Posts by Steve Davies 3

'I'm telling you, I haven't got an iPad!' – Sent from my iPad

Re: On helpdesk calls

Er... can't you just send the missing ethernet cable via snail-mail?

Australia to force Google and Facebook to pay for news and reveal algorithm changes before they whack web traffic

Re: Beware of the leopard sign

Why would that make any difference to people in Oz? They have plenty of far more deadly wildlife right in their own back yard.

Now if it said 'Keep Out! King Brown inside'

They would take note and stay well away.

If you own one of these 45 Netgear devices, replace it: Kit maker won't patch vulnerable gear despite live proof-of-concept code

Where are the class actions?

This sort of behaviour is normally guaranteed to start several class actions.

Otherwise.... Netgear can go suck this [see icon]

At historic Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google CEOs hearing, congressmen ramble, congresswomen home in on tech market abuse

The biggest losers were the people putting the questions

Keeping on interrupting an answer shows that you don't give a toss about what is being said. You have already made up your mind and everything else is for a soundbite to air on the evening news in your hometown.

What a waste of time and money... apart from the money spent on lawyers and consultants. Tax deductible no doubt!

From a trickle to an Application Stream: Red Hat opens barriers for RHEL 8.3 beta

Re: re: set root password and create a user

There is nothing stopping you from disabling that local user once you have joined the LDAP etc. However, I've found it a lifesaver to have a local account around when the LDAP etc has the heebie-jeebies.

We keep the passwords in the data safe along with the security keys.

but naturally, each to their own.

AMD is now following More's Law: More chips, more money, more pressure on Intel, more competition in the x86 space

Re: No room for a Chimpzilla crack in those earning reports?

TSMC already has a number of fabs outside Taiwan including at least one in the USA. But, you are right. TSMC needs a 7mm (going to 5mm) fab outside S.E. Asia.

With Apple going to their own CPU design (based on ARM), I can't really shed a tear for Intel. They have engineered their own demise. Being unable to get volumes out of 10nm and using an architecture that is well passed its sell by date, where else is there to go but down ef?

With the US election coming up, when better to petition regulators for a controversial way to chill online speech?

US Politics

is dominated by Lawyers. I've spoken to people studying law. Some had no intention of ever really practising law. Law was just a stepping stone into Politics.

The thinkers and doers are all out making shed loads of money to really care about Politics. Besides, they get the laws that they need by 'campaign contributions' to the right people. The payback is when laws favourable to their business get passed.

In the USA, 'those that can do, those that can't become lawyers and politicians'.

The best government that money can buy!

Google extends homeworking until this time next year – as Microsoft finds WFH is terrific... for Microsoft

Re: Vincent Black Shadow

Lucky? Not really. Just very fortunate.

I inherited it from my Father. He bought it new with a sidecar. That's in the shed at the bottom of the garden. Restoring that is next years project.

re: lack of variety

You have identified the problem. now you need to do something about it.

What about a pet. Dogs love being taken for a walk. Cats just think of themselves and crap everywhere.

What about growing some veggies/herbs? Even a windowsill can provide a lot of variety.

Go out for a walk each and every day.

Staring at the screen is mentally exhausting so limit your screen time. Stretch every hour. Question the people calling the meeting. Is it really needed? If you don't contribute to them then they are a waste of time.

Have something else to do in your life and expecially something non IT related. I've rebuilt a 1963 Triumph T120 this lockdown. Just an hour or so each day was more than enough to take my mind off work.

I got it on the road last week. Fantastic. I have a 1954 Vincent Black Shadow waiting for a top end overhaul. Thankfully, I have a well insulated garage/workshop in which to while away the hours.

Gone in 15 minutes: Qualcomm claims new chargers will fill your smartmobe in a flash

In a 'flash' charging

has its downsides. You gotta be careful about too much really fast charging you subject any Lithium Ion battery to.

ask any old Nissan Leaf owner if you want to know the pitfalls of rapid charging on battery capacity.

Slow and steady is the name of the game for me with batteries unless I really, really need fast charging then I tend towards 50kW chargers in my EV rather than the 350kW ones that are becoming quite common these days.

Re: so they know everywhere they've been

I'm sure that the likes of Google, Fartbook and Amazon will be kept well informed as to your whereabouts as well.

But some people obviously don't care who gets all that lovely data that their devices phone home every few minutes.

If you can read this, your Windows 10 2004 PC really is connected to the internet no matter what the OS claims

Re: Cortana can't be activated

I regard that as the one really nice feature of this release and...

Oh wait, MS will be along soon and make Cortana even harder to kill and bury 6000ft under.

