Posts by nematoad

That's how we roll: OWC savagely undercuts Apple's $699 Mac Pro wheels with bargain $199 alternative

Re: Still Overpriced

"Kudos to them - if they can completely take the piss and make money off them,"

Funny that you should say that. I was looking at it the other way and thinking that it was Apple taking the piss and being unjustly rewarded.

Though I was not thinking that any kudos should be given to Apple. It's just the standard modus operandi . Take all you can and give nothing, or in this case very little, back.

God! A set of castors for nearly £590.

Just greedy bastards in my opinion but I suppose some Apple fans will have sucked it up and bought the bloody things.

Aviation regulator outlines fixes that will get the 737 MAX flying again

Hmm.

It's good to see that the FAA is happy that the 737 Max will soon be fit to fly. However a few thoughts occurred to me.

1) Will other aviation regulators such as the CAA trust the work done by Boeing and the FAA?

2) Will there be any demand for these aircraft, given the slump in flights due to the corona virus pandemic?

3) Will the airlines give the paying customer the choice of risking a flight in an aircraft with such a tainted reputation?

My answers are:

1) Maybe, if the FAA and Boeing are completely transparent on the steps being taken to put right all the faults and design choices that led to the crashes.

2) Probably not in the short term. Airlines have a big enough job trying to coax passengers back given the impositions of mandatory quarantine on a lot of tourist destinations.

3) Not a chance in hell. Firstly, it would definitely put people off, me included, if they were told that they were going to be flying on such a problem riddled design and secondly the logistics of actually informing people would be difficult and probably impossible.

So, to sum up it looks like we are going to have to trust that this time Boeing has got it right and that the FAA has actually done its job and made sure that this aircraft really is safe to fly.

We shall see but I for one will not be volunteering to act as a crash test dummy for the foreseeable future.

Venerable text editor GNU Nano reaches version 5.0 and adds the modern frippery that is scrollbars

Re: Cult?

I get a new version sometimes when I update PCLinuxOS so yes.

An alternative editor.

Ah yes,

Nano and Pico. I tried them but could not get on with either.

What I did find and use to this day is a little extra bundled with MC called mcedit. It's all I need for editing .cfg files etc. and the key bindings are the same as MC so I found it easy to use.

It may not be for everyone but it is a little hidden gem which no-one seems to know about.

It's been five years since Windows 10 hit: So... how's that working out for you all?

Re: So here is a question for the group.

"This obsession with varying shades of grey on menus with incomprehensible symbols..."

Bloody hell, you have just described the EVE Online UI, so I can imagine how horrible trying to use Win10 must be.

It has pissed me off for years and with ageing eyesight any combination of grey on grey is something that really makes life hard for me.

Still that's all in the past CCP started messing around with the game balance so I left.

Re: I would LOVE to be able to use Linux

Dear, dear, dear. You need to practice your trolling skills a bit more.

However, you are right in one respect. Systemd is an abomination that should be put out of our misery. Luckily, Linux being FOSS you don't have to put up with systemd if you don't want to. See, that's the joy of FOSS stuff like Linux, you have a choice.

Don't like the direction a project is going in? Fork it. See LibreOffice as a good example of that. Hate systemd, chose a distro like Devuan, PCLInuxOS or Slack and so on.

From what I read on El Reg about the contortions people have to go through trying to get Windows to behave, the thought that:

1) You have to pay for this nonsense.

2) You have no choice but to suck it up makes me glad that I dumped anything MS later than Win98SE and NT4.

Re: How bad is it?

"FOSS does not mean you get much better than what you can pay for, it just means it's free,"

Another person confusing free as in beer with free as in liberty to do what you want with the OS. There is nothing in the GPL preventing you charging for your distro. What it does do is stop you taking away the freedoms granted by the license if you pass it on.

Red Hat did not get where it is today by giving away the OS. It charges for support, training and so on. That is where the money comes from and that doesn't seem to have worked out too badly, now does it?

UKIP blackmail, data breach sueball allegations were groundless, rules High Court

Re: Standard are slipping...

" they did not have a realistic prospect of success",

That seems good summation of UKIP as a whole.

