Posts by David 132

Brit cops accused of abusing anti-terror laws to hunt colleague

Re: Police whistle blower?

a family friend and amusingly called Dixon (though not of Dock Green, sadly)

Well duh, everyone knows real policemen live at 999 Letsby Avenue.

And their favourite food is Irish Stew (in the name of the law).

Re: Yes, plus

Perhaps he meant free 'reindeer'

Ah, the Register - always first with the best technology gnus.

Re: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help...."

Good catch.

Apologies if my posting came across as a bit frothing-at-the-mouth, but I'm in a ranty shouty mood at the moment.

I could have added:

GCHQ interception powers - granted to them "to fight terrorism". Next thing you know they're being used to "fight", as time goes on:

- paedophiles (that always-handy bogeyman to frighten Middle England)

- people downloading "extreme" pornography

- people downloading non-vanilla pornography

- people downloading anything that frightens the politicians

- economic threats, such as Johnny Foreigner buying his fighter jets from anyone other than BAE

..and so on.

My point about the Theresa May / Keith Vaz headlines was that there's a high degree of cognitive dissonance going on; if your party proposes legislation, the tendency is to think "they're a decent bunch, they have the interests of the country at heart, and they're right that <x> is a threat". If the other lot propose legislation, the instinctive reaction is "they're a bunch of fascists trying to snoop on every aspect of our lives". And yes, I'm as guilty of that propensity as anyone.

But we have to remind ourselves that governments change - bad laws endure.

My own inclination - and I appreciate that here I'm wandering off the topic and indulging in cod civics - is this: our British system of laws has evolved over centuries, shaped and checked and balanced to take account of human nature. It might not be perfect, but it works. Legislature, Lords, the Armed Forces, the judiciary and the monarchy all playing their part. It's arrogant in the extreme for us to assume that we can change one "bad" part of it and do better than our forebears. Tony Blair, I'm looking at you.

It's like looking at a carefully crafted Swiss watch mechanism, and saying "that cogwheel there is too big, it's ugly, it looks old-fashioned, let's remove it" - and then wondering why the whole thing runs fast, slow, and then bits start flying off and going sproing-pinnnng against the ceiling.

OK, that analogy could use some work.

"Give us more powers" they say. "Are you for or against terrorism?" they say.

And this is (one of) the reasons I'm firmly against the expansion of GCHQ/MI5 police spying powers that the UK government (of whichever colour) keeps proposing.

Because the bastards have shown, time and again, that if they gain a power for justification <x>, they'll end up using it for <y>.

Anti terror laws, for example:

2000 "For catching terrorists and keeping you safe"

2001 "Well, we can use it against paedophiles. Everyone hates paedophiles, right?"

2006 "How about tax evaders, too? Boo, hiss. Evil banksters robbing money from the poor."

2008 "For spying on people who are putting out their bins early or fibbing about which school catchment area they live in"

2015 "For rooting out journalists who show the authorities in a bad light"

2016 "For identifying people who sympathise with extremists"

2017 "For identifying people who harbour thoughts of racism or bigotry"

2018 "For catching people who might vote SNP/UKIP/Green/Respect/[insert your preferred bogeyman here]"

2020 "For finally stamping out the scourge of anyone emitting more than their annual CO2 quota"

And if you think I'm over-dramatising, here's an exercise.

Whether you're a Labour/SNP voter or more inclined to Conservative/UKIP, read these two "headlines" and for each one ask yourself "What do I think of this?"

1) "Theresa May Proposes Strict New Internet Monitoring Laws"

2) "Keith Vaz Proposes Strict New Internet Monitoring Laws"

If you disapprove of [the party you hate] proposing the law, but approve of [party you support] doing it, you're a hypocrite.

And if you approve of security laws no matter who's proposing them, then sorry, but I think you're an unquestioning sheep.

If you disapprove no matter what, then congratulations, you have principles. Don't let them try to tell you you're obviously a terrorist/paedophile/extremist/little-englander sympathizer.

Fake IT admin tricked Cox rep into handing over customer database – cableco fined $600k

Silly cox.

