Posts by JcRabbit

Microsoft emits more fixes for Exchange Server plus patches for remote-code exec holes in HTTP stack, Visual Studio

Re: Another fine mess...

Outlook 2003 here.

Windows 10 once more in print condition: Microsoft applies out-of-band fix to Patch Tuesday cock-up

Re: The current Windows dev process is horribly flawed...

The problem is not the hiring. It's the firing. They fired the whole QA department some years ago.

Windows is an extremely complicated piece of software (which is how it should be since this is the result of DECADES of new features, stability improvements and backwards compatibility with nearly everything from kitchen toasters to printers), any small change here can break something there. It's humanly impossible to understand or have a clear picture of how it all interconnects - which is why an experienced, competent and knowledgeable QA department, testing out real world scenarios and legacy combinations, is a must. Precisely the thing they got rid of.

And now every little change they make here breaks something there, as it always did - difference being that now this is how an update is publicly released, instead of stuff like that being caught before.

Splunk to junk masters and slaves once a committee figures out replacements

Crazy

Why is the world going crazy? But, even more important than that still, why are we, adult sane reasonable people, LETTING it happen? Time to start speaking up and saying enough is enough, no?

You know Facebook has an image problem when major nonprofits start turning down donations over political lies

So the one person here defending freedom of speech - which is one of the pillars of Democracy - gets down voted to hell just because you guys don't like Trump? Wow. Just wow. No wonder the whole world is going insane. lol

Microsoft attempts to up its Teams game with new features while locked-down folk flock to rival Zoom... warts and all

They don't care about customer feedback. I have a 20 year old email account that my ISP decided to migrate to Outlook.com back in 2014. I access it via POP3. The other day there was a snafu with MS POP3 email servers (which they REFUSED to admit was on their side and kept trying to pin on the client side until it was 'mysteriously' fixed a week later) and I was forced to login to my account via Web Mail for the very first time.

So, lo and behold, there, sitting in a 'junk' folder I didn't even know existed, are a TON of really important emails I never received because they were marked as 'spam' and never delivered to my email client via POP3. The icing on the cake is that you cannot turn their 'Junk' filter off, despite me seeing HUNDREDS of requests from MS customers going back for many years for such a BASIC feature, all you can do is add domains to their 'safe senders' list.

Since their spam filter is LITERALLY bonkers with no rhyme or reason to it and I cannot turn it off, I am now forced to periodically check my account via web mail to rescue important messages that should NEVER have been flagged as spam but were. I shudder to imagine how many I have missed over the years because of this 'feature'.

While searching Google for a way to turn this 'feature' off, I read many heart breaking testimonials of users who had missed important job interviews, doctor appointments, invoices, etc, because of it. They BEGGED Microsoft for a way to turn it off, to let their email client filters handle the spam instead - page after page after page of users complaining and screaming.. and here we are in 2020 and you STILL can't turn it off.

Are MS programmers on crack?

It's time to track people's smartphones to ensure they self-isolate during this global pandemic, says WHO boffin

Tracking

So, any predictions on how it will take to make cell phones compulsory so everyone's location can be tracked (in the name of security, of course)? And don't say that will never happen, I remember that just a few years ago all the current tracking in social media and Windows 10 would have resulted in a huge social uproar. Now nobody cares.

Stack Overflow makes peace with ousted moderator, wants to start New Year with 2020 vision on codes of conduct

Re: It's their site

Which totally misses the point. No company should be allowed to force ANYONE to use compelled speech - that should actually be illegal.

Compelled speech is literally forcing people to lie, e.g.; saying the king's new clothes are nice - lest your head gets chopped off - when everyone knows full well he's completely naked.

You can't force someone to BECOME nice - you'll just make an hypocrite out of them, which is far, far, worse.

Are we so blind these days that we do not see the HUGE problem and implications of compelled speech?! If this goes on it will eventually become FORCING people to LIE with the full strength of the LAW behind it (Canada's Bill C-16). Do you not understand what this would do to people's minds/perception of reality over time and how it can be used to control them (which I believe is the ultimate goal)?!

Have we all turned into sheep ready for slaughter?!

Re: Epic number of downvotes

And if I understood correctly, all this happened over what can be qualified as 'compelled speech' in relation to gender pronouns. Exactly the kind of thing Jordan B.Peterson was warning us about.

I find this completely insane. It's the 'Emperor's New Clothes' all over again - everyone knows the king is naked, but nobody dares to say so lest they lose their head. I really hoped we human beings had learned our lesson by now so as to not let things like this happen (i.e.; being ruled by fear), but it seems obvious now that we haven't.

