "commodity" computers. The whole deal went to Gateway. Prices went up, quality and selection went down, then Gateway went into bankruptcy. Anyone who actually cooperated with the contractor instead of getting exceptions approved regretted their lack of effort.

Government has a wonderful way of putting all of its eggs into one basket. Those of us who wish to stay sane at work need to avoid the inevitable consequences, somehow.

Dinosaur love hug: Dell's $64bn death pledge to EMC

The cloud racket

This thrashing over a supposedly new way of doing things is rather short-sighted.

Remember when Sun said the computer was the network, but nobody had the bandwidth to make a global client-server network?

Now that we can do it, it's not necessarily the thing to do.

Leasing in the cloud will have its place, just like smartphones, tablets and desktops have theirs.

Chill, people. It's all a matter of alternatives and using them as you see fit.

Dell buys out EMC in mega-super-duper $67 billion deal

Just a transaction

Tucci (electronically) signed a message to EMC customers today that said, in part,

"Michael S. Dell, MSD Partners, and Silver Lake are leading a transaction...Following completion of the transaction, Michael will lead the combined company as chairman and chief executive officer...this transaction will create a new leader in the most critical areas of the $2 trillion information technology market..."

The word "transaction" was mentioned five times before Mr. Tucci concluded that it was all for the best.

I wonder what he calls a takeover, a controlled merger, an avaricious acquisition or any other stock-wrangling extravaganza?

It's only a world of transactions after all.

FAIL: Windows 10 bulk patch produces INFINITE CRASH LOOP

Beta code

That is all.

'Fix these Windows 10 Horrors': Readers turn their guns on Redmond

Not to worry...

They've broken Office as well. If it was installed before an upgrade, Outlook gives a continuous error until you run a system scan and have it repair a couple of .mui files.

With something so valuable to the MS ecosystem broken, it'll surely be fixed immediately, right? Right?

Waiting patiently...

Windows 10: A sysadmin speaks his brains – and says MEH

Back in the real world...

Windows 10 is a complete non-starter. It's not just the impossible Start thing or the difficulty of finding any ordinary work application just to get going with a spreadsheet or data application. It's the fact that the fixes, such as Classic Shell, can't be used by corporate desktops for free or get past the approval process.

That's the real issue here: businesses won't be using an operating system that requires retraining, endless hours of fixing the base installation and the long wait for compatible versions of their approved and mandated software.

The consumer crowd will reluctantly buy what's available, some will even be happy with it, but the people who have to get some work done won't be happy with another revision of what Microsoft thinks is the way they should be getting things done.

Windows 10 on Mobile under the scope: Flaws, confusion, and going nowhere fast

"Why remove the charm and usability from Windows, in the mad chase for apps?"

That's the crux of all Windows faults. They have forgotten the OS business that gave them such a large market share and are chasing a market they don't understand. The desktop experience and what people do with phones don't need to be identical--which is an impossible goal for any decent functionality on either group of devices.

Apps are apps because they are lightweight applications that work on phones. But nobody wants a crippled desktop because its been reduced to phone functionality.

What would really be wrong with a desktop OS, a decent tablet adaption and a phone that works?

Microsoft rushes out latest Windows 10 build. 300 fixes? Pff, whatever

Every time...

...a new Windows version comes out and it takes extra clicks or pokes to find what you need to fix your configuration.

Q: How many UI improvements do you have to wander through to apply a fixed IP address to a remotely accessible box on your network?

A: More than the last time.

'This ruling does nothing to change the facts' thunders Apple in latest price-fix appeal blow

One fix deserves another...

Looks like the price of MabBooks just went up another $10.

Boffins set networking record with marathon 12,000 km fiber data run

Wow

This just made my light saber a little longer.

Apple CORED: Boffins reveal password-killer 0-days for iOS and OS X

Another version in the offing

If this truly is a fundamental flaw in the OS, it's going to take another version to fix it. We can expect to see new programmer training and new versions of most OSx compatible apps with the next variation.

It's bound to happen. Write once, run only in the old version, write it again to run it in the new and improved secure version.

Go fac' yourselves: US privacy bods walk out of visage recog talks

If only...

Most of these strained attempts at justifying the technology seem to be of the type--"If only we had known it was you, we would have treated you better."

But is there really anything a machine can do for you by recognizing you? Other than some biometric applications, the rest of this stuff seems to be related only to crowd control by threat of identification.

Sysadmins rebel over GUI-free install for Windows Server 2016

What is a picture worth?

If you really want to read a book, and have to type one to do what a few clicks in the GUI can do, install the server core.

But why eliminate what can communicate so much more quickly than anything in endless text can do?

BTW, the GUI tools don't work right on the majority of BrandX desktops out there, so if you're not logging on from a Windows system, you have to have a remote desktop to see what you're doing.

I've always thought this fascination with typing is a self-deceptive phenomenon. You don't really do more by more finger action, you just think you did.

RIP Leonard Nimoy: He lived long and prospered

Binge watch time

I actually remember the Perry Mason appearance and the Mission Impossible series due to my habit of watching old TV late at night while deleting junk mail. Leonard always made a character worth watching.

I usually don't like the comedy stuff, but the Big Bang Theory appearance was very well done. Because it was really an homage to the cultural icon nature of Star Trek without the overbearing fan boys trying to get too much out of it, I will admit it was good for sci-fi as a whole.

