Posts by Alan Bourke

Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI

Anyone who thinks this is AI

is lacking in I.

How one techie ended up paying the tab on an Apple Macintosh Plus

Re: Manual page numbering

Word processors not meant for large books.

GitHub drops Atom bomb: Open-source text editor mothballed by end of year

Re: S. Sharwood in 2018

Dry your eyes. Atom open source. It's not going anywhere. Also you forgot to put a '$' instead of the 's' in Microsoft like it's 2002.

Next major update of Windows 11 prepares for launch

Re: I'm surprised that it's not appeared on more ordinary people's machines

Do they ? How do they do that?

Re: I'm surprised that it's not appeared on more ordinary people's machines

"when it's even worse than Win 10 for user control"

What does that even mean.

I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems all too well

This statement is so incorrect I've just had to lie down.

"Sure, Windows users will still see what looks like a PC on their desk, but really it will just be a smart terminal hooked into a Windows 365 Cloud PC. The real computing smarts will be in the cloud."

Not happening at any major scale, not ever.

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Re: I would get it fired for inventing Powershell

There hasn't been a DOS prompt in Windows since Windows ME. There is CMD.EXE, which supports DOS commands.

RAD Basic – the Visual Basic 7 that never was – releases third alpha

Re: Beginners'

People still snooty about BASIC after all this time. Dear oh dear

Autonomous Mayflower to attempt Atlantic crossing, again

So anyway

tell me again how cars are going to be able to drive themselves around central Madrid or somewhere when this thing can't even go from A to B in the vast emptiness of the ocean.

Apple patched critical flaws in macOS Monterey but not in Big Sur nor Catalina

Re: There is an official update available from Apple

This is like those gobshites who stay on Windows XP because their brain hurts or something.

File Explorer fiasco: Window to Microsoft's mixed-up motivations

In the unlikely event this does ever appear

It will be in the consumer SKUs, very much not in the corporate SKUs and as for how the military would get along with it ...

Microsoft Visual Studio: Cluttering up developer disks for 25 years

Er what?

"The damage it does to a regular installation of Windows is too much and is unfixable without wiping the OS and starting again from scratch. "

Nonsense. What damage does it do?

people still do these right

Er no

Microsoft proposes type syntax for JavaScript

Re: would this be...

Would far rather use VBScript than poxy Javascript

Rate of autonomous vehicle safety improvement slowing – research

Today In Solution We Will Never Have To A Problem That Doesn't Exist News

from your correspondent Crash Likely.

Microsoft releases first preview of .NET 7

Re: Situation Normal, All Eff'ed Up

Is Micros~1 the new 'Micro$oft' ?

Very clever.

Odd how the company that utterly dominates the business computing space can't apparently 'write proper SOLID code' whatever that is.

Joint European Torus more than doubles fusion record with 59 megajoules

Re: More megajoules

TNT is old hat. Not very energetic.

Re: MegaJoules? Watts?

I don't see the larger units such as swimming pools, double decker buses and Wembley Stadiums.

Multi-level marketing corporation that sells weightloss products sues ex-exec over 'fraudulent' Dell deal

Quacks Outquacked

Film at 10

Microsoft's do-it-all IDE Visual Studio 2022 came out late last year. How good is it really?

Re: Most microsoft advice ever

"at one time" i.e. a very, very long time ago

Tesla Full Self-Driving videos prompt California's DMV to rethink policy on accidents

Re: As ever, fully autonomous cars

I suspect proper education, enforcement and homeworking would do much more than this daft pursuit. It's the American way though - throw surgery and diet pills at the obesity problem rather than addressing the root cause.

As ever, fully autonomous cars

are solution to a problem that doesn't exist, the tech for which we are decades away from achieving, if we ever do.

Notes on the untimely demise of 3D Pinball for Windows

Easter eggs in operating systems

are not a good look when it comes to today's security landscape.

Mozilla founder blasts browser maker for accepting 'planet incinerating' cryptocurrency donations

Re: Cryptocurrencies are a scam?

Yes let's ditch the petrodollar for energy gargling Ponzi nonsense favoured by ransomware groups.

Windows Terminal to be the default for command line applications in Windows 11

There's nothing more tedious

than Linux stans, and they're half the reason we're still talking about this year being the year of Linux on the desktop.

Re: The way forward

Don't apologise, if it works for you and you don't need to run business software or games then great!

Re: When will I be able to ...

Never, because nobody does this.

Irish Health Service ransomware attack happened after one staffer opened malware-ridden email

Re: root cause

Oh is it 'email is dead' time again? Can't be five years since the last round surely. Where does the time go ...

Remember SoftRAM 95? Compression app claimed to double memory in Windows but actually did nothing at all

Re: "Windows' registry doesn't need cleaning"

9 years old and\or one of these people who thinks Windows is still like Windows 95 in all respects.