Satya 'Karma' Nadella ignored our complaints over pay gap, thousands of Microsoft women say

No it's not Russell Brand's new cult, it's Microsoft's Office crew rolling out their Save Experience

Re: Consistency

It's not just Nadella! It's a cultural war inside Microsoft, and goes all the way back to the 'classic' Visual Basic vs. .NET days.

On one side you have the 'Raymond Chen' school, who understand one of the main strengths of Windows has always been backwards compatibility and how important that is. In his blog Raymond tells that when Win95 was being developed, Microsoft bought a truck (literally!) of different software from a local shop and distributed the packages among its developers, so they could look for any incompatibilities and fix them before Win95 shipped!

On the other side, you have the 'we have no common sense' and 'new is always better' school. They want to get rid of everything they consider 'clutter from the past' and start from scratch, not realizing that the 'clutter' is there for a reason and is, in fact, the glue that keeps everything together. They are ideologues, and therefore have no common sense or even care what happens IN PRACTICE, nor how much suffering the full consequences of implementing their ideas will bring to others. It's not their problem and they think it's perfectly ok to bring people kicking and screaming into their utopia - they are doing them a favor, after all.

It's somewhat amusing - if it wasn't so sad and alarming - to see that what is going on with our society these days was already being reflected inside Microsoft over a decade ago.

They say piracy killed the Amiga. Know what else it's killing? Malware sales. Awww, diddums

Re: This reminds me on Son May

When you buy a wooden sculpture, are you paying for the piece of wood or for the work (creative energy) that went into turning that raw piece of wood into a sculpture? If you steal the wooden sculpture from an exhibition and you are caught, should you be penalized based on the value of the original piece of wood or the value of the sculpture itself?

As it's obvious from the correct answers to the above (assuming intellectual honesty), the value of something is not the material that something is made of (even when you buy a piece of wood, you are not paying for the object itself, but the work invested in obtaining it and presenting it to you) but the *creative energy* that was invested into making that sculpture beautiful and unique. Unique because anyone else faced with the same raw piece of wood would have come up with something completely different.

So, what this means is that the REAL value of something is not the object/material itself but the creative energy (work) invested by someone else into creating/obtaining/shaping that something. So, it does not matter if, when you pirate something, you are not depriving the other person of a physical object. You are still STEALING something from them: in this case the just reward for the work/energy THEY invested in creating that something YOU want to use.

Even if you do not agree with the price of something, it is not up to you to set that price, but to the creator/vendor. You either take it or leave it. If you don't want to be a thief, then don't steal/pirate something. Anything else is pure hypocrisy.

Likewise, when you deprive someone of an object like a car (e.g.; what you would call 'really stealing') ultimately what you are *actually* stealing from that person is all the energy he invested working his ass off so he could eventually afford, pay for and use that object.

If you think of everything in terms of energy (because that is what everything in this universe really is, energy expressing itself in different forms) then even if something is in digital format (i.e.; you cannot physically touch it) valuable energy was still required to create it - so EACH single copy of that work has a definite value (same way you don't buy a book because of the paper it is made of but the story within).

This Free software ain't free to make, pal, it's expensive: Mozilla to bankroll Firefox with paid-for premium extras

Re: Firefox's global market share dwindles ...

> @thosrtanner And I fail to see any performance improvement from the multi-process firefox

As someone who keeps a TON of tabs open at all times, I have.

First there was the problem FF being 32 bit for a long time, which meant the whole thing came crashing down once the max 2GB address space was exhausted. Once the 64 bit version came out, the problem became memory fragmentation slowing the browser to a crawl. With multi-process this too was eventually solved, but now the browser QUICKLY used up ALL of your system's memory when you let it (actually one of the reasons why I went from 16 GB RAM to 32 GB RAM on my new system, only to find it didn't matter how much RAM your system had, FF would eventually grab ALL of it lol).

Ironically enough, it was the emergency release after armagaddon that fixed this issue too... FF is now a lot more conservative in how it uses total system RAM with no apparent adverse effects. I, for one, am now happy. :)

Headsup for those managing Windows 10 boxen: Microsoft has tweaked patching rules

> I've just spent a week trying to update 1803 to 1903

Hey, be happy. I can't even SEE the 1903 upgrade in my main Windows 10 1809 machine (perhaps it is for the best lol).

Ironically, a Windows 10 VM running under that same machine got offered the 1903 upgrade. I guess the main machine does not see it because I have two external USB drives connected I use for automated daily backups and so the update has been disabled - one has to wonder though: if MS is aware of the USB drive letter issue and has been for quite some time, why hasn't it fixed it already?!

