* Posts by nematoad

1986 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Sep 2009

DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Nazi business this

Causing one or two parts of his anatomy to spring up to the vertical

Well, one horizontal and one somewhere in between.

nematoad Silver badge

Citation required.

Or are these "alternative facts"?

nematoad Silver badge

...until there is real evidence of desiring mass murder and total control

Give them time.

Trump has just been sworn in.

Remember it'll cost ya to keep the lights on for Windows 10

nematoad Silver badge
Windows

What?

...Microsoft's generosity

Now there's an oxymoron if ever I saw one.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Idiots took over

I know that Trump keeps saying "Russia,Russia,Russia" when anyone questions interference in elections but it does look as if Russia has influenced Trump in another way.

The chaos caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union gave people in the right place an opportunity to take large portions of the Russian economy into their own hands and become the so called Oligarchs. It may be that Trump, Musk and all the other hangers-on see a similar chance if they can destroy the US government. Just look at all the billionaires swarming around the Trump. Are they doing that as part of their civic duty to support the President?

Or are they there hoping to get a slice of the pie and another mega-yacht, a bigger private jet or tasty government contracts?

It's what the Russians did and maybe this bunch of shysters are just following the playbook.

Windows 11 stages a comeback – still miles behind older sibling

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Don't panic

From what I gather from comments on sites like this it's more a case of;

It's as if you sent the BMW in for a service and got back a Reliant Robin.

Ubuntu upgrade had our old Nvidia GPU begging for a downgrade

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

A nightmare.

What a fankle!

The OP is partially right in saying that this sort of thing will put off many people wanting to try Linux. However, what Liam is writing about is getting into "advanced" territory and is, in my experience, a consequence of Nvidia's attitude to the status of its drivers. Being proprietary is a recipe for frustration, inconvenience and outright bloody-mindedness.

I too was once bitten by the curse of Nvidia drivers. I wasted a lot of time trying to get the driver to work as Nouveau was not cutting it. In the end I just switched to AMD/Radeon and have never had a single problem since.

Not much consolation for those poor souls stuck with an integrated Nvidia GPU and if that is the case you are just going to have to follow Mr. Proven's steps and get into the nitty-gritty of video card drivers.

The very best of luck.

Microsoft to force Windows 11 24H2 on Home and Pro users

nematoad Silver badge
Happy

Re: Opt out of support

But it's good to be reminded of much better off I am with a decent OS.

I too use a decent OS, in my case Linux but your sorry tale also applies to my attempts to install a new copy of my chosen distro. I thought that the days of fiddling around with an OS to try and get it work were in the past but with UEFI the demons have risen again and I'm stuck trying to figure out the magic incantation needed to get my new box to boot.

It feels like config.sys has risen from its grave.

Absolute Linux has reached the end – where to next?

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Not for me anymore.

To this day it still has a USB flash stick in the back which boots first and then switches to the internal linux image.

Ah, it may not be me then.

Could you tell me how you got it to boot from the USB stick and then boot off the internal image?

I tell you this UEFI stuff is driving to drink!

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Not for me anymore.

The only really tricky bit was getting the UEFI config right...

It's funny you should say that. I am currently having a nightmare trying to get a UEFI system to boot, Again nothing to do with the distro or the hardware, it's just as confusing as hell.

So far the distro's forum has been helpful but I am missing something. It's a pity as my new box has specs far in advance of my current one and I am getting frustrated with the whole thing.

There must be a reason for UEFI but for me it is just a PITA.

nematoad Silver badge

Not for me anymore.

I admire the effort and resourcefulness of people developing this type of distro and twenty years ago I would have been straight in there fiddling about, tweaking and seeing how I could do more with less.

These days I just want a distro that "just works". I gave up PC wrangling a long time ago and the hobby side of Linux has faded away.

Horses for courses of course but with the vast amounts of storage and computing power now available I am content to let others push the envelope of Linux and settle for a larger, easier type of distro.

