Posts by Daniel M

Is it really the plan to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal? It's been a weird week

So many words

The answer to the title is "no."

As you were.

Short-lived bling, dumb smart things, and more: The worst in show from CES 2025

Just give me a menu

"We believe that speaking is the most natural way to interact with devices and services and our goal is to empower consumers with the power of voice."

I "like" to interact with inanimate devices by speaking -- when they absolutely do not work. I do not think that the devices, much less their overlords, want to hear that kind of speaking.

My local electricity provider has a particularly annoying telephone system. Any buttons pressed: "Oh! [ giggle ] You don't have to press any buttons with me!" I have raised questions of accessibility with the company: ignored. I guess that other people like to listen to recorded giggles as they are being prevented from accessing a secret list menu.

The one thing that I actually like about Spectrum is that you can escape to the actual menu with number pad controls at any time: *99.

Woman uses AirTags to nab alleged parcel-pinching scum

Re: "police declined to pursue the matter"

San Francisco is not a country, and certainly not one known for law enforcement.

BOFH: Well, we did tell you to keep the BitLocker keys safe

Re: Atlanta?

Atlanta has a yuuuge and luxurious airport that is a hub for Delta and, I would think, important for other airlines as well.

No one suggested that he was staying in Atlanta ... although it might take some jiggery pokery to explain the other flights when he came back.

Microsoft Stores all close their doors in China

Re: Hmm

I do not know when the Chinese stores were opened, but Microsoft stores used to sell Lumias, tablets, and XBoxes, among other hardware (and software). I suppose that the (newer) Surface products always had the highest margins, though.

'I’m sorry for everything...' Facebook's Zuck apologizes to families at Senate hearing

"'Today’s hearing shows once again that many Senators are actively helping Big Tech harm kids because they’re more interested in creating sound bites for TV than the actual work of legislating,' said Fight for the Future director Evan Greer."

Pot, meet kettle. Naming and shaming is unfortunately the first step. There can be no legislation if there is no demonstrated problem.

University of Texas latest US school to ban TikTok

Re: "School"

Typically, American universities are made up of colleges. In turn, colleges are made up of schools. Then divisions, then departments (or, in the past, faculties).

Anything else is colloquial.

Tavis Ormandy ports WordPerfect for UNIX to Linux

No text mode in WordPerfect 8 for Linux?

To the best of my knowledge, text mode -- similar to WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS -- has been available in WordPerfect for Windows for some time. It is not the same in the current version, but close in "WordPerfect Classic Mode (version 5.1)."

Was this not true for WordPerfect 8 for Linux?

Oh, and Make It Fit for all the doubters. Word formatting can be extremely difficult to tame.

'IwlIj jachjaj! Incoming LibreOffice 7.3 to support Klingon and Interslavic

Re: Manx should be spoken

I think that it is dangerous to forget history. Examples abound.

That said, I really wonder about the modern Western preoccupation with "extinction." Ever since caveman took up a club, we have been killing things. Eating is good, and it is preferable to getting et.

Maybe it is the way of nature, and God's plan, for species to go extinct from time to time, just as it could be for new species to arise from time to time.

Circling back to the question of languages: should we forbid Esperanto and Klingon as illegitimate languages, or do we have to preserve them somehow as soon as they become some poor infant's first language?

Epic trolling: Microsoft allows third-party storefronts into its app store

Re: Get off my lawn!

I agree with the sentiment, but the pull quote does not have context. The Windows Store includes applications for Windows 10 Mobile -- although that might change when the Store is redone -- Xbox, and other devices. When I read this, I understand that "PC devices" are distinguished from other devices that have access to the Windows Store. Linux &c. boxen: keep calm and carry on.

COVID-19 cases surge as do sales of fake vaccination cards – around $100 for something you could get free

Re: Hmm

Not only that, "cases" nowadays are usually PRC test positive results, not actual medical diagnoses. The same PRC test that cannot distinguish between any number of respiratory diseases and will be retired from use in the United States at the end of this year after providing several more months of nearly meaningless statistics.

University duo thought it would be cool to sneak bad code into Linux as an experiment. Of course, it absolutely backfired

Re: Place your bets...

An Institutional Research Board typically has a very narrow scope: that of preventing "unethical" experiments on students or unnecessary access to their records. This research project would have fallen outside that scope. It is true that the students have now suffered the consequences ...