Firefox armagg-add-on: Lapsed security cert kills all browser extensions, from website password managers to ad blockers

Armagadd-on

For anyone who thinks 'oh, no big deal, sh*t happens, and it's been fixed already' think about this: thousands of men hours, if not millions, were wasted by Firefox users everywhere trying to determine what had happened and trying to fix the issue themselves. Many lost work (tab manager add-ons) or were unable to continue to work because their password manager add-on was also disabled. Scores lost their add-on settings because they removed their add-ons in an attempt to fix the issue.

All this because someone at Firefox forgot to renew a cert.

It's raining patches, Hallelujah! Microsoft and Adobe put out their latest major fixes

HEADS UP!

Don't want to spread FUD and this just happened, but be careful if you are installing the latest batch of updates on Windows Server 2012 R2.

I installed the updates and rebooted the server and now I cannot RDP to it. Server is up and running, but the RDP app gives up at ''estimating connection quality' without ANY error message, both from a Windows 10 and a Windows 7 machine. Currently trying to solve this issue!

Spyware sneaks into 'million-ish' Asus PCs via poisoned software updates, says Kaspersky

Not at all surprised about Asus total lack of reaction to this. All you need to do is go to their forums (if you can even sign in or create an account there, such is the mess) to fully understand how unresponsive to issues they are.

Chrome ad, content blockers beg Google: Don't execute our code! Wait, no, do execute our code – just don't kill us!

Re: Why bother?

I've stuck with Firefox for many years, but it's not without it's problems, especially if you like to keep a lot of tabs open:

First they did not have a 64 bit version which would limit the amount of memory it could use to 3GB, then with the 64 bit version I run into memory fragmentation eventually slowing down the browser to a crawl - at least that could be sorted for a while by going to about:memory and clicking on the GC, CC, and 'Minimize Memory Usage' buttons.

Firefox Quantum fixed the memory fragmentation issue and subsequent slow down, but now the browser gobbles up RAM like there is no tomorrow. It simply looks like it NEVER releases memory, even when you close the tabs. Problem with this is that the buttons in the about:memory page no longer seem to help either. Only solution if you want to get nearly all of that memory back is to restart the browser.

Quantum is actually the major reason why I went from 16GB of RAM to 32GB of RAM in my new system. Kid you not lol.

Apple solemnly agrees to pay France $570m in back taxes, turns to camera, gives us a wink

Re: It's not bullshit

I think everyone agrees that loopholes should be closed. *Back taxing* those loopholes on the other hand, especially going as far as 10 years, is nothing but legalized robbery. The companies didn't do anything illegal, they just gamed the system by doing what the law ALLOWED them to do in the first place.

Oz cops investigating screams of 'why don't you die?' find bloke in battle with spider

Re: Spiders: there is no "overkill"

Oh you would have LOVED to see what I had to go through once then:

One of my ex-girlfriends had one of those old wooden houses in the mountains that we used to go to on the weekends. One of those times we decided to carry to the dumpster an old mattress that was sitting next to the outer wall. The mattress was covered in those little spiders with extremely long legs (daddy long legs?)

When we came back the following weekend, we opened the door and the door right across the hall was behaving rather strangely: it seemed like it was waving and moving all by itself, almost in an hypnotic way. Upon closer inspection, we figured out that this illusion of optic was caused by the HUNDREDS of spiders that were literally covering the whole door, top to bottom.

You see, it seems that when we removed the mattress, the spiders, now homeless, decided that moving inside the house was the next best place to be. They were EVERYWHERE. Thousands and thousands of spiders, EVERYTHING in that house was moving and waving.

And so, armed with nothing but old wrapped newspaper and magazines, for the next couple of hours I took upon myself the task of killing all those spiders while my cowardly girlfriend hid at a nearby coffee shop. I'm not particularly afraid of spiders, but even I had had enough after two whole hours of spider genocide. I had also run out of old newspaper and magazines.

And so, once the killing was done, we finally went to bed. You know that point when you are already in warm, confy, lala land, just about to fall deeply asleep? That's exactly when a live spider decided to fall down from the ceiling straight into my mouth.

Yeah. That day will forever be carved in my brain.

While the UN laughed at Trump, hackers chortled at the UN's lousy web application security

Re: They ain't laughing WITH you, Idiot in chief ...

@jake - I am not being a troll, Jake, I'm being very serious.

Instead of calling me names, how about debating my arguments? That would be a LOT more productive than just proving me right, thank you. :)

Of course, it would be a lot easier for me to have a normal rational discussion here if the moderators stopped waiting HOURS to approve my posts as they are doing lately.

