Posts by BitDr

Terrified robots will take middle class jobs? Look in a mirror

Terrified robots?

What has them so terrified? The thought of joining the vanishing in ddle class?

Shopping for PCs? This is what you'll be offered in 2016

Re: Call me old fashioned

The computer that is custom assembled (we don't build them) is generally much better than the name-brand you buy. When assembling a machine more control is exercised over the choice of the components. Selecting items that are built to last means cutting through the marketing BS, which can be a time-consuming task. Motherboards that can handle 32 GB or RAM, that use solid capacitors and a larger less-densly populated surface area (no built-in graphics or Audio) generate less heat and better dissipate what it does generate. Cases with good airflow management instead of good "bling" management. Cooling fans with quality bearings that won't fail in place of LEDs that do nothing to add to performance. A power supply with low-ripple in the output voltages, fast RAM, a kick butt CPU (8 cores or better) etc. Enterprise class HDDs (spinning rust) in RAID for data storage, SSD for booting (with a backup image of the SSD stored on the RAID).

If a business wants (or needs, in the case of specialized applications) to spend the money for licensing then by all means do so. I'll install your proprietary software and even manage your licenses and implement an audit program to ensure you adhere to their terms, all for a fee of course. I will not compromise on hardware.

Windows 10 will now automatically download and install on PCs

Re: I upgraded back in November, and Windows 10 is working great.

Now what possible reason could there be for NOT providing software support for a flatbed scanner... for goodness sake it's TWAIN isn't it?

You'd be surprised how valuable the metadata from the spyware is. That is the real money maker, the subscriptions will be a distant second.

Re: Sigh - Not again

"Windows 10 outperforms Linux Mint on most things"

Yessss.... if most of those "things" are in the area of privacy invasion and customer abuse.

Re: Sigh - Not again

Have an upvote & a pint! Those downvotes must be from MacIntosh users.

Rooting your Android phone? Google’s rumbled you again

Re: No problem here

If the problem is that the app can be too easily subverted once you have control of your device, then perhaps they should not have dedicated apps (which IMHO gather too much personal info anyway) and stick to using their websites.

P.S. My devices are not rooted and I refuse to use the app of my financial institution as it wants too much access.

Re: This is not...

Don't use apps for banking as they want too much info from the device.

Reg readers battle to claim 'my silicon's older than yours' crown

Re: Do terminals count? Adm3a from 1976

Ah, the ADM 3A, those were the new kids on the block in 75/76 when I started out. Their keyboards were pretty fussy, key bounce being an ongoing problem. We used them to connect to an H/P 2000 Access and H/P 3000 over acoustic modems. Wonderful fun.

Why a detachable cabin probably won’t save your life in a plane crash

It's been done....

And with modern materials and propulsion systems it could be SO much better.

Check out this newsreel footage of the Fairchild XC-120.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjgxiXxu3nY

Research: By 2017, a third of home Wi-Fi routers will power passers-by

Electricity costs....

That the Electricity costs MIGHT be close to zero is not the point. The point is that a third party is using a resource which is not theirs (your electrical service) and for which they do not pay.

I did a bit of number crunching. The output of the power supply for the my device is 12V @ 1.0 Amps so that's 12 Watts which is 288 Watts per day if it is on for 24Hrs. Although the device if used by me alone might not draw that much it might come close if it is having to reach out longer distances and serving more people. Lets use 10 Watts as the power consumed, so 240 Watts per day.

If we use 30.42 as the average number of days in a month then each month sees 7.3008 KW being used by the device. The actual cost of electricity here is equivalent to $0.2221 (yes our utility does carry charges per kWh out to four decimal places), so the monthly operating cost of the device is equivalent to $1.62.

Not a large sum of money, but is is added to your electrical bill and by extension your overall cost of living. If only you are using the service then that would be fair (you use it you pay for it), but the ISP is using you to extend their infrastructure at zero cost to them, which is somewhat less than fair, and IMHO not exactly ethical, but certainly a profitable.

