Posts by David 132

US prosecutors slam Autonomy tycoon's attempt to get charges tossed

Re: My first reaction

Jarndyce and Jarndyce

SCO vs IBM

HP vs Lynch & co

The gifts that keep on giving! (For the lawyers, that is, and the popcorn vendors.)

Raspberry Pi 5: Hot takes and cooler mistakes

Something fishy going on with boards dying every now and then though, suspect overvolting ram or something

Just spitballing here, but have you tested the power supplies on the failing units to see if their output voltage is within spec?

Thousands of Teslas recalled over brake fluid bug

Re: Lucas called

Eh, ignore them, they’re just blowing smoke :)

Windows 10's latest update issue isn't a bug but a feature – to test your patience

Re: Therein lies the rub

"Feature Enhancements" seems to be, these days, Microsoft code for "We found another place to cram in adverts for Edge and ways to steer you towards a Microsoft account".

I'm still bitter about the %&@$!-annoying "Microsoft Points / Microsoft Account / Reset your browser to Edge" crap-banner that infests Windows 10's Settings app.

There used to be a way to remove it with Vivetool, but of course Microsoft closed that loophole ASAP. Far more important than fixing security issues, yes?

OK, rant over. Thank you for listening.

Ubuntu unleashes Mantic Minotaur with 23.10 build

Re: You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike

Very relevant Oglaf comic. (Site NSFW - that one comic is probably safe though)

530K people's info feared stolen from cloud PC gaming biz Shadow

Well no CEO in this situation is likely to say “this incredibly simple and obvious attack that even a concussed 6-year-old would have been able to spot, which sailed right past our utterly inadequate IT defences…”

So “highly sophisticated” it is. Makes it easier to then claim on the data-loss insurance policy!

Atlassian buys 'asynchronous video' outfit Loom for almost $1 billion

Re: Video bloggers for Jira

Oh god, "How To" videos on youtube. You've triggered me there good and proper.

Do a google search for anything along the lines of "how do I X" and the top several results are always some jumped-up wannabe "influencer" using a 10-minute video to explain something in the most roundabout and irritating fashion possible.

"Hi gang, welcome to my channel, don't forget to subscribe, here's a word from my sponsor..." ...minutes of loud jingle music and sub-Windows-Movie-Maker effects later... "...and in a little while I'll show you how to use the registry to disable this Windows feature, but first..." etc, etc, etc.

Or, you know, a simple web page or even PDF document could have answered the same question with only 20 seconds' reading effort required.

Pint because it's Friday now and I need one after getting that off my chest.

US construction giant unearths concrete evidence of cyberattack

Looked at the cost of 12/2 or 14/2 Romex cable lately? Perhaps not quite as bad as Simpson's ties & brackets, but still usurious. Between those and the cost of plywood/OSB, this is not a good time to do any construction or remodelling projects :(

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

Re: EuSpRIG horror list

MS Paint.

Re: “ANRO decided to honor these 16 additional offers too"

“…and also, due to a further user error, the developers who were named in Oriel’s ‘About’ dialog box.”

The words booze-up and brewery rather come to mind.

Re: The UK can no longer afford nor staff a viable health service.

Politicians of either colour have been fire-hosing money at the NHS for years. The NHS management then swing from their tyres and smear their poop over the walls, throwing bundles of cash randomly around as they do it.

The inevitable “crisis in the NHS” headlines then appear, and everyone blames the politicians. Rinse, repeat.

Anyone seen or heard from Amanda Pritchard lately, the alleged head of NHS England who is paid a vast salary to ensure that the buck stops with her?

Re: Excel for dodgy databases

Dare I suggest that it was rueful laughter because you’d discovered her cunningly hidden slush-fund/overrun padding?

ie the Scotty approach: “I always tell you a repair will take three times as long as I know it will… how else can I maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?”

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

Re: re: Hello Dave................

No, and no buns, baps, baguettes or smegging flapjacks either!

Re: what will freemium look like?

And all tiers come with Genuine People Personalities™!

"There, I've finished and made the final code commit. Oh man, users are going to adore this new AI feature!"

Next day, colleague walks in with a sombre expression: "Uh, Tim, bad news I'm afraid. The first telemetry is in, and users are disabling your AI thing in droves."

Blood drains from Tim's face.

"But... but..."

"Yeah, sorry. Oh, and regarding your other past projects, Kin and Zune and Bob... uh, we never really updated you about those after they launched, did we? Come on, let's take a walk..."

