* Posts by Steve Davies 3

7136 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

Oracle Java copyright war latest: Why Google's luck is about to run out

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Coat

If Oracle win... what then?

With the majority of smartphones in the world running Android, will the owners see an Oracle Victory as an attack on each and everyone of them?

What about those Execs who are about to sign an Oracle Purchase Order? Will they say "nope, not gonna do it".

It will be interesting to see what happens if Oracle prevail.

It might be that they win in court but lose in the court of public opinion.

Could this win actually mean the end of Oracle as we know it?

Is this Larry's grand exit plan?

Mines the one with a front row ticket in the pocket.

Microsoft promises free terrible coffee every month you use Edge

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Where's the coffee?

While you are correct, the stuff that Starbucks serve up is a huge step up from Gas Station coffee unless you add something like Vanilla to it.

Oracle campaigns for third Android Java infringement trial

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Steve Davies 3 The never ending Story

I thought NK was the perfect match for the huge ego of Larry E.

You said it, 'egomaniac'.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

The never ending Story

Oracle's lawyers must have been reading the history of the SCO case.

That one still raises its head out of the slimy grave it was consigned to every so often.

The SCO vs IBM case was started in 2003

Why don't they just give up and use the money to help Larry buy a Country, say north korea.

Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell for Linux, Macs. Repeat, Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Yecch.

could not agree more.

A few years back, MS issued a patch that had a side effect of stopping the MSCS cluster control plugin from working (Server 2008R2). WTF! Thankfully, they actually started to test it after it had been released (SOP then).

A week later we got an updated patch that rectified it. Won't get the 200+ man hours we expended trying to sort it out back though.

Thankfully, the customer learned a valuable lesson and didn't roll out Patch Tuesday releases the next day but now waits for at least a week.

Shame that us mere plebs (who can't legally buy enterprise edition) can't stop W10 patches from being rolled out and crapping all over your system.

Ad-blocking ‘plateaus’, claims hopeful ad industry

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
FAIL

Re: It isn't just the ads

I visited one site in the USA a few months back.

It wanted to load 67, yes sixty seven bits of javascript from other sites.

I found this by firing up a VM and using an OOTB IE 9. Well, I was using my laptop in a Starbucks. The VM is one that I overwrite after use with a clean version.

It took almost 5 minutes to load and I was in the middle of Portland, OR.

I have to wonder if the owners of the site are happy with all that ad revenue and tracking cookies (24 of them) that get deposited on your system. One had an expiry of 01-Jan-3033. WTF?

I wonder how many people just give up and go somewhere else with sites like that? Probably loads so they lose revenue so they add more ads etc etc

The increase of advertising will soon make the internet unusable without adblocking.

Happy Anniversary: What’s new, what’s missing in Microsoft’s giant mobile update

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: I just wish that MS would come out and say.

No more Hardware?

Where does that leave the Surface?

I find it hard to believe that MS will can this flagship device in the near term.

It is not another Kin or Zune. They really have too much riding on it to can it now.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

never mind the quality, feel the width

Quote

The quality of development on Windows 10 has gone up this year

Really? The recent borking of systems with the updates and the disk thrashing are hardly evidence of a quality operating system in 2016. In 1996? Possibly but not now.

There is indeed a very long way to go with quality.

£11bn later: Smart meters project delayed again for Crapita tests

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: If you have a PV Array then the last thing you want is a smart meter

Strange that mine is running backwards as I type this and yes I'm in the UK.

Apparently there are different types of old style meter and I have a good one. My PV Array was fitted last March.

As for the feed in tarriff... It is reducing quite a bit over the next few years.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/system/files/docs/2016/07/tariff_tables_july_2016.pdf

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

If you have a PV Array then the last thing you want is a smart meter

With the old style of meter anything you generate is fed back into the grid and your meter runs in reverse.

That means you only pay for what leccy you use in excess of what you generate.

