* Posts by Kevin Johnston

1536 publicly visible posts • joined 6 May 2007

Fresh version of Windows user-friendly Zorin OS arrives to tempt the Linux-wary

Kevin Johnston

Re: Coincidence...

Firmly agree with this especially about the 'it must be Windows' people, They will have spent so much effort on learning how each new version of Windows works and this could now need repeating several times a year as unrequested updates get deployed but learning to use Linux/Mac is 'too much work'

You mention Outlook and this is a perfect example in business where 'it came included so must be best' which had some traction when home use was also Outlook but these days it is more likely to be on a tablet rather than a PC so that argument has time expired. The MS lock-in is very much a poisoned chalice yet many businesses still sip from it as a result of MS Sales people who should be on 6 figure salaries for their ability to convince the C-Suite to sign yet another contract

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

Kevin Johnston

I passed on the chance to buy a T Shirt supporting the right to keep and arm Bears. Would love to see the NRA types deal with that little conundrum

World-plus-dog booted out of Facebook, Instagram, Threads

Kevin Johnston

Correct, if it is broken that is for the good of humanity

Kevin Johnston

Hmmm

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

ha ha ha

and productivity improved by 40% once the users tears cleared enough to see their screens

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

Kevin Johnston

Reasonable reward

Surely it is more reasonable for them to get the same reward as all the other shareholders...

Shafted

OpenAI sued, again, for scraping and replicating news stories

Kevin Johnston

Re: Embrace the verbatim

Fully agree, not only does this avoid lawsuits from the source owners but it also builds confidence in the output of these systems unlike the recent examples where the advice or quotes turn out to be complete fiction

Starting over: Rebooting the OS stack for fun and profit

Kevin Johnston

RAM/PMEM

The final part of this took me back to a Z80 based home computer I had, a Memotech. If you bought the CP/M upgrade with the 3.5" floppy drive then at startup it would copy the disc down to RAM and run everything from there. This is only really different to the RAM/PMEM idea in terms of hardware, not concept...albeit that there was no practical way to copy back up without dragging out the shutdown process

Lenovo debuts AI PCs that have specs a lot like vanilla PCs with this year's accelerated CPUs

Kevin Johnston

Re: "enabling the interaction with physical objects"

Don't forget though as with so many things in the marketing world (Colour options for new cars is a classic as is 'this seasons fashion colours/style')) they will proudly announce that 'over 90% of all purchasers chose the AI Capable option' while calmly ignoring the minor detail that all PCs had that badge slapped on them.

If we plug this in without telling anyone, nobody will know we caused the outage

Kevin Johnston

Re: Ugh I hated SCSI cables

I kept a wirewrap tool for exactly that purpose. It was unusual to find a plug where I could not gently slide the tool between the surrounding pins and straighten any bent ones.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

Kevin Johnston

Re: Chatbot vs Human

It gets worse (yes, it really can). If you complete your tax affairs using the information provided by HMRC Tax Inspectors you can be found at fault when their advice was wrong and be taken to court if you challenge that

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

Kevin Johnston

Re: Puzzled....Again!!

I would mostly agree with this but by extension anyone who is using private encryption becomes 'of interest' so in essence they are trashing the privacy of 99.999% of people so they can see who the targets actually are

Kind of like the idea of shooting everyone and letting $Deity sort out which are the good guys and which are the bad

BOFH: Hearken! The Shiny Button software speaks of Strategic Realignment

Kevin Johnston

Resource re-alignment?

It always confuses me when managers are so keen to get onboard with this. They will not see a bonus from the savings as that is well above their paygrade but there may be questions about the need for their role once the staff numbers reduce as we are seeing from the WFH movement over the last 4 years. So many staff are happier and working more efficiently without the hourly interruptions from a manager that needs to be seen to be 'in the loop' that entire layers of management are now desperate for people to be back in the office before the axeman comes to encourage them to spend more time with their family.

Some companies appear to be looking at this is a good way and are downsizing their office space and making savings that way but there are a number of big enterprises out there who are too invested in their offices, especially since it is now a buyer's market for office space so selling a 'quantum experience in flexible ergonomic working spaces featuring ambient music and meditation pods' is not a quick process.

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

Kevin Johnston

Re: What fresh hell is this?

While I do not run the latest AAA*PrimeMegaMustBuy games (or whatever the latest label is for them) I have not had any games not run on Steam. I have played with the various compatibility modes, due to an odd CPU/Graphics set-up which came from re-using old kit, to find the sweet spot although most have simply run the most recent option.

