one for the oldies
Ooh goody, they've brought back the Start button
523 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jul 2009
I can just see the centre of Oxford when this takes off ! Not a pretty site at the best of times and it certainly is not a cyclists paradise, more like a graveyard. Honestly, if they could send you to the RIGHT, the city councillors most certainly would.
Oft is the case in Oxford that would be Greens get planted by either landfill waste bearing trucks or public transport buses.
ALF
Hmmm, no comments above about Comodo being hacked a couple of years back when the perps made off with amongst other things, an unknown number of legal SSL Certs, which have been used to by pass browser security.
Did they ever find out who did this ?
Here they go Comodo issuing useless certs ?
Comodo inserting adds !
Why on earth anyone is still using the company and their products defeats my imagination.
The last install I did of Safari on my Windows 7 machine allowed QuickTime to delete BBC iPlayer software and the TV programmes that I had downloaded to watch at a later time. And bugger me if the following two QuickTime software updates didn't repeat the deletion of BBC iPlayer and my downloads. Needless to say, Safari is now relegated to my old MAC Book, where it belongs. It's not allowed out to play anymore
can get pwned by a dodgy Flash update. Honest, happened to me last week and it is the one and only time I have been pwned, ever. Thanks Adobe, you are revered in the halls of flame along with Microsoft and some other software baddies, more interested in what they can get from you than the quality of what they are selling you.
About time and good riddance, 25 years in the Hacking.
Aaaaaaaarrrrgggghhhhh !!!!!
Look.
What is the fucking point in doing a redesign ?
Are you trying to keep staff that should have been shed in the last round of cost cutting ?
Oh no, I see now. You have to source and prepare less images before publishing a story ?
But really !!
You gleen more adverttising revenue from the twats with the massive banner images that cripple my dialupband connection here in dismal Dorset.
Well my fucking day's just got a whole lot shitter since your fucking annoying mini adverts keep poppong up to block my view of what I was reading.
I really have lost the plot with your devs.
Who designed this really annoying User Interfarce, Microsoft certifiable engineers ?
Stuff you fucking advertising in the shit house please and give me something I can read without blowing a sodding fuse everytime some innane seister muppet tries to flog me something I have no sodding use for and probably never will have.
No brownie points for you today.
Naughtie Register !
Pretty please !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still selling broken stuff and then charging us to have it fixed !
Wish they would run out of fucking road, I'm fed up mending computers that aught not to be broke in the first place. Especially as Microsoft make it ever more difficult to do the basic system maintenance and integritty checks that their software is supposed to be doing.
There's no justice in this world, why can't Microshit go bust and do it properly ?
Speaking as a relatively linux n00b of many years, I'd like to acknowledge that the posters here have made clear to me many of the archane things about Linux (and it's deviants) which previously eluded me, where reading man pages presents a massive wealth of complexity and attending forums is often like sticking my head up someone elses arse.
Bifurcation, branching, forking, fucking hell ! BOLLOX !!!!!
As far as the Linux desktop is concerned, (IMHO) unless I am prepared to pay for a distro that has human support in English on the phone, it is a none starter for me, as so many things that I want to do and that my clients want to do - on a daily basis, can't be done easily, or simply cannot be done at all. Using the BBC iPlayer being one of 'em.
While the richness and diversity of the ever evolving application landscape is hearty stuff for developers, It's fucking well driving me insane, as I wade through distro after distro trying to find a working linux desktop that I can reliably recommend to my none computer literate students, who are either old, disabled, strapped for cash, or just really fucked off with the Microsoft and/or Apple softshit efforts available in the shops.
Fortunately I read this article and the comments, which has convinced me of one thing that I guess I already knew really and that is, if I see that the vested interest is genuinely devoted to capturing punters wallets, then I can easily avoid the pitfall of tripping into a walled secret garden, or worse, sending an unsuspecting n00b in that direction. And conversely, if there's no money init (geddit) then I have to hope the damn thing has been given attention to detail and grown with love and care, rather than being bungled with a time schedule and budget.
