Posts by James O'Shea

Wetherspoons bars smart glasses from filming customers

Treat the silly things the same way that Flock cameras should be treated: a nice can of black spry paint does wonders.

Britain isn't considering datacenters' thirst for water in its 'AI superpower' ambitions

Errr

I was under the impression that Britain is an island, totally surrounded by lots and lots and lots of water. To be sure, it's _salt_ water, but there's an easy fix: massive desalination plants powered by the continual jaw-jaw-jawing in Parliament. Why, then the problem would be to limit the intake, or they'd drain the North Sea... Think of all the jobs which would become available... and the excess salt is sure to have something valuable in it! We can make Britain a world power again!

Using AI makes people less likely to admit they don't know something

Seen on Reddit

A short time ago, I saw an... interesting... interaction between two Redditors. One of them claimed that Word for Web was trash, and should be avoided. One claimed that MS pioneered new features on Word for Web, and that the latest and best user experience was on Word for Web. He was promptly challenged to provide three new features that had debuted on Word for Web, and when they arrived first for web and then for the desktop app. He rose to the challenge by enlisting the mighty Copilot AI, which found _five_ new features. Except, as the other guy pointed out, Copilot couldn't provide even one date. Worse, one of the 'new features' had debuted for Word for Mac version 3, in the 1980s, and was later ported over to Word for Windows; another 'new feature' was in Word for Mac 1.05, in 1985. One more was in Word for Windows and Mac v6, in the early 1990s. All three were well before Word for Web existed. One more debuted in Word for Windows 2010, appearing in Word for Mac 2011. The last one arrived simultaneously in Word for Mac, Windows, and Web. The original poster attempted to say that because Copilot said it, it might be right, and that the other guy was simply wrong. The second user provided times, dates, and support from Microsoft's own site. He further pointed out that even if Word for Web had certain features early, which the first guy could not prove, that did not mean that Word for Web wasn't trash, and proceeded to provide support for his position. The first guy simply stopped responding.

I found it fascinating that someone would actually argue that it must be true because the AI said it, and that anyone arguing against the mighty AI must be wrong.

Idiots walk among us. Be afraid.

And, oh, yeah: Word for Web is trash.

Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem

Re: Too many to mention them all....

The ThinkPad I'm using right now to type this has two Backspace keys. One is big and right next to the Delete key. One is small, in the F-key row, and next to the power button. It also sets the sleep mode, if pressed while the Fn button is also pressed. Yes, the screen is supposed to go black if you hit the wrong button...

Court tosses Microsoft's appeal in pre-owned software licenses spat

Re: Moving customers to the cloud means we can screw them over for a subscription.

Stop posting nonsense.

I have in my hand a 128 GB USB 3.2 thumb drive. I have before me a computer which has available USB A-type USB 3.x ports. Plug thumb drive into a port. Format thumb drive with file system of choice, this one is formatted FAT32 for reasons known best to the vendor, I made it EXFAT instead. I could have done NTFS or APFS or EXTx instead. I can then select up to 128 GB of files from the OneDrive and copy them to the thumb drive. If I wanted to copy all the files in the OneDrive, I could get an external 1 TB USB 3.x spinning drive or SSD, plug it in, and just copy them all. MS cannot stop me.

Replace 'OneDrive' with 'GoogleDrive' or 'iCloud' if you use other cloudy services.

Note that the majority of the data on machines at work is either in the process of being converted to ODx formats or already has been converted. Work OneDrives will be terminated at the end of August.

MS may want to try to keep the users' data in their cloud and may want to charge a subscription, but there is nothing requiring you to actually pay and to use their services. Just have a proper migration plan and execute it. And stop paying MS. And there is NOTHING that they can do to force you to stay.

Note that in the case of my workplace, the 'proper migration plan' includes moving to Linux (Ubuntu) and Mac except for select legacy devices, which are not allowed contact with the Internet precisely because they are legacy (WinXP, Win7, mostly) and which therefore don't have modern versions of MS Office or a OneDrive in the first place. Some of the older Macs have MS Office 2019, which is due to die on 13 July; they are now fitted with LibreOffice.

