Posts by Dan 55

Former Nokia boss Stephen Elop scores gig as chief innovator for Australia's top telco

Re: ROFL

Nokia were the number one in the market until they collapsed practically overnight with the Burning Platform memo in February 2011.

The Communities Dominate blog maintains that Nokia X, negotiations with MS, and the sale were carried out by the Nokia Board, not Elop. At that point Elop wasn't even trusted with being in charge of the staff canteen.

'Just give me any old date and I'll make it work' ... said the VB script to the coder

Re: Effing 'Merikans

The way Access DB files, VBScript, Jet, IIS, and Windows locale work together to confuse dates is incredible. At least the planets align themselves every so often, you need to pointlessly twiddle settings for hours until they all deign to use YYYY-MM-DD.

Get lost, Windows 10 and Phone fans: No maps HERE on Microsoft's OS

Re: No longer work

It seems they're dropping Windows Phone 8 app compatibility on that date.

That's the Windows 10 Mobile gravestone^Wredstone release.

Re: Let's face it...

I do hope MS keep up licence payments for HERE data.

Re: To answer my own question

So developers have to target a constantly changing platform without a version number. Ye gods...

Burning platform

The boot's on the other foot now, MS.

Google adds worldwide HTTPS info to transparency report

Re: The Register ???

Also worth noting that from the next release Firefox Dev Edition will complain if the page you're on has forms delivered or sent with HTTP. Something which is surely coming to Firefox soon...

Steve Jobs, MS Office, Israel, and a basic feature Microsoft took 13 years to install

Re: Mac OS X didn’t support Right to Left (RTL) languages?

This one is all on MS. Mac OS Classic and X (okay, 10.2 upwards) have always been good with non-western languages.

UK draft super-spy law 'not fit for purpose,' say 100s of senior lawyers

SNP

Also known to like their databases, also abstained, also hypocrites.

Microsoft traps and tortures poor little AI in soulless Minecraft world

Re: AIX?

I thought AIX was UNIX with IBM's unique take on error codes.

Re: Virtual world, with AI slaves bound to pointless tasks.

Although it will be for single player Minecraft now, there are plans to put AIs in multiplayer games played over the Internet. That's going to end well.

No. 1 rule... don't connect AIs to the Internet.

Hollywood could learn a lot from software devs, says GitLab founder

DevOps and Continuous Delivery

I can see it being good for films with lots of car crashes, train wrecks, and explosions with regressions and plot holes in the script. Maybe the next Transformers sequel?

Former US anti-terror chief tears into FBI over iPhone unlocking case

Re: John Oliver

Change everything up to v= in the URL to http://www.youtube.com/v/ ... Job done.

Like masochism? Run a PC? These VXers want to help you pwn yourself

Re: true story, here

And later on will trace everything going wrong from then onwards back to you changing the template font in Word for them...

Staff 'fury' as penny pinching IBM offers legal minimum redundo payoffs

Re: Statutary minimum redunancy pay?

If you've been working there for less than six years and want out, or more and want to stay in while you look, then you could use it as a basis for kicking up a fuss.

Statutary minimum redunancy pay?

There's the statutory minimum notice period in response to that... (S86 Employment Rights Act 1996)

Microsoft's done a terrible job with its Windows 10 nagware

Security updates like these? I wouldn't like to see a Windows 7 computer in 2020, it'd be covered in popup adware for MS' latest and greatest OS.

Re: Is that Microsoft's usual "management" of statistics?

"How do I get my upgrade [off the computer]?"

Beer-powered bid to build mobile network goes flat

Re: "That's no beer."

Well the article does say they also refine oil. Maybe they bottle what doesn't make the grade.

You were downvoted by someone without tastebuds, obviously.

LG builds a DAB+ digital radio radio into a smartmobe

Re: DAB, DAB+ and Digital Radio Mondial

Not really cutting edge smartphone stuff though. Nokia had a DAB headset in 2011 that you could plug into any Symbian 3 phone.

For all our complaints about Nokia they did seem to push the rest of the industry forward.

Get off my lawn, etc...

Crap IT means stats crew don't really know how UK economy's doing

Re: Goodhart's Law

Are you channelling Stewart Lee in the penultimate paragraph?

FBI channels Kafka with new rules on slurping Americans' private data

Re: Tightened?

Because the educated layman might have a chance in hell of finding out they're completely ignoring them again...

Nest: It's no longer all about you. Now it can recognize your kids, too

Re: What is the obsession

Are heating thermostats always in such inaccessible places? Never in any house I've lived in.

Re: What is the obsession

Don't you generally know when you leave the house that you're not going to be back that day if you're on a work trip? You'd have to adjust the thermostat anyway, only before you leave instead of after. Not too difficult...

Re: Already doing this

If there's a way guaranteed to waste energy in the hour before you leave the house, it's a proximity-based thermostat. You're going to have to push a button or tap a screen either way an hour before you leave.

