Posts by JimmyPage 3225 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2010
Thunderbird is shit - I've had to switch to Evolution.
Sorry, but T-Bird seems to struggle with odd little things - the Lightning extension for calendars in particular.
There is - and always has been - a Linux-shaped hole in the desktop OS space, just ready for the first company to actually seriously build a looks-like-Windows, acts-like-Windows distro. But for some reason (which suggests the free market is shit) they simply haven't.
Part of the problem is the Linux' desktop strengths - diversity of apps, customisable beyond belief to name two - are actually what scares the horses. Imagine trying to deliver a Linux desktop in a non-trivial (>20) user space.
If someone could come up with a straightforward Linux desktop, with a settled GUI, and a Windows approach to installation and operation, and a bombproof email/calendar program (not "app") that could connect to Exchange if needed, and that could run click-for-click versions of Word/Excel/Powerpoint, then you'd probably be able to put it on 80% of the corporate desktops and few would notice.
The fact that no one seems to have worked that out yet - and been willing to back it with cash - suggests it's not something that interests the Linux community.
The closest we've probably got is Mint. Which still needs some techie smarts to get around. Even then we hit snags like the Evolution calendar widget (which provides an Outlook feature) won't work on Cinnamon. (Guess what the default Window Manager is ?). True, you can switch to GNOME to have a working widget. At which point you've proved the Windows fanbois point.
All of that said, it's curious that when it comes to computers, an awful lot of megacorps really have backed a single horse, which means they are incredibly vulnerable to any flaws in that landscape. Surely for the sake of resilience, there should be a driver to run different desktops ?
"...without that geomagnetic field there would be no life on the Earth's surface."
No life ? At all ?
I'm betting that quote came from someone who isn't a scientist and who doesn't play one on TV.
I'd have felt more comfortable with the more accurate (and wordy) "...the earths geomagnetic field has been shown to play a significant part in the development of life on Earth."
We have no idea what would have happened (or not happened) if it wasn't there. If science teaches us nothing else, it's that life seems to occur wherever you look for it.
And there you have it. The entire "I'm sooooooooooooooooooo scared of the nasty US" sob story that some people have fallen for is a load of bollocks.
Bear in mind that if he had been extradited from the UK to Sweden, he would have been protected from the further extradition to the US he so claims to fear by both Swedish *and* UK law. Double bubble.
Before this wankfest of hipster shite, why not work on stocking your stores with the shit you are supposed to sell ? Because the past few months have seen us missing at least one if not two items that are on our list. Last weeks being "12 eggs". Oh, yes you had eggs in 6s. Eggs in all sorts of boxes. But 12 large eggs in one box ? May as well have asked for an elephant ear in a bun.
(We just happen to use Sainsburys, as trialling Tesco, Morrisons, and Waitrose demonstrated you can't get a rizla paper between them for anything.)
This discussion does drift into the idea of governments mandating OSs to use, and throwing those that don't into the big house.
Would be frightening easy to achieve a stready stream of "paedophiles ... blah blah ... nothing to hide ... blah blah ... muslimic terrorists ... blah blah" and your own Mum would be turning you in. After all, the average user wouldn't have a clue and is quite happy with Windows/Android/iOS.
Speaking for myself, I can remember working on a CRM system of some 2 million records. Somewhere a new marketing director entered the scene, and decided that the metric of c. 90% accuracy wasn't good enough. (1 in 10 records had something wrong ... misspelling, old phone no/email, etc).
Cue a massive drive to get it updated and improved over the slack summer period (loads of outcalls).
After 6 weeks, we were pulling in about 94% accuracy.
After 26 weeks, we were back to around 90%.
Imagine the scope for inaccuracy in a project this big ? And whilst on the one hand, that's scary, on the other, it's a synonym for "reasonable doubt".
Shame you didn't bother to stop and process what the poster was saying. It wasn't a value judgement (although it says a lot about you that you read it as such).
Seemed a statement of fact to me. Millenials are growing into a world where they won't be able to buy houses (not their fault). They are therefore deciding to spend their money as they see fit, rather than in the manner to which the previous generations would have understood. Again, no judgement.
It's possible to devise a chip that can fry it's own circuits - say if the wrong passcode is entered (or entered twice ...)
The reason such chips haven't been developed is because despite offering Hollywood-blockbuster levels of security, the first time one ACTUALLY fried itself, and some moronic user puts on their Daily Mail sadface with a headline about how they "lost" £1,500 simply because the entered the wrong passcode (or their darling brat did) and it's game over. So no point in spending a kings ransom on the R&D only to be told that HP/Dell can't sell a machine with such a feature.
Those with long enough memories might recall the "scandal" in the 80s of the pisspoor security around cars - bent twig and you're in. After taking repeated pastings, the manufacturers delivered some pretty good security. Of course the first headline was "man stung for £1,500 after losing his key". Security vs. convenience. Guess which won ??????
I wonder if there's a solution in separating Google the search engine, from Google the ad-slinger ?
Ad-slinging requires the Googly goodness which fucks around with the nature and order of results returned. There's no question that Google have had their sticky little fingers in the pot, and can hardly claim "wot, me guv ?" when told that if they can manipulate those search results, then they can jolly well manipulate these search results.
However, if a search engine is just returning a list of what's there - warts and all - then it has a pretty good defence of being a common carrier. Unless we are going to start reindexing dead-tree archives ?
O'Reilly ?
