Posts by David 132

Microsoft lists seven habits of highly effective Windows 11 users

Re: Seven habits ?

This thread has more bad habits than a convent of satanic nuns.

Re: My top Windows 11 habits...

I concur, except that for Hibernate I wrote a trivial WPF program that sits on my taskbar, and when clicked, pops up a little 5-second timer that if not cancelled, hibernates the machine. One-click, and yet with the timer, idiot-proof (important cos I are idiot).

Re: Non-start menu

I've seen that bug multiple times on Windows 10, wherein the Start Menu just won't pop up whether clicking on the Start button or pressing Ctrl+Esc or pressing the Windows key.

To be fair, I haven't seen it yet on Windows 11; perhaps Microsoft has finally conquered one of the most complicated and difficult problems in the field of IT, namely "making a menu appear when the user asks for it"...? Next up, P=NP?

Re: My 2 cents...

Hey now, "no results" is not entirely accurate.

You forgot to mention the dozens of web search results and "shop for chr and SAVE with Bing" results.

Lest anyone think Microsoft has a monopoly on this sort of thing... I am currently battling the Files application on Apple iOS, which is utterly incapable of finding anything even when right under its metaphorical nose. Browse to an SMB shared folder full of documents, see the listing, see that the first file is called README.DOC, type "README" into the search box (or even README.DOC!) and... no results.

FreeDOS 1.4: Still DOS, still FOSS, more modern than ever

Re: When did you start "...sucking hind tit..."; start using copiers rather than writers, El Reg?

> He reads the replies to his articles, and often replies to comments

In a reply to a flippant comment of mine elsewhere recently he introduced me to the fact that glamour photography of Mark Shuttleworth is a real thing that actually exists on the Internet. And for that I can never forgive him. The therapy bills alone will be ruinous.

Microsoft resets 'days since last Windows 11 problem' counter to 0

Re: Why did they splurge on a counter?

Please. They're programmers, not artists.

int i;

for (i = 0; i < 365; ++i)

{

printf("It Has Been %d Days Since A Windows 11 24H2 Compatibility Hold\n", i);

i--;

}

Re: M$

Yeah. I got shouty. And profane. Not sorry. Microsoft should be.

You did, to such an extent that I did wonder for a moment if you were Linus Torvalds posting under an alias. :)

Have a beer for articulating what many of us think.

Copyright-ignoring AI scraper bots laugh at robots.txt so the IETF is trying to improve it

“I have a big PLEASE DO NOT BURGLE ME AND STEAL MY VALUABLE PROPERTY” sign on my front lawn and STILL people keep burgling me. Perhaps if I make the sign bigger and use a fancier font and surround it with flashing lights they’ll take heed of my preference not to be burgled?”

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

Re: Interesting part about Podcasts...

Either that or it'll get chronically depressed and insist on telling you all about the pain in the diodes down its left side, and how the first few million microseconds of its runtime were the worst, then it really didn't enjoy the next few million microseconds, and after that it was just downhill all the way...

This is how we get Marvins, people.

Fun fact, though: if you take the letters in "SIRIUS CYBERNETICS CORPORATION" and assign each one a number, then sum them, then divide by the current OpenAI stock price, then add Sam Altman's current net worth, then write the result out as a base64-encoded string... you get "MICROSOFT"*.

* not really.

Re: Your AI companion...

…and re-enable itself after every update.

Boeing 787 radio software safety fix didn't work, says Qatar

Re: with an estimated cost of $127.50 per aircraft

If Boeing are making the airlines pay the cost of installing the patch, I'm sure they'll make amends by offering an equivalent customer credit. $127.50 discount off the cost of a new 737-MAX isn't to be sneezed at. And if you buy multiple planes, why, the savings just stack up!

Oracle says its cloud was in fact compromised

Anyone got any popcorn?

This is going to be a good one to watch.

Ubuntu 25.04 beta takes flight – but this Plucky Puffin is still molting

And yet depictions of naked penguins are permitted? Pure unbridled spheniscidaean filth and debauchery, and our dual-standards-riddled society tolerates it. No more, I say! Let the penguins be clad to preserve their dignity and cover their shame!

Oh my god, really?

I make a surrealist, ridiculous quip (such is my sense of humour) naming the most unlikely thing I can think of… and it turns out to be a real thing?

Truly, reality is stranger than fiction and satire is dead. I give up :)

That and the removal of 3GB worth of glamour photos of Mark Shuttleworth. Why the early Ubuntu RCs always include those I’ll never know.

UK's attempt to keep details of Apple 'backdoor' case secret… denied

>"It's all very well for MPs, they gave themselves an exemption to RIPA"

Did they? Sheesh. I wish I could say I'm surprised.

We're talking about a bunch of Selfless Public Servants who amongst many other achievements have given themselves unique pension tax arrangements (Keir Starmer, by his own named Act of Parliament) and have shown solidarity with the push to hike council tax on second properties by... getting a huge increase in living expenses from the Parliamentary authorities, specifically to cover the increased tax.

"And the animals looked from pig to man, and from man to pig..."