User swore hacker called General Failure had invaded his PC

Re: Wasn't Netware Dead and Buried by 2000

Some people still had NetWare well into the 2000s and indeed into the 2010s. I last encountered NetWare in the wild in 2014. Never underestimate the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.

Even the Secret Service won't use company-issued phones

Ahem. Squeaky Fromme. Sara Jane Moore. And, of course, he who would impress Jodie Foster, John Hinckley.

UK school’s network left wide open for invasion, student found

Re: He Should Have Reported This, *Anonymously* ...

And after logging into a computer other than the one he usually used, or even a 3rd-party machine using any of the many remote access tools available, and using the admin username and password. Preferably the afternoon before a major holiday, a few weeks/months after he uncovered the weaknesses. And, oh, BCCing the individuals in question, so that no-one knows who else was notified until they compared notes. If they compared notes.

The resulting furor would have been something to see.

British Home Office seeks techie to herd nearly 1,000 engineers looking after 600 systems

Re: Compensation seems a little light

Could be worse. Could be Milton Keynes.

Microsoft accidentally kills epic Outlook email threads

There's noway that this was an accident

Thunderbird for the win

Smartphone market to shrink 15 percent this year due to memory crisis

Err... no. I use a phone as a phone: it's a comms device. Voice, text, messaging, that kind of thing. I rarely use web browsers, banking apps, etc., on a phone; that kind of thing gets done on an iPad or a laptop. Any AI installed would be turned off (so far, at least, Apple has clear paths to 'no AI', including not installing it/not turning on/turning it off quickly) or just ignored as it wouldn't affect how I use the phone. There's a _reason_ why I have a 16e: it's (relatively) cheap and is NOT a 'flagship'. Just as the SE 2nd it replaced was cheap and not a flagship. Any replacement would also be cheap and not a flagship. Note that I waited until the 17s were out before getting the 16e, making it cheaper; I would do something similar when the time to replace the 16e arrives... in four years or so.

I have an iPhone 16e from T-Mobile. They want me to 'update' it to a new device. I haven't finished paying it off yet. The 16e replaced an iPhone Se 2nd generation, which was five years old at the time it was replaced. I plan to get five years out of this device, too. No, I will NOT be 'upgrading' at any time soon.

Apple's WebKit performance tax leaves iOS browsers stuck in the slow lane, says Microsoft

speed racer

Umm... I have before me a MacBook Air, running the latest Apple non-beta OS, and Safari (latest release) and Firefox (just updated to 152 this morning). I also have a Lenovo desktop (not one of my personal machines) running the latest MS crapware release and Edge and Firefox (just updated to 152 this morning) plus an iPad Pro on the latest iPadOS release and running Safari. All are connected by WiFi 5, to the same WAP. The iPad Pro is, if anything, very slightly faster than the others; the difference is totally insignificant. Edge on the Lenovo is the slowest, but not by much and frankly if I hadn't been looking closely at performance I wouldn't have noticed. All three were connecting to El Reg's front page, and then to Yahoo's front page. I suspect that the main difference is that I have adblockers running in Safari and Firefox but not Edge, so Edge gets slowed by ads. Who knows, if I had an adblocker on Edge it might place first, but it's not my machine and those who own it don't want any 3rd-party extensions on Edge. (Which is why I usually use Firefox on that machine...)

US Army picks out Vampire to fill a gap in its layered drone defenses

It's from the 1960s. It's a repurposed Paveway system. Again, cheap.

Cheaper than that. The rockets are 1940s tech.

The 2.75" FFAR is a 1940s weapon. It's been in production for nearly 80 years. It's _cheap_. There are millions of them sitting around; it was the most commonly used air-to-ground weapon in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese captured so many when they went south, liked them now that they weren't being used on the NVA, and put them into production themselves because they were cheap and easy to build. When the Chinese went over the border in the late 1970s, among the weapons deployed were thousands of 2.75s. The Chinese achieved none of their war aims (Pol Pot's murderous regime was removed from power by the Vietnamese Army, Pol Pot himself fleeing to China) and declared victory and went home after taking significant casualties. The electronics involved are cheap, and have been in production since the 1960s for the Paveway series glide bombs. Even the lasers are now cheap, and don't fly with the rockets so can be reused.

