Posts by jpennycook

It's been 20 years since Oracle bought two software rivals, changing the market forever

Saving money by buying companies

At the time, I wondered if the goal was to save on rent - Oracle seemed to like buying fellow occupiers of Thames Valley Park in Reading

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Re: increase in the frequency, tenacity and intrusiveness of the ads recently

Brave Browser seems to be good at filtering Youtube adverts

The sweet Raspberry taste of success masks a missed opportunity

Turtles

> What is needed is the system software equivalent of Lego

I read that as Logo, and longed for the days when life was simple and I could play with Turtle to make strange patterns

Backup failed, but the boss didn't slam IT – because his son was to blame

Re: Backups...

I don't understand how my local council can say that giving up the central catering body and transferring responsibility to each school can save money. Even if the plan is to outsource, surely the Council could negotiate a better outsourcing contract than all the schools in the County could individually.

Firefox ditches Do Not Track because nobody was listening anyway

irony

Of course, the irony is that activating DNT makes you stand out from the crowd, making it easier to track you.

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

> How is this used in your fingerprint?

> Browsers which set the DNT header to ‘1’ are fairly rare, and this can be an identifying metric. However, this should be left as the default for your browser.

Re: Future of Privacy Forum

or just one syllable - usually "do" is enough

'Best job at JPL': What it's like to be an engineer on the Voyager project

Re: ...and you try to tell the young people of today that!

> Twenty five years ago,

I had cable broadband 25 years ago, and a 56K modem before that. I knew some people with ISDN, and others who used infra-red to couple their devices to their mobiles.

Abandoned US Army 'city under the ice' imaged in serendipitous NASA find

It was a trial for the flat earth stuff!

The flat earth conspiracy people seem to think there's a secret NASA base in Antarctica, so presumably this was the dry run!

Arecibo telescope might have failed because of weak sockets

electric conspiracy

There are so many videos on YouTube about how only electricity is real - the idea of electroplasticity bringing down the telescope that we used to send transmissions to aliens will just electrify their claims!

Starlink's new satellites emit 30x more radio interference than before, drowning cosmic signals

V2 sats beam 10M times brighter noise, hampering telescopes

Completely off topic, but reminded me of one of my favourite Art of Noise songs: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=WKfb8cAD92Q (not sure I like the "surround sound" mix)

Sorry, Moxie. Blaming Agile for software stagnation puts the wrong villain in the wrong play

Re: Where are the distributed services?

> not least adding a social media UI to an e-mail client - E2E encrypted social media operating user to user, without a central hub.

You'll likely get some Government interest in that, given that it would be of interest to organised crime etc. It was done ages ago anyway - encrypted P2P platforms don't seem fashionable any more (or at least I don't hear about them, but maybe that's because I'm getting old).

Cisco slashes thousands of staff, 7% of entire workforce, pivots into AI

But where's the blockchain?

It can't be a real pivot if there's no blockchain. I thought all modern companies were doing blockchain AND AI.

Giving Windows total recall of everything a user does is a privacy minefield

Re: How much data stored?

unless it's being recorded like video - so changes from the previous frame, rather than recording the whole frame each time

Windows users left to fend for themselves after BitLocker patch bungle

Re: Inevitable.

I remember one of the NT4 service packs which accidentally broke PDA sync and Lotus Notes from working. By an amazing coincidence, Microsoft were pushing their own Windows CE devices and Exchange/Outlook products.

Meta connects Threads to the Fediverse

Re: Here's how it will go

An awful lot of Fediverse servers are blocking @threads.net - some probably temporarily, most permanently, so I am not worried about Threads making unilateral changes.

In theory, truth.social could probably federate (it's based on the same software) but they would be blocked by almost every server.

Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

Re: Very Different

> PDAs were an early form of tablet and I was designing one in 1987-1989, with aspects inspired by Dynabook, Project Xanadu, Apple Hypercard, the digital cordless system that later became DECT, and DOS based FutureNet CAD/CAE (which used hyperlinks).

Was the PSION Organiser not a PDA? The Series 3 definitely was, and I wouldn't call either a tablet.

Re: Very Different

> MS was shipping Xenix in 1982. All internal Microsoft email transport was done on Xenix-based 68000 systems until 1995–1996, when the company moved to its own Exchange Server product.

Back in the time of Exchange 2007, I found some Xenix mail documentation, and it looked like Microsoft had changed Exchange to make it more like Xenix mail.

Re: Very Different

> The iPhone a success due to the data contracts. It was 9 years after smart phones came out and 2 after Nokia politics killed their better than S60 GUI on Symbian.

