Posts by Dan 55

Microsoft Edge bug odyssey shows why we can't have nice things

You can, with LTSB.

National ID cards might not mean much when up against incompetence of the UK Home Office

Re: The government already holds all that data on you anyway

The Windrush generation would have been asked to prove they qualified for a card. A Hostile Environment is not mitigated by a piece of plastic.

No, the objectives are different. One is to enroll everyone into the ID system, the other is to get lower net immigration figures by any means necessary.

Therefore, historical NI, employment, and bank account info already on file would have been more-or-less enough information, instead of also having to produce four pieces of official correspondence for every year of residency.

Re: ID isn't the problem

The UK has a Citizen Card which is a HO- and police-approved ID card that gives you proof of age and photo ID (which is nice if you don't have a driving licence). Of course it's not accepted EEA-wide (because that requires biometrics).

I think the only reason it's not accepted is it's not a state-issued ID. There are countries in the EEA which issue ID cards without a chip, and many of those with a chip just have the photo stored on it as the biometric data.

Whackypedia

Re: Personnummer

Made it easy for me as a foreigner to rent videos too back in the day.

And hopefully it was visual check of the card to confirm age verification, not swipe and store your details with what you rented...?

Re: How would ID cards prevent anything?

They would have been identified, but they couldn't have been deported as that law was rescinded in 2014.

Presumably by that time someone would have realised they've got a problem as passport applications came in, and worked out how to regularise them to get them into the ID system, instead of the Home Office actively deporting British citizens and people with ILR in their haste to achieve their target of lowering immigration figures and/or because their records are a mess or destroyed.

British fussiness at its best.

Seems it doesn't matter about how intrusive the database is, but the real-world manifestation of it can't be card shaped.

The people who arrived under Blair/Brown were EU citizens using their "freedom of movement"; luckily for them, they didn't have to deal with the Home Office.

Apart from Romania and Bulgaria.

It's not particularly lucky for the rest of the EU countries as that's something that's going to blow up pretty soon. A residency registration procedure would have been useful after all.

How do people get flagged?

Does anyone have any insight into this? My theory is when you deal with the state, some automated system kicks in which searches for your British passport, British birth certificate, or both. If it finds it, you may proceed citizen.

Otherwise you get to witness the power of this fully stupid and dysfunctional Home Office. And they have been known to get it wrong.

PayPal reminds users: TLS 1.2 and HTTP/1.1 are no longer optional

Re: Expect limited chaos

The only browser that's going to do TLS 1.2 on an old OS which doesn't do TLS 1.2 is Firefox (although you may need an older version of Firefox which is the latest version available for that OS). The rest are limited by the OS' implementation of TLS.

More to the point, why is your accountant friend using XP or Vista?

Ailing ZX Spectrum reboot firm kicks crisis meeting into long grass

Re: Why?

It could be done entirely in software as a Switch download, without these shysters robbing everyone.

"no defence has yet been filed"

Ah, the cupboard is bare.

Um, excuse me. Do you have clearance to patch that MRI scanner?

Re: obvious solution ...

Qubes OS seems to be the most practical way of going about it. Ancient Windows software can be run in its own VM too.

Donald Trump trumped as US Senate votes to reinstate ZTE ban

Re: The Emperor is clueless

For a moment I thought you were going to say the tiny-handed emperor has no clothes, which is a far worse mental image.

Now Microsoft ports Windows 10, Linux to homegrown CPU design

MS and getting it right first time

Hopefully they can do for their CPU what they're having trouble doing for their laptops and operating systems.

Google says Pixel 2's narcoleptic display is being fixed in June update

That is utter horseshit * 2.

Google have been caught sending your location back to the mothership against your location preferentes.

You can use an iPhone without an Apple ID perfectly well, you just hit "set up later" on start-up.

And please define how Apple slurp is worse than Google slurp. I'd like a laugh.

Re: RE: BC

As the unhappy owner of 3 Nexus 5s, 2 Nexus 9s, and 2 Nexus 6Ps...

I think I'd have stopped at the second.

What can you do when the pup of programming becomes the black dog of burnout? Dude, leave

Re: Working in IT is a magical, mysterious, and wonderful task

This isn't the job that my Spectrum promised me it would be on the 25th of December 1982. I want a refund.

What's all the C Plus Fuss? Bjarne Stroustrup warns of dangerous future plans for his C++

Re: Disagree....

Java is the antidote to C++ in the same way as a saw is an antidote to gangrene (remember you shot yourself in the foot with C++?). It's fiddly to develop for because it probably won't let you do what you want to do, the bits it will let you do are horribly bureaucratic, and if C++ is getting a bit fat, Java is in danger of collapsing under its own weight in libraries.

User spent 20 minutes trying to move mouse cursor, without success

Re: Sun optical mice, circa 1985

Ah, who can forget the OpenWindows Help pages, which for some reason used pop-art cartoons and some women ended up dancing in Club Soda.

Meet the Frenchman masterminding a Google-free Android

Re: He's late to market

But what can they do if Google's putting every new API into Play Services instead of AOSP and not documenting it and AOSP versions of apps are five-year old abandonware?

On the second point, if AOSP were truly open then it could be updated by developers outside Google, but it can't. So Google leaves them to rot and all work by other developers on improving AOSP apps is fragmented.

Yes, yes it does.

Re: Banks

More to the point, why aren't Nokia (HMD) selling Jolla editions of their phones, or making an easy downloadable flash tool available which changes the OS?

Re: He's late to market

Your favourite gapps install still has Play Services no matter how tiny/micro/nano.

Re: French!!!!!!

I'm English, we have a love-hate relationship with the French.

Speak for yourself.

