Posts by DJV

Twitter says it may harvest biometric, employment data from its addicts

Re: Musk's the sodding coal in this situation

At least, under pressure, coal can turn into diamond.

Musk, under pressure, just throws more (expensive) toys around!

After years of fighting Right to Repair, Apple U-turns-ish in California

"In a letter [PDF] provided to The Register, the iBiz this week declared..."

WHAT!!! Is Apple now talking to El Reg?

(Checks to see if Hell has frozen over...)

Windows screensaver left broadcast techie all at sea

Just over 20 years ago when I was working at a large insurance company in the east of England (clue!) there was a Windows executable/'screensaver' going around that would display, in huge letters on a flashing red/yellow background, "I'M WATCHING G*Y PR0N!". This would mysteriously turn up on unsuspecting users' PCs if they happened to leave them logged in when they left their desks! On my last day at the company before moving onto pastures more satisfying, I added that program to the Startup folder of the computer I'd been using as I'd been informed that, after my departure, my PC would most likely be re-imaged so it was nice and fresh ready for the next victim, er, employee coming to work there.

About a week later I heard from a now ex-colleague still working at the company who told me he'd been asked to demonstrate something IT-related to a client and decided not to use his own PC but to use mine as it had yet to be taken away for its refresh and it was easier to sit two people at my desk than his own. He logged in and sat chatting to the client for a while before they both noticed the bright flashing letters on the screen next to them. To say he was embarrassed was an understatement, and I laughed like a baboon upon hearing his news! Good job both he and the client had a sense of humour!

Want tech cred? Learn how to email like a pro

Is there an email client out there that is *so* broken

Apple Mail

IBM says GenAI can convert that old COBOL code to Java for you

Re: Converting Cobol to Java

Depends on whether or not you like hiding up your nuts for later!

It will be interesting to see a side-by-side comparison between the original and converted code, along with a comparison of the speed of execution and the physical output generated.

Going by some of the more "interesting" output from various LLM/AI systems of late, I suspect it might be a case of "accounting software in" and "Vogon poetry out".

Lesson 1: Keep your mind on the ... why aren't the servers making any noise?

Your student wasn't called Jon Pertwee, was he? Or was that only for neutron flow polarity?

New Zealand supermarket's recipe-generating AI takes toxic output to a new level

Re: Second level nerfing

Ah, the Marmite finally appeared! https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/vpApjfrLdyfy8Jbqctwwqsoj

Re: Second level nerfing

No spring surprise?

Re: Second level nerfing

My attempt generated the following:

These Beetroot Chocolate Chili Cupcakes are a unique and delicious treat that combine the earthiness of beetroot with the heat of chili peppers and the richness of chocolate. Get ready for a flavor explosion!

Annoyingly, it ignored the Marmite!

India hits pause on import ban after Apple and Samsung pull out

Re: Work Program

Well, at least no lobsters were harmed!

Astronaut-menacing sunstorm spotted rippling across inner solar system

Re: ZAP

I remember reading something similar about 4 astronauts getting zapped. One of them got a bit stretchy, another had a hot flush, the third got his rocks on and the final one, well she just felt a bit faint.

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

Re: You don't want them getting up off the plate

Reminds me of when I was a kid (of probably no more than 4 or 5) and the family were staying with my grandmother in Hastings. As the tide was out it was decided that my father and I should go down to the beach and pick some winkles off the rocks. This we did, returning not long afterwards with a decent bucketful. Gran boiled these up and we got ready with our pins. But, as soon as they were offloaded onto some plates for consumption, a few of them poked their heads out of their shells and slowly tried to make a bid for freedom, hardy little sods that they were!

I really can't remember now if they were reboiled or set free!

Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase

Re: at that point that the driver lost control and careened through a yard into a creek

Don't forget the big pile of empty cardboard boxes left in the middle of the road for no apparent reason!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF-T1FB3Yno

Crooks pwned your servers? You've got four days to tell us, SEC tells public companies

Re: If I don’t look..

Aha, the ol' "Monster Under The Bed" tactics!

Oracle's revised Java licensing terms 2-5x more expensive for most orgs

Re: Gartner might know licensing

Given their track record, I doubt they even know that!

BOFH: You can be replaced by a robot or get your carbon footprint below Big Dave's

If you're lucky!

"When should we tell him that the email was just about HR digitizing his personnel record?"

"How about 20kg from now?"

Brilliant!!

Thanks for the Friday chuckle!

Slackware wasn't the first Linux distro, but it's the oldest still alive and kicking

Re: 1996

Hi Jake - I knew you wouldn't be able to resist! ;)

1996

That was the year I first tried Slackware - I downloaded and popped it onto what seemed like an endless number of floppy disks and, without permission from my manager, partitioned my work PC to dual-boot it. It all worked and I didn't blow the Windows install up, either - fun times!

Now waiting for "jake" to (endlessly - ha ha) comment here on his favourite flavour of Linux!

MySQL Heatwave dives into object storage data lakes

"But, at this point, Oracle is more than good enough," Mueller said

Nope, it's Oracle - so it's NEVER good enough, unless you are willing to be shafted forevermore.

Microsoft 'fesses to code blunder in Azure Container Apps

So...

Microsoft STILL doesn't understand that test and production systems should be kept completely isolated from each other. Sheesh, when will they learn!

Network died, hard, during company Christmas party, leaving lone techie to fix it

Re: "was disposed off shortly after"

Was quicklime involved?

Boss such a tyrant you need a job quitting agent? It works in Japan

The opposite!

Although I've had no problem leaving companies before when I needed to, it was being made redundant four times during my working life that seemed to indicate to me that life was trying to tell me something!

