Posts by Al fazed 576 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jul 2009
I still use Open Office in preference to Libre Office. It's much older but works on my hardware whilst some features of Libre Office leave me fuming as the screen freezes when in spreadsheet mode.
Also I found the limit to the physical size of drawings. But this may be a fault with me being unable to work out how to change it.
There are other office suites you can try, unlike with Microsoft's OS
I agree whole heartedly with you regarding the right and the left wingers.
Unfortunately, the current thinking is aligned to the two party system we live under, win or lose, fuck you.. Consequently the real picture will never be known by the majority.
What am I on about ?
Anarchists is what. If you fail to include this philosophical outlook in your assessment of activists motivations, you are doomed to keep repeating your previous failures to understand.
Hello, anybody there ?
Doubt it very much.
ALF
I believe I reported such shit quite some time ago when a Windows 10 update totally fucked my machine so I could no longer edit video or audio which I have created.
It isn't so much the DRM crap but in fact all those extra procedure calls which interrupt the operation. By operation I mean watching back the 2 minute piece I just edited without it freezing or stuttering.
I watched the logs and sure enough there are so many remote procedure calls I might as well be in China attempting to edit a Disney film on servers in Florida.
I had to ditch Windows 10 after 12 months and revert to using my Windows XP machine, which whilst being of a much lower specification can actually record audio and edit video quicker than my Windows 10 machine, which is now reserved for reading the Register and mining the BBC for "news" "?", or watching catch up TV.
No Windows 11 for me........ever!
ALF
I had my doubts from the beginning. Only because I had recently graduated uni where I was taught that type safe programming is er, the safest. Quick fixes from American gunslingers was labelled "suspect device", before you started typing.
I can only grieve because it took so long to hit the "rails" amd so many passengers got injured in the journey, "on the road to no where".
ALF
But if the adversary is already on the machine, software or hardware, any type of encryption is not going to provide the secrecy you are looking for.
Stenography is the only thing that I have found which actually works, as long as you don't give the recipient the info via eMail or text, etc.
ALF
I agree with you all the way to the end, where I'd like to add:
it seems now that they are also creating the problems.
They have perhaps discovered the UK's (secret) Economic Policy. That there's more money to be made fighting ghosts in the future machine, by selling solutions to problems which don't yet exist.
Really clever shit........
ALF
Firefox is slower than ever !
Finding the URL isn't what I am referring to.
I am referring to how long it takes Firefox to load, it takes quite some time longer than previous.
This isn't counting the time to close the app and re open it as it didn't manage to load my Bookmarks, this time ?
Every time !
I'm using Linux MX and the Firefox Error Message says "sometimes an anti virus product can prevent Firefox from loading the Bookmarks"
So, thanks for the help, speeding up the useless Interenet search, but no thanks for the length of time taken to load, AND also for the need for me to do this twice.
Yeah!
ALF
Any more stories like this and I'll be pissing myself.
Surely Shirley, if you let LLM Bots scrape data indiscriminately world wide .... you are bound to end up with a disproportionate model.
Er, let's see, there are more Chinese speakers that American speakers, More Indian speaking people than American speakers, more latin speakers than American speakers..... so we assume.... more web sites and social media pages are being scraped by da bots.
You can see where this top heavy model is going from here. I don't need a MSc to work this out. STOP. I don't need to scrape any more data indescriminately, BOLLOX I need to scrap this model and start again.
Thinks ? I need to be more discerning in my data trawl if I want the LLM to spout the Orangisms utterances as opposed to utterances made by our Chinese communist bretheren, our Russian communist bretheren, our Hindu bretheren, or our Arab bretheren, or indeed anyone who thinks differently to the person partial to swimming in Tango.
I imagine there are quite a few more of us than there is of HIM
ALF
Once upon a time, not too long ago in a land of fairies and elves there live a computer geek who wanted to turn on everyone to his new toy, Windows 3.1.
As time passed the wicked witches of everytown soon got to work for Microshite and began their corporate plan of unusability for the masses....
Oh f*ck.....what do I do now ?
My ptinter broke so I went to the local library where I found an array of PC's sitting alone, unused and apparently unloved by everyone.
I thought bugger me, there isn't a queue ! Am I really in England ? Wow !
Sat down, logged in easy enough - done it many times before.......then - Oh shit !!!!
What have we here, a Windose logo in the middle of the horzontal bar across the bottom of the page.....I wonder what it's for ?
Funny, I keep moving the mouse but I am unable to see where the fuck it is one the screen...
