Posts by nijam

Stop the press: Journos not happy losing jobs to journo bots, say journos

Re: Analysis

> Now, this is a reasonably intelligent person...

No, it isn't.

> ... other reasonably intelligent people ...

No, they aren't.

Re: Bots... bots who need data / Are the luckiest bots in the world

> Which is going to allow every motivated blogger and radio personality to fill the gap with their own self-serving analyses.

Exactly how is that different from what journalists and editors do now?

UK Home Office spy powers unit pretended it was a private citizen in Ofcom consultation

> Mobile operators at home and abroad see COMUGs as devices operated by unscrupulous scammers determined to diddle them out of revenue

Users at home and abroad see mobile operators as unscrupulous scammers determined to diddle them out with overpriced calls.

Linus Torvalds lashes devs who 'screw all the rules and processes' and send him 'crap'

Re: "Does the chip vendor publish enough to let someone write a driver?"

> The APIs may tell a lot about the architecture of the chip itself, and you may need to know a lot of the chip architecture to use the low-level APIs proficiently.

That is just (very) bad design. If the device does not have a clearly-specified function that can be encapsulated as a clean API, the implementation is probably just as shit inside as the API looks from the outside.

Re: "Does the chip vendor publish enough to let someone write a driver?"

> MS is able to get companies write drivers for Windows.

Sometimes they pay those companies, if the device is one that MS sees a strategic or market significance in. Sometimes the company writes a driver because ... oh, you know, the device is useless without it. And there you have it - a device with no Linux driver is useless to anyone who is using Linux.

User rats out IT team for playing games at work, gets them all fired

Re: Big Companies and Policies

> I'm browsing El Reg now - when I should be working

Browsing El Reg *is* working - or at least I can convince my boss I'm keeping up-to-date with technology news.

Li-ion king Goodenough creates battery he says really is... good enough

Re: 94 years ..

> I would said that big advances in most sciences are made by relatively young people...

... but then the paper is published with their supervisor's name as author...

SHA-1 crack just got real: System Center uses it to talk to Linux

Why would any responsible Linux administrator entrust management rights of any kind to a Microsoft system?

Dyson backs Britain plc with $2.5bn AI and robotics investment

> most successful engineer Sir James Dyson

Most successful self-promoter Sir James Dyson, do you mean?

China proposes new world order for cyberspace regulation

Re: Nice Try

> I'm sure the rest of the world will rush to switch over.

Sadly, all too many would.

Congratulations IBM for 'inventing' out-of-office email. You win Stupid Patent of the Month

Re: Spoilsport

> What it protects is a system which notes when a user says they will be away - start date, end date and a message

Oh, a *calendar entry*. What a relief. No-one's ever thought of that before.

Move over, Bernie Ecclestone. Scientists unearth Earth's oldest fossil yet: 4bn years old

Re: Blood

> ... the prawn was far more intelligent ...

So what? People always believe this about their pets, not because it's true, but because humans - sorry, yumans, I mean - cannot help anthropomorphising things. [Yes, even abstractions - god makes perfect sense as an anthropomorphisation of ignorance.]

Re: 'seeded' from the same extrasolar source

> that does not disprove God in any way, nothing does or ever will, coz to the believer, "facts don't count" ...

True, but for the more subtle true believers, their God has been carefully designed to be intrinsically unprovable (one way or the other). Or perhaps I should say, their religion has gradually evolved its definition of God to be intrinsically unprovable.

In a loving tribute to its fiery washing machines and Note 7... Samsung management explodes

It's actually hard to see this a bribery in anything but a technical legal sense. According to what I've seen published, it's much more that he was the target of a protection racket.

Sony: Never mind the phones – look out at what our crazy lab scientists have done

> Years ago, Sony was one of the first of the old tier-one electronics giants to get fully behind Android. With its multimedia prowess, its amazing R&D pipeline and its refined design aesthetic, Sony should have ruled the roost.

Let me rephrase that ...

Years ago, before Android even appeared on the scene, Sony was starting to rot from the inside out. Their once-admired quality had vanished from large parts of their product range, leaving only the expensive badge and a now-hollow reputation.