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed

Kevin Johnston

Re: The problem with Notes

I presume you have forgotten that at that time every piece of software had it's own unique UI. Even MS products used different UIs from each other (this is the era when all the MS-Standards jokes started) and the whole point of Notes was you could write your own UI if you hated the 'out of the box' one so much

MS were working very hard to make their product incompatible with everyone else so companies had to make a choice. Each update for Lotus 1-2-3 to allow import/export of Excel files was followed by an Excel update to break it.

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

Kevin Johnston

Re: thereby increase the value of the company

A high score on a computer game from several decades ago is about as meaningful as holding the school record for the egg and spoon race when the school closed the year after you left.

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

Kevin Johnston

The older the better

While I am fully behind the concept of not buying anything which needs a regular payment to continue to be usable, my motive for buying an older car is even simpler.

We now have things like Euro NCAP which supposedly makes cars safer but it does that by allowing the car to take control based on a set of overly focused scenarios. One of the biggest challenges is the bit where the camera see you getting to close to a white line without having used an indicator so takes over the steering to move you away from it - straight into the pothole/vehicle you were trying to avoid. I can understand the thinking behind these but it seems the implementation assumes we all live in areas with standard width, well maintained and well marked roads. If you are outside such a fantasy town then your 'single track with passing places' country lane is going to give the car a complete nervous breakdown and there is never an option to shut it off long term, just for the current journey.

How the Xbox Series X fridge chilled our holiday spirits

Kevin Johnston

Re: Sellotape

Have these people never watched Father Ted? Your dispenser of course state how much has been used doesn't it?

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

Kevin Johnston

Re: Give us a break!

Anyone else remember the days when the slogan was 'nobody got fired for buying IBM'? Microsoft are treading the self-same path and like every other instance they seem to believe they have a magic way of not crumbling when the masses get fed up with other people's hands in their wallets.

NASA pushes back timing of ISS deorbit vehicle contract

Kevin Johnston

Silly question

Rather than 'safely de-orbit', which is a polite euphemism for crash into the earth with a degree of probability for where it will hit, why not push the orbit further out to a point where it has an acceptably low probability of coming back?

Yes, I know this is rocket science but boosting to a higher orbit is a fairly well studied area so maybe?

Microsoft issues deadline for end of Windows 10 support – it's pay to play for security

Kevin Johnston

Re: Need the EU to step up…

I would say the main reason for the technical debt and cruft is that MS is not sure what can be removed without issues down the line. They have had several chances to do the decent thing and start from fresh to create a cleaner Windows (reminds me I must pay the window cleaner) but the risk is that the cashcow of users blindly accepting each new Windows as a better 'must install' option may look around and see other options which are cheaper/more reliable/shinier. The previous attempts have all caused more PR issues than tech issues (MS have developed a habit of multiple updates finally getting the OS >95% right and then throwing it away in favour of the next whalesong) but most of your old software continues to work no worse than it did before.

If people do switch OS supplier then the challenges can actually be less than those suffered when MS bring out a new version of Office where everything is in a new place and your old files are only mostly compatible but risk is one of those four letter words that most business will not entertain

Steam client drops support on macOS, but adds it on Linux

Kevin Johnston

I use Steam for games (on my linux systems) mostly because it is hard to plough through the various game review sites and publishers and find games I may enjoy which will run on Linux whereas using Steam I can run the compatibility mode which allows me to mostly ignore the intended OS. there is also the issue that very few games are available for full download to keep forever and anything claiming to be a AAA rated game will have an always online requirement meaning you have no idea how long before they turn of the validation server.

It has been many a year since I was able to buy a game from a bricks'n'mortar establishment and run it directly from the disc inside the box, only connecting to the internet for minor updates. The last game I bought as a downloadable was >30GB for the initial download and then needed to pull down a >40GB 'update'

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Kevin Johnston

Re: The RJ family...

Most people are blissfully unaware of how complex most of these standards are having only ever met 2-3 implementations but I made the mistake while an apprentice of stating that a connector could not be RS232 because of the number of pins. I was escorted to the Technical Library and shown the standards manual for RS232 and told to read it and make a list of all the different connector types which are part of the standard...wow there was a lot

Lesson learned

BOFH: Groundbreaking discovery or patently obvious trolling?

