Posts by David 132

French court pulls SpaceX's Starlink license

Re: Not quite...

Ah, early 90s humour.

"What do you call the small box on the back of a Sky satellite dish?"

"A council house."

Just throwing in my tuppence worth, I live about 10 minutes outside of town, in a semi-rural location, and when I bought this house I was careful to check with the seller that he had ADSL.

Unfortunately, after I had bought the house, it transpired that there's a weird quirk of the ADSL rules in this part of the world that neither the seller nor my buyer's agent knew about. If the property is more than X miles from the DSLAM, but has been provisioned with ADSL in the past, it can continue to use the ADSL connection - but only until the property is sold, at which point the ADSL link has to be yanked and cannot ever be re-provisioned. Because it's too far, you see, and can't possibly work at sufficient speed/quality. Even if it was. And even if removing it leaves you with NO options whatsoever.

So I'm forbidden to continue using a perfectly functional 25/4Mbps link, and have to settle for a 16/8Mbps microwave relay that is bounced via a dish on the house to the next valley over, all for an eyewatering $125/month, with a pathetic 400GB cap. Grrrr.

On the plus side, I have 4 mountains on the horizon as I look out of my living room windows, so can't really complain too much!

Google snubs South Korea's app store payments law

To be fair to Google…

…they use the money raised by their 15% cut to fund a really, really thorough and exhaustive application review process, as a result of which not a single Play Store app has ever contained malware or spyware. And the remainder of the Store revenue goes to fund a first-class customer support operation; it’s lovely to be able to call a freephone number from anywhere in the world and speak to a knowledgeable, fluent, helpful agent to solve your Store problems at any hour of the day or night.

Note icon, and feel free to mutter about “the lowest form of wit”…

UK suit over reselling surplus Microsoft licenses rolls on

Re: My opinion

As an addendum to your comment. Lifehacker had news the other day of a pretty tempting offer - a permanent licence to Office 2021 (or whatever the current non-subscription version is) for only $50, compared to the usual pricing of $400 or so. Despite my well-documented aversion to Office, I admit I was tempted. However, the small print revealed that it was for one PC only. Now it's not that I ever intended to cheat and install it on every PC in my household, but I do change/upgrade my primary PC fairly frequently, and I could tell from the small print and Microsoft's general go-fuck-yourself attitude that as soon as I upgraded my PC, my "permanent" licence would be $50 thrown down the drain. At least with Windows in years passim it was possible, albeit painful, to argue and cajole the telephone activation helpdesk into allowing transfer of a licence to a new motherboard...

So I passed. And your comment leaves me feeling vindicated.

Re: Licence, not license

I'm a Brit, but have been living in the States for about a decade. Honestly, these days I'm starting to lose track of which spelling is which, and I find myself mentally switching gears when I talk to friends back in the UK ("I just used the phrase 'my cellphone was dead'... oh, bother, I should have said, 'my mobile was flat'..."). That said, why on earth should The Register standardise on American spellings? That's insane! I wouldn't expect the BBC to do so, or the Telegraph, or any other UK-based publications. Has El Reg been bought up by Halliburton or Fox News without us knowing?? Is our beloved Vulture now a Bald Eagle? Or has the editorial team simply been locked into using Microsoft Word 265 with only the US English dictionary installed?

Announcing the new Azure introductory "Danegeld" pricing tier...

Web3 'contains the seeds of a dystopian nightmare' says analyst firm

Re: Web3 Is Going Just Great

Seconded. My wife asked me what I was doing a few evenings ago, and I sent her that link and told her I'd reached schadenfreude overdose from reading it. An hour later she was still scrolling through its stories, giggling like a hyena.

I think web3isgoinggreat.com is to blockchain what the late lamented Groklaw was to the SCO shenanigans, no?

Re: My view

So you're saying that DeFi crypto blockchain NFT whatever is actually Web4? Quick, someone trademark that term and start a highly-paid consultancy to state bloody obvious platitudes about it!

SerenityOS: Remarkable project with its own JS-capable web browser

This. A Windows NT4 / 2000 GUI is looking very tempting right now as I continue to do battle with Windows 10.

Mind you, we can take nostalgia too far. I fired up my old Amiga workbench environment under AmiBerry on my RPi 400 the other day. It's hooked up to my distinctly modern-era super-wide monitor. Workbench is NOT particularly usable at 3440x1440 - I had to drop down to 1280x1024 before it began to be so!

Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia are top sources of online misinformation

Re: Saudi Arabia?

I think that in the case of Saudi Arabia, it’s a case of the old Cold War mantra: “he may be a sonofabitch, but he’s our sonofabitch”…

GParted 1.4: New version of live partition-manipulation tool

Can Clonezilla (or GParted for that matter) clone to smaller and larger drives and resize the cloned partitions? ISTR that was a limitation of Clonezilla at one time. When cloning to a smaller drive I had to use Ghost or similar.