"Do it our way or on yer bike! and then they say in a whisper, 'Oh, and we are taking over Linux very soon so don't think that you can escape that way!'"

UK.gov admits it has not performed legally required data protection checks for COVID-19 tracing system

Re: But of course

When did any of the major political parties suggest abolishing the right to a trail by jury? What you are suggesting is just that.

We aren't the USSR, GDR or China you know.

What possibly 'trumped' (sic) up charges would you give them 'whole life' sentences for?

Here's why your Samsung Blu-ray player bricked itself: It downloaded an XML config file that broke the firmware

Why...? Just Why?

Does a standalone device such as this need to phone home (and all the rest)?

I see this incident as just the start of planned borkage by makers. In this case, Samsung got found out others will be a lot sneakier. It is so simple to send a [redacted] config file and then tell the poor sods that now have useless devices that there is no fix apart from buying a new one that will probably suffer the same fate the day after the legally mandated warranty runs out.

My home is an IoT free zone and none of my electronic kit other than my computers/phone/tablet will ever be even indirectly connected to the internet.

AMD fans forced to sit out latest Windows 10 Insiders build due to 'bug impacting overall usability of these PCs'

Don't cheer too loudly

or MS will start charging us 'Borkage'

Time for one of these methinks [see icon]

Cornwall councillor suggests authority paid £2m for Oracle licences that no one used on contract originally worth £4m

re: Are you supposed to pay ... forever?

Doh.

Yes, you are supposed to pay and pay and pay.

That is the whole point about making software licensing an inpenetrable maze of conditions and contradictions.

Oracle and Microsoft (and others too numerous to mention) are past masters at this are many organisations around the world have found out to their cost time after time.

You would have thought that people would have learned this by now but apparently not.

Google employs people to invent colours – and they think their work improves your wellbeing

Re: You can tell how much money Google has

Inventing Colours?

I wonder if Google knows how much a set of Pantone Swatches cost? PErhaps they should 'google' it.

It's handbags at dawn: America to hit France with 25% tariffs on luxuries over digital tax on US tech titans

Re: more US dairies to try to make real cheese

WOT? you mean to say that there are some that don't make USDA approved Rubber Substitute? (Aka what is sold as cheese)

This must be as rare as finding 'oak smoked back bacon' in the shops over there in Trump land.

One of these [see icon][virtual] to those who tell us where proper cheese is made and sold in the USA.

Rust code in Linux kernel looks more likely as language team lead promises support

Compiler Version

The simple way would be to ship the version used by the Kernel Devs with the kernel source. Then there would be no version mismatch when building the kernel.

Thinking about it, I can't remember the last time I actually built a kernel. It must be around 10 years ago.

Sueball locked, loaded and pointed at LinkedIn over iOS privacy naughtiness

Little chance of this going anywhere

but down the toilet. Against Microsoft's army of lawyers his team will get tied up in a legal minefield that will last years and years.

That's if it gets that far and a court throws it out at the first hurdle.

Privacy watchdogs from the UK, Australia team up, snap on gloves to probe AI-for-cops upstart Clearview

Re: selling photos you don't have the rights to

This has been going on for a couple of decades, if not longer. I had a photo 'scraped' from a website that was used in an online competition by the [redacted][redacted] barstweard and the thing won. I only found out about it a year or so later and because the scumbag lived 5000 miles away taking legal action was next to impossible. After a long exchange of legal letters the photo was removed from the competition website. I had to prove that the photo was mine. Thankfully, I had the negative strip (remember the days of film...?) which was good enough.

Since then I have not posted any image on the internet that does not have my copyright embedded. Also, I don't post images where individual people can be identified. That saves me a load of grief.

Heir-to-Concorde demo model to debut in October

Re: But this is for the rich

Who will be flying in their own private jets from small airports and therefore avoiding the queues.

Even CV-19 has not stopped the private jets using places like Farnborough.

Hungry? Please enjoy this delicious NaN, courtesy of British Gas and Sainsbury's

Re: Sainsburys Have It

Stop putting Temptation.... sigh. Why bother. The Grandkids love it and they are coming over tomorrow.

My weakness food wekness is Hazelnut Yoghurt.

Re: Out of cheese error

"That can't be happening Grommit!"

Fret not, Linux fans, Microsoft's Project Freta is here to peer deep into your memory... to spot malware

coming soon

Microsoft Linux - only $99.99/month. With a lovely GUI straight from Windows 10.

Perhaps the icon might not be correct in a year or so.

Oracle sued by a shareholder who alleges its lack of progress in diversity amounts to 'dishonesty'

Re: Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2

Those great words should be modified to say.