Ban internet anonymity – says US Homeland Security official

Re: Think of the children

What we're actually discussing here is making a change to our entire society from "Rule Of Law" to "Rule By Law", and these are two VERY different things. A good explanation of the differences between these at can be found at http://branemrys.blogspot.ca/2005/08/rule-of-law-vs-rule-by-law.html. Below are two snippets from that blog;

"Rule of law is an intrinsically moral notion. Indeed, I don't see how one can have a consistent theory of rule of law without appealing either to natural law theory or to some higher rule by law (e.g., divine command theory)."

"Rule by law is very different, despite some superficial similarities. Rule by law is prudential: one rules by law (properly speaking) not because the law is higher than oneself but because it is convenient to do so and inconvenient not to do so. In rule of law, the law is something the government serves; in rule by law, the government uses law as the most convenient way to govern."

That sums it up pretty nicely. What we are seeing today is a movement to change society in a subtle yet detrimental manner. Enforcing the rule of law while maintaining a free society is not an easy task, nor should it be. Making it an easy task by turning to "rule by law" may ultimately lead to despotism, which, history shows, will eventually crumble. When that happens (not in my lifetime (I hope)) it may involve a great cost of life and set humanity back into a dark age.

Trouble is

When given access to power, or even when put in close proximity to great potential power, and information is power, people will ultimately do exactly the wrong thing. If there are rules in place to prevent abuse of power, then those rules will eventually be whittled away until they are no longer a concern. It is not a matter of "if", it is a matter "when".

Free societies are supposed to be above the tools of the "bad-guys", the likes of which killed millions of people in the first half of the 1900's. Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of liberty; vigilance against those who would peddle fear to undermine those liberties.

"All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, Losing, cheating and mediocrity are easy. Stay away from easy"

-- Scott Alexander

Test burn on recycled SpaceX rocket shows almost all systems are go

A Barge is not stable enough...

A platform built on a Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull (SWATH) design would perhaps be a better fit to purpose. Stability is a SWATH ship's calling-card. The less pitching & rolling of the deck the better the chance of touching down vs falling down.

Windows 10 makes big gains at home, lags at work

Re: Error in statement

Corporations yes, but not small office / home office.

American cable giants go bananas after FCC slams broadband rollout

Re: "FCC's fault" & Comcast

That act should be renamed the "status quo" preservation act.

Assembly of tech giants convene to define future of computing

Mmmmmm...

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Visionaries are not often those who are established, but those who seek to become established.

Al late reply.. buuuut

We use an on-premises owncloud server for our smart phone data sync, keeping Google at arms length as much as possible. You see I too was there (albeit just entering IT) when it was all starting to happen in the mid '70s. Yes Xerox invited the Apple gang to see their stuff, and the Steves "got it"; in exactly the same way that the Xerox "business" guys didn't.

Intel gets mentioned twice?

Anyway, cloud/schmoud. I want my data on my server my way and I don't want to have to pay someone else to get at it.

BTW, the "tech giants" are not those who define the future. If that was the case Dec, Unisys, Sperry Rand, Data General, H/P, Xerox, and Burroughs would have lead the way. In a way Xerox was a leader, but only through Apple's *ahem* adoption of the GUI concept. Anyway, the real pioneer visionaries were companies like Altair (the IMSAI was an Altair clone), North Star, Apple (for the Apple I and ][), Microsoft (for MS BASIC on CP/M). Digital Research, Tandy (TRS-80), Commodore (Kim 1 & PET), KayPro, Osbourne and the like. None of which were tech giants at the time. IBM was late to the game but their reputation (no one ever got fired for buying IBM) saw their platform concept take hold in a way that S-100 never did. Microsoft rode the IBM wave, using a code base purchased from Seattle Computer Products (QDOS).

Microsoft steps up Windows 10 nagging

Re: I don't respond well to force

They should perhaps take a lesson from the fable of The North Wind and the Sun.