Zuck didn't invent the metaverse, but he's started a fight to control it

As someone said on Twitter:

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.

Tech Company: Finally we have created the Torment Nexus, as imagined in the sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.

Computer shuts down when foreman leaves the room: Ghost in the machine? Or an all-too-human bit of silliness?

And their plugs are crap

And their plugs are crap

Got enterprise workstations and hope to run Windows 11? Survey says: You lose. Over half the gear's not fit for it

Re: On the other hand

Really? Fantastic! I'll just load up all the software that I need to run my real business in the real world (and sneak Call Of Duty and Far Cry on too wink wink) ...

Oh.

Why we abandoned open source: LiveCode CEO on retreat despite successful kickstarter

Re: Maybe there wouldn't be a shortage of kids going into coding

"Maybe if they encouraged the kids who are interested in the subject and stopped trying to force it on all and sundry?"

100% agree - kids with an aptitude should be identified and streamed early on, with good apprenticeship-style positions in companies later on to entice them. This 'everyone must be a coder' thing is as much nonsense as 'everyone must be a car mechanic capable of stripping and rebuilding an engine'.

Maybe there wouldn't be a shortage of kids going into coding

if there were more easy languages like LiveCode to get them started, as opposed to the cavalcade of ever shifting nonsense that is JavaScript.

Windows 11 will roll out from October 5 as Microsoft hypes new hardware

Re: How do I opt users out of this "upgrade" ?

"Install a FOSS OS. "

Really? Fantastic.

OK that's done. Now to install MS Office all the software that actual businesses use to actually run (and maybe a few recent games) ...

Oh.

Magna Carta mayhem: Protesters lay siege to Edinburgh Castle, citing obscure Latin text that has never applied in Scotland

Re: Sumption is wrong

It's 'Magna Carta', not 'the Magna Carta'.

Magna Carta there ...

written in French and revoked the year after.

Boston Dynamics spends months training its Atlas robots to perform one minute of parkour almost perfectly

Cue 'robotic overlords' panic from the internets

When of course while it's super cool and impressive and I love it, it's still a non-intelligent machine that does one thing, like a Roomba, and the huge amount of processing grunt involved isn't pictured.

Firefox 91 introduces cookie clearing, clutter-free printing, Microsoft single sign-on... so where are all the users?

According to StatCounter

Edge is now neck and neck if not overtaking it for desktop browsers.

Microsoft emits last preview of .NET 6 and C# 10, but is C# becoming as complex as C++?

Re: Cross-platform UI?

That's the intention of .NET MAUI, which is due "real soon now"

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/maui/what-is-maui

Infor pays UK construction retailer Travis Perkins £4.2m settlement following cancelled upgrade of 'Sellotape and elastic bands' ERP system

If I could do a chefkiss

I'd do one

Great reset? More like Fake Reset: Leaders need a reality check if they think their best staff will give up hybrid work

Flexibility is key.

Starting out on your career, living in a shared house, you might relish the chance to get into the office, have the bants, be around for Friday pints and so on.

50 years old, kids self-sufficient to a large extent, why would you want the commute every day?

Windows 11: What we like and don't like about Microsoft's operating system so far

I bet you still can't

have any other colour than yellow for Explorer folder icons. Looks *great* in Dark Mode ....

Apple?

Sue for taking someone else's idea? What, in the Pot Kettle Black court ?

Windows 11 still doesn't understand our complex lives – and it hurts

Man confuses 'Teams' with 'Windows'

film at 10

Days Gone PC: Melting pot of open-world influences makes for one of the more immersive zombie slayers out there

Re: "If you love a game, buy it at fucking full price."

I have, in the days when their were demos. Quake, Thief, Duke 3D, played the shareware\demos of all those and loved them before buying.

AWS Free Tier, where's your spending limit? 'I thought I deleted everything but I have been charged $200'

Re: Free tears

"If some process runs away & tries to cost a few hundred thousand bucks then AWS will be up shit creek when the attempted charge riccochets in their face."

And you'll still be legally on the hook for the cost, burner card or not.

Microsoft sheds some light on perplexing Outlook blank email incident: Word was to blame

Re: "users who followed a full cloud model ... were not impacted at all"

If you actually think that a company with the size and reach of Microsoft don't test the shit out of everything extensively then you don't really know much about computers.

Hospitals cancel outpatient appointments as Irish health service struck by ransomware

Re: This is very serious

Oh yes we should kick diplomatic ass like the UK did after the 2017 NHS attack, i.e. do the square root of f**k all.

Nationalised?

We don't have a nationalised system, in the NHS sense at least. We have a two-tier public\private system where free access to the latter is based on a medical card, obtainable by those with medical or finanical need, or who know a local politician.