"Lets Kill all the Lawyers and start with those in Politics"

July? British government could decide to boot Chinese giant Huawei from the UK's networks by this month

UK Government to decide....????

I really doubt that they will. It will be the USofA that decides. Our Puppet Government will just pass on the decision.

If someone inside Whitehall had the balls they'd delay and delay and delay the decision in the hope that El Trumpo gets the boot in November. But they won't. After all, they that their Peerage and Directorships to think of now don't they!

ITAM Forum asks software giants to stop browbeating customers onto their clouds with threats of licence audits

Stop 'forced' migration to the Cloud?

Are you having a larf?

You can't be serious!

etc etc etc

The 'software giants' will soon (if not already) be making on premises really, really, really more expensive that their cloud offering. Naturally, they'll hide the costs of getting your (as in yours not theirs) data out of it again.

These companies have you over a barrel and will be shafting you from day 1. The Beancounters will love it because they can show reduced CAPEX and to hell with OPEX. They'll have moved on to other companies by the time the chickens come home to roost. It would not surprise me if we see a company go TITSUP because they can't get THEIR data out of the Cloud with their cash in hand. Who's data is it when the original owner goes TITSUP and can't pay their cloud fees? Are their the equivalent of Cloud Baliffs?

Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds

Dreaming in Hex???

Octal please.

12702

00101

12703

00001

60302

and the answer is?

anyway, it is time for a sunday Pint (Sussex Bitter) in the back garden.

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

Re: makes sense

After all, just how many Anvils does a blacksmith need? It is not as if they wear out every year, five years or even twenty years. It is not as it there is a sleek cool new model of Anvil that every smith must have today!

I hate ALL adverts and stuff that gets repeatedly advertised to me goes on my 'do not buy' list. It is surprising how long that has become over the years.

Hey Mr Camera Dealer,

"Yes, I know that I have just puchased a Nikon DSLR. I'm hardly going to go out and buy a Canon DSLR the next week am I! STFU with all those Canon adverts."

Targetted adverts are the worst sort of adverts ever invented.

ALL ad-men and agencies need to [see Icon]

UK space firms forced to adjust their models of how the universe works as they lose out on Copernicus contracts

Re: It was ever thus

You obviously played by the rules...

And didn't provide - All expenses paid holidays - Cases of fine wines - [redacted] of the night

to the people on the end of the bidding.

Microsoft takes tweaking tongs to Windows 10's Start Menu once again

more fiddling while Redmond burns

As if this was their top priority... What about fixing that real bone of contention... Windows Update.

Well bork me sideways: A railway ticket machine lies down for a little Windoze

Re: Victorian computing

and it would run on 'Swindon Time' if Brunel had anything to do with it.

The TV Series 'The Architecture that the Railways gave us'

or something like that is well worth watching. Seeing the inside of the clock tower at Kings Cross Station was well worth it.

Never knowingly under-digitally transformed: Retailer John Lewis outsources tech function to Wipro

Re: A Question for the Chief Idiot

Doh!

Beancounters RULEZ!

But yes, I agree that it is them that need to be outsourced to Naglblistan and paid in unobtanium.

Linux Mint 20 isn't exactly bursting with freshness but, hey, there's kernel 5.4 and it's a long-term support release

Re: Upgrading?

Once upon a time, long, long ago... upgrading Linux used to be a real dogs breakfast.

But 2020 is not that time. I've not had an issue with updating or upgrading for well over a decade. My only gripe is gnome 3. That is a load of smelly dog poo on a good day. I use MATE as my desktop.

Mint is a decent distro. The more it distances itself from Ubuntu/Canonical (who seem to be intent on re-inventing the wheel yet again) the better IMHO. I think it should align itself with Debian.

Remember when we warned in February Apple will crack down on long-life HTTPS certs? It's happening: Chrome, Firefox ready to join in, too

Re: That kinda sucks...

Not really. 398 days is over a year. 13months or there abouts. So your once a year on a certain date just becomes once a year on a rolling 12 months.

OR

You could invest in some automation that renews them, replaces the old cert and emails you to say 'Job done and here are the results'.

It isn't all doom and gloom. If shorter cert lives stops a load of bots then isn't that a good thing?

Apple said to be removing charger, headphones from upcoming iPhone 12 series

re: I'd say Audi drivers are now worse

And have been for about 10 years although drivers of those small Mercs are catching up fast.

Blg black cars are the worst of all. I guess being black, the drivers think that they can't be seen so there is no need to signal... ever.

As for Apple removing stuff that no one ever uses... Just don't try to sue them when your phone explodes due to it being overcharged and you using a cheapo/knockoff charger.