Re: Why?

Tradition. The US Navy, for instance, used to have a love affair with stuff starting with 'T': Terrier, Tartar, Talos, all SAMs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-2_Terrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-24_Tartar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-8_Talos On land, the US Army went with assorted Nike systems for their SAMs, my favorite being the nuke-armed Nike Hercules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Nike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nike_Hercules There's a nice little Nike Hercules base near me; it could have put a 20-kiloton warhead above Havana and the US Army made sure that Fidel knew it. It's decommissioned now.

The Three Ts were replaced by Standard, the Nikes by Patriot or nothing; the US Army no longer has a long-range nuclear anti-aircraft missile, or at least won't say if it does. (Note for Canadians: the Spartan and Sprint nuclear SAMs were deployed as anti-ballistic-missile systems in the northern tier of the contiguous 48. If they were used, they would have been used over Canada. Someone in Canada noticed. There was a spirited discussion and the Spartans and Sprints were decommissioned.) All three of the Three Ts had nuclear variants. There were nuke variants of the Standards, too, which have been, officially, withdrawn. In Ye Goode Olde Daze a good way to tell if a US Navy ship had nukes was to see if the magazines had Marine guards. If there were armed jarheads in the magazine spaces, there were nukes.

This kind of thing goes back a long way: Fairey Aircraft had a long line of aircraft with names like Swordfish, Albacore, and Barracuda. Hawker Aircraft had Hurricane, Typhoon, and Tempest. AV Roe had Manchester, Lancaster, and Lincoln. Supermarine had a lot of machines with 'S' in their names: Spitfire, Spiteful, Seafire, and Seafang. De Havilland had Moth (several Moths, actually, my favorite would be the Tiger Moth), Mosquito (and Tsetse), Hornet, Vampire, Venom, and Sea Vixen. Republic had Thunderbolt, Thunderjet (multiple variations), Thunderchief, and my favorite, the Thunderscreech. (The Thunderscreech was the loudest aircraft ever built. It more than once caused personnel at an air base, used to loud noises, to become physically disabled by sound alone.) And, of course, there would be ship names: Warspite, Dreadnought, Invincible, Illustrious, Indomitable, Enterprise...

Finally, the 2.75 inch Folding Fin Aircraft Rocket is _ancient_, it's a 1940s-50s era air-to-air weapon repurposed as an air-to-ground weapon in the 1960s and now repurposed again as a ground-to-air weapon by adding a laser sensor and some electronics. It's had many names, including Mighty Mouse, Hydra, and now Vampire. It was directly inspired by Luftwaffe rockets used to try to break up USAAF bomber formations in 1944-5. We're talking 80 years here.

Malware scare keeps schoolkids home for a second day

Re: School can't school?

The paper version of certain texts cost in the hundreds of dollars, and you can't use secondhand copies because the books come with a 'key' to 'online content'. That key can be used once, and students who don't have the 'online content' cannot pass the course. The LMS-embedded versions have DRM, some (Cengage! Looking at YOU, you bastards!) rigged so that you can't print or export to PDF. If you really want to make a copy, you can generate a screenshot of each page, then assemble the combined screenshots as a PDF or run them through OCR and feed them to EPUB. Most texts are several hundred pages long. You go and make the screenshots and build the PDF/EPUB/whatever. There are ways to defeat the DRM but they're almost as tedious as the screenshot method, and cause problems when there are lots of figures, tables, and such. With the screenshot method you get the figures and tables and whatnot in the correct place. What won't be available would be the 'interactive learning' stuff built into the e-texts. That 'interactive learning' stuff is tied directly into the gradebook in the LMS and it is impossible to pass most courses without it. Go ahead, go to a lot of trouble to pirate that book... and still fail. That's why McGraw-Hill and Wiley don't bother heavily DRMing their e-texts, it is perfectly possible to just pour a McGH Connect or Go book into a PDF without much effort, but the interactive stuff is all gone and you're not passing if you don't have the e-text.