Ever wondered what it's like working for Microsoft? Leaked survey shines a light on how those at the code coalface feel

Re: "It sounds like some of these complainers don't know how good they've got it"

"It's all part of the USAin obsession with being at the workplace for an excessive number of hours."

Er, our neighbor to the south has a six-day, forty-four to forty-eight-hour workweek and effective corporate ownership of employees despite its many labor laws that are supposed to defend employees and unions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBdU9v5nLKQ

Facebook finally finds something it thinks is truly objectionable and needs to be taken offline: Apple

Re: Hmmm

"meddling with the newsfeed so we see what they want us to see, warnings on just about everything because we can't be trusted"

I deleted the app from my mobile when they started inserting very frequent mini-lectures to me in my feed on how to think about current events. I had already seen that they would show certain posts of mine -- generally photos -- to "friends" while effectively deleting others -- generally Web links -- by not showing them to anybody. Then there was my comment about Facebook censorship that got ... censored as fake news. I could excuse some of their behavior if it were only about the money, but the clown-nose-on, clown-nose-off approach to content manipulation is wearisome at best and enraging at worst.

Windows on Wheels is back, though the truck has come to a standstill, much like the OS

Re: It's an Apple ad

Were you in MS-DOS Mobile ?

www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/ms-dos-mobile/9nblgggxzdtw

Vivo pushes out X51 5G: Chipper whippersnapper, quite a battery-sapper, but at least the wrapper's dapper

A physical headphone jack is necessary to provide a usable FM antenna for any mobiles that have the circuit enabled. Conversely, I would assume that the FM radio circuit is disabled if there is no jack.

Tesco self-service separates innocent Reg reader from beer after collapsing into heap of Windows dialog boxes

Re: Self service check outs

Too bossy:

http://www.victorlams.com/music/Victor_Lams_-_Shelly.mp3

We're afraid it might be terminal: Tesco top-up box looking less than tip-top

Re: Eye popping performance not surprising

But was it WordPerfect 6.0a ?

WordPerfect 6.0 did not get along with Windows at all. Thus 6.0a, which as I recall was a free upgrade.

Amadeus! Amadeus! Pwn me Amadeus! Airline check-in bug may have exposed all y'all boarding passes to spies

Poor Gramma

The possessive adjective is "all y'all's," or, arguably, "all y'alls."

As read, the headline directs itself to ... boarding passes. Which would not be the oddest Register headline.

Facebook celebrates Independence Day by lighting up American outage maps

Karma; or The Wrong Plug

This is simultaneous with their cancellation of Facebook and Messenger app services for Windows 10 Mobile.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g_rWja1Xiu8

All's fair in love and war when tech treats you like an infant

Shelly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7lfNjk2_GI

Google plonks right-wing think tanker and defence drone mogul on AI ethics advisory board

The Heritage Foundation? Oh, nooo! I'm melting!

Sorry that some people are so religiously fanatic that they resort to histrionics -- or take to "social media" -- at any hint of disagreement with their unreasoned views based on the divine revelation that is Twitter. Get those stakes and pyres ready! There is a Foreign Thought among us!

IBM so very, very sorry after jobs page casually asks hopefuls: Are you white, black... or yellow?

Re: sorry or not

Thank you for digging out "Brazil." It immediately looked to me like a Latin American list, but I was stuck at Spanish, in which not all these terms would be used.

The Register may now resume its anglophone pearl-clutching.

Google is 20, Chrome is 10, and Microsoft would rather ignore the Nokia deal's 5th birthday

Re: Ask Google? Ask Microsoft?

!g, !gi, and, if you must, !gm are your friends.

Happy 10th birthday, Evernote: You have survived Google and Microsoft. For your next challenge...

Re: InfoCentral

Pretty please ... ?!

My useful data died when I had to move it from InfoCentral 7 to Outlook. Even after several years, I would be willing to find that data file and make aaall the updates from that point forward.

How a tax form kludge gifted the world 25 joyous years of PDF

Winners write the history books

There is no mention here of Novell Envoy (1995), which I had, as part of PerfectOffice, and used. A free downloadable viewer (which no one had) and the ability to package the viewer together with the .ENV file as an .EXE, which was quickly to become an unacceptable attachment in several systems as did a similar emission from OmniForm.

