Posts by David 132

China discovers unknown mineral on the moon, names it Changesite-(Y)

The official Chinese line is that this new thing DID NOT come from a lab. And what reason would we have to doubt them?

Re: Curly -- or Straight?

> The dangerous practice of of 'splitting the Linguine' (for example, when feeding children) can cause serious leaks of the sauce and consequent irreversible changes to tablecloths.

Plus of course, the risk of accidental creation of antipasta.

Icon ->

Microsoft mistakenly rated Chromium, Electron as malware

Re: Microsoft’s changelog...

Commonly known as “firing the Parts Cannon at the problem”.

Former Microsoft UX boss doesn't like the Windows 11 Start menu either

Re: Use the windows key not start button

Edge is the Talkie Toaster of browsers.

Re: Start Button

Hello Mr Alonso!

Re: Windows 11 early adopter…

> I think I can still find elements of Windows 95 ui design in 11 if I poke deep enough.

Windows 95? I can beat that one.

Go to Start Menu -> ODBC Data Sources (32-bit) -> System DSN -> Add -> Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb) -> Finish -> Database Select

Et voilà. A Windows 3.x dialogue box in all its glory. For authenticity, make sure you're listening to some D:Ream or 2-Unlimited while doing so...

As I recall, if you spend ages searching fruitlessly for Stavromula Beta, you’ll end up at a nightclub run by a Greek/German guy instead, where you will die.

And that’s still a better result than Windows Search usually manages.

I was always darkly amused by the fact that although Microsoft licensed the song, for some reason they only used the first few words of the lyrics.

They didn’t include “…you make a grown man cry…”.

Funny, that.

Re: Start Button

No, but he does know Start Button.

Re: Use the windows key not start button

which kind of makes Harris' point mute.

Aaargh :)

Moot.

Not "mute".

Re: Personally.....

To quote Hermes in Futurama... "Now then, while many of you do half-assed jobs, and the rest do jobs whose ass ratio ranges from 42 to a mere 11 percent..."

Internet pranksters send hundreds of cabs to Moscow street, cause gridlock

Re: in other news

"I just don't know how I'm going to break it to his catamite!"

Blackadder quotes are a cheap, risk-free way to farm upvotes round here :)

Re: What fresh hell is this...

Indeed. Seconded. And in this brief interlude of DP recognition, may I offer my own favourite Parker-attributed quote?

“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea;

And love is a thing that can never go wrong;

And I am Marie of Romania.”

Goodbye, humans: Call centers 'could save $80b' switching to AI

Re: Might have one advantage

At the risk of overcomplicating OP’s scenario, I would have used a DTMF tone generator app (or even youtube video).

Xcel smart thermostat users lose their cool after power company locks them out

I was just thinking something similar. Northern Oregon here, and to save money I've been leaving the AC switched off for long periods this summer and opening windows instead. Once the interior temp gets to around 84F my wife has been known to shut the windows and temporarily turn the AC back on, but not much below that mark.

Microsoft adds virtual core licensing to Windows Server

Re: FUD

Yes, definitely sounds like they’re taking a leaf out of Oracle’s playbook, doesn’t it?

LG makes a TV roughly the size of a queen-sized bed

Re: Asking for a friend

The box it ships in will make a house, if that helps...

Germany orders Sept 1 shutdown of digital ad displays to save gas

> And are already furiously brainstorming alternatives on how to combat that...

Don't give the barstewards ideas.

Re: FRA airport is very nearly in compliance with this law....

> And my architecture text tells me that when heating was first introduced in London theatres, they were able to maintain the temperature at 12C

Well yes, but they were made of sterner stuff back then. Heck, I remember my mother telling me that as a girl in the depths of winter in the more-recent 1950s, she'd have - if she was really lucky - a single bar of an electric fire in her bedroom. Getting ready for school on those cold mornings was a matter of dressing under the bedclothes and then hopping quickly out of bed to hunch over the electric heater. We are spoiled these days by central heating & air-con.

Speaking of the Victorians and theatres, here's an informative documentary on how actors were treated back then.

Re: Exceptions for such dual-purpose signs have been arranged.