I have EPUBs and PDFs of certain texts, available if the network dies, but that's because I'm paranoid and building those files was easy enough except when Cengage is involved. I don't need the interactive stuff if I need to put something up fast when the network isn't behaving. But I'm the instructor, not a student, and the students most definitely will need the interactive stuff. (Note: I can't even hint that I can get a DRM-free version of the e-text to students, that would result in the vendors foaming and school admin fainting.)

All the e-texts are in the LMS. No LMS, no e-text, no assignments, no grades, no class. It's stupid but that's how it is.

Re: School can't school?

It's not that simple.

1. The 'text' is embedded in the class shell on the (ahem) Learning Management System. Paper texts are heavy and expensive and take up space; texts in the LMS weigh what the iPad or laptop weighs, cost less, and take up only the space taken up by the iPad or laptop. (Substitute 'Chromebook' for 'iPad or laptop' in some institutions) Why did schools, all the way up to tertiary level, go with 'texts' embedded in the class shell? Because paper texts are big and heavy and expensive, students were forever 'forgetting' texts, and that's if they bought the texts in the first place. If the texts are in the shell, the students have access to them 24/7, as long as they have a working computer of some type with an internet connection and a compatible web browser. (Note: McGraw-Hill Connect books have problems with Firefox, starting with v148. McGH says it's a Firefox problem, they aren't changing. Mozilla says nothing at all. Other McGH products still work with Firefox. Guess how I know this.) Assignments (Projects, quizzes, demos, videos, and more) are embedded with the 'texts'. If you don't have access to the text, you can't download the files necessary to do the work, you can't take tests, you can't run the simulations, you can't do much of anything.

2. The gradebook is in the LMS. Grades are entered based on the assignments. Oh. Wait. No assignments because no internet. So... no grades. The instructor can't even enter grades by hand, as they can't access the LMS either. The LMS used by the Fine 3try Level Institution that I do some work for is Canvas, which was hacked just before finals this year. Because I'm massively paranoid I had nice little spreadsheets with class rosters and grades, and old exams created by no longer officially supported exam creation software which could be printed. Others, including many of the full-time faculty, did not. Canvas was patched, but there was a HUGE backlog.

3. The class is often built around using the LMS and a projector, and sharing using Teams (ick) or Zoom or whatever; the Blackboard LMS has built-in sharing. Oh, wait. That requires network access, LMS access, and more; the sharing system would make a recording, which would be posted to the class shell in the LMS for students to review... oops. Not available, because no recording because no LMS and no network. And even if recording was available, no LMS to post it to.

it's simpler to just cancel class.

3. The class roster and attendance are in the LMS. Oh, look, there was no attendance today... The instructor can't print out a paper copy of the roster, either from the LMS or Workday or similar, they have no access.

World Cup AI predictor now lets users ask daft what-ifs

Re: "What if the players are replaced with each country's largest native rodent?"

Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay, home to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capybara, fight it out. Canada, Mexico, and the US, home to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_beaver try for second place. Everyone else can go home.

Apple version of Office 2019 becomes useless in a month

if you have some time to waste

Go to MS's site and try to get assistance, or even information, on this. Good luck.

MS Word on Mac user since 1984. (Yes, I bought Word v1. It was $100. It was copy-protected; for only another $10, MS would send you a second floppy, also copy-protected. I didn't take MS up on their generous offer. CopyIIMac would break the copy-protection. CopyIIMac cost more than $10 but broke a _lot_ of copy protection.) MS Excel on Mac user since 1985. (Bought v1 of that, too; also copy-protected, CopyIIMac broke the protection on that, too.) PowerPoint user since before Bill acquired it. Entourage and then Outlook user. I now use LibreOffice for most things (Thunderbird and Apple Mail for email) and have MS Office on my personal machines (Mac and Windows) only for use where LO breaks something, which hasn't happened in a while. If/when Office on my Macs stops working except as a file viewer, will see if cmd-A/cmd-C/move to an LO document/cmd-V works. If not, and I'm betting that it fails at cmd-A, delete MS from system.

MS Office is being deprecated at work; the holdouts are mostly Excel users. They will not be getting 'upgrades', so it's LO for them.

I will be touching MS Office only on machines provided by the Fine 3try Level Institution that I do some adjunct work for, and that only because they insist.

Nice talking to you, Sad Nad.