Perhaps none of these competitors threatened -- or will ever threaten? -- the economic success of Adobe, but they must have had some influence.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mark the life of Slack for Windows Phone

Windows Phone ... 7 ?

Does this refer to Windows 10 Mobile, or the no-longer-supported Windows Phone, last seen at version 8.1?

In other words, is it news, or no news?

Or did I miss the fact that the only point was to make fun of Windows phones?

It's all true – I bribed big city's IT boss with fat bathroom bungs, admits tech biz chief exec

Re: Bathrooms...

Because of the time zone difference, no one ever reads my "late" contributions ...

For the nth time, there is no such thing as a bathroom without a bath, whether shower or tub. This is why bathrooms are exclusively found in private residences. The only exception is the real estate agentese "half bath," which in fact is a bathroom without a bath in a private residence.

Restrooms, which are public, sometimes do have long benches in them although I concede that I am doubtful as to whether that is the "rest" referred to.

Want to know what an organisation is really like? Visit the restroom

Re: Stop....

A restroom is public and has no bath. A bathroom does and is therefore generally a domestic facility. Quite logical.

Now illogically, and I suppose mainly for the convenience of real estate agent databases, a domestic facility without a bath is generally referred to as a "half bath."

Collateral carnage as ZTE sanctions see Australia’s top telco dump mobe-maker

Re: Last laugh

Please try to keep up. This was all set in motion during Obama's presidency. So, if one subscribes to the belief that the American president controls everything in the entire country, this is obviously Obama's evil plot coming to fruition.

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

Stalin treated his people ... pretty much the same as how they'd been treated by the Tsar

Er, no, the Tsarina invited my German ancestors to settle in Russia. Some years after the Bolshevik revolutionaries shot one soldier-aged youth on his doorstep for refusing to join, and thereupon successfully conscripted the one standing next to him to the front lines, where he did not last a month, Stalin starved the rest to death and plowed under their village. Only my great-grandparents escaped. The letters from Russia desperately pleading for help stopped when everyone ... well, when everyone was dead. So yeah, "pretty much the same."

Democrats (still a thing, apparently) are super unhappy about AT&T's Time-Warner merger

Time Warner is Not a "Telco"

Once again: Time Warner Cable was spun off from Time Warner a decade ago. Along with Charter, Time Warner Cable is now "Spectrum," which offers telephone, cable, and Internet services directly competitive to AT&T.

Time Warner, on the other hand, is a content company.

This has nothing to do with two companies in the same sector. If anything, it would be very similar to the old AOL Time Warner conglomerate.

But who cares about facts, right?

Hey, AT&T. Help us out. Why is buying Time Warner a good idea?

I am waiting for a light to come on, somewhere

I suppose that everyone has an idea of who AT&T is. It seems that no one knows who Time Warner is.

Time Warner used to be a competitor of AT&T with its Time Warner Cable. TWC -- often colloquially referred to as "Time Warner" -- was sold off a few years ago, recently bought by Charter and is now Spectrum, which continues to be a competitor with AT&T, most notably in Internet, cable telephony, and cable television, which are now promoted at exactly the same "introductory" rates as AT&T's. How surprising.

Anyhow, Time Warner is now only a content company. It has nothing to do with "coverage," urban, rural, or otherwise. It is a large company, but it is NOT a competitor of AT&T. So the questions cited in the article -- "how coverage and reliability would improve – particularly in rural areas – and how the combined company would ensure that consumers have a choice in service providers and plans." -- are fairly stupid. Can the proposed bigger huger corporation be a good thing? Maybe, maybe not. But this merger is not antitrust material, especially if AOL Time Warner itself used to sell services and content at the same time and that was okay.

By the way, AOL was spun back off in 2009. And a proposal for 21st Century Fox in 2014 to buy Time Warner was cancelled due to worries about antitrust penalties. Content versus content: apples and apples I can understand.

Lexmark files patent gripe against 24 cartridge makers

Misleading article and wandering readers

"Lexmark has probably run out of ink today"

If you read further and follow the link, you will see that Lexmark is suing over TONER CARTRIDGES. Yes, Lexmark has some of the cheapest and worst INKJET printers and the most expensive INK CARTRIDGES in these United States, ... but that is not what the article is about.