I've been following El Reg for 20 years and it saddens me to see a publication with a 'Biting the hand that feeds IT' tagline basically censoring anyone who doesn't follow the leftist narrative.

And if you are the moderator reading this and don't agree, please feel free to go read past posts of mine that were rejected (for instance, debating the so called gender pay gap) and then ask yourself WHY were they rejected. Did I insult anyone or resort to personal insults? No, I debate ideas (well, I did call Kieren a 'twat' once, but I was truly joking and only because he called me a Troll first - apparently HE wasn't joking, and his post was deleted afterwards). Do I curse or use swear words? No. Were my arguments fully rational? Yes, they just aren't politically correct.

I reached out to one of El Reg's own and the reply I got was 'it's not WHAT you say, it's HOW you say it, because SJWs get triggered easily'. I wish I was kidding but this is EXACTLY what I was told. I thought we were all adults here, but apparently not.

Re: They ain't laughing WITH you, Idiot in chief ...

@Jake > What a fucking buffoon. I weep for my country.

You guys have been led by weak pathetic losers for so long that you can't even recognize a real leader when you see one anymore.

I used to think the same as most of you about Trump (I'm being very serious here) until I understood what is really at stake here: on one side you have the Left with SJWs, Political Correctness, progressive liberals, Antifa, BLM, Toxic Feminism, self-loathing, Marxist professors on Universities openly brainwashing the youth and calling everyone who doesn't follow their narrative a racist, nazi, bigot, etc..., on the other you have... TRUMP, who is the ONLY leader in the past 20 years with balls, not afraid to REALLY speak his mind and go against the constructed narrative.

Funnily enough, it is the Left that is propagating Russian/Marxist ideals (where the 'Poor vs. Rich' mantra has simply been changed into 'Oppressed vs. Oppressors') while at the same time accusing Trump, who is actually diametrically opposed to that ideology, of collusion with the Russians. Thing is, if I can see this, so can you - all you need to do is take your head out of the sand and stop getting blinded by your own media-induced loathing of the Donald.

Dear alt-right morons and other miscreants: Disrupt DEF CON, and the goons will 'ave you

Good! People should not be allowed to disrupt events, doesn't matter if alt-right, alt-left, alt-middle or alt-anywhere. A moron is a moron is a moron. Don't want to listen, don't go.

Universities should start hiring their own goons for when leftist groups like Antifa and SJWs do exactly the same thing to invited speakers. They too should be 'kicked into the fetid hell of the August sunshine with a boot mark on their backsides' to see if they learn some manners and stop being anti-social assh*les.

Microsoft will ‘lose developers for a generation’ if it stuffs up GitHub, says future CEO

we will lose the trust of developers for a generation

What trust? lol

Does anybody still trust Microsoft? I mean, users and developers alike?!

In defence of online ads: The 'net ain't free and you ain't paying

This generation has decided not to pay for anything

Yep, that's why it is called the 'entitled' generation. They think they are all 'special' (yeah, special snowflakes, unique just like all the other snowflakes lol) because their parents kept telling them so, and now they think the rest of the world owes them something.

As a software developer who makes Windows desktop applications and sells them to the general public, I know this only too well. Well, guess it could be worse, I could be a Linux developer. ;)

You know that silly fear about Alexa recording everything and leaking it online? It just happened

Re: And that....

@ Michael H.F. Wilkinson "I am very curious to see what would happen if you repeatedly played that song to Alexa"

Well, listening to the song, it would chart you a flight to the Vineyard, then another to Nantucket for that same night, would place an ad on the local newspaper to sell your home, and would then order some delicious bones from the local butcher for you to chew on. Bon apetit! :)

I don't get it. Even George Orwell, when he wrote 1984, would never have guessed that people would VOLUNTARILY put those spying cameras into their own homes. Oh what a world we live on! lol

Tech bribes: What's the WORST one you've ever been offered?

Well, not a bribe per se but some years ago I was hired by a foreign firm that was here specifically to organize a special annual sports event.

I was supposed to be a 'helper hand' at IT, but their IT manager had a family emergency the very next day and I had to take over his functions for the next four weeks, without anybody bothering to explain exactly what that implied. Found out the hard way *all* the logistics were on me. But I digress...

At the end of the event they were packing up to go home and had a bunch of 'broken' PCs they were about to throw away (it would have been more expensive to ship them back to France), so after confirming they were indeed broken I asked if I could keep some for myself, for parts. They agreed, so I randomly chose three of the PCs and happily took them home (along with a few cases of beer they gently offered for having been such a good sport).

