Posts by DiViDeD

Australia to build six 'cyber shields' to defend its shores

Re: This will be the same Australia ...?

That's the one. The only cyber security 'experts' whose built in "This address is blocked for your safety" page triggers an UNSAFE SITE warning from every browser on the planet.

Scientists suggest possible solution to space-induced bone loss

Re: ...treatment for brain changes and other detrimental health effects of space exposure...

From what I've seen so far of the Remastered set, the upscaling has been done pretty well.

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

Re: functionality

Back in the days of the Last Great MS Office Overhaul, I was tasked with training the office staff (especially Accounts staff, PAs and secretaries) on the wondrous new world of The Ribbon.

The accounts guys had Excel workbooks with custom menus which were no longer supported, and they were faced with trying to recreate their old menus in that bloody Ribbon xml - they were beancounters, not developers. And "why isn't there an option for Range on the Insert menu anymore? Oh it's now in the Formulas menu. For why?

And PAs and secretaries who knew Word and Outlook backwards were like fish out of water for months!

I remember a sharp uptick in water cooler conversations that started with "have you seen this thing called Open Office? It's more like our old Office..."

Re: You can reformat into ntfs using the windows usb boot installer

The most informative error "message" I got from a recent install of Win 11 Pro was:

Oops! something seems to have gone wrong :(

Hold on while we try to fix it for you

FBI abused spy law but only like 280,000 times in a year

Re: I'm not surprised

See: Stasi, GRU

Wrong analogy, I believe. The Stasi and GRU were under the control of their respective governments and took their orders from them.

The FBI has, from inception, been a separate entity - a power group extending its own power for its own sake. It's generally not politically inclined (although for some reason it appears to attract many who are right leaning verging on fascist), since it owes fealty to no political party, only to itself.

Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison – with a $500m bill

Re: End of an error

But I thought Apple were the first on the table with a smartphone?

Re: End of an error

"I knew it was fraud, just from the description. So did many of the other commentards here on ElReg"

Could it be possible (and I realise this is a bit of a long shot) that Rupert Murdoch doesn't read El Reg?

Then how does he keep up on important societal trends?

Barred from US tech, Huawei claims to have built its own 14nm chip design suite

Re: Intel

I suspect readers here will take that with a large pinch of salt

but not too large a pinch or it won't fit in the new die.

A tip for content filter evaluators: erase the list of sites you tested, don't share them on 100 PCs

Re: Other ways to justify access

A lot of decent writers wrote for Playboy back in the day - including (but who didn't he write for?) Isaac Asimov.

Re: A lot of El Reg Readers really are very old

There was a lot of that attitude at Microsoft back in the day. "Of course people should be able to share files and resources, and of course nobody would ever think of doing anything nefarious"

Ah, how times have changed!

Re: A lot of El Reg Readers really are very old

And we also mean REAL computers

Yeah! and card readers that could slice a finger off, splitters & bursters that could embed continuous form paper in the ceiling, impact printers that could deafen you with the acoustic lid CLOSED, and many other perils to the unwary.

Happy days!

Re: A lot of El Reg Readers really are very old

Old?

Let me tell you, I'm old enough to remember when you could paste any 'encrypted' password into NotePad to see what it was.

AND break into ASP code just by adding colons to the URL.

Ah, the grand old days!

Re: Only if you are incompetent

It was common practice at a certain Flora Margarine logoed oil company back in the day to create a single 'approved' COE (Common Operating Environment) image for each type of user (admin, developer, web developer, engineer and so on) and to image machines as required.

At one time we even had Dell imaging our 'standard' desktop onto all new deliveries and we'd simply add required software through Wyse scripts, or reimage to the required desktop as needed.

I believe, at the time, that Microsnot were only concerned that we had sufficient individual licences to cover the number of PCs we had operating

Job 1: Get the boss on the network. Job 2: Figure out why Job 1 broke the network for everyone else

Re: I hope it was only the WiFi

I just name my network Federated Bread Incorporated

One of my neighbours called his network 'ASIO Monitoring Vehicle #267'

He never got an intrusion either, although he did initially get a visit from local plod, who thought it was a wizard wheeze.

For the folks in the old dart, ASIO is the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Think spooks in thongs and boardshorts

For people in the old dart (again thongs are flip flops and not at all what you were thinking

I'm happy paying Twitter eight bucks a month because price isn't the same as value

Re: He changed his mind again on Official within hours

Good point, well made.

Anyway, moving on ...