I do think that the distros under discussion here should be given a warning "Not for Windows refugees or beginners."

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

nematoad Silver badge
FAIL

The older I get the more technophobic I become.

Has no-one heard of mirrors? Simple,cheap and easy to replace. They do the job and never short out.

It strikes me that this sort of thing is becoming another answer looking for a problem.

If you must have rear view cameras then for safety's sake fit mirrors as well.

You know redundant safety systems.

Tired of begging, Microsoft now trying to trick users into thinking Bing is Google

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Devious yet inept

My sister bought herself a new laptop. It was locked in S mode and the applications she had bought the machine for were not loadable. So she turned to me for help.

Talk about the blind leading the blind. I haven't touched Windows in over twenty years and there was much hair-trearing and blaspheming before I was finally able to beat it into submission. What a nice way to treat your punters!

When Win 10 dies and she asks me to help the thing is going to be wiped and a proper OS that respects its user will be installed.

Probably Linux Mint.

Microsoft invites Chinese software vendors to sell on its marketplace and through its partners

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Rowing against the current

I for one am happy to see companies tilt towards business and away from war.

Ah, that depends on the definition of "war".

War is not just soldiers, airmen and sailors trying to kill each other. There is a different kind. Asymmetric warfare. Just look at all the undersea cables and pipelines that have been damaged lately. Many of which are alleged to be the result of Chinese and Russian ships dragging their anchors across said assets.

During the Second World War the British had a department called the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

It may well be that the Chinese have something similar that we don't know about.

Elon Musk's galactic ego sows chaos in European politics

nematoad Silver badge
Pint

Re: Fall of the (Roman) Republic

Plus 1 for the Classical analysis.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

nematoad Silver badge
FAIL

Re: "the seventh-largest political party in terms of seats in the House of Commons"

...the Labor apologists

Labour!

Unless, of course, you are referring the the Australian political party of that name.

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

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Thumb Up

...older apple M chips with crossover I think it's called that can run most games.

Crossover also works well on Linux.

So now you have options.

Honey co-founder's Pie Adblock called out for copying GPL'd uBlock Origin files

nematoad Silver badge

I agree that Paypal gives off bad vibes, but, some vendors will only accept payment via Paypal.

I buy cubic zirconia from time to time and most vendors I deal with will only take Paypal payments. So to get the stones I am forced to hold my nose and use Paypal. It does not sit well with me though.

25 years on from Y2K, let's all be glad it happened way back then

nematoad Silver badge

Re: And for other reasons

...it began in 1901 and ended with the year 2000

Argh! No it didn't.

Look, I'm mildly dyscalculic and I can see that 1 to 99 does not make a hundred.

As you partially point out centuries start on year 1 of the century, so the 21st century started on 1st January 2001.

Do get it right.

nematoad Silver badge

Re: And for other reasons

I remember Y2K as mostly a damp squib.

Yes, me too.

Though I remember sitting in the call centre all night waiting for things to fall apart, they didn't, and picking up some ridiculous multiplier to my hourly rate. 5 or 6 times if I recall correctly.

nematoad Silver badge

Re: And for other reasons

Unsurprisingly this makes them numerically ill-informed.

Yes, that really annoyed me at the time as people were celebrating the turn of the millennium a year early. Year1 to year99 does not make a century.

It would seem that the writer is similarly confused as we won't be in the second quarter of the century for another year.

Now let's all kick off the second quarter of the century

Trump's tariff threats could bump PC prices by almost half

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Eh?

I know that people say that a country gets the government that it deserves, but what did the US do to be saddled with the likes of Trump, Musk and co?

Are you better value for money than AI?

nematoad Silver badge
WTF?

Re: OpenAI chief financial officer (CFO) Sarah Friar

Friar seems to be saying that if you replace humans with "AI" then the company will save money. She then goes on to say that OpenAI will generously relieve you of the savings by charging you more for the product.

How kind.

