Posts by TReko

Microsoft says it broke some Windows 10 patching – as it fixes flaws under attack

Re: MS Borks an update?

I can hear from the whine of laptop fans in our office when it's patch Tuesday.

I wonder how many gigawatts of power this inefficient update engine consumes every month?

CrowdStrike hopes legal threats will fade as time passes since it broke the world

Re: License terms

In most Common Law countries one cannot exempt yourself from negligence. If it can be proved that they were negligent in not testing the update, then Crowdstrike may be liable. However, it will probably never get to this.

Re: License terms

I've often wondered how legally binding "pressing OK" is on a EULA. How can it be proved that you did?

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

Games aren't the only problem

There's lots of other Windows stuff that doesn't work well on Arm.

Many devices don't have Arm drivers, and the chances of getting a driver for any non-new hardware are tiny.

Similarly many anti-virus and Virtual machine hosts don't work.

I'd give it at least 2 years before switching to Windows on Arm.

What is this computing industry anyway? The dawning era of 32-bit micros

Re: Intel 432

my apologies

Intel 432

Liam can't list all the 32bit failures, but the Intel 432 deserves a mention.

https://www.theregister.com/2004/02/17/who_sank_itanic/

The T9000 Transputer chip probably does as well. Not to be confused with the T900 which got Terminated

Admins wonder if the cloud was such a good idea after all

Re: Shareholder

Yes, it was cheap at the start to get people locked in.

From Microsoft's last results: cloud now brings in 4x what Windows does ($105B vs $23B).

Windows 11 continues slog up the Windows 10 mountain

Re: Not all HW W11 compatible

> "W10 needed UEFI and so BIOS based PCs were stuck"

I haven't found this to be the case. W10 works fine on my PCs without UEFI enabled.

Re: Not worth it

I'm of the same opinion as you.

I've been primarily a Microsoft person since DOS 3.3. I've used most versions of Windows, been on NT since 3.51, I've played with Linux since the very very early days, but Windows has been my daily driver, as it had more apps I need. However, after 35 years, I will switch to Linux as my main OS soon and run any Windows stuff I need in a firewalled VM.

Microsoft has just got to hostile to its users. Most have little choice to stay in the abusive relationship now.

Veeam debuts its Proxmox backup tool – and reveals outfit using it to quit VMware

Re: Proxmox Backup Server...

Yes, why pay for Veeam, when Proxmox backup server is included?

https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-backup-server/overview

Starliner's not-so-grand finale is a thump in the desert next week

Re: Boeing and Intel...

True, and the engineers don't seem to have to hire hit-men to take care of those pesky whistleblowers, like Boeing.

CrowdStrike's meltdown didn't dent its market dominance … yet

Re: "a costly and time consuming process"

Most likely most Crowdstrike customers are locked into a subscription model. Those CIO's who recommended Crowdstrike are probably gonna lose face if they go with another product, too.

Crowdstrike's labour costs are also down since they offshored most of their technical work in February 2024.

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Re: The big mistake

> "What made Microsoft, love it or hate it"

So true. Unfortunately Microsoft seems to have forgotten that what most users want from an OS is to run programs and get out of the way.

Many of the "upgrades" to Windows in the last 20 years have resulted in regressions, things look and work differently but in many ways they don't work better.

Judge acquits web dev accused of spreading fake news that led to UK riots

Puzzling

Why would someone in Pakistan want to provoke anti-Muslim feeling in the UK?

LibreOffice 24.8: Handy even if you're happy with Microsoft

Good spreadsheet as well

The spreadsheet handles very large csv files much better than Excel.

Re: If only there was a replacement for outlook...

it's a not a replacement for Outlook, it's an upgrade, a much better product called Thunderbird.

NASA will fly Boeing Starliner crew home with SpaceX, Calamity Capsule deemed too risky

A reputation for violence as well?

> "chasing next quarter's bottom line."

and chasing whistle-blowers, who then tend to die mysteriously.

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

Less is less

and with at least Windows 2.1 you could change the colour scheme to anything you wanted.

Taken away in Windows 10 - now you have to use a "color scheme" so that only certain colour combinations that are approved by the UI experts are possible.

HMD Skyline: The repairable Android that lets you go dumb in a smart way

Re: 3 years of updates ?