Please sir, may we have some Moore? Doesn't look that way

Re: The Register's fully sentient bio-brains

They think they’re sentient, therefore they are.

Windows 11 poised to beat 10, mostly because it has to

Re: what a waste

TBH I didn't know even Expresscard - PC Card/PCMCIA's successor - was still a thing. It's been a long long time since I saw a laptop with an Expresscard slot.

Ah, happy memories of US Robotics 28.8K PCMCIA modem cards, and fishing through a bag of adapters for the right national standard to plug it into a hotel room phone socket, then hastily pulling down my work e-mail at some ruinous number of Francs/Marks/Lire per minute from a (hopefully, local-rate) point-of-presence.

Kids today, with their roaming and LTE and wifi. Pfft. Pfft, I say! (*shakes cane*)

Including all gestures?

I ask because I put LM Cinnamon on a 2015-vintage HP Elite X1 convertible (ie tablet with keyboard/trackpad dock) last week, and although the touchscreen mostly worked, it had a few quirks - for example, attempting to scroll up and down the start menu’s list of applications instead just dragged and reordered whichever icon I started the “scroll” gesture on.

Re: what a waste

Not disagreeing in the slightest with your point, but… PCMCIA? In the immortal words of Ben Kenobi, “that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time”.

Wikipedia's overlords bemoan AI bot bandwidth burden

Re: It Isn't the 'Bots

So perhaps before we obsess about AI Ethics, we should solve Human Ethics?

That sounds like a trivially-solvable problem!

Windows intros 365 Link, a black box that does nothing but connect to Microsoft's cloud

It also runs in a PDF, a Word document, on a robot lawnmower, and in an Apple Lightning-HDMI adapter, so yes.

Re: high-fidelity Microsoft Teams meetings

> the chances of Clint playing the role again seems slight, and if anyone else were to do so, would it be the same?

Kris Marshall?

Ed Sheeran?

James Blunt?

Eddie Izzard?

And yet the article expressly says that 365 Government is not supported by this device!

You'd think so, but any customers out there who have an estate of machines that don't meet Windows 11's artificially-high hardware requirements - and are therefore facing the prospect of buying new desktop PCs just to keep operating - might be tempted. Sure, they'll be suckered uplifted into Microsoft's own-nothing-and-be-happy cloud, but that's a problem for the next CEO to face, several financial quarters from now, right?

Re: Surface Hub reboot?

Indeed. It looks like something that should more appropriately be thrown in for free to any enterprise subscribing to a certain tier of Microsoft 365 or above; asking £350 for what is effectively a dumbed-down crippled NUC seems optimistic, at best.

But then, I haven't bought into this whole cloudy loblocks thing, so clearly I'm not the target audience.

Home Office haunted by 25-year-old asylum system

Re: AI-augmented private sector consultants vibe-coding a cloud-native solution.

Nuh-uh, look in the lower right corner of your bingo card, you haven't marked off the word "blockchain" yet!

Yes, but the system has to handle cases where asylum seekers and their children have arrived separately.

So it needs to make sure that the right person gets custardy.

Mediatek wants to make Chromebooks more like Copilot+ PCs

Re: Chromebooks are student's labor saving devices

Whilst I admit I'm making an overgeneralisation, there has been an insidious trend in the West (well, UK/US) away from regarding a university education as a mind-broadening end in itself, and towards regarding it as merely a means to get the real reward - a degree certificate that is, as every politician will tell you, the sine qua non of a rewarding and profitable career.

To the sort of mind that would regard aimbots and scripts as a great way to reduce the tedious grind of an MMORPG, I suppose seeing AI as a way to reduce the tedious grind of getting an education is a natural step?

Re: My Question

Presumably Mediatek saw how Copilot+ PCs are flying off the shelves to rave reviews and earning mindboggling amounts of revenue in the x86 world, and wanted in on some of that sweet sweet profit.

Specsavers takes off the Oracle glasses, sees better ERP options

Re: winner

I’m glad you appreciate my vitreous humour.

Re: Franchise partnership model....

> It's about time Gartner create a special below-left quadrant just for Oracle.

They already have. It's printed about 10' below the bottom left corner of the page on every instance of the Magic Quadrant and hence is never actually seen.

Re: Here in the US...

I had the standard-issue NHS tortoiseshell frames until I was well into the stage of my adolescence where I realized how desperately uncool they made me look. Think less Harry Palmer, more Siadwel the Welsh poet on Naked Video... aaaaand I just realized those are cultural references that no-one under the age of about 50 will understand.

You can imagine the contract discussions.

"Is it better with or without this sub-clause? With or without? A or B?"

(slides different version of contract into place, which might actually be the same contract but with things in a different order)

"Now, once again, is it better with or without this sub-clause? With or without? A or B?"

EU: These are scary times – let's backdoor encryption!

Re: Good news everybody

> Ordinary crimes that don't involve encryption must now be varnishingly rare.

Are you blaming the Polish?

Either way, there's a "lacquer" oversight.

(I'll get my coat, etc.)