I imagined that the curated app store and a proper touch screen were big advantages of the iPhone over Nokia, plus Apple had a footprint in America where Nokia did not.

How Sinclair's QL computer outshined Apple's Macintosh against all odds

Re: outSHONE

"gifted" always seems to be to celebrate the giver rather than the gift or the receiver.

RE: Amstrad was sold to Sky

AMSTrad were nearly sold to PSION, until someone thought they were over-valued

https://www.theregister.com/2010/11/23/symbian_history_part_one_dark_star/

“We are not buying Amstrad as perceived by its brand and name. Amstrad is in ashes. We are buying the phoenix in those ashes.”

Re: Overheating

or replaced the underspec-ed voltage regulator!

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed

Bacon butties

The catering for customer briefings in Staines was so much better than the competition - the bacon butties were especially good. I've still got my t-shirt for the R5 launch tour. R5 was a breath of fresh air and had a usable mail UI.

Our AI habit is making us less environmentally friendly, Google admits

regulations?

Surely this is why we don't have a fully anarchist free market, and instead have Government regulations/standards/laws to prevent people and companies destroying the planet in search of money. Or it would be nice if that was true.

Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?

Will Windows 12 have a sensible UI?

I have Windows 11 on a laptop I use less than my PC and haven't got used to the UI after over a year - the Start Menu, Task Bar, and System Tray are all awful. One day, I'll give in and download things to make Windows 11 look more like Windows 10.

Boffins devise 'universal backdoor' for image models to cause AI hallucinations

so it's a basilisk

David Langford wrote a story about using basilisks to hack human brains, so it's inevitable they get used with AI.

https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm

https://ansible.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html

Microsoft takes another run at closing Exchange brute-force security hole

Re: Hope springs eternal

Hopefully someone will need my Lotus Domino and Notes skills before I completely forget them. R5 was almost usable by end users.

Mastodon makes a major move amid Musk's multiple messes

Fediverse is more than Mastodon

There are services other than Mastodon in the Fediverse - including video sharing, image sharing, and even one that's like Goodreads for book tracking and reviews.

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

A better suggestion - use the location reported by the phone

When you call the emergency number, your phone transmits your location at the same time, and it's free, and the mobile network provides a location too (presumably based on cell tower triangulation)

https://eena.org/our-work/eena-special-focus/advanced-mobile-location/

> AML stands for Advanced Mobile Location. In the event of an emergency call, an AML-enabled smartphone (all Android and iOS devices worldwide) automatically sends accurate location information of the caller to the emergency services. This information is derived from the location data of the phone (GNSS, Wifi).

> AML is not an app; it does not require any action from the caller. AML is simply a protocol to transport the data (using SMS and/or HTTPS) from the smartphone to the emergency call centre. AML is – of course – free of charge. Emergency services are then able to receive this information in all the countries that have deployed AML.

https://eena.org/knowledge-hub/documents/aml-in-the-united-kingdom/

> Handset locations obtained through the AML functionality are be compared to the location provided by mobile networks (using cell coverage information), using an algorithm that analyses factors such as time of positioning and the separation of the two locations.

> Once the mobile handset knows its location it is sent to BT using a simple, already available, Short Message Service (SMS) based protocol (which gives 160 characters of data).

If you don't know where you are and your phone isn't able to use GPS to locate you, W3W is going to be just as bad as AML.

SUSE to flip back into private ownership after just two-and-a-bit years

Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

Microsoft were already involved back in 2010/2011 - they formed a consortium called CPTN to acquire Novell's (who owned SUSE at the time) patents.

> As of December 2010, CPTN's members are believed to be Microsoft, Apple Inc., Oracle and EMC Corporation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPTN_Holdings

ISP's ads 'misleadingly implied' existence of 6G, says watchdog

donations

From the Manchester Evening News article, writing about a Council motion:-

'It said: “When a group of residents recently met Chris Green MP about the problems, he claimed to have no knowledge of the company until they pointed out to him that he had recently received a political donation of £5,000 from IX Wireless.

'“He has failed to answer any questions as to what his relationship is with the company or why he received and accepted the donation. It is noted that similar donations have been made to a number of other Conservative MPs in the North West of England.”'

Those poles do look ugly - I wonder why they can't at least disguise them as trees.

Microsoft's Activision fight with FTC turned up a Blizzard of docs: Here's your summary

Re: "Windows Phone -- stole the idea from Apple and Google."

When Microsoft were first making operating systems for phones, Apple wasn't in the market, and I'm not sure that Android had caught on. I think there was a court case against Microsoft that they had allegedly blocked the ability for EPOC and Symbian-based devices from syncing with Windows PCs which should give you an idea of who Microsoft were competing with.

