Posts by DJV

Here's one way past Moore's law: Chips that mix photonics and electronics

The boffins have obviously seen the light!

(see above)

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

"it's well past time to stop being so harsh on Redmond"

Nope, it's not. Give 'em an inch and they'll patent the ruler.

First-ever James Webb Space Telescope image revealed

"The better alternative is to keep the politicians away from this stuff"

I'm increasingly of the opinion that it would be best to keep politicians away from a breathable atmosphere for the sake of the rest of us.

'Unbreakable' Oracle Linux 9 is a RHEL rebuild with built-in Btrfs support

Yeah, but it's Oracle...

I will therefore avoid it like the plague.

This is the military – you can't just delete your history like you're 15

Re: Every single time

Oh god, yes! I used to work in IT support back in the 1990s - the number of times we had to remove all those damned "useful" (sic) toolbars from people's computers. We'd tell them NOT to reinstall them knowing we'd have to go back a week or two later to do exactly the same thing once again...

Someone may be prepping an NPM crypto-mining spree

Reinventing the wheel

There's always been this thing about "not reinventing the wheel" but it's becoming obvious that inventing your own wheel does mean that you retain full control over how many spokes your wheel has and exactly what each of those spokes in your wheel does. Relying on randomly updated external sources for your wheels means that you are not likely to notice when that extra spoke goes very, very bad.

Spain, Austria not convinced location data is personal information

Re: Hm, I'd say..

Yes, and also, delete that data after an agreed time period.

RISC OS: 35-year-old original Arm operating system is alive and well

Re: Guess what I'm using to read this

Your eyes?

Telegram criticizes Apple for 'intentionally crippling' web app features on iOS

Re: I love the fact that...

Duh, yes! Whoosh!

I love the fact that...

...there's now always an ® after the "We have asked Apple for comment" text. Has El Reg really registered that sentence as a trademark?

IBM ordered to hand over ex-CEO emails plotting cuts in older workers

"an IBM spokesperson"

Maybe El Reg should now always refer to them as "an IBM spokesliar" instead.

How one techie ended up paying the tab on an Apple Macintosh Plus

Manual page numbering

I was asked if I could convert an aspiring author's Word documents into an ebook. She had written the book with each chapter as a separate Word doc. Well, fair enough, I thought - it won't take long to mash them all into a single file.

However, what I hadn't initially realised was that ALL the page numbers had been MANUALLY inserted into the document text as she had no idea about header and footer sections, or using automatic page numbering! It also turned out she had no real idea about spelling and grammar checking, either.

Sigh - never again!

Next major update of Windows 11 prepares for launch

Re: Apparently Baldrick is now running Microsoft

Yeah, that accounts for every release looking more and more like a turnip.

Lonestar plans to put datacenters in the Moon's lava tubes

Re: Ask the dinosaurs

I did but he was too busy digging for worms in my back garden to answer.

Failed gambler? How about an algorithm that predicts the future

Dunno about brown...

...but mauve has more RAM.

Google keeps legacy G Suite alive and free for personal use

Re: Gmail's spam filtering is really good

With 'good' meaning 'way too overenthusiastic' - it puts almost everything into the spam folder, even when you've told it that it's NOT spam!

Nvidia open-sources Linux kernel GPU modules. Repeat, open-source GPU modules

I'm really surprised...

...that the article didn't link to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g

Google's Flutter app development framework now stable across platforms

So...

...the next stage, as usual, will be to kill it dead then.

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Email domain for NPM lib with 6m downloads a week grabbed by expert to make a point

holes

This sort of reminds me of an aunt who was so bad at knitting that her attempt to knit a jumper ended up looking like a string vest. NPM is (or hopefully, now, was) the software version of her jumper.

Trying and failing to update Visual Studio? You aren't alone

"continuously improving the Visual Studio update experience"

"We are continuously fucking up the Visual Studio update experience so that it's as buggy and useless as possible."

FTFY

iOS, Android stores host more than 1.5 million 'abandoned' apps

Re: Once you're a Google Play developer, you always will be.

Same here - the hoops Google want me to jump through just to satisfy their stupid updates are not worth the effort. Yet, it's impossible to actually engage with the idiots to tell them what the situation is! I've tried sending messages to various places as I've come across them but absolutely NEVER get a reply. Google are pathetic, greedy and useless.

Also, as a web developer who has made use of the Google maps API many times in the past on various sites, now, when updating those sites I am moving all mapping to OpenStreetMap because their interface is now simpler than Google's and they don't also demand credit card details up front in order to use the maps.

Clustered Pi Picos made to run original Transputer code

Re: UEA?

Yes, he was still there in 1993-6 when I did my computing degree there. I only took one course that he taught (known as 1D10 - and, yes, of course we added a final "T" to it!) the coursework of which was to program a CPU simulator.

Outlook bombards Safari users with endless downloads

Re: Netscape chewed up memory and Windows' memory management was woeful

IE3 also chewed up memory and tended to crash Windows somewhere around the twentieth web page (and that was on mid-1990's lightweight* web pages). We advised people to go back to using Netscape until we'd managed to upgrade everyone to Windows 95/8.

* in comparison with today's CDN/crap overladen stuff.

Apple's return-to-office plan savaged by staff

Re: iHotel

Now you're just taking the piss!

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

Re: "just as dumb as the rest of the staff"

You're lucky - they are usually dumber!