And for now I'll carry on using Debian etc to cover my arse, when I need to get some proper work done.
Cheers.
is the Microshaft 8 thingy. For decades if you want to close down your machine you use the START button. So instead of correcting this semantics error, they remove the fucking button altogether and force you to adopt top right of screen instead of bottom left you have used and taught others to use, for years.
Instead of fixing the bugs in XP and beyond, they expire all that energy in a new interface in an effor to hide the tradgedies at work or not under the bonnet/hood.
But I suspect their motive is the same as the supermarkets fun loving hide and seek tactic which is employed so you'll discover something else to buy in the spot where the milk used to be. That's why when I decide to play a media file with my favourite software/app, I get an in your fucking face advert telling me I can forget what I was trying to do and go off on a tangent to their wonderful shop where I can buy another app that will do the same thing as the software I asked my fucking computer to open in the first place !!!!!
Do Icome across as a very angry disabled and ancient computer user who has been stiffed into upgrades where none was really necessary............... ?
ALF
Been at it since DOS days and it hasn't got anymore exciting, or interesting except for those couple of occassions where automatic updates bricked some poor fuckers machines. Windows updates, MAC updates, Linux updates, they've got to be done as what IBM call a "steady state", others call a Swiss cheese that hasn't matured yet.
It doesn't surprise me that humans cannot make an operating system that is absolutely flawless. What does surprise me is the eagerness of some manufacturers to push fundamentally flawed products onto unsuspecting, none computer science, end users. But the biggest surprise is hearing the spouting of bollox that some people resort to when defending their favourite Operating System, of any flavour. Are these people really that fucking stupid that they'll disregard basic fuckups in the product and the multiple work arounds that using the product requires them to perform ?
Sorry folks, but as far as I am concerned, this IT business is comparable to the situation way back in the old Model T days of motor cars because we are new at it and still trying to improve on last seasons models. So we still have to get out and get under the hood on a frequent basis, or find a nice man who can. The equivalent of seat belts for the passengers and driver, safety glass, a surround sound system and a shiney set of rims are but the fantasy of a 62 year old geek that'll likely run out of road before I can relax and actually enjoy the ride ............
that microsoft are still "allowed" to sell Operating System software to anyone, even more so that governmints and other supposedly responsible/intelligent organisations like banks, are still buying Microsoft Operating systems, er sorry, software of any description made by Microshaft. Swiss cheese was the term used in the 90's to describe Microshite software and that hasn't changed, in fact it's got even more bloated and has as a consequence, even more holes. Isn't it about time they tried to make their softwarts a little harder ?
Surely these types of vulnerabilities were recognised and mitigated against way back in Windows 98 when MS first got into delivering networking capabilities (and mass sharing of all your files) out of the box.
How many more times are Microsoft going to be allowed to con end users into buying and installing some NEW "shite" that really should have had all this crappyness fixed BEFORE the OS was released to the general public.
FUCK governmints and military shitheads, they get all they deserve the arrogant pricks.
But stupid money bearing NEW end users come along in droves every few minutes wanting a point and click world, so at this rate, there'll never be an end to this sort of malarchy, oh, sorry meant anarchy. Any attempts to run a country or a bank, etc using these softturds is just a fucking joke, always will be.
And Caveat Emptor is dragged out yet again. (maybe 'cos it's Latin that uneducated end users haven't got this one yet, but banks should have !)
ALF
since they have bought a wide screen TV for the community centre so that they can watch soap operas, so there'll be no Top Gear for a start. Not to mention what it might actually be like being told what to do every day by a fucking TV Zombie ................
I may be desperate for a shag, but I am still not biting as I am concienciously avoiding being seduced by a feminine Hitler ...........