Then there is the point that if everyone, bar a favoured few, are made redundant who will have the wherewithal to actually buy anything?

The likes of Musk might be able to take up a bit of slack but even they do not have the purchasing power of the rest of humanity.

This is bullshit, wishful thinking and special pleading. But then again so is much of so-called PR.

Xfce 4.20 is out: Wayland support lands, but some pieces are still missing

nematoad Silver badge

Still?

...it's possible to use Wayland – although not everything works yet.

Haven't I heard that about Wayland for a long time now?

Not being a developer the differences between Xorg and Wayland are meaningless to me and leads me to suspect that the Wayland people are engaged in re-inventing the wheel.

I may be wrong, I often am, but if it ain't broke why fix it?

And yes, I know that the difficulties are probably with XFCE and not Wayland but there does seem to be a long-running thread of "This is not yet implemented in Wayland."

We told Post Office about system problems at the highest level, Fujitsu tells Horizon Inquiry

nematoad Silver badge

Re: How much bigger does Liar's Gate need to be?

I don't think that remuneration is the right word to use here. They are not getting money for services rendered.

I think that a better word would be redress, giving them back what the Post Office extorted from them.

Of course that will not help those who have died before they were made whole.

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Liars the lot of them

The trouble with your argument is; there is only one shareholder.

The government.

Given that the government has no money of its own if the Post Office fails the Public Purse would be the one to take the hit. Which means us, the British public.

In the litigation that the Post Office has been engaged in the board and managers were playing with our money, bottomless or otherwise, against Sir Alan Bates and all the sub-postmasters. The top brass of the Post Office had no skin in the game and it showed in the reckless squandering of public money trying to defend the indefensible.

As has been said the Post Office really was accountable to no-one and it is about time that the hammer of justice was dropped on those, great and small, who were responsible for this fiasco.

British Army zaps drones out of the sky with laser trucks

nematoad Silver badge
FAIL

What?

"take the learnings of the project into account ..."

What sort of people are the MOD employing to write this stuff?

I would say illiterate, poorly educated and lacking a sub-editor to screen out howlers like this.

The word is LESSONS.

It makes you want to weep.

Microsoft confirms there will be no U-turn on Windows 11 hardware requirements

nematoad Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Well...

... just to be able to run that piece of sh*t they call an O.S. !

Then why bother?

If you gave been on this site for a while you surely must realise that there are options other than MS Windows.

It might take a bit of time and effort but examine what's out there and jump off the MS train.

Abstract, theoretical computing qualifications are turning teens off

nematoad Silver badge

Re: WYF!

As Oddball in Ryan's Heroes...

I got that wrong of course: It should be Kelly's Heroes.

Old age is taking its toll.

nematoad Silver badge

Re: WYF!

... if your brain didn't work that way then it was never going to make sense.

And my mind does not work that way and programming has never made sense to me.

To concentrate on programming as the only thing that matters in IT is missing the mark.

I got a post-graduate diploma in Systems Analysis and Design and then went on to a career in desktop support and systems administration. Some of the most awkward customers we had when doing desktop support were the programmers who worked next door. They seemed surprised when their fiddling with the systems sometimes caused the whole thing to fall over, and were resentful when they were charged our standard call-out rate to put things back together. They were good at what they did, i.e. programming, but did not have a clue as to how their PCs worked.

As Oddball in Ryan's Heroes said "I don't know how they work, I only ride in them."

Broaden thing out. Man cannot live by programming alone in the IT world.

UK financial regulator slammed for failed tech transformation

nematoad Silver badge
WTF?

Say what?

...ran them for 14 hours a day in an office environment.

Who's running the FCA?

That geezer Murthy who keeps banging on about working till you drop?

We are talking about quasi civil servants here. They must be working shifts if that is true.

Windows 10's farewell tour – not AI PCs – set to drive laptop sales in 2025

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Looks like people are buying laptops without all that A.I. bullcrap...

"Businesses want to move to AI PCs but not pay a premium as there are no compelling business cases,"

Then why bother?