It's a Meow-nixed system, I know this: Purr-fect storm of 3,000+ insecure databases – and a data-wiping bot

"If the DB owners don't have backups or suffer as a consequence then that is theor fault ...

Perhaps it is time that we set up an electronic equivalent of the Darwin Award.

Hard on the DBAs but even harder on any clients that they may have. Let's hope that their backups, if any, are in working order otherwise they are stuffed.

Brit unis hit in Blackbaud hack inform students that their data was nicked, which has gone as well as you might expect

I see.

"...to share insights into the future of giving + philanthropy."

They certainly seem to have lived up to their aspirations on that score. What a pity that the recipients of their generosity happen to be a gang of criminals.

Brit retailer John Lewis to catapult 111 tech bods over to Capgemini weeks after dumping 244 on Wipro

"No. No it won't. Never has done, never will do."

You hit the nail on the head there.

When we were bundled out of our jobs the place we worked at wanted us to train up the new people. The company we worked for would have none of it and we were told "Show them where the loos are and leave it at that." So we did.

Ha!

"Redundancy isn't always a bad thing"

Well it was for me and from what I can gather it was for the place I was working at. I got pushed out of job that I loved with people I enjoyed working with in a country where I was planning on settling down and applying for citizenship.

As for the workplace it apparently went down hill in a very short time and in the end thay had to recruit new sysadmins. So disruption for them and the cost of hiring new hands.

So a lose/lose situation all round and for what? Presumably to keep the bloody accountants happy.

Penny wise pound foolish and this was a top tier company who you probably have had dealings with.

Oh, and it was compulsory and we left with bad grace and feelings.

Apple and Google, take note: Newly enacted EU law aims to protect developers from arbitrary decisions of tech giants

Sigh.

"We have asked Apple and Google how the legislation impacts their policies and will report back with any comment received."

As far as I can see it will have no effect on devs in the UK. That is unless there is some obscure rule that says because it was passed during the transition period it will apply.

God! The chickens are coming home to roost with a vengeance and I wonder how long it will be before the penny drop and the"man in the street" sees what a shit-fest this whole Brexit affair is.

Yeah, this is really "Taking back control" and leaving many people swinging in the wind.

Four years after swallowing Arm Holdings, SoftBank said to be mulling Brit chip biz sale

Re: Here’s a thought - UK.gov to purchase

Ah! I love the smell of pedantry in the morning.

Still, you are right and got an upvote.

IBM job ad calls for 12 years’ experience with Kubernetes – which is six years old

Re: Windows 2000

"Quite a lot of people had access to the beta's coming out of Microsoft at that time. "

From what I can see of Microsoft's attempt at a rolling release they still are.

Privacy watchdogs from the UK, Australia team up, snap on gloves to probe AI-for-cops upstart Clearview

Re: Opt out ?

"Individuals in these countries can opt-out."

Oh. And what if the individual is unaware that their likeness has been scraped?

I have no "social media" presence so have not uploaded any photos of myself or others. But other people I may or may not know might. So my photo may be available to the like of Clearview but how am I to exercise my right to "opt-out" if I don't know about the photo?

This is just a fig-leaf to cover what is likely to be activity falling foul of the GDPR in the hopes that everyone will forget about it and allow Clearview to pursue its obviously lucrative but very dodgy practices

LibreOffice community protests at promotion of paid-for editions, board says: 'LibreOffice will always be free software'

Re: What's the need?

I don't have a problem myself with making money from LibreOffice"

I agree, though it heartening to see that TDF does not seem to have a marketing or PR department as otherwise their handling of this affair would have been a lot slicker and full of buzzwords and puffery.

Though of course that may come.

The thought of a LibreOffice core and paid for extensions needed to get any work done i.e a "freemium" offering is always going to be a threat.

NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs

Re: So what happened?

“Perhaps we didn’t have as many people embedded in that process as we should have,”

Oh they were "embedded" all right. Only they were "embedded" where the sun don't shine.

Boeing? Another Midas in reverse and NASA keeps throwing money at these bozos?

Oracle sued by a shareholder who alleges its lack of progress in diversity amounts to 'dishonesty'

Hubris

"Oracle responded by suing the government ...claiming it has no authority over the company."