With a smart meter, your generated leccy is bought at a far lower cost than what you consume.

guess who wins then? Not you. The power company gets leccy at a lower cost from you than from any other source.

F**k smart meters.

Ford announces plans for mass production of self-driving cars by 2021

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

And Lawyers everywhere start

rubbing their hands with glee and begin to order a shed load more yellow legal pads.

This will be a field day for class action law suits.

The slightest 'ding' will result in a law suit being filed.

Intel fabs to churn out 10nm ARM chips for LG smartphones next year

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: So will Intel try to leverage this and get ARM to back down on servers?

MS per core licensing will be the holy grail to them then.

Think about a Snapdragon SOC. How many cores does it have? 4 or 6 or what?

Even though some are reserved for Graphics

Then apply a license per core at the same rate as they charge for an X86 per core license. Suddenly that cheap as chips (doh) ARM SOC becomes very, very expensive.

Could this be the huge pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for MS

or

Will it be the final stone that makes businesses stop using MS software for good.

This will get interesting. More popcorn please.

Some Windows 10 Anniversary Update: SSD freeze

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Huh,

C:/ProgramData gets full of crap so yes you should unhide it and look inside at regular intervals.

VMWare leaves copy of all the files you copy to a VM in this folder tree. Wondered where all your disk space went? Well go and see how big this is.

But naturally Nanny (a.k.a. Microsoft) knows best so fully expect a patch to hide the directory to be along soon. After all, it is their machine not yours isn't it.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Where are all the MS apologists?

cue the complainers about 'systemd' and... well everything done in the past 5 years.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Business as usual then?

sigh.

What was that song that got played constantly? Oh yes... 'Things can only get better'

With Windows 10, it appears it is more of a case of 'Things can only get worse'

The question is though, will MS learn from their mistakes?

Lets wait and see eh?

Apple allowed to put up bit barn in the Fields of Athenry

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Once the land has been cleared...

Quote

Other companies are re-using old factory buildings - much more environment friendly.

Not always. What if the old building is riddled with Asbestos. What then eh?

As for destroying the garden of Eden (which is in the Middle East and Saddam and everyone else has had a real go at it) we shall have to wait and see won't we?

Apple has been granted planning permission. This more than likely comes with a list of restrictions longer than your arm. They will be held to account if they don't meet those restrictions. Just like any company in this day and age. If they fail then we will know all about it here and then we can vent our collective anger at more rotten fruit coming out of Cupertino. It will be more than justified.

Lets wait and see eh?

Google's brand new OS could replace Android

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Coat

Re: Fuchsia

Cuttings and Fuschias? Yes.

but will we be able to 'fork' it over.

Mines the one with the rooting powder in the pocket

Native Skype for Windows Phone walked behind shed, shot heard

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: It'll be available on Windows Mobile

I know windows phones are cheap when compared to iPhones and Galaxy S* models but do you really think that someone will go out and replace a perfectly good phone with a Windows 10 abomination just so that they can continue to use a full fat version of the Skype client?

Oh wait...

Yes... people are that stupid.

Perhaps this is the MS Cunning plan to achieve world mobile phone domination?

Once the OSX/MacOS version of Skype stops working I'll be rid of MS for good.

I did say that I'd gotten rid of all MS products but I forgotten that I still used Skype from time to time.

Looks like I'll be looking for an alternative that runs on Linux, MacOs and Windows pretty soon then.

Would Apple dare to step into the breach and release Messenger for Windows? Hmmmm

It is a real shame that MS buys a product and then proceeds to shaft the users like this. Happens pretty well every time they open their wallet. The MS Kiss of death. Does anyone in Redmond ever look at the number of users before and after and ....

Like hell they would. They don't care about the users.

Bees bring down US stealth fighter

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

Brings a new meaning to

'Buzzing' the enemy

£1m military drone crashed in Wales after crew disabled anti-crash systems – report

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Drones for UK that can't land in the Wet

Nah, it was chopped out to save a few hundred million. After all, the bad guys are all in the desert where it don't rain now does it? Balls. It snows in Iraq and Syria.

