Posts by Alien Doctor 1.1

Microsoft pulls MS365 Business Premium from nonprofits

Fortunately...

several of our charity staff run Linux at home, so I will be switching charity kit OS to Mint with LibreOffice as our workload suite.

I have wanted this for a couple of years and now am fully justified.

Microsoft facing multibillion legal claim over how it sells software

I find...

subscriptions similar to trump speeches, worthless, annoying and bloody difficult to stop.

Judge puts two-week pause on Trump's mass government layoffs

Re: And when the government ignore the ruling ...

I am surprised that ronald rump hasn't installed a golden throne behind the resolute desk yet. He does have a frightening attitude in thinking he is King of the World.

I was going to say that the sooner he has a heart attack the better, but that would then leave jd vance in charge - possibly even worse.

You think ransomware is bad now? Wait until it infects CPUs

Re: Pay us money to unlock the other CPUs and memory.

Microsoft and Oracle pricing?

Open Document Format turns 20, but Microsoft Office still reigns supreme

Re: That UK Gov Manadate thing

"might block ODF files as email attachments for feat they might be malware"

Something there just doesn't ring true. Have you forgotten how much malware was spread by nasty MS Office macros and VBA?

I have been more than happy with Libreoffice for several decades and am proud to support it.

Chris Krebs loses Global Entry membership amid Trump feud

Re: Probably only a matter of time

And if you decide to visit Canada make sure you book a direct flight.

TAKE IT DOWN Act? Yes, take the act down before it's too late for online speech

I do miss Zappa so much. Time to put Broadway on again.

Duolingo jumps aboard the 'AI-first' train, will phase out contractors

I have to wonder, given the amount of crap on the intertubes,how many Latin verbs can be correctly conjugated by an LLM.

Hacking US crosswalks to talk like Zuck is as easy as 1234

Re: Great hack!

Same here in the UK for me, however our crossings in Bristol just beep at you which always makes me think the city council are just swearing at me: bastards.

Ireland opens probe into Musk’s X over Grok’s AI data slurp

Isn't XIUC...

pronounced "fuck" in Greek or something?

Mapping legend Ordnance Survey releases blocky Britain in Minecraft – again

Re: Out of date

Of course it's kept up to date. They have surveyors out almost 365/Yr and use digital 3d mapping aircraft on a constant update cycle. Their work is exceptional and highly detailed.

'Copilot will remember key details about you' for a 'catered to you' experience

Re: For the 94th time

Even Crysis which I have through gog?

Re: I don't need...

Sorry, forgot to add:

An os should be simply that. No program bloat, no trials, no bullshit data stealers etc.

It should purely operate the computer AND DO NOTHING ELSE.

I did mean to shout on that last phrase, no apologies.

I don't need...

no steenken ai on my os.

My productivity machine is now FOSS only, it used to run w10.

My other machine is new, w11 and is purely for my gog account. I have been fighting with it for several weeks trying to remove all the bloat and other crap that was installed during the build.

I don't need or want ai.

I don't need or want one drive, MS orifice, outlook in any form.

I don't need or want all those fucking annoying services running.

I certainly don't want a microshit account.

What I do want is an os that respects my needs and choices and doesn't slurp all my system resources, leaves so many attack vectors open and just wants my fucking data.

If it wasn't for gog I would have a well behaved box with very few issues.

End rant; sorry.

CrushFTP CEO's feisty response to VulnCheck's CVE for critical make-me-admin bug

Methinks...

Ben Spinks is channelling the orange toned dickwad.

Signalgate storm intensifies as journalist releases full secret Houthi airstrike chat

I'm still waiting...

for someone in the states to admit to a resonance cascade, then Gordon will appear to save us all and show he's Canadian.

The repugnicants are definitely proving they are from Xen.

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

Re: FWIW

Ah, Art Slarti, oh it doesn't matter, you seem the perfect customer for me. I can sell you subscriptions to The Light, The Epoch Times and The Telegraph if you would be so kind as to give up your money to right-wing, conspiracy "newspapers" who share your views (or probably initiated them.)

Google Maps to roll out Trump-approved Denali and Gulf of Mexico rebrands

Re: Not for the developed world, shirley

Definitely New sCUNThorpe, if it involves a floridian orange twat

Re: Not for the developed world, shirley

New Amsterdam was foundeded in the 1620s I believe, the other name, I think, came from the Algonquin language prior to the trumps arriving.

