Posts by 45RPM

Happy with your existing Windows 10 setup? Good, because Windows 11 could turn its nose up at your CPU

Re: What gen?

Hmm. So what’s an 8080 then? Surely that’s the true third gen? (4004, 8008, 8080)

Or if we’re just talking about PC chips then 386 (8086/8088, 80186/80188/80286, iAPX386). It’s all just nonsense.

Re: The good ol days

Yeah - not that kind of Z800. HP Z800 workstation - a different animal entirely.

I’ve had Z80s though - never that kind of 800 or 8000 though!

Well that’s the end of the road for my Z800 then. Wait a minute - what are the minimum CPU requirements for Linux? Guess I’ll be okay for a while longer then!

Apple scrambles to quash iOS app sideloading demands with 'think of the children' defense

But why do you care? Presumably if you want that functionality you’ll buy an Android device. If you would prefer that that functionality isn’t available you can buy iPhone. Isn’t it good to have the choice? I’d have more sympathy with this view if Android didn’t exist, or if Android was total crap. But Android does exist, and it isn’t bad at all - so why do you care what the other team are getting up to?

Re: It's not Either/Or

You’re right - it isn’t. It’s better than most though, but still worse than some. The point is to protect the majority - some people will be such high-profile targets (world leaders etc) that it’s worth overcoming any security to get them. The security on the iPhone is good enough to protect my family - and likely yours too - and that is the key point. The more holes you poke into it the easier it is to attack people who aren’t tech savvy, and that is not a good thing.

Re: It's not Either/Or

You could, yes - and it would be very bad for security. You have the savvy to know not to enable such features just because that cold call from “Apple Macintosh” or “Microsoft Windows” told you to - my mother in law definitely doesn’t. At the moment, her iPhone keeps her safe - with your suggestion she’s be open to attack by predatory phone calls and social engineering.

A better idea, credit to John Gruber, might be to enable such functionality - but only to registered developers. Still sucks though.

Counterintuitively, I think that the freedom of choice argument is valid. Sure, the restrictions imposed by the App Store mean that I can’t fundamentally alter the OS or the features that it provides (GUI, way that NFC works, the App Store etc) but I can build apps to do nearly everything else. The thing is that, personally, I enjoy the security that not being able to change low level functionality provides. If I had one wish it would be that the curation was more rigidly enforced - I mean, they do let some right old crap through!

If I wanted to have a more open ecosystem, one where I can do pretty much whatever I choose, then I have choice. There are a lot of nice Android phones out there (and a lorry load of really nasty ones too if cheap and plasticky is my preference). If I want total openness, do whatever I like no holds barred, then there are pure Linux phones available too. I have choice.

To mandate that Apple has to open the iPhone up to third party app stores, or system level changes, is to deprive people who think like me of choice. I suspect that the people who are most rabidly pro third party in this case actually don’t want an iPhone anyway - this is a religious thing for them. They just want everything to work like Android does - and that’s not good for anyone.

John McAfee dead: Antivirus tycoon killed himself in prison after court OK'd extradition, says lawyer

Of course not. But I’m always interested in hearing the other persons perspective. Even proper wrong’uns.

There are many things that I disagree with that he espoused (not paying taxes being one of them… but that’s uh nuther story), I’ve had my fill of conspiracy theories and craziness, and I’ve had my fill of the objectification of women. But still, he was a character, I would like to have bought him a beer and chatted to him (though he could more than afford his own, and there are many more people he would have preferred to talk to!), and he will be missed. He definitely ripped up the rule book when it comes to defining what a geek is!

Mayflower, the AI ship sent to sail from the UK to the US with no humans, made it three days before breaking down

Must be a very good for morale having to walk around with a rictus grin plastered to your fizzog. A laugh a minute. I suppose we should be grateful for the small mercy that it applies to everyone and that it isn’t only the women who are being subjected to this indignity. Cheer up love, you’re much prettier when you smile and all that bollocks.