Anyway, what idiot decided that a laser altimiter was a good idea. So what happens when the bad guys fire a laser at the drone? What then?

This whole program seems to be a complete TITSUP from start to finish.

Russia is planning to use airships as part of a $240bn transport project

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Sometimes one really has to wonder about the subheadings around here.

I was thinking more about the cover of Led Zep 1 and how not to do it.

As for Russia, there are vast parts of the country (and in Kazakhstan) that are almost unreachable by wheeled vehicle.

Really heavy lift choppers or indeed Airships are ideal for supplying these wildernesses.

I've visited northern Siberia [1] and some places we visited were only accessible using a Hovercraft or amphibious vehicle but that is only workable for 3-4 months a year. Using an Airship with air temps of -50C (in still air) would be problematic. Many steel alloys are very brittle at these temp. Building them would be an interesting engineering problem. The Russians have plenty of experience building kit that works in these temps. I wouldn't dismiss these plans out of hand.

[1] The biggest problem facing us were the gazillion, gazillion mossies/sq metre that fill the air anywhere near water in summer.

The curious case of a wearables cynic and his enduring fat bastardry

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Fruity watch wearers

Having seen

1) a woman get mugged for her iDevice. (The thief ran into a couple of builders who floored him. Plod took him away.)

and

2) someone pay in a shop by wafting their Fruity Watch at the NFC terminal

all within 24 hours in London,

I had my doubts about wearables but to be able to pay for things without risking your phone or physical wallet (you know those things you keep folding notes it) seems to me to be a very good solution.

I am sure there are downsides (other than it being Apple tech) that will get pointed out very soon but that is one use that Apple have got very right. Simple to use and seems to work (from my very limited survey).

If I

1) Wore a watch (not done that since about 1980)

and

2) Had a smartphone I might look at some form of wearable device.

Until then my old nokia dumb phone and my Half-Hunter pocket watch will do very nicely thank you.

Now if I could get an Apple watch inside a half hunter case then I'd be more than willing to open my wallet.

What next for the F-35 after Turkey's threats to turn its back on NATO?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

I'm sure Mr Putin

would offer some SU-35's to his pal Erdogan as a more than ample replacement

What then for the Turkish desire to be part of the EU? Probably accelerated by 5 years.

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook's ad-blocker buster: It's a block party!

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

They (Facebook) have a nerve

To quote a company statement

"We’re disappointed that ad blocking companies are punishing people on Facebook as these new attempts don’t just block ads but also posts from friends and Pages," the company said in a statement.

How is improving the user experience by reducing the number of ads slung at the poor user( sorry product) punishment? It is their shoddy code that blocks post from friends.(as detailed on many other sites)

I am so glad that I've never even visited their website let alone signed my life away to join up.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Don't forget 'connected' TV's

once you plug in that RJ45 or enable WiFi your viewing habbits (and probably a lot more) is gone in a flash to the various motherships for distribution anyone who wants to pay for it.

Don't forget to put some tape over that camera on the TV unless you really are a voyeur.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Unhappy

Where's the off switch?

I will bet a pint of three that it won't be long before we get devices that won't switch off until the user has viewed the required number of ads that day.

Cox stiffed for $25m after letting subscribers pirate music online

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Coming soon to Cox users

A new fee that they have to pay called something like

LEgal Protection Insurance

Well, they have to get their users to pay the fine somehow don't they?

Thay aren't going to let this piffling fine affect their profits.

UK local govt body blasts misleading broadband speed ads

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Really?

And pigs might fly...

As the US Telco market has amply deomostrated all those little extra charges are where they make the money.

only £0.99/month for us to produce your bill and let you read it on the internet

only £0.99/month for the box on the wall there you plug your phone into (does not matter if you paid for it yourself

only £15.99/month for Caller ID

only £5.99/month to let us block all those annoying PPI/MS Support/etc/etc/etc calls.

and so it will go on no matter what OFCOM says.