Something like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkByAkAdZs

I'm going to miss Leonard Nimoy too.

Ugly, incomplete, buggy: Windows 10 faces a sprint to the finish

How does that go?

The old saying...one step forward and two steps back. The Start menu/screen can no longer be emptied so it's just a vertical column, which is all you need. If you remove what you don't want, you get empty space, kind of like the empty stare most people use when they see this result. The new grouping of start items is equally worthless as users aren't allowed to make their own categories.

When Microsoft can no longer do an operating system that people want to use, their future is lost. Nobody really cares about their other products, except maybe Office which they are making less useful daily, and they are rapidly eliminating their core business while chasing Internet services income.

It all brings to mind another saying: a bird in the hand...

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

White on white

What bothers me most about redesigns is that they nearly always make a site less useful What is it that people think are proper design goals?

I have seen this trend toward white-out design in too many places, now it has struck here. And that big graphic? I prefer the one that I could scroll through if needed.

The whole site now looks overly bright (on the screen, not necessarily more clever) and less useful.

LA schools math quiz: $500 Chromebooks or $700 iPads for students?

Single-source contract woes

Despite the inability of government types to pick the best contract, I wonder why they want to pay that much for a Chromebook. The going rate here, with lifetime data guarantees, is under $250.

AMD tops processor evolution with new mobile Kaveri chippery

It seems to me...

AMD have spent more time on acronym development than doing anything uniquely useful. Perhaps it's a sign of desperation for the one-time Intel challenger. They seem to be playing catch-up with system-on-a-chip.

China's Jade Rabbit moon rover might have DIED in the NIGHT after 'abnormality'

Go to the dark side...

...then blame it on the moon.

Pulsars: the GPS beacons of the cosmos

Re: Why is my prime meridian wobbling?

It actually takes only a bit of reason and some nearly accurate measurements to determine the dimensions of a meridian, with the prime meridian being an arbitrary point, for a planetary body. Here is a reasonable explanation of how Eratosthenes did it:

http://geography.about.com/od/historyofgeography/a/eratosthenes.htm

We can do the same more easily from orbit and have created accurate vertical datum for nearby planets of interest, such as Mars:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/faqs/faq_sci.html

Beyond that, a universe-wide GPS that helps us navigate amongst the bodies is more complex than describing the ones we can observe.

Confirmed: Bezos' salvaged Saturn rocket belonged to Apollo 11

Bezos buys...

The headline should have read--Bezos buys right to surrender space junk.

STEVE BALLMER KILLS WINDOWS

The man who reinvented Windows reinvents Microsoft. How long before BillG comes back and fixes things?

Microsoft begins automatic Windows 7 SP1 rollout

Discrete?

Discrete regular patches sounds more like Apple charging for service packs. Is Microsoft so desperate for revenue streams?

Apple files avatar automation, emotion patents

Not again

Apple is going off the deep end with yet another attempt to patent the world. They may actually break the patent system so badly that all patents will be made worthless by backlash legislation.

Apple gets patent for ‘unlock gesture’

What is not obvious about touch and movement being needed to operate any part of a touch-screen device? What is not prior art about all of the other devices that used touching and moving to "unlock" them?

Insanity has not been patented, it has only been practiced by the USPTO. Plenty of prior art there.

Win 8 haters are just scared of change, say MS bosses

Choice(s)

Something MS never seems to think about, but it's what pleases everyone: the ability to make your own choice. Providing clear choices for interface and layout would be the best operating system choice.

Facebook suggests sharing everything all the time

What?

This resembles the nightmares of people who fear the Internet is taking over their lives. When and how does anyone remove their information? Once your identity is on the Internet, it's not yours anymore.

Galaxy Tab remains illegal in Germany

Optional--as in shirt and shoes?

Finally, a patent on smooth surfaces on anything rectangular without sharp corners. We can't let just anybody produce these things! That could lead to $99 thingies with touchpads!

'Lost' dollars turn up in gaming outfit

Translation...

We welcome any means of obtaining revenue from something we have already done. After all, that's what royalties and licensing are all about.

Google rolls out offline Gmail (for Chrome only)

Incredible future

What's next--offline word processing? What a brave new world....

Microsoft unveils file-move changes in Windows 8

Windows Exploder can't do math

The problem with MS file management has always been that the progress indicator for copying or moving files took the total number of files measured against the rate of transfer for the most recent few files to arrive at a total time estimate, which was updated periodically. This made for time estimates of, at first, 2 minutes, followed by 3 days, then 18 hours, 14 minutes, 98 minutes, and so on.

Using the total number of bits to transfer divided by the transfer rate would have been better, but apparently too complicated for MS programmers.

Apple pictures iOS on your wall

Wait, wait, wait...

I hold the patent on any device that can place an image on a wall, platform or motion picture screen by means of light projection from an electronic source without the use of film or glass slides.

I'm gonna be rich.

Lightning strikes cloud: Amazon, MS downed

Not again

These cloud systems have fallen down more often than any data center I have been involved with. They must be too complex for the people running them--or have management decisions, influenced by marketing types, led to over-promising things that haven't been designed into the systems?

You wouldn't see these situations if they stuff they promised was actually functional.