* Posts by MJI

6849 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2009

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

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Thunderbird is the replacement for Outlook Express

What I did when it was removed many Windows versions ago

Microsoft: Copyright law didn't stop the VCR and shouldn't stop the LLM

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Re: VCR?

Nope fully legal, sold quite a few at the time.

Wear and tear was the biggest issue with a new head disc at £160 AFAIR for my edit deck in the early 90s.

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Re: The Levy

No I object to paying levies on tapes for some theoretical pirating.

I object to the dumbing down of kit to ruin copying.

I was so lucky my edit VCR and portable VCR both worked on regenerate sync, rather than degrade it. then Sony were forced to rejig the format to degrade.

Later on I captured all the originals to hard disk, and of course the levy crap applied to blank DVDs.

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Re: VCR?

I sold a few, made a bit from it, not a lot as wear and tear was expensive. Head discs not cheap.

Perfectly legal sales as well.

I have had to pay a levy on those blanks to compensate some random company with nothing to do with my copies.

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The Levy

And this is why I am happy to download stuff.

Why should I pay a levy on blank DVDs, blank video tapes?

More to the point why should I pay a levy for a blank MiniDV tape which goes into my HCR9?

Why should I pay a levy for the backups of my OWN PHOTOS?

Why should I pay a levy for burning my OWN VIDEOS to DVD or BD?

Supermium drags Google Chrome back in time to Windows XP, Vista, and 7

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May be valid reasons

Some people struggle to use 8 and newer due to the shocking UI.

7 is the last proper version of Windows, UNLESS there is some way to drop the entire UI on top of 10 or 11, wome people are stuck.

Already using larger fonts.

Hereditory eye diseases are not fun.

Trump supporters forge AI deepfakes to woo Black voters

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Re: Except

Or Boris hiding in a fridge.

Or Boris dangling from a wire waving flags.

AMD may have failed to dumb down its chips enough to allow China sales

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It forces the Chinese to up their own technology

And that is counter productive.

I reckon GPS chips would be good but altered so anything in Ukraine steers the device to Moscow.

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

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Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

TBH I prefer four more cylinders and a slightly higher state of tune, single heading a 15 coach sleeper out of Plymouth.

Double headed sounds a bit better, but over too soon.

But of the big 4 stroke Diesels CSVT wins soundtrack award.

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Walnut head - lucky escape

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Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

Or this

https://class37-growlers.weebly.com/class-37-information.html

It's crazy but it's true: Apple rejected Bing for wrong answers about Annie Lennox

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All search engines, now appear to be crap.

So much junk served up when you are looking for something.

I put lots of terms to my own web site and it is something like page 10 on google.

May as well use DDG, as not raelly any worse.

I don't go to the German tin plate toy train search engine much, as I do 4mm scale British.

Dell staff not alone in being squeezed to reduce remote work

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Long Covid

Having constant exhaustion works wonders as I could say, stuff it I retire.

Not been in since November, hada few ops in between as well.

Home, I get fed, the company is better, the light is nicer, no traffic noise.

Dumping us into ad tier of Prime Video when we paid for ad-free is 'unfair' – lawsuit

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Re: Personally I think both Prime tv and Netflix are rubbish

Amazon Prime WAS worth it for

The Expanse

The Grand Tour

James May, our man in ....

Good Omens S1

Reacher

Man in a High Castle

Just a few examples, most are gettable by nefarious means if sadverts appear.

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If I see ads

I am going to pay the 2.99, bash out James May in India, Clarksons Farm.

Then cancel prime.

Then investigate getting downloaded vidoes from PC to PS4 without burning to BluRay

Looks like I will jet have our national broadcaster with no logos on main channels, nor proper adverts beyond itself.

I have dropped stuff before over on screen logos!!!

Adverts will get dropped.

Glad I got the Expanse finished

Mozilla CEO quits, pushes pivot to data privacy champion... but what about Firefox?

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Don't trust MS, don't trust Google

So Firefox everywhere.

My mobile phone does not have adverts

Mozilla slams Microsoft for using dark patterns to drive Windows users toward Edge

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Sony bought Bungee.

BTW I am pleased that Starfield was not too good*, as I will not buy an XBox as I only use MS stuff if I have to, or if it is good (their mice)

* MS Scrapped the almost complete Playstation version.

Sony are a lot nicer to me than MS, for a start they used to do really good TVs.

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Re: Teams/Outlook users driven over the Edge

Have you seen teh RAM it takes up , bonkers

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The edge virus keeps striking

Had another occasion, it hijacked email links, not the usual one, but a new one.

Is it time to delete edge again?

Dell said to be preparing broad Return To Office order this Monday

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Re: Throw me in that briar patch!

Autistic traits, well a lot of people are not really people people and prefer small company. They COULD be counted.

I KNOW I would be a poor manager, like my boss is not a good programmer.

I think I am just a normal techie.

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When you can look at things and....

Too wrecked to commute, can't stand traffic, but I can work from home.

Did say if I drove to the office, I would get in after 10 and leave around 15 to avoid traffic and dark.

If it was demanded, I would go on sick and look for work in an out of date language WFH only, no stuff it, just retire.

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Re: The inalienable human right of WFH.

Farmers work from home, they usually live on the farm

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Re: "if they want to keep their tax breaks"

WFH = more money for small coastal commutiites in Wales* and less in the pockets of Tesco filing stations

* Two holidays last year by the sea. Nice quiet area of Wales.

Windows 10 users report app gremlins after Microsoft update

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Core 2 Quad here

But on 7 still ooops after making a change from XP

Would use Mint full time, but need to use Windows specific software too often with no linux alternatives (I asked them)

OK I rely on good AV firewalling, and only using specific websites.