Lap(top) of luxury: Porsche Design revs up 2-in-1 Windows 10 slab

Re: Built in Taiwan

Fiat used low-grade steel long before that, I seem to recall.

Autonomous cars are about to do to transport what the internet did to information

> Every tech startup since Intel has made a meal ...

Maybe you mean "Nearly one tech startup in 10,000 has made a meal ..."? I believe that would be somewhat more accurate.

Windows 10 networking bug derails Microsoft's own IPv6 rollout

Re: "but Android doesn't support that"

> ... near zero removable devices are formatted in those file systems

Somebody's confusing cause and effect.

Re: "but Android doesn't support that" 4 Ken Hagen

> ... this isn't irony but an example of a deliberate use before selling policy

I disagree: (a) it's not about selling anyway, and (b) you'd imagine (OK, it's Microsoft, you wouldn't) that they'd have some consistency in their various products and the kit they bought for the job.

No crypto backdoors, more immigration ... says Republican head of House Committee on Homeland Security

> We’re fighting 21st century threats with 20th century technology and a 19th century bureaucracy...

... and a medieval leader.

The Register's guide to protecting your data when visiting the US

Re: 'I read that in the original article.'

> 3. The fact that passwords are off limits, but you can be forced to unlock a device using fingerprints by US customs can't be ignored. So is Uncle Sam pushing device makers towards this agenda?

At this point you will need an app that pops up a message on the screen saying "Restored Factory Settings" every time you use the fingerprint reader. And even, maybe, actually *does* wipe the device and restore the factory settings (if you usually use 2FA rather than the fingerprint scanner).

Munich may dump Linux for Windows

Re: The thing about Linux Desktop

> ... smaller attack surface as it's not as widely used

That's not what attack surface means.

Re: Replacing Linux with Windows, based on *cost*?

> Calendars...

not email.

> ...task tracking...

not email.

> ...contacts...

still not email.

Re: "when webmail is fine for what most people need their mail to do? "

The bit that baffled me was "...using a traditional heavyweight [mail] client...", when web-mail is even more heavyweight.

Prepare your popcorn: Wikipedia deems the Daily Mail unreliable

Re: Climate Change Whistleblower

> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent...

Oh, please don't drag them into it as well. They only look reputable by comparison with (some) other newspapers.

Re: Hmm

> We know the planet is warming over a period of decades and we know we are at least significantly to blame.

We also know it's been warming since before the end of the last ice age and that we are definitely not to blame for almost all of that. Just saying.

Re: It might not be the Newspaper of Record...

Didn't a study a few years back suggest that Wikipedia had fewer errors than Encyclopedia Britannica, in topics where their coverage overlaps?

Cardiff researchers get £250k to monitor Brexit hate crime on Twitter

Re: Who defines what Brexit Related Hate Crime is?

> ... if the "victim" simply feels that they have been harassed/upset/attacked for it to be a hate act

So a better description would "hallucination crime", in that it is a crime only by virtue of what happens in the mind of a person claiming to be a victim?

Want to come to the US? Be prepared to hand over your passwords if you're on Trump's hit list

> “You were chosen by him, you work for us...."

"You work for us, but you foisted on us by him" surely?

Vapists rejoice! E-cigs lower cancer risk (if you stop smoking, duh)

> There's one for you, nineteen for me

Nothing to do with smoking per se, but a reference to the 19s/£ income tax rate mop-tops faced at the time.

(95%, for those of you who've forgotten "pounds, shillings, and pence")

Pulsating white dwarf described as a 'dynamo' found, no, not in the back pages, 380 LY away

Re: "Should that not be in fact 10124009 Brontosaurus?"

> Brontosauri

? No, Brontosaurus is not a Latin word. Some Latin plurals take the form you suggest, but that is irrelevant in this case.

AMD's daring new money-making strategy: Sue everyone! Mwahaha

> If they are suing they have reasonable evidence

Not necessarily. In the majority of IP cases, the cost of defending a lawsuit is so high that even non-infringing defendants settle rather than face the higher cost of a successful defence.