Not so funny now, eventually I found my way to my USB memory stick and clicked once, thwice, three times and even clicked my heels together .....................enventually ..... a pop up dialogue box tells me that Windows 11 cannot open the MS Office 365 docx that I want to print.......or indeed any of the MS Office 365 .docx that I want to print.......
The Library assistant tells me that it's a problem they are facing now, without any clue as to how they can improve the situation, since their IT overlards rolled out WIndows 11.
It seesm the licenceing arrangements for MS Office and Windows 11 have been updated with Windose 11 and now the library cannot afford a licence for each the PC's they bought recently in order to comply with the upgrade requirements of Windose 11....
I won't say any more in case I start shouting and smashing things up.... as it looks like I will have to buy another printer now.......
ALF
What ahppened, did you turn 21 ?
Just take your head out of your older persons arse, sit down for five minutes and listen to the lyrics.
Sorry forgot to say, ignore the popular culture radio broadcasts, they have always been pap propaganda and crud from Eurovision Song Constest and the Gagged Singers.
ALF
f you successfully take away the problem you miss a golden opportunity to make money from attempting to cure the problem........
It's as old as prostitution as a means of earning a crust, and weaponising people was man's greatest contribution to our social development, oh and economics of course.
Didn't Captain Cyborg of Reading UNiversity discover the human brain can be influenced by wearing a cap fitted with neurotransmitters and is able to shave a man in the desert in Texas, without ever touching a scalpel, or needing the subject to injest anything. Never mind electronic kit powered by lithium or any other sort of batteries.
DARPA = Daft Administration Research Projects Ataloweb.
ALF
Q. Aren't datacentres simply individual islands of data ?
I was taught that replicating the data is where the waste of resources lies.
I doubt real thinkers in Europe are not thinking of merely replicating the Hyperscale Data Centers of the US providers, or competing with them. Competing isn't the point. Doing our own stuff, that which suits us better than off the US peg suits currently on offer.
Independant computing is the goal I would imagine. And keeping that "knowledge" to our "friends group". Data sovereignty of this sort would also reduce the number of incidents of data compromise, I imagine.
Many upstart companies use big data like the rest of us, but really I doubt that they all need hyperscale compute and AI processes, particularly processes that cannot be provided nearer to home, with greater levels of control to access without having to get permission from the US company and pay a fee for the privilege of getting our own data back.
It just goes to show that politicians are still wanking on about tech stuff that they know very little about beyond the marketing spiel. Certainly they still appear to lack any real idea of how this will be delivered, or paid for, and for what Business Case.
FFS Apparently the Post Orifice Oracle software was agreed and delivered without any Specification Document. And I don't see anything has improved since then when it comes to requisitioning IT services. Or in "timely delivery" of "the specified item".
Surely someone this side of the pond can produce stuff that's better than Microsoft, Amazon, x, etc.
ALF
My personal opinion is that service industries could do well to follow your example.
I have numerous boxes available and boy do I need them.
Without unwanted intrusion from hackers, my Windose 10 box has now become useless, even at playing music files. Until a few months ago, this was my most powerful machine and most recent hardware which I used for video editing. Not anymore. It languishes now until I get around to hosing it ready for some Linux OS.
BUT !
Even this MX Linux box is becoming useless. IT decided one day that I now need to enter the master password, or press Ctrl D to boot the machine. Firefox now doesn't load when I click the icon once, or twice. It now needs three clicks........and it can't access it's own Bookmarks.
etc, etc, etc. FFS!
Who need hackers or ransomeware crew when we have OS developers and hardware manufacturers that can do the same job ? And are probably doing it (better ?) than the bad peeps.
SHEESH
ALF
It sounds a lot like the UK Go Vermins is attempting what Trump attempted recently over the pond.
My suggestion (cover smile) is why not get MuskRAT on board. He is available again right now and he is certainly committed to saving Go Vermins money spent on security and immigration for spending on other things, like er , Telecoms ?
Why is Brtain like a f00kin' shadow puppet of the USA ?
We are still trying to make IR35 work long after the US decided it was unworkable......
and so it goes on.......
Are you sure that Microsoft isn't part of a commy take over ?
Why not let Microshit decide what tech our Go Vermins use ? They seem to know "something" about IT !
snigger........
ALF
Yes I love my Linux MX boxes.
I have three running now,
as one won't play DVD's,
another boasts only 800x600 screen resolution available on my BenQ 16:9 HD monitor. so sqaures are rectangles and cirles appear - well, oval....
The third box is fine, er, but however my external 2Tb hard drive recently lost functionality whilst using it with MX Linux.
All the Linux tools under the sun could not read the disc or rescue the Hard Drive, or the data on it. The OSes on each Linux box say "drive is MOUNTABLE", but none were able to mount it AGAIN.....