It was only a couple of weeks later that I decided to check on those PCs... they all booted fine, every single one! Since they were all in working condition, I gave them all away to friends who actually needed them.

Spring is all about new beginnings, but it could already be lights out for Windows' Fluent Design

Re: Microsoft’s business models require stealing and reselling personal data

You're right, it's not relevant here other than it related to Windows 10 and Microsoft's current practices.

This said, as a developer and as a user, I now HATE Microsoft with all my heart because of all they have been doing lately to both groups. So, from this perspective, I won't downvote repetitive posts like that (didn't upvote it either, perhaps I should).

All I can say is that it is a shame there isn't really a viable alternative to Windows (Apple is even worse than Microsoft and Linux is still for techies): Microsoft would then be forced to suffer the price of abusing their monopolistic position and of their blatant disrespect and contempt for the needs and wants of developers and users alike.

As for the article itself, this is typical Microsoft going after whatever they think the latest fab is. It will be dropped as soon as the 'next big thing' comes up, and wow to anyone who still believes in Microsoft and adopts this, they will be left out to dry, as usual. Microsoft has no vision and no leadership, it floats with the tide.

At least before they still worried about backwards compatibility - one of the major reasons for Windows being as popular as it is, the other being that it was never the closed garden Microsoft is now trying so hard to turn it into. These days they just get rid of 'old technology' (by 'old' read 'no longer the current fab') as if they were throwing away an old filthy rag, and to hell whomever believed in them and is still using it to make a living.

Huawei wins patent injunction against Samsung in China

Wait... did I read this right? China taking another company to court over patent infringement?! LOL

Perhaps they should start by cleaning their own house instead.

Uber breaks self-driving car record: First robo-ride to kill a pedestrian

Re: Didn't see that coming

Very true. Still, no matter what you do you can never fully eliminate all accidents. I read somewhere she decided to cross the road suddenly at a non-crossing place, giving no time for both the human and robotic operators to react. Doesn't matter how fast your reaction time is or how good the electronic safeties are, you still can't beat the laws of physics: a 1.5 ton car moving at normal speeds cannot come to a full stop instantly.

Anyway, we don't know the details of what exactly happened yet.

US cops go all Minority Report: Google told to cough up info on anyone near a crime scene

Well, even more surveillance is not the answer. We are ALREADY living in a world that could turn into George Orwell's 1984 at the flip of a simple switch. And don't you think it would never happen, because it WILL.

CCTV cameras everywhere, our whole lives, thoughts and opinions can be tracked via social media, our movements and current location tracked by the GPS on our phones, our secret and most intimate web searches (porn, eheh) tracked by our OS and browsers, 24/7 listening devices in our own homes (Alexa, Echo, etc...) put there BY US, and we are already being brainwashed/limited in what to think and what to say by political correctness.

We have been slowly but steadily giving up all our freedoms and rights in exchange for a bit of (illusionary) security. And as B.Franklin wrote, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

If you can't see the writing on the wall and the terrible potential risk we're already under, then you're blind as a bat. In truth, if it ever happens, we will fully deserve it for failing to react when we still could - even a stupid OS is pushing us to the limit and STILL we don't fight back!

Do you know what would have happened just a few years ago if people even suspected the OS *might* be phoning home? A full riot. These days, when we actually know *for sure* that the OS is actually spying on us?! Not so much as a whimper.

After repeated warnings Facebook bans Britain First for 'inciting hatred'

Re: This post is a collection of alt-right dog whistles.

@DrewC > Your call to exterminate minorities (but fudging this by conflating with rapists and paedophiles) is grotesque.

First, I used 'exterminated' enclosed in quotes deliberately - cast out from our society as the evil they are is the proper response - and, in fact, that is exactly what happens when we put them in jail. Second, I used rapists and pedophiles on purpose to illustrate that minorities should not be protected *just because* they are minorities. Is there anything wrong with this reasoning? By labeling my argument as grotesque you seem to be implying that rapists and pedophiles should have a rightful place in our society - which not only is wrong on ALL levels, as it would make YOU a monster.

Second, the reason you call Katie Hopkins and Laura Southern 'trolls' is because they use the media to speak out what they and many others think and would like to say but are now either too afraid or do not have the audience. From my point of view, this is no different from what other liberals in the media (like our own Kieren here in El Reg) also do, except that, to me, it's the liberal ideology that is truly dangerous. To me, you are the trolls - but at least I am willing to debate the issue, and not shut other people down by calling them every name under the sun while covering my ears and labeling every attempt to discuss the issue in a serious manner as 'hate speech'.

