Posts by Alan Bourke

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.

Microsoft has gone to great lengths to push its tech, but survey suggests many devs slipped through the .NET

One problem with UWP

Is that they tied deployment too closely to the Windows Store. No bugger uses the Windows Store.

Visual Basic 6 returns: You've been a good developer all year. You have social distanced, you have helped your mom. Here's your reward

Don't use it then. And dry your eyes.

PCs continue to sell like hot cakes and industry can barely keep up with demand – analyst

That whole 'everything on tablets' notion, along with the 'consoles are dead' notion, was patently ridiculous to anyone who has ever done anything involving a lot of typing on a PC, or any serious gaming beyond noddy bullshit like Candy Crush on a PC or console.

What next for Visual Studio? Microsoft's monster IDE can't please everyone and 64-bit will not solve legacy problems

Re: git integration / Azure devops push

I don't know why anyone on Github would use Git within VS when Github Desktop is there.

Debian devs decide best response to Richard Stallman controversy is … nothing

Re: Not very accurate

We all may or may not be 'nice' but not many of us are nonce apologists.

Canonical releases Ubuntu on Windows Preview with early builds, new tools for the brave

Re: Can anyone help me see the point

Obviously in this case as a proof of concept to see whether a complex application would work. In the real world you would continue to use the native version of GIMP for your platform.

While truly self-driving cars are surely just around the corner, for now here's an AI early-warning system for your semi-autonomous ride

Ah, autonomous cars ..

... still an ever-distant technological solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Richard Stallman says he has returned to the Free Software Foundation board of directors and won't be resigning again

Re: I'm Back...

Aw did you see a big boy say all those words on Twitter?

He's a paranoid nonce apologist

The torture garden of Microsoft Exchange: Grant us the serenity to accept what they cannot EOL

If there was an alternative to Outlook

that even began to approach it in terms of functionality I suspect it would be all over corporate desktops. But there isn't.

'Meritless': Exam software maker under fire for suing teacher who tweeted links to biz's unlisted YouTube vids

America is never shy

of trying to throw pills or technology at problems that would be better tackled by addressing the root cause.

Project Ticino: Microsoft's Erich Gamma on Visual Studio Code past, present, and future

Re: "we decided to not use any UI frameworks"

More like Linux every day then.

Then again

they have the resources to not have to use frameworks if they don't want to.

What’s that in CES heaven, is it a star? Or is it that damned elusive flying car?

Re: MS' deep pockets

"to be really practical though they need to be automated"

So 100 times less likely to ever exist then, since we can't even get the ones that roll around to be automated.

Apple appears to be charging Brits £309 to replace AirPods Max batteries, while Americans need only stump up $79

Re: MS' deep pockets

"try CloudReady from Neverware"

What if I want to run some software on it though ?

Microsoft is not the enemy, why Google still runs 'Borg', and other insights from Kubernetes founders

VBA isn't really a successor to VB6 tbqhwy

VB.NET would have been except it isn't either. You want something like Xojo.

Back of the .NET: Microsoft chooses Xbox day to unveil a slew of dev-luring products

Git has been the de facto default for version control in VS

for quite a while. You have to go out of your way to make it use TFS.

Blazor: Full stack C# and Microsoft's pitch for ASP.NET Web Form diehards

Re: Not web forms

"with a little bit of CSS and JavaScript"

There's no such thing. There's a morass of me-too frameworks in a shit scripting language.

What's for Christmas, Google? Oh, you're taking away free phone calls from our Nest speakers

Re: Calling

Desktop computers? All over the place mate. Not going anywhere.

Microsoft drives users to the Edge: Internet Explorer to redirect to Chromium-based browser in November

Re: you can't configure which browser it forces you into

There are three groups of users - you missed the ones for whom it's simply a case of 'click on the blue E for the internet'. If Firefox's icon was a blue E, they'd be using that.

Re: Let me get this straight

Yes but they're pimping Edge just as hard.

Has Apple abandoned CUPS, the Linux's world's widely used open-source printing system? Seems so

Re: So...

Unless the question is 'how can I run all the business software that exists, and games?"

Even 2020 cannot bring forth the Year of Linux on the Desktop

> but by 2030 Windows will be Linux-based.