Re: He changed his mind again on Official within hours

they wouldn't exist, because normal people wouldn't get around to it

You know that Elon simply bought the company that developed the Tesla vehicles, sacked the board (including the guy who originally came up with the concept) and set himself up as resident CEO and in house genius, right? That he didn't sit up all night inventing an electric car (or anything else, actually)? That his Hyperloop was a 150 year old idea that had never (and still doesn't) worked and that all he did was give it a dumb sounding name?

You know all that, right?

Big brands urged to pause Twitter ads until Elon's learned how this all works

Re: Respected?!?!

Are FB still doing their 'fake posts from people in your friends list' thing?

Apple exec confirms iPhones will switch to USB-C because 'we have no choice'

Re: Contact life span

... most tat comes from China

You've obviously never tried to assemble a 'Proudly made in Australia' garden shed.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

Re: Obergränsad

A Gram-O-Phone?

No Gram-O-Phones in 'ere, grandad!

Re: play both sides sequentially without having to pause and turn the record over

I have a couple of linear tracking decks, as well as a Zero 100 with it's 'revolutionary' tangential arm (the headshell angle adjusts as it moves towards the centre, keeping it in line with the record groove), but I never trusted Sharp to get the pressure right for an upside down cartridge that needed spring loading to keep it in contact with my precious vinyl!

A couple of years ago I looked at the ELP Laser turntable as a way to reduce wear damage, but got a bit worried when I looked at the extensive cleaning process and careful handling and storage needed because the laser would just as happily track a speck of dust or fluff as it would a groove!

Truth be told, everything I'm likely to want to listen to (as well as a lot of stuff I hope to never hear again) has been transferred, first to tape then to digital, but some occasions call out for the unsleeving and careful placement of 12 inches of plastic with a hole in the middle.

Re: We are in the wrong business...

I haven’t yet seem any audio grade routers!

May I present for your amusement This:

The Fidelizer Audiophile Wireless Router?

If you can think it up, an audiophile will pay big bucks for it.

skip diving.

In Australia we have what are affectionately known as 'Council pickups', when estranged children, wives, etc take all the old fella's favourite tech junk and bung it on the pavement for thge council to ..erm.. pick up.

Over the years, I have recovered a Nakamichi 700 & 600, an Akai 4000 & a GX7, my first Accutrac TT (a 4000), as well as numerous cassette decks, CD players, amps, tuners and more speakers than you can shake an audiophile's finger at.

Re: It gets more fun...

Ah, but you haven't seen fully automatic until you check out my Accutrac +6.

Stacks up to 6 albums on its centre stick, lowers each one gently, spinning it so it hits the TT at the right speed, and ludicrously programmable, as in "Play disc 1 track 3, followed by disc 3 track 2, then let's have disc 2 track 6 and finish with disc 1 track 4"

Truly an OCD joy!

Re: Digital transmission?

I know that a lot of early stereo mixes - especially pop, rock and what the hell is that rubbish you're listening to? albums would squash all the instruments into one channel, leaving the other for disconnected and somewhat reedy sounding vocals. Even the more 'artistic' mixes tended to have instruments pushed way out to the side, with an oddly empty middle.

And of course, the late 60s brought us the old wandering lead guitar which raced from side to side like the guitarist was bouncing off the walls.

Facebook deliberately took down Australian government pages during pay-for-news negotiations: report

I'm a little ambivalent on this

As I understand it, if this legislation gets abandoned, Zuckerberg wins. If it doesn't, Murdoch & Fairfax Media win.

Either way, the ABC, regional press and Australian people lose out big time, as usual.

First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets

Is it Funding Application time already?

and did the report include the phrase This puts us within 30 years of cheap, sustainable fusion power - again?

Wozniak startup to share orbital space junk data

A Golden Opportunity

Could Privateer start by deorbiting all those bloody Starlink boxen?

Nvidia releases $1,999, 8K-capable GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU

Re: quite minor improvements.

3-4% improvements in performance at the cost of pretty substantial power & cooling requirement hikes just sounds like someone in marketing just said "But what if we hook it up direct to the mains and turn everything up to 11? Will it catch fire, or can we just pump more water around it?"

Food for thought on the return to the office

Re: The Great DeResignation

I worked for Coca Cola Amatil (Australian distributor for Coca Cola) for a while. There were fridges full of free soft drinks everywhere, but, as one of the few Coca Cola franchises that also sold alcohol (TCCC were and still are, as far as I know, run by a teetotal family), each floor also had the special fridges, filled with Peroni, James Boag, Jack Daniels and such goodies, which were unlocked at 4:00 pm on a Friday.

