Posts by daveeff

Windows 8: Not even Microsoft thinks businesses will use it

Re: Didn't this happen with Windows 95?

this did happen with 95 - I never used it, skipped straight from 3.11 to 98.

Good release, bad release - I went from DOS to WfW (3.11) to 98 to NT, to XP, to 7 (wow, did I not miss something between XP & 7?!)

UK music-rights collection: Where does all the money go?

Re: Levies - if they were on blank media

because mass production / sales makes DVD's cheaper than they would be if no one copied stuff?

Facebook stock plunge leaves tax-dodge Saverin WORSE off. Haa ha

Re: Harvard

>>It's funny how the people who make the least amount of money are the ones who are most indignant about taxes.<<

Yeah it's hysterical, people who's tax bills mean the difference between a holiday or no holiday, tesco value beans or tesco value minced beef, getting a tooth pulled or not because they can't afford an NHS crown get more upset than people who's tax bills mean a difference to how many billions they have in the bank that they couldn't spend if they spent their whole life on the shopping channel.

See Marie Antoinette's tweet #cake.

Look out, world - Mad Leo Apotheker's back!

Re: The Kruger-Dunning Effect strikes again

>>The success and failure of a company usually doesn't depend on its management.<<

I see you say "usually" there but lets face it, management have paid 10B for autonomy, imposed the usual HP management shit that means the talent leave & the boss gets sacked - looks like that is going to have an affect on success / failure for HP and Autonomy as was.

UK cookie law compliance takes effect today

Re: Does El Reg really think its compliant?

>>provide visitors with sufficient information to make a decision on whether they are happy for a cookie to be placed on their device<<

Saying we're using cookies covers that? Should say what data and why?

>> and obtain consent before placing a cookie <<

der, my browser is set to accept cookies, I could set it not to - I have given consent.

How to keep your money safe if the euro implodes

Go Export yourself

Germany exporting cars to Greece? If they're all the same currency are they really exporting? Does California "export" to Alaska?

A currency's value has got to be defined by it's fiscal policy hasn't it? Monetary Union without Political Union was never going to work, I can only assume either

a) politicians wanted a US of Europe by the back door

b) politicians are too stupid and too busy chasing short term kudos to take sensible decisions

c) both of the above.

actually I could just have stopped at

The Euro - & used the WTF is that all about icon

Vatican in pact with Microsoft to initiate world's youths into Office

I read

"given its highly centralised nature, strict hierarchy and tendency to clamp down on deviations from approved doctrine."

& thought we were talking apple.

Unions urge under-fire HP workers to 'resist' job cuts

A blow to UK IT?

Sad as I am for individuals facing job loss this could be good for UK IT. Get some more start-ups going with that redundancy money.

The worse thing to happen to UK IT lately was a bunch of US tossers buying Autonomy - HP are shit at IT.

What's copying your music really worth to you?

Obviously Format Shifting Should be OK

The format it comes in is 1's & 0's - unless I can "format shift" it into moving air & nerve impulses it's no use!!!

Unless I can transmit it (wirelessly or wired) from my player to my speakers it's also no use.

Personally I won't buy music unless I can also copy it from my PC to car to phone to player so I can listen to it wherever.

I only listen to one copy at a time so I can't see I'm breaking MORAL laws - except when my phone goes off when I'm listening to the album I took the ring tone from!

Smoke-belching flash drive self-destructs on command

power

Power could be an issue then - can I plug my laptop in so I can self destruct it?

My drives are truecrypted but what I want is a truecrypt delete password - type in the right password and all is good, type in the specific delete password and it scrambles the lot. If anyone forces me to disclose the password I can give the delete one.

DaveF

Speaking in Tech: The worst government IT deal of ALL TIME

safe search is ON

OK, so I know it was foolish but I had to google images bacon sex log.

Don't

BBC deletes Blue Peter from BBC One

Re: Meh

Magpie was cool (even better with the divine Ms Hanley) but wasn't around for the first N years of Blue Peter. You youngsters get off to bed with your warm milk and leave us grown ups to reminisce ;-)

US gov boffins achieve speeds faster than light

Re: Meh. So information goes a bit faster than light...

Monarchy may travel faster than light but the information about it doesn't. Yes the heir becomes the monarch the instant the old monarch dies but no one knows that until the death is observed & the (old) heir doesn't know they are monarch until the information reaches them.

If HRH Prince Charles were put in a sealed box with poison, a radioactive isotope & a cat ... Channel 4 would want to make a reality TV show about it.

Re: Science fiction? Or reapplication of old news?

"spot from a rotating light beam against a target a very long way away can achieve any velocity"

Nothing in the "spot" has moved, photon A arrived at point a (1 light year away), rotate the source 180 and photon B arrives at point b (2 light years away from a) only 1 one year+tiny bit later but nothing moved from a to b. No particle no data so no velocity - what is this "signal"?

"signals which do not carry information" AFAIK: signal=information

so signal - information > c

=> nothing > c

Re: >"individual particles are still moving at the same speed but there is a ripple through them"

And how much thought went into this thought experiment?

Obviously you aren't going to get rigid poles a light year long in practise but less obviously you aren't going to get them in theory either because of the very law it is trying to disprove. It takes takes time for the molecules adjacent to one to end to move when the end moves & so on all down the pole. I suspect given the stiffest pole possible (now that should get spam filtered) it would take about a year for the far end to catch up (if it were a light year away). See my comments on moving lights.

