Posts by wiggers 216 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2011
I find one of the biggest bugbears trying to support friends and family is that the default user account is administrator. SO all kind of things get installed and settings changed without a thought. If a password had to be entered every time a potentially serious change is made it might concentrate the mind. Several friends simply have one account, administrator, called "User" with no password at all!
Solution to what problem exactly? And if the proposed solution doesn't fit a large proportion of use cases then what's the alternative? Government trying to pick winners in a non-existent race, no doubt to feather ministers' nests in future employment.
The first thing my support droid told me to do was open the dredded HP "Smart" app. It doesn't work on my machine, probably because I've got WARP VPN installed. Then I had to reinstall the drivers using the 320MB "EasyStart" wizard, which was anything but easy. Failed while trying to install a Network Driver, even though it's connected by USB.
Neither "Easy" nor "Smart".
"Astronomers believe it could have only formed with the presence of dark matter."
That's not science. Scientists formulate hypotheses to form a logical argument to explain observations. Dark matter is not the only hypothesis, see also Quantized Inertia (QI).
* Henry Spencer
I moved from a cabled area to a non-cabled area but Virgin Media's system didn't comprehend that such areas existed. Probably because they didn't provide a conventional service to this area either. Major battle ensued to switch to a different provider.
Regulation is the attempt to predict all possible harms from a new technology or application thereof by those not necessarily qualified. Virtually impossible and restricts potential benefits.
Far better is the law of Tort. Have penalties for causing harm, to focus the minds of those developing the tech to design-in safety.
"First, do no harm."
I use the DuckDuckGo browser that has an app tracker-blocker. Astonishing to see the number of tracking attempts. Santander's app is the worst, 10,000-20,000 in a day most days. When I've raised this with them they seem completely clueless, mutter something about essential cookies. One app, Eufy Clean, they didn't even know the app had trackers until I pointed it out to them!
Yes, we used to have lengthy "team" meetings every week where we'd have to report what we were working on and what progress had been made. Problem was that the "team" were all working on completely unconnected projects and the "progress" was never compared with a programme nor even what was reported the previous week.
"If crypto is a ponzi scheme because it relies on new investors valuing the asset, what does that make gold?"
I agree that the crypto world is more like a bubble than a Ponzi scheme. The enthusiasm of the crypto-kiddies talking it up on social media is testament to that. Whether a cryptographic "coin" has the immutability of gold is another debate.
The (UK) State Pension "fund" is only a kind of Ponzi in that pensions are paid out the tax revenue from those currently working. If you have a personal pension then that is *your* pot of money ready for when *you* start to draw it down. Hence the advice to view the State Pension as a potential safety net, in case for some reason your personal arrangements go pear-shaped.
It's still pretty bad. As you zoom out it suddenly switches from the 1:25k map you downloaded to a 1:100k or something. And offline is still not working. Once you're out of mobile signal you can't go very far before walking off the edge of the visible map. Have had long correspondence with their support for a few years now.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