Re: "Probably the world's least useful bug report"

I see your "it doesn't work" and raise you a "funny on screen" (which was the full extent of a bug report I once received).

Windows 10 still growing, but Win 11 had another bad month, says AdDuplex

"MS seem oblivious to the financial problems that people are experiencing all over the world."

And also: MS seem oblivious to the problems that people are experiencing with Windows 11 all over the world.

Microsoft partners balk at new licensing scheme, dent growth

@ac

Yep, the old drug-dealer methodology.

Your AI can't tell you it's lying if it thinks it's telling the truth. That's a problem

Re: driving license

"would have done better with a driving license ... as these have the photo on as well"

My driving license doesn't - it's still the old fold-up paper type, which is still perfectly legal (I checked with the DVLA).

Not to dis your diskette, but there are some unexpected sector holes

Re: some overenthusiastic hole punch work

I heard a similar second-hand story about that - programs and data loaded from paper tape kept being corrupted. It took them a while but the problem was eventually tracked down to a clueless newbie in charge of occasional paper tape loading - he was getting bored and poking the occasional extra hole in the tape with the point of a pencil.

Apple geniuses in Atlanta beat New York to the punch, file petition to unionize

Re: It is interesting to see the moves to unionise

I fully agree.

Unions are good when they are trying to raise workers from the hell of "minimum wage" employment with uncaring, greedy, money-first companies. So, I am fully supportive of the workers at Apple and Amazon trying to unionize.

However, those of us in the UK with long memories may remember the "closed shop" proposals of the 1970s when it seemed that the boot was very much on the other foot and militaristic unions ruled the country instead of the government (not that the current bunch do much ruling, preferring instead to party and line their own pockets at everyone else's expense). The very small family-run company I worked for at the time, who tried their best to pay a decent wage, lived in fear that, if closed shop was imposed, it would effectively mean they would run at a loss, which would kill the company.

So, unions are good in moderation - the other extreme is just as bad.

Microsoft plans to drop SMB1 binaries from Windows 11

@Neil Barnes

I love the fact that you needed to go and check!

'IBM is now a very different company' says CEO as Q1 2022 beats expectations

IBM is now a very different company

Absolutely! In the past, the saying went, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM!"

Now, it's more like: "No one in their right mind will buy from IBM."

Windows 11 usage stats within touching distance of... XP

Re: They could at least test this mess properly

No, that's what users are for...

AI models to detect how you're feeling in sales calls

I like the Joy of Tech's take on this!

http://www.joyoftech.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2890.html

An early crack at network management with an unfortunate logfile

FFS!

I make a lot of use of a great file sync program called FreeFileSync and I use it enough to have bunged the developer some ££ on occasion. One option is to make shortcuts to commonly used settings on the desktop - the file names it generates for these always amuse me as they have the format: Name.ffs_gui

Re: Any code written will be looked upon with raised eyebrows in X years

Yes, and I do that to my own code that was written X years ago (and as for the code written X*2 years ago... well... words are not enough!)

You can buy a company. You can buy a product. Common sense? Trickier

Re: "The icing on the cake was that the colleague in question worked for our IT department"

I'm surprised you didn't add "but not for much longer" to that sentence!

Chromebook sales train derails as market reaches saturation

It's just another Gartner Guestimate.

Nothing to see here!

Microsoft details how China-linked crew's malware hides scheduled Windows tasks

Re: The registry is much more than a cron table

And that's one of the problems right there!

Go wash your mouth out right now - as if lovely, kind-hearted Microsoft would ever do anything like that!

So...

...if Microsoft can detect this and they know exactly how it works, then does that mean that the current version of Windows Defender can detect it and remove it automatically? And, if it can't, then why not?

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

Re: Well, at least they disappeared in later versions!

Upvoted - I recognised that quote immediately. Younger readers might want to go here.

First Light says it's hit nuclear fusion breakthrough with no fancy lasers, magnets

Re: "reliably shoot a projectile every 30 seconds"

Just put a red-shirt in the target area and make sure that there are none of Vader's Stormtroopers anywhere around the shooting end. Should hit the target every time!

Web3 'contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare' says analyst firm

Re: Good report

Yeah, and if Gartner also suddenly come up with feasible predictions that end up coming true then we're definitely all doomed!

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

"Still, "Microsoft" and "pointless and annoying" sadly seem to go quite hand-in-hand lately."

Upvoted - though what do you mean by "lately"?

The first step to data privacy is admitting you have a problem, Google

@AC "what harm does it do me"

With a response like that, it just shows that YOU are part of the problem.

Apple notches up ninth €5m fine for ignoring nation's competition watchdog

Re: quite a discrepancy!

It's probably an on-the-fly calculation that's similar to the amount of time showing to completion on a Windows file copying dialog - you know, the one that goes: 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 4 days 6 hours, 18 hours, 6 minutes, 23 years, 3 minutes, 2 minutes 50 seconds, 2 minutes 59 seconds, and then sits there at 99% done with "5 seconds remaining" left showing for around 10 minutes.

How legacy IPv6 addresses can spoil your network privacy

Vermin IPv6

"Depending on your ISP, router, and so on, you might find that on your home network, your laptops, phones, and other devices have their own local IPv6 addresses"

I'm with Vermin Media - I suspect their planned date for switching to IPv6 coincides with the date of the heat death of the universe...