Electric Vehicle DC charging tripped by a wireless hack

Re: Security is for the weak!

> The one with "The Little Book of Calm" in the pocket

Hmm, I don't have that one. I have "TANKS!" by Dennis de Groot, and "The History of Screaming" by Rachel Stewart. Are either of those what you're looking for? Maybe you've swallowed The Little Book of Calm?

Re: Security is for the weak!

This warning sign comes to mind.

Nvidia releases $1,999, 8K-capable GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU

Re: I guess it's no use

I’d love to get one of these, but first I need to find an EISA-to-PCIe interposer so I can use it with my motherboard.

Dev rigs up receipt printer to spit out GitHub issues

Re: I know....

Fair enough, but for all we know his previous method of tracking his github issues might have been to tattoo them into the flesh of small endangered flightless birds using microplastic beads, so…

Re: It should be mandatory for Agile teams...

Or even

+++ Out Of Cheese Error +++

+++ MELON MELON MELON +++

+++ Redo From Start +++

Microsoft backtracks on lack of easy Windows browser choice

Re: Please explain to me

I'll bite, because it's a fair question.

Having a default browser is not the issue. Sure, you could have an OS that didn't include any browser at all (albeit, how would you download a browser... try talking your grandma through the process of SFTP :) ), or you could do a Windows 7-in-the-EU-like "please choose which of these competing browsers you want" splash on first boot, but in general, I don't think the fact that Edge is the default is what's riling people.

What is doing so, is Microsoft's passive-aggressive attempts to bounce people back to using Edge whenever they try to migrate away from it. From dark-patterns, to wheedling "are you suuuuure you don't want to use Edge? It's Microsoft's Recommendation!" popups, to hijacking web search results to try and convince you to stay with Edge, to updates that sneakily reset your preferences every so often, to (as you mention) whole chunks of the OS that ignore your choice and use Edge anyway - it's sneaky, offputting, underhand, and frankly destroys any trust or goodwill that people might give Microsoft.

Build a better browser and people - in an open marketplace - will naturally use it. The fact that Microsoft, and Google too let's be honest, feel the need to trick/coerce/bounce people into using their browser just makes me, for one, instinctively go elsewhere.

Others can almost certainly phrase it better than I can, but that's the gist of it.

The wild world of non-C operating systems

Re: What about Assembly Language?

>Those were the days when IT was fun and there was always something new happening.

Such negativity. Why, these days after decades of research and hard work we have mandatory activation, always-on DRM, the ability to patch applications and OSs whenever the developer feels like it without having to wait on the pesky user... almost every day, we get a whole new radical paradigm in UI design, whether it's flat, flatter, monochrome, greyscale, slightly-less flat... heck, we've even managed to accelerate and streamline applications by renaming them "apps". What's not fun about all that, you cynic??

Have a beer and join me building my time portal back to about 1992, won't you?

Re: Necrophilia for fun and profit

>I wouldn't build a house out of dead people either.

I have a car - a Lotus, actually - made out of dead people.

It's my Esprit de Corpse.

(sorry, not sorry)

Re: What about Assembly Language?

> but them there presses were sitting impatient to go.

Which meant, sadly, that they had to drop the dead donkey.

Re: What about Assembly Language?

You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.

Axed data scientist sues IBM claiming he was discriminated against as a man

What a lovely company to work for

With every one of these stories I see, I'm more puzzled that anyone - at least, anyone over the age of 35 or unwilling to work for H-1B wages - would still want to work for IBM. What a dreadful image they project.

Nvidia outlines subscription-fueled journey to $1tr revenue

“Special offer this month! Pay £15 each per month to get hardware acceleration on the Red and Green channels, and we’ll allow you to combine that with your existing ‘Basic Blue’ complementary rendering for free!* Experience hardware acceleration in full colour!”

*terms and conditions apply. Combined RGB acceleration may only be used until Jan 1, 2023 or launch of next generation GPU, whichever is sooner. Not valid in Hawaii, Alaska or Stoke-on-Trent.

In the graveyard of good ideas, how does yours measure up to these?

Re: Missing Biog icing:-(

Not in all the way, though. Just as far as the "tips" link.

Re: At Semtex451, re: managers.

> if you can get a troupe of Howler monkeys to screech & fling poo

Ah, I see you too are familiar with the Windows Vista development process!

Help, my IT team has no admin access to their own systems

Re: Top Dog

> I would not be able to resist mumbling ‘sausages’ in a doggy style voice

“WALLS!”

How many decades on, and that advert still sticks in my memory…

British cops arrest seven in Lapsus$ crime gang probe

Re: Kids today, eh?

As a child my idea of being a hardened criminal was returning a library book a day late. Tch, kids today indeed.

Intel updates ATX PSU specs, eyes PCIe 5.0 horizon

Re: Hot new features

>Curry'n'Crysis anyone?

To go with the Netflix'n'Naan?

RIP: Creators of the GIF and TRS-80

Re: Tandy

I had a Gakken EX electronics kit as a kid. It was awesome.