We always worked late on a Friday - often well into Saturday to be honest.

That's how keen we were to make sure there was no unfinished work waiting for us on Monday morning!

Canalys: Foldable shipments could 'exceed 30 million by 2024'

Re: Rollable

Don't we all?

That said, the first 3 months with my Z-Fold 3 have been, as I believe the young people say these days, awesome.

The folded profile really only gets used for phone calls and selecting tracks on the 'music' player (currently rocking out to the Lovecraft Mysteries series from Auntie Beeb), while for everything else (videos, games, reading El Reg, and especially navigation while tunnelling up the New England Highway in search of the Alfa's next speeding fine) there's the full unfolded glory.

Samsung, though it pains me to admit, have to be congratulated both for their clever method of upsizing 3rd Party apps, and the thought they've put into making their own native apps utilise the screen real estate, especially the camera app, which gives a wide selection of shooting information and onscreen access to all the tools that are useful for a tog reduced to using a smartphone.

UK.gov threatens to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

Re: Dead Cat

At my school he was a lanky kid called Antony and his speciality was Pron

At my school all our pr0n requirements were met by a lad named Bosse, who was the son of some bigwig Swedish diplomat and went home for the summer holidays to stay in Malmo with his uncle. A couple of trips to Copenhagen on the ferry meant we were well supplied with everything from "OMG! pubic hair!" to "Hang on, what's he doing with that?"

Re: Dead Cat

As in Sir Humphrey's famous line:

"The government must be seen to be doing something

This is something"

BOFH: The Geek's Countergambit – outwitted at an electronics store

Re: Electronics shop

Here in Australia we still have JayCar Electronics - anything from a 3D printer to a single resistor and everything in between.

I use them online a lot, but when I'm working in town, their dingy basement shops are a must for lunchtime inspiration.

I mean, who doesn't need a 10mm tapped spacer, electrolytic capacitor, tub of solder flux or bluetooth dancing santa speaker from time to time?

Smart things are so dumb because they take after their makers. Let's fix that

Re: What are error messages for?

Microsoft, since Win 8.1 have perfected the art of the simple, easy to understand while simultaneously 100% impenetrable error message with their classic:

Oh dear, something went wrong. Hold on while we try to fix it for you

It started at Pixar. Now it's the Apple-backed 3D file format viewed as HTML of metaverse

Re: The metaverse can kiss my balls*

Don't know about Sliders, but there was The Futurological Congress by Stanislaw Lem, where the wondrous opulent world became grimmer and grimmer as one illusory layer after another was stripped away.

Why was everyone in the express elevator breathing so hard and turning red?

Reg scribe spends 80 hours in actual metaverse … and plans to keep visiting

Ah, Nostalgia - not what it used to be

This article prompted me to download the Second Life client and go take my first look in something like 15 years.

Apart from my sudden untold Linden Dollar wealth, which I hadn't expected, the old place is pretty much the same - lots of avatars standing still, choppy graphics and fsck all going on.

Although the half naked women avatars appear to have way bigger tits than they did back in the day.

Uninstalled and proceeded on my way, but still a salutory reminder of the old adage "You can never go back, but even if you can, it hasn't got any better"

Amazon aims to launch prototype broadband internet satellites by Q4 2022 – without Bezos' Blue Origin

Satellite Map

If you eant to get even more disconcerted, try Stuff In Space, which doesn't restrict itself to satellites.

There is, as they say in the engineering trades, a metric shit ton more than just satellites out there

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou admits lying about Iran deal, gets to go home

Re: He said, she said, literally

But then again, the UK has laws against running someone over in your car and fleeing the scene, but I don't see any sign of the US authorities falling over themselves to extradite Anne Sacoolas

Re: Concerning

You're a bit late on banning China's access to US technology - the days are long long gone, if they ever existed, when US technology was coveted by the rest of the world.

Re: Concerning

Oddly enough, international politics is not quite as similar to a primary school gang fight as a stupid person might imagine.

Re: They won't get any traction

Tip for the future: don’t use USD

I believe OPEC is with you on that one.

Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15 after six-month wait

Re: Have to agree coming at it from the other way.

Maybe things are different in Australia (I somehow doubt it), but I have used the same throwaway non google email address since my first Android phone (anyone remember the Dell Streak?), and Google do have a date of birth on record, but I'm not sure if it's anyone's actual date of birth as such.