What do you call a spreadsheet with lots of negative numbers? Qualcomm_FY2015.xlsx

Re: Headline of the year award candidate ?

Seconded. Made oi larf!

PC sales will rise again, predicts Intel, but tablets are toast

Somehow these don't look like minis as I remember them.

Ah, you obviously haven't seen the upcoming docking station/port replicator/golfball printer for the Surface Book.

Re: "Sales of two-in-one systems are up 150 per cent"

Upvoted if only for the Blackadder reference.

The scenes with the Infanta Maria and her interpreter still crack me up every time.

Second only to the home-selling conversation with Mr & Mrs Pants in the season-II episode.

"What we're talking about, in privy terms, is the very latest in front-wall fresh-air orifices, combined with a wide-capacity gutter installation below."

"You mean, you crap out of the window?"

"... Yes."

"Well, in that case, we'll definitely take it. I can't stand those dirty indoor things."

..Wait, what were we talking about again?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion about PC sales.

At Microsoft 'unlimited cloud storage' really means one terabyte

Another reminder of what cloud really means: now you have it, now you don't.

Yes, this is part of why I dislike and distrust the current stampede to the cloud.

If I buy a 4TB hard drive from Western Digital, it will stay in my PC for ever (or more likely, for about 2 years given WD's reliability record, but I digress). I'd be pretty miffed if I switched on the PC one day to find that WD had "changed the product description" overnight via an online update, and the drive was now only 1TB.

Yet when it comes to the cloud, we meekly accept service providers changing the terms at their whim.. and always to suit them, not the customer.

Bah. Cloud is just a fancy new marketing name for the old "mainframes and dumb terminals" model - ye Gods, have we already forgotten why we fought to get away from that?

'Profoundly stupid' Dubliner's hoax call lost Intel 6,000 hours of production

Re: accent

yeah, it went Scottish at one stage too. best i could do given the circumstances.

Ah, I feel your pain. Whenever I try to do any accent at all to impress people - say, a Sean Connery-like Scots brogue - it usually regresses inevitably and against my best efforts to Peter-Sellers-level, goodness-gracious-me comic Indian. Which confuses people. Haven't caused an international incident yet but it's been close.

But if you're claiming that your impression was of Sergeant Shadwell of the Witchfinder Army, then it was a very good one.

Re: We All Know.

And as we all know, Leixlips sink ships.

Oh, put a Cork in it. Though I have to admit that was Halfway amusing.

Unless you fancy Dublin your chances with another pun, but don't make me Cross Barry.

(sorry, early morning, not enough coffee, weak puns are the best I can offer)

We suck? No, James Dyson. It is you who suck – Bosch and Siemens

Joke time

An appropriate one-liner courtesy of Tim Vine:

"I've decided to sell my Hoover. Well, it was just collecting dust."

Oracle Java 'no longer the greatest risk' to US Windows PC users

Why don't people update?

Reasons why people don't update software on their systems:

1) Apathy/Ignorance

2) Hassle and inconvenience of patching/updating mechanisms

3) Preference for the older version.

The first reason will always be with us, and user education - and auto-update systems - are probably the answer for them.

Plenty of attention has been paid to (2) - see comments above - but I think that's a red herring.

Speaking for myself, if a new version of software is compelling and offers added value, I don't care if I have to manually download it and install it, I'll still do so.

Which leads me to the third reason, which is one I don't think is appreciated.

We've seen a trend in recent years for new versions of software to be qualitatively worse than older versions. Gone are the days when new versions were automatically better; now, they're often an excuse for the developer to foist their own ideas about user interface, micropayments, or workflow.

Examples:

iTunes 9 (I think?) which got rid of the Coverflow view for album art. Many people (myself included) liked "flicking through" our collections in this view to choose tracks. Gone. Not coming back.

Windows 8 / TIFKAM, need I say more.

Microsoft Office and the Ribbon interface.

Solitaire/Freecell in Windows 10 - "watch adverts or pay us $10 for this formerly free game".

These are all examples of software that the developer - and perhaps a large part of the user base - thinks have improved. But if you're someone who likes Coverflow, or the Windows 7 Start Menu, you'll fight tooth and nail to keep them.