Finally, a wafer-thin server... Only a tiny little thin one. Oh all right. Just the one...

re: their system had gone down

Ain't the laws of unintended consequences wonderful!

Bet they didn't do that again. The question that remains is...

Did this other team get their own UPS or did they freeload off another one. I've seen that happen before.

I always wondered why...

UPS vans were brown...

Now I know it. Brown hides all the [redacted] in your pants when things go TITSUP.

Mines the one with a roll of soft tissue in the pocket just in case things get a bit short.

Dems take a crack at banning Feds from using facial-recog tech. Congress will put it on todo list after 'learn Klingon'

re: keen app

The Keen app actually looks to be potentially useful, though it is undoubtedly just another profiling and slurpage mechanism.

You clearly forgot to add...

"that will be withdrawn in 3-6 months"

Isn't that becoming standard for Google these days. Launch some new fancy doo-dad and when it does not become the hottest app on the internet, it gets canned much to the annoyance of those who find it useful.

What Google giveth, Google usually taketh away.

Macs, iPhones, iPads to get encrypted DNS – how'd you like them Apples?

Re: Default?

It is optional because there are a lot of DNS providers out there that still don't support it. Over time, this won't be a problem and the default will be changed to 'ON' and there will still be a lot of teeth gnashing by those who don't like any changes at all.

Huawei wins approval to plonk £1bn optical comms R&D facility in UK's leafy Cambridgeshire

Re: Given the reality shone on China recently...

It reallsy does not matter a jot. Trump won't let a bit of soil be turned on this project.

He is waging a war trade against China. He won't be happy with his fellow New Yorker (Bojo).

This project will never come to fruition as long as Trump is in the White House which might be long after Jan 2021.

I think that there is a good description for this.

Welly Wangling

CompSci student bitten by fox after feeding it McNuggets

Re: Some of the sheep

Naturally there was emphasis on the word 'Some'...

GitHub redesign goes mobile-friendly – to chagrin of devs who shockingly do a lot of work on proper computers

Re: I'll tell you what you want...

It would be interesting to know what percentage of GitHub users actually code from a phone or tablet.

Could it be that MS in their infinite wisdom (or at the behest of from Marketing MBA) are solving a problem that really does not exist?

It wouldn't be the first time that MS has done this. It is almost as it the words 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' are not allowed inside Planet Redmond.

Former UK Labour deputy leader wants to know how the NHS's contact-tracing app will ensure user privacy

Re: Turn those cellphones off

Just turn BT (no not that BT) off and the app is useless. The phone bit of your limb extension still works fine.

Here's a headline we never thought we'd write 20 years ago: Microsoft readies antivirus for Linux, Android

No no and thrice no

This disease isn't going anywhere near my Linux systems. Disease you ask? Yes, MS is spreading almost as fast as CV-19 and is just as deadly to your data as the real thing is to your health. Once infected there will be no way to totally eradicate it other than a complete security erase and re-install.

The 'emperor' penguin says no!

Apple to keep Intel at Arm's length: macOS shifts from x86 to homegrown common CPU arch, will run iOS apps

Wot?

Cook perhaps is referring to an update for Apple's Mac Pro workstation, where power utilization and battery life top out around 902 watts for the 2019 model.

What battery other than a very tiny watch sized one does the Mac Pro have? The Mac Pro, like the iMac has to be fed with 230vAC (of 115VAC). I agree for the macBook pro and that it needs more battery life.

My 2015 MBP (bought secondhand) is getting rather long in the tooth. As I mostly write fiction on it these days I may well get one of the new devices in a year or so. I'll let all the Fanboi's rush out and get them first. Then they can wail long and hard about this function or that function not working like it did in 2009. ROFL. Things change people. I may even pick up one secondhand at a good Apple Tax free price.

What's the Arm? First Apple laptop to ditch Intel will be 13.3" MacBook Pro, proclaims reliable soothsayer

Re: And now it gets interesting

re: your 1) above,

It is clear that being dependent upon Intel for the CPU's worked in the beginning but in recent years... Intel's performance has clearly sucked big time.

I see that as the initial motivation for them to shift now. The raw CPU performance of their recent SOC's has been shown to outperform a lot of what Intel is offering.

We shall have to wait and see what transpires today (if anything) especially wrt price.

Folk sure like to stick electric toothbrush heads in their ears: True wireless stereo sales buck coronavirus trends

re: Isn't that the Apple business model in general?

Indeed it is. They are rarely first to bring any tech to market but when they do, it is often implimented better than the rivals (not always I hasten to add) and naturally, they'll make you pay through the nose for the pleasure (sic) of owning a device that was probably made in some chinese sweat shop and sold by Apple.