IBM's Marissa Mayer moment: Staff ordered to work in one of 6 main offices – or face the axe

Re: The Yahoo experience

> My personal opinion is that you have to meet your co-workers physically on a regular basis. How regular...dunno :-)

Well, sometimes it helps... OTOH, we have one team member that the rest of the team are all very happy to have working remotely.

Re: IBM Marketing

> "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM."

But it didn't say "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM as an employer."

IBM - I've been Moved.

Hard numbers: The mathematical architectures of Artificial Intelligence

> Microsoft, then, clearly thinks that Cortana is AI and, by implication, AI is here.

Alternatively, Microsoft may simply be wrong. Again.

Oculus gift: VR biz to cough up half a billion dollars for ripping off software copyright

> Oculus in its statement focused on being found not guilty of trade secret theft, and said it plans to appeal the decision.

So they're saying they *are* guilty of stealing trade secrets, then?

'Mafia' of ageing scientists, academics and politicos suck at picking tech 'winners'

The author seems quite ill-informed about what Universities actually do, I note. Of course, he's grinding his own axe whilst complaining about politicians grinding theirs.

Don't worry, America: Elon Musk says he'll have a word with Trump

Re: Insane

> ...the constitution never envisioned this

It surely did, there is a process for removing or suspending a President (or other Officer of State) if they are ill, mad, etc. The practical problem in doing so is that half of the USA knows that he isn't ill, mad, etc. (Their "knowledge" is not in any way verifiable of course, but that's not relevant to the issue.)

Re: Indeed.

> He's already outraged most of his own party...

If only that were true.

Wow, look out, hackers: Trump to order 60-day cybersecurity probe

> ... the internet is "currently vulnerable to attacks from ... state..."

Well, he should know.

Microsoft's Cloud UI brings Windows full circle

Re: Cruel, but necessary.

> a global, system-wide hotkey editor

WIndows already has a system-wide hokey editor. And plenty of other hokey stuff to go with it.

BT's profits plunge 37% following Italian Job

> “deep disappointment” at the “unacceptable practices”

In an article about BT, what are the chances? Oh wait, Italy? I just assumed it was in the UK.

President Trump tweets from insecure Android, security boffins roll eyes

Re: What's up, El Reg?

> Is it just me or is this publication devolving into a political opinion 'rag'?

Given that Trump supporters have made the truth into a political opinion, that's unavoidable.

> "... and these can easily look as if they come from a trusted source."

How can anything Trump does look as if it comes from a trusted source? Just asking.

Naughty sysadmins use dark magic to fix PCs for clueless users

Re: No quite wizadry but...

> Apparently you get in trouble if you try that on the users themselves

Sadly true, even though that would often be the best fix.

Re: "Mechanical Sympathy" and magic

All true enough, though I will point out that it was perfectly normal, and sensible, to use CR to move to the next text box down until Microsoft came along and screwed up window manager ergonomics. Just as it used to be sensible to use DEL to delete a character (hey, the clue's in the name), and now we have to use BS. Microsoft is likewise the origin of BS, as we all know.

Plump Trump dumps TPP trade pump

Re: HOLY CRAP!

> ...after a few months of President Trump's successes...

We'll worry about that after it happens. If it does.

Google hardwires its Android app store into new Chromebooks

> I think you're being harsh on Bing. I reckon that only 98% of people would switch over given the choice.

1. It isn't possible to be too harsh on Bing...

2. ...but, given the choice, 98% of people probably wouldn't understand the question

Re: It had potential ...

> But some have said, Hmm, yes, that looks and interesting piece of hardware, I wonder if I can run native Linux on it...

As a Linux user, it pains me to say that - statistically - near enough nobody has actually said that.

The rise, fall, and rise (again) of Microsoft's killer People feature

Re: Only thing better than BB Hub

> Why no commentard howling about the way Google examines and stores every last byte of data they can even sniff?

I expect it's because they all know Microsoft does exactly the same.