* Posts by Fading

769 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Sep 2009

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Closure of Windows 10 upgrade path still catching users by surprise

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Windows

In my misbegotten youth....

I purchased an upgrade from Vista home OEM to windows 8 retail via Microsoft for the grand total of 25 whole English pounds (when they were desperate to increase windows 8 uptake). The key has been used subsequently to upgrade to windows 8.1 then 10 and since then the "downgrade" to windows 11 - going on 15 years of MS OS's now (all those other OEM licenses from machine upgrades have been wasted). This is linked to my MS account so with luck I will get a few more MS Os's out of it.....

Now who remembers calling the MS activation number for XP numerous times after another wipe to get the machine working again.....

Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse

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Holmes

Looks like we'll have to go back to proper net surfing......

Where you relied on links on one page to take you to other interesting pages.

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

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Originally played the cut down Electron version....

Certainly not the best version but my first - monochrome graphics, only one galaxy, no military lasers and reduced number of ships. Docking was fiendishly difficult compared to all other versions I played (C64, Amstrad CPC 464 - non metro version so had the random crash bug - had to send it back to get the patched version (two weeks, imagine waiting two weeks for a patch) , PC - Dos version in 4 colour CGA filled graphics then played Elite Plus in glorious MCGA) - so after mastering on the electron I could dock easily on any other version. Spent a long time hunting thargoids in witch space on the Amstrad CPC version (mining lasers were the best weapons for this - needed to hit a key combination whilst hyperspacing to force your ship into witchspace)

Put a fair amount of time in Frontiers - loved my Merlin and got all the way up into an Imperial Trader (though preferred flying the courier) and aslo played a bit of Encounters (pretty much a Frontiers enhancement).

Haven't play ED in ages - lost a bit of interest when engineers were introduced - might drop back into it at some point if I have time.

Microsoft issues deadline for end of Windows 10 support – it's pay to play for security

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The impending win11 downgrade approaches...

I have tried to get on with win11 but it is definitely a downgrade from win10 (which was an upgrade from 8 but a downgrade from 7). My main machine meets the TPM requirements (but does not allow the memory integrity to be turned on saying "incompatible drivers" - though the list of incompatible drivers is blank).

So issues I have with win11 - not able to move the taskbar to the top (previously I always had my local machine's task bar at the top - so could tell at a glance if I was on a remote session or not), "open with" - sometimes works mostly doesn't, hyperlinks in apps no-longer opens a web browser with the link - and of course in an app you can't view where the link wants to take you (probably linked to the same issue as before). What is up with the stupid icon menu for right clicking on files? Pretty much always have to "show more options" just to get anything done. I have tried the DISM and SFC repairs but my problems still remain.

Will be nuking from orbit and reinstalling soon - just wondering whether to go back to 10 for some peace of mind.....

I also have a 10 year old laptop that doesn't do TPM (i7 3610QM, 12 GB RAM) which will most likely get a nice linux install when win10 goes out of support....

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

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Re: Every single time

To be honest it lasted me a good long while (died after about seven years of use) and whilst it had a few quirks by the end I still remember it fondly.

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Re: Every single time

Defintely a thing in the UK - I had one of these (https://www.theregister.com/2003/12/17/evesham_voyager_64_athlon/) which has both 10/100 ethernet and a modem port right next to each other plus USB 2.0 (and a IR port, firewire - damn thing had pretty much all the connectivity you could want - except wifi).

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

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Big Brother

5G was to blame.....

2024 - Covid inquiry finally concludes 5G did spread Covid 19 and vaccines were actually nanobots designed to nullify the symptoms whilst also provide Bill Gates control over our thoughts. Vaccine damage concluded to be nanobots blue screening without page-file space for a memory dump. Public outcry reduced to minority of vaccine free individuals easily framed as "conspiracy cranks" and never given air-time again. OF-COM re-branded as ministry for truth to prevent anyof these dangerous alternative views and merged with BBC to enforce the correct messages across all media and the internet. Epic win cases against Google, Steam and Apple enforcing a mandated cut for distribution to be unified across all industries and set at 50%........

CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it

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Windows

Assuming it was undeliverable...

Or were a lot of dummy email accounts for various miss-spellings of "Helpdesk" set up so the BOFH could happily ignore all but the most exact of complainants?