And yes, they keep asking me if I'd like them to have my credit card details, but I keep hitting Skip.

And yes, I've been living at 18 Letsby Avenue for some years now.

One-size-fits-all chargers? What a great idea! Of course Apple would hate it

Re: Apple don't like it?

iPhones have kept with the slow (USB 2 speed) but robust lighting connector

Yes, but the latest iPhone now has 4k (sorry - 'ProRes' - even standard terms need to be 'Appletized' these days) video capability, so a 480Mbps max data connection makes no sense. And with talk of them dropping the port altogether in favour of wireless (oops! I meant 'MagSafe' of course) charging and AirDrop, transferring your video files for editing is going to become an even bigger exercise in patience.

It's just lucky that today's content creators are renowned for their enduring patience.

Texas law banning platforms from social media moderation challenged in lawsuit

Re: If they take an editorial role

Wasn't it Demon Internet or someone - the mind gets a bit woolly, many years ago, who were warned that, if they continued to act as 'editors' to block certain content (hardcore & child porn, almost anything from 4Chan), that they would be considered to be the publishers of anything they let through, and their response was to dump their filtering altogether and just let anything get posted, without interference in an entirely predictable example of unintended consequences?

Re: Censorship

social media sites would become spam-infested sewers that nobody wants to visit.

You mean they're not already?

Did I miss a staff meeting?

Apple debuts iPhone 13 with 1TB option, two iPad models, Series 7 Watch

As a cynic of the old order, I can attest (admit?) that I'm actually happy with my Z Fold 3. For phone calls it's slim, discreet and fits happily in a pocket. For reading articles and books, watching video or playing games, it's a big rectangle of loveliness.

But yes - the only innovation in 10 years or so to have any practical usefulness.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we should feel fine

Re: Does it work though? @Dan 55

TBH, that's truer than you suspect. I have several fanboi (and gurrl) friends and colleagues who have never missed a Jesus Phone model. Whether this is because, often they describe their new acquisition as 'fixing all the shitty things in the previous model', simply 'way better that the old model', or just regard it as an opportunity to sneer at those not sufficiently hip or wealthy to own the absolute latest shiney shiney, I leave as an exercise for the user.

That said, I just exchanged my Note 10+ 5G for a Z Fold 3, so glass houses, etc.

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

RIP Sir Clive

When the ZX80 kit first showed up, I was using a Cado Cat minicomputer (twin 8" floppies - no hard disk, hideously expensive) and fatasizing about one day owning a Superbrain or a Commodore PET.

Suddenly, there was an admittedly underpowered computer I could own at home. And you couldn't really break it by experimenting!

The ZX81, with various 'novel' attachments to deal with RAMPack wobble, and an original ZX Spectrum soon followed. playing with the Save output on the ZX80 to generate music (pretty piss poor, but it was mine!), stealing other peoples' code to try to produce pixels on a character based screen, designing 'sprites' with user defined characters and graph paper - all the experimentation, trial and error and exploration that Sir Clive opened up for us.

The 80s would have been so much duller without him.

BOFH: Pass the sugar, Asmodeus, and let the meeting of the Fellowship of Bastards … commence

Re: The weedy bloke

Ah, Sharepoint! It's incessant "yes, I know I said it was on your C:\ drive, but now I come to think about it, it was somewhere else and I didn't bother locking the file, so now I don't know whether someone else might have updated it in the meantime. Tell you what - how about you pick a local folder and put it there for now, then next time I can open it for you, let you work on it for an hour or so, then tell you I opened it read only because I mistook your local drive for a network drive, and could you please save it under a different name in a different folder."

Sharepoint has been responsible for so many "Ohh look! You know all those files you worked on and saved? I've managed to recover them from versions that were interim saved 6 months ago - would you like me to open them now?" messages when starting up, well, anything.

But at least I'm not bitter.

Quantum Key Distribution: Is it as secure as claimed and what can it offer the enterprise?

The Adult Entertainment Industry

A few years ago (OK, quite a few decades ago now - where does it go?) I was in a meeting discussing the possibility of selling product online. It had been decided that we would need to employ a consultancy firm for much dosh to guide us through the process.

In my youthful innocence (All right - many decades!), I asked why we didn't just get in touch with the webmaster of a porn site because those guys had been doing online payments for years.

My suggestion wasn't met with the kind of reaction I'd hoped for.