Posts by Bob Vistakin

What legacy is IBM really shooting for? Cheating its own salespeople out of millions? Here we go again, allegedly

Re: Corporate Arrogance

IBM has a history of being evil?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

Before IBM started axing staff, it told them Q3 2020 would be super-busy with post-lockdown catch-up jobs

Re: Experienced as both customer and employyee

Gritted teeth ... tongue bitten ... tenders lost, then whole process mysteriously scrapped and awarded with no bidding malarkey because that only "costs money" ... Two week Bermudan "conferences" for whole family ... seen first hand ... cough cough

Experienced as both customer and employyee

Late 80's at BT using their mainframes and "support", late 90's as a GTS employee onsite at BAe.

Both gave exactly the same impression - IBM were no different to any of the others apart from one aspect - they charged the customer 10x more. How did they continue to get business, with only large corporates/gov as clients? Well, the last time I posted anything about that here the post was deleted, so lets leave it to the imagination and see how we get on this time.

IBM cuts deep into workforce – even its Watson and AI teams – as it 'pivots' to cloud

IBM has a cloud offering?

You learn something every day.

Former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman calls on UK govt to legally protect data from contact-tracing apps

The PIE lady knows best

Just ignore anything which comes up when you Google Harman PIE.

Virgin Galactic takes another step towards blasting Richard Branson into space

Everyone loves the NHS

None more so than Branson, who got £2m by suing them in 2016 for having the audacity to not do business with him. Literally that - they refused to bend over to his enforced privatisation so he sued them. From his tax free island.

I hear Branson was especially interested in Tom Moore's activities, since there's nothing stopping both of them doing it all over again.

The Windows Phone keeps ringing but no one's home: Microsoft finally lets platform die

Will they be having a funeral?

Like this one?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-celebrates-windows-phone-7-with-mock-iphone-funeral/

Oh, wait...

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

Re: Surprised

Gosh, next they'll be over here driving on the wrong side of the road, killing people and scarpering back home knowing their legal system will protect them. Oh, wait...

Virgin Media dumps BT's mobile network to hop into bed with Vodafone

One link explains all you need to know

https://www.google.com/search?q=vodafone+worst+customer+satisfaction

Microsoft has made an Android phone. Repeat, Microsoft has made an Android phone. A dual-screen foldable mobe not due until late 2020

One question

Can it be reflashed, so we can get rid of any ms garbage in the inevitable eBay firesale?

First they came for 'face' and I did not speak out because I... have no face? Then they came for 'book'

Re: The application is being considered

I was involved in a rejected application once. It was for two words combined as one which separately had no obvious connection at the time. I can't say exactly what because it's still a thing, but if I substitute by way of an example "Chair Pencil" you get the idea. Anyway, it was firmly rejected by way of reasoning that it is just "two common words stuck together". Guess we should have thrown zillions of pounds their way and removed one of them.

Go fourth and multi-Pi: Raspberry Pi 4 lands today with quad 1.5GHz Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, up to 4GB RAM...

Still no damn onboard flash

Haven't they heard how SD cards are practically guaranteed to fail being hammered by Linux so much in its normal operation, never mind when running apps? At the start, when the Pi was aimed at teaching kids, that was OK because when they got corrupt you just put another in. But long term? How much would it have cost just to add 4G eMMC? No serious IoT user could rely on it as it stands. Possibly deliberately...

The other downer is Google abandoning Android Things for all but smart home devices. This new device would have been brilliant had they not abandoned it for everything else. Oh, and taken away the only official way to discuss it with Google engineers when they killed G+.

Microsoft: Yo dawg, we heard you liked Windows password expiry policies. So we expired your expiry policy

Re: Yeah, right.

The same experts who held a funeral for the iPhone and Blackberry, both of which are still going strong(ish), unlike Microsoft's mobile offering which has ceased to be?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-celebrates-windows-phone-7-with-mock-iphone-funeral/

FAANGs for the memories: Breaking up big tech's biggest isn't a matter of if, but of when

FAANG Doesn't include Microsoft

Is this because they are now the good guys, or having thrown away mobile etc they are so irrelevant now that whatever they do nestles snugly amongst the floor noise, with them now not even worth adding to a fancy acronym?