Even if it does have many weird hardware configurations, there are solutions to fix this up. BSP = board support packages abstract things away, allowing standard operating systems to run on a variety of packages.

Hell, even Windows has a HAL = hardware abstraction layer. This allowed the original design to run on Intel x86, DEC Alpha, RISC and MIPS CPU's.

Android is just a steaming mess to get built. Plus big companies like Samsung bypass the open source Android API to implement their own steaming blob of mess, like VoLTE drivers.

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday borks dual-boot Linux-Windows PCs

Re: questions

> "How does Microsoft get to apply patches to someone else's boot loader"

It's worse than that - Microsoft patches often include BIOS and even CPU microcode updates.

The most infamous was the microcode update to Spectre which slowed machines down around 15%.

So your machine is not the same after a patch Tuesday.

Microsoft rolls out one Teams app to rule them all

IRC could do much of what teams could do in less than 1MB of RAM.

Add in video calls, whiteboards etc and the old MS Messenger could do this in 16MB of RAM.

Teams is bloated because it is a web application so needs a webserver instance to run locally just to run it in 500 to 1000MB of RAM.

Atlassian CEO's idea to build 4,000-kilometer extension cord plugged in

It's going the wrong way

Pity he doesn't send it to the East coast of Australia, which is running out of power and pays more for it than Singapore.

Sorry, Moxie. Blaming Agile for software stagnation puts the wrong villain in the wrong play

Don't forget taking away features, too.

Even small things like Windows 10 makes it very hard to set up arbitrary UI colors.

The amount of PR spin involved in MS allowing Notepad to have a dark mode is incredible. Next year it will even support tabbed Windows.

I get the feeling software is now designed by multiple layers of committees.

ESA's Juice probe dances with Earth and Moon before shooting off to Jupiter

Positive spin?

These fancy trajectories are interesting, but I can't help thinking that launching on a bigger rocket with a decent booster stage would allow a direct to Jupiter trajectory like Pioneer and Voyager used.

Still, I guess it's a trade off and allows more mass for payload. Pity rocket power hasn't improved much since the 1960's.

Gartner mages: Payback from office AI expected in around two years

There's always a market for BS peddlers. The credit ratings agencies survived their colossal role in the 2008 GFC of marking junk debt as "AAA"

I predict Gartner will remain around doing the "thinking" for those who now call themselves "thought leaders".

Windows 11 Insider preview brings new Sandbox features and fatter FAT32

or Sandboxie

which was around in the XP days in Windows.

Google brings more Gemini AI features to Android, saves the best for Pixel 9

How about bringing old features back?

Features I want on the phone are the ones that they've taken away:

- SD Card, 3.5mm audio jack and a replaceable battery.

I'll bet for the $1000+ you're dropping on the phone they don't even include a charger.

Study backer: Catastrophic takes on Agile overemphasize new features

Boeing tried it on their 737 MAX series.

Incentives matter

Unfortunately, it is often easier to add new features than to fix bugs on old ones.

Also, adding a new feature impresses bosses.

Fixing something that's broken stains the developer's or team's reputation, even if they didn't originally write the code.

Need to move 1.2 exabytes across the world every day? Just Effingo

Re: So that's how your personal data gets shipped..

and I'm guessing personal Google Drive files have the lowest priority, which would explain it's tendency to lose files at random.

Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign

Be careful when you wish for censorship

Who decides what is true? Everyone has an agenda.

The Egyptian government shut down the entire Internet in that country in 2012 to block Twitter and Facebook during the Arab Srping.

CrowdStrike hires outside security outfits to review troubled Falcon code

Re: what happened

Crowdstrike's response sounds like they paid the third party consultants to make them look good.

The facts are clear: They did not test this particular release before releasing it to the world.

Sure, they may have tested the sub-components separately, but anyone who's been in IT or engineering knows that one must test the whole friggin' system.

Consulatant Jackpot Time?

One hopes many of these consultants are the US developers they fired in January before moving development to India in February 2024.

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free

Re: A 680MB download. . . .

Most of the size is the scanned WordStar manuals.

Remember the days when you bought software and it came with a manual?

50 years ago, CP/M started the microcomputer revolution

Re: Thanks Gary

Ah the DEC Rainbow. I was thinking about it the other day when assembling an expensive PC case. I remember the 5mm thick aluminium case it had. It was so well built. Even premium cases these days are puny in comparison.