It's a simple calculation: if I move to new version of Application X, I will lose <feature I like>. If I stick with the old version, I might be attacked. But I can mitigate against the latter.

Perhaps there's an argument to be made here for abstracting the user interface part of an application from the underlying security framework, such that the same security fixes can be easily made available for previous versions of the app (i.e, patching Windows 7, iTunes 8, Office 2003 etc against 2015 vulnerabilities). But there's little-to-no ROI for the vendors there, so I can't see it happening (more than the grudging extent they do at present).

Bacon can kill: Official

Re: You first

Upvoted for the Mr Flibble reference. You, Sir, are truly the King of the Potato People.

Icon, obviously.

El Reg celebrates Back to the Future Day

"Marty tries out the Doc's Virtual Really Tea goggles"

Per subject!

Bosch, you suck! Dyson says VW pal cheated in vacuum cleaner tests

skelband It seems to me that the test needs to be updated.

Yeah, that was my first thought too. Something doesn't add up in this version of Dyson's complaint.

Having vacuum cleaners auto-detect when they're drawing dust, and ramp up the power until no further dust is detected is a good thing, Shirley?

If the EU "test conditions" simply run the EUT for n seconds/minutes in a clean room environment, and make no attempt to simulate dust, and merely measure the power consumed - then

a) Dyson have a valid complaint, and

b) the test design sucks (ahahaha)

Has there been a misconception somewhere - by Dyson, the author of this article, or me?

Western Digital's hard drive encryption is useless. Totally useless

Yikes.

But... if that was their actual response, then kudos to WD for being sensible in their response, and acknowledging it as an opportunity to do better.

Rather than taking the all-too-common-in-the-industry approach of threating to drop a lawsuit-bomb on the security researchers and/or invoking the DMCA.

Rogue Silk Road Fed starts 6.5-year stretch for nicking Bitcoins

Re: Just 6.5 years?

yaywalking

(Assuming that wasn't a mere typo...)

Walking whilst in a state of extreme happiness and contentment?

Or perhaps you meant "Yay! Walking!" - the state of being enthusiastic and gleeful about walking?

In at least some American cities, that's a paddlin'.

True story, albeit told to me second hand... many years ago, one of my colleagues who was on a business trip to Houston from the UK decided to walk back from a restaurant to his hotel, which was only a mile or so. He got about 3 blocks before the cops pulled over and questioned him - refusing to believe that anyone who wasn't a vagrant would voluntarily walk anywhere. In the end they gave him a lift back to his hotel and told him not to do it again.

So yeah, "Yay! Walking!" can be an offence in the States.

Temperature of Hell drops a few degrees – Microsoft emits SSH-for-Windows source code

Good.

I applaud them for their hard work.

Even if, for some reason, images of Admiral Ackbar come unbidden to my mind as I read this.

Microsoft now awfully pushy with Windows 10 on Win 7, 8 PCs – Reg readers hit back

Re: Seriously Misjudged the Mood

I think you seriously misjudge their market too. You're not their market, I'm not and nor is anyone on this forum.

Upvoted, but I wish there was a more granular "I hate the implications of your post, but dammit you're right and there's f-all we can do about it" button :)

That's a lot moire than many small businesses have.

I'm spotting a pattern here.

Re: There may be trouble ahead

There may be trouble ahead

"But while there's moonlight, and music, and love and romance,

Let's face the music and dance..."

I now have that song stuck in my head. Thanks a bunch.

But seriously, I agree with your post.

Windows Update was an arrangement of trust - "I will give Microsoft permission to install new code on my PC, but trust them not to abuse that."

And they've broken that arrangement in spectacular fashion. We now face a future of having to review every single update in depth, to ensure that it doesn't make unwanted changes.

Thanks, Microsoft.

Windows Mobile 10 nears point of no return

Re: I can't imagine why

The UI is painful

Ooh, ooh...I got one...

Don't forget to mention the modal dialog that helpfully informs you that "your organisation does not allow Lync access from outside the network". Yes, I know, you fecker, that'd be because I have just resumed from sleep and the OS hasn't reconnected yet. But thanks for giving me a great big blocking dialog pointing out the obvious, that I now have to close before I can continue. Because closing the dialog once connectivity's established 5 seconds later would be too convenient.