Eventually, I got the damnable thing working again using Windose 10 dusc management tool. At last I could reformat the drive Ext 4 again and bring it back into use........
Still no idea what happened to it whiilst it was attached to that Linux MX box !!!! The Linux OS is fine
Oh, nearly forgot - this box refuses to print anything even though it can see the Canon Pima printer and has the drivers installed, several times now......
Oh no, this Linux box is unhappy. It won't Boot Up anymore without my interaction. What's that ? Enter device password, or Press Ctrl D to continue ..........I haven't set a device password, I checked to make sure - so I GUESS Ctrl D will have to do.......
F00kin' SHEESH, only a nutter like me would put up with this rather than go out and buy a working for now Windose nightmare.
ALF
After all these years, I am still forced to read Penguinistas propaganda about how easy it is to install and run Linux........
What utter BOLLOX.....
It really depends upon your hardware as much as it does for Windose 11.
No, the hardware doesn't need to be as up to date, however the drivers for things linke sound cards, graphics cards and monitors needs to be in the Linux you are installing's library, otherwise your 16:9 monitor will only run in 800x600.......
etc, etc, etc........One of my Linux MX boxes will not play a DVD, another has only 800x600 available for the monitors resolution, another refused to record and play through in Audacity........and I have neverhad this issue previously using Audactity since year 1.
So no, peeps, Linux is nont plain sailing no matter what the Penguins think.
A good idea changing from Windose to Linux YES, HOWEVER just to prepare you, it maight not be as simple as some Penguinbs make out.
ALF
These TW*TS are also backing the building of data centres which consume more electricity than the houses which are not being built.
You can see the sacrifice is justified as the data centres won't need many humans working in them once built, so the houses won't be necessary.
Or somthing along those lines.
I am unable to tell the difference these days between entitled lying tory bastards and stupid unentitled socialists dickheads.
ALF
the data gifted to Palantir is already missing vital health information about the patients in the data trawl, so how useful is the data going to be ?
Already missing from NHS provision, Mc Timoney Chiropractics, Psilocybin and Cannabis treatments.
This is on top of the heavily massaged data that the NHS actually provides to Palantir. That is, I have been taken off the ADHS Assessment waiting list in Calderdale 5 times since 2021. The NHS Trust in Oxfordshire closed their waiting list over a year ago. The HC1 ceritificate I hold - as a UK Pensioner, says to the Dentist's receptionist that I can have specific kinds of dental treatment "free" under the scheme. Unfortunately NHS Business are interpretting the data differently than the dentists reseptionist was capable of doing. They have now fines me £100 and expect me to pay for the treatment. Huh ! The filling fell out after only 2 weeks. I am a pensioner on the breadlins and these muppets will now spend £1,000's attempting to get £300 out of me.
Yes, this certainly is the way to go forward
I think people will be even more disappointed to hear that NHS Trusts have been removing people from waiting lists or simply closing the waiting lists for things like ADHD and Autism assessments.
To add to your and I suppose Palantirs frustrations, some NHS "customers" with HC1's are currently being fined by "NHS Business" for the treatment they have just had, which NHS Business claim "wasn't covered by their HC1."
So there's an obvious problem with the information being processed, either by the dentists receptionist, or NHS Business.
Does it really matter, other than it was UK Tax Payers money wot got given to the CIA via the Palantir contract ?
Typical obfuscation technique from Microsoft, nothing to see here.
If the article had been any longer, yawn........I might not have remembered this line from the beginning of the article................"after criminals got there first".
So that's not evidence of Active Exploitation then...........?
What ? So the ship has to sink completely before the Captain can shout "abandon ship" !!!
They've (MS) been building (if that's what it is) these Business "dread noughts" for a couple of decades now and STILL the purchasers don't seem to notice that the ships never leave the harbour, always seem to be stuck at the shallow end of computing (if that's what it is ?) At least these businesses never seem to sink completely, just day after f*in' day with mops and buckets, er and dry towels might help for those tears.
ALF
Yes, that is the problem, left hanging.
The distro actually did install, twice.........but was broken in a different way each time install was completed. So many missing bits, as I said earlier SHEESH !
Just for the record, I did like Turbo and Object Pascal and I did use Delphi at university to learn about Object Oriented Programming as well as "safe" programming methods. As opposed to C, etc.
So much so in fact, I will next attempt the install Lazarus from a command line rather than trying the GUI versions that I tried previously. I feel it would be great to get it working even though I don't yet have a project to use it on. Just need enough hours to read the MAN pages and reverse engineer or maybe re engineer stuff wot iz broke.....
ALF
very encouraging.....
