Posts by Martin Summers

Ex-Microsoft maverick takes us on a trip through vintage Task Manager code

Re: "I'm proud of my younger self for a job well done"

"Couldn't make it up."

You seem to have had no trouble.

Outlook's clingy 'reopen last session' prompt gets the boot

Re: Perpetual Office

Something most of us will be in until the day we die or relatively close to it once we've retired. Sadly real life rather than dystopian.

Re: Is it just me...

It's not just you. I leave the emails open, at the end of the day if they're not dealt with I close outlook and let it prompt me to open them all again when I start it up again.

Like you say it's not perfect, but because the emails are not massively important I don't really care. It just works for me.

I was actually worried this article was going to say they were removing the feature.

Getty delivers text-to-image service it says won't get you sued, may get you paid

Re: Whose images?

How much are Getty charging for the images though? That's the crux of it. The photographers should be on a percentage of sales, not hard to do and the only fair way to do it.

As someone else has said, all this needs is a rival to disrupt the market and break the likes of Getty's hold and everyone is happy.

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Re: Dirt

"Dave, the senior BMS"

Bum Matter Surveyor?

Uncle Sam names three Amazon execs as Prime suspects in subscription ripoff case

Is this just a US thing? Cos I've just cancelled it on their UK site several times over the years and other than obligatory 'please don't go' screen, it's been cancelled in seconds. It's also fairly obvious you're being signed up to prime if you aren't currently.

UK Online Safety Bill to become law – and encryption busting clause is still there

Re: Why?

"We could hope that Signal and friends follow through on their threats to withdraw their services in the UK."

Since they stopped supporting bog standard SMS in the android client full stop, I stopped using them anyway. What I thought might end up as a decent WhatsApp replacement that I could use for everyone encrypted or not, has to my mind now shot itself in the foot. I even donated to them.

UK judge rates ChatGPT as 'jolly useful' after using it to help write a decision

When AI takes over completely from journalists, it's time to stop trusting the news completely. What will they do then when eyeballs are no longer on their content. Extremely short sighted short term cash saving decision.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

"One place where this would make sense is fleet owners"

It could never make sense, the hardware is already fitted and ready to use. It's already paid for by virtue of it being present in the car. To try and justify a subscription for something that is already there and would work but for the change in one binary bit is craziness.

Re: if you tolerate this then your chilled air will be next.

"I!Miss!The!Old!Yahoo!Headlines!"

Just not the clickbait style ones, 'one weird trick'. I see enough of those to invoke irrational hate, that it's not funny seeing them here even as a joke.

Probe reveals previously secret Israeli spyware that infects targets via ads

Re: Pathetic Apathy is as Pathetic Apathy does.

To everyone concerned here who hasn't been around long [best Brian Conley voice] It's a bot!

Obviously has ingested some questionable material recently.

Oracle cloud hardware to reside in Azure datacenters – and Microsoft's good with that

Re: Vertical integration, don't you just love it.

Oracle cloud services are appalling. They never did them right or reliably when I had to work with them some years ago and I doubt they improved. So I suspect you're right.

Japan complains Fukushima water release created terrifying Chinese Spam monster

Oh dear. I've got a couple of Tritium keyrings in my pocket that I've had for a very long time. Although to be honest I've not had any problems with my tentacles at all. I think it's just a scare story.

Windows screensaver left broadcast techie all at sea

Re: Who me on call?

Eluded is equal to and greater than Alluded? Sorry I'm just trying to be pedantic because of my own fragile ego not being able to have my mistakes corrected ;-).

Yes you are of course correct I did mean alluded, but stories are certainly eluding them.

Re: Who me on call?

They've eluded to their post bag of submissions being empty. So maybe they're having to stretch the scope. Quite a few entertaining yarns are put in the comments that would make decent articles. Maybe they should give the option not to be regomized so contributors can take their glory in the comments section.

Re: huh?

"Merrill's first mate was on duty making souvenir vids."

From the hidden CCTV in the passenger cabins.

High severity vuln in WinRAR could allow code to run when files are opened

Re: Need money to plug holes

I was going to make a comment like this until I saw yours. Yeah just think of the millions of shareware abusers out there now with Day 800 of a 30 day trial :-) WinRAR has the last laugh!

Lesson 1: Keep your mind on the ... why aren't the servers making any noise?

I was always taught that reversing the polarity would get you out of trouble.

Pack of GM Cruise robo-taxis freeze, snarl up Friday night traffic amid festival crowds

"He has no financial interest in Cruise or any other AV company."