Totally agree with you. Hateful app.

UK drivers left idling as Tesla rolls out Autopilot in US

Re: Why the snark?

@DougS Take the average European who thinks they're hot shit in the parallel parking department and place them in an F150 or Land Cruiser

*shudder* Too true. Or something like an F-350 Super-Duty dually (quite a few of those around this part of OR). Anyone who even takes one of those downtown has bigger cojones than I - never mind trying to park it in anything smaller than a football field. Proper football or American, take yer pick.

(Note for Brits: the above is a 4-passenger pickup truck with approximately the external dimensions - and fuel throughput - of Stanlow refinery. Not the biggest truck on the market though... see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8P5vGcf-NU for The Ultimate.)

Why the snark?

Interesting article, but why the snarky "At last - Americans finally get to parallel park" subhead?

Try visiting any large US city. Parallel parking aplenty.

Having said that, I parked in Portland Oregon last week and I felt like a total n00b. It took me about 3 attempts to get perfectly lined up with the kerb - could have had something to do with the shiny new Aston Martin that was parked behind me, and a little voice in my head saying don't hit it don't hit it don't hit it, for the love of God don't hit it...

Weight, what? The perfect kilogram is nearly in Planck's grasp

Not overheard..

Phrases you won't be hearing at NIST/the International Avogadro Coordination project/NPL/NRC:

"Close enough"

"Just a smidge more"

"Eh, it'll do"

"Give it to the work experience kid* to finish off"

"Let's take the average and call it good"

(* but I bet the work experience kid got sent off for "a long weight")

My own take? Just define it as 2.2lb and the job's a good'un.

Meaningful gesture: Thalmic Labs Myo motion sensing armband

Douglas Adams, as usual, nailed it

Sigh. Another of these periodic attempts to map the "wow omg technology is so cooool" mindset of the !Bong¡ Startup Set into real life - and it will fail.

Douglas Adams characterized the biggest problem with gesture-based technology far, far better than I ever could:

"The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program. "

Bah.

Facebook's UK wing paid just £4k in corporation tax last year

Re: Companies don't pay tax

Guns don't kill people, rappers do.

Did you see it in a documentary on BBC-2?

PC shipments slump in Q3, thanks to free Windows 10

Re: Windows 10 didn't prevent me from buying a new PC in Q3

NUC? Can you elaborate please. I'm in the market for a new PC to put Linux on.

Intel's Next Unit of Computing, aka small form-factor PC.

(obRadioTimesDisclaimer: other small form-factor PCs and brands are available)

Comes with anything from a Celeron to a Core i7, depending on which one you choose. You can get it as a near-complete system (add your own RAM + WiFi + SSD) or just get the bare board and use a 3rd party case, which potentially adds space for extra drives etc. The system kit comes with a VESA wall-mount bracket.

http://ark.intel.com/products/series/70407/Intel-NUC-Boards-and-Kits

We have been using Mint on the i5MYHE - it's an i5-based one with vPro/AMT support.

Just be careful on the RAM; many of the NUC variants need 1.35V low-voltage DDR3L SODIMMS, rather than the more-common 1.5V DDR3-non-L.

Another SFF system to consider is the Gigabyte Brix family, but in my experience the cooling solution on those is noisy as hell when under load (4770R).

LMK if you need more info.

Google Chromecast 2015: Puck-on-a-string fun ... why not, for £30?

Re: Real Men Use RJ-45 Connections

Big Ed I got too tired of wireless router placement, boosters, extenders and fighting with my neighbors and gamer kids for wireless bandwidth.

I'm fortunate enough to live on a large-ish plot of land with no neighbours within about 200 yards. After months of futzing with extenders and powerline networking, I gave in and found a no-name Chinese AP; it supports 5GHz 802.11n, and the configuration page for Wireless Transmit Power includes the lovely, lovely option "Ignore Regulatory Limits"... allowing power levels that give me strong & fast wireless coverage across the whole house.

No, I don't get many visitors with pacemakers or dental fillings. Why do you ask?

