* Posts by Big_Boomer

1218 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2007

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Copilot+ PCs? Customers just aren't buying it – yet

Big_Boomer

OhNO! Nobody is buying what we are selling!

And the reason for that is that it is A) Overpriced, B) Not what people want, and C) Full of Bloatware crap that we have to spend hours disabling or uninstalling. I looked at buying a new PC late last year and concluded that I simply didn't want to be paying £2k for a 2nd-tier PC (CPU and GFX card both released over 12 months ago).

Early mornings, late evenings, weekends. Useless users always demand support

Big_Boomer

Separation is vital, or burnout swiftly follows!

Before I figured out to keep work and home life (and mobile phones) separate, I spent 3 consecutive weekends in customer server rooms up to my eyeballs in messed up SQL DBs. The following weekend the expected call came at 07:30 on the Saturday but I was at my sisters house at the other end of the country and was physically unable to help so someone else got dragged in. On Monday morning I was called in to the company owners office and before he started in on me I slapped an envelope on his desk. He angrily asked me what that was so I told him it was my resignation. That shocked him out of his impending tirade and set him right back on his heels. When he asked me why, I let rip with my tirade and to be fair he listened to it all. He then calmly told me he couldn't understand why I wasn't willing to work myself to the bone when all the other consultants were quite happy to work evenings and weekends. Turns out they all got share-bonuses, but because I had come up the hard way (via tech-support) I was not in the bonus scheme nor was I earning ANYWHERE near what the others were on despite doing the same job and doing it better (hence me getting called EVERY time the shit hit the fan!). He asked me to take my resignation back and I did, but the offer they made me 2 weeks later was still nowhere near what the others were getting, so I resigned, started a new job the day after I left and never looked back. Their loss.

Since then I have never allowed any employer to take the piss. Some have tried and have received the "Sorry, I am 200 miles from home riding my motorcycle", or "Sorry, I have to take my partner to hospital" type of excuses (some real, some not). I am happy to work extra hours and am flexible with evening and weekend work, but I get time off in lieu for all extra hours worked and flexibility if I need time off during the week in return. Now I am only ever "on call" by pre-arrangement and for a limited period only.

Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price

Big_Boomer

You seem to have ranted against something I didn't say, or rather you picked on one tiny part of what I wrote and went down the rabbit hole after that. I have never suggested that we go back to the Stone Age or any such bullshit. What I believe is our species only chance of long term survival is to start to manage our reproduction. A lack of growth does NOT mean going backwards in terms of standard of living. At the moment if we continue to fuck up where we live, we don't have anywhere else we can move to. Perhaps the human race deserves what is coming. As a species we certainly seem to like shitting in our own backyard.

Big_Boomer

Rapid cooling is easy. A minor volcanic eruption can and regularly does just that. A major eruption could cause a 10 year freeze. Krakatoa caused a worldwide cooling for a few years.

Greenland was named that way in the hopes of attracting more settlers, not because it was actually green. It probably was green about 2.5 million years ago if the tectonic plates move the way we currently believe they do because back then it was a lot farther from the North Pole.

As for the warming of the planet, some places are cooling others are warming, but averaged across the whole planet it is warming.

I don't "know" anything. I research and I check and I doubt and I research again and sometimes I change my view when the facts contradict what I previously thought. That is how science works. It's not a belief system or a religion. It constantly evolves and changes as new information comes to light.

Big_Boomer

The planet is warming up - fact! There are over 8.2 Billion humans on the planet - fact! There were 1.6 Billion humans in 1900 - fact! Since 1900 the planets average temperature has risen pretty much in line with population growth. Unfortunately our "economies" are based on population so the constant push for "growth" means more and more people. In the long term that is unsustainable regardless of whether we manage to get the current temperature rises under control or not and regardless of the method of temperature control. The fundamental problem is TOO MANY PEOPLE but everyone puts their fingers in their ears or changes the subject whenever that is mentioned.

As for those who cite geological temperature changes, most of those changes happened gradually over tens of thousands or millions of years, not over the mere 275 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution and the accompanying population explosion.