This has nothing to do with race, and all to do with group cultural behavior. I don't care if you are white, black, gray, gypsy, blue, yellow or red: provided you behave in a civilized manner, you're ok in my book. But if you come to my own home trying to impose your own culture and values on me, threaten me or my family, and/or generally act obnoxiously, then you can go suck an Elf. I will not accept you and your behavior just because you belong to a minority - nor should I EVER be forced to. In fact, I don't care if you belong to a minority or not, I only care about your behavior. This is not racism, it's simple common sense, which is what liberals seem to lack completely these days.

As for Brexit, you're also proving my point: liberals never believed that the vote for Brexit would ever win, which is why they allowed the voting to happen. Whether the vote to leave will be a good thing for the UK in the long run or not remains to be seen - and I am not British, but I am still divided on that one: on one side the EU seem to be becoming a tirany run by people who were never elected for the job, on the other I like the feeling of all of us identifying as European. Unity is strength. Either way, good luck, I truly wish you all the best.

Re: @JcRabbit

@ Someone Else > Racist much?

See? You're proving my point exactly! Thank you.

This is not about 'hate speech' at all, it's about liberals preventing what is actually the MAJORITY from expressing themselves, thus making it look like the liberal point of view is universally accepted.

Laura Southern was just banned from entering the UK. She was labeled as 'far-right' when, in truth, she is just a moderate Christian conservative, and a very compassionate person actually! The irony is that those who do commit REAL hate crimes by going to fight jihads in Middle Eastern countries and then coming back to the UK, who have deep religious views that go against every single Western value and would actually murder people just because they are, say, homosexuals, THOSE are protected and welcome with open arms into the UK (and Europe) because they are 'a minority'.

See, this is why the current liberal way of thinking is so wrong. Being a minority does not mean you're automatically right or that you deserve protection - there is a reason you are a minority, after all. And some minorities not only should not be protected, they should be 'exterminated' with deep prejudice (and before you get up in arms, pedophiles and rapists are also a minority, for instance).

The fact is that the MAJORITY is being forcefully silenced, and you can clearly see that with Brexit. Personally I believe one of the major reasons so many people voted against staying in the EU was because of the migrant crisis, and this was the only way left for them to express themselves without being automatically labeled as 'racists'.

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'

Re: No thanks, I am staying with Windows 7

@Roland6 > Suggest you keep that Win7 programmer's workbench system safe, as I expect you will be returning to it when you discover just how much effort it is taking to keep your Win10 workbench stable.

Oh, I'm changing the hardware too, so the Windows 7 machine 'as is' will be sitting right next to the brand new Windows 10 machine.

You know, just in case. ;)

Re: No thanks, I am staying with Windows 7

I'm a developer who does launchers, utilities, shell enhancements, etc... parts of it needs to dig deep into the OS to accomplish what users want them to do, so they are not your run-of-the-mill vanilla applications. Because of this I have to keep up with OS changes under-the-hood, make sure all the latest updates don't break some key functionality of my applications.

For now my main development machine is still Windows 7, and I test the software on Windows 10 VMs and also a couple of physical Windows 10 PCs I have here. However, since I do eat my own dog food, this is very different from actually living on Windows 10 for 24/7 - only by immersing yourself in the latest Windows version do you really get a 'feel' for what needs improving.

So, I will be finally moving my main development machine to Windows 10 soon. But let me tell you this - and this is the whole point of my post - I have been running Windows since the 3.0 days (even paid for the Windows 95 beta, and boy, was it worth it, I loved it!), and in all these years this is the FIRST TIME that instead of being excited to install a new Windows version, I actually DREAD the day I have to do it.

The transition from XP to Vista was very difficult for most developers, I imagine, but even that was EXCITING! Vista was beautiful and a step in the right direction, it only got a lot of hate because it demanded a lot of the hardware at the time, the new security restrictions broke a lot of older applications, and developers simply weren't really ready for it. But once those wrinkles were eventually ironed out and Windows 7 came out - not much more than a refined and polished version of Vista IMO - users LOVED it. I would say that it was the most loved version of Windows ever, high up there with Windows 95.

It was so good visually that it essentially killed the Windows customization/skinning market (remember Stardock WindowBlinds?). And so what does Microsoft do? Keep going in the same direction since it proved so popular? Nope, they grow Apple envy and decide to turn Windows into a closed wall garden, which essentially they can only do by killing Win32 and replacing it with *something else* they can control 100% - conveniently forgetting that the only reason Windows was so much more popular than MacOSX was precisely because, unlike the latter, it always was an open environment with a huge priority on backwards compatibility.