Kevin Johnston

Phased data?

I recall that in one of the Heinlein books they discussed a trinary computer which used phased data so presumably an optical computer. Would make doing division with Roman Numerals look like childsplay in comparison.

Bright spark techie knew the drill and used it to install a power line, but couldn't outsmart an odd electrician

Kevin Johnston

Re: Other folks' DIY

We moved into a house with wobbly floorboards but before I could do anything we had to move back out for a couple of weeks for a complete rewire after the fusebox blew out. Turns out that the previous 'electrician' had run the mains cables through notches in the joists but to ensure they lay flat used bent over nails to hold them down and one of the wobbly floorboards was where the nail sat proud in a notch that was too shallow. The foot traffic over that area cause the wiring to break down and short out. When this was all replaced (and circuit breaker fitted instead of fuse wires) they showed me the stretch of damaged cable. About a foot just had beads of copper instead of wires...we were very very lucky

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

Kevin Johnston

Re: Poor, deprived Americans

One math to rule them all?

I blame my daughter who is watching LotR at the moment in the next room

Making the problem go away is not the same thing as fixing it

Kevin Johnston

Re: So, shoot the messenger is still well and alive

Had a similar issue with a Ford Fusion where the light came on and after carefully getting it to a mechanic it turned out to be the super-secret Ad-Blue tank behind the read bumper had reached the low limit (was then another £200 for Ford to top it up and clear the flag since only they have the required tools) - shysters

California's Governor Newsom signs laws on right to repair and data deletion

Kevin Johnston

Re: Window dressing

I understand your thinking but it cannot be that open-ended. While I agree that you should be able to take a mobile phone with a broken screen to any repair shop (or buy the parts online and have a go yourself) there would need to be restrictions for some categories of items because of their purpose. You may well be capable of safely changing the brakes on your car but can you safely replace the magnetron in a radiotherapy system? Would you expect the receptionist at a school to be able to replace the fuser in the photocopier etc etc

Small steps are the right approach here to ensure the correct battles are fought to pry manufacturer's fingers from 'our' stuff

Microsoft takes another run at closing Exchange brute-force security hole

Kevin Johnston

Re: Hope springs eternal

I always considered it a shame that people were happy to write really complex applications for their business needs but would use the sample user mail template 'out of the box' and then whinge it was too clumsy/ugly.....Well write your own then, it is actually very very simple

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

Kevin Johnston

Re: Cortana

"My attempts to kill AI.exe managed to nerf Office so badly it couldn't update or repair itself."

You say that as though it is a bad thing

AI girlfriend encouraged man to attempt crossbow assassination of Queen

Kevin Johnston

Re: In Other News ...

Already predicted by Harry Harrison in 'I Always Do What Teddy Says'

Kevin Johnston

Re: In Other News ...

Sarai, is that you?

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

Kevin Johnston

Long time back now but we moved into an old house which still had flash-cap wiring. For those that have never heard of it a carpenter/joiner(chippie) would run 1"x2" timbers with two channels cut into the length. Sparky would then come along and lay in two bare wires and the chippie would come back put a thin cap over it to protect the residents.

Apparently that was determined to not be a safe method to deploy mains round a house

EFF urges Chrome users to get out of the Privacy Sandbox

Kevin Johnston

Re: Is there a local database involved ?

Are you thinking little Billy 'Drop Tables' Smith?

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Kevin Johnston

Re: if you tolerate this then your chilled air will be next.

So that classic where the FPU was 'removed' from the main CPU (the Intel 486SX) and could be bought as an extra chip which was essentially the same CPU with the FPU enabled and had an extra pin to take control when FPU work was required.

Awesome marketing that

37 Signals says cloud repatriation plan has already saved it $1 million

Kevin Johnston

Re: Is it comparable?

"People didn't switch to cloud to save money"

In many/most large enterprises the finance decisions are much more subtle than that as which bucket it comes from often rates higher than how big the bill is and moving to cloud simplifies the accounting since it is now just a rental charge rather than capital equipment with support costs and depreciation etc.

The people that actually declare that the company will move to cloud have a limited understanding of the technical side but have listened to the salesmen/accountants and have been assured that it will have no effect on the end-user but will look much nicer on the balance sheet (we have global distributed resources; great uptime blah blah blah). What nobody will mention is the change in stress points since now it is not the ability of the datacentre team to keep all the servers going but all the disparate companies between you and your data who can roll out changes without warning that cause your link to go dark. If it is your datacentre/staff you can send the boys round 'pour encourage les autres' but when it could be any one of six companies who already have your money and consider you a class B customer you may not even be able to get a recorded message when you call them.