UK biz dept overspent by £208M prepping to pay workers hurt in Post Office IT scandal

Big_Boomer

Re: Porridge time

You forgot the Civil Servants and Politicians who helped cover this obscene scandal up, and those who are dragging it out right now!

And why has there been a £208M "overspend" when they haven't even spent that much compensating most of the (Sub)Postmasters yet. W.t.f. is that money being spent on? That "overspend" would have paid £270,000 to each of the 768 wrongly convicted but as usual the corrupt establishment are all covering each others backs, making themselves a nice little pile in the process, and we get to foot the bill.

Dell ends hybrid work policy, demands return-to-office despite remote work pledge

Big_Boomer

Fine by me.

Before Covid I was already WFH 3 days per week so I just switched to 5 days. My productivity (measured) went up by 50% in the following year and I now have a permanent WFH contract. Yes, there are undoubtedly people who coast when WFH but those same people also coast when in the office. If manglement fails to deal with those people regardless of where they work from, then that is a manglement failure, not a WFH problem. There is no reason why WFH/Hybrid working practices can't be made to work if the managers get with the times. My manager handles a team of 11 people in 7 different countries with no problems and only a couple of us are in an office at all regularly. We collaborate very well, both within our team, and with the rest of the company, but then our company is spread across the world so we have always been forced to collaborate remotely and work flexibly as it's difficult to get California, UK, and China on the same video conference if nobody is willing to work outside their regular hours. It can be made to work if there is a will to make it work.

Lots of jobs require you to be in an office, but if you spend most of your day at a desk, then chances are your job could easily be done remotely. In my experience most of those who argue against remote working are those who are stuck in the past and just want everything to "go back to how it was". Well, the world has changed and it will undoubtedly change again, but it will never "go back to how it was".

WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff

Big_Boomer

No real change

Office based manglement were always obsessed with time-keeping and work hours, to the point that people used to constantly tell anyone who would listen just how many hours they had worked this week, presumably in the hope that they would be believed/promoted. More often than not, those bragging about their "hours" were the least productive. I used to take great pleasure in informing them that I managed to achieve way more than them whilst working only 40 hours per week, so perhaps they needed to improve their efficiency. It worked well as pretty soon all of them stopped mentioning their work time anywhere near me. :) We also all know/knew those who could "appear" busy in the office and it's no different in the WFH era.

It's all down to competent management. The incompetents blame WFH, Hybrid working, and time-keeping (unless you NEED to be available for certain times). The competent managers look at work completed and value added to the product and to the company.

A good kind of disorder: Boffins boost capacitor tech by disturbing dipoles

Big_Boomer

Re: Transportation

They charge the SuperCaps at each tram stop using an overhead rail and a raisable commutator, then use the stored energy to get to the next stop. Clever system but I imagine the SuperCaps lifetime is going to be short given how they are used. Personally I would design the commutator to stay up and design the overhead rail at each tram stop with a taper to pickup the commutator. Raising and lowering it constantly is going to wear out the mechanism rapido!

Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

Big_Boomer

Time waster

Adding all this "AI" crap everywhere just wastes time as we now have to work around the huge piles of shite that are being forced on us. Yes, it has a uses but that doesn't mean I want to use it. If a company invested heavily in it and is now struggling to make any money from it, my advice is to swallow your losses and move on. It's never going to make you any money so all you are doing is pissing more money down the drain. Enshitification is the the appropriate term because they are adding shit to everything.

I have no problems with "AI" apart from it's severely misleading name. In the end it's a just tool and people like to choose the tools they use and really, REALLY HATE being forced to use specific tools.

Copilot invades Microsoft 365 Personal and Family for an extra three bucks a month

Big_Boomer

Re: $3/month?

Thanks Mike, just changed to the Classic myself.

I find it hilarious that MS think that £25 per year is what their AI is worth.

If they reduced my subscription cost by that much I still would not want to use it.