Free opium supplies for their school kiddies, Bonfires of Ganja bales lit on Saturdays and built down wind of mosques, LSD and flouride in their water supply, Free Entry tickets for Glastonbury 2015 for anyone converting to consumerism, sponsored Primark factories, open Job Clubs ?
Al Fazed
For a long time MAC the company promoted the idea that MACs were invulnerable, this was in view of thousands of users and administrators contacting MAC tech support asking for help with, what turned out to be .... a virus.
It isn't necessarily the MAC OS that becomes infected. The software a user uses can become infected during use.
As far as I am concerned these social netfarting sites can keep all the erroneous data that they have already collected. It's their diskspace that's redundant after all. The more garbage they collect, the more the good old t'tinternet will become a huge dustbin full of the worlds digital rubbish, mainly comprising, homemade music of questionable quality, photos of cats and countless images of human reproductive organs, all linked to dead eMail accounts which SPAM Bots deluge incessantly with messages advertising more places to dump to or download digital shite from.
My own MYSpace account bacame a conveyor of fast flux malware, a friend lost money from their bank account somehow via the site and I was locked out of the account, unable to contact a real person to do anything about the situation. I wonder how many other abandoned MySpace accounts are in the same state ?
ALF
Brilliant sir, a breath of sanity on Monday morning.
That first paragraph brought tears of joy to my eyes. It's just what I've been trying to get across to Users (who ask) for a while, but have been invariabley outnumbered by Techies in pompous smirk mode.
Now there are two of us.
Thank you Ali Star
ALF
>Standard Oil dominated the turn of last century's oil markets not because of Rockefeller being an evil bastard but because they were the lowest cost producer. Anyone wanted a price war then Standard were going to win it (the evil bastardy came from the fact that Standard was quite happy to start the wars, to the benefit of consumers).
>>Only in the short term. As soon as the competitors died, Standard Oil jacked up prices to obscene levels.<<
Is there any other kind of capitalism ?
It's all about exploitation of any differential for the benefit of creating a profit. A word which is now often heard (in the sharing economy) used like a rude word.
Whether those untrustworthy bastards are intending to do dodgy stuff with the data or not, doesn't really come into it from where I am standing.
Why ?
Well the first premise of useful data is that the data is actually correct and secondly, it must be comprehensive. The appropriate saying here goes, "Garbage in, garbage out." if I remember correctly.
Well as far as I am aware, most of my cannabis smoking friends have never told their GP or dentist or anyone else, that they smoke cannabis like a trooper, daily, and some of 'em do do other "things" - at the weekend (honest) which shall remain nameless for the sake of the NSA and GCHQ peeps reading this. As these are "chemicals", it seems to me that knowledge of such stuff should fall within the scope of what the NHS might consider "useful" information. But, if none of this data ever enters into that soddin' big fuckoff database that they are planning to exfiltrate to their mates in Insurance and "legal" drug industry sectors, I ask, "What fucking use will the data be ?"
I expect that the cogniscenti amongst you will have the same answer as me.
So UK Tax payers fork (off) out a few more sheckells for a Go vermin led datascrape that will have one of at least two possible outcomes, (1) the information gleened from said data will produce information that is a load of crap, or (2) the intended "Buyers" will assume that the data is, er, "incomplete" and consequently not worth a US cent.
If you consider that in many US States currently, cannabis is no longer illegal, therefore you can mention it to your doctor and he can write you a prescription for some Accupulco Gold or whatever. Yet here we are still under the sway of the J Edgar Hoover belief that smoking tobacco is much better for you and smoking cannabis will ultimately lead to the end of your professional career.
The whole idea is a lot of nonsense, designed only to fill the exceptionally deep pockets of our corrupt govermins mates, ie; tha same ones who regularly build Information Systems wot don't work for our wonderful UK Over lards.....
Give me a break. ALF
Ever heard of it ?
Since moving to Dorset I can no longer do much of the Internet Banking I used to do when I lived in a city. Why is this, you say ?
