Posts by DJV

Recall the Recall recall? Microsoft thinks it can make that Windows feature palatable

Re: "until is is not, which will happen sooner or later!"

... until is is not, which will happen sooner!

FTFY

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Re: I have no idea where the book went

Try looking down the back of your sofa - you know, the one impossibly jammed in your hallway.

Some US Kaspersky customers find their security software replaced by 'UltraAV'

Re: even Windows Defender would work better

Yes, of course it would. And it certainly won't start eating your desktop icons and then delete the associated programs off your computer will it! Nope, absolutely not and it never, ever has done either... oh and please don't click any link that might happen to be below.

https://www.techspot.com/news/97275-microsoft-defender-update-kills-start-menu-shortcuts-program.html

Re: Please don't swear in this august community.

Or even in this September community.

Amazon, Tesla, Meta considered harmful to democracy

Well...

...colour me surprised...

not.

Chinese server-maker Inspur claims it's on track for better liquid cooling with 'railway sleeper' design

New IT Helpdesk Response

Sorry, your computer is running slow because of a points failure between the memory modules.

Google dodges €1.5B EU ads antitrust fine after appeal win

One word...

Bugger!

I don't know what pressing Delete will do, but it seems safe enough!

Re: and apparently still working

Ah yes, that's what it wants you to think.

But, behind the scenes, it is waiting patiently... a gleeful and malevolent expression plastered across its digital face... just waiting...

UK watchdog fears Voda-Three merger will balloon phone bills for customers

Re: "Two strong players and two weak players"

I left Vodafone because of their bullshit support (I knew far more than the idiots I spoke to in their support dept - and I know almost bugger all!). After a short stint with EE I ended up with Three. So, I'm hoping this merger gets completely canned.

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

"it is many things, none of them good"

Oh right, so the mess that is the Settings App is better, is it?

Utter bullshit.

If Microcrap really decided that the "bad UI" should die, we'd be back on the Windows 7 interface immediately with none of the crappy leftovers from the awful Windows 8 debacle.

Canadian artist wants Anthropic AI lawsuit corrected

Boucher using Claude to write 97 books in less than a year

If that's true then he isn't a writer at all. 97 books in one year works out at less than 4 days for each one.

As someone who has several books published whose content all came from my own hand (with absolutely no AI involvement, whatsoever) I know how long it can take to properly write and edit a book, and it's far in excess of 4 days! My latest book, which is currently being printed, had its germination back in October 2022.

So, a pox on all those who call themselves authors but are really no more than manipulators of AI.

Sweet 16 and making mistakes: More of the computing industry's biggest fails

Yes, the first Spectrum Plusses certainly had that issue. I was working in a small computer shop in Norwich when the first model arrived. While unpacking it, I turned it over to remove part of the packaging underneath and, when I righted it, many of the keys were still lying on the table!

Gentoo Linux to drop Itanium support as Funtoo fork enters 'Hobby Mode'

Re: 'Windows From Scratch'

Well, that should have been ReactOS - but the chasm between what that supports versus the current version of Windows unfortunately seems to get larger every day.

Microsoft tweaks fine print to warn everyone not to take its AI seriously

I haven't taken Microsoft seriously for years!

Microsoft patches scary wormable hijack-my-box-via-IPv6 security bug and others

hijack-my-box-via-IPv6 security bug

Well, that's all us Vermin Media cable users safe then... sigh...

Vermin Media: IPv6 - um, yeah, we've heard of it.

Report: Tech misconceptions plague the IT world

Re: Incognito

Glasses work quite well, too

Re: Say what?

You were lucky - we had to chisel our zeros and ones onto stone tablets. Clay tablets are the work of the devil, I tell you!

Superclusters too big, but single servers too small? Oracle offers AI Goldilocks zone

Goldilocks?

Hmm, possibly the wrong fairy tale.

Oracle have more in common with the wicked witch with the poisonous apple from Snow White and the Seven Vertically-challenged Co-residents

Chrome adopts app-bound encryption to stymie cookie-stealing malware

scourge of infostealer malware

Sounds like a good description of Google themselves!

Oracle's Java pricing brews bitter taste, subscribers spill over to OpenJDK

Re: Gartner finally gets something right!

Throw enough darts at multiple dartboards and the law of averages suggests that a bullseye is likely to be hit once in a while.

The months and days before and after CrowdStrike's fatal Friday

Re: Sometimes it can be recovered, but not this time

Upvoted with enthusiasm for the use of the term "screwee"!

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Sports Sponsorship

I like the way that article states: "Crowdstrike is one of the biggest and most trusted brands in cyber-security."

I suspect the "is" has now changed to a "was".

Dangerous sandwiches delayed hardware installation

Re: blowing up the bag may indeed have been the correct form of disposal

Oh $DIETY... that takes me back to my school days in the late 1960s and a classmate whose surname was something like Donague. His nickname had transitioned through Dongo, Pongo and finally settled onto Whiff - and, yes, he did live up to that name. He had been absent through illness on the last day of term. As I sat next to him, it became my job to tidy up the contents of his desk as well as my own. Unfortunately, he did have a habit of not eating the sandwiches that his mother would dutifully make for him each day. These he would store in the desk alongside his books (exercise, reference and hymn*). I seem to remember there were several day's worth of uneaten cheese sandwiches which, once the desk lid was opened, was accompanied by cries of horror as the pong wafted around the classroom.

* The hymn book he had kept especially to occasionally show us the exact page upon which, during one particular morning assembly, he had thrown up onto. On that fateful morning, I had been standing directly to his left but I'm glad to say that he had aimed his stomach contents mainly into the hymn book itself and partially to his right, much to the chagrin of the boy in that direction whose school blazer caught a good proportion of Whiff's deliverance.

