Posts by John 104

So about that Atari reboot console... you might want to sit down. It's going to be late, OK?

WTF

Why all the processing power? You can run this on almost nothing. and 4K? Seriously? These games were designed to run on shit 720x480 tube TVs. If anything, 4K will make them look worse.

Qualcomm wins Apple patent case, loses Apple patent case, wins Apple patent case, loses Apple patent case...

Hang In There

Big Q can hang in there. It isn't like their only customer was Apple.

F5 Networks buys into open source, hands over $670m for Nginx! Double Nginx! Infinity Nginx!

Oh Joy...

I can only imagine the frustration of future implementers as they try to get technical support from F5.

"Whats that? You need help with one of our products? No problem! Just open your web browser and navigate to devcentral.f5.com and open a new thread on the user groups. I'm sure someone there can figure it out for you."

"Wait, what? What is this support contract I paid for supposed to for be then?"

"...."

Demand for HP printer supplies in free-fall – and Intel CPU shortages aren't helping either

Re: Two years ago...

I played the same game with a previous HP laser. Eventually the drums got so dirty that it stopped printing anything legible.

I do still use HP and have a nice desktop color laser. Slightly more expensive to buy than the near give away toner printers, but the cost per page is less than a penny. And, yes, if HP would lower their prices for their toner, they'd do a lot better. I use the Green branded stuff off of Amazon and can get a full load out for slightly more than a single cartridge cost from HP. SO glad lexmark lost that lawsuit!

Are you a Windows 1 in 10 (1809)? Or a mighty 80 percenter (1803)?

Enterprise

Even in the enterprise, pulling media from the volume licensing site, it is tricky to NOT get 1809. 1803 is out there and can be found, but you have to dig a little. Avoiding it like the plague. We can get previous builds, but I'd ratner not skip 2 years of security fixes...

Excuse me, sir. You can't store your things there. Those 7 gigabytes are reserved for Windows 10

@Tom 38

"It took me about 8 hours of fiddling, uninstalling things to get enough free space to install updates"

Funny. You could have installed Mint on it in about 20 minutes. I did the same thing to my daughters HP Stream and it runs like a champ.

FYI: Twitter's API still spews enough metadata to reveal exactly where you lived, worked

Simple Solution

On the one hand, the data shouldn't be available like it is through the API.

On the other, the simple solution to all of this is to not broadcast to the world every little detail of your life! We cant be completely anonymous if we use any digital services. However, we can be wise about it and not give our data away at every turn.

Some of the examples above are real world scenarios. In the US, insurance companies use all sorts of meta data to set rates. Did you know your credit score goes into setting your rate? It's all out there, waiting to be abused to separate you from your rights and money.

Re: That data is useless anyway, why keep it?

Oh really?

https://news.avclub.com/kevin-hart-apologizes-to-lgbtq-community-again-says-he-1831576953

This is why the data isn't useless. The internet never dies and people never cease to dig as deep as they can to throw someone under the bus.

Your two-minute infosec roundup: Drone arrests, Alexa bot hack, Windows zero-day, and more

FIOA and AT&T

Late to the conversation. Holidays and such.

So EFF sues the government for docments and finally gets them, the case is dismissed and....? Where are the congressional hearings on abuse of power, violation of the 4th amendment? Judicial overreach? Makes me fucking sick.

Re: No one is holding Assange hostage

No one is holding Assange hostage

Assange is free to leave the embassy any time he desires. Brexiting the UK may be a little problematic since he is a UK fugitive waiting prosecution.

FTFY

IBM is trying to throttle my age-discrimination lawsuit – axed ace cloud salesman

Re: American companies...

@American Companies

Yes, because it is only the American version of homo sapiens who run big greedy companies.

Give us a break and stow your nationalistic prejudice.

If at first or second you don't succeed, you may be Microsoft: Hold off installing re-released Windows Oct Update

Re: I have had enough

@HKmk23

I have had enough

I have taken all my pcs off the internet except one W10 which is not connected to my network. All the others (five) have been rebuilt to Windows 7 professional sp1. This give me back control and Micro###t can no longer force updates, screw my systems, or any of their other "advantages".... when and if they manage to develop a computer system for us the users (known as customers) instead of the coffee klatch at Redmond'a wank tank I may try again.