Vissles V84: Mechanical keyboard hits all the right buttons for Mac power users

Except that the drivers don’t exist, and seldom have I used a cheaper feeling or mushier keyboard. Even Sinclair made better keyboards than those supplied with Sun workstations.

Wanted: Brexit grand fromage. £120k a year. Perks? Hmmmm…

Re: Is one of the

I doubt it. It’s a poisoned chalice, everyone knows its a poisoned chalice, and the money isn’t all that must - especially considering that it’s career suicide.

Dem, Repub senators propose tax credits for factories that churn out chips on US soil

Will McCain benefit as well? Can they get potatoes in sufficient quantities? And will the benefits trickle down to the farmers as well?

/dad-joke

Of all the analytics firms in the world, why is Palantir getting its claws into UK health data?

Fair enough. But if you count cock up by scale and number and triumph by scale and number then by my reckoning the scales tip leftward.

Thumbs up. It’s a good point. I did say that it was a difficult nut to crack though, and that I didn’t know what the solution is.

It’s certainly a point of view. But where’s your evidence? Perhaps the best analogy I’d give is that of a power station. You might argue that Labour governments didn’t maintain the generators properly so the power output dropped until someone fixed them. I’d argue that the Tory government has ripped out the turbines for their scrap metal value and the generators are spinning only on the residual energy in the flywheels - and the power station is now beyond repair.

Think of the lions of British Industry of the past century. The powerhouses of the British Economy. Well, most of those were sold off during Tory Governments (incidentally, I’m mainly thinking of private sector businesses which we failed to protect - Reuters, ARM, Apricot, Lyons, Rowntree etc) - but that’s okay. We didn’t need them did we? We had our powerhouse financial sector. Well, we did until Brexit. So how’s that for fiscal probity?

Politicians should always listen - but they should also be brave enough not to deliver if what is being asked for is not in our best interest. Part of that contract is to explain clearly why what was being asked for is not in our best interest of course - I don’t know how to fulfil that part in the 21st century, but maybe part of it is focussed, single message, YouTube videos which educate on a particular concept without any party political advertising. Useful topics might include (after the nag has done a runner):

* What Europe has done for us

* The benefit of proportional representation

* The importance of lockdown

* Why vaccination works

I’m sure that we can all think of others.

I sympathise with your cynicism - but I don’t agree with it.

Some politicians are in it to extract whatever benefit, usually financial, that they can for themselves. This seems to be the case for a majority of Conservative politicians (including UKIP / Brexit party, which are broadly conservative in their outlook), and a minority of Liberal and Labour politicians (even more so with the Greens).

Other politicians are in it for the public good, and genuinely believe that the views that they hold and the policies that they promote are for the benefit of the country and the wider population. As far as I can see, this holds true for the majority of centre and left wing politicians, whether I agree with them or not. You can be sure that I disagree with much of what Jeremy Corbyn stood for - but equally sure that I admire the man for trying to do what he genuinely believed would do the most good for the people of this country.

So who would I rather govern the country? Venal, grasping, rapacious predators who will stop at nothing to line their own pockets (the Conservative party). Or clumsy, sometimes naive, do-gooders who cock up once in a while whilst trying to deliver a better life for the broadest spectrum of people? Well, neither of-course - I’d rather a competent well oiled machine trying to deliver a better future for us all. But given hobsons-choice (a government trying to deliver in our best interest or no best interest at all) I’ll take the hippy over the pirate every single time.

And yet, despite all this, the ostrich voters of this country will still continue to bury their heads in the sand and try to justify their actions by saying that “sure, the Tories are bad - but they’re better than Labour or the Liberal Democrats”. There’s no evidence of this superiority, of course, and there’s quite a lot of evidence that the reverse is true - but still. Right wing Good, Left wing Bad. It must be so ‘cos it says so in the tabloid chip wrappers (in which category I also place The Maily Telegraph and The Times).

