I did wonder about this. The only competition will be between different implementations of the Chromium browser engine.
Posts by Andy E
236 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2010
Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS
IBM lifts lid on latest bid to halt mainframe skill slips
HPE's updated Spaceborne Computer-2 ready to hitch another ride to the ISS
OSIRIS-REx's stuck asteroid sample canister finally cracked open by NASA
40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes
The inspiration for Oolite
I didn't play Elite at the time of its release as I didn't have a compatible computer. Many years later I discovered Oolite which is a modern take on Elite. Over the years it has been expanded and refined. It even includes the facility for people to define missions - tasks which have to be completed in usually very specific ways. I still play it occasionally. Have a look: https://oolite.space/
The New ROM Antics – building the ZX Spectrum 128
Microsoft confirms Smart App issue renaming everyone's printers to HP
Scared of flying? Good news! Software glitches keep aircraft on the ground
It's complicated....
It's fascinating reading the comments but its clear people don't have any idea how complicated air traffic control is or how it works. With long distance flights that terminate or cross UK airspace, the flight plans are passed to NATS 4 hours before the aircraft enters UK airspace. So the plane may well be in the air by the time NATS gets the flight plan. The flight plans are submitted to a local or regional organisation who does some validity checks before routing it to the authorities who manage the airspace the flight crosses. These organisations will have different systems so there may be a lot of data translation involved. The software module that crashed validates the flight plan and adds UK specific information to it for the air traffic controllers before passing it to the next system. That it caught the error is good but that it failed in the way it did was not so good. In the bigger picture, things failed safely.
For an even more embarrassing episode concerning NATS and software not behaving as expected, read the report of the 12th December 2014 air traffic fiasco.
Boffins reckon Mars colony could survive with fewer than two dozen people
What would sustainable security even look like?
Re: Nobody is legally responsible, oops
You have hit the nail on the head in that the problem is nobody is legally accountable for security lapses. Until that is fixed there is very little incentive to invest in effective information security.
Introducing accountability for security may have unintended consequences but it is badly needed.
Clingy Virgin Media won't let us leave, customers complain
They are very poor
I switched from Virgin Media to BT as I was out of contract and the BT deal was cheaper than any of the deals Virgin Media offered me. Choice from VM was limited as I was not a new customer. When I pointed out that the deal they were pushing was more expensive than the one I had been on and the rival package, they said it was the best they could do. Apart from the hassle of talking to the sales bods switching was relativity straight forward. They did ring me about a month after I had left them to offer me a new deal. Talk about desperate measures!
Another thing I hated about Virgin Media was their Customer portal. It was clunky and hard to navigate once you had logged in. The UI seemed to gave been designed in the last century. And don't even think about IPv6 as they have never heard of it.
California man's business is frustrating telemarketing scammers with chatbots
Microsoft tackles SaaSy URL sprawl, dumping its dotcom in favor of cloud.microsoft
Smallsats + solar sails = Photos of exoplanets at 1970s digital camera resolution
Firmware is on shaky ground – let's see what it's made of
While I agree that the vast majority of the Open Source community are striving for the common good, security is not necessarily their main objective. How do you know the firmware you have just downloaded is free of anything to create a bit of mischief?
The SolarWinds incident showed what can happen when someone broke the weakest link in a supply chain.
Fancy trying the granddaddy of Windows NT for free? Now's your chance
Those were the days
Those were the days! I was a VMS specialist from v3 through to v6 and even worked for DEC for the majority of that time. Writing a file archiving system in Bliss 32 was probably the peak moment. In some ways VMS spoilt me as the DCL command language was consistent and intuitive. Want to print the file Myfile.txt? try $ Print Myfile.txt I even wrote an application in DCL for a client.
Whenever I dip my toes into the Linux terminal it always seems to be just a mess. Non-intuitive commands and each one has its own non-standard switches and options.
While I have a soft spot and high regard for VMS, I can't think of a single application I use that would run on it.