Well, since my bank decided it would be more secure to send a 4 digit pin to my mobile phone I can no longer set up a new payment or cancel an old one on-line, simply because my mobile doesn't work when I am at home, there is no signal ! I have to travel about a quarter of a mile to get a signal. I bet they never thought of this one.
Also, if my mobile phone is nicked and the perps try hacking into my bank account, Santander very kindly send them the 4 digit pin, making the process easier for them and harder for me, as the bank still insists on sending my mobile a PIN, even if I am doing telephone banking from my landline !
Fucking smart arses..........
To hear you lot talk one would think that the Internet is only ever surfed by developers and the like. From and end user point of view the whole raft of browsers appear as a huge bag a shit software and developer wank juice which is getting bigger and more drippy and stinky every day, with many of my regular users saying, "fuck this, the interface has changed again ! If it happens one more time, I am out of here and off to get a real life".
Think I am joking ? Just shows how out of touch technophiles are with the common people. It used to be that the user experience was the most important thing. However, it now appears that developers new toys are attempting to push the levels of human capabilities to the point where we are all expected to be none thinking robots with access to the fucking source code when we open a browser.
Can't remember who it was exactly that did these experiments, but I once read that in some behavioural and pyschological condidtioning tests carried out on rats, the experimenters finally succeeded in sending the all of rats completely barmy, through changing the rats operating environment and the conditioning signals for rewards and punishment that the rats received.
WAKE UP !
End users are more like rats than browser developers, honest ! Their brains aren't that interested in playing with new widgets and discovering what that new icon is for and where the old ones have got to.
I work for a charity which provides access to PCs, the internet and training in the use of software for disadvantaged people (which currently makes up about 10% of the population), so people can apply for jobs, housing benefit, send eMails, surf the web and the like. Training people has become much harder, mainly because the interface the person saw last week is not the same one they are faced with today. Hell on earth, it is hard enough getting volunteers in the first place, but now I have volunteers talking of resigning because they cannot keep up with this pace of change and are constantly frustrated by these seemingly senseless changes to their operating environment.
At the end of the day, many of the folks that I know personally and others that I work with are actually really pissed off and getting totally fed up with this browser developers little lark. They are not on their own. I myself have many more reasons today for going back to a paper based life that doesn't know and doesn't want to know anything about the fucking Internet and all the crap that it brings into daily life.
My BSc in Information Systems appears ever more to have been a complete waste of money and time as the precepts that I read about, with computers and the internet making life more inclusive for disadvantaged folks has been completely swept away in favour of making them into more like a sea of expensive novelties for the thick rich twats to play with.
Am I on my own here ? I refer to this browser interface malarky as "the shifting sands of Iwo Jima" and wonder who will be left standing when the browser wars finally come to an end.
I work with disadvantaged people in a local Learning Centre in rural Dorset. If you ever had to help someone with eye sight and mobility issues to navigate through the pages of the Government's Job Centre web site, you would soon wish to retire to somewhere electricity will never reach.
It is no fun and as a voluntary job it is certainly is lacking in any sense of the word "rewarding".
Recently, I could not assist a disabled person to send his CV to a prospective employer. The web site insisted he write a new CV using the web page. His CV written earlier in the job club )open one day per week) was not acceptable, there was no way to upload it to the system. He could make no progress until he had done this task. Press the write CV button, site asks him to first log-in. He was already logged in, but never mind, we'll do it again to humour them. Types password, one shakey finger at a time, peering, searching, scanning the large screen for info, confirmation that he hasn't made another typo, his eyes about six inches from the monitor. If he sat back, as Health & Safety advises, he could not make out the page contents, had considerable difficulty finding the insertion point and all this was compounded by his lack of command of the English language. After innumerable typos, finally presses Log-In button, site promptly returns him to previous page, asking him to create a CV.
He was with me for about two hours, fumbling about and being completely fucked over by this badly drawn software. He kept apologising for being unable to type faster, for making typos. He even thought that HE was doing something wrong and that's why he couldn't send his CV to the prospective employer.