Microsoft gives unexpected tutorial on how to install Linux

Liam, does that make you feel better about missing the LILO/Gummiboot pun I pointed out to you the other day?

Your phone's cracked screen may one day heal itself, but try not to drop it for now

Oh, you cynic!

Unity CEO 'retires' in the wake of fee fiasco

Re: Promise re. re Quality Street

Fair enough. I have been out of the UK for a while now. I’m old enough to remember when Easter eggs actually had the chocolates sealed inside the chocolate egg shell, and not bagged separately in the box in a ghastly “assemble it yourself” fashion :)

Re: Promise

Respectfully, Quality Street chocolates aren’t bad at all :)

Re: Promise

"Hey Bing, which company has the motto 'Do No Evil'?"

...

"You asked for a list of local chiropodists in Little Rock Arkansas. Here's a link to the collected writings of Kevin Keegan. By the way, would you like to switch to using Edge?"

Re: Promise

Been reading XKCD too long. I knew which one that would be before I even opened the link!

Aaaaaaaaargh bad 80s flashback alert

Nick Berry, deelyboppers, Kia-Ora "orange" "juice"... aaargh you bastard! :)

"Hold a chicken in the air, stick a deckchair up your nose..."

Re: Promise

"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons" - to quote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In other words, a properly decent person or company wouldn't need to say things like "do no evil" or "we promise never to do X", because it would go without saying.

It's like hiring a baby-sitter who makes a point, unasked, of promising you she's not a murderer. Why, isn't that reassuring?

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

Re: not happening

Ian Johnston: Many, many people will just stick with W10 and not worry about updates.

Well, until one of the updates Microsoft does deign to push out (probably described as something innocuous like “stability and customer experience improvement”), puts giant scary full-screen “This version of Windows has reached end of life!” warnings in front of the user to panic them into an upgrade…

Re: Mem'ries...

> Who remembers trying to run Vista?

“My name is David 132, and it’s been over 20 years since I last ran Windows ME.”

(rest of rehab group murmurs approval and support)

Re: PC is good enough for now.

“Hunt The Hidden Registry Key To turn Off Annoying Feature <X>”?

Re: How long?

Considering that this same story gets published every year (“Despite looming end-of-support of previous Windows version, customers reluctant to move to newest version”) I just assumed this was next year’s version of the article, that had slipped through a temporal wormhole.

Lenovo to offer Android PCs, starting with an all-in-one that can pack a Core i9

Re: There are more brands of cars than Linux desktop envs.

Well.... in the former USSR, there was basically only one model of car for the masses... and that one was so popular that there were decades-long waiting lists for it :)

(Note icon. I agree with your point. Just being a contrarian.)

ELKS and Fuzix: Linux – and Unix – writ very, very small

Re: New release of Fuzix just in time for the 2nd Spectrum Next

Yep. Next R2 shipping very soon now. We’re all getting quite excited about it!

Red Planet roommates have been stuck on 'Mars' together for 100 days

Re: Like a wet holiday in Bognor Regis

“Day 47: Briefing from Ted on relative cow size. I still don’t fully understand it. I put the kettle on again.”

FEMA to test emergency alert system US-wide today

Re: No 5G initiated Zombie Apocalypse...?

We have dial-up zombies here in the wilds of Oregon. They don't mumble, they make a blood-curdling screeching sound... and then briefly emit link negotiation noises.

At least, I think so. It's all a bit of a Hayes to be honest.

…“A Certified ‘B’ Corporation, LLC”

Re: My only question is WHY?

> When they dropped nukes on the Nevada desert, anyone living in an inhabited area who wasn't manufacturing photographic film was mostly fine

Also anyone hiding in a fridge.

No no, you’re thinking of the Secret Gay Jewish Nazi Lizard Freemason Illuminati.

They’re just a bunch of wannabe poseurs who couldn’t organize a One World Government in a brewery.

Re: No 5G initiated Zombie Apocalypse...?

Yes, that’s totally how it works. When their fever-dream conspiracy theories are shown to be wrong they are well-known for humbly apologizing and keeping a very low profile from then on.

Nurse! My pills!

The best comment on this I saw was on Reddit, and was along the lines of “several of my cow-orkers believe the vaccine conspiracy theories, so when the alert goes off, I’m going to clutch in pain at my arm, fall to the floor, then stand straight up and in a blank robotic monotone, praise Joe Biden.”

Good, Good. Keep stamping on the Truth wherever it leaks out. You have done well, agent #467-••¥z.