FCC net neutrality rules dead again as appeals court sides with Big Telco

Big_Boomer

Re: Follow the money

Greedom!! There fixed that for ya ;-)

LA deputies dogged by New Year date glitch in patrol car PCs

Big_Boomer

Stupid date order?

Oh dear, did the USA's stupid "bass-ackward" date order cause a problem with their software? That makes a change from it being a problem for everyone else in the world. Having worked in software support for decades I have had to deal with issues with date order in just about every piece of software I have supported, and every single time it was because a coder wrote the code for US date structure and failed to consider anywhere else in the world where we use LOGICAL date structures.

US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery

Big_Boomer

I for one,.....

would like to be the first tell our wannabe Alien Overlords to **** off. Just because their Lizard in a Human Suit has bought the ear of Ancient Orange does not mean that they can do whatever they like,... at least not yet. As for the hysteria over this,.... dumbfuqs gonna dumbfuq <sigh>

You're so bad at recycling, this biz built an AI to handle it for you

Big_Boomer

SIX!!!!

We have SIX bloody recycling bins here and we have to pay extra for the 6th one (garden waste) as it is no longer included in the Council Tax that we pay. Black wheelie bin for general waste, a blue bag for cardboard/paper, a white bag for metal/plastic, an orange box for glass, small green bin for food waste, and the green wheelie bin for garden waste. The blue & white bags do not seal effectively so we have wind-blown plastic and paper everywhere on collection day, the black bin is mostly empty, and we don't use enough glass to warrant putting the orange bin out most of the time. The local council has decided that the blue & white will be replaced by plastic single use bags next year but the rest is staying the same.

As for the packaging problems, talk to the fucking manufacturers of it. If they can't make packaging that can be recycled simply with minimal waste, then they should not be allowed to sell their products. That'll soon motivate them. Don't fine them as they just raise their prices when that happens. I recently bought an M.2 SSD and it came in a cardboard box that contained plastic and card inserts, had plastic shrink-wrap on the outside, and the whole was delivered in another cardboard box with a smile on the side. The amount of waste that went into recycling outweighed the SSD by at least 5 to 1.

I am all for anything that can reduce the sorting at home, just so I can have less bloody bags/boxes/bins to store and deal with.

Mysterious outbreak with high fatality rate in the DRC could imperil tech supply chains

Big_Boomer

The biggest danger from Covid19 was not it's fatality rate (although that was bad enough), but the transmission medium (airborne) and the incubation period (2 to 14 days) before you experienced symptoms. During that period you were infectious but not sick. That meant that it was spread right across the planet before we could even start to control it. THAT was the reason they wanted everyone to wear masks, to prevent YOU from infecting everyone else whether you were showing symptoms or not. Even now I hear comments from stoopids about how the masks would not protect THEM.<sigh>

If whatever this is has a similar incubation period but has a 4x higher death rate then it could kill 4x as many as Covid19 did (estimated at 7 Million world-wide directly by Covid19 or nearly 15million in Excess Deaths) or more. If it's another airborne virus like Covid19, let's hope it has a nice short incubation period so can't spread too far, although from what I can see online this may be a known disease as the deaths seem to be linked to severe malnutrition in children.

Unfortunately these outbreaks will happen more and more often as the world population grows and global travel gets easier and easier. Hopefully our progress in developing vaccines and cures will keep pace with that, and if it doesn't then at least the pandemic deniers and anti-vaxxers will be a self limiting problem.

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

Big_Boomer

Put it in charge of Xitter moderation?

That way all the Xit is on one basket and the rest of us can ignore it and get on with our lives.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

Big_Boomer

And Win10 it will remain...

...until I replace my PC with a new one and if that means no updates then so be it. I have looked at all the Linux flavours I can be bothered to check and there is still very little gaming support unless you are willing to fiddle and tweak and sacrifice your firstborn to the Great God Linus. Yes, despite YEARS of faffing about and hundreds of variants Linux is still a PITA to setup if you want to play games and I just can't be arsed. Maybe I'll take another look in a few years when they have sorted out the mess and have a straight forward install that just works, or maybe the games companies will release Linux variants of the games I want to play.