No but his pals still work there I'm sure. Never know when this might come in handy for him.

I would personally recuse myself from any vote involving any company I ever worked for.

Virgin Media O2 offers plug-in 5G network in a box

Re: Vodafone 5G in a box

No they don't. Reading the article you have linked to states it is just a prototype and they don't know what to do with it just yet.

Want to live dangerously? Try running Windows XP in 2023

Right. Now you've done this and spent so much time getting it ready, connect it directly to the Internet and tell us how long it takes for it to burn to the ground. Go on, please!

Someone just blew over $190k on a 4GB first-gen iPhone

I'd love to know if there was actually an iPhone in there. How can they be sure unless they X-Ray it?

So now this box is going to sit there and be admired for the rest of time or until the owner croaks or it is sold again. What a complete waste of money for anyone sane.

Clingy Virgin Media won't let us leave, customers complain

Re: Simple approach

You don't have to call them

Text PAC to 65075 then give your PAC to a new provider.

That'll give you your code to transfer.

Text STAC to 75075 if you just want to leave completely.

This was dealt with for mobile companies. They have to comply. If they don't, complain to Ofcom.

Of course what doing this also normally does is get someone to call you, offering retention. By which time you've either already got your code or set cancellation in motion.

Re: Successfully Rubbish "We are committed to providing our customers with excellent service"

How on earth does that even happen though? Your price would normally only go up by that much if you were at the end of contract, and surely you'd know that you were? I just don't understand how this happens to people. I contact them well in advance of my contract ending and if anything I end up with a reduction, never an increase.

Also, if you are I assume unemployed rather than underemployed (same thing? Typo?) Then don't forget the social tariffs that are available to order from providers.

Virgin sent me a random email the other day saying my contract expired in 2015 and would I like to renew for 25% off. I'd not long renewed my contract and it had already been discounted. I'm now paying 25% less and locked in to roughly the same period of my contract than I was. Not entirely sure what's happening there. Maybe it was related to this and they are trying to head off any reputation damage?

Reputation wise, all of the big names have bad reputations. Virgin media service is different all over the country thanks to different integrated legacy networks, as well as just how much sunlight the cabinet gets at the end of your street. Customer service wise I tend to find if you use their WhatsApp it is reasonably pleasant. I've not rung them up for a while.

Sometimes when people ring to cancel they're just not firm enough about it and they let themselves get sucked in to the retentions dance. However sometimes that retentions dance can actually be in your favour and you choose not to leave anyway. If you deal with them politely and firmly on the phone I can't see how they can really make it difficult past a few offers being chucked your way that you can dismiss.

Microsoft admits unauthorized access to Exchange Online, blames Chinese gang

Err yeah, like it or not so does most of the corporate world. It's a standard tool, it works most of the time. It's also familiar. So regardless of Microsoft bashing, it is what it is until something actually better and deployable comes along.

China's openKylin 1.0 arrives. Our verdict? Not a bad-looking, er, Ubuntu remix

I don't know why you're being downvoted, the idea that there *wouldn't be* a considerable amount of Government spying and backdoors going on would be unthinkable.

Microsoft signs 1.5 million seat contract for Office 365 and more

Re: Value for money

It's not just teams and email, they're offering things like intune as well and external phone calling. It all has to be integrated into the NHS Mail admin portal too which essentially just runs powershell commands on their tenant when you tick a box etc.

NASA and miners face off over lithium deposits at satellite calibration site

So they're accusing NASA of photoshopping images to make spurious claims? That's quite a big allegation there. If only someone had a satellite pointed at the area to verify such claims.

Vodafone offers '5G Ultra' to users of very specific phones in very specific locations

Is the phone restriction possibly due to them offering mmWave in those locations I wonder?

Virgin Media email customers enter third day of inbox infuriation

A few more of these and they will have managed to convince even the most diehard users of their email service to ditch it. I presume that would be a blessing for them. Not stating that's the reason for the outages (one letter away from outrages, how apt) of course, no sir, not at all.

With dead-time dump, Microsoft revealed DDoS as cause of recent cloud outages

I was configuring intune for iOS at the time. I was glad to be able to leave on time for once!

False negative stretched routine software installation into four days of frustration

Android auto is annoying as heck with its constant requests to be removed and re paired with the car even though there's nothing wrong with it. It has some odd quirks that potentially are the fault of the cars software too no doubt. There's also the constant pop ups asking me how I find my experience with Android Auto which I dismiss, thinking how about you actually test your bloody product or make use of that lovely telemetry you are no doubt collecting (c'mom it is Google).