If you wanted Windows 10, it looks like you've already installed it

Imagine for a second having to install windows 10 from floppy.

NOW that is a new level of hell

*shudder*

As someone alluded to above, I think the real meaning of Hell would be getting to disk #20xx of 2079, then hearing that GRAUNCH GRAUNCH GRAUNCH... GRAUNCH GRAUNCH GRAUNCH... and the dreaded "Disk Read Error. Aborting."

Oooh. Nasty flashbacks.

Ex-Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch sues HP for $150m+

Re: RE: multi-billion PR company

HP would manage it so badly that it would only be worth $100 by the time the ink has dried on the contract.

This being HP, the ink to print that contract would have cost more than that.

Find shaving a chore? Why not BLAST your BEARD off with a RAYGUN

Re: Reserving judgement

senior-developer levels of facial hare

Facial hare? The guy's name must be Warren.

This really Bugs me.

*ba-dum tssshhh*

Is Windows 10 slurping too much data? No, says Microsoft. Nuh-uh. Nope

Re: Where does this lead?

Ken Hagan Just block the outgoing connections. Too much (ongoing) effort? Well...

It's a market opportunity for someone who already has blacklisting software and who already maintains the blacklists that drive it. Of course, that would require the AV companies to grow a pair and actually take on Microsoft, so I won't hold my breath.

A sensible suggestion from a technical perspective, but this is just mitigation of the core problem; we/the IDS vendors shouldn't have to patch around Microsoft's arrogance and thirst for data.

An analogy: you have a car that, despite the manufacturer's assurance that it's clean, pumps out unexpectedly high levels of emissions. Is it for the manufacturer to fix? Or is it a great business opportunity to sell giant bin-bags that tape over the tailpipe and catch most of the fumes?

/me marvels at my brilliance

/me rushes off to register VAGbags.com

/me realises that it sounds far too rude

You were already saying that about Vista, weren't you ?

Silly Pascal, don't feed the troll. Wrestling with pigs, and all that.

Besides, "technophile" == "one who loves technology"... ow, what a cruel insult. Ouch. Sorry, but I'll gladly accept that description.

And it's surely because we love technology that we despise the marketroids and social media onanists who're systematically gutting the concept of PC-as-open-platform and turning it into PC-as-Telescreen.

JoS:The privacy setting controls not being located in one control panel item is telling. "We are purposely making this as difficult as possible."

Yep. You can always tell, these days, when a software vendor really wants you to do something - and when they don't.

Annoying in-your-face pop-ups, with no obvious way to disable them:

"OS 9.01 is now available for your iPhone" / "Click here to reserve your copy of Windows 10" / "Click here to switch on OneDrive"...

... a sure sign that <whatever> is for the vendor's benefit, not yours.

Having to apply an arcane Policy, or edit the Registry in 47 different places, or apply commandline incantations to turn something off...

... equally, a sure sign that <whatever> is something that benefits you, but not them.

And both cases give them plausible deniability: "We don't force people to upgrade to the new OS" / "We don't force people to install Skype"... nope, technically users can disable <behaviour X>, but you make life as feckin' difficult and obnoxious as possible until people give in and drink your kool-aid.

Bunch of pempsliders, the lot of them.

I'm in a foul mood at the moment and need a drink. Or several.

Re: You really want to "deliver a delightful and personalized Windows experience" to me?

I very much want a 'personalised experience' from my PC. But I want it the way I decide and not the way some software decides I want it.

Yes! This! A thousand times, this!

Personalised is good. But let me be the one doing the personalisation.

Having "smart" software agents on the PC trying to decide what I want is ineffective at best, and downright creepy at worst.

Having software agents back in the Microsoft mothership trying to decide what I want is... nope nope nope nope nope. Do not want. And I feel exactly the same way if you substitute Google/Apple/Adobe/whoever, so don't think I'm playing unfavourites.

Upvoted. Have a pint, too.

And I'm gonna keep on lovin' you

'Cause it's the only thing I wanna do

I don't wanna sleep, I just wanna keep on lovin' you

I now have that song stuck in my head. Confound you! *shakes fist*

Re: Jesus wept.

I don't know what you have to feel sorry for.