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Re: Fuck Off AC. Post with a handle. Especially when calling Fuck Off.

You will, however, fuck up.

AIs don't like religion – particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, study claims

Frankly, AI not liking Jehovah's Witlesses is the first good thing that I've heard of on the subject of AI use.

HP customer claims firmware update shoved printer off support cliff

Re: Sounds like how Apple drives new sales

Hmm. [looks at iMac 2007 24", 8 GB RAM, retrofitted with a 512 GB SSD, running OS X 14 Mojave, still working...] y'all sure about that?

Re: HP on a slippery slope

Many years ago I had an HP multifunction device as my main home printer. It connected to Macs. It connected to Windows. And then MS released Vista and Apple released Leopard shortly thereafter. And the device refused to print, or scan, or do anything any more. I contacted HP non-support. After a prolonged (well over an hour) wait at non-support, they stated that the device was no longer supported and I needed to get a newer device.

I did two things: I went to Ghostscript and HPIJS and downloaded unofficial drivers for Windows and then for Mac, and the device was able to print; I got better output with the unofficial drivers than I had with the official drivers. Scanning was a bit more difficult, but I managed that, too. I also purchased a new device, from Brother. The Brother device is STILL WORKING. It's been nearly two decades and many OS changes. The HP device died, finally, when the 3rd-party suppliers I'd been using stopped selling cartridges for a device long past EOL. I can still get cartridges for the Brother, and Official Brother Cartridges, while more expensive than 3rd-party cartridges, are cheap enough that I just buy the official carts. (There might be one or two lessons for HP here...)

I currently have a Brother grayscale laser device (nearly 20 years old and still running) and a Brother colour inkjet device and a Brother colour laser device which will theoretically replace the first two when they finally croak.

Google accused of pushing 'free for life' G Suite users onto paid plans

If I got one of those lovenotes

I would use the (meager) time available to move everything to another service and wave buh-bye to Google.

However, I am highly unlikely to get one of those notes as:

1. I never had one of the 'free', 'lifetime', G Suite accounts.

2. I used have GMail. I no longer do. Google was after me, repeatedly, to provide a cell phone number for 'security'. I declined. And then, out of the blue, Google decided that they could not verify that I was the correct user of the account and shut it down. Hmm.

Cloud-managed earbuds sound strange - as a concept, and on a plane

Re: We noticed your Colleagues were listening to..

I was thinking more of Battle Hymn, by Manowar. Sound the charge, into glory ride, over the top of the C suite's pride.

Hackers ate my homework: Educational SaaS Canvas down after cyberattack

It's Finals Week

Final exams, and major projects, all due, in Canvas, by noon today. Due dates may be extended by 24 hours, no more than that, as grades are due in (ick) Workday by noon Monday and that ain't changing. This weekend's gonna be fun-fun-fun. Certain students may regret waiting until the last minute.

TomTom’s route planner takes an unplanned detour into oblivion

It likely means that _onsite_ backups are screwed, and they have to dig up _offsite_ backups.

1 in 8 employees totally cool with selling work credentials

Re: IT, take notice

Some machines (Macs...) can have two network interfaces live at the same time and therefore two MACs and two IPs, one Ethernet, one 802.11. And, yes, they notice if you turn off/disconnect/otherwise screw with one of the network interfaces.

Hungarian cops cuff suspected swatter after two-year FBI probe

What kind of idiot

posts live video of themselves committing a major felony?

Microsoft boss tells investors the company is working to 'win back fans'

it took two tries but I got connected to someone who had a clue. He remoted in and did some stuff in the terminal/command prompt and in regedit, rebooted the machine three or four times, and killed the MS account replacing it with a local admin account and killed copilot and recall while he was in there. I could probably have done all that, except that I really don't like playing with regedit (my friend thinks that 'regedit' is a job at the Register, so there's no way that he would have been able to do this). It works now. My friend really wants to know why on earth it was such a problem to get local account and not to have copilot or recall or any of that stuff. And why did it require command-line and registry editing, instead of a simple 'click on uninstall'. If it wasn't for the fact that a lot of the apps he uses on a regular basis aren't available under Linux he'd have had me just put Ubuntu on the machine. As it is, he'll be getting a Mac when he replaces this unit.