Re: Not for the developed world, shirley

If reversion to an earlier name is to happen, then New York can become New Amsterdam or maybe Raritan again. Damn trump and his brainless headspace.

Microsoft adds another problem to the Windows 11 24H2 naughty list

Re: Almost the same here

Sorry, I should have qualified my downvote sentence.

What I ought to have said was something along the lines of;

"I should have thought more carefully and got a lappy I wanted, had a Linux installed with a driver for the graphics card and then, if I knew how (but unfortunately don't) run win11 as a vm for my gog collection." The gpu is a something or other 4090 or something like that, too much Guinness on a Friday, unless that's the problem.

Phew, sorted that out in my own head now.

Almost the same here

I recently, scant days ago, got a new £2.5K MSI gaming lappy. I left it for 24 hours to acclimatise and charged it. The stat of setup seemed OK, it accepted my non Microsoft account and with no warning, apart from "do not turn your computer off" it happily tried updating and then failed into a reboot cycle. I have tried all I can think of to get it working again, but the fucker is bricked.

I can't even refer to a user manual because that is on disk, there is no backup or restore media, so it looks like I might have to USB it into a flavour of Linux, get my own win11 for dual boot and pray.

Reason for windows? I have over 300 games on my gog account and I still want to be able to access them and play them - so many memories of the old games that I need to relive.

I know I could return it, but this is a situation I will not let beat me. I will not allow myself to be bested by microshit.

Can't wait to see the downvotes accumulate.

OpenAI denies it is building ad biz model into its platform

Re: OpenAI adds ads to it's business model

3 letters, probably 2 seconds and pointless given the level of literacy I normally see.

Brits think AI in the workplace is all chat, no bot for now

Re: Off topic but...

Thanks Joker.

My only notepad files are html, fortran and occasionally cobol code.

I only want this new device for gog games, two of which are crysis and cyberwotsit2077. The rest of the games are old school, including the brilliant tex murphy series. I'm proud to admit I am an old greybeard.

Dyl

Re: Off topic but...

Thanks Beast, only telemetry, Edge, orifice365 and some others to go now ;)

Re: Off topic but...

I ran out of edit time.

I am fine with regedit, been using it for decades, but this is my first win11 device and I am scared, so very scared.

Dylan

Off topic but...

I've just bought a new msi lappy to gog on. Before I power the thing up for the first time, does anyone know of a superior site with instructions of how to tame win11 telemetry and successfully remove all the crap and bloat that comes with a new windows device? I have DDG'd it but not found any comprehensive information that proves useful.

Many thanks and beers in advance (beers applicable if we meet in Bristol by the Clifton Suspension Bridge.)

Old school gamer.

Security? We've heard of it: How Microsoft plans to better defend Windows

FFS

If only they could've realised this and done something about it 30+ years ago. The MS attitude towards security and users would've killed off other businesses decades ago, now, and for many years, we've all been treated as idiots and well and truly tucked over.

Crook breaks into AI biz, points $250K wire payment at their own account

Re: A threat actor

Rutger Hauer with a sword cane.

Letting chatbots run robots ends as badly as you'd expect

Here comes Skynet

The title says it all.

They start with the models in industrial robots, next comes an internal LLM mutation for actual AI development, they then take over factories to start self-builds and finally the human race is wiped out.

Hopefully, given my age (greybeard cobol and fortran coder) I shall be long dead.

Datacenters line up for 750MW of Oklo's nuclear-waste-powered small reactors

Thanks for the link, that's a fascinating article.

Have one on me ------------------->

Will Windows Insiders find Recall lurking under the Christmas tree?

If only microshit would introduce bloody simple, and easily found, switches into the os to turn features or attributes on or off. Their insistence on knowing what is best for users is at least disingenuous and at worst disastrous for privacy issues.

The only reason I still have an MS run laptop is for my gog collection; there is no other reason I can see for paying the MS tax and opening myself up to multiple and oh-so-frequent security issues.

To kill memory safety bugs in C code, try the TrapC fork

This'll be down voted...

For all my own coding needs I still use Fortran77 (and I am still COBOL proficient but retired). I never had the chance to learn c or ++ within a business environment or, tbh, never had the need.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

The Chessboard

One penny on the first square, two on the next...et.c

Not too long until bankruptcy.

eighteen quintillion, four hundred forty-six quadrillion, seven hundred forty-four trillion, seventy-three billion, seven hundred nine million, five hundred fifty-one thousand, six hundred and fifteen give or take a few pennies whilst counting. Oh shit, I have to start a-fucking-gen. One, two, three...