Microsoft freaks out users with Windows 11 warning: 'LSA protection is off'
Windows 11 update breaks PCs that dare sport a custom UI
Spotted in the wild: Chimera – a Linux that isn't GNU/Linux
NASA, DARPA to go nuclear in hopes of putting boots on Mars
Laser-wielding boffins bend lightning to their will
New York cracks down on carbon fuel-based crypto-mining operations
Re: Crypto currency would go away if
There's so many things wrong with this post. All metals are traded (including gold, silver and copper). The price of them will fluctuate depending on demand and supply. Even when it was used as a backing for a currency, the gold standard was a volatile monetary system.
IBM sues Micro Focus, claims it copied Big Blue mainframe software
NASA wants a hundredfold upgrade for space computers
UK hospitals lose millions after AI startup valuation collapses
Shoddy reporting
This is just sensationalism and widely distorting the truth. The various trusts didn't actually pay any money for the shares. They provided data and in return were given some shares which are now pretty much worthless. THEY HAVE NOT LOST ANY MONEY. You could summarize it as they were tricked into giving away data for free but even that's a distortion of the facts.
Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop
Support?
One of the things that gets overlooked is the availability of the skill set(s) required to support the end users. With a Microsoft environment there's a ready supply of skilled people mostly due to its sheer market dominance. With a Linux environment the choices of distributions, desktops and applications which will do what the the company wants, ensures that the chosen solution will likely require a rare and possibly unique skill set to support. There won't be many suitably skilled people around to staff up the support team.
British boffins make touchless computing tech on the cheap
Health trusts swapped patient data for shares in an AI firm. They may have lost millions
Meta now involved in making metalevel standards for the metaverse
Tweaks to IPv4 could free up 'hundreds of millions of addresses'
Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux
My 1st attempt
An old PC I had failed (motherboard failure). I tried to move the hard drive to another box I had but Windows wouldn't entertain that. That gave me the opportunity to stuff in some spare hard drives and an SSD and install Linux Mint. Perhaps I should mention that at that time I had no prior experience of installing any type of Linux,
My mistake was wanting to use the hard drives in a particular way (SSD for system, medium sized HD for Home and the big HD for general stuff). It took an awful lot of googling and multiple installs to get it how I wanted. Quite a steep learning curve if you want something different to a default install.
While I cursed a lot during the build I've grown to like Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop. It's similar enough to Windows so I can just get on and do the stuff I want to do. I will be moving more systems over to Linux as they don't have the hardware spec for Windows 11 put are perfectly good PC's.
Start your engines: Windows 11 ready for broad deployment
Goodbye Windows 11
With no prior Linux experience, I built a Linux Mint system last year for a project. The experience was "interesting", but I got there in the end.
If Microsoft get rid of local accounts then I'm afraid that might be the final straw and the three windows machines used every day will be going Minty too.
Microsoft-backed robovans to deliver grub in London
Parking like a human
Having to contend with "parked" delivery vans from Asda and Ocado as they deliver their orders is a daily challenge here. They just seem to stop as close to the target address as they can ignoring any no parking restrictions and/or blocking access roads, driveways etc.. How are they going to teach robots to do that?
Lawyers say changes to UK data law will make life harder for international businesses
Additional and unnecessary costs
Developing a DP regime that substantially differs from GDPR will add additional and unnecessary costs to the businesses and organisations that have to comply with its requirements.
I can't see what the attraction is, except to monetarize and share the data subjects personal data without their knowledge or consent (that's the "innovation" bit).
Intuit sued over alleged cryptocurrency thefts via Mailchimp intrusion
Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements
Re: Is anyone else seeing a major opening for switching to another Operating System?
I have a laptop and a desk top that quite happily run Windows 10 and are fine for what they are used for. However, they don't meet the requirements for Windows 11. Assuming they continue to run and have the performance needed, I will be moving them to Linux Mint when W10 goes EOL.
I expect this (Linux) will be the fate for many W10 boxes which is probably a good thing. Why throw away a perfectly good computer?