I apologized, because I can't shake the feeling that I am different and strange for not "getting" this new model of computing. As I said in a post passim, I might be "that one soldier on the parade ground compaining that the other 99 soldiers are out of step". Microsoft are selling - OK, giving away - colossal numbers of Windows 10 licenses, so there's obviously many, many people in the world who don't share my opinion & concerns.

Do I come across as the guy in this icon? --->

...buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp, I tole 'em, I tole 'em...

Jesus wept.

I'm starting to think they actually believe this stuff.

...although he did admit that the OS does regularly phone home by default...

How the flip did we get to a situation where having an OS "regularly phone home by default" is not seen as blatant, get-the-torches-and-pitchforks-out, what-the-feck behaviour?

"We collect a limited amount of information to help us provide a secure and reliable experience. This includes data like an anonymous device ID, device type, and application crash data which Microsoft and our developer partners use to continuously improve application reliability,"

Well, that sounds lovely and cuddly. Switch it off by default and I'm sure everyone will switch it on immediately by choice, cos it's so amazing, right? Right?

Myerson said enterprise customers will be able to disable collection of telemetry data – once the long-fabled enterprise features for Windows 10 are delivered later this year, that is – but added that "we strongly recommend against this."

Mmm. And IT/Legal/Compliance departments the world over will "strongly recommend" that Microsoft take their collection of telemetry data, and shove it up their named pipes.

Incidentally, can we stop using the fluffy euphemism "telemetry"? Call a spade a spade. It's wholesale spying and monitoring and slurping of every aspect of our lives. And let's stop with this sly, subtle implication that anyone who doesn't want this is in some way paranoid, or strange, or has something to hide. You might be happy to live in a Panopticon. I sure as feck am NOT.

Look, Microsoft. If I want data-logging, or social media integration, or any "digital assistant" wankery, I will install an application to provide that. Don't put it in the operating system and tell me I'm stupid for wanting to disable it. The job of the OS is to run basic services and provide a standardised set of interfaces for applications - nothing more.

Rant over. Sorry. *wipes frothing spittle from mouth*

Diskicide – the death of disk

1930s?

From the fine article:

"I'm going to begin back in the 1930s, before most of us were alive...

Remember punched cards; ..."

I'm sure it wasn't the intention, but that sentence seems to imply that punched cards per se date back to the 1930s. If so, try looking up "Jacquard Loom", and be impressed at the ingenuity of the early 1800s - I know I was, wot wiv me being of poor edumacation an' all.

But yes, you're right, the 1930s is about when the technology was repurposed for control of digital data-processing devices - via Hollerith in the 1890s and so on!

Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows: The spirit of Clippy lives on

Re: MSFT is cooking with gas

Oh, they're cooking with gas?

I knew there had to be some reason for the strong aroma of methane I've been detecting around those products.

Microsoft rolls out Windows 10 Mobile preview update

Re: Why not 10538?

There were Vyolynne's, Trum's and Base too

Vyo Lynne was Jeff's emotional younger brother. Very highly strung.

On the article topic, I'm waiting for build 8675309.

Microsoft names September 22nd as the date for Office party

Re: Bilbo Baggins

Yes. If you want the new version of Office, give Microsoft a ring.

Don't want to upgrade to Windows 10? You'll download it WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

Re: "Personal" computer no more

@Androdgenous Cowherd:

Re: "Personal" computer no more

A trillion UpVotes for that! I'd buy you an entire KEG if I were close enough to shoulder-surf you to the pub & drown you in Pints.

Epicly Well Put!

Shucks. Thanks. If you're ever in northern Oregon I'll take you up on that beer offer. We can drown our sorrows and reminisce about the Good Old Days when computing was fun, when PCs were a platform for exploration and learning, rather than a constrained and straitjacketed ad-delivery device. BTW seems like I have a good start on that trillion upvotes... I certainly touched a nerve with my cri de coeur!

Re: oh nos!

windows 10 ate my hamster

And the telemetry will rat you out.

You'll be souris you ever installed it.