Consequenlty, he went away quite depressed having failed in his Job Centre task to apply for x number of jobs this week - using their web site. I went away quite depressed too wondering if he would now lose entitlement to his Employment Support Allowance. I have a BSc in Information Systems, but I have never felt so utterly useless in the ten years since graduation.
We are a charity with many of our callers on the one day per week that our doors are open, being disabled, have learning difficulties, living without electricity on a traveller site, or are simply too old and have not needed to buy into this didgital nightmare...........until now. 7 million out out 70 million.
I hadn't been able to assit anyone else for two hours.
In my humble opinion, the gentleman would not have got the job even if there had been no-one else on the planet, because his poor vision alone would have made it impossible for him to work in such a dangerous environment as a kitchen.
What is this world coming too ?
Ministers and scientists must accept that some people will never be able to operate like a machine, even if they do have an iFad.............
BT can deliver something which resembles broadband in Shoreditch (2mb). In deepest chicken shagging Dorset BT simply charge us for braodband whilst delivering mere dial-up speeds which don't even allow their customers to use BT products like BT Sport/Cloud etc. 350 kbps max download anyone ? I threatened the bastards with Ofcom recently for miss selling the product and the broadband price came down pretty quickly along with the cost of my mobile phone calls combined with removal of the monthly data cap. Chicken anyone ?
Thames Water gave many of the inhabitants of Oxford and surrounding villages cryptosporadium poisoning during the 1980's would have to be proved in court by Thames Water to be incorrect and in fact defamatory ?
About fucking time .................. IMHO what a bunch of irresponsible bastards the leading team at Thames Water must have been back then. And no, I am still NOT paying my fucking water bill, take me to court you conniving numpties.
So what happened to the mask icon, is it now considered defamatory to use it ?
ALF
how the best tech usually loses the battle of the market place. I may be getting old but this romance with touch screens will end soon. What happened to RSI, does it not work with touch screens ? Personally speaking, I hate smudges on the screen when doing most tasks or even playing about, some iPhone fans seem to like using ones with huge cracks in the screen as they often go out and buy the same again but a later version.
There's no getting away from it, people are generally quite gullible, nay, f*cking stupid .... and a shiney novelty to wave about in the pub seems to be their only agenda, not getting any work done, or having fun even.
Losing half my screen real estate in order to type an eMail or enter a web address or complete an on-line form is IMHO - flippin bonkers, never mind switching screens to type upper/lower case or numerals.
Got to say it, you must be f*cking mental to want anything to do with a touch screen, and it doesn't matter which tech tat firm knocked it out ......... didn't you ever repeatedly press Delete by accident ? How thin are your fingers ?
I feel sorry mostly for all those grannies that I am regularly called upon to help with their new device, who have an iFad, Windowlet, Googlegawp@, Samsmug Glaxo, etc, to compliment their Parkinson's disease, simply because their grand daughter/son or other stupid offsprog said that they should have one in order to do Face Time. For fucks sake, with the iFads, you don't even get a manual that you can read unless you are actually conneced to the internet !!!!!!!!!! How daft is that ?
Sometimes I feel like we are all drowning in a sea of IT lard and that the HCI handbook went out of the window some time ago .... along with our common sense.
Alf
Didn't Macs once come with Adobe PhotoShop and some other neat software which was dropped unceremoniously from subsequent OS updates.
Supposedly, iPhoto and iMovie are still available to me after the upgrade to Mavericks, but this is another loads of old bollox, the App Store has been downloading and installing them back again without managing to pull it off. They no longer work on this Mac Book Pro and in the process I had to sign in to the App Store about a dozen times. Oh yeah, and reboot the machine a couple of times too many.
Just confirms everything I ever thought about Apple. There's very little to choose between Micorsoft and Apple as manufacturers of iTech tat. "Could do better", is what appeared on my school reports, even when I was top of the class.