And since Microsoft was never an innovator but instead a sucker for the latest fabs and technologies (abandoning them later just as fast), they then somehow convinced themselves that using RAD for an OS was a really good idea (WTF?!). And so they managed to alienate both Windows users *and* developers. Nice going MS.

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

Sinclair jump started programming in Europe

Oh man, the memories! :) I started with the ZX-81 but quickly moved on to the Spectrum:

LD HL,16384

LD D,H

LD E,L

INC E

LD BC, 6912

XOR A

LD (HL),A

LDIR

Anybody remembers what that does? Can be written in a simpler way, but, IIRC, that is still the most efficient way in terms of T-States alone. :)

So, a friend got me the 'Complete ZX Spectrum ROM Disassembly' by Dr.Ian Logan and Dr.Frank O.Hara. The bible of programming Assembly Z80 on the Spectrum! Based on it I ended up doing a copier called 'OmniCopy II' (there was never a version 1) and the thing kind of spread everywhere: the copier got copied eheh. Never put my name on it, so it was bittersweet reading about it in local newspapers and foreign computer magazines... :)

Reg man wraps head in 49-inch curved monitor

Re: Wanna go 4K?

@ Tom 38 > In the UK it costs £749, or around $1030. So no.

Wow. I'm in Portugal and just got mine a few weeks ago for less than 700 Euros. How much does a 32" 4K Acer Predator cost in the UK, for comparison? Here they are above 1,000 Euros, for instance, so quite a lot more expensive for a much smaller size.

@ Anonymous Coward > I really don't get, what seems to be, an increasing trend to go with tv size screens for monitors.

Simple: at anything much smaller than 43" on a 4K monitor, text size on the Windows desktop at 100% DPI is just too small to read. So people are forced to raise the Windows DPI to 150% or even 200% to be able to even read the text, thus turning what is a 4K monitor (3840x2160) into the equivalent of a 2560x1440 or 1920x1080 monitor. Pixel density is still there, so things will look a bit sharper, but screen resolution (i.e.; available screen real estate) will be halved. Might as well get a native 2560x1440 or 1920x1080 monitor in that case, no?

As I stated, I am a developer, so for me the biggest advantage of 4K resolutions is the added screen real estate. But more screen real estate means nothing if I can't actually READ the bloody text in whatever I am working on. ;)

Going from a 30" 2560x1600 to a 43" 3840x2160 was perfect for me: text retained the same relative size. In fact, I had been waiting a long time for 4K monitors to go above 32".

This said, there ARE drawbacks: you need a HUGE desk, which, luckily, I already had. Also, even with a huge desk a computer monitor will typically sit much closer to you than a TV, so yes, that will induce a bit of strain on your neck - you now have a huge area right in front of your nose to scan, so unlike smaller sized monitors you will actually need to look up and down. Think of it as going to the gym, though: eventually your neck muscles strengthen and you will get used to it. :)

I hope. lol :P

Re: Still only 1080 Vertical

@ inmypjs > I have been using 2 x 30" 2560 x 1600 for years.

I used 3 x 30" 2560x1600 for years too (two LG W3000H and one HP ZR30W), but just a few weeks ago I finally jumped to 4K with the 43" LG43UD79-B. I now have the 30" HP on the left, the 43" on the middle and one of the 30" LGs on the right.

If you're planning on going the same route AND you are still running on Windows 7 like I am, then be aware of the following limitation (I wasn't): the total width or height in pixels of all your monitors cannot exceed 8192 pixels. This is because the DWM in Windows 7 uses a DX10 texture to compose the Windows desktop, and a texture under DX10 cannot be larger than 8192 x 8192 pixels.

If the combined vertical or horizontal resolutions of your monitors exceed this limit, as mine did (2560 + 3840 + 2560 = 8960 horizontal pixels), Aero will stop working and Windows 7 will NOT tell you why it's not working anymore. You will be dumped into the Basic theme, all Aero related options will be gone, and there is no work around other than to reposition your monitors in relation to each other or reduce the screen resolution of one of them.

Took me a long time to figure out what was happening because very few people in the world use multiple monitors with extreme resolutions such as these, so unless you already know what you are looking for, 99.999% of all the solutions you will find in Google will be for completely unrelated issues.

Windows 8 and Windows 10 do not suffer from this problem because the size limit of a single texture was raised to 16384x16384 pixels under DX11. Just wait until 8K monitors become the norm lol

Wanna go 4K?

Wanna go 4K? Then do it properly: get a 43" LG43UD79-B or the equivalent of the same size. 3840x2160 of pure bliss, look it up!