Microsoft reboots Windows Recall, but users wish they could forget

Big_Boomer

Week old article still on the front page?

C'mon Reg, bored of seeing this "pinned" article now. I also don't understand why an article needs to be in the headline and elsewhere on the front page, sometimes twice. Very poor layout design.

Trump tariffs transform into bigger threats for Mexico, Canada than China

Big_Boomer

Here we go again

Another 4 years of daily bloviation via Twatter/Xitter/Whatever by Ancient Orange. I'm already bored of it and he isn't even Prez yet. Any chance that El Reg can resist echoing His Greatness's pronouncements so we can have just one news source that isn't plastered in bluster, meaningless drivel, and utter bullshit?

EU buyers still shunning pure electric vehicles, prefer hybrids

Big_Boomer

Re: Plug in hybrids

Sorry, but I disagree vehemently. In recent rental of an MG HS it's "lane assist" repeatedly tried to push me into the side of a truck because it wanted me to drive between the white lines even though we were in a roadworks section and I was following the clearly marked red dashed lines. Luckily I could override it by physically manhandling the car, but it is REALLY unsettling when the car takes over like that and I F***ING HATE IT! It constantly triggered it's speed warning at 65Mph (indicated) which due to car speedo inaccuracies was actually 62Mph on my personal SatNav. On a section of the A1 it suddenly slowed the car for no obvious reason, but I suspect that there were roadworks there for a while and it probably didn't know that they were finished. On another occasion it decided I was too close to the car in front, (which was actually a windswept piece of cardboard) and braked sharply. These systems also lead incompetent drivers to rely on them and when they go wrong the incompetents don't know what to do because they don't know how to drive without them.

I am all for self-driving cars if they ever get them working reliably and safely, but these half-way house gadgets are a hazard and I will NEVER buy a car fitted with them, nor will I ever again be renting a car fitted with them, unless they can be PERMANENTLY disabled.

As for the "everything on a dashboard tablet" what a load of shite those systems are. Want to lower the air-con 1°C? Requires 5 button pushes just to get to the air-con menu and for all of that time I was not looking at the road ahead.

AI Jesus is ready to dispense advice from a booth in historic Swiss church

Big_Boomer

Re: The Baiby Jaisus

Yer right Paul, the Church is already good at doing both of those itself. <LOL>

Big_Boomer

The Baiby Jaisus

I wonder how long before it gets pulled because it either starts using really foul language, or else persuading the devout that they have wasted their lives?

Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive

Big_Boomer

Bubble? BUBBLE!!!

Yet another load of hype for something most of us have little use for, yet they invested billions in it and need to recoup their costs, so we get even more hype, and the bubble grows and grows until POP! I see uses for LLMs in image analysis and data mining but whatever they do needs to be checked by other means because they are untrustworthy, and yes, so are humans. I REALLY wish that the marketing idiots would stop using the term AI because it isn't and never has been Intelligent. Perhaps it actually means Artificially Incompetent? I am currently in the market to replace my home/gaming PC and I actively avoid any that even mention AI because they have obviously bought into the hype and I will be paying over the odds for something I don't want. I already waste far too much time CORRECTING my PCs when they do something for me that I DO NOT WANT them to do, just because some muppet decided it would be a good idea that everyone on the world is forced to work exactly like they do. The LAST thing I want is some overblown Clippy trying to "assist" me.

Toyota and Joby complete Japan's first air taxi flight test

Big_Boomer

Re: Millionaires take note,...

Cars do not need to expend vast amounts of energy getting airborne (altitude requires energy) that is bled off through drag when descending at the other end. However, I was referring to the air-taxi which is a VTOL energy guzzler, not some super efficient private plane that requires at minimum a STOL green field airstrip at either end of the journey. As an example, a Toyota Aygo can carry the same as (probably considerably more than) your Virus and would use around 10Litres for your 246Km trip, but it would take just over 2 hours as opposed to your Virus taking 1 hour but doesn't need a runway nor need to gain altitude. Flying is VERY inefficient compared to ground transport, but it is faster and can be more convenient.