Signed,

The Secret Gay Jewish Nazi Lizard Illuminati Freemasons.

(icon shouldn’t be necessary, but some people...)

Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive

I have a friend whose approach to (cough) torrenting films is to go purely by filesize. “This one is really high quality! It’s over 15GB in size!” (said of a file that is basically a lossless-compression 4K recording of someone pointing a VHS camcorder at a TV screen that is showing a flip-phone recording of a movie taken from the back row of the cinema, complete with the back of people’s heads and plenty of coughing).

In the same way, I’m sure there are CIOs out there who weigh up competing software options purely on the basis of how long the feature lists for each are. “Yes I know the IT dept say our employees only need basic document editing and email, but this office suite has AI! And blockchain! And a ‘new improved UX’ whatever that is!!”

Kaluma squeezes JavaScript onto the Raspberry Pi Pico

Re: Size

“And for my next trick… Systemd on a ZX Spectrum!”

Google doubles minimum RAM and disk in 'Chromebook Plus' spec

Re: Simple Computer Standards: it's the 1980s, Again

As a child of the '80s, I fondly remember the usual ones - ZX81/Spectrum, BBC B, C64 - but I do get a twinge of nostalgia when I remember the more obscure systems. MSX, Aquarius, Oric-1, TRS-80 (way more popular in the States than the UK), Dragon 32/64, Acorn Electron, Sam Coupe... sigh.

Is it beer o'clock yet? Is the sun over the yardarm? A pint raised to all those early 8-bit pioneers :)

openSUSE offers Slowroll distro for those scared by the speed of Tumbleweed

Re: Gummiboot

German humour, Liam. You weren’t expecting it.

Gummiboot

>...it was an independent project called gummiboot, which is German for rubber dinghy. It is an alternative to the GRUB bootloader...

And presumably, with the name it's been given... a more sophisticated alternative to LILO.

A pint to the author for the nominative creativity!

Beta driver turned heads in the hospital

Re: Black screen

I miss power LEDs, drive access LEDs, and even - OK, I'm weird - 7-segment CPU frequency/Port80 LED displays on desktops.

Re: Monitors need monitoring

Could be worse - on a subreddit I follow, someone who's a mobile heavy equipment mechanic recently posted a tale of the time he was called out to a construction earthmover that wouldn't start. Customer screaming, job unable to proceed, etc etc.

So he drove for two hours to the customer's jobsite... moved the machine's gearshifter out of Drive (interlocks prevent start when in gear) and into Neutral, started it without problem, and got back in his car to drive two hours back.

And did, at least, get to bill the customer the ID10T tax of 5 hour's callout charge.

PhD student guilty of 3D-printing 'kamikaze' drone for Islamic State terrorists

Re: The cops also reportedly discovered at the home an IS application form,

For some reason the line "so what is he, is he a martyr or is he a f**king jalfrezi??" line from Four Lions (after they've just suicide-bombed a sheep) comes to mind!

Re: The cops also reportedly discovered at the home an IS application form,

"[Section 4]

For statistical purposes and to ensure that we comply with the Equalities Act, please indicate below your ethnicity, gender identity & preferred pronouns, and your religion (if applicable). This section is optional."

Free software pioneer Richard Stallman is battling cancer

Re: Hang in there, rms.

Indeed, I wish him long life and a good recovery. His absolutist, no-compromise attitude to software freedom has benefited all of us, even if sadly it's earned him detractors on the way.

Not trying to trivialize his condition at all in any sense, but I have an elderly dog who is currently going through chemo for the canine equivalent of NHL - his third round, and he's 17 going on 18. The oncology vets are amazed at how well he's doing and his incredible quality of life. After each round he has remission for about 4-6 months. At $1000/month for the chemo, I should bloody well hope so!

Zuck dives deeper into the metaverse, dragging Snoop Dogg along for ride

Re: "Meta is still trying to make the metaverse a thing"

> Something must be done. This is something, so it must be done.

The motto of politicians everywhere, as is well known.

Or admire their multi-thousand £/$ NFT GIFs of monkeys in glorious immersive 3D. That’s the killer application that the entire world’s been waiting for, right there.

Re: Hilarious

ISTR that at least one of the Roman emperors employed a slave to stand next to him at state functions and whisper into his ear “Remember, thou art mortal”, as a guard against the adulation of his hangers-on making him too complacent.

Perhaps a modern equivalent for Zuck, Musk, and their ilk.

“Remember, thou art a clueless cockwomble etc…”