No wonder this country is screwed. It’s populated by imbeciles. /rant

Debian's Cinnamon desktop maintainer quits because he thinks KDE is better now

He’s right. It is!

(Legs it as the Gnomeites and Cinnamonites start lobbing brickbats!)

In all seriousness, the wonderful thing about Linux is that we have the choice. The price we pay for that choice is a disjointed user experience where user interface elements from one program don’t match up with those from another.

Apple ditches support for pre-2015 MacBook Air, Pro laptops with macOS Monterey

Now why would I do that given how much better it works that the alternatives for my use-case?

In any event, I'm a) a geek, and I enjoy using OSs of all stripes - I love Linux, I love MacOS, I even love playing with DOS and Windows - and VMS, CP/M and MOS. Besides, it gives me 'one who knows what he's talking about status' which has got to be better than 'one who is prejudiced and likes to talk out of his hat status'.

And b) my software has been quite popular, and makes me more money on macOS than on all the other platforms it sells on put together. I'd be a mug to get off the gravy train given that I'm quite enjoying the gravy myself.

As I get older, the more of a pain in the proverbial this becomes. Back in the day, when my Mac LCIII became unsupported after only 3 major releases (7.1, 7.5, 7.6) and 4.5 years, it felt kind of annoying but okay. I mean, 4.5 years was practically the same as forever when I was in my twenties. Nowadays, with fewer years ahead of me than I have in the rear-view mirror, time gallops by at a hell of a lick - and it seems iniquitous that support for a computer should be dropped after a mere six years. Especially when one of my main computers is celebrating its 12th birthday (Mac Pro, with Catalina) and another is celebrating its 32nd (Mac SE/30 with A/UX).

I have an IBM 5150 in the loft (original 5 slot PC to you), and that was supported for the latest versions of its primary OS (MS-DOS) for a conquering 13 years. Outside of mainframes and industrial use, can any other computer make such a claim?

UK's Labour Party calls for delay to NHS Digital's GP data slurp until patients can be properly informed

Once again, I find myself asking who benefits from this? I suspect that the answer might be Tory politicians and their bank accounts.

Apple settles with student after authorized repair workers leaked her naked pics to her Facebook page

Re: In before . . .

I can’t thumbs up this enough. Victim blaming is never acceptable, no matter what the circumstances are.

Apple's iPad Pro on a stick, um, we mean M1 iMac scores 2 out of 10 for repairability

Re: Shipped to Turkey?

I have some seriously old perfectly working Macs, and none of them were rendered useless by Apples software updates. Perhaps you’re thinking of the other fellas. In fact, for a while, each release made the computer quicker (with the caveat that the original MacOS X was dogshit slow on my PowerMac G3, but was really very usable by the time Tiger rolled around)

Certainly, my 2009 vintage Mac Pro is really rather snappy with Catalina (albeit that Catalina wouldn’t install without a spot of help), my 2013 MacBook runs Big Sur without breaking a sweat…

It all renders your argument a little… well… pointless.

Taking my iPhone - well, that’s a 2016 model - and still runs perfectly well now that I’ve changed the battery, and all patched up with the latest OS.

Even the other fellas are fine. My HP z800 of ancient vintage runs the latest Windows 10 with no difficulty (although I suspect that if it had an i3 inside it might not be quite so happy)

Here’s my theory, putting aside bullshit and prejudice. If you spend serious dough on your gear then it will last a long time and be supported for a long time, without tedious slow downs. If you buy budget then you get a budget lifetime. It doesn’t matter if it’s a car, a fridge, a computer, a toaster, a TV, a phone. You get what you pay for.

As long as the Mac Pro is serviceable then, as long as the iMac et al are recycleable, they can sacrifice that maintainability in order for fashionable thinness. I hate typing those words - reuse is better than recycle, and for reuse maintainability is a key requirement. But, realistically, most people don’t care about maintainability - if it’s old, broken, or just a bit dowdy off it goes to the dump. So why bother making it maintainable if most people won’t maintain it?