Think I miss spelled the title !
Yes, You can upload your files but you cannot share them, if they are audio .was files. No reasons given, so two days wasted trying to access this free service, which doesn't like some browsers. Especially Internet Explorer, the default for your BT Account.
Look, the money hasn't been flushed down the drain, it went into the pockets of the unscruplous or incompetant IT company directors and consultants. It went the same way as all of the other lost Government IT Spunking money, the same way as the Bank losses, it went into some other fuckers pockets. Strange that ! Stranger still, you think it turned into sewage..........
So according to this story, Germany (and the rest of the world) only has solar and wind mechanisms for producing energy. With all of their huge rivers they have no hydro ? I doubt this very much.
We've all been sold so much bollox on this renewables debate that even the sanest of us cannot see that we are still being blagged stupid by the politicians and pundits.
IMHO
1. There are thousands of industries manufacturing (what I think of as) a lot of shite that we don't actually need, which are directly responsible for consuming energy in such large quantities that production on massive scale is necessary. They make huge profits from exploiting us and our "needs" and they bugger up the environment in the process, then when there's not "enough" profit in it for them, they fuck off to rape somewhere/one/thing else. We can do without a lot of this and consequently, we don't need to produce as much energy as we are being led to believe.
2. It appears that Hydro power can be generated cleanly - 24 hours a day from a slow flowing river, like the Dorset Stour, even in the summer, employing an Archimedes Screw mechanism. From a small amount of fall, It provides electricity on a small scale, for local homes and businesses.
3. I humbly suggest that our Universities, chain outlets of consumer goods and services, govermin and military institutions, as well as Cloudy providers, etc, all of whom consume vast amounts of energy in order to exploit our "needs" - should invest some of their govermin gifted dosh into the development of such plant - on their own turf, of course. AND, If they cannot produce enough, then they shouldn't be damned well expecting the rest of us to stump up for their greed and grandiose schemes.
4. People please get real on power. Stop being hoodwinked by these f*ckers, a lot of us here are supposed to be tech savvy. The picture isn't so bleedin' bleak as some foks like to make out, but capitalism as we know it - can get screwed !
Is Windows 3.11 still in operation anywhere critical ?
But if I specifically wanted to run Win 3.11 or even DOS apps, I'd set up a machine for that purpose.
A lot of businesses, large and small are still using Windows XP because of the applications they are using. Just like UK Govermin is resistant to change from Windows 2000, it's the cost of upgrading the applications as well as the OS, as well as the hardware - for ALL your Users, which makes the process something you don't do lightly or over night. The sensible approach is to roll out as and when the upgrade is required. Usually, this is some time after the early adopters have had their burned fingers bandaged and the major bugs have been discovered and ironed out. I imagine that this is one of the main reasons why so many people and businesses are still using XP, not 'cos they like the badge or Bill Gates. When upgrading you are going to be throwing away money that you earlier invested in stuff like, version of Adobe PhotoShop which still serves it's purpose on an XP machine, but won't run on the latest OS.
But most of these apps will still be able to be used on an XP box which doesn't have an Internet connection. And remove any USB/floppy disk ports, NICs, etc to reduce the opportunity for Users to import malware onto the machine from their BYOD devices.
Running a Linux distro with XP and it's retro applications in a Virual Machine seems an obvious means to enjoy modern hardware along your favourite interface.
It is time to upgrade the "tool" when upgrading the "tool" presents an advantage to the business, not when you are being held to ransome by the company who sold you the tool in the first place. If the new tool is superior in some way, then there may be a tangible reason to upgrade, but for f*cks sake, 7, 8, 8.1, RT !!!!
There are better tool makers these days, Linux anyone.
Since any would be Claimant without a PC and connection to the Internet would be pointed in the direction of the local library where they can do these things for free.
AND
Since the libraries I know are still running Windows 2000 and IE6, they shouldn't have a problem, right.
Did someone mention security ?
Didn't think so !