Clearly you haven't had enough. If you had, you would have put Linux on there or bought a Mac. You are getting close, though

For all the good it does them . . .

In any case, I'm glad Microsoft is doing its level best to promote the use of Linux.

You really couldn't find a better advocate.

Indeed. After the update bricked my HP laptop, I installed the latest version of Mint and am not looking back. - Windows System Admin.

Sudden Windows 10 licence downgrades to forced Xcode upgrades: The week at Microsoft

Insanity

The rush for consumers to PAY to be data mined is truly alarming. Alexa, Cortana, Google Home, whatever the new facebook one is, Siri. Are consumers really this blind to what is going on? Are the "Shiny neatness cool gadget" thrills that appealing or necessary that consumers are so willing to completely throw away any last semblance of privacy?

Palliative care for Windows 10 Mobile like a Crimean field hospital, but with even less effort

Re: "The goal is to make the OS team work more like lean startups"

The goal is to make the users the beta testers. It is pretty common in software these days. Save a cost by shoving untested code on your user base and see what happens. This was pretty evident when 10 came out and they announced that they were pretty much doing that.

You see it in games as well. "Early release", "Beta Release", etc. People lap it up to get games sooner. Maybe it works in that model, but for a user who relies on their operating system for productivity, not so much.

I'm a Windows Server admin and have been since the NT 4 days. However, when the October update killed my home laptop (HP with Skylake chipset) over an effing keyboard driver, that was the last straw. Mint installed and working great. Eventually the whole house will be converted and I'll get some good exposure to the other platform.

I'll continue to learn and use/support Windows at work, because it pays well. But for personal use I'm done with spying operating systems, lack of proper testing, and lousy responses from the companies that make them. Microsoft, looking at you.

Top AI conference NIPS won't change its name amid growing protest over 'bad taste' acronym

Logic?

So..., they wanted the survey to include people who didn't go to the conference because they didn't like the title (which I also thought was referring to slang for Japanese, post WWII). How exactly were they supposed to get these people to take the survey if they didn't know who they were? What an idiotic statement.

WiMLDS Workshop. This workshop is non-inclusive to men. How dare they be so sexist and divisive? Did they ask any men if they wanted to be part of this workshop? Perhaps if the men had known about the survey that the didn't take, they would have gotten surprising results?

Wi-Fi Alliance ditches 802.11 spec codes for consumer-friendly naming scheme

"This noob-friendly generational naming convention is being applied retroactively, so no longer will you refer to 802.11ac or 802.11n. Instead, say Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 4 when conversing with members of the general public."

Well, that should clear things up for this new generation of Reg readers.

Apple macOS Mojave: There's goth mode but developers will have to wait for the juicy stuff

Re: News App

@Dan 55

Give Mint a try for the desktop. Newest 19 version fixed the text scaling issues that 18 had on smaller screens. Also seems that they have done some power management tweaks to get better battery life out of laptops.

Libre Office is fine for most use and is very polished. You'd still need a mail client if you are going thick, but most web mail interfaces get the job done these days.

And yeah, how they didn't learn a thing from the Windows 8 disaster is a mystery. Mobile OS does not belong on a desktop/laptop. Although, in the case of Mac OS, maybe it would be an improvement? I really can't stand the way it does stuff and how things are arranged. There is a reason every flavor of *nix, Windows has a basic start bar with organized shortcuts. It just works for humans.

Day two – and Windows 10 October 2018 Update trips over Intel audio

Cancel? Yeah, sure thing, buddy.

This isn't the first time that we've seen the "Click cancel if you want but we are going to do it anyway," feature.

RIP Peter Firmin: Clangers creator dies aged 89

Similar

"One of Firmin's last interviews finds him criticising the soulless quality of modern CGI animations."

Here in the States, we lost Ray Harryhausen a few years ago. He had a similar take on CGI.

Ray almost singlehadedly filmed the stop motion action in all the Charles Schneer produced moivies, along with Jason and the Argonauts, and many others.

It is a painstaking art that really is underrated by today's film goers.