I went to the dump yesterday (a load of failed flourescent tubes and their mounting apparatus in case you’re wondering), and the electronics skips were full of laptops and desktop PCs - most of them either quite repairable, I’ll bet, or full of useful components which were fully functioning. Will they get repaired? Of course not. They were in a bloody skip, exposed to the elements. They’ll get shipped to Turkey and dumped in landfill. So why go to the effort of making them repairable in the first place?

Sure, some people (most of us I’ll bet) do care about maintainability. But what are we going to buy? A pro spec computer (Mac Pro) or a home spec computer (iMac)? I bet most of us are going to go Pro - at least, if we can afford it. So then the argument becomes one of, sure, do what you will with the iMac - but for the love of Woz, make a Mac Pro that is affordable - at least in a base specification.

Steve Wozniak to take stand: $1m suit claiming Woz stole idea for branded tech boot camp goes to trial

I don’t know the ins and outs of it, and I’m not sure that I really care. It’s all very well having a good idea, but your good idea is just puffery if you don’t do anything with it. If you do something with it then you deserve protection, if you don’t then you’re just being vexatious if you seek legal redress.

And whatever else he may be, electronics whizz, coding whizz, inventor, prankster, Woz is not a great businessman. He says that it doesn’t interest him, and his actions back up his words. Sure, he shouldn’t have signed the paper - but in his philanthropic heart he probably thought that Wrecker Ralph was a good guy, and that he’d be encouraging future generations by lending his support.

On the face of it, Ralph Reilly is just doing his best to get the whole of geekdom to hate him. Seriously, darling of the geek world (and love Apple or hate Apple, Woz did some amazingly cool things - and probably got more screwed over by Jobs and Apple than almost anyone else, and yet still found it in his heart to forgive. The man is a legend!) vs some puffed up fraudster? Screw that guy!

Apple's macOS is sub-par for security, Apple exec Craig Federighi tells Epic trial

In which case, yes. There can be no disagreement that I can see. Additionally, it might prolong the life of the hardware further.

Not true. There’s plenty of open source available on iOS. You can even install software that Apple won’t permit on the App Store - such as PC Emulators, Console Emulators, you name it. If you want to install such prohibited software on your device though you do need to have sufficient experience to install Xcode and build software (from sourceforge, github and the like) using it.

It does make it hard to break out of the sandbox and peek at user files or scrobble the memory, or do other nasty malware things. But that’s not a bad thing.

When Apple first started sandboxing it caused no end of bother. Things I used to do routinely were now prohibited. But you know what? The things I was doing weren’t good programming patterns - they were just lazy. Ultimately, these limitations forced me to think about what I needed to do and to implement the functionality properly. I became a better developer, my users got better software.

Yeah, I’ve pondered that. The problem is that, by offering a ‘power-user’ mode, inexperienced users are opened up to a new avenue of attack. I can easily imagine my mum being convinced by a con-artist that for reasons of support / improved battery life / insert spurious reason here it’s necessary to enable power-user mode and install one piece of malicous software or another. They’ve tried it before - and failed only because I’ve locked down the security on her desktop computer pretty tightly. Better then, on balance, not to provide the option. If you need a power user mode on your phone, if you are the 1% (and even as a software developer, I’m not in that category), then there are other phones available.

Optimal security is something like a dumb light or an old Bakelite phone. They don’t do much, and they can’t be hacked - so they’re secure. Maximum insecurity would be a device that lets you do whatever you like to whatever file from wherever. Think something like Windows 95 or classic MacOS. They have a network stack, and very little in the way of permissions.

Everything else is on a continuum inbetween. I like iOS being secure. It’s a phone for gods sake, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that. For 99% of use case the tight security is not a problem - in fact, it’s a very definite benefit. The same applies to the watch and to the iPod.