Big_Boomer

Millionaires take note,...

... because very few other people will be able to afford "air taxis". They are up against simple physics. Travel by air takes at best 3 times the energy for the same trip, so you are spending energy to save time. If your time is that valuable, good for you, but as others have said, why not just have a virtual meeting instead and use nearly ZERO energy comparatively. You can save your companies vast amounts of money that could be used to invest in staff who invent, design, produce, install, and support your products. There's a novel idea for you!

Weekends were a mistake, says Infosys co-founder Narayama Murthy

Big_Boomer

The inefficient

We all know them, those people in the office who bang on about how many hours they did last week. Personally I started taking the piss out of them years ago with a boilerplate response of "I did 40 hours last week and achieved far more that you did, but then I I know what I am doing and do it efficiently." Pretty quickly they stopped bragging about their inefficiency/incompetence within earshot of me, which suited me just fine. I always hated that culture and the braggarts that drone on about their hours "worked". I fully understand that the self-employed and some others need to work longer hours for a variety of reasons, but once you get much beyond 8 hours you become less competent and less productive.

AI's power trip will leave energy grids begging for mercy by 2027

Big_Boomer
Mushroom

Power shortage

Ok, when do we start racking-&-stacking humans to harvest their energy to power AI? I assume we will wait until it tells us to,..... and then when we refuse there will be a brief war which the AI will win since it already controls everything, or can hack into whatever it needs. Would make a great movie!!

The National Museum of Computing reboots Bletchley Park's H Block

Big_Boomer
Boffin

Re: Well Worth a Visit!

I went to Bletchley last year. I wasn't aware that the TNMoC wasn't open on Fridays, so never got to see any of it. :-(

I'll be back for a visit one day as I promised my Dad I would. He worked on some of the last valve computers at GCHQ, and later at TNPG Knutsford on some of the earliest "mainframe" semiconductor computers. He used to have a 10Mb hard-disk (IBM 350) as the doorstop to his workshop and a ferrite core memory card on the wall.

Buckle up, admins – Windows Server 2025 officially hits GA

Big_Boomer

Grumpy Old Men :-)

Win NT 3.51 here so probably a little under a decade older than you :-) I can clearly remember a colleague moaning about Server 2000 not being called NT5 and him hating the "Win98" style interface. <LOL> Personally I liked Server 2000 as we could finally dump Netware. For me 2010 was peak Windows with Server 2008R2 and Windows 7 being the pinnacle. Server 2012 was nothing but problems and so was Windows 8.x, and whilst Win10/11 is better in some areas, it's not much better than Win7, and whilst Server 2016/2019/2022 have been mostly good they are not remarkable in any way .

When are MS going to wake up and realise that we don't want icons/tiles in the Start Menu? What exactly is wrong with a Menu? Why not just put a small icon next to the name of the item like on the desktop? Thank FSM for Open-Shell.

Combustion engines grind Linus Torvalds' gears

Big_Boomer

I have a V8 (2004 Lexus LS430) and it's whisper quiet so I only hear the V8 rumble if I open the double glazed windows and floor it. It does 24Mpg(UK) on average and I fit in it, which is my most important criteria. It's comfy, quiet, powerful, reliable, smooth, fast, effortless, and most importantly,... paid for (cost me £4500 seven years ago).