Re: oh this is so funny

Watching them fall on their sword is indeed entertaining. I've never been busier migrating people from Windows & MS Office to Linux (mint) and Libre. They already use Firefox or Chrome, most use webmail, those that don't are finding the transition to Thunderbird from Outlook an easy one. Most like the Cinnamon desktop to be themed like XP or 7, but a few like the default. Those that are accessing their desktops via a thin client use Mate. It all just works and it doesn't spy on them or annoy them with constant pop ups.

Re: I'm waiting until it goes to 11.

"Yes, there are some nice features in Win 10 but we're going to have to wait for the next version before they get it right."

They had it right, it was called Xenix.

Adobe: We locked our customers in the cloud and out poured money

Fund FOSS then...

Get together as a group, make up a list of features you must have that are missing from something like, oh, say the GIMP, and then fund the development of those features. Write off the costs as R&D, and you will have your software, as many copies as you need on as many machines as you need, FOREVER.

Buh-bye Adobe.

France mulls tighter noose around crypto

France I would think

Had learned something from the Nazi occupation of their country. Where would France, and indeed the rest of the (still) free world be today without free speech & privacy in communications. Did iron-fisted tactics work for the Nazis? Are they a long-term viable way of running nations?

The worst thing we can do is to go down the road of neighbor spying on neighbor; suspecting everyone and trusting no one. The set of people who MIGHT commit a crime is much larger than the set of people who HAVE or ARE committing crimes. Police are meant to apprehend and investigate the latter, the former is the rest of the human race.

Obama calls out encryption in terror strategy speech

People

People are at once, the problem and the solution.

If it still works six months from now, count yourself lucky

Money Saved

Nothing lasts forever, but you can save much by assembling kit from high end components and using Linux || Free BSD. How? Purchase quality hardware, avoid shopping by brand-name, buy the maximum amount of RAM your MB supports, and purchase more CPU power than you need while remaining within budget. Similar rules apply to Hard Discs, buy enterprise grade long-life kit. Use RAID storage where you can (make sure you know how to manage them), and SSDs where speed counts.

The machine in use to write this has an Athlon II CPU, 4GB RAM (which is a small amount these days) and what was at the time a high end MB; it boots from an SSD and uses a software RAID for /home. The graphics card is an nvidia GeForce 6800 GS. A hardware RAID would be faster, but I've been burnt by their oft-proprietary nature, and when those fail they can be a more of a hinderance than help when it comes to getting them back on their feet.

The PC that this one replaced is also still working, 24/7/365 doing duty as an internal-facing web-server and NAS running an older version of CentOS.

Sun of a b... Solar winds blamed for ripping away Mars' atmosphere

This is old news...

For anyone who pays attention to these kinds of things this is really old news.

January 31, 2001

New evidence from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft supports a long-held suspicion that much of the Red Planet's atmosphere was simply blown away -- by the solar wind.

Source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast31jan_1/

Red Hat Enterprise Linux lands on Microsoft Azure cloud – no, we're not pulling your leg

How is this beneficial to anyone using free software?

This deal will, I think, not help RHEL as much as MS, and may bruise Linux fairly badly when it comes to cloudy offerings. Microsoft has worked superficially to make themselves appear friendly with Free Software, and this move may help them in this regard. The important thing to keep in mind is that at the deeper corporate level MS is still the same animal. It seeks control.

Is this good business? For Microsoft I think it is, but for Red Hat, if you're expecting great things then get ready for disappointment. Red Hat has moved their position from that of a competitor providing an alternative, to a partner providing assistance. I think they will be paraded around that light, and I think their customers may be obliquely portrayed as happy-campers now that they can use Azure. Let's see if that happens (I hope I am wrong).