Bing Wallpaper app, now in Windows Store, accused of cookie shenanigans

nematoad Silver badge
Happy

Re: heartbreaking to see one of my favorite tech giants

Well, when I was gainfully employed MS were one of my favourite technology firms.

Not for their products but because they gave me a well paid job sorting out all the chaos they left in their wake.

Personally I wouldn't touch any MS stuff with a bargepole and now I am retired you couldn't even pay me to.

Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive

nematoad Silver badge
WTF?

Re: AI uses - writing emails, transcribing meetings, managing files... wtf?

I don't understand.

Just because the PC has an AI label stuck on it does that mean that the PC is incapable of functioning as a standard non-AI machine? Or is it the case that managers have told their staff "We have given you this new AI PC and you must use it."? Without training.

Or is it the case that the staff have been given this new toy and being curious have started playing around seeing what the new wonder weapon can do? Again without training.

It seems to me that management have fallen for the promise of increased productivity but have forgotten that a new method of working does require a modicum of training before they reap any rewards.

UK energy watchdog slaps down Capita's £130M smart meter splurge

nematoad Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Failed roll out.

...as soon as they mention "smart meter" I say "no thank you", and just hang up.

Thank God, I was starting to think that I was the only person repeatedly saying no to these infernal contraptions.

I don't want a smart meter for a number of reasons.

1) I don't trust them.

2) I don't trust the energy companies and stories here only reinforce that.

3) I live in a radio shadow, we have very poor connectivity with no choice with mobile 'phone networks and everyone here is hooked up to satellite TV through force majeure. Despite this I was told last time they tried to get me to install a smart meter "Oh, our maps say that you have a good connection," I was too polite to tell her to come and see for herself.

Which is where the distrust of the meters comes from. I won't take the risk of the meter failing and then being sent an estimated reading. Climbing on a ladder and reading the meters by hand is a small price to pay for getting my real use through to the energy company.

UK orders Chinese biz to sell majority stake in Scottish chipmaker

nematoad Silver badge

Re: FTDI, really, the USB Serial/TTL chip people

Irreverent company a strategic UK asset???

Eh?

Are FTDI auditioning for "Have I Got News For You" or something?

Or are they really an "Irrelevant" company?

Black screens still plague Windows 10 Azure Virtual Desktop users

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: A testing experience

As far as Microsoft's quality assurance team is concerned,

Oh, you mean their users?

Reaction Engines' hypersonic hopes stall as funding fizzles out

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Thumb Up

As for hovercraft, the principles were pretty clear, and in the long term turned out to be a white elephant

Well not as far as Hovertravel are concerned.

I have made many trips across the Solent on their hovercraft and the technology seems to be in fine fettle, and it works. Unlike our much storied Cowes floating bridge that is out of service more often that it's in operation.

Combustion engines grind Linus Torvalds' gears

nematoad Silver badge

Re: the rumble of the V8

...they were expensive

As far as I can see they still are.

It's all very well for Linus to say that "I prefer an EV over an ICE." He is, presumably, well off and can afford a new car but what about the peons like me managing on a very basic income?

Better off people in first world countries will get an EV but those in developing nations with lower incomes will struggle.

Will the price of second hand EVs be low enough so they can afford one? And do the batteries last long enough or will they die inside an otherwise roadworthy car?

As far as I can see the eco-nirvana of mass EVs is a long way off an the ICE will be with for a while.

Skyscraper-high sewage plume erupts in Moscow

nematoad Silver badge
Flame

Alternatively.

...the slow pace is largely due to insufficient funding.

Stop invading other peoples countries then.

Stopping all the state sponsored kleptocracy might also help.

Note: Icon is the nearest one to a shower of shit.

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Improv clones survive!

"...even idiots picked up the form."

Not all idiots.

Spreadsheets have always been a mystery to me, I just can't figure them out.

Being dyscalculic might have something to do with my difficulties but for the life of me I could never see any use for Excel or any other of that ilk.