AMD gives 7000-series Threadrippers a frequency bump with Epyc core counts

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Big Brother

Re: and 320MB of total cache....

Makes two of us (first HDD was a 30MB "hard card" - HDD on an ISA controller card mounted on one of the three ISA expansion slots in my Amstrad 1640).

(Icon - I'm old enough to remember the 1984 Apple advert).

Raspberry Pi 5 revealed, and it should satisfy your need for speed

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Re: Lost the plot

Remember netbooks? Yep my better half loved her little Dell Insprion Mini 10 - running ubuntu. This was back in 2009 and it was significantly cheaper than the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 she currently uses. Small, light and powerful enough for the needs of the time - no idea why anyone would force windows on the same hardware (though they did) . Would I put windows on my Pi400 - nope as Win 11 seems to use a lot of resources even at idle (I have 2 windows machines and 2 linux machines). I understand people trying though not me, I sometimes have enough trouble with windows on machines that are supposed to support it......

Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

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Coat

Re: So let me recap...

Probably upset about the money spent on pR0n when the supply was freely available from the local hedges........ (is hedge pR0n still a thing?)

Moscow makes a mess on the Moon as Luna 25 probe misses orbit, lands with a thud

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Coat

Of course there are Nazis on the moon

As this documentary (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/) pointed out.......

Telecom giants dial up the heat on suppliers: It's not you, it's your CO2

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Terminator

BT ahead of the game on this one....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/05/18/bt-job-cuts-redundancies-replace-fifth-with-ai/

A lot less carbon based lifeforms really helps decarbonise the industry....

UK's GDPR replacement could wipe out oversight of live facial recognition

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Re: "Masks do not stop airborne infections"

To stop bacterial infections spreading.

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Re: "the fight against crime and terrorism"

Masks do not stop airborne infections (especially cloth masks). Covid-19 had an airborne infection vector https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1030 and we have known this for two years.

Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins

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Re: Mayhap the IoP should concern itself with funding useful research ...

So funding this survey is a good use of membership fees?

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Facepalm

More survey based nonsense......

I fail to see why the opinions of 2514 individuals should decide on the useage of any words in any language. I also fail to see why these nonsense pieces ever see the light of day. Mayhap the Institute of Physics should concern itself with funding useful research instead of pop-culture-war surveys.

The nodes have it in the Great DB debate: Reg readers pick graph

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It does help.......

To have more than one tool - if all you have is Excel, everything looks like a spreadsheet......

After long delays, Sapphire Rapids arrives, full of accelerators and superlatives

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CPU as a service....

Another first from Intel?

Tributes flow as Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo - the mind behind Sound Blaster - passes aged 68

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RIP

Didn't get a soundblaster card until I drop a Soundblaster 16 into my 486 DX2 win 3.11 machine (well MSDOS 5 with windows 3.11) - great card. Prior to this I had an Adlib card. Have a soundblaster Katana on my desk as I type this. I think it was the Soundblaster 2 that really made an impact back in the day in the UK though it was Roland that was always considered the pinnacle of sound cards in the 80s.

Twitter gives up fight against COVID-19 misinformation

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Re: @Binraider - There's no "right sort of censorship"

As an author of various academic papers you must be fully aware of the replication crisis that is getting worse?

https://www.news-medical.net/life-sciences/What-is-the-Replication-Crisis.aspx

All of the norths are about to align over Britain

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Coat

And as the norths merge at Stonehenge.....

The gates of Avalon will open and the one true King of England will return.....

With Dragons....

Or something......

(yes I know Stonehenge is at 51° 10' 26.30" it's close enough for mythology)....

Linus Torvalds suggests the 80486 architecture belongs in a museum, not the Linux kernel

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Linux

Erm isn't Intel's CSME running on a 486?

Here we go - https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/05/unfixable_intel_csme_flaw/

I wonder if Minix will also drop 486 support.........

Liz Truss ousted as UK prime minister, outlived by online lettuce

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Coat

Re: Face like thunder

I for one welcome our new Asteraceae overlords....

Too bad, contractors: UK government reverses decision to axe IR35 tax reform

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Pint

Re: Where are the Tories ?

I'm assuming you saw the photographs? And you describe them as "wild parties"? I think you need to get out more.........