The Mac is another matter. It’s used for myriad use cases - and it’s mostly a tool for professionals. The trade off of security / flexibility therefore errs more on the flexibility end the spectrum - which necessarily causes it to have a malware problem, at least when compared to iOS. The same is equally true of other flexible platforms - including Linux (and Windows 10 even let me absentmindedly delete a system file the other day, so I could argue that the situation is worse there - they’re erred too far toward flexibility)

The thing is that if the Mac erred further toward secure it would lose users, including me, fast. I think that the balance is about right.

As to the iPad, much has been made about how the hardware is great but the software is not. I think it’s not a problem with the UI per se - it’s the fundamental issue that the security / flexibility balance of the iPad is wrong. Given what the device is, and what it’s intended to do, I’d argue that the iPad should be a smidge more flexible and a smidge less secure. And it’s a pretty big smidge at that.

Linux laptop biz System76 makes its first foray into the mechanical keyboard world with dinky, hackable Launch

Re: Best keyboard ...evah

I was a cheapskate. I had an old EX44, which I also used as a printer. That felt pretty good too.

Re: Why?

Have a thumbs up. I’ve never upgraded the firmware on my old keyboard. I couldn’t even if I wanted too. I’d argue that we’re making life too complicated!

I must be getting old. I see RGB and I think “No way” right away. Perhaps the fun has been drained out of my soul.

I’ll be sticking with my faithful old AEK II keyboard, with Alps mechanical switches. 30 years old, and still the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used.

Elon Musk hits the brakes on taking Bitcoin for Tesla purchases

Absolutely right. I forgot about this - I was thinking purely about the vehicle efficiency in terms of the fuel being optimally burned. I forgot about the immediate impact of breathing in smog (probably because I don’t live in a town!)

Plus, EVs can be ‘upgraded’ to be totally carbon neutral in terms of miles travelled by upgrading the power generation capacity (as is being done all over the world) without any effort from the vehicles owner.

Distributed ledgers solve some very real problems, but the cure should never be worse than the disease. Distributed ledgers and the technologies that use them (Bitcoin etc) are power hogs and unless this problem can be solved then it seems reasonable to limit their use - or discourage it.

Sure electric vehicles may ultimately burn fossil fuels as well but they burn less than a directly fossil fuelled vehicle does because the generating apparatus can (usually) be run at peak efficiency whereas a fossil fuel powered car seldom does. The electric car therefore (as far as I can see) does less harm than those vehicles that it replaces.

Bitcoin does more harm than the technology it replaces - and therein lies the problem.

I’d suggest that before we go all gooey over a new tech and start adopting it the first question that we should ask is whether or not it does more damage to the environment than the tech it replaces. And if the answer is yes then we should kill it stone dead right there - whether it’s a new form of currency, a new car or even a new games console or computer. Our time is up. We can’t pussyfoot around anymore.

Stale and past its best. Are you talking about Windows or the pizza you're waiting for?

Re: Computers and pizza

Yeah, I was slightly thinking of that fail too. Also those vile Oetker pizzas. There are a million ways to violate pizza, but unusual toppings aren’t amongst them.

Plenty of chilli sauce and cheese and nothing dries out. But celery? I’ll give it a crack. What’s the worst that could happen?

Computers. Of any kind. That’s what doesn’t belong anywhere near a pizza.

Pizza should have thin, freshly stretched dough base, and then go to town on the toppings. I realise that Italians, and probably particularly Neapolitans, have very strict ideas about what constitutes an acceptable pizza topping - but I’m not so strict. Sure, I wouldn’t go for ham, or for pineapple, but I’m equally sure that my preferred toppings would have many people gagging. For reference, I prefer to overload a pizza with:

* Freshly made basil and tomato sauce

* Nduja sausage

* Pepperoni

* Chicken

* Artichokes

* Anchovies

* Fresh chilli peppers

* Smoked chilli sauce

* A lot of mozzarella

- and now I’m feeling hungry! (You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry)

Bill to protect UK against harmful foreign investment becomes law

Re: re: Jaguar

I thought I was clear that this wasn’t exclusively a Conservative problem. I said ‘consecutive governments’ not ‘conservative governments’. The Tories have merely hoovered up the majority of the trough, not quite all of it.