If you get someone at MS who knows what he's doing, you will get stuff done, and you will get stuff done quickly. If you get someone clueless, nothing will be done and it will take a long time to do the nothing. There are far more 'agents' at MS Support who are clueless than who know what they're doing.

Re: Fans! Fans! Fans!

Shit can hit the fan in a good way?

I'm currently connected to chat with MS to move a friends machine to a local account instead of n MS account. MS 'support' is being... MS-like.

Two men charged over series of arson attacks on 5G masts

Idiocy is its own reward.

Using the password 'admin123' wasn't as bad as sharing it on Slack

Re: WHAT DECADE IS THIS?

No. It becomes Pass#00$Word, Pass#01$Word, Pass#03$Word, as certain people require not merely changing passwords on a regular basis (every 90 days is one example I'm thinking of) but also require 'complexity', as in at least two capital letters, at least two symbols (which at the site I'm thinking of must be selected from an 'approved' list, limited to @, #, $, and *. I wish I were making this up.) and at least two numbers, and must be a minimum of 12 characters in length. I told the boys running the site that they were inviting passwords as noted above. They replied that they knew, that they use similar passwords, and that their hands are tied, this is a Directive From Above. Someone senior once read a short article on security and now has fixed ideas on the subject and cannot be moved.

Sticky-note security turned gym into hall of '80s horrors

Re: Bike!

Are the fat-bottomed girls riding today?

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

depending on whether it is allowed

I will try to set a DoB of 21 Oct 1805 and a user name of Thomas Hardy. An anyone who has a problem can kiss me. Guess where.

Microsoft publishes a workaround for Samsung's C:\ drive woes

Re: Opportunity

And this would be a problem for MS, exactly why?

Critical Microsoft Excel bug weaponizes Copilot Agent for zero-click information disclosure attack

Re: Frankenstein

Google Workspace? You're kidding, right?

1. It's Google. They WILL be having a look at everything touched by anything vaguely connected to GW. Don't use it for anything that has to be confidential.

2. It's Google. Sooner or later, Google will get tired of it and kill it. See further https://killedbygoogle.com/

3. It's cloudy crap. You will need a _fast_ internet connection. So not only is Google going to be going over your data, so will assorted others sitting on the internet between you and Google. Really don't use this for anything confidential.

4. It's a bunch of previous Google tools mashed together, just as MS Office is a bunch of MS tools mashed together. You're trading one Frankenstein's monster for another. (Pendant point: Frankenstein was the guy who built the monster, not the monster itself. Just saying.) The main difference is that the various MS Tools have decades of history (Word for both Mac and Windows is/was based on Word for Mac 1.05, from 1984-5; Excel for Mac and Windows is based on Excel 1.0 for Mac, 1985; PowerPoint is based on PowerPoint for Mac, 1988; Access is based on Access for Windows, 1992. Google Workspace is a lot younger. Google hasn't had time to find all the problems that MS has had. (Google also hasn't had the time to fuck things up as badly as MS has...)

If you must use a non-MS product, may I recommend LibreOffice? It has a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation system, a DBMS, and more. And there's no cloudy crap in sight. And it doesn't export your data to the mothership for whatever purpose, including but not limited to AI training and ad-hawking.

The only office suite that I'd rate as being a worse choice than MS Office 361 CoPileOfShit would be Google Workspace. Pretty much anything else is a better idea.

Yes, I use LO. No, I don't use Google products, including Chrome or Android, unless I have no choice; there's Android on my 'smart' TV. I have limited the unit's access. The unit complains every time that I turn it on that it can't access the mothership and that I might be missing out on various goodies, none of which I care about .

Sorry, kids. Memory crunch threatens to kneecap Chromebook shipments

Re: Good riddance

Bloody hell. Looks at ancient Mac mini 2014, 8 GB, running Firefox with three windows open, 32 tabs in one, 52 tabs in the second, 49 tabs in the third... I can't live without my morning comix fix. First thing is that I open a new window, right-click on the 'comix' folder in the bookmarks toolbar, open all 56 comix pages... when done, close the window, but for a while I'd have four windows with more than 30 tabs each open at the same time. if you're having problems with 50+ tabs, the problem ain't the browser or the OS or the hardware, not if a decade-plus old machine with half your RAM can handle 190 tabs without complaint.