(not defending any of these social gatherings just the hyperbolic "wild party" description).

The new GPU world order is beginning to take shape

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Re: Waiting for the enevitable

Not sure of the numbers that fit your demographic - the intersection of gamers that had a 3090Ti (and have had it long enough to want to upgrade) and are now looking to purchase a 4090 isn't going to be anywhere near the majority. 450W is excessive (my 1080Ti was considered excessive at 250W) and whilst I do have a PSU that can run a 4090, I don't have the desire to spend £1700 on just a GPU. Given the difficulties getting GPUs at reasonable prices until recently I suspect there are more people with 10 series cards looking to upgrade than 3090Ti owners looking to upgrade.

Fixing an upside-down USB plug: A case of supporting the insupportable

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Re: Outrageous

That kind of behaviour just leads to unrealistic expectations.

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Windows

Re: Upside down 3.5" floppies

I had to think about that for a minute - yes the labels wrapped around the bottom of the disc (when did the name change from diskette?) - Nurse! more dried frog pills please.......

Climate change prevention plans 'way off track', says UN

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Adaptation....

Adaptation instead of mitigation would be a far more sensible investment given how little impact the UK can actually have.

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

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Re: Coburg-Gotha-von-Battenberg

You mean this France?

https://twitter.com/emmanuelmacron/status/1568181528932356099

"To you, she was your Queen.

To us, she was The Queen.

She will be with all of us forever."

Former Microsoft UX boss doesn't like the Windows 11 Start menu either

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Object Dock...

I've been using Stardock's object dock on my home machine since windows vista - hence having the task bar at the top of the screen. Previously you can make some registry changes (check out howtogeek) to force win 11's task bar to the top (also requires a restart of windows explorer - not the machine itself) - why is there not a simple setting for this (and why are there some reports of this failing since the last update)? Having the task bar at the top means I never confuse my local machine with those I've remotely connected to - so in the meantime I'll stick with win10 on my main machine.

PanWriter: Cross-platform writing tool runs on anything and outputs to anything

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Thumb Up

Re: Also

I second the "don't fight it" comment - you won't win (you think you have and then you open the file on another machine and realise you were duped).

Since I've learnt to let Word get on with it, my documentation takes a lot less time to write (and I hate writing documentation) .

'I wonder what this cable does': How to tell thicknet from a thickhead

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Coat

Re: colour me sceptical

Most connectors can be made physically compatible when enough force is applied.....

Patch Tuesday: Yet another Microsoft RCE bug under active exploit

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Facepalm

Buggy processors link....

So I diligently follow the link - find my processor and then check the link for CVE-2022-21233 only to be sent to the details for CVE-2022-28693 (ok I can find the details if I type intel-sa-00657.html at the end of the link). Does anyone at intel check these things?

Too little, too late: Intel's legacy is eroding

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Re: So called lead...

From Sandy bridge (2000) to Skylake (7000) intel knew they had no real competition - so took advantage of this. Each gen was only a small improvement and higher core counts were only available on their stupidly expensive HEDT and server chips. Ryzen was a kick to the proverbials - and when AMD also started to release good laptop chips intel responded late and in some cases with desperation (e.g. back porting the newer architecture onto the 14nm process).

Near-undetectable malware linked to Russia's Cozy Bear

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Headmaster

Can we not just get all email scanners....

To strip the last three characters from all attachments and default windows to open anything without and extension into a hex editor. Anyone that really needs the attachment will have to download and rename the file appropriately.

I know this would never fly with users..... :(

If you didn't store valuable data, ransomware would become impotent

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Coat

The other option....

Is everyone has all the data. May seem crazy but stick with this thought for a moment:

In this situation if I need to prove that you are who you say you are (lets say for purchasing) - then I can use as much of the data as I want to satisfy myself that not only are you that person you say you are but you also have the means and funds to purchase what you want. That purchasing record then becomes another piece of data that everyone has access to. This omni-data model would initially need to be inviolate (well at least cascade change proof) (blockchain all over again) - but as contradiction cannot exist in nature the data would self-correct as more is collected.

Ransomware only exists because companies and individuals hold data no one else has got - if we all have it all there is nothing to ransom.

And if this omni-data is used nefariously - well that becomes part of the data and the nefarious agents become visible for all to see....

Hmm might have overdone it with the meds.....