Just an idle thought, but if the illuminated LED sign saying "Welcome to Swindon" was hacked and replaced by goatse, how long would it be before anyone noticed...?

Block sued after ex-staffer siphons customer data

Re: "Block – the digital payments giant formerly known as Square"

I think they're a division of HR Block, the tax preparation company.

(*no, they're not, but as I don't particularly like either company, and this was the principle objection that HRB raised at the time that Square renamed themselves, it's fun to troll them both.)

Big Tech is building the metaverse of its own dreams. You don't want to go there

The sarcasm is strong in this one.

Or the drugs.

One or the other.

Re: Royston Vasey

“This is a local Metaverse, for local people!”

Lawsuit accuses Oracle of facilitating sales of 'billions' of folks' personal data

Re: I admit it!

The real dystopian future will come when they use AI to infer whether you’ll put the cream or the jam on the scones first, and then dispatch swarms of killer drones when you make the wrong decision!

Binance exec says scammers made a 'deep fake hologram' of him to fool victims

Re: "Legitimate crypto businesses"

I know. I can’t help hearing that phrase in the voice of Fat Tony (or just about any Goodfellas character, if you prefer). “We are legitimate crypto businessmen, working for a legitimate crypto business”

Apple autonomous car engineer pleads guilty to stealing trade secrets

Re: Disguised car

It's funnier if you disguise the link:

https://www.apple.com/employees/secret-plans.htm?access-key=123456

We were promised integrated packages. Instead we got disintegrated apps

Re: When?

> c:\apps was where you found WordStar, SuperCalc, DBase etc

Speak for yourself. Way too informal. For me it was C:\applic~1.

Re: B...... Calendars

Any Ray Davies / Kinks fan gets an automatic upvote from me!

Re: Cloud access?

> Tasks.org, wants $30 *per* *year* to allow me to do this

And there's the annoyance. What in days past would have been a simple "I will pay you $30, you will give me a licensed copy of your software, we are both happy" has now - thanks to the MBAs and beancounters - become all about ongoing revenue, monetization, X-as-a-Service and similar shite.

My own personal nadir for this sort of thing was a Freecell game I run on my phone. It's fun, but honestly, it's Freecell - once you've drawn the cards and coded the rules, there's not a lot you can do beyond that. Anyway, the free version plays annoying adverts before every game (unless a PiHole gets in the way, nyuck nyuck...).

So I thought I'd do the decent thing and pay the developer. "Remove the ads for $6.99!" screamed the overlay banner. Nope. It turns out that the developer wants $6.99 per month to remove the ads. For a fucking freecell game. Nope, nope, nope-ity nope.

NASA builds for keeps: Voyager mission still going after 45 years

Well, they're probably being followed by a trail of vehicle tax disc reminder letters.

Better that than the Norweb Federation, I suppose.

Re: NASA and other acronyms are all upper case, you illiterate artiste morons.

Small caps? Pffft, be grateful that unlike Slashdot, El Reg at least supports UTF-8 and Unicode. Seriously, try searching Slashdot for the 'â(TM)' string sometimes, which is what smart quotes get converted to by Slashdot's braindead CMS.

Mouse hiding in cable tray cheesed off its bemused user

Re: We used to do this...

>Out of interest, what's the policy threshold for 'too much' porn?

Well, after a certain amount, it becomes hard to measure...

Scientists use supercritical carbon dioxide to power the grid

Thank you. I was concerned that maybe I was the only one irked by that.

LibreOffice improves Microsoft compatibility with version 7.4

Re: Windows/Linux compatibility

I’m sure it’s #1 on their to-do list.

That was fast: MetaGuard emerges as an 'incognito mode' for the metaverse

Don't mock. We are singularly blessed to have the presence of such an immense intellect grace our humble forums. Why, he/she has apparently rewritten Maxwell's equations, invented half the technologies that power the modern world, proved that P=NP, got through to Directory Enquiries after less than forty rings, had lunch with Rowan Atkinson when he paid and wasn't late, and probably even met a nice South African!

Alternatively it's just a knockoff of AMFM1's stream of consciousness babble, and should be ignored and derided.