Unless OFCOM threatens to revoke their license nothing will change and they'll find new ways to gouge us each and every months.

Reactive? Serverless? Put to bed? What's next for Java. Speak up, Oracle

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

What's next for Java?

Death?

{because of the way Oracle has behaved since it got ownership}

Google Chrome will beat Flash to death with a shovel: Why... won't... you... just... die!

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Why wait until December?

Just Nuke Flash Now!

Someone please tell the likes of the BBC that they need to pull their finger out and drop the need for users to install that bug ridden sorry excuse for a bit of sofware called Flash NOW!

London's 'automatic' Tube trains suffered 750 computer failures last year

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: So what's the message here, then ??

Quote

And if he wants to see a really brave implementation of ETCS and ATO, look at what NR are planning for on the Thameslink core in 2018.

I think the NUR will have more than a few words to say about that given the present problems Sarf of the River. The last southern train from my local station goes at 16:28 this week.

If NR think they can get 24 tph (trains per hour) in each direction in the peaks through the Thameslink core then can I have some of what they are smoking please?

No supercomputer cash? Time for a systems squeeze

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Thumb Up

DB Query design

This

With a read-only copy of the data, you can query to your heart's content in the knowledge that you won't be slowing production down by soaking up system power and/or locking tables for minutes on end

got me smiling.

I did an audit of a system not that long ago. I found that the developers had absoultely no concept of DB data locking. All queries locked rows even if they were being used for reference/validation purposes.

We got those queries changed to read only onese (for example with SQLServer, using 'with (NoLock)') and the overall system throughput went up by more than 20%.

Nice article for a Monday morning.

Linux 4.8 rc1 lands, with Surface 3 support promised!

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Keep on hacking

Unstable? compared to what? Windows 10? What were you comparing it to?

As most of the updates were documentation that is clearly not ..... code.

As for forthcoming Surface support. We'll probably get it just as Microsoft announce

1) They have locked down the UEFI so that only Windows will boot

OR

2) They are stopping production of all Surface devices.

OR

3) They are dropping the Windows kernel and adoping Linux with the Windows 10 GUI.

Which is more likely?

Windows 10 Anniversary Update is borking boxen everywhere

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Boot scoot

I think you may be 'speaking too soon'.

I get the feeling that there is some Evil Genius sorry, Madman somewhere inside Microsoft who has set out to bork every Windows 10 system in existence.

As he strokes his white cat he chuckles to himself and mentally ticks off another million borks of upgraded systems.

His motto is 'the day ain't done until all updated systems don't run'.

come back Balmer, all is forgiven.

Canadian govt to cloud providers: Want our business? Stay local, eh

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: carry through

A good number of those who live south of the border seem to get in funk when presented with anything NOT in feet, lbs, Gallons (US), Pint(US), Farenheit, time (AM/PM) and the odd way of presenting dates

Those silly metric units are not for them. Foreign rubbish (as stated to me last June about 10km from the US/CDN border in Washington State)

Amazon launches its own plane line. Sort of

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

What about those now empty BHS stores

Just asking for someone to rent them.

Given Amazons arm twisting ability like,

hey Mr Councillor, we have your systems on AWS. wanna keep them running? Well give us a 100yr buisness rates holiday. Yes? Job done.

We'd better watch out. There are vast swathes of the US where the only stores left are Wallyworld. Now they are closing a lot of them leaving people up to 100miles away from anything more that a Gas Station Convienece store

We don't want Amazon to be the only store in town. They could do it.

BlackBerry: Forget phones, Lawsuits In Motion is back – and it's firing off patent claims

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: bazza - try getting your facts right

did you even bother to take half a second to read what I posted.

I did not mention

- Patents

- Copyright

- Contract

All I said was 'sue, sue ,sue'.