Nothing 'unites teams' like a good relocation, eh Vodafone?

Shitting on their own staff just as much as they do customers

Consistency is important in these troubled times.

This is the final straw, evil Microsoft. Making private GitHub repos free? You've gone too far

Re: That didn't take very long.

Correct.

Soon the last project it manages will be Microsoft Mobile.

Facebook names former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg head of global affairs

Cameron off to Google, Blair off to Amazon

But thanks to Treason May we stay in the EU.

300,000 BT pensioners await Court of Appeal pension scheme ruling

BT shat on it's employees when they worked for them

So continuing this fine tradition is no problem at all, especially now they can't fight back.

A sad Paris, because it's poo you answer to.

Microsoft has signed up to the Open Invention Network. We repeat. Microsoft has signed up to the OIN

If it knows it lost mobile, it knows it can lose a heck of a lot more

No panic here for the rest of us, it's just a drowning corporate clutching at whatever it can.

LinkedIn has a Glint in its eye and cash burning a hole in its pocket

Re: Once upon a time

Correct. The MS reverse Midas touch always repulses everyone to seek alternatives when they can.

Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid

Then, amid the oohs and aahs, the small boy said "but he has no clothes on!"

WTF does this give you a £20 burner from ASDA doesn't?

Google now minus Google Plus: Social mini-network faces axe in data leak bug drama

What about the "Login with Google+" buttons you see everywhere?

Google can just flick a switch and it goes dark. What about the zillions of websites and apps that 3rd parties they encouraged to wire in their services this way? All those share buttons?

IBM won't grow, says analyst firm while eyeing flatlining share price

Re: Not Surprised

The process those spreadsheet wielding PHB's use to manage the techies who actually do the work is known as the Intense Bowel Movement.

This "IBM Cloud" you speak of

When it launches, please report on it. Everyone will be curious about it in a dancing bear kind of way.

Microsoft: OK, we have no phones, but look how much we love Android

Re: Surprised they don't make their own Android phones

Head spinning thought: If MS made Android phones, would they still charge Google the royalties they extort per handset from other manufacturers in patent fees?

Google is 20, Chrome is 10, and Microsoft would rather ignore the Nokia deal's 5th birthday

Blamer and Bill Gates don't talk anymore

Wonder why?

Microsoft takes another whack at killing off Windows Phone 8.x

Re: Why would you buy a phone from Microsoft ever again?

Microsoft failing in mobile is one of the textbook examples students will be taught from now on - alongside Ratner etc.

It's also wierd to think they busted Google for every Android handset sold on the patents, but now get ass reamed by them for everything they sell on their app store https://goo.gl/NhV35i, and dance to any tune Google play if they want any kind of presence on 80% of the worlds mobile platform.

It had an app store?

Blimey!

Click this link and you can get The Register banned in China

As long as no-one mentions they eat dogs

We'll all be OK. Oh, wait...

Brit web host biz UKFast gears up to IPO on London Stock Exchange

Re: Junk

This is one of those situations where a bad taste has been left in my mouth from early experience with them, and whilst simple common sense tells me they are probably better now, I'm just not even interested in finding out.

BBC websites down tools and head outside into the sun for a while

Gary Lineker's BBC salary is £1.7m pa

Well worth every penny. Can't think of anywhere better to spend it.

Sorry, Neil Armstrong. Boffins say you may not have been first life-form to set foot on the Moon

Re: "..one small step..."

https://youtu.be/ygnTysoKnvU

Re: "..one small step..."

You know NASA's official position on the telemetry tapes for all 6 missions is that they are "lost"? Someone totted up how much space and weight they would have taken up, and its just over 1 ton.

Gosh, that is clumsy.

Dixons Carphone profits drop 24% amid hack 'n' high street struggles

This icon

Says all I need to ------------------------------------------------------------------->

Dixons to shutter 92 UK Carphone Warehouse shops after profit warning

Re: No surprise

Thumbs up.