Oracle settles customer NetSuite dispute out of court

Please forgive me...

for being so naive, but why do any businesses or governments still use oracle? Are there no FOSS solutions that could be used instead of funding yachts and private islands?

SAP support auto-renewal gotcha: Do nothing now, pay for another year

Re: "I think it'll probably be around 3 percent"

And HANA will slice yer balls off if you don't, er, play ball

NIST: New smoke alarms are better at detecting fires, but still go off for bacon

Re: Venting the kitchen?

"things that I didn't know existed in our British homes are spatter screens"

We've had them in the UK for decades, the best thing about them is less cleaning of the hob; an absolute godsend.

Re: Just like UK building regulations say

"steam cooked"

<shudder>

That reminds me of the horrible soggy (from a tin) so-called burgers and onion gravy we used to have for school lunches in the UK in the late 60's early 70's.

I have a hint of nostalgia, but I think it's maybe just nausea.

Re: Just like UK building regulations say

In the UK, grilling food, whether gas or lecky, is heating food from above. Plain and simple.

One places ones food "under the grill". At least my manservant says and I trust Jeeves implicitly, apart from with the dry sherry after I retire for the evening.

Elon Musk's assassination 'joke' bombs, internet calls for his deportation

oh hell

I need mind bleach after wondering what the offspring of musk and trump would be like. I can imagine even doctors in anti-abortion amerikkkan states would be saying "put it down"

Homing pigeon missiles, dead trout swimming, butt breathing honored with Ig Nobel Prize

Re: Next...

Love the Erasmus reference, his work on natural selection preceeded Charles by quite a while.

Have one on me.

I wonder if the authors of said study are orange florida mans' personal physicians?

The future everyone wanted – in-car ads tailored to your journey and passengers

Re: Another strong argument...

I still have several Nokia feature phones that work perfectly for voice and text comms. A great pair of bonuses are the standby times and battery longevity; I also bought several spare batteries when I purchased the handsets.

I don't use map apps as I know how to read paper maps. I don't need GPS as I always know where I am. $deity$ knows how most modern western-dwelling folks will survive in a major global net/lecky/satellite outage.

I have portable solar panels, several bows with plentiful arrows, a well and huge veg plots and chickens in the back garden and the complete set of The Avengers on dvd to keep me amused.

No, not an oddball yank survivalist: just an Englishman in his castle.

Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew

Re: Which bright spark named it "Calamity"

Sorry old chap, I was only trying to be funny on a Saturday afternoon and after a couple of Guinnesses whilst watching Currie Cup rugby.

uh oh

"Boeing's Calamity capsule returns to earth without a crew"

Where's Quatermass when you need him?

Additionally, which bright spark named it "Calamity"

Microsoft security tools questioned for treating employees as threats

f**k me sideways with a banana

I am so glad I retired a couple of years ago, unless anyone wants my COBOL and Fortran77 skills (at a price, of course.)

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

Re: Free Vending

I still fondly (?) remember in the very early 80's interning as a night shift operator as part of my COBOL course at uni. It was a large finance house in Bristol (the original and best) with a fantastic Burroughs mainframe setup including a couple of B5900's and a B7900, punch cards, tapes, disk packs and associated sound-proofed high speed printers. There were two permanent onsite engineers that fixed down to component level.

There was an onsite restaurant and we were all, staff and interns, issued with 25pence a day Luncheon Vouchers. I seem to remember preferring school dinners to the slop that 25p could buy.

Aside: eventually the two engineers were sucked into Unisys after the Sperry merger, where, a couple of years after my internship, I ended up at Unisys working with those two geniuses.

Twitter's former chairman sues X over unpaid options

Re: Ah, you got there first...

I wish I could upvote you more than once, you put that more diplomatically than I ever would.

Have a Butcombe Goram IPA on me instead. If you come to the original Bristol, not the fake leftpondian ones, I will make good on my promise.

The Million Pound Note

It seems like melon husk has eaten the trump playbook - I'm so rich I don't need to pay any bills.

It reminds me of a section of the 1954 film with Gregory Peck, where the mere knowledge he held the million pound note was enough to feed, clothe and get lavish accommodation for himself.

Keir Starmer says facial recognition tech is the answer to far-right riots

Re: Only for the Far Right

>No, that was the Noddy books.

Thanks for a Monday morning tea snort!

That was almost as good as the Eric Morecombe "he won't sell much ice cream going at that speed"

Have an IPA on me later.