Here Maps works better than Google Maps for me and pops up up GDPR questions.

Indiegogo lawyer asks ZX Spectrum reboot firm: Where's the cash?

Kickstarter at least wants to see a working prototype before it lets start-ups or businesses use their platform. Indiegogo doesn't.

That is why Indiegogo has a much lower success rate than Kickstarter (9% vs 36%).

Swiss cops will 'tolerate' World Cup rabble-rousers – for 60 minutes

Re: Being sensible

Why is it the Government's place to dictate how you live your life?

Because in Switzerland it's a direct democracy?

Still, when your neighbours are all there watching their tellies in the garden and every goal is met with fireworks, airhorns, and vuvuzelas, I'm sure you'll be the first one to enjoy it.

Office 365 celebrates National Beer Day by popping out for a pint

We're all good!

Oh do eff off with your matey second-person plural error messages all over Office and Windows.

Shatner's solar-powered Bitcoin gambit wouldn't power a deflector shield

Re: Too late...

Obviously he's left it too late because he's had too much cake.

Universal Credit has never delivered bang for buck, but now there's no turning back – watchdog

Re: hmm

The welfare system is complicated because people's lives are complicated. UC ignores all the complications and people are getting pushed into poverty because of that. UC was never a good idea nor will it be.

The tax system is more complicated than it needs to be due to the political choices taken down the years.

Re: uk.gov IT

And if you've got two jobs that'll be up to 10 paydays.

Do they know the people they're supposed to be helping. Who signed off this bollocks?

Re: The government position:

That is basically what was said on QT last night.

Oh, and the NAO was wrong.

WTF has happened to government in the UK?

Microsoft loves Linux so much its R Open install script rm'd /bin/sh

Re: Today's story...

Then that's not like ripping out sh and replacing it with a link to another shell.

Re: Today's story...

Yes, that changes the menu but does that mean old batch files are forced to use powershell too?

Re: Today's story...

Replace cmd with powershell on your system and see how it runs.

Re: Typical installer written in a large company

I struggle to understand why someone thought it'd be a good idea to change a shell system-wide instead of writing their scripts with #!/bin/bash at the top.

Par for the course...

"What came in here was such an exhibition of incompetence that I can only assume they are doing it on purpose."

Microsoft says Windows 10 April update is fit for business rollout

What this story really means

"Please IT depts, why won't you just hit the roll-out button on WSUS? By the way, you've got another major roll-out in about another three months."

Creepy software knows what you are about to do... to that poor salad

I am disappointed that there was an opportunity to use a stock photo of a woman laughing at salad and it was not taken.

Scrapping Brit cap on nurses, doctors means more room for IT folk

It was all about the economics and ability to do our own trade deals for me, and nothing to do with immigrants

The CBI thinks you've been had.

Paul Dreschler also said there was "zero evidence" that trade deals outside the EU would provide any economic benefit to Britain.

The government said it was "focused on delivering a Brexit that works for the whole of the UK".

But Mr Dreschler blamed a "tidal wave of ideology" for the government's Brexit approach.

"If we do not have a customs union, there are sectors of manufacturing society in the UK which risk becoming extinct," Mr Dreschler said.

"Be in no doubt, that is the reality."

Cops fined £80,000 for revealing childhood abuse victims' names

"before the force recalled the mail"

Has that ever been known to work when the email gets sent outside the organisation.

Microsoft tries cutting the Ribbon in Office UI upgrade

Re: Icons are supposedly accessible?

Presumably they'll be proper toolbars with tooltips, however I'm prepared to be disappointed.

Re: So we're basically back to toolbars again?

No, toolbars with slurp.

No fandango for you: EU boots UK off Galileo satellite project

We arnt out of this galileo thing because we are leaving the EU , we are out of it because of a bunch of bureaucratic tit for tatting and point scoring

We are out of Galileo because it's an EU-funded project carried out by the ESA and the rules that the UK helped draw up state that the work only goes to EU countries and the PRS can only be used by EU countries.

if you want to leave the EU, I'm going to pretend that you want to get rid of it completely

No, that's a fact.

If the UK leaves the EU, but in addition to that says it is not going to be a part of the SM, the CU, the ECJ, and the ECHR (red lines), the consequences are that the UK becomes a third country. This means it gets practically nothing from the EU.

There is a legal framework to be inside and out out of things. There is no legal framework to be outside and opt into things.

Tech firms, come to Blighty! Everything is brill! Brexit schmexit, Galileo schmalileo

Re: Our future is India!

Obviously people who know languages will choose to stay in the 17.5% free market paradise (see above) with a welfare state and a society to match.

Audit of DeepMind deal with NHS trust: It checks out, nothing to see here

Re: Who pays the piper

If you pay a lawyer or solicitor to say something for you it must be true.

Intel chip flaw: Math unit may spill crypto secrets from apps to malware

They didn't work with the BSDs at the end of last year with the original Spectre/Meltdown, they didn't work with them just now, take a guess at what'll happen next time.

This HTC U12+ review page is left intentionally blank

Re: Review it.

You can't really honestly review anything until you get the day one update with everyone else. This phone has show stoppers, but they will probably be fixed by the time everyone gets hold of it. If they publish now, they run the risk of publish an inaccurate review.

This, unfortunately, also enables the hype machine to work (see film, videogame embargos).

AI built to track you through walls because, er, Parkinsons?

Re: Prototype for proving theory

Why is Google Maps suddenly allowing me to go inside my own and other people's houses?

Re: More productive lives????

I do hope some future super-evil AI doesn't pick up on the "safer, more productive lives" bit and turn the human race into batteries. Coincidently that sounds like the plot of some film from a couple of decades ago.