SCC, one of Europe's largest resellers, orders staff back to their desks for three days a week

nematoad Silver badge
Devil

Shiver!

"We'll deal with those on a case by case basis, and talk to those individuals about, you know, how we can achieve the best balance."

This is the sort of menacing talk that would send cold chills down anyone's back.

This sort of talk would better fit a maniacal overlord relaxing in his secret base inside an extinct volcano. Complete with a white cat.

Would you work for someone who speaks like this?

If you do you have my deepest sympathy.

Server-maker Wiwynn expands $61M lawsuit against X

nematoad Silver badge

Caveat venditor.

A little Latin twist on an old maxim.

I can see why Wiwynn got caught as the contract was originally with Twitter, but anyone new thinking of doing business with Musk should be very careful.

UK electronics firms want government to stop taxing trash and let them fix it instead

nematoad Silver badge

Stop it!

CLEAR group calls for VAT to be dropped on spare parts, repairs, labor

What has an Australian political party to do with a domestic UK issue?

This "International English" nonsense is starting to irritate me. In any case it should properly be called "American English".

As Nik 2 said in the Openreach reveals latest locations facing the copper chop thread courtesy should mean that UK spelling is used in a UK exclusive story

One-year countdown to 'biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete in history' as Windows 10 approaches end of support

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Unfortunately, not everything works with linux

...not on a couple of old NVidia 1050ti cards, or any combo whatsoever.

Nvidia, that might be your problem right there.

I gave up on Nvidia cards a while back as I was always fiddling around with xorg.conf to try and get the cards to work. In the end I switched to AMD and have had no problems since.

Maybe not in your unusual setup but something to think about.

nematoad Silver badge
Happy

Re: Upgrading my linuxhardware

Yes. I'm thinking of getting a new old box to replace my old old box and had the same thought.

There seem plenty of quite well 'specced machines out there just now, but would it be better to hold on until the avalanche of perfectly good ex-windows 10 are on the market?

Decisions, decisions.

Ubuntu turns 20: 'Oracular Oriole' shows this old bird's still got plenty of flight

nematoad Silver badge

Re: Apt good, rpm so-so

" Conectiva was bought by Mandrake and is why the combined company was renamed Mandriva."

True, but wasn't there some silliness over the name "Mandrake"?

The Hearst Corporation owned a comic strip called Mandrake the Magician and without any connection to Linux or Unix objected and more or less strong-armed Mandrake in to changing their name.

nematoad Silver badge
Thumb Up

Apt good, rpm so-so

I'm with you when you say that apt and apt-get are far better than rpm was and probably still are.

Simple and clear and apt just makes sense to me, unlike the arcane world of rpm.

There were several easier-to-use distros that simplified things,

True but you missed out Mandrake.

One of the best for a newcomer it was also free, as in beer, although you could buy it. I did on several occasions to give the distro support. The ease of use of their admin tools was, and still is, unmatched. Can you think of a better partitioning tool that Diskdrake? I can't. Luckily Texstar forked Mandrake and inherited all the lovely .drake tools with the added bonus of adapting apt to run with rpms.

So now any user of PCLinuxOS has all the ease of the Mandrake suite of tools plus the convenience of being able to use apt or a gui version like Synaptic for all those updating jobs that come along.

SpaceX accuses 'meme-stock' rival of 'misinformation' over Starlink signals waiver

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

...spurious emissions

Pretty much what comes out of anything Musk has a hand in.

So we have astronomers up in arms about the light and radio frequency pollution for Starlink and now he wants permission to encroach on the bands that other people have licenced.

What next?

If his BBF Trump gets back into power I have a nasty feeling that we might find out.

China calls for realtime censorship of satellite broadband

nematoad Silver badge
Unhappy

"...damages the national image"

I would have thought that China's image could get no lower and this sort of proposal certainly will not help.

"...ethnic discrimination"

Tell that to the Uighurs.