As a strategic move by Microsoft I see how it benefits them, but I can't see any long-term sustainable gain for Red Hat. I can see one of two things happening with this deal;

1. Red Hat realizes what is going on and allows the deal to slowly fizzle out, thereby saving face.

2. They become Microsoft's lap dog

If I was Microsoft I would expect option #1, and not knowing how much time before the light comes on at Red Hat means I need to make as much marketing hay from this deal as possible.

Rule #1. Don't do business with Microsoft

Rule #2. See Rule #1.

Next year's Windows 10 auto-upgrade is MSFT's worst idea since Vista

Re: Bah!

Microsoft is looking more and more like the malware slime that we in the trenches fight on a daily basis. I guess they couldn't build an OS that would stop 'em so they decided to joined 'em.

Microsoft offers to PAY YOU to trade in your old computer for a Windows 10 device

Re: MS are idiots

Back in 2012 I wrote that "UEFI is a straight-jacket dressed up as a security blanket". Looks like I was right, something that, in this case, I am not happy about.

Chocolate Factory plops Marshmallow on Android slabs

A few small complaints, but good overall

In settings->apps they swapped the locations of the "Force Stop" and "Uninstall" buttons. I've almost uninstalled three apps in the last 24 hours. That's a nasty little difference. Otherwise my nexus 5 now charges faster and battery life seems to last longer. I rather like the return to the nexus one vertical scrolling applications. I found the swipe right to get to the phone very handy in Lollipop, now swipe right opens up a voice search? Also used to be able to swipe right, left, or up on any part of the screen to open the phone, camera or home screen, now only swipe up works on any part of the screen, left and right only work from the lower corners. Why doesn't the home screen rotate so it can be used in landscape mode?

So far these are the only niggles, I'm still exploring, but it seems to be an improvement overall.

Laser razor binned from Kickstarter resurfaces on Indiegogo

Prior foolishness....

Mad magazine, July 1979 "The Space Age Razor Race".

http://imgur.com/gallery/fDkFb

I remember reading this at the time and getting a chuckle out of it, only to see the insanity actually begin to unfold less than 20 years later with the Gillette Mach III.

How long does it take an NHS doctor to turn on a computer?

> Don't mock an end user for their lack of IT knowledge until you have the same knowledge of every appliance you use.

I don'[t mock people for their lack of IT knowledge, I mock them for their lack of knowledge regarding the basic use of the technology they use ion their day to day lives.

> Are you sure mechanics and plumbers don't make jokes about you?

I'm sure they do, but then I trust them about as far as I could throw them. Recently, while standing in an engine rebuilders shop needing some work done to a cylinder head, the shop owner tells me that they don't have a milling machine and can't do cylinder head work; all the while behind him was a machinist using a milling machine working on a cylinder head! Uh huh. I played dumb and left, I wouldn't trust him to tighten a nut to the correct torque.

Re: Oh ha ha

You don't sound/read like a computer illiterate. This kind of thing like a blanket policy for the hospital image. We had this problem where I once worked, a corporate image of Windows rolled out to all and sundry to standardize the base O/S, with tweaks to differentiate developers machines from user machines, or in your case it would be machines for the Operating Theatre, Imaging, clinical, ER, or administrative.

I feel for you. Frame it as a Health & Safety issue, see if they take notice.

Re: Oh ha ha

Not the same as not understanding how to turn on the machine. What you describe is a total failure to implement a cohesive security/privacy policy across departmental boundaries. Sounds like egos were being stepped on and everyone made up their own rules.

Re: Power...how does that work...?

Acoustic modems, 300 baud, ADM3A terminals... and we had it good! The university we connected to was still all using cards, still, we had to submit compiles as jobs not as interactive sessions, (HP 3000), until we realized we could log in as a job and have the compile output sent to our terminal. The sysop wasn't too happy with us. Later, gaining access to an h/p2645a vdt, we captured the screen to a built in tape, then spooled that to a decwriter.

Re: An argument for All In One computers

Actually an argument against them, single point of failure, monitor dies = replace whole system.

Turning on your computer is not an IT skill.