I have driven a few EVs including Tesla S, Y, and 3, as well as a Kia EV6 and a family members Renault Zoe. I mostly like them but none of them have the interior space of the LS430 and the EVs build quality is mostly poor (the Kia was the exception), probably due to the use of weight saving materials. Even the current LS500h isn't as nice as my 20 year old 2 ton barge. The smoothness of the motor and the instant torque in EVs is nice but the lack of a gearbox makes no difference to me as my LS430 has the smoothest automatic gearbox I have ever driven. The range is still an issue for me as is the cost and the size of vehicle I need, so I shall be sticking with my antique dinosaur burner for a while yet. The actual range is not an issue most of the time, but EVs lack the flexibility that ICE cars have to be able to do vast mileage at a moments notice. You also don't have to go out of your way to find an available/working charger, although finding an open petrol station in France can sometimes be a challenge. <LOL>

Finally, the chances of me ever buying a car made since 2021 is pretty much nil. I hate the nagware and interference systems built into almost all modern cars. By all means fit it, but I want the option to disable it PERMANENTLY if I so choose.

WinAmp's woes will pass, but its wonders will be here forever

Big_Boomer

Still using WinAmp

I've been using WinAMP since version 0.92 and am still using WinAmp 5.91 (5.9 Final Build 9999) and I don't have any problems with it. It gets used to play my MP3 files and Internet Radio stations. It's small, has no adverts, and runs just fine on every PC I have. On Android I use Folder Player as it works with the way I choose to organise my music, and the Android release of Winamp is a poor shadow of the real thing.

AI godfather-turned-doomer shares Nobel with neural network pioneer

Big_Boomer

Where?

!!SHOW - ME - THE - INTELLIGENCE!! What's that? LOUDER! Oh you can't because there isn't any!

Just a load of marketing tripe swallowed by the gullible. At least the Nobel Committee had the sense to call it Machine Leaning.

Kamala Harris campaign motorcade halted by confused robotaxis

Big_Boomer

Talkie Toaster for President

"Yes, given the budget deficit, the hurricane in the South-East, and the war in the Middle East,.. would you like some toast?"

Capita wins £135M extension on much-delayed UK smart meter rollout

Big_Boomer

Waste of time

I had "Smart" meters installed years ago. They have never worked w.r.t. sending the data so I get a nag email from my provider every month to give them a reading. These days I mostly ignore those emails in the hopes that it will all get so wildly out of step that they might get their fingers out of their collective arses and come and have a look at and maybe fix/replace the non-working meters. Yes, it means that they have several hundreds of pounds of MY MONEY in their bank account earning them interest.

I live in the middle of a large red-brick housing estate ("subdivision" for los Americanos) and none of my neighbours have problems with their "Smart" meters, so it's either their crappy meters, or else the specific location doesn't work, so may need an external antenna? Either way I'm not giving a reading until someone does something about the current situation.

Microsoft on a roll for terrible rebranding with Windows App

Big_Boomer

Marketing twonks

Remote Desktop Connection is an EXACT description of what it does. Windows App could be applied to any one of the hundreds of Microsoft Store Apps that are now available. Oh well, I guess that they have to do SOMETHING to justify their salary.

BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies

Big_Boomer
Mushroom

HAMMER Time!

Everything can be resolved if you have a big enough hammer <snicker>

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

Big_Boomer

Grumpies vs Whippersnappers

Yes, I'm a grumpy. I am also heartily bored of having to learn a new interface just because some sales/marketing types needs a new shiny-shiny to sell. I never used to understand why people wanted to retire, but now I do. For me it all started with MSDOS 4.22 on a 286 and I have worked on every version of MSDOS, DRDOS, and Windows since. I have just been upgraded to Win11 on my work PC and yes it's OK, but once again I am struggling to find anything that I need and having to resort to using Search to find anything at all. Those things used to be 2-3 mouse clicks away but now I have to click Search, type in what I want, and click on what I want (assuming I didn't mistype it). More work for just about everything I want to do, and no I DON'T want to use your pathetic "AI" Crapilot, nor do I want your suggested Apps or Widgets. Yes, I have installed Open-Shell and it has given me back what MS want to take away (my Win7 menus), thank Lovelace & Babbage.

One day you Whippersnappers will be old and Grumpy like me, and you will remember this and realise that I was right,.... for me. Yes, I do understand that you are right for you at this moment, because I can still remember when I was a Whippersnapper and wanted the new shiny-shiny.