Re: Probably in a tiny room somewhere

Yes, it will be sealed off from civilisation but not before someone has installed a server in there as nowhere else was suitable or available. It will sit there doing its job for years without issue until someone finally decides to upgrade that old Netware 3.12 box to something a bit more modern - except they won't be able to find it until they physically trace the CAT-5 cable through a wall.

Microsoft 365 remains 'degraded' as Azure outage resolved

Damn, I came here to post exactly the same thing!

Kindle sputters out: Amazon's e-readers couldn't download content for a short time

Maybe...

Maybe someone attempted to download a copy of "Ten Years to Save the West" by blink-and-you'll-miss-her-time-as-Prime-Minestrone-cheese-head Liz Truss and the system decided it couldn't handle the sheer horror - and who could blame it?

An arc welder in the datacenter: What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Let's start a fight with the Welders

My brother "taught himself" welding and attempted to do up his rusty banger on our driveway in front of our and the next-door neighbour's garages. He was banned from using it after said rusty banger was reduced to a burnt-out husk and the paint on the metal garage doors had blistered alarmingly. Parents (and next-door neighbour) were definitely not amused.

Mars is slam-dunked by hundreds of basketball-sized meteorites every year

"size of basketballs"

What I want to know is: Who (or what) is filtering out all the ones that are larger or smaller than basketballs?

Europe accuses Apple of preventing devs from telling users about world outside

Apple could face fines of up to 10 percent of its global annual revenue if it fails to comply

Finally, actual teeth - though I bet it will get watered down in some way to just a slap on the wrist.

Risk of installing dodgy extensions from Chrome store way worse than Google's letting on, study suggests

Rule One

Rule One: The Doctor Google lies.

Voyager 1 makes stellar comeback to science operations

And hopefully...

...they are far enough away to escape the unwanted spread of systemd...

Version 256 of systemd boasts '42% less Unix philosophy'

Bouvet Island

No, it's still on this planet and in this solar system.

Apple finally adds RCS support after years of mixed messages

RCS

Well, I'm glad El Reg explained what RCS was after a few paragraphs - for a while there, I was wondering why the Royal College of Surgeons were getting involved!

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Re: What's in a name?

Is it sad that I knew EXACTLY what you were linking to before I went there?

Microsoft fixes the fix for the Windows Server 2019 NTLM problem

No, they would have only needed to randomly test ONE other language pack. But, hey, this is Microsoft whose motto appears to be: "Our users are our testers, so why should we bother to do it?"

It looks a lot like VMware just lost a 24,000-VM customer

Meh. Who needs toes anyway...

Another week, another leak for Boeing's Starliner crew capsule

Reminds me of one of my favourite Larson cartoons.

Why do I suspect that Boeing probably has a lot of Teds working for them!

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Yes, there was. I seem to remember she was married to Fred's friend, Barney Rubble.

BMW calls for vendor openness in quest to mine its own processes

Re: Lass dich ficken, BMW.

I also suspect that working indicator lights are a paid-for extra...

European Parliament votes to screw repair rights in consumer toolkits

The Register asked Apple to comment on the EU directive and will update this piece if it responds.

....tumbleweed....

Apple releases OpenELM, a slightly more accurate LLM

I wonder if...

...it's susceptible to Dutch OpenELM disease...

Another Boeing whistleblower comes forward – with receipts

Off topic; but has anyone else noticed that their little coloured badge thingie has disappeared?

Have you tried looking down the back of the sofa?

EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy

Re: Thank you!

They should be fined on the "wheat/rice and chessboard" principle. On the first day of non-compliance they should be fined one penny/cent (it probably doesn't matter which), the second at two pennies or cents, the third at four pennies/cents and doubling every day of non-compliance until the company realises just how soon they will be made completely bankrupt. That should focus their attention a little bit!

185K people's sensitive data in the pits after ransomware raid on Cherry Health

Re: There ought to be a rubber stamp for this

Any institution uttering that (or similar) phrases should be subject to an immediate multi-million $/£/€ fine!

Mega city council's Oracle ERP system still not legally safe, compliant... 2 years after rollout

Re: Was Object Oriented Programming involved?

Maybe, in this case, OOP stands for Orrible Oracle Programming!

Microsoft claims it didn't mean to inject Copilot into Windows Server 2022 this week

>Seeking to reassure users, Microsoft added: "It is important to note that the Microsoft chat provider for Copilot in Windows does not execute any code or process, and does not acquire, analyze, or transmit device or environment data in any capacity."

Translation: Oops, some b*gger noticed.

Gentoo Linux tells AI-generated code contributions to fork off

"I have used ChatGPT to generate example snippets of how to do a specific thing, but I have been completely unable to get it to produce even a relatively basic program that is functional"

Back in the 1990s when I was doing a computing degree at university, someone assigned to our first-year group project also produced code like that. A quick glance at his attempts at coding would reveal several compiler-breaking syntax errors. "Did this compile?" I'd ask, knowing full well that it couldn't have. "Yes," he would lie.

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

Re: merge with Boeing

So... send print job from computer to new HP/Boeing printer. After 3 pages, the printer software decides that all the cartridges are now empty (whether or not they have any ink in them), all the doors on the printer fall off and an oxygen mask dropping down somewhere inside the printer causes a paper jam. Sounds about right...

Techie saved the day and was then criticized for the fix

Re: Mess with locks = big nope

Rats, squirrels, politicians - you've always got to clear up after they've been in your systems.

Re: Mess with locks = big nope

In that case, just make sure you have your towel with you.