As long as you can fondle it, it's a fondleslab.
Posts by hitmouse
506 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Dec 2008
HP reveals bonkers $5k foldable tablet/laptop/desktop
I would like a lower-powered version just for the screen. That gives me one-two pages of music at a piano or on a music-stand.
Unfortunately most fondleslabs top out at less than 14.4" needed for an A4 page (or the aspect ratio is all wrong, optimised for movies). I blame reviewers who now all complain if a device is heavier than a Starbucks grande latte and forget 1990s laptops that weighed as much as a bicycle.
Lost voices, ignored words: Apple's speech recognition needs urgent reform
Microsoft's English recognition is pretty good, but it has made little effort outside of US vocal dialects and spelling. If you switch to British or Australian (for example) in Teams then you have a double issue with reco being poorer and ludicrous homophones being used in transcript e.g. someone thinks that "cheques" is uniformly used where "checks" is uttered. See also "draughts", "philtres" and a number of other default renderings even when grammatically incorrect.
Microsoft promises to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for next decade. Sony believes it
These are not the days of yore with Ballmer's paranoia causing inertia in Microsoft's product lines Today's Microsoft is busy churning out apps and services for Linux, Android and Apple platforms. They're not going to miss an opportunity to make PS bucks as well.
Take Sony's reservations as projection. That is a company that will self-sabotage with whole new hardware platforms in order to retain control.
Microsoft to hike prices in Australia and New Zealand
Australia to phase out checks by 2030
Run it through Microsoft Speech transcription
If you set your language to English(UK) or English(Asutralia) it transcribes every utterance of "check" as "cheque"
So even if you're just talking about "checks and balances", "check in on someone", "a pattern with checks", it all comes out as "cheques and balances", "cheque in on someone", "a pattern with cheques", ...
Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors
Google Photos doesn't allow you to search for photos with words that (only Americans I guess) would find unseemly, even if the photos and albums are labelled with those words. I have photos from European towns that have been labelled automatically (via encoding) with words that have a different meaning in English, but Google slams its "one-size fits all languages and cultures" approach.
AFACIT OneDrive and Dropbox don't have this issue with the same files and words.
Microsoft can't stop injecting Copilot AI into every corner of its app empire
Academics have 'no confidence' in Edinburgh University's response to its Oracle disaster
Here's how Microsoft hopes to inject ChatGPT into all your apps and bots via Azure
Latest Windows 11 build shares desktop real estate with, er, Spotify
Polish for Windows Spotlight and tabs for Notepad in latest Insiders build
Microsoft fumbles zero trust upgrade for some Asian customers
Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement
I vote for Iago, Jafar's offsider from Aladdin.
"Personality. Iago is very stingy and typically allies himself with whoever benefits him the most. He's characterized with a frequent useage of biting sarcasm as well as a sharp wit."
Having his tweets read in the voice of the late Gilbert Gottfried is a bonus.
The IT decision-maker that really matters? Your pet
France says non to Office 365 and Google Workspace in school
"There is no reason to."
University staff and students literally squirrel inappropriate data into any IT storage system available to them. The only rhyme or reason given is "for backup".
Email is commonly used to route copies of sensitive data despite explicit instructions against it. Students learn this from the example of senior academics and Medics. Universities don't discipline this sort of behaviour.
Microsoft leaves the Office, rebrands everything as 365
When are we gonna stop calling it ransomware? It's just data kidnapping now
Brexit dividend? 'Newly independent' UK will be world's 'data hub', claims digital minister
There can be only one... Microsoft Excel Champion
Re: Excel is why we can't have a simple "quick'n'dirty" database app in Windows
User inability to conceptualise relational databases is the main reason, or their desire to treat every problem as the nail matching the hammer they've mastered. Hence the resourceful person who haunted user forums in the 90s with the relational database they built with Word tables and WordBASIC.
Users mostly want tables with some cleverness, hence so many focused tools for table management.
The sins of OneDrive as Microsoft's cloud storage service turns 15
OneDrive has to sync to multiple client OS, so path length, allowable characters etc are lowest common denominator for those and various web standards.
The number of files limits are well documented. There's a single page (easily locateable via web search) detailing limits.
"a customer couldn't restore a file because it said she had it open. She didn't. Then it wouldn't let me view files online because the option just disappeared from the right-click menu." Probably created files or folders past the path length limit. I've seen this behaviour.
Microsoft tests CD ripping for Media Player in Windows 11
Re: Centred start
Microsoft had prerelease builds of Windows in the late 90s with a centred start button. It's not as if it's such a blindingly unobvious design choice as to require copying,
The movement from mouse-centred to pen/finger-centric selection in the intervening decades is more relevant as Fitt's law issues are weighed differently.
First-ever James Webb Space Telescope image revealed
UK Info Commissioner slams use of WhatsApp by health officials during pandemic
Re: Here's a clue bozos!
If you use Teams chat (as mandated in many regulated environments) it's rated for medical privacy and content is not cached locally.
However you can't tell a doctor that they've made a choice showing they aren't brilliant in technology understanding...as they just stare you down and say "people will die" .... mic drop.
Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options
Google's plan to win the cloud war hinges on its security aspirations
" They sent a "your name has been mentioned in..." email when someone mentioned me in a office365 app"
That means that your name has been @mentioned just like on Twitter or other message platforms. So it is simply a message via lookup in your organisation's active directory. You may as well complain about receiving emails because someone looked up your email address.
If you're in a regulated environment outside the US then Google is simply not an option. Google's servers are in the US, so data residency laws mitigate against using it. Also Google's Ts & Cs are a big raspberry to IP and confidentiality so if you're doing research then you don't want to be sending your data to Google to train its AI.
Contrast Microsoft and Amazon who offer regional or in-country data centres.
Microsoft brings Cloud PCs and local desktops together in Windows 365
Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements
Russia labels Meta an 'extremist' organization, bans Instagram
IT blamed after HR forgets to install sockets in new office
Re: I've seen many deparments terrified by HR
HR's response to unhappy staff: advertise for a "Happyness(*) Specialist" at a rate higher than all the underpaid and unhappy staff.
*yes that was the spelling
HR secret is to employ their own staff in inflated job levels to boost the levels of their managers
Saving a loved one from a document disaster
The end of free Google storage for education
France says Google Analytics breaches GDPR when it sends data to US
Many countries have data residency requirements for specific uses such as research or medical data.
There is little clarity from the major cloud services providers (Google, AWS, Microsoft Azure) as to whether cedata processing e.g. for voice, is done locally, in "region" or in US. There's even less clarity over whether third-party plugins to their platform services obey any residency laws.