Found the original Zuli review on El Reg and you do, in fact, need to do that.

What a load of gubbins.

How does it tie the people in the room with their account anyway, do you have to walk around the house waving your smartphone or smartwatch?

Not under my roof you won't

the ecosystem of smart locks, thermostats, lights, doorbells, cameras and so on all starting to work with one another

That's a clusterfuck waiting to happen, but in somebody else's house, not mine.

Microsoft adds 'non-security updates' to security patches

Re: It didn't happen to me

You don't. You have proper update systems in place to stop it happening. I am in an office with 18 Windows and 2 Apple PCs and this doesn't happen here.

Yet if you take the PCs home and they decide to phone home to Windows Update...

Re: It didn't happen to me

I don't know what that latest Patch Tuesday contained but the computer was there for two hours with "do not turn off this computer... installing update 1 of 2..." on the screen.

I'm going to have to go through the update history now to see if it was installed or not. That'll teach me to value my time and think I can get away with it by allowing automatic updates with optional updates disabled.

SAP backs UK remaining in the EU ahead of vote

Re: Confusing..

They are only following orders...

We’re so over Uber: Italy ponders slapping taxes on workers in the ‘sharing economy’

Isn't it supposed to be all declared on Self Assessment anyway?

Just asking...

How a Brexit could stop UK biz and Europe swapping personal data

And this...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/23/leave_or_stay_in_the_referendum_gdpr_has_to_be_implemented_by_the_uk_whatever_the_result/

... which argues that if the UK finishes off implementing the GDPR, Brexit won't affect it.

David Cameron hints at Budget law change to end mobile not-spots

Re: cue the Anti Mast campaigns

Yet there was an O2/T-Mobile agreement, there was national roaming between Orange and T-Mobile, and there is an EE/3 agreement.

I don't think there's any particular law that stops active network sharing, it's just it requires a bit of organisation between the two companies.

Go DevOps before your bosses force you to. It'll be easier that way

I can only assume the hero image for this article is the Reg commentardiat's reaction on seeing a new DevOps article.

State should run power firm spam database, says... competition watchdog

Do not want state-sanctioned spam

If this flies then why not do the same for every utility or service?

It's as if the mail preference and telephone preference services are working too well. Why would that be? People don't want or have time for this crap.

Mozilla burns Firefox on old Androids

Tab Groups

There's an add-on now, but then again I must have at least 5 add-ons already to bring back removed functionality.

And yes, I use it. The alternative is just a row of tabs full of Jira pages.

Don't fear PC-pocalypse, Chromebooks, two-in-ones 'will save us'

There is no economy of scale to make ARM desktop/laptop devices because the dominant OS does not run on ARM, therefore OEMs don't make them just to sell a few Chromebooks.

UK Ministry of Justice secure email system browns out

POP3

Shirley some mistake?

IMAP is too new a protocol?

Knackered Euro server turns Panasonic smart TVs into dumb TVs

Re: Where can I get a good dumb TV?

Samsung screens without Samsung software. What's the downside?

Re: During the meanwhile ...

I don't know, dog leads, poop bags, and bills sounds better than the average US network telly.

Not very smart

What with their inability to work if they can't phone home, the manufacturer's inability to support network services, the data slurping, and 3rd parties getting bored and pulling apps (e.g. Skype) which may make expensive additional hardware worthless (e.g. Skype), the smart money is on a dumb TV with a cheap Chinese Android stick.

We tested the latest pre-flight build of Windows 10 Mobile. It's buggy but promising

This is one of two things.

a) We are looking into the sausage factory and seeing how the sausage is made and it isn't very nice. One day the sausage will be delivered and everything will be fine.

Or

b) Windows 10 Mobile users will be subjected to Agile hell for the duration of ownership of the device, nothing ever really completed and as soon as a new app is thought up then effort will go into that instead of finishing off everything else.

Cloudy stuff is generally b) and they've said that cloud is first, so they're adopting a methodology suitable for cloud products.

Big-screen Skype gets small farewell note

How can DLNA cease working, it's supposed to be a local network thing?

Not doubting you, just wondering how they engineered that piece of built-in obsolescence.

Re: Ahead of the Curve

Perhaps the idea is you'll rush out and buy an XBox. Fucking stupid idea, but there it is anyway.

Accenture leans back, receives £86m Met Police contract

Nice to see that the government are putting their "we're going to outsource to smaller consultancies" plan into practice.

Fail0verflow GitHubs PS4 Linux loader

Re: I just... why?

It is rather a hangover from the last generation of consoles when things like low-powered ARM boxes connected to the telly weren't easily obtainable.

2016: Bad USB sticks, evil webpages, booby-trapped font files still menace Windows PCs

Compare and contrast...

... the CVEs for IE and Edge.

I haven't done it but I bet they're the same again this month.

Home Office biometrics strategy is three years overdue, despite 'lack of clarity'

Judge Dredd

Lately there seems to be a fashion for letting them get on with it then writing the law to cover what they do.