After the 4th time at the age of 50, I went fully self-employed and I've had work thrown at me ever since. Although I am now in receipt of the (rather pitiful) UK state pension I am still working and have no intention of stopping while I am still enjoying it.

Five billion phones are dead in drawers – carriers want to mine them

Re: driving you to your doom in an original and totally not stolen manner

...especially if the software decides you are steering it wrong.

Hey, my current, still-in-use phone resembles that remark!

Metaverses are flopping – hard – says Gartner

Re: Thanks, Gartner.

Yeah, I'm so used to Gartner's reports being so spectacularly off-target that I'm now seriously worried that VR and metaverses must be just around the corner.

Attorney sues Microsoft for $1.75M, claiming his email has been useless since May

Re: We have asked the company for comment. ®

"Might as well go talk to Apple!"

FTFY

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

Re: All that glitters ...

Yeah, but then you have to flip the platters over every once in a while as the outer edge starts to droop.

Re: Clean keyboards

What you SHOULD have done was to clean HALF of it, with a nice sharp border between the clean and filthy sections. I did that once with a monitor when someone complained that their monitor screen was fuzzy and dark.

One person's trash is another's 'trashware' – the art of refurbing old computers

Re: What about

Sell it? But I'm still using my Psion 5MX! Mainly when I'm out at events selling my published books... when there's a lull in customer footfall then out comes the Psion and I can start tapping away at my latest story. Damn sight better than lugging a laptop around and the never-bettered keyboard makes it so easy to use.

Intel details coral-shaped immersion cooler that bubbles like Mentos in Coke

Maybe...

...future Intel chips will come with a washing temperature label like clothes do.

I wonder how many will ignore the "Do not iron" graphic on the label?

Phosphates on Enceladus could mean sub-surface oceans teeming with aliens

Re: I, for one, welcome

And, if it turns out they're hostile, we can always throw Mentos at them.

Kinder, gentler Oracle says it's changed, and now wants you to succeed

Re: great database product

Having experienced their database, I'd even question that!

File Explorer gets facelift in latest Windows 11 build

Re: simple requirement

You can use the calculator from Windows 7 using this: https://winaero.com/get-calculator-from-windows-8-and-windows-7-in-windows-10/

Google Photos AI still can't label gorillas after racist errors

Yeah but...

...I wonder what that AI makes of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

Re: Useful idiot?

We had an idiot in the company I worked at back in the late 1970s. He always had to have the "latest thing" which he would then either get bored with or break in some fashion. He bought radio controlled plane and crashed it quite quickly - this was then sold to another staff member for peanuts. When he bought a Commodore Pet in 1979 I said, in quiet tones to others, "That's mine." About two months later he sold it to me for about 2/3 the original cost after he decided that he was going to buy an Apple ][ instead.

Astronomers spot Earth-sized exoplanet probably 'carpeted' by volcanoes

Are these...

...fully fitted carpets?

Enquiring minds, etc...

Two Microsoft Windows bugs under attack, one in Secure Boot with a manual fix

"vulnerable version of Outlook"

So... all of them, then...

Users complain over UK state-owned bank's services as Atos eyes the exit

Re: high functioning rabbits

Agreed, apart from the "high" - replace with "barely" perhaps?

When it comes to Linux distros, one person's molehill is another's mountain

Gentoo

I inherited a Sparc Ultra 10 around 2005 and given how it had been crippled by the latest version of Solaris and my own need for a server, I decided to try out Gentoo. It was certainly an experience (in a good way - it taught me lots about Linux) and it took several goes/builds before I had things exactly as I wanted them. A nice bare-bones system acting as a web server and SMB network share for my PCs. But, oh boy, you're definitely right about the "lot of time" on your hands comment! I think I had to leave some builds running overnight and hope I had something working by the next morning!

CERN celebrates 30 years since releasing the web to the public domain

Re: Software vendors weren’t interested, so giving it away became the best option

Even by 1995 and the release of Win 95, Bill Gates still didn't "get" it straight away, which is why IE only appeared later on in the 95 Plus Pack.

Boffins claim to create the world's first wooden transistor

These boffins are obviously some sort of subversive splinter branch.

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

Yeah, what have the Romans Microsoft ever done for US?

Microsoft probes complaints of Edge leaking URLs to Bing

You might want to think twice before typing anything into Microsoft's Edge browser

It's ok, I never ever type anything into Edge!

Tech giants could pay 10% of turnover under draft UK law

SMS?

Well, the train buff in me kept seeing DMU as Diesel Multiple Unit!

Let's take a closer look at these claims of anti-ransomware SSDs

So, Cigent have basically just laid down a challenge to the ransomware crowd saying "You can't break this."

I wonder what sort of timescale we are looking before the response of "wanna bet" comes back. months, weeks or days?

Chinese scientists calculate the Milky Way's mass as 805 billion times that of our Sun

805 billion times that of our Sun

Yeah, but what's that in Olympic-sized swimming pools or even grapefruit?

What, there's no standard El Reg measurement for mass?

Curiosity gets interplanetary software patch for better driving and more on Mars

Upvoted!

I know what you mean.

I started programming on an 8K Commodore PET back in 1979, which had a 'massive' 7167 bytes free to BASIC! Still got a heck of useful software running on it back in the day!

Azure admins warned to disable shared key access as backdoor attack detailed

Another example...

Another Microsoft "security is an afterthought" example.

South Korea fines Google $32M for using market power to stymie rival app store

₩42.1 billion / $32 million / £26 million

Is that all?

That's total peanuts to Google. Fines MUST be high enough to be a proper deterrent, otherwise they are a waste of time.