This seems to be trend in boardrooms across the world. These corporations have got so big and have so many law-makers in their pockets that they really do believe that they are above the law. The likes of Mark Zuckerberg cocking a snook at Parliament here in the UK and refusing to appear at a parliamentary hearing is a symptom of this. Added to this is the appalling Investor State Dispute System ISDS by which companies can take a country to a form of kangaroo court in order to impose its will on a sovereign nation.

I know a lot of people, including myself, consider company accountants to be the lowest form of corporate life but I'm changing my mind. It now seems as if the legal department is taking control and causing untold harm to countries and people throughout the world.

I reckon Shakespeare had it right in Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2 when he wrote "Let's kill al the lawyers."

Linux Mint 20 isn't exactly bursting with freshness but, hey, there's kernel 5.4 and it's a long-term support release

Re: Linux flavours

"Distrowatch doesn't prove popularity."

OK.

What metric would you suggest then? As they say, "Citation required."

Re: Linux flavours

Looking at Distrowatch Mint is at number three with MX Linux and Manjaro ahead of it.

So it looks like these distros are more popular at the moment though most people agree that Mint is an excellent distro.

Upgrading?

"...Upgrading can be painful in Linux"

I have never found upgrading to be a problem but then I use PCLinuxOS which is a rolling release.

Now of course rolling release distros are probably not the answer for business use but as someone running a small private network with only a few boxes it's ideal. A cron job can handle "apt-get update" and " apt-get dist-upgrade" easily enough. PCLinuxOS seems to have got the balance between the cutting edge and solid conservative features about right and I have few complaints about upgrading breaking things though it has happened, usually in respect of video problems.

So, as I say, not for business use but for me it works and I always have the current version of the distro.

We're no longer helping UK Post Office persecute postal workers with our shonky system, says Fujitsu

Re: Money missing....people went to jail....but no mention of independent audits? Strange!

" I haven't seen ANY mention of auditors..."

Ah they were there alright. It's just that they were busy subjecting sub-postmasters to the third degree and forcing them to plead guilty to things like false accounting and theft, all without the presence of a lawyer.

These people had the title of "Auditor" but in reality they were just thugs and bullies throwing their weight about.

Re: And hopefully the summary

"...that there is a public summary of the failings that occurred at Post Office Ltd.”

Presumably omitting the fact that the government* as the sole shareholder has a seat on the board and still did nothing about this scandal.

* Labour, the Coalition and the Tories are equally guilty of an abdication of their duty to safeguard public funds and to hold the executive board of the Post Office to account. There is a lot to cover up in all this and you can bet your life that no effort will be spared to whitewash this whole affair

After huffing and puffing for years, US senators unveil law to blow the encryption house down with police backdoors

Re: So once the Government gets its way....

"... possibly just not in enough of them "

Ah it was not the popular vote that elected Trump, it was a construct called "The Electoral College".

The College works on a strange and convoluted system and in the 2016 Election Hilary Clinton actually got more of the popular vote than Trump and still lost.

Re: LAEDA is sponsored by US Senators ...

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."

Mark Twain

I couldn't have put it better.

These characters should join their Australian counterparts in trying to repeal of the laws of mathematics.

Here's a headline we never thought we'd write 20 years ago: Microsoft readies antivirus for Linux, Android

Agreed.

Aye, and on a similar note.

If you dine with the devil sup with a long spoon.

MS stuff? Not on my systems. That's why I took the trouble to switch to Linux.

Re: Too Bad that

"Linux doesn't come with any security built in."

Well maybe not the masses of add-ons needed when you want to run Windows securely but that's because Windows was never built with security in mind and has been playing catch-up ever since it was released.

Linux, the kernel, on the other hand has followed Unix in as much as security is something thought about and implemented. I'm sure Linus Torvalds had security forefront in his mind when starting the development of Linux and I don't think he is going to change now.

Google isn't even trying to not be creepy: 'Continuous Match Mode' in Assistant will listen to everything until it's disabled

Re: Does not compute.

"...Shodjai did not explain how users will end a Continuous Match Mode session"

I think a sledge hammer would do the trick!

It's 500 Friday at GitHub as source shack takes an hour-long morning totter

Modus operandi.

Microsoft?

More like Midas in reverse.