No more fossil fuel or nukes? In the future we will generate power with magic dust

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Coat

Given time crystal realisations....

reach stability only if isolated from the environment and the observer, I guess no one can easily check if they did manage to produce two of them......

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

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Joke

Re: Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

The reason why the French struggle with the concept of "the weekend" is they couldn't contemplate the concept of not working for only two days every week.......

[grabs coat and ducks to avoid barrage of onions and baguettes]

Original killer PC spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 now runs on Linux natively

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Re: Word Star

CP/M Wordstar that tickles the grey matter. I had that running on my Amstrad 6128 back when I was at secondary school.

Phishing operation hits NHS email accounts to harvest Microsoft credentials

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Re: To be fare (pun intended)...

There was no source defined in the original comment. Whilst it was a national emergency the figures supplied to the NHS far exceeded the additional number on the side of the bus - and if the funding is continued as listed in the link I provided it will still exceed the £350M per week. Would they have done it without the emergency - well that's highly debatable.

As it is, I'm not pulling anything merely providing links to the relevant figures. There are many many things to hit the current bunch of muppetised incumbents with but an outdated and superceded (circa 2016) political advert on the side of a bus isn't one of them.

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Headmaster

To be fare (pun intended)...

If we include Covid NHS funding the change from 2019 to 2020 (Jan-2020 being when "Brexit" happened) the funding increased from £149 billion to £191 billion so around an £800 million a week increase (https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget) so the promised £350 Million (a week - it was a week on the bus - https://jonworth.eu/the-two-versions-of-the-350-million-for-the-nhs-slogan/) was more than given.

Don’t expect to get your data back from the Onyx ransomware group

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Pirate

Re: Trust issues?

If you can't trust cyber criminals who can you trust?

Fitbit recalls Ionic smartwatch for burning fat – literally

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Flame

Re: does the device need to be sent back?

Part of the process "unlinks" your ionic from the fitbit app - so technically it isn't de-activated just un-paired. They want you to agree to have it destroyed/recycled in the approved manner an it is a 3-6 week wait before you get your refund though. Yep, I've jumped through the hoops to get the refund for mine (that I was still using) so at the moment I don't have a tracker enabled for my Vitality health insurance points - no free coffee next week for me.

Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage

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The joys of modifying windows sounds...

For awhile (back in XP days) I did have my personal laptop play various lines from 2001: A Space Odyssey - the critical stop being "I'm sorry Dave I'm afraid I can't do that". It would have been better had my name been Dave. IIRC "My mind is going. I can feel it" was the windows shutdown sound....

File suffixes: Who needs them? Well, this guy did

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Windows

Re: Lots of files with the same name

The icon showing is dependent on the associated program - hence with only a little nefarious fiddling you could have all the icons the same as well.

To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer

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Re: Step outside

The one that almost caught me out was when driving in southern Italy (Naples down to Sorrento). When pulling onto a road - flashing headlights do not mean "after you" as they do in the UK but "keep out of my way I'm coming through".

The other thing I noticed was the speed limit and "no-overtaking" signs were obviously only for tourists.......

COVID-19 was a generational opportunity for change at work – and corporate blew it

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Big Brother

Re: This outcome in inherent in a hierarchical organization and distribution of managerial power.

"They are held responsible for the results of their team, or teams."

Really?! Taking the praise when things go well and shifting the blame onto subordinates when things go wrong - that is management.

And Decision avoidance is a essential management skill. No manager would last five minutes if they were actually held responsible (even for their own ideas).

Windows 10 2004 is nearing the end of the road. Time for a Windows 11 upgrade?

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Windows

Re: Thin ice

Friends don't let friends use Access.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we should feel fine

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Re: We shouldn't feel fine

All my Amstrad CPC 6128 needed was a rubber band to replace the perished one in the 3" disc drive (note: 3 inch floppy) and a bit of a clean up (nothing Isopropyl couldn't handle). Even the multiface II was still functional. Cleaned it up over Christmas and had some retro fun. No batteries to worry about in those old 8-bits. Amstrad's may have been all about cutting corners and "all on one plug" but the all bits still work.

Note - it wasn't in "storage" just a cardboard box in the wardrobe. Apologies for mentioning the hated Alan Sugar Trading's name on a Sir Clive Thread.

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