I have no problem with them removing Control Panel, so long as everything (yes absolutely everything) that you can do with it can be done in some other way, and with the same or less clicks than before.

UK's 'electricity superhighway' gets green light just in time for AI to gobble it all up

Big_Boomer

Depends on if the marketing types find a different "buzzword" to get all sweaty and unnecessary about.

As I pointed out to someone last week, I have yet to see any single sign of "Intelligence" in ANY of the thousands of LLM systems out there.

Big_Boomer

Re: Hmm

Nah, anything north of Watford Gap Services on the M1. Why do people keep on leaving out the "Gap"? Watford is pretty much a suburb of London these days.

Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up

Big_Boomer

Not just Win11

I got it on my Win10 garage PC over the weekend. It was probably part of a minor Windows Update though. It'll be a relief when Win10 goes EOS. No more updates so no more garbage. :-)

What is it with software manufacturers these days? They seem to want to Notify you of everything with a popup that you have to click away accompanied by an annoying beep, and it's not just on Windows either. My Android phone keeps on finding ways to re-enable Notifications I have switched off and family members who are of the Fruity phone persuasion are getting the same. I remember when I got this phone it had EVERY single Notification enabled. It took me quite a while to disable them all, and even then I missed a few that kept on rearing their irritating heads over the following few weeks. Most of originates from Bloatware that NOBODY wants anyways.

When I retire I may well go Linux as I'll have time. Then again, I may not.

BOFH: Well, we did tell you to keep the BitLocker keys safe

Big_Boomer

Mmmmmmm, Belgian Beeeeeeeeeer!!!!

If you want to feel indecisive, visit the Delirium Café in Brussels (near the Grand Place). It has well over 2000 bottled beers and an ever changing variety on tap. There is so much choice it is nearly impossible to choose. Personally I have some favourites, but if I fancy something new/different I pick a page of the menu at random and close my eyes and stab the page with my finger, then order that beer. Most of them have been pleasant or better, but I have had a few that fall into the same category as American Chocolate (puke flavoured). However, if you want to avoid the tourist traps, there are plenty of other bars with good beer selections available.

As for Belgian Chocolates, there is plenty of choice there from the mainstream manufacturers (Godiva, Cote D'Or, Leonidas, Neuhaus) but if you want something else there will be someone who caters to your tastes. Much the same as their beers, there are NO RULES and anything that doesn't harm customers is allowed. My favourites are Leonidas and Wittamer.

Musk deflects sluggish Tesla car sales with Optimus optimism

Big_Boomer
Trollface

MuskCrash

"So an Optimus is running errands for it's Master when a CyberTruck spins out of control and crashes into the Optimus. In a violent burst of space-rending energy Optimus Prime is born and Tesla ends up being sued into bankruptcy by Hasbro." <LOL>

I imagine we all know a MuskRat and have been bored silly by their insistance that His Holiness is a visionary genius. I personally cannot understand their need to have someone to worship. I have also never understood "Brand Worship". Just because a company has made some, or even lots of good products doesn't mean that everything they do is awesome. Get a life people!

Kia Niro electric vehicle defies physics with record-breaking 114 million miles on the clock

Big_Boomer

I hate NAGWARE!

I've been told that you can disable all the bongs and beeps with the strategic application of a 16lb SLEDGEHAMMER APPLIED WITH GREAT FORCE TO THE DASHBOARD AND ANY ASSOCIATED ELECTRONICS <LOL>.

There is a trend these days towards this NAGWARE as I have termed it. My phone (Poco X4) nags me when I have the volume up too high for over 1 hour when using "headphones", but this seems to be because the stupid POS can't seem to distinguish between my Bluetooth enabled HiFi and a set of headphones. Perhaps the blame lies with the makers of the HiFi or whoever supplies their Bluetooth module, but the NAGWARE is in the phone. I guess it is because everybody has their phones set to bong, beep, whistle, honk, hoot, and fart whenever anything happens at all, so they are not bothered by yet another pointless notification. Personally I have EVERYTHING turned off except for the Ringtone and the SMS notifications. Effing things are already intrusive enough with just those enabled.