Lesson 1: Keep your mind on the ... why aren't the servers making any noise?

Kevin Johnston

Been there done that

Fortunately it was only me that suffered...

Was doing unit test work on a small weather radar display system and had just checked the HT side of the display was running correctly as 15kV. Got the urge for a coffee so made everything safe and wandered off to get one and once back I picked up where I had left off in the test script. Sadly as we all know following a script does not require thinking to be engaged and I was wondering what that tingling was when I realised I was leaning on the HT lead. I know there was hardly any current but even so I was very very lucky

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

Kevin Johnston

Re: functionality

I recall in the past before the Lotus products died a death there were repeated updates from MS which were specifically designed to break any compatibility. Sadly that mindset has never gone away

Orkney islands look to drones to streamline mail deliveries

Kevin Johnston

Re: Floating drone

Or a Death Blossom

MIT boffins build battery alternative out of cement, carbon black, water

Kevin Johnston

Makes you an offer you can't refuse?

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

Kevin Johnston

Oh dear

I just wish I could say that I have never heard of that before, but...

It seems the more self-important a person is the more bizarre their thought processes become and I have had to re-educate a number of apparently intelligent people that Trash is a baaaad place to keep 'things I need to work on'. The best way to fix this is to enable a process to flush the Trash every night until they get the hint

Clingy Virgin Media won't let us leave, customers complain

Kevin Johnston

Simple approach

Make a reasonable number of attempts to cancel and record any calls. Send an email to the appropriate departments and if no response in two weeks just cancel the direct debit. It is amazing how fast they get in touch if they cannot get into your bank account at which point you bring up all the attempts you have made to follow their processes and please supply the MAC/PAC to move to a different provider

and no, you will not re-enable the DD

Let's have a chat about Java licensing, says unsolicited Oracle email

Kevin Johnston

CMOT Oracle

If there was only one flavour of Java available and it was a critical system with no other way to code then I could see this approach having some merit. In reality this is the Twitter approach to building your business

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Kevin Johnston

magic keyboards

I spent some time working in Switzerland which has four official languages and about 427 different keyboard layouts which meant chaos when trying to work over a remote connection as it was impossible the work out what effect a keypress on your local keyboard would have.

What I never understood though was the way some keys had 4 or 5 different accented characters associate but when I was typing in German "IT ALWAYS KNEW WHICH ONE I WANTED"

Freaked me out every time

Bad times are just starting for India's IT outsourcers, says JP Morgan

Kevin Johnston

Re: "After 34 years with the firm"

I have always wondered at what point 'x years with the company' actually becomes a liability? I know that all roles will be different but most management positions need an awareness that 'we have always done it that way' is not the same as 'optimal approach' and that is something which needs refreshing by finding out how other people approach challenges and processes.

Germans beat Tesla to autonomous L3 driving in the Golden State

Kevin Johnston

Referring to a Mercedez Benz as a 'Benz' must cause all manner of confusion when someone drives by in a Daimler-Benz. From memory the only country which does not call them a 'Merc' is the USofA so under the 'World Series doctrine' that must mean all the other countries are wrong.

Microsoft battles through two 365 outages in one day

Kevin Johnston

Ah but with two outages in a day MS will say the count should only go down by one although I prefer the comment from a previous story saying that the O indicates this is an Octal number so they still have at least a month or so of outages before they drop past the offered uptime

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

Kevin Johnston

Important rule

If you have such a Box/Room, always go in looking for something else or you will never find the bit you really want. Hands up all those who dive into such storage and immediately find the bit they were looking for a couple of days ago and just couldn't see

BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

Kevin Johnston

Re: Oh the pain!

You forgot the 'Help' option which links to the FAQ page containing half a dozen simple questions where they have already got an answer. Those answers will include the 'This is solved in the next release, please contact your Sales representative to ensure you are signed up to our automated update program'.

BT is ditching workers faster than your internet connection with 55,000 for chop by 2030

Kevin Johnston

Re: Did I get this right?

I thin BT read that as Fibre To The Pavement

Kevin Johnston

Re: This is the tulip bubble all over again, isn't it?

Is that 'cold fusion on Mars using a smartphone'?