It seems as if everything they touch turns to shit

PC printer problems and enraged execs: When the answer to 'Hand over that floppy disk' is 'No'

Re: Ah IT 'managers'

I have to say that with the exception of one "IT" manager they did know their stuff and I had few if any problems with them. The one exception got confused with one of those credit card CDs that used to float around and shoved it in the floppy drive where it took me a while and a pair of fine-nosed pliers to get it out without ruining the drive.

The problems I did have were with middle managers in general, most seemed to have been over-promoted and were extremely defensive in any of their doings, quick to take offence and really difficult to deal with, relying on a loud voice and a hectoring manner to try and get out of any awkward situations they found themselves in. The top brass and the line workers were doddle compared to these characters and I approached dealing with them with some reluctance.

No surprise: Britain ditches central database model for virus contact-tracing apps in favour of Apple-Google API

Re: Had to happen

"There are technical challenges."

Talking to people we know a lot have said that they tried the app but ditched it due to draining the battery and in some cases making the 'phone hot to the touch. Added to the fact that it appears to not work with the iPhone as the OP titled this thread it had to happen.

Amazon's not saying its warehouse staff are dumb... but it feels they need artificial intelligence to understand what 'six feet' means

Re: What does 'six feet' mean?

It's the distance that they bury you after you die of corona virus that you caught in one of their "fulfilment centres"

Wow, Microsoft's Windows 10 always runs Edge on startup? What could cause that? So strange, tut-tuts Microsoft

Blimey.

Having read all the posts detailing how to stop Windows running things you don't want it to run takes me back to the time when Linux was being decried as "too difficult".

Not having used Windows for years I did not realise that people were forced to jump through so many hoops to get the damned OS to work as you wanted.

Of course there may be reasons why people need or want to run Windows but I am thankful that I managed to get off that train a long time ago.

UK.gov announces review – not proper inquiry – into Fujitsu and Post Office's Horizon IT scandal

Re: Letter (email) Written to my MP

Why bother?

Mine has just been in the news for blatantly breaking the lock-down by attending a barbecue with a friend who also broke the rules by relocating from London to his second home.

Anyway he doesn't bother to reply when I have e-mailed him and to be honest I am not going to waste the price of a stamp to get some kind of regurgitated government bullshit.

Re: Well that's a relief

"...meaningful penalties to those who in this case maliciously pursued innocent people..."

I don't think that all this political theatre is going to be the end of the story much as certain parties might wish.

There is something called "Malicious prosecution" in English law which could be used against The Post Office and senior managers, to seek redress for the PO's appalling treatment of their sub-postmasters. Added to which are the cases that have been referred to the Court of Appeals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Senior arses may well be kicked and I note with some pleasure that Paula Vennels the sometime PO CEO has been dropped from her position on the Cabinet Office board and it seems that those in high places are edging away from her due to the toxic nature of this affair.

Oh, I nearly forgot. The judge in the case brought by the Justice for Sub-Postmasters Alliance, which they won hands-down, has referred Fujitsu to the Director Of Public Prosecutions over evidence given by its staff in the trials of a number of sub-postmasters accused of theft and false accounting. So there may well be consequences for people involved in all this.

Snapping at Canonical's Snap: Linux Mint team says no to Ubuntu store 'backdoor'

"Not only is Mint a very popular distro ..."

Yes, I have been wondering about that having just read the Lenovo has said that it will support "Linux" on all its Thinkpads etc. Red Hat makes sense as it is the only distro most suits know about, but why support Ubuntu when many people hold that Linux Mint is superior?

Could it be that this is a case of not what you know but who you know?

Software bug in Bombardier airliner made planes turn the wrong way

"..the perfect air safety record of 1918"

Ah, but there was a war on you know. That will play havoc with safety systems!

Boeing brings back the 737 Max but also lays off thousands

Re: Why ?

"Why build more ?"

Stock options, bonuses and keeping their masters on Wall Street happy. It's just business as usual.

"...make the plane easy and safe to build."

There seems to be a problem with the thinking of the top brass at Boeing. They want to make the 737 Max "easy and safe to build." but no bloody mention of "safe to fly."

See, it's always the bottom line with this bunch of chancers, keep the bonuses rolling in and to hell with the safety of their passengers and crew.