Sheesh.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

The sign of a dying company

Sue, sue ,sue

Look how well that plan did for SCO.

Email proves UK boffins axed from EU research in Brexit aftermath

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Time to retaliate then?

Just stop advertising contracts in the EU Journal.

Then the scientific funding/participation will get restored in a thrice.

If they stop playing by the rules then so should we.

This won't end well for anyone.

Microsoft: You liked Windows 10 so much, you'll get 2 more in 2017

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Ample is as good as a feast

I was thinking more of taking them to Badwater, Death Valley and leaving them alone in the middle of the salt pan with no water and no hat or shoes.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

do you enjoy

Flogging youself with a dead horse?

Mint with a Windows 10 skin. Shudder. The word I'm looking for is Masocist. Yep that is it.

Oh well, at least it is not 'Genuine Windows' underneath.

Render crashing PCs back to their component silicon: They deserve it

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Windows getting its own back on you?

eh Mr Dabbs?

Well, using Orifice is IMHO just asking to be shafted where it really hurts.

Time to wean the Mrs onto A Penguin or Fruity system?

you know, just to keep the marriage alive if you know what I mean - nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Quip away, but Microsoft Excel 365's REST APIs win the day

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Can the downvoters please

explain why they downvoted a very simple and straightforward post?

Perhaps they have been infected by the zika-cloud virus and are scared of going anywhere outside their little cloud bubble?

I really don't know but the thought of trusting MS with their new T's & C's with anything is just wierd.

given them all your contacts yet? Have those contacts been send spam advertising? go on, I'm sure we'd like to know.

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Wonderous story

should be filed away by every support person. Then it can be wheled out to shouw the beancounters and the PHB's why you need that new bit of kit as a backup to the old 'new server'.

Just wondering... Does the company that Earl tried to do this work for still exist?

Microsoft extends bug bounty to cover Edge remote code exec

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Pay is still way too cheap to do Microsoft's job for them

and in other news we see Apple doing just that.

I think your thoughts about MS being cheapskates is not far from the truth.

Samsung Electronics reportedly ponders buying Fiat parts

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Just because????

Apple is (cough cough) supposed to be

1) making an electric car

2) rumoured to be talking to Fiat-Chrysler about a JV

Just wondering you know...

BlackBerry DTEK 50: How badly do you want a secure Android?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

Well if you have something to hide, don't go to the USA the the USSC ruling will not apply now will it.

Oh Wait! The UK Plod can send you to pokey for not unlocking your phone regardless of the device's capability to use fingerprints

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Fingerprint Snesor ? WTF!!!!

Quote

NOBODY with a working pair of braincells (or more) wants a fingerprint censor! If the image of your fingerprint gets 0wned, you are fucked

So what about all those millions of iPhones with fingerprint sensors then?

Perhaps your comment should be

NOBODY with a working pair of braincells (or more) wants a fingerprint censor unless it has a hardware vaults to store them in(like the iPhone) If the image of your fingerprint gets 0wned, you are fucked

I see this as a general problem for Android phones.

And now we are getting iris scanners... Just as bad then?

VMworld 2016: What happens in Vegas ... could be just a desert trip

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

A trip to the Desert

is IMHO a darn sight more interesting than Vegas itself.

Some of the landscapes in the Nevada Desert (Area 51 excluded naturally) are absoultely stunning.

Just gotta keep an eye out for those pesky traffic cops when going from Vegas to Ely.

Got a genius enterprise tech idea? Tell the world about it

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Why?

Why would I do this and NOT already have the idea already going through a Patent Application?

Remember in the USofA, it is first to file. So I stand up and tell the world about my idea and bang some sharp SOB gets their patent application in before me. Naturally, I don't have the million(or two) USD it would take to fight them in the courts esp if they get the venue moved to that well known rump of Texas.

30 years ago I would not have thought twice about telling the world but now? Not a chance.

Sign of the times.