Brit watchdog thinks Google's tweaked Privacy Sandbox still isn't cricket

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was does this mean to me?

With all my browsers variants of Firefox.

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

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Salt sounds as bad as sugar in tea

NEVER been able to drink sugary tea, it ruins it.

Tesla Cybertruck gets cyberstuck during off-roading expedition

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Re: Subaru diff lockers?

Subaru do not make off road cars, they make cars capable of some off road usage, exept they are quite good at it.

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Re: Land Rover owners rejoicing

Don't worry we take the pee out of most other off roaders, managed to deflate a Mitsubishi owner mentioning his bigger engine (of less power), and mines permanent 4WD.

What if there is no handy Land Rover to rescue the Jap offroader?

None of that off road course would trouble any of the proper LRs. And if you want to off road in total luxury buy a Range Rover.

One was going down a slope with a wheel in the air, Ireckon on that I would have 4 in contact with the ground.

United Airlines’ patience with Boeing is maxed out after repeated safety issues

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Engineer

https://www.airbus.com/en/our-governance/guillaume-faury

Beancounter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Calhoun

Perfect timing... US Navy throws Boeing $103M to update its sub recon jets

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And they replaced Comets

Perhaps we should have kept the Nimrods

Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

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Been dropping for years

Google have never been that good, I prefered orignal Yahoo! search.

DDG has been getting quite poor recently.

Plenty of room for a decent web search again.

YouTube video lag wrongly blamed on its ad-blocking animus

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Re: YouTube adverts

What adverts?

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Re: uBlock Origin FTW

Moved to it from ABP no regrets use it on mobile too, so get surprised when other phone users see adverts and I do not.

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Firefox UBlock fine

Just works, as expected

Microsoft touts migration to Windows 11 as painless, though wallets may disagree

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11 looks horrid

I don't want to but being forced to.

But can I force a 7 UI on it?

Microsoft braces for automatic AI takeover with Copilot at Windows startup

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Filled with dread

As I need a new PC, starting to get the odd component failure, one of the HDDs is failing despite being second newest.

Tempted to get really overblown PC and run Windows in a VM for the few bits of software requiring them.

Needs

Firefox

Thunderbird

Something video edity

Something 3D CAD

chitubox

The Register's 2023 in gaming had one final boss: Baldur's Gate 3

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TLOU

I did play a remaster, stopped after 1 hour and deleted, it felt meaningless. Just slightly better graphics.

I played near release on orignal PS3 and that was the full experience and not to be forgotten.

Best thing is play through 3 or 4 times, then just remember it.

Boss fight between Donkey Kong champ and leaderboard org ends with settlement

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Just read this while

My wife is watching Eastenders

Nearly 200 Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes grounded after door plug flies off mid-flight

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Airbus time?

Looks best to not buy (airlines) or fly (passengers) anything post merger Boeing.

Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'

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Try it with vision issues

Just unusable, totally unusable, luckily that PC is locked back to 10 now, and that is bad enough.

I can just read this text I am typing on a 1920x1080 monitor.

7 is easy to use, 10 hard, 11 almost impossible.

Yet I am legal to drive. So not that bad vision, imagine if it was worse, or their issue was more retina than lens.

Bricking it: Do you actually own anything digital?

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Re: Let's get physical.

VCR peak was mid late 80s, but then early 80s stuff was well engineered.

Like my Sony portable

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Re: Case in point: Star Trek & Paramount Plus

I have a non DRM version of Star Trek, recorded off the TV in the 90s.

Decent VCR and in stereo, I had a NICAM decoder wired into a Beta HiFi deck.

They still play OK

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I charity shopped 2/3rds of my books, used the shelf space for other books to be easier to get to.

I was not going to read them again, so free the space.

Of course hobby based text books started to fill the space.

Got some really nice photo books I just like to pick up and browse.

Will be culling more in future.

But like you TP stays, as do more modern SF authors I like, such as Alastair Reynold or Richard Morgan.

DVDs are well culled, 50% gone, BDs only 10% dumped, games about 25% gone.

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Re: True

I paid £35 for TLOU and it still works fine on my older console.

SP games are usually still safe if BD is in your hands.

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Re: While my kindle is very convenient...

Kindle

Pulp style books on Prime or Kindle unlimited, rad once then return, like a library book.

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Donr it with films and TV for good reasons

A film, some bribes went out and the BluRay was cancelled and only a HD-DVD was done.

Yes I did email them and told them I got the HD-DVD rip off TPB, cpnverted it and played it off the hard drive of my PS3, mentioning I was going to buy the film but could not play it.

TV, FTA channels start the series, then the scum buy the rights and stop me watching, TPB to the rescue.

One series I loved I had pre ordered the DVD before the TPB release was out.

Never seen those episodes on broadcast due to that..

I have really culled my book collection as I was not not going to read them again, but keep the books I reallly want to keep.

Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?

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Logged onto work PC

WTF is this?

Phone hardware support roll back

Follwing Monday

A new button for start menu is not start menu, roll back again.

Following week, trying again, this time I stop it and say leave at 10.

I can't handle the UI changes. too confusing.

Not everyone is a 12 year old excited for useless changes.

I would be happy with 7 or Mint.

BOFH: The Christmas party was so good, an independent inquiry is required

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Re: Plagiarism?

Except for the diary of Sir Patrick Vallance.

Pushed Johnson under his bus of lies.

Korean peninsula space race sees South and North launch tit for tat spy sats

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Re: US aircraft carriers at Norfolk naval base!

What are they doing in the Broads?

Google Groups ditches links to Usenet, the OG social network

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With broken support to NGs

It is hard anyway, only follow a couple and has been via googles search of them, will need a different way in now.

As usual it is because it is what goole decide no the users