Posts by Al fazed

'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP

You need to get pout more

Whilst I totally agree with the main thrust of your observation, I believe your distopian view is not uncommon.

However, contrary to mass public opinion, we can use hydroponics, aqaua culture etc, to grow strawberries etc, well out of season, er as long as Microsoft, AWS and Palantir etc take no part in the production process or the supply chain.

There are other physics myths which we via public education, have been force fed in the UK. Over the years many people repeat the same myth without having caught up with real life.

Energy from water ?

1. you get hydrogen and oxygen for a drop of water using a small photo voltaic panel.

2. the gases once release expand at rate and can, in a sealed system drive a piston.

3. After maximum expansion pressure has been utilised, reversing the polarity of the current reassembles the gases into the original drop of water and piston returns to base.

4. No waste, no heat produced.

My plasma physicist pal who explained this to me many years ago, was swallowed up by that Aldermaston Research place shortly after he was given his doctorate at Maudlin College, Oxford..

Obviously

ALF

Microsoft engineer speedruns Raspberry Pi magic smoke in five minutes

Confirmed

That this is the type of person who has been designing Windws OSes since I imagine at least Windows 95.

Maybe it's the special quality embodied in the phrase "what's this for" supported by the dev having no idea what it says in the f*cking manual........

No wonder Windows OSes always seem to have been built using a similar methodology.

ALF

VLC's keeper of the cone nets European free software gong

Gong bath, gongwash ??

Hmmm, either the commenters here don't use VLC very often, or maybe they're doing another task with VLC running a Playlist whilst they work ?

I sound like a Grinch

and maybe at a pinch

that's exactly what I am,

but otherwise I see a scam<

it may be free

and has entertained me

for as long as I can remember

on Windows Linux and the MAC

VLC has always had my back,

well until very recently

when I dragged the spoilt child screaming

off my mobile phone

and don't you ever touch it again,

my playlist of my own creations

was so rudley interrupted

by some twat advertising some shite

under guise of the VLC.

Now this really vexes me

Be gone I said,

never darken my door again

with unwanted rubbish

stuffed with payed for crud

On my mobile you have no home,

Gone sorry busted and dusted,

you really fucked me off son.

Who won ?

ALF

MX Linux 25 reaches beta testing – complete with systemd

Re: Wot abaht ... ?

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

UK chancellor Putin the blame on Russia for cyber chaos, but evidence says otherwise

Re: Evidence

The Register still has some Anarchist readers and commentators in the UK, even though the editorial staff are moving towards a right wing.American Australian view point.

I wonder how long it will be before I change my IT information provider as a consequence of this shift.

ALF

Re: Evidence

And the orange ape Trump is at war with the UN.....

It's all out war on every level.

Doom anybody ?

ALF

Re: Evidence

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

Windows 11 update leaves Blu-ray and TV apps stuttering

It started with Windows 10 actually

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

UK.gov ditching 'Red' risk data sharing project after slashing £0.5B budget in half

Well, what a surprise

It's probably the only reason that the software has been given extended life support.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/23/hcl_notes_domino_support/

ALF

RubyGems maintainer quits after Ruby Central takes control of project

At last

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

Quantum code breaking? You'd get further with an 8-bit computer, an abacus, and a dog

Re: Discredited Gutmann

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

Re: Huh?

Scare the shit out of them.

That usually works.

It has since Roman times at least.

ALF

Re: Bullshit

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 fine. The people running it are not

Sorry to infuriate BUT

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

Top AI models - even American ones - parrot Chinese propaganda, report finds

Larf ? I nearly cried

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

Windows 11 migration heats up... on desktops

Where am I ?

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

Teens used encrypted chats to recruit for 'violence as a service' murder ring, Europol says

Re: Encryption?

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

Re: Scandinavia

Well, that is the power of AI for you....

ALF

DARPA is testing a device soldiers can swallow to make them less stressed

It appears to me that

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

Europe's cloud datacenter ambition 'completely crazy' says SAP CEO

er ?

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

Let them eat junk food: Major organic supplier to Whole Foods, Walmart, hit by cyberattack

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

Schneier tries to rip the rose-colored AI glasses from the eyes of Congress

Re: MAGA

So what's your problem ?

ALF

Re: MAGA

and Britain, from the other side of the pond,

Which will sink first ?

Answers on a post card please, as my eMail isn't working today

ALF

Just 15 buyers are in charge of £14B in UK central government tech spending

Uhu....

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

KDE targets Windows 10 'exiles' claiming 'your computer is toast'

Re: Alarmist?

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

Re: Alarmist?

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

Ukrainians smuggle drones hidden in cabins on trucks to strike Russian airfields

Re: Who built/supplied the drones?

The same manufacturers and supply chain which supplies the other side, obviously. You didn't study Business I presume......

too warm for a coat......

Out of here, soz.

ALF

Ex-Meta exec: Copyright consent obligation = end of AI biz

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

Re: Just for the record. . .

er.......the human reading the books is bound by copyright law. Recital of the work is not a crime:

unless it is being recited for monetary gain or other rewards.

ALF.

Greater Manchester says its NHS analytics stack is years ahead of Palantir wares

Re: Wait...

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

Re: Wait...

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 ?

Dead or alive, Britain hands Schrödinger's industry £121M

Re: Place your bets

More like the replacement for both will be:

Quanfusion pronounced Con Fusion.

What else ?

ALF

Oops, some of our customers' Power Pages-hosted sites were exploited, says Microsoft

There's no evidence of active exploitation

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

Type-safe C-killer Delphi hits 30, but a replacement has risen

Re: Not

They were definitely error messages which squarely laid the blame on me as well as working out how to fix it.

Cheers

ALF

Re: Not

I tried both sources actually. First the GUI linked to from the Reg article, then via the MX Synaptic package manager. Both created an install which was broken beyond my capability to fix it

in my lunch break......

ALF

Re: Not

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

Not

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 declutters Windows 11 File Explorer in the name of Euro privacy

It still doesn't

make Windows 11 a "useful" Operating System. So sad, back in Win 1.11 days I actually thought they had a good thing going.

I guess that's gone........

a long time ago.

ALF

XCSSET macOS malware returns with first new version since 2022

Re: Hilarious

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

Indian authorities seize loot from collapsed BitConnect crypto scam

Re: Astonishing

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

We can't make this stuff up: Palantir, Anduril form fellowship for AI adventures

Re: Mordor...

Twinned with Todmorden possibly ?

ALF

Palantir designed to 'power the West to its obvious innate superiority,' says CEO

Re: Heil Palantir! Heil Tesla!

Apparently, it is no longer a crime, if your name is Trump, et al

ALF

Maybe you lost the plot

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

Encryption backdoor debate 'done and dusted,' former White House tech advisor says

Re: I bet . . .

and the only people interested in spying on you are good people, who have your best interests at heart.

A few of us don't believe this bullsh*t, even here in the UK.

ALF

Intel debuts laptop silicon that doesn't qualify for Microsoft's 'Copilot+ PC' badge

So ?

Does this mean that the PC's sporting these latest chips won't run Windows 11 ?

Whilst on one hand this seems like a marvellous idea, I'm not aware of an actually working alternative OSes........

Maybe Intel also has an OS these chips will run.........

ALF

Telco security is a dumpster fire and everyone's getting burned

Re: CHINA'S SPIES ARE TAPPING OUR PHONES

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

Re: Security is an illusion

What ?

You mean there is actually something that can be done ?

Without unplugging it ?

F* Off !

ALF

Re: I wish them luck.

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

Re: Wherever you are, this story includes you.

Don't lose sight of the fact that the cats are using us....