Apple MacBook butterfly keyboards 'defective', 'prone to fail' – lawsuit

FTFY

Despite awareness of the defect, Apple touted – and continues to tout – the %Apple Product Here% as having a superior and highly responsive %Computing Device Here%,

'Our way or the highway' warranty scams shot down by US watchdog: It's OK to use unofficial parts to repair your gear

@AC

You might want to ask yourself the questions in the first paragraph while pondering that this is the same company who blamed users for holding their phone wrong to cover up a shit antenna design.

If any company has people sitting in a board room brainstorming on how to screw over customers, its Apple.

Seriously, why do people buy their crap? They give two shits for their customers, unless they are buying something new that is.

They forked this one up: Microsoft modifies open-source code, blows hole in Windows Defender

Worked On That Team...

I had the disprivilege to work on that team years ago. This in no way surprises me at all. The team was very aggressive in dropping new definitions - every 4 hours on the fast track, 8 hours on regular. However, their methodology for delivering the new bits was all based on a scripted work flow with flag files, and the like. It was a hugely delicate process. Any time one piece of it didn't complete on time or as expected, the whole thing came crashing down and had to be manhandled. It sucked.

Yes, It was GIANT antivirus. That turned into Defender. Their other security products are based on their own code I think.

Are meta, self-referential or recursive science-fiction films doomed?

Re: Ready Player One

Ugh. I have been trying to read the book for a few months now. It is horribly written with such a cliche' plot, the only saving grace is the references to 80s culture. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so I get pretty much all of it. But that can only carry a story so far. If the book is better than the movie, I don't think it will sit too well with me. But maybe visuals will help.

Starship Troopers.

Great book and I loved the movie when it came out. I was in the minority, but I guess people eventually come around. And if you loved the book and haven't read John Steakelys Armor, you owe it to yourself to do so. When asked if he would consider a sequel by JS, Heinlein told him he should write it. So he did.

Dune

The Lynch version was dark, moody, and poorly paced. The SciFi channel remake of the late 90s or early 2000s (don't remember exactly) was much more enjoyable (miniseries).

For some reason, you lot love 'em. So here are the many ThinkPads of 2018

Crap

I use a T470 at work. I hate it.

Moderate weight, no biggie. Reasonably powerful. Nice form factor.

However, it absolutely blows chunks when being docked and undocked. I repeatedly have to fiddle with network devices to get it to work. The other day it was the worst yet. I had to remove my network device in device manager to get it to enable. Not to get it to pick up the network as if it was diconnected. To get it to work at all. Why was it disabled when undocked? PITA.

Waking from sleep is slow. This may be a byproduct of having to communicate with the docking station. I don't really care.

Keyboard is nice though.

I'm far happier with my HP Envy. It's a previous generation I7 and is faster and more reliable than the 470. Cost less too.

Planning on forking out for the new iPad? Better take darn good care of it

@Boohoo4u

What a stupid reader.

Some people will complain about anything when they don't have reading comprehension skills.

Did you miss the part about not waterproof? And not durable?

Fender's 'smart' guitar amp has no Bluetooth pairing controls

Re: I will not hear a word said against Fender

@James Huges

Have you picked up any new Fender guitars? Even their super expensive kit just feels cheap. Frets are poorly filed, action is crap, sound is crap. Its all just a huge marketing machine for wanna be rock stars to buy in to. As soon as they came out with fake road worn guitars, that was the end for me. The Japanese stuff is well made and worth the cash if you can get a decent one.

As for gimmic Amps. No thanks. Why would you want to play anything other than guitar through your guitar amp? The speaker isn't designed to play voices or deep bass, or whatever else isn't guitar. Or, at least, it shouldn't be.

I'll stick to my mid 80s Warmoth Boogie Body and my Orange Micro Dark in its custom cabinet with my nice sounding Eminence RamRod. Sounds fantastic, no pedals needed.

BOFH: We want you to know you have our full support

Steam

Steam support.

Reminds me very much of trying to get anyone from Steam to help you with an issue. it is the biggest joke of circular redirects I've ever seen.