Astroscale wants to be the world's friendly neighborhood space garbage collector

Re: is this correct?

"People seem to be able to drop litter with impunity in the UK"

Some people want and expect to drop litter with impunity. Let's not forget that. Those people are the problem and not anyone in authority, let's get that straight.

Kinder, gentler Oracle says it's changed, and now wants you to succeed

"Customers are choosing to run on Oracle infrastructure for all their requirements – be they new services like AI training, or services we're known for, like database and Java,"

Just who the heck are these people who buy new services? Are they masochists? Have they heard of Oracle, did they not experience enough pain already?

The world just got a little less understandable.

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked, keygen now works on Linux

Re: Nothing to see?

Because legal reasons? I don't recall Microsoft saying anyone could have a free for all on XP.

North Korea shows off surveillance satellite it claims it can launch

I find it funny that the article devotes considerable time to how badly North Korea treats its citizens and states how this does nothing for their impoverished citizens. Well you could say that about any space launch in any country really couldn't you. India receives foreign aid for example and still spends money putting probes up. Like someone up above said, I'd love to know how the heck NK manage to get this far in the first place. Although I'm sure backing from the likes of China and considerable purloining of sensitive information has something to do with it.

'Top three Balkans drug kingpins' arrested after cops crack their Sky ECC chats

Re: Nationalise The Drugs

We will also need a thieves guild.

Microsoft puts the freeze on employee salaries, CEO pay still as hot as ever

Make lots of money, pay your staff well, foster loyalty trust and increase productivity. Increasing your profit and revenue and then saying we can't increase your reward for doing that just doesn't cut it. Nor does it make any real sense.

Yes shareholders I know, but am I naively missing something else? Do they really think that revenue and profit are going to be obliterated in the near future?

Building your own private 5G is as easy as Wi-Fi

Re: Quick question...

"Note that the approach I’m describing uses CBRS spectrum that is allocated in the US; other countries are in different stages of establishing similar allocations. You'll have to do your own research there. In the UK, you'll likely need to talk to Ofcom."

Payments firm accused of aiding 'contact Microsoft about a virus' scammers must cough $650k

My best reaction was when they finally twigged I was having them on, after I said "I can see a picture of a penguin on my screen" and I then said to them, what would your mother think of you doing this? What would your god think of you scamming people? Whilst the scammer literally screamed noise down the phone at me. I think that was 40 or so minutes, which was good going considering I wasn't even in front of a machine.

OpenAI CEO confirms biz is not currently training GPT-5

Re: Can you really believe the denial whenever so much is at stake?

Classing bots as 'they' now? Hey aManfromMars, you've achieved sentience (apparently).

Re: Can you really believe the denial whenever so much is at stake?

Well I suppose whilst I would actually class you as spam, at least you aren't punting drugs and porn on the comments section. You're our very own benign pet bot.

Brits start 'em young with 20% of tots 'owning' a smartphone

Prior to the Internet, the telly box was the babysitter for a lot of kids, the delivery method has just changed.

What really is the problem, is adults having kids and then paying no attention to them or doing anything with them at all because they are glued to their phones. I've been guilty of this.

Then there's 'sharenting' where a poor kids whole life ends up on social media with little or no concern for their privacy. This is particularly damaging when they grow to being adults which many from the first generation to suffer this now are.

The memories that should be cemented in your mind are absent, because you were staring at them through a screen passively rather than being engaged with the live situation. And it's too late to get them back.

Virgin Obit: Launch company files for bankruptcy in US

I guess they decided they all needed more space.

Paid and legacy Twitter verification now indistinguishable

Re: There's a browser extension to fix that....

Gosh, why did they bother? Who cares that much about whether someone was legacy verified to install, let alone create a plugin.

Europol warns ChatGPT already helping folks commit crimes

Re: ChatGPT forerunner

"There speaks the pre-ChatGPT generator."

And there's me getting moderated the other day for saying aManfromMars was old hat and saying he needed plugging in to Chat GPT.

Journalist hurt by exploding USB bomb drive

This is presumably the BOFH method of penetration/security testing with staff...

No reliable way to detect AI-generated text, boffins sigh

Re: Just check the commas

Go check the post from amanfromMars above. By your logic he's a fleshie.

Re: Ground Zero 0Day Vulnerability Base

Well at least we can spot you a mile off. You need an upgrade, you're old hat now and it's embarrassing, this is a tech site after all. Tell your creator to plug you in to Chat GPT. Would love to see that.