Janet Jackson music video declared a cybersecurity exploit

Re: Unbelievable

I’m thinking maybe something like the 19 forbidden notes from the Boîte Diabolique?

Open source VideoLAN media player asks why it's blocked in India

Re: Cones

Oh my, you haven’t lived until you and your partner have tried “coning”!! Just make sure that the crème fraiche is properly chilled and the bunch of daffodils have been checked for caterpillars, is all I’ll say. Oh and DO NOT cheap out - you need a scissor-lift that will go to AT LEAST 15’.

Cynical, sad, but quite possibly accurate.

Re: Cones

> It was less idiotic than Twitter.

There’s a joke in there somewhere about one being a giant gaping festering inflamed anus trying to get the world’s attention through the shock value of the vilest imagery…and the other being goatse.

…but I are not smart enough to make it.

It's 2022 and there are still thousands of public systems using password-less VNC

Yes. Lock it, fast as a rocket. It’s prudent, don’t knock it.

Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for slow Celeron laptops

Re: Availability

>I ended up with a load of Levano laptops

Ah yes, the off-brand knockoff from the same people that brought you Sorny and Panaphonics hi-fi...

Apple says 2017 MacBooks don't have FlexGate defect. Aussie tribunal orders a fix anyway

Re: It's not hard

>it just works

Maybe it's only me, but I always read that with the alternative interpretation of "just" - i.e., "barely".

"It barely works".

Apparently as regards the screen cable on their laptops, "it's juuuuuuust long enough"?

Re: Apparently

I have a 27” iMac, bought new in 2010. It’s still soldiering on. I’ve upgraded the original HDD to an SSD, upgraded the RAM, and even swapped out the original socketed Core i5 processor for a faster Core i7. It’s been one of the most durable and long-lasting PCs I’ve ever bought.

I occasionally looked at getting a newer iMac, but each year they seemed to get more and more restricted. Non-upgradable storage, CPU… and on the latest ones the screen glass is bonded to the chassis in a way that positively deters disassembly. So I never bothered. These days I run Intel NUCs instead. Far more flexible and upgradeable.

Apple seem to have disappeared up their own posterior as far as the balance between style and practicality goes.

Epson says ink pad saturation behind 'end of service life' warning on inkjet printers

Re: Brother

Obligatory XKCD (may be NSFW)...

Meta's AI internet chatbot demo quickly starts spewing fake news and racist remarks

Re: Oh bot, this is trouble

ITYM “Bite my shiny metal ass”

Court voids 34,000 unfair Fuji Xerox contracts

Re: "Fujifilm will invoice the customer for licensed software irrespective of delivery by Fujifilm."

Indeed.

"We licenced the software to you, so you owe us, even if you didn't want it, don't need it, and never installed it."

vs

"We licensed the OnStar service package to you, so you owe us, even if" etc etc.

Funny that this stuff is allowed, yet if - for example - you go putting books through random peoples' letterboxes and then sending them an invoice weeks later, it's rightly considered to be an unfair contract and not something you can enforce.

Ain't ongoing-X-as-a-Service, own-nothing-rent-everything great?

'I wonder what this cable does': How to tell thicknet from a thickhead

Re: He made a discovery

I'm sorry, it must be the space my head is in this morning, but your story sounds like it should end with the line "...and it was at that point that I ran screaming out of the Gents' and told my mum to find a policeman"...

Re: Terminators and T-Pieces

I suspect that a representative of the perpetually offended Twitterati-class made a complaint, and someone at the Reg got nervous that having the Paris icon wasn't aligned with corporate diversity equity values or some such twaddle.

Tempus fugit.

Re: adapter

A.K.A "engineer's screwdriver number one" round these parts.

Re: colour me sceptical

Many, many times in the past have I wedged a Euro-type Shuko or two-pin plug into a UK socket, even on occasion using a small screwdriver in the Earth-pin hole to open the socket's internal safety shutters.

Take that, MK electrical safety engineers!

OTOH, I have here in my office now several of those extremely sketchy Chinese-made "will accept any plug from any country" power-strips, and those give me the heebie-jeebies. Arcy-sparky and wibbly-wobbly don't mix with mains voltages.