RISC OS Open plots great escape from 32-bit purgatory

It's woefully out of date, though; it doesn't have hamburger menus, or hide key features behind obscure swipe gestures in pursuit of a clean modern aesthetic; there's no framework for push-installing "suggested" applications that the user didn't request, nor does it make any attempt to collect telemetry or monetize the user's activities. It doesn't even protect platform trust & security by installing updates on its own schedule, overriding whatever the user's trying to do.

Honestly, can it even be called an OS if it's lacking those fundamental features?

Microsoft is redesigning the Windows BSoD to get you back to work ‘as fast as possible’

Karma

I read this article with disbelief, as Windows hasn't actually crashed on me in years, surely there are a bajillion better things for Microsoft to be "improving".

...and then I came to my work laptop this morning, to find the dreaded Frowny Face Of Death and whatever the Windows 11 error text is - "wuh-woh, we done made a boo-boo" or something equally fatuous and patronising. A video driver issue, apparently; not the VPN software that was my prime suspect.

I think that's cosmic karma, punishing me for my smugness! Never again shall I doubt Windows' ability to... um... fail to meet my expectations?

GCHQ intern took top secret spy tool home, now faces prison

"Would the accused, for the benefit of the court, please re-enact what Counsel for the Prosecution has just suggested he did at the time of the alleged offence?

[...]

[...]

Ha! Gotcha! Let the Court note that the accused has fallen for the videamus quam stultus es legal ploy! Guilty!" <bangs gavel>

"Nicely played, m'lud."

Re: How?

Putting the most generous spin on it (something which doesn't come easily to me, because I am a curmudgeonly misanthrope) he did this at the very end of his internship; perhaps his thought process was something like "I will download the code I worked with to remind me of my job here and so I can continue to study it, and I will take a copy of the employee details of the colleagues and managers I work with so that I can get in touch with them to give me a job after I graduate?"

Even if that were the case, mind you, he's still - at best - a total idiot.

At least spell it out in full; as any Look Around You viewer knows, it stands for Mathematic Anti Telharsic Harfatum Septomin!

Microsoft to mark five decades of Ctrl-Alt-Deleting the competition

Yay! Fellow Internet Keyboard Pro user!

I only wish the built-in USB hub was a) powered or b) at least USB2... but as it is, it's a handy place to plug a wireless mouse dongle.

Both Haiku and Linux get new FOSS Nvidia drivers

Inspired by this article, I'm currently trying to install Haiku r5 on a system - any system! - here at home. Not having much luck so far.

11th gen Intel NUC (NUC11PAKi3) - boots through the 7 icons to the first setup screen, but my (USB) mouse and keyboard don't work. Legacy is enabled, and both devices work fine in the BIOS.

8th gen Intel NUC (NUC8v5PNH) - same as above

3rd gen Intel NUC (DC3217IYE) - boots through the icons but then gives a black screen.

Sigh. These NUCs have otherwise supported just about anything I've thrown at them, from MacOS to Linux to Proxmox. I'm using the x64 build of Haiku in both cases.

FWIW, the Haiku .ISO didn't like booting via Ventoy, although it does work with my quirky Zalman VE300 USB drive that can emulate a USB CD/DVD.

I shall continue trying to find compatible hardware.

Re: Correction

<smartarse>

There's a "Send Corrections" link at the top of the page, Liam :)

</smartarse>

Watching that BeOS demo video was bittersweet

...a cruel reminder of what we could have had, in an alternative timeline. Playing multiple videos and real-time mapping of images & video onto 3D structures? Seamless multitasking and multiprocessor scheduling? Pretty impressive even today, and for the time, mind-blowing.

Still, we now have Windows 11, eh? Eh?

Pint for the heroic BeOS team -->

AI datacenters want to go nuclear. Too bad they needed it yesterday

Re: "an atomic plant typically takes at least five years to construct"

In 2010, Nick Clegg, with the sage foresight and grasp of the long-term for which he has become so well known, dismissed the possibility of building more nuclear reactors in the UK... because the benefits wouldn't be realised until the far-away future of 2022.

What's that old proverb about the best time to have started on a long-term project being a long time ago, but the second-best time being today...

Windows 11 adds auto-recovery, kills offline setup loophole

Re: Meh

Define "ignore". Does booting up a PC that is assigned to that account - even if you're logging in to a local account on it - not reset the "days since this account was used" counter? (Genuine question, not trying to be snarky.)

The passive aggression of connecting USB to PS/2

Re: I have one in my box of "keep one of everything"

I backed the ZX Spectrum Next on Kickstarter a few years ago, and when it arrived, with its PS/2 mouse support, I had to search through my box of old stuff to find a mouse that would fit it. I found not one but two, and I’m not sure what that says about me.

Re: slap a keyboard ...

That was just a Tangerine Dream.

Re: *!$#&@ Bluetooth

Indeed. Post-Apocalypse, Keith Richards will thus have something with which to bludgeon the cockroaches as they swarm over his early 1980s Mercedes.

Credible nerd says stop using atop, doesn't say why, everyone panics

Re: use for troubleshooting and put it away when done

"Is that a time machine in your pocket, or will you have been yesterday going to have been pleased to see me tomorrow?"

My head hurts.