We translated Intel's crap attempt to spin its way out of CPU security bug PR nightmare

And Nothing about Google?

Those twats are responsible for this late night patch frenzy that my company and countless thousands more, are dealing with. Their excuse for releasing the details is thin at best. So now, instead of a small number of nefarious types speculating about these exploits, the whole world + dog knows and vendors were forced to release their patches out of band. Good job ass holes.

Ubuntu 17.10 pulled: Linux OS knackers laptop BIOSes, Intel kernel driver fingered

wow

Since Ubuntu is free and you accept some sort of GPL agreement, I'd guess these folks are screwed. Which is pretty lame. Glad I'm lazy and don't rush to put the latest thing on my HP or I'd be in the same boat (possibly). I have no optical media as is with many laptops these days.

Republican tax bill ready to rescue hard-up tech giants, struggling rich

IT Angle?

Oh, that's right, el Reg isn't a tech site any more. I can't believe this bull shit political article made it to the front page. You guys are twats for letting this fly, and for allowing the political editorializing in it.

Stick to technology and leave the rest to the foul media.

*No, mentioning Apple, Microsoft, et. all, does NOT qualify this as an IT article.

IBM to expunge over 500 people in latest redundo round

Re: Are IBM outsourcers or innovators?

@ AC pedantic.

You know, I struggled with how to phrase that. I always thought of 1st world as Western civilization, including Russia, as they have been a developed country for quite some time. 2nd world as places like India or China, etc, where the economy was modern but quality of life was lower when compared to more developed nations. 3rd for the rest. Probably a pretty narrow and uninformed view. Thanks for the clarification!

Re: Are IBM outsourcers or innovators?

@AC

IBM WAS an innovative business solutions company. One that charged a ton of money for their solutions. But customers obviously don't need those solutions as much as they used to. Otherwise, IBM wouldn't be trying to make it in the cloud compute space, and they wouldn't be in such a panic to stay afloat. Small layoffs are part of any business. But how many tens of thousands of people have they laid off in the last 24 months?

Computing has changed and they didn't see the change fast enough and are getting buried as a result.

(1) "As IBM transforms into the premier cognitive computing and cloud platform company, we continue to remix our skills and invest in these priority areas. "

What a laugh. If IBM were the premier cognitive computing and cloud company they wish they were, they wouldn't be having mass layoffs. If they were even on track to be a contender, they wouldn't be having mass layoffs. And the fact that they continue to lay off and outsource IT roles should be an indicator to anyone interested in hosted compute to look elsewhere. I can think of 3 more reliable companies that are doing a bang up job of it these days...

(2) IBM does this in each market in which we operate, adapting to meet local client needs. Our clients expect no less.

Your clients expect a reliable business partner who has the technical expertise to meet their needs. Only the most established crony business partners would keep contracts with IBM at this point. Asking them to implement, support, and maintain a workflow for new business would be business suicide.

(3) IBM currently has about 25,000 job openings around the world for new skills in growth areas such as cloud, analytics, security, and social and mobile technologies

What a snake oil statement this one is. Did they not just say that they are laying off higher paying workers so they can ship their support and such to low paying 2nd world countries?

This downward spiral won't stop until there is almost nothing left of IBM. They can't make margin because they aren't relevant or because there is too much fat on their contracts and no one wants to pay it. They cut staffing costs to keep management in gold, meanwhile losing customers because they don't have the proper staff. Rinse repeat. It was a long run anyway. I see IBM going the way of Motorola. Someone will buy up all the IP and that will be the end of it.

It's a decade since DevOps became a 'thing' – and people still don't know what it means

Scrumban

Now THAT made me laugh. Because SCRUM or Kanban weren't good enough. We must combine them! Please tell me it was a joke?

What really gets my goat here in the comments are the developers looking down their noses at ops guys (like myself) as if what we do isn't just as important or necessary as the code that gets written. If I had a dollar for every developer who was as clueless about systems integration as I am about programming in C++, I'd be retired. You can't have one without the other no matter how you slice it. Put it in AWS or Azure, sure. but there are still highly skilled technicians keeping things going on the back end so that your code has a place to live.