Consecutive governments, with the Conservatives in the vanguard, have allowed our most precious national assets to be sold off to the highest bidder without much in the way of scrutiny.

Lyons

Rover

Apricot

Acorn

ARM

Inmos

Plessey

Reuters

Jaguar

Cadbury

Rowntree

British Steel

…I could go on. The point is the the lions of British industry, those companies which powered our wealth, have been stripped and sold. We have virtual nothing left now that our political masters have grown fat by slaying our golden geese.

Brexit offers no protection - if anything, it’s made matters worse because some of those companies were sold to our erstwhile friends in the EU and they may have felt some duty to their ally before we demonstrated ourselves to be untrustworthy and lacking in sense. Those countries of the EU, by and large, have the good sense to protect their Crown Jewels. We should have done this decades ago, when we still had some.

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

Re: Er ...

It’s not much smaller than Texas - at 643,801 km² (France) vs 695,662 km² (Texas) and both are massive compared with little old England (130,279 km²).

And both have something that England doesn’t. Friends. Texas has the rest of the United States. France has the rest of the European Union. England isn’t even liked by the rest of the ‘United' Kingdom.

Apple faces another suit over its allegedly misleading water resistance claims

You’re drowning it wrong!

GCHQ boss warns China can rewrite 'the global operating system' in its own authoritarian image

Re: Global operating system

Neither. The global operating system is Stupidity, if past evidence is anything to go by.

NASA’s getting really good at this flying a helicopter on Mars thing

Re: Very cool

They’re either being chased by Martian Police for flying their drone too close an airfield, or its that whole Jesus footsteps thing again. https://xkcd.com/1575/

Apple supplier Quanta Computer confirms it's fallen victim to ransomware attack

Interesting thought, but proven wrong throughout history. Capital Punishment does not stop murder or rape and I doubt it would stop blackmail. If it did then countries with Capital Punishment would have lower crime rates than countries which don’t - and, by and large, that isn’t the case.

Per 100,000 people the rate of murder is as follows:

Russia 8.21

US - 4.96

Saudi Arabia - 1.3

China - 0.53

The UK sits at 1.2.

China is an interesting point, since it appears much lower than the UK - but reputable studies suggest that its crime statistics should be taken with a pinch of salt, given that police authorities tend to bend the facts to appease their political masters. That said, if we do trust those figures then I offer Norway (0.47) as a counter to China.

So rather than paying the crims, pay the businesses affected a large sum in compensation. The fact that this story exists, regardless of whether or not anything leaks, is damaging enough reputationally. Sufficient compensation might help them hold on to some of the business that they risk losing.

On a different note, because it occurs to me that some tech savvy crims might read The Register, I wonder if it has occurred to the blackmailers that this kind of action can cause a company to go out of business with thousands of lost jobs. This is a far from victimless crime. And many of those people who lose jobs will not be able to afford to be without work, and many won’t be able to get equivalent work quickly. Honestly, I don’t know how the criminals sleep at night.

I can’t imagine anyone giving in to these demands. The benefit (secrecy over a product which will no longer be secret in six months) just isn’t enough to make it worthwhile. And that’s assuming that the crims can be trusted - what guarantee that they won’t just pocket the cash and publish anyway? None. That’s what.

Won't somebody please think of the children!!! UK to mount fresh assault on end-to-end encryption in Facebook

Re: Overton window

It depends on your perspective. The older you are, the more recently ancient history appears to have happened. From my perspective, the 1980s really weren’t that long ago.

From Cheop’s perspective, Henry VIII was a recent occurrence.

From my son’s point of view, the Conservative Party have never been a centrist party.