Everything that can go wrong has, and the way to get things right is unfathomable to me at this time.
I downloaded from Lazarus but it didn't install, just sits in downloads.
I used Synaptic package manager and downloaded and installed Lazarus.
No that didn't work either........Upon starting the program I got nothing but error messages.
MAN pages reckon It could be installed in any number of locations on Linux, with libraries here, other bits go there, and then some go somewhere else.
Needless to say, if I want to use this IDE I am going to have to dedicated a lot of time to installing it properly first
SHEESH.........
ALF
Microsoft spends a lot of effort fixing the problems with their own OS.
Sadly it just isn't enough effort.
Maybe the effort should be applied before the release of each new Operating System ?
But then again, with so many Microsoft apps like 365 running on MACs, it's maybe the Microsoft apps which are making everything else "Holy" ?
ALF
One chap I recently heard about is only 16, but he is avidly convinced that he knows something that every one else doesn't. He's autistic yet his mother is funding him to get his "powerful" PC, 'cos she knows bugger all about computers or Crypto.
So there you go.........there'll always be another one along in a minute
ALF
the article is about Palantir and Peter thingy and is proposing various observations regarding his stated beliefs and those of his mates aboard that particular socio political group..........
You can't keep politics out of IT otherwise it would be nothing less than marketing spew.....
ALF
Or, maybe your Smart Taps are ordering the mince pies from China instead of ASDA. What ? Has the supply chain with that "Middle East/West - Far/Eastern Kingdom" company been disrupted again ?
It could just be the "Seasonal Adjustment" we have to adjust to ?
Or, It might simply be that ancient ERP system acting up again, or we could have been hacked ?
No. Turns out it was an unscheduled Microsoft update.....
ALF
It'll turn up in some ML library - and will be available, for a small fee for later use by the social media AI bots when all the real users have left and only the bots are writing and reading the STUFF that's posted.
Similar to what is happening with LinkdIn at the moment, or the BBC eventually.
ALF
The only reason we don't know they are spying on us, or to be quite specific "SCREWING US OUT OF BUSINESS" is because it takes maybe 20 years and a possibly even a change of government branding before someone is really brave enough to throw away their career and family, or the STATUS QUO actually run out of illegal options like "gas lighting" the whistle blowers.
WAKE UP MUPPETS, PLEASE.
IT'S THIS KIND OF THINKING WHICH KEEPS WOULD BE IMMIGRANTS QUEUING UP IN FRANCE IN ORDER TO GET TO THE UK.
SHEESH
As a long time supporter of end Users of IT who are generally speaking not IT proficient, they are simply users of very complex technical equipment which they have little or no understanding of how it works. They just want to stay in touch with friends and relatives, do a bit of convenience shopping, or watch a music video. They tinker with the Apps which are easy to use and offer some level of novelty, or which are used by members of their own peer group.
Otherwise, trying pointing out to one of these lovely people that they would have more success and less anxiety if they changed their keyboard to UK from the Default American English. But even this is too much information for a lot of people.Never mind, "Do you have anti virus ?", or "Is your Firewall switched on ?". "Updates ?", What did that "Pop Up window say ?"
I have experience which shows me that even CEO's fall under this category of End Users. Then every budding new business I have ever come across would rather use WordPress for it's web presence, or would chose another web service which is built on top of WordPress(like) convenience, stock images supplied from unknown sources via scripts who's functionality they know nothing about.
We even have Go Vermin buying into Microshites latest Xmess channel stuffing, Oracle the ONLY ERP on sale to GoVermin service providers.......
This is only scraping the top of the IT security iceberg, I mean........what can go wrong ? Using chips and hardware made "elsewhere" for our convenience and to keep the price down.........
Job at GCHQ anyone ?
ALF
Pegasus is the first "accredited" bit of software which springs to my mind. If it's already been used by a Government that surely implies it's "accredited".
Then there are those pesky side channels in the CPU/GPU/NPU/AIU accidentally keep turning up in Intel and AMD chips, not to mention that pesky Huwai networking hardware/software, which if I recall, still needs to be stripped out of a lot of places in the UK. I mean where the fuck is OUR 5G otherwise ?
IPV6 ? no doubt that external IP address in my ISP supplied router, which it is impossible to delete is/isnot covered by the ACT, as the Router command DELETE only works for IPV2/4 addresses listed in the IP Table.
Oh, don't forget those undocumented BIOS updates I mentioned a couple of years back. I haven't heard anyone come up with a fix for that one yet.
And when Microsoft keeps leaving it's Windows wide open on Github, CoPilot+, Windows Server 2025 release/escape (?).........
Do they actually need a legal framework ?
ALF
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