(Sorry, can't decide if I'm feeding a troll or not, but it's light relief from my We're-All-Dooooomed comments above)

Re: @David 132 - "Personal" computer no more

Thank you all for your kind words and upvotes (I've reciprocated, in a round of mutual back-slapping). It's nice to know that I'm not alone in my concerns.

Rationally, I understand that all of this is just a necessary part of the evolution of the computer - it's moved on from being a hobby project for nerds, to being an appliance that underpins every aspect of modern life. Interconnected, with the potential, if hijacked or subverted, to ruin lives worldwide. In fact "appliance" is an apt comparison - we don't complain any more that we can't take apart our washing machines and upgrade them, or our microwaves, or our cars. We've made all of those things reliable, safe, dependable, so that anyone can use them without having to have a degree in electronics or mechanical engineering. Yet here I am, in an age of fuel-injection, bemoaning the fact that I can no longer balance my own carburetors. I am - we are - swimming upstream against the inevitable flow of technology. We're the one soldier on the parade ground, complaining that the other 99 soldiers are out of step. It's depressing.

I just don't get excited about new computing technology any more. Ironic, because I work for one of the largest technology companies on the planet.

It's no longer a case of "ooh, something new and interesting has launched, I wonder what I can do with it?". Rather, it's "Oh, an upgraded set of handcuffs that now have always-on tracking and tagging. But I get to choose their colour. Yay."

And as several of you have suggested, I am already moving to various Linux flavours. I built my own NAS based on Ubuntu (yeah, don't laugh, it just happened to have the most "how to set up NFS/Time Machine/DLNA/RAID-1" guides available for it), and any new machines that enter my house get Cinnamon Mint.

Oh well. I'm sure I'll learn to live with all of this.

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving beast. Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

"Personal" computer no more

I've been struggling to articulate just what it is about Windows 10 that bothers me, without seeming like a total luddite. But I think it's this: their default assumption seems to be that it's not my computer, it's their computer, that I'm allowed to use according to their whim.

Up until about 2-3 years ago, my computers were under my control - a small oasis of control in a world in which I'm largely powerless and my ability to live my life as I see fit is being systematically stripped away. I want to uninstall an app? "No problem." Decline an update? "No problem." Delete the entire C:\windows\system32 folder? "Dumb, but hey, if you're determined - no problem, we won't stop you." Point was, it was my computer, and I could do what I wanted with it. Technology was an enabler and the possibilities were endless.

But from Windows 8 onwards, it seems that the entire direction of computing is moving back to centralized, paternalistic, "we-know-what's-best-for-you" control. Cloud storage. Cloud logins. UAC. Administrator-doesn't-really-mean-Administrator. Enforced updates. Downloading a whole new OS just-in-case-you-want-it-but-if-not-we'll-continue-to-nag-you. Secure Boot that somehow only seems to benefit Microsoft. Constant logging - sorry, I mean "telemetry". Safe Screen a.k.a. "we'll inspect everything you download to make sure we approve of it". Technology seems to be defined in terms of what it grudgingly allows you to do, with the approval of the Powers That Be. And it's a whole lot worse with Windows 10.

It's not just Microsoft; Google, Apple, and pretty much all the big players seem to be enthusiastically moving in this direction. An analogy would be: we've moved from the traditional liberal "everything is permitted unless it's expressly forbidden" model of rights, to the totalitarian "everything is forbidden unless it's expressly permitted". And I hate it.

Pardon my rant. Dismiss it as hyperbole or pretentiousness if you wish. It's just my primal scream of rage and frustration against an IT world that I no longer fit or understand.

Cuffed Texan woman holsters loaded gun IN VAGINA

Re: Lends a new meaning...

"Silencer?"

"No just the opposite. Made her yelp."

Also: ewww.

Heigh ho, oh no! Politically correct panto dumps Snow White’s dwarfs

Re: Students

A deliquent boy from a broken home squanders his own mother's meagre wealth on "magic beans", breaks into a pensioner's house, steals his things, and kills the unfortunate victim when confronted.

You remind me of the - possibly apocryphal - summary of The Wizard of Oz once printed in a TV listings magazine, which IIRC went:

"Transported to a new land, a young girl kills the first person she meets then teams up with three strangers to kill again"