Hotpatching goes default in Windows Autopatch whether you like it or not

I'm so glad

that my personal systems are macOS and Ubuntu, except for a Win10 laptop, a Win7 desktop, and a WinServer 2008 R2 machine due to be decommissioned Real Soon Now.

I predict Fun Times Ahead. So... which will get borked first: printing? Network access? Security? Why not all three? (Note: assorted Patch Tuesday 'updates' over the last 18 months have broken all three. In several cases, MS has broken stuff twice.)

Get out your popcorn, lads and lasses.

Flying cabs, next-gen aircraft cleared for takeoff in 26 states

Re: Maybe

That link is a 404.

Microsoft 365 confirms new premium tier, stuffed with AI and few discounts

The Patero Principle applies: 80% of users use 20% of the features. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

The problem for software devs in general, not just for MS Office, is that it's not necessarily the same 20% for every user. Many features are used by virtually all users. A very small fraction of features are used by a very small fraction of users... but those users use those features _a lot_. Back when I used MS Office (I've moved to LibreOffice for most things) I wrote a lot of reports, with tables, tables of contents, bibliographies, and illustrations. Layout apps, such as Quark XPress, were usually overkill (and overly expensive) and creating those docs without certain Word features was tedious and annoying. The majority of users wouldn't know how to generate a proper ISO 690, or Chicago, or, God help us, APA format bibliography. Or what a table of authorities is. Those who did know quickly discovered that they could spend hours doing things by hand (you think I'm exaggerating? Try generating a table of contents, index, and table of figures for a 200+ page annual report by hand; the PHBs might not have clue one about ISO 690 formats, but they'll notice if the report isn't properly done.) or seconds using built-in features.

There are lots of features that only a few use, but that many people will notice if they're not used.

My problem with Office was always that MS kept moving things around and duplicating things. Word 2024 for Windows, for example, has the Editor button on two different Ribbon tabs: Home and Review. The Spelling & Grammar button is also on the Review tab, right next to the Editor button. The thing is, Editor includes spelling & grammar. The geniuses at MS put the same item into the Ribbon three times, including twice on the same tab. The F7 key also brings up the Editor. A major problem with new versions of MS Office was always finding out where MS moved stuff this time (moving the undo and redo buttons was a nice touch, there boys...and by 'nice' I mean 'completely fucking insane') A lot of the changes were purely cosmetic. There's a reason why longtime users are reluctant to update. UX, MS has heard of it. Vaguely.

Patch Tuesday is tomorrow

MS, you're not supposed to reveal the vulns until then,

Bad Sad Nad, no biscuit.

Re: One trusted solution?

Sure they should. Example sentence: "Never, under any circumstances whatsoever, trust Microsoft."

US struck Iran with copies of its own drones

Re: So what's the difference between a cruise missile and a "suicide drone"?

One's Islamic ('La ilaha illa Allah!') and one isn't.

DOGE bites taxman

Re: The assignment....

'Vaya con Dios'? That sounds Mexican. ICE is going to be paying you a visit. I hear El Salvador and/or Uganda are sunny at this time of year.

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

Re: It worries me that *everything* is being forced to depend on the …

Here in Deepest South Flkori-duh, Always Totally Terrible. used to, I repeat, USED TO, supply a UPS to home/small business 'service points' which had their DSL service, and the 'landlines' supplied were VoIP. They no longer do this. I personally have provided a UPS to those 'service points' I am responsible for. As the only load on the UPS would be the router, the phone, and, where necessary, whatever is doing the work of a switchboard, the UPS can usually hold out for quite some time. We get power from FPL; Frequent Power Loss blinks the lights quite often, but outages aren't typically long (except when there's a hurricane, of course), so the UPS is enough. The cell sites have UPSes and might have generators; they typically can stay up for an extended period.

Light a fire under those responsible for comms; cell towers around here got extended life UPSes and generators after several hurricanes. did naughty things, and the populace got pissed off. It's a bad idea to annoy Florida Man.

Re: Apples and oranges?

I used a landline yesterday.