As to the fellow who mentioned VMs towards the top. The reason VMs are around is because the hardware that we use today is so undersubscribed that it made sense to abstract it out. It isn't because of the laundry list of ignorance you mentioned.

Russia threatens to set up its 'own internet' with China, India and pals – let's take a closer look

it may take a day for everyone on the internet to reach it (in reality most internet users will do so within an hour or so).

Only if they don't understand DNS TTLs. Setting a lower TTL prior to a migration will mitigate this...

Report: Women make up just 17% of IT workforce, paid 15% less than men

OK, 17% of IT are women. How many women vs men are actual applicants to work? That would be your telling factor on whether there is hiring discrimination. Otherwise its a useless number. Maybe there are only 17% because there are not that many women candidates. You can't make someone pursue IT just because you see a perceived defect in numbers... IT isn't for everyone. It is thankless work for the most part and requires an interest in the nuts and bolts of software and hardware that most people don't have. So tired of these reports.

Microsoft's memory randomization security defense is a little busted in Windows 8, 10

sysadmins can set a registry value to force bottom-up ASLR, a wonderful task if you're in charge of a fleet of machines

Said the writer who has obviously never administered anything other and a single Windows Desktop.

iPhone X: Bargain! You've just bagged yourself a cheap AR device

"Apple's genius with the iPhone X may be in launching a device that, as it did with apps before"

There was nothing genius about iPhone apps. Palm and Microsoft had been doing it for years before. Apple just made it more mainstream because they have a very good marketing dept.

As for the VR platform. One could say the exact same things for Samsung and Google with their VR platforms. Huge user base, been out for a few years now and still no compelling reason to have it other than curiosity.

Like Sammy and Google, Apple is just searching for relevance in an overcrowded market.

Amazon Key door-entry flaw: No easy fix to stop rogue couriers burgling your place unseen

Flawed

So Amazon assumes it is just delivery drivers would re-enter? What about someone who waits at a local delivery center, looks for the big package, follows the driver to their destination, waits for them to exit, and then starts the camera jamming process?

Nice try, Amazon, but your spin is weak.

Shiver me timbers! 67cm Playmobil pirate ship sets sail for Caribbean

Wow

Wow, Reg. Way to regurgitate their entire synopsis for your article.

https://track-adventure.squarespace.com/our-adventure/

Still, very fun idea and execution.

Stop worrying and let the machines take our jobs – report

So... the people who lost jobs to robots, who pays for their new training? What about up and coming people? Who pays for their education to get some other type of work?

And don't forget, it isn't just middle class workers who get the shaft here. Every self checkout station in any store is a job lost.

Mythbuster seeks cash for roller skates to wear in virtual reality

Re: $50K?

No kidding. Guy is a fucking millionaire and he's asking for money? What a tool.

Picture this if you will: Facebook trousers $77,794. Every. Minute.

"We built these tools to help people connect and to bring us closer together, and they used them to try to undermine our values. What they did is wrong, and we are not going to stand for it."

Meanwhile, here are our corporate account details. you can make your daily deposits here.

Atto, boy! Eggheads fire laser for 43 attoseconds, fastest Man-made spurt

Re: The science, the hype ...: let's digest the digest

@Cuddles

Thank you for writing this so I didn't have to. So many people thing solar is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but its inefficiency has always been its weakest link.

What's HPE Next? Now it's unemployment for 'thousands' of staff

Cut Executive Pay?

I don't see any mention of reducing exorbitant pay of executives to help the bottom line. Funny that.

Still love my HP laserjets though.

Sex harassment scandal scoops up Silicon Valley's Slimy Scoble

Re: Why is it...

@Mark65

Everyone's sorry when they get caught.

No. They are sorry they GOT caught. Not sorry for their actions. It's pathetic.

Brit spooks 'kept oversight bodies in the dark' over data sharing

So, just like the NSA

Do things you aren't supposed to do, knowing you shouldn't, but not giving a damn anyway. Keep doing it until you get caught, and then explain your way out of if, while lying about how you are going to fix it and not do it again. Then do it again. Fuckers.

BOFH: Oh dear. Did someone get lost on the Audit Trail?

Priceless

Best ending in a long while. Love it!