The wild world of non-C operating systems
How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?
Solitaire & FreeCell
For those who can remember trying to get through boring shifts, Solitaire & FreeCell were essential on Windows 7. Have a look at what they have done to them in Solitaire Collection for a taste of what an Ad strewn Windows might look like in the future. Imagine opening an application which triggers a video advert (with sound) which you have to let complete before the app loads. That's what the Windows future looks like.
Half of bosses out of touch with reality, study shows
It should be called Team!
You can only be active in one Team at a time so why its called Teams is beyond me.
Anyway, in Microsoft's world if your not using Teams then you aren't working. As the best bit of Team(s) is the Meetings I'm not surprised they are using this as their measurement metric.
Capgemini wins £30m deal to work on UK customs
Apple seeks patent for 'innovation' resembling the ZX Spectrum, C64 and rPi 400
I can't see the point
Nearly all the clients I deal with have shunted their users data to the cloud. Very little gets stored on the mobile/desk computer. So if your data is in the cloud, why do you need to take the computer home with you? Just use the one you have at home.
With the advances in the mobile phones these are now powerful enough to use as mobile computers (providing you have the right peripherals). Perhaps another reason why I can't see the point of Apples patent application.
Crypto.com now says someone tried to drain $34m from hundreds of accounts
Re: It sounds like their MFA was worth SFA.
With a little insider help it is possible to bypass the 2FA system. In a recent Twitter incident they (the criminals) impersonated an employee who was having difficulty getting access and the Admin people let them in bypassing the 2FA. So it can be done.
Microsoft tweaks Teams and Viva to help bridge gap between frontline workers and their managers, among other things
UK taxman breathes life into old relationship as Capgemini handed £51m deal extension
Re: Two points
I agree with both your points but would add the following to the second point-
While it is a complicated task to create a system that reflects the current tax system how do you factor in for yet unspecified future changes to the tax system? A change may be announced next week and several more in the next month. Certainly more changes in the Budget. Some may just be simple rate adjustments while other changes may be a new tax or the combination of taxes.
Who knows what the Chancellor will dream up next?
Munich mk2? Germany's Schleswig-Holstein plans to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
Re: Windows 11
The issues I had were on the with the original install. The PC in question has a SSD and a collection of old HD's. Trying to set these up as I wanted was the hard bit. A lot of searches and three installs later I had the setup I wanted. Next was identifying what the command line utilities I needed were and what flags and arguments to use to get the desired outcomes was shall we say interesting.
I cut my teeth (as it were) on VAX VMS. Even today the DCL command line environment from VMS seems futuristic compared Linux, Windows and anything else I have looked at.
Windows 11
I did wonder if the relativity high spec requirements for Windows 11 would trigger some companies to a Linux distribution. While my newer PC's can move to W11 with no problems I have a perfectly serviceable PC which can't. As the program I need has a Linux equivalent it was a no-brainer to put Mint on it.
Although its up and running now it was still a steep learning curve to get it setup as I wanted.
Windows 11 comes bearing THAAS, Trojan Horse as a service
Re: Forgive me for saying this...
I'm sorry but I have to use Teams everyday and apart from the video conferencing it is awful. Essentially its window dressing on a Sharepoint backend with appallingly bad and inconsistent integration.
Why is it called Teams anyway? You can only have one active team open at a time. That's frustrating when I'm in 4 teams with 4 different clients.
China sets goal of running single-stack IPv6 network by 2030, orders upgrade blitz
South Korea tables law to remove app stores' in-app purchase monopolies
Linux Mint 20.2 is a bit more insistent about updating but not as annoying as Windows or Mac, team promises
I like it
Using bits and pieces left over from numerous PC upgrades I built a system and loaded Mint to see what this Linux stuff was. There was a steep learning curve but eventually I got it setup as I wanted. Its not a box I use every day but it seems stable and lets me know when there are updates available. The updates themselves have not caused me any issues although you do tend to get more prompts requiring user input than Windows or Mac updates.