Top VW exec blames car pollution cheatware scandal on 'a couple of software engineers'

Rogue employees...

This smacks of a business decision made by marketing & sales; not a decision made by engineers.

I have no doubt that the engineers came up with the implementation of the solution, in exactly the same way that I'm certain that the engineers were not the ones driving the bus that they would eventually be thrown under.

PC shipments slump in Q3, thanks to free Windows 10

Re: The opposite view

Privacy concerns rule out win 10, UBuntu, and Chrome. Also rules out win 7,8, & 8.1 if they've been infected with KB3075249 and KB3080149.

Linux kernel dev who asked Linus Torvalds to stop verbal abuse quits over verbal abuse

Re: YoLotD

All you wrote was that "Linux has no momentum", which is false. Now if you had written that Linux had no momentum in the desktop then that, while also not true (there is some movement in these parts anywyay), is closer to the mark. You could also have written that Linux has momentum in NASA and the scientific community, much more so than in home-computing & small business, and that would be true.

I neither upvoted nor downvoted your post.

Cybercrim who fleeced students faces scramble to repay stolen cash

Punctuation!

'Cybercrim who fleeced students faces scramble to repay stolen cash"

There really ought to be some punctuation in that headline. How does one "fleece students faces" without their knowledge? Is it done while they sleep? Who buys this face-fleece? I'm guessing that only those with thick face-fleece were targeted by this miscreant.

HP's TippingPoint security bods on the block, suits shuffled to make way for 3D printers

"Our company is positioned perfectly to take advantage of our sophisticated intellectual property and know-how to transform industries and power the next industrial revolution."

Says it all really; they are not innovators nor are they risk takers, they wait on the sidelines and use their "sophisticated intellectual property and know-how to transform industries and power the next industrial revolution." It's a we didn't create it, nor did we help move it along, but now that it looks like it's not a fad we WILL jump in with both feet and splash around like we did.

Bloke clicks GitHub 'commit' button in Visual Studio, gets slapped with $6,500 AWS bill

Re: Trawling

Or better yet, it depends on whether it is a fishing boat or a phishing boat. Are phishing boats crewed by trolls?

Net neutrality: How to spot an arts graduate in a tech debate

Hmmmm...

>"Currently, ISPs manage the floor through a mix of pricing, scheduling, and not taking on too many customers."

If paying more gets you better performance then there are multiple floors and the ability to screw some while benefiting others is true. Not taking on too many customers is the right way to do it, but greed will win over common sense, and the pipes will be oversold, leaving many wanting.

> we made commercial steam engines without fully understanding the properties of gases, and experimented with electricity long before Maxwell developed his theories of electro magnetism.

The lack of understanding of gasses did not impede our ability to use the steam engines, and Maxwell would not have been able to formulate his theories unless experimentation was performed. Packet-switched networks are a creation of humanity, not some natural force that has been harnessed by us. As such they are theory in practice. I would posit that the understanding of their operation would need to be well in-hand from the start in order for them to exist at all.

When some are favoured and a great many are disfavoured the unfairness is prevalent and most likely intentional. To state that it is a result of emergent behaviour is all well and good, but it smells like a cop-out, something in the relationships is causing the bias; figure out what it is and squash it, unless of course it is deliberate, and they you have to invent another reason for it being the way it is.

I think network neutrality mean doing nothing special with any of the data passing through the network, (i.e. just keep it moving). Trying to give some data priority over other data is when (IMHO) "emergent behaviour" begins.

Brussels taxi union to disrupt the disruptors over Uber service

Re: Ridiculous

The French taxi companies (those that pressed for this law) don't understand that it prevents them from increasing their own profits by applying real-time tech to their services.

Greed & Stupidity reign.

Pirate MEP: Microsoft's walled garden is no consumer pleasure park

Re: Earth to Microsoft

I remember that kind of pain, it was about 2005/2006 when I was setting up dual monitors on diskless workstations that PXE Booted Fedora from a CentOS server (have your eyes crossed yet?). That was painful. Webcams were also painful... but we did it.