What would anyone have to gain from this event that is emphatically not going to happen, even?

Re: Is this really a valid point?

"Buying new hardware for Windows systems is almost impossible unless you keep "upgrading" the OS with every new version, whereas most current Linux distros support plenty of "legacy" hardware. "

This is incorrect on every level.

Visual Studio Code 1.50 goes hard on extensions support, but tackling add-on bloat is becoming more onerous

Re: Don't blame the extensions...

200MB is peanuts in 2020.

Death of the PC? Do me a favour, says Lenovo bigwig: 'I'm expecting the biggest growth in a decade... for 2021'

Is it 'PC is dead' time again?

I really enjoy this when it comes round every few years.

Mozilla warns more Firefox website breakage to come because devs just aren't checking for SameSite snafus

Re: How about...

I'm told, ahem, that popular site Cross Site Dominatrixes is having issues. Apparently.

University of Cambridge to decommission its homegrown email service Hermes in favour of Microsoft Exchange Online

Re: MS' deep pockets

Boom, there it is, the mandatory 'everything is a conspiracy' post.

Could it be? Really? The Year of Linux on the Desktop is almost here, and it's... Windows-shaped?

Ah, Git ...

Except that it isn't the only reason to run Windows, blinkered fanboy.

Windows Terminal hits the big 1.0: Fit for production?

Re: A terminal program?

If you want to be doing systems administration stuff in Python, knock yourself out.

Re: Oh Really. It's 2020 and Windows Terminal is at Release 1.0. Wow.

Could you fill us in as to what it is?

Re: A terminal program?

It's almost as if cmd.exe and latterly Powershell were perfectly fine for almost everyone with command line needs over all that time.

Like Visual Studio Code and your data lives in SQL Server? Microsoft has something for you

VS Code is great

However I do worry that as more and more features are added it will slowly just become Visual Studio, which is also generally great but which nobody could accuse of being close to the metal and speedy.

Cheshire Police celebrates three-year migration to Oracle Fusion by lobbing out tender for system to replace it... one year later

Re: This is my shocked face

"Imagine buying a Morris Minor and having to hire consultants to custom fit seats, tires, steering wheel, gearshift knob, windows, and even the pedals that must be custom-built just for you."

The Morris Minor you want is called Quickbooks. In the real world any company of any size has an ERP requirement that calls for some degree of customisation.

There's no Huawei a virus can stop us! 90% of our staff in China are already back at work, says CEO

Re: Bad becomes good

I see tin foil hattery remains unaffected.

Microsoft throws a bone to those unable to leave the past behind: .NET 5 support on the way for Visual Basic

Yeah you really wan tto be writing a GUI-based application

in F#.

Stuck at home? Need something to keep busy with? Microsoft has 115 ideas – including an awful SMBv3 security hole to worry about

Re: Imagine a user...

Users have absolutely no idea whatsoever how any of it works.

'Developers have lost hope Microsoft will do the right thing'... Redmond urged to make WinUI cross-platform

Re: If you want to build portable, you don't use Microsoft tools.

Yep, consistently shite.

Sophos was gearing up for a private life – then someone remembered the bike scheme

I remember when Sophos first appeared.

Small, fast, unobtrusive and tech support in the same time zone.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

I doubt he was bright enough to build a rocket

yet dumb enough to actually *be* a Flat Earther.

This AI is full of holes: Brit council fixes thousands of road cracks spotted by algorithm using sat snaps

There is no AI involved in this.

None.

Take DOS, stir in some Netware, add a bit of Windows and... it's ALIIIIVE!

"HP driver causing grief"

Uh huh.

Apple: EU can't make us use your stinking common charging standard

We eant to keep gouging customers

for our flimsy crap cables.

Look sharp: Microsoft Blazor's gone mobile. Fancy developing mobile apps with C# web technology?

Re: Beware: Microsoft has thrown more former technologies under a Bus

And of course they're completely unique among tech companies in doing this.

Cough.

AppSheet. Gesundheit! Oh, we see – it's Google pulling no-code development into a cloudy embrace

No no no

We don't want bloody citizens developing.

Are you getting it? Yes, armageddon it: Mass hysteria takes hold as the Windows 7 axe falls

Ah, Git ...

What's wrong with Windows 10?