From bitter experience, women are very good at adding all sorts of irrelevant details to the directions ... I mean "carry on until you get to the A454, turn left, 500 yards, your're there" is succinct. You don't need to know about any roundabouts, superstores, churches, or other landmarks on the way.
It has been a source of puzzlement for years - no, decades, why IT workers with admin prvileges are so reluctant to use these for their own benefit.
Well, firstly, it's a pretty crap setup if "admin" access is a synonym for "access all areas" for a single person, unless it's a small outfit. In which case there's probably other mechanisms in place (like working next to your boss). Even going back 10 years when I was sysadmin for a small business, there were things I didn't have access to (the directors email, for one).
And even if you had genuine God access, the question is how to use it "to your own benefit" ? Because if you could devise a way to do so - and make it undetectable then (a) what are you doing being a sysadmin, and (b) well .... how do we know it hasn't happened ?
Finally, it's a hard enough life getting the systems to do whatever nonsense the business is crying out for today, let alone getting it to do something off piste.
Once you've put all your eggs into the cloud basket, how long before "demand management" becomes a thing ? You want to use CPU cycles at peak times ? Then pay a premium rate for it.
No pay, no play.
On a slightly different tack, how essential is *Windows* server? I'm pretty sure I could easily run a SME on some carefully configured Linux servers.
Almost every single issue I have with Android (and there are enough that it's an issue in itself) has resulted in viewing hundreds of "support" forums whose advice never seems to work. Mainly because they insist there's a button or a setting somewhere. And there is. On *their* version of Android.
Case in hand. MrsPage recently wanted to send an SMS to a group of contacts about a medical support group they are in. Should have been the easiest thing in the world shouldn't it ? Just create a group for those 5 contacts, and send to group.
It was only then that it transpired the stock *Android* contacts app does't do groups. Anymore. It used to , but the feature was removed sometime ago.
So after finding over 20 articles telling me how I could have done it, I finally got the answer on hit 21. You need to install the *Google.Android* contacts app.
I really have no idea how anyone could run a business with such an amateur approach to features and support.
(As for Apple, seems their native email client doesn't do groups either...)
I'm guessing the switch to BYOD has allowed this to happen.
They'd have realised that trying to decide on a standard by throwing differing incompatible systems at the market was a surefire way to fail.
Even amoeba have more intelligence about how cooperation can lead to bigger payoffs.
Maybe next time ...
1) form a consortium
2) share resources, and develop a technically correct solution, not a marketing perfect one
3) license it to others, so they can share in the wonga
4) bring to market
instead of doing it backwards ?
that there's nothing "I" in AI.
Many years ago, understanding natural language was (correctly) touted as the gold standard of AI.
We're still as far off that as we are fusion power. And just like "fusion power" we can fake it few a sneeze of time.
I'll believe in AI when a system can look at a picture of a knife, a fork and a spoon sticking out of a mound of earth and tell me:
1) what it is, and (more importantly)
2) I have wasted my life
(Not necessarily in that order).
and Rehabilitation of Offenders Act or not, there has always been an option to scour national and local newspaper archives and ferret out the recorded news - with names - from the original conviction.
So in one respect, nothing has changed.
Yes, Google, etc make it *easier*. But it was possible before.
Even if Google didn't exist, it's pretty likely that local and national newspapers would have digitised and monetised their archives anyway. The only difference being you might have had to pay to see the results.
All of that said, I agree with the concept of rehabilitation. Otherwise you may as well lock someone up for life for any criminal offence.
(Part of the issue here, is the enormous amount of "crimes" that successive governments manage to invent. But that's a seperate debate).
So ? (Although I'd leave the UK out of this sweeping statement ....)
Or rather, "So what" ?
No amount of legalese will ever change the laws of mathematics and the principles that underpin encryption. You may as well complain that it getting dark at night is hampering your crime solving ability, and await a low making it illegal for the sun to set.
A much better idea might be to go back to your elected overlords and suggest they think more carefully about what should - and should not - be "illegal".
Because their minds are running waaaaaaaaaay faster than our mammalian neurons. They see the world in ultra slow motion.
(Little tip ... they take off *backwards*. You can splat them if you aim a little up and behind them).
I'll believe more in this AI bollocks when someone can rig up some software to track a fly - in real time.
Whilst it's right and proper there should be privacy safeguards in place for people that have Facebook accounts, how about the same for people that don't have Facebook accounts, but that Facebook knows about (and can sell the data on to other parties) ???????
I'm not explaining how again.
downvoted for lack of imagination. There's plenty of money to be made, still. Just spread across a wider userbase than a few EnormoCorps. Part of the problem now is that the EnormoCorp have managed to supplant the elected mechanism of government with the unelected privilege of wealth.
Seems Eisenhower could not have been more right. Probably the most prescient president the US had.
I guess it might really have been. But that's such a baggage-laden number in IT, it does suggest that it was the first number the person quizzed could think of.
"Did I ever tell you the time I sang in a barbershop quartet in Skokie Illinois .... ?"
Been a while since we've had a call for more El Reg icons. But a "Oh, really ???" one might be an idea ?
It used to be an IBM point of pride that you could still run 30 year old code on their latest boxen.
Certainly up to XP, MS made a similar boast with Windows.
Fair enough, you wouldn't expect XP to be able to handle 2002 hardware onwards. Hence Vista/7. But you'd expect it to run something for Win95 - or even Win3.1/3.11.
So how come the phone OS market turned that on it's head, and lead to a situation where it's almost expected that the latest version of an OS will break older apps ? Which strongly suggests an unstable or infant platform. Not something the corporates are going to look to.
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