Re: CP/M Gets AC From Idiot To Mostly Competent!!!!

Multiscribe, a word processor for the Apple 2e and 2c did full WYSIWYG in 128kB on a 1MHz 6502.

The original MacWrite did the same in 128kB.

Modern software is many layers of inefficiency and no-one cares as hardware is cheap.

Legal eagles target Intel for class action over cooked Raptor Lake CPUs

Did Intel do any QA?

One wonders if Intel shut down their QA department to save unnecessary costs?

Perhaps some bright spark MBA saw how well that worked for Microsoft in the last few years, users can do the QA. If there's a problem, just release a patch. Problem is it's a bit harder to patch hardware.

Boeing and Crowdstrike have recently learned similar lessons.

Intel to shed at least 15% of staff, will outsource more to TSMC, slash $10B in costs

Pump 'n Dump

Don't forget Intel has just received Billions in US and German government subsidies.

I wonder if they aren't just moving to a "more cost effective location" as they've also just announced expansion of their Begaluru and Hydrabad offices.

Intel prepares to cut 'thousands' of workers

Just offshoring

Intel announced expansion of their Begaluru and Hydrabad offices at the same time.

Microsoft remains massively profitable, investors await AI payoff

A New World

It's astounding to me that cloud now brings in 4x what Windows does ($105B vs $23B).

Xbox at $22B brings in almost as much as Windows.

Desktop hypervisors are not dead: Oracle preps major VirtualBox update

Re: Why I Abandoned VirtualBox

We got out of it for similar reasons. Plus it was always slower than VMWare player.

Anyone still using VirtualBox for free in a corporate environment should be very very careful not to install any of Oracle's recommended plugins, unless they want a visit from Oracle's licencing dept.

Microsoft's Azure networking takes a worldwide tumble

Re: MS...still safer than Boeing

At least reporting problems with Azure doesn't cause death like it has with the various Boeing whistleblowers

Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up

Re: Ooh, let me guess…

And even then...when the next Windows update drops Microsoft will just re-enable the backup all my files to OneDrive option.

Boeing Starliner crew get their ISS sleepover extended

Re: What are the astronauts doing?

No insurer is going to cover them. They are aware of the short life expectancy of others who have said nasty things about Boeing.

On actuarial tables, eeing a Boeing whistleblower is way more dangerous than being an astronaut.

CrowdStrike meets Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will

MBA culture replaced engineering culture

True there's no longer an engineering culture, it's all short-term cost saving by people who don't understand the technology.

Engineers are now a costly "resource" like paperclips. MBA's regard them as fungible. Why pay for expensive engineering resources when someone with the same title can be sourced in India for $9 an hour? Boeing did with the 737 MAX ACAS software, Crowdstrike did it in February.

All this ignores that engineering skills do matter, testing is crucial in a complex environment. The MBA needs to learn that even if they choose to ignore reality, reality will not ignore them.

CrowdStrike blames a test software bug for that giant global mess it made

It worked on my machine!

A sanity test of actually installing it on a few real machines before deploying it worldwide to 8.5M machines is something that used to be standard QA practice.

Crowdstrike's practices sound like criminal negligence.

How did a CrowdStrike file crash millions of Windows computers? We take a closer look at the code

You get what you pay for

In February 2024 Crowdstrike had layoffs in the USA and moved most tech jobs to India. They proudly announced this via a press release.

It's the same as Boeing's 737 MAX ACAS software being outsourced to $9 an hour jobs in India.

Unless very carefully managed, the savings are an illusion.

Mozilla Thunderbird finally gets system tray notifications

Re: It's fixed in BetterBird - has been for years

Betterbird is a Thunderbird fork that has many bugfixes that Thunderbird has refused to fix.

It's written by a group some of whom used to work on Thunderbird, but left because of politics, the other problem with FOSS.

CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor also linked to Linux kernel panics and crashes

Kutz is famous for his "fire fast" mentality. In February this Crowdstrike had layoffs and moved most tech jobs to India.

Kaspersky gives US customers six months of free updates as a parting gift

Re: Is it a trojan horse offer?

Who knows? There is a possibility Kaspersky was refusing to whitelist malware written by certain US three letter agencies. EternalBlue being a case in point.

An example may be being made of them to other AV vendors who are thinking of detecting things they shouldn't.

So you can choose who spies on your PC, Russian FSB or some US TLA.