A proper monitor - none of that using a TV as a computer monitor nonsense - this is the *perfect* size to use 4K at 100% scaling in Windows. The major advantage of a 4K monitor - at least for me as a developer - is screen real estate, so I never really understood those buying a sub-30" 4K monitor only to be forced to run it at 150% or 200% DPI on the Windows Desktop because otherwise the text is too small to read. Might as well buy a 1080p or 2560x1600 monitor in the first place and save a LOT of money.

Of course, going 43" means you need a REALLY BIG desk... and a very powerful GPU if you also play the occasional game (and no, despite all the noise, we are not quite there yet for native 4K, not even the mighty 1080ti is truly up to it - perhaps with the upcoming Volta/Ampere, if nVidia ever gets tired of making money with the crypto miners and finally decides to release it).

Oh, and you know how much that 43" 4K LG costs? Less than $700. Yep, you read that right.

He's cheesed it! French flick pirate on the lam to swerve €80m fine, two-year stretch in the clink

Re: This:

@ Anonymous Coward > But people looks to become worried only when *their* contents are stolen....

Eheh. You're getting a lot of down votes, but this is the absolute truth. Those people down voting you would be the first to throw a massive hissy fit if it was THEIR hard work getting stolen - they just don't know it yet, because nothing they ever did was fit for mass distribution, so it never got pirated.

All they do is rationalize stealing, pretending it's not stealing at all, that nothing physical is missing so nothing was stolen - forgetting that what is *really* behind every produced good, material or not, is ENERGY. The energy required to make a physical object is exactly the same type of energy required to make an immaterial work of art. You are not paying for the object itself, you are paying for the transformation/energy spent in turning something useless into something you find useful. Without that creative energy, there would be NOTHING to steal.

Also, it's easy to have a Robin Hood frame of mind with the work, lives and property of OTHERS - but when it comes to you... that's when the sh*t hits the fan, isn't it?: "what do you mean I'm getting paid only half my salary because a bunch of entitled strangers took the other half?! I worked hard for it! How do I pay my rent now?! How do I feed my family?!" (Yeah, you get the gist of it). :)

Vatican sets up dedicated exorcism training course

Re: Exorcism?

@Winkypop > Stop with the magic shit.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Time's up: Grace period for Germany's internet hate speech law ends

To Puerto Ricans: A Register apology

Re: Every day

@ bombastic bob

Could not have said it better myself, well done. And the funny thing is, I actually have an open mind, always did. But it is also a *rational* and *critical* mind, who doesn't put up with this PC/shamming nonsense, and recognizes the danger and the true motivation behind all of this (as you explained so well, the real motivation is to control others).

Also funny how the snowflakes are now trying to turn that term around, a term that was specifically created/used to describe them and their posture in the world. Perhaps because calling normal people 'nazis' and 'racists' doesn't cut it anymore? lol Either way, they obviously don't even understand what it means - but you explained it to them rather well.

Twitter's not dreaming of a white supremacist Xmas: Accounts nuked

Re: Chad H.

@ Dan 55 "if the pendulum swings and we end up living in an alt-right society, we'll have bigger problems than Twitter."

Ditto if the pendulum doesn't swing and we end up living in an alt-left society. Both extremes have been responsible for the deaths of millions (over 80 million because of communism *in peace time* vs. 55 million during WWII because of nazism).

The old communist mantra of 'proletariat vs bourgeoisie' has now been replaced with 'victims vs. oppressor', but the ideology behind it - and the eventual results - are *exactly* the same. Do not let yourself be fooled.

The problem here is when you start labeling everything YOU don't agree with as 'hate speech', 'racism', 'sexism', etc..., even when it really isn't. Be careful thus that when shutting down opposite views you don't also end up shutting down common sense and the voices of reason.

Tired of despairing of Trump and Brexit? Why not despair about YouTube stars instead?

@ Timmy B "Irony is that this is what I think when I read most of what Kieran writes....."

Exactly!

As someone who posted above said, who is he going to go after next? Footballers? Actors? Anyone else HE thinks does not deserve the money they make (as a so called 'journalist' he would be much better suited for that kind of money, I'm sure). That is not how the world works - if they make that kind of money, kudos for them - it means other people find whatever they produce interesting, regardless of how shallow (or not) it may be. Also, if he thinks producing videos on a consistent base with interesting content is easy and not much work at all, let him take a shot. :)

This is NOT - nor is my reaction - about a clip making fun of Hitler and Nazi Germany, and Kieran knows that very well. That introduction was just a typical dirty PC tactic he used to try and shame the author of said clip and rally other people onto his side. No, it really is about envy. Specifically, Kieran's envy.

Report: Women make up just 17% of IT workforce, paid 15% less than men