Given " two long perfectly rigid poles" information can travel faster than the speed of light - given a moped that does 5x10^8m/s pizza can travel faster than the speed of light.

Where's the icon for "I believe your premise is false" or indeed "Garbage In, Garbage Out".

Re: Yawnnnnn! Big deal.

You run up the train but aren't travelling faster than it???

The train is a 300yds long, we both get on the last carriage, I walk up the train to the first carriage. It arrives and we both get off. I'm at the ticket barrier, you are down the platform and walk to the ticket barrier.

I got there first - ie travelled further in the same time, so either I travelled faster than you or time dilated significantly. I can't see time dilation effects occurring at London Midland speeds!

'Oppressive' UK copyright law: More cobblers from IP quangos

Fair Use

If it is OK to rip a CD to my MP3 player (i believe it is morally if not legally) is it OK to download the MP3 of an album I own on vinyl?

If I am paying for the ip of the s/w / music / literature / movie am I entitled to my money back if it's not fit for purpose? Says it runs on Xp but doesn't, says it's a comedy and I never laughed ....

Dave

You can flog 'used' software, but read Ts&Cs first – ECJ

Support?

Did I miss something or what happens about support? If I buy s/w with 12 months support & sell it on surely the support goes with it? Most support happens on installation so 2 customers => twice the hassle.

I know companies who have sold lifetime support & upgrades - that sort of relies on the customer settling in and not bothering you after a while, if they sell it on...

Compulsory coding in schools: The new Nerd Tourism

We only want the good ones?!?

And how do you find the good ones unless you try and interest everyone?

Playing with css & html may be no more programming than playing in the sandpit is maths but we don't decide to not educate any kids unless they start reading "Calculus for Kids" or Dickens without any input from the educational establishment.

That's the way education works - you get kids to mix epoxy, hope they ask themselves "why does it do that?" and THEN teach them chemistry.

Playing with web pages is the start of the process not the endpoint.

Pew study finds one in five Americans still won't go online

Not everyone has a choice here...

> 2 per cent can't physically use a computer and 6 per cent live in an area where access

When you're done slagging these guys off spare a thought for those who don't have the option. Though of those 6% who have no access I guess they may have the option to move.

It's also not clear if this includes people who go on line via cafes / libraries but have no home access.

>can't physically use a computer

hmm, I've elderly rellies who could just about USE a computer but couldn't navigate the web too well (visual & dexterity issues) and certainly would have problems keeping AV up to date & taking on board the whole security mindset - they will ring premium rate lines because they've "won" something, what they'd make of a half decent phishing mail I wouldn't like to think.

And this is a US study - .7% of the population is in prison!

Windows 3.1 rebooted: Microsoft's DOS destroyer turns 20

want a start bar? Install caldera

I have a 486 laptop (I had to part with all the 386's & the 286!) with wfw and Caldera on the top of that to give a "win95" feel. It really is rather good.

See someone else's at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2pBdoo2TgI

The floppy drive has died but I have a backpack CD ROM with sound that connects via the parallel port. Normally I use a parallel port ethernet adaptor and map a drive to a real PC for installs.

File manager is a pain compared to explorer, compatability issues are still a pain - install one app and it may mess up others. Finding drivers is no fun (it never was but there isn't a lot of 311 support anymore for some reason(!))

2K was OK, XP was pretty good, 7 no real improvement (office is now dire) 8 looks disastrous for serious use. Unfortunately Ubuntu may be picking up some bad habits.

DaveF

Sitting down all day is killing you

standing desk

My company (v. afraid of being sued) gave me a desk I can stand up at (motorized! at who knows what cost!). They also gave me two mains sockets.

The fact I have 4 computers, 2 printers, a sep scanner, serial / usb / parrallel, cat5 mains cables (12+) means raising and lowering the desk is not really an option.

Dave

Devs spanked for touching vulnerable open-source packages

Testing, testing,...

There is is the minor issue of shipping stuff with known bugs vs shipping stuff with unknown bugs. Yes the old version has some vulnerabilities but without spending time and money we don't know the new version doesn't format c: or rm -r /*

Things we know we don't know and things we don't know we don't know....

Dave

MP allegedly cuffed after scrap in Commons bar

sad

I know this is a techie site but I'm still sad a story about our elected leaders resorting to punch ups gets so many posts about the definition of "theft".

Illegal downloads are illegal (der!), thumping someone is illegal - both can have debatable moral positions (violence in defence of self/others? copying a file to listen to a couple of times that you would never buy?)

We seem to be stuck on the download rather than the violence, but maybe that is what is more in our experience.

US survey: 1 in 5 telecommuters work an hour or less a day

US survey, YOU ESS - the guys in the offices there work an hour a day if you're lucky. US culture is to spend 12 hours a day at the office to make it look like you're a hard worker, not actually do anything.

The problem with home working is when you are not working you are obviously not working. Talking about the weather is work if with colleagues in the office, but not if with your wife in the kitchen. Not the dumb way "work" measured. The point is what gets done, not the hours "clocked on".

As for working in PJ's - when did code quality rely on what you are wearing? Would Hamlet only be good if Shakespeare was dressed when he wrote it?

Anyway, according to hollywwod t-shirts always out-hack suits ;-)

Daveeff