NASA 'quiet' supersonic jet is nearly ready for flight

Concorde, so loud

When I lived under the Concorde flight path (Slough, Brentford) I found that there was no volume setting on the TV that could compete. It was always fun in pub beer gardens if your friends weren't expecting it.

Capita faces first legal Letter of Claim over mega breach

"Barings Law told us it had launched a marketing campaign on social media"

I haven't seen them promoting it on Mastodon. I wonder what their campaign looks like...

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

Re: Really?

How can a country be "neoliberal" AND "neomarxist" at the same time? One is concerned with having the workers in charge of the means of production, and the other is about free market capitalism (see also Thatcherism)! I'd say Dyson is probably a neoliberal.

Millions of mobile phones come pre-infected with malware, say researchers

Re: Non-Google Android

I haven't used either, but https://lineage.microg.org/ and https://e.foundation/ claim to deliver de-Googled phones

Potatoes in space: Boffins cook up cosmic concrete for off-world habitats

Re: wacky edgy 80s comedy

Surely it was "zany", and all in the best possible taste

Brit newspaper giant fills space with AI-assisted articles

Re: Spelling Mistakes

OpenStreetMap.org refers to these (non-existent roads or deliberate spelling errors) as Copyright Easter Eggs: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs

For ages, Bing had a town near me named "Empshott", presumably a deliberate misspelling of Kempshott which isn't a town and wasn't quite where they said it was.

Rebel without a clause: ISP promises broadband with no contract

press release?

This article read like a local newspaper article - i.e. like a press release!

I can't do that, Dave: AI drowns top sci-fi mag with story submissions

Re: "There isn't (AFAIK) really an equivalent to ClarkesWorld in the UK"

Interzone hasn't gone yet - it now has another owner/publisher/editor. I'm not sure if my lifetime subscription got transferred to the new owners (hmm, https://news.ansible.uk/a427.html says they emailed subscribers last month - I didn't get an email). I got bored of Interzone years ago, hopefully the new owners will make it interesting again.

Not satisfied with Virgin Media and O2 merger, Liberty Global takes 5% Vodafone stake

Maybe the ex-C&W people in what was NTL just want to buy the bit of C&W that Vodafone own. Certainly if Vodafone have fibre in the ground near Virgin Media's cabinets or O2's base stations, Liberty Global might think it can save money by owning a national fibre provider.

Google now won't black-hole all AI-made pages as spam

AI and newspapers

I wouldn't be surprised if many stories on local newspaper websites were AI-generated (or maybe lightly edited after AI), given that so many seem to be duplicating press releases, Trip Advisor reviews, or copying from council meeting minutes. No doubt this will be the case in future.

When will the UK take another giant leap into space?

Re: What is the benefit?

Operating satellite ground stations isn't trivial

Beware the big bang in the network room

This reminds me of the time when I was working late when my colleagues and boss had gone to the pub. I was just about to leave to join them, and when I walked past the server room I could hear lots of UPSs complaining. I went in the server room, traced the cables back and found far too many devices were powered from a single 13A mains plug, which had partially melted. After reorganising the mains cables so they used more than one socket, I was then very late for the pub, and no-one seemed bothered that there could have been a fire or something. If I didn't have such sensitive hearing and wasn't so dedicated, I could have had more beer (and probably had to perform the BCDR process the next day).

Virgin Media fined £50,000 after spamming 451,000 who didn't want marketing emails

I opted out of marketing communications from Virgin Media several years ago. They would only call my mobile when I was at work. They were so desperate to market to me that multiple call centre agents on bad quality lines that I couldn't understand would call simultaneously. They would also ask me to verify my password, despite me not being able to verify who they were. I wouldn't mind receiving marketing material by post, but they don't offer any granularity. These days I just ring them up whenever they want to put the price up and see what deals are available.

Ceefax replica goes TITSUP* as folk pine for simpler times

Page the Oracle

I remember when ITV had Oracle, and Channel 4 had two different Teletext operators (4-Tel and Oracle I think).

Channel 4 had 4-Tel I think.

I still talk about "paging the Oracle"

Google Maps can now tell cyclists how HIGH they will get

Re: UK-only alternative

open.mapquest.co.uk also takes elevation into account for cycling routes.

Google's vanity OS is Microsoft's dream

We had instant-on in the past

"Today's netBooks really don't have instant-on yet, nor an optimal UI - and in a pell-mell competitive market where margins are squeezed, they're getting bigger, heavier and more expensive."

The Psion NetBook(R) had instant-on, and a choice of three operating systems (so lots of UIs)...