Proud to say the decades I spent avoiding them since being similarly burnt by CPW have in a small way contributed to their demise.

Ex-staffer of UK.gov dept bags payout after boss blabbed medical info to colleagues

You don't get sacked from the DWP

It's an open secret everyone there is because they are the literal dregs of the jobs market, the living dead for whom the slightest glimmer of hope is daily and systematically drummed out of them before they get any ideas.

I remember having to prove to my manager that my pen was truly out of ink before he would issue a replacement from the stationary cupboard. I remember having to return wall clocks to their previous, and wrong, position having helpfully moved them on a Monday after they went forward/backwards, only to be told "that's an electricians job, do you want to cause a strike"? Sure enough, an hour later said robot plodded in to do the essentials. I remember a "desktop ergonomics consultant" coming round to everyone to tell them where the best place to put their coffee mat, ruler, pen and paper was on their desks.

People *have* to work there, but since it's a given the jobs and people are the last desperate scraps before the dole there's no point getting rid of any once in. You only get more of the same by way of replacement.

T-Mobile owner sends in legal heavies to lean on small Brit biz over use of 'trademarked' magenta

New icon required

I propose this for anyone making such claims: https://img.memecdn.com/w-anchor_o_54030.webp

Danish submariner sent down for life for murder of journalist Kim Wall

You mean they didn't believe her head fell off when the hatch hit it?

Gosh. Unusually, justice really did prevail for once.

UK consumer help bloke Martin Lewis is suing Facebook over fake ads

"You just won't believe why Dragon's Den was cancelled"

Alongside a picture of one of them with a black eye.

Or how about a photo of a battered Richard Branson alongside some equally dramatic "rushed to hospital" story.

The list goes on.

To Reg readers, these are as credible as an economic forecast from Diane Abbott, but I long suspected they are being run via some offshore loophole too difficult to close, but still making money for ZuckerData, hence the bind eye being turned.

Now IBM turns redundo gun on its Digital Business Group

Intense Bowel Movement

From management to staff, as usual.

Tech’s big lie: Relations between capital and labor don't matter

Unions in which country though?

This article swerves the obvious contradiction it throws up. When everything's been offshored, how do you unionize your new peanuts sweat shops? Could it be that's one of the cynical reasons this was done in the first place?

Java-aaaargh! Google faces $9bn copyright bill after Oracle scores 'fair use' court appeal win

Google's biggest blunder

Not buying Sun when it had the chance. It went for $7.4bn. As things stand, Oracle got it for nowt plus a healthy surplus. See icon.

Still, we're all on Kotlin now - aren't we?

How a QR code can fool iOS 11's Camera app into opening evil.com rather than nice.co.uk

Not all of them: SQRL.

No, Stephen Hawking's last paper didn't prove the existence of a multiverse

"vertical particles"?

Please. It's "virtual."

Well, it is in my universe ;-)

Phone-free Microsoft patents Notch-free phone

Re: Oh dear

Microsoft are merely continuing the policy of their only meaningful contribution to the mobile phone industry being negative. They were forced down this route when some asshole there with zero vision rolled around laughing at the iPhone, so obliterating themselves from the future of personal computing.

I hear Bill Gates is no longer even on speaking terms with Blamer. Chuckle.

Brit retailer Currys PC World says sorry for Know How scam

Can't work out who is thicker

Their staff or their customers. And no, being rumbled on this latest scam doesn't change that.

Windows Mixed Reality: Windows Mobile deja vu?

Re: Microsoft is a toxic brand

Here's someone from Microsoft rolling around laughing, back when they were in mobile.

Re: Microsoft is a toxic brand

"Me too" Microsoft - always joining the party just as everyone leaves.

Re: Bob

I'm for it.

Re: Pointless

It's 3D glasses for TV all over again.

Yeah, sure, all the family will have no problem sitting there in silence with those specs on getting headaches watching a distorted TV picture. The solution, for those hold-outs who don't get the memo, is to just keep on blindly shovelling money down the same marketing black hole. It's gotta work then, right?