Do they have corporate manslaughter on the statute books in the US?

Broadcom sends its England-based staff back into office as UK lockdown eases – though Welsh workers get a free pass

Why?

...will come on site for one out of every four weeks while the remainder of the workers work from home"

So what is the rationale for this? Is it because people are more productive if working in the office or is it because the bosses like to see the minions with their noses to the grind-stone?

Looks more like a lack of trust and a bit of willy-waving from the C suite.

While waiting for the Linux train, Bork pays a visit to Geordieland with Windows 10

Ah, yes.

"... a custom Linux build to improve their stability and generally operate with more efficiency."

Luke 15:7

Runaway Latvian drone found meditating in tree after shutting down nation's skies

Re: fully fuelled before its test flight and had a potential endurance of three days

"... does it mean that a drone these days can stay in the air for three days non-stop?"

Well apparently this one can. I think the clue is in the fact that it was "refuelled" and not "recharged". Though of course if fitted with photovoltaic cells a drone could stay up for even longer.

Mind your language: Microsoft set to swing the axe on 27 languages in iOS Outlook

Re: You vill parle Amrecianish Da!

"... Irish, I can (sort of) see the logic of stopping support for a language withe low use levels"

I'd like to see you explain that to the people living in the Gaeltacht. Irish law gives equal rights to Gaelic and it is used both in daily life and in the proceedings of the Dail, law courts and in legal instruments. As to the status of Gaelic as opposed to Welsh, they are roughly similar in that they are both protected in law and used by a proportion of the general population and government. Oh, and on the topic of "competent translators" most, if not all, of the speakers of Gaelic or Welsh are bilingual and actually speak English as well! Sometimes better than monolingual English speakers, Trump comes immediately to mind. Covfefe, anyone?

You don't have to live on an island to be insular and MS have just proved this by axing languages that people rely on. Are they going to pay for foreign language classes for those denied the use of their mother tongue?

Open letter from digital rights groups to UK health secretary questions big tech's role in NHS COVID-19 data store

Re: Privacy and data ownership are critical for wide support

I got a letter from some organisation called Natcen Social Research concerning this app.

It wanted to know if I had a smart 'phone, no. If I had a smart 'phone would I use it, no. Did I trust the government with the information the app would be funnelling back, definitely not. It went on in that vein for a while until finally it asked did I have any opinion about the app? Again no as I had not used it and had no intention of doing so.

From a tiny straw poll not many people have any faith in the app and its purported use. A lot have downloaded it and a lot have subsequently removed it.

Anyway a mark 2 is rumoured to be in the works as the current one seems to be a bit fragile and there are reports that the government is working on a plan B and moving closer to the Google/Apple type, so it may be a while before the rest of the country can enjoy the delights of this process.

Academics demand answers from NHS over potential data timebomb ticking inside new UK contact-tracing app

"... a centralised model may risk losing public trust."

No, I don't think it will with the majority of the population. You might, I most certainly would, be wary of such a data slurping feature but the readers of El reg are not in the majority here. Most people are not even aware of what the consequences of such a data grab could mean.

So good that the government is thinking about trying to control the spread of this disease, but bad that their instincts are to grab everything that they can and hope that no-one notices

Australian contact-tracing app leaks telling info and increases chances of third-party tracking, say security folks

Maybe, maybe not.

"The design of Australia’s COVIDSafe contact-tracing app creates some unintended surveillance opportunities..."

Are you sure that the consequence were unintentional?

Australia's contact-tracing app regulation avoids 'woolly' principles in comparable cyber-laws, say lawyers

Re: Assuming that were not the case. And what happes to people who don't own phones?

Yes, what you say is true, but that misses the point that RobHib was making.

Currently the Australian government has not made it compulsory to have the app but that may change. What RobHib is pointing out is that not everyone has a "smart phone" so would be in a difficult position if say, a politician decided that the lock down was not working quickly enough and further and more drastic measures must be taken and made any such tracing app compulsory.

Want to put a satellite into orbit for US comms? Whoa, says Uncle Sam: Where's your space crash risk assessment?

I believe you.

"...so that we could seek additional comment on them."

And then ignore them just as they did with the shady "consultation" on the repeal of net neutrality.

It's just business as usual with this FCC.