I keep a fish in my raincoat.

It's a Pac-a-Mackerel.

(joke © Alexei Sayle, circa 1988)

Re: Does anyone care?

When I first visited my then-girlfriend's parents in Oregon, one of the first things my mother-in-law-to-be said to me was "It's raining outside, take this. We call this an umbrella but in England you call it a 'bumbershoot', don't you?"

To which my reaction was basically "er, not since about 1720 we don't, no."

Methinks MILTB had been watching/reading too much Jane Austen!

No non-volatile memory as such, but the persistence of the RAM chips was pretty good. On multiple occasions I was able to power cycle my Amiga (remember, they could boot up in nothing flat) and re-read data that I'd stored in a RAM disk.

Re: And how about GINGER, GIST, GIBBERISH, GIBLET, and GIN?

"Invent me a binary format for pictures of giraffes!"

"Hmm. That's a tall order."

HP finance manager went on $5m personal spending spree with company card

Re: How did this work

My understanding of the case is that she not only made up suppliers ("Totally-Not-Me, Inc." etc) but she also made up POs and invoices ("Supply of 3 boxes of Totalement Rien(TM), $500,000"). Hence it flew under the radar for longer than it should.

Samba 4.16 release strips away more SMB 1

Re: @Jeremy Allison - Are we all friends now?

So, not a case of "Windows Ain't Done Till Samba Won't Run"?

Testing for COVID with the sound of a cough? There’s an app for that

Re: Still waiting...

The FaceMask of the Red Death?

C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language

Re: I think I have the problem

Zed's dead, baby, Zed's dead.

Obvious icon -->

Re: I think I have the problem

E exists - I was writing programs for my Amiga in it almost 30 years ago. And apparently, looking at the Wikipedia article, there's at least one other programming language that uses the same name.

Which is great, or as those well-known advocates for programming language plurality the Shamen put it: E's are good.

The IBM System/360 Model 40 told you to WHAT now?

Re: how did that escape?

And in the intervening decades we've moved on from that to

:(

Something went wrong.

That's progress, is it?

Re: Password generator turns sweary

My password is "Belgium".

Re: Found in translation

As ever, there is an XKCD for Precisely This Situation!

Re: how did that escape?

> Phone John on 01962......

Honestly, I'm more impressed that a full 40 years ago, John was able to foresee 1995's PhONEday and presciently insert a 1 into his phone number!

Upvote for your anecdote. I just had to be "that guy" and show my usual pedantry :)

Re: No rude but I always laughed

I automatically upvote any mention of Sapphire & Steel.

Joanna Lumley & David McCallum were awesome. And boy, how that show managed to be incredibly spooky with the most primitive special effects (in the first multipart story, the effects were pretty much just a spot of light travelling across the floor... still gave me goosebumps...)

Russian IT pros flee Putin, says tech lobby group

Re: how successful he has been

Upvote for Der Untergang (better known to English speakers as "Downfall"). A truly excellent movie. Skin-crawling at times and unflinching in its depiction of the horrors of the regime, and what it did to the German population - never mind what it did to the rest of the world.

Apple stops censoring terms it etches onto iPhones in Taiwan

Re: "Engrave Danger"

It's full of cutting remarks.

Oracle's compliance cops now include Java in license audits

Re: Confusing mess

> shear cost of defending any claim

Cost-cutting lawyers?

How not to attract a WSL (or any) engineer

Re: How do your school friends view you now?

I can't even remember most of my school friends/acquaintances. It's 30 years ago now, and it was the sort of school that went by surname which is handy for anonymity purposes here - let's see, I am still in frequent touch with Roose, I am aware that Pritchard-Jones is doing extremely well for himself, but as for Ormerod, Willis, Sims, Bengree... not a clue beyond an occasional Google search for the more unusual surnames.

On such a job application, I'd be tempted to just Make Stuff Up. Not like they're going to check.

Win 11 adds 'requirements not met' nag for unsupported hardware

Re: What about?

Yep. One day soon you'll power on your PC and be greeted with a fullscreen "Hi! We upgraded your computer to Windows 11 for you! Now while we move all your personal data to our cloud, create your Microsoft account so you can log in, and check out all these amazing offers and addictive games from our carefully selected partners! We think you'll love Candy Soda Saga!"

I wish I was certain I was joking.

Devs of bcachefs try to get filesystem into Linux again

Re: Ramsey and Oliver in the kernel?

No, you’re not the only one.

Cyclops Blink malware sets up shop in ASUS routers

Re: Eejit guide to detection...?

Well, there's one test.

If your router will let you click this link: www.putinisamazingandwelovehim.ru, but gives an error on this one: www.isupportukraineandthinkputinisevil.ua, then your router is infected and you should immediately nuke it from orbit, just to be sure.

But seriously. I agree, good point. A simple test would be a great idea, something that even the non-technical average home user or elderly relative could try.