Today, 2015, I installed Linux Mint to replace UBUNTU 10.04 on a customers work-station. We turned it on and both monitors "just worked".

Re: Earth to Microsoft

Commercial/corporate won't. People tend to use at home what they use at work. Personal Computers were around long before IBM got into the game, but they never got popular until big business started adopting the IBM PC. Employees then learned MS DOS. In the early days of the Micro Computer, before large scale adoption by big business, when people bought a home PC, they bought an Apple ][, or a C=64, perhaps a Tandy CoCo, or a BBC Micro. Hardcore hobbyists bought CP/M machines.

There was a period of time (about 1982-1986/1987) when the PC market was booming as the machines penetrated big business and home users started to look at "PC Compatibles", because they wanted what they used at work. There were problems with these as they weren't 100% compatible, but that soon changed. Sales of the aforementioned 8 bitters started to wane as MS DOS was front and centre in people's minds.

Fast forward to Windows 8 and 10. Big business won't touch either and If corporate interests don't adopt 8 or 10 then they are going to move to something else. Linux is a good choice, so is Free BSD (as Apple has proven). Both are open (truly open), they can both be customized, and in the case of multinationals and banks thousands of expensive licenses or license packages are no longer required. To ease end-user adoption the GUI (for example Cinnamon) can be made to look like what they are used to. If they do this then all of those corporate employees will now no longer be using Microsoft's product. Unless they have forgotten their history this kind of scenario has GOT to be on Microsoft's radar.

If I were them I would start to try to cut them off at the pass, what's the weakest link in the chain? The hardware. Control the hardware and you control the platform that is used. But how do you control ALL of the hardware without owning it? I mean, even Microsoft doesn't have that kind of money. The answer is you use Other People's Money and some psychology.

The bit about "authorised devices" is the key here. If you can get the hardware makers to hand off control of driver distribution to you then you've got them just where you want them. Apply some psychology, use terms like "Secure" and "Authorised" and people will invariably buy in, thinking you are talking about protecting their systems and environments; even though you said no such thing. Mechanisms to authenticate device drivers and the OS against the BIOS (secure boot) drive the nail home. Firmware on the devices simply has to look to the BIOS for Secure Boot, if it is NOT enabled the device will not work. If your OS isn't secure boot enabled (even if it is Windows) then your shiny new device can be made to work if you turn on Secure Boot. Your Linux Distro might be able to use Secure Boot, but then you're paying Microsoft because they manage secure boot authorization keys. Win WIn Win (for Microsoft).

Words from the Bill Gates character in the movie Pirates of Silicon valley;

"You know how you survive? You make people need you. You survive because you make them need what you have. And then they have no where else to go".

Job done. And most people didn't see it coming.

Apple and Samsung are plotting to KILL OFF the SIM CARD - report

Re: And the carriers smile

Oh yes, secure boot can be turned off. It is not as easy as just clicking on a radio button somewhere in the UEFI settings screens. On an ASUS BIOS you are REQUIRED to enter a BIOS password in order to disable secure boot. Knowing people's propensity for forgetting/misfiling passwords, they will invariably one-day need to get into the BIOS (or someone like me will need to get into their BIOS to fix something) and they won't know or be able to locate the password.

Now the real question, Given that WPBT can load software onto a system from the BIOS without the need for Windows being present in memory, what benefit does a signed boot process bring to the consumer that would cause them to desire it?

Re: And the carriers smile

>>Uh, what makes you think that a new system wouldn't make switching virtual SIM cards easier than switching physical SIM cards?

A SIM card is switched out in less than a minute, it enables a device to change networks with the network carrier providing card. Replace the old SIM with a new SIM and presto you are on a new network. Now, ask this question, "who benefits from taking this ability out of the end-users hands"? Certainly not the end-user, who at present simply puts a new key in their device to gain access to a different network.

The cynicism is justified.