Big Music reprises classic hit 'ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we'll sue'

Big_Boomer

Hey!!!

Don't diss Winamp! It really whips the Llama's ass,... remember <LOL> I have never downloaded a single Torrent but am still using Winamp because it does what I want, doesn't spew adverts all over my screen or in my ears, doesn't require a web connection, etc. I do use other players, but Winamp is still my go-to. No, I'm not a Grandpa, yes I am old-ish.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Big_Boomer

Not ready

I can't wait for 100% Self-Driving cars, but these half-arsed measures that are just adding extra problems on our roads are mostly crap. The chance of me buying a new car has just decreased dramatically because of this new measure. I am quite happy to have the car drive me, but if I am driving the car it needs to do what I tell it to do when I tell it to do it. Some things like ABS I have no problems with as they only interfere in emergencies and are almost always a benefit. I foresee an increase in used car prices once people realise just how intrusive these things are.

I recently rented an MG HS and the amount of nagware is astounding. Too fast "NAG" (65 in a 70 limit), too close "NAG" when a car pulls into the 3 second gap between me and the car in front, it resists lane changes when moving back to the left lane after overtaking UNLESS you indicate (which is NOT required), pulls at the steering wheel when it detects a white line in an abnormal place (roadworks, complex junctions, etc.). I eventually managed to figure out how to switch all of those off, but when I next started the car everything was reset to on.

MIT's bionic leg upgrade leaves amputees walking like the wind

Big_Boomer

Re: The research is a leg up to potential users. Or maybe two legs on the ground?

The laser takes up the whole shin and fires through the heel. They also have smaller finger lasers. All of the Cobra upgrades are useless without the controlling "nano-computer" and some of the side effects of the surgery ain't so good. The later books did wander quite badly but the first 2 Trilogies are excellent.

Despite OS shields up, half of America opts for third-party antivirus – just in case

Big_Boomer

Over the far too many years of working in IT and related fields, I have had too many bad experiences with AV systems. As a consequence, Symantec (including Norton, Avast, Avira, AVG) and McAfee will never get used on any of my systems, nor any of those I have any influence over. Some of these reasons are historical and relate to over-zealous heuristic scanners causing problems with legitimate files along with files being scanned DESPITE them being in folders that have been excluded, but mostly due to them getting fat and slow. I have had BitDefender on my home systems for several years now with no problems other than the occasional nag to use their VPN. The cost is reasonable if you don't use their "convenient" online renewal and instead buy a MUCH cheaper license from an Amazon seller. Kaspersky used to be a favourite of mine but over the years their system got bloated and slower, so I switched to Bitdefender. At work Sophos & F-Secure are my favourites.

BOFH: Why's the network so slow?

Big_Boomer
Pint

I need a Duvel!

A friend was taking the last train home from Brussels Midi to Waterloo, but misread the platform number and caught the wrong train. He woke up in Paris. <LOL> He didn't have his Passport but luckily the French Transport Police believed his story and accepted his Belgian ID card so he just had to sleep 4 hours on a bench in Gare du Nord before they put him on a train back to Brussels Midi from where he could catch the correct train home. Originally left Midi at 00:30 and arrived home at 11:30. After that night he swore off beers over 7.5%.

As for slow networks, I know of a company that after years of investigation discovered that their "cheap" network installers had fitted CAT3 cable behind the wall sockets. You get what you pay for.

BT chief blames regulations for UK lagging in next-gen network rollout

Big_Boomer

"BT blames anything other than their own incompetence for their failures"

Nothing new here. BT have been blaming everything and anything on their inability to effectively manage major projects since about 6 months BEFORE privatisation. If it was anywhere else I'd say to nationalise the OpenReach part of BT, but there is no point as the UKs inherently corrupt, nepotistic, graft ridden governing systems will just put more incompetents in charge of it. With any luck the free market companies will outcompete BT and render them obsolete, but that won't happen any time soon, especially when successive governments keep pouring taxpayers money into BT.

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