* Posts by DoctorNine

168 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Dec 2011

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Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

DoctorNine

Re: (Sighs)

They just need to change the name to 'Boing' and be done with it.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

DoctorNine

Re: Microsoft's planned phase-out of the classic Outlook for Windows. 2029

I'm sad that this is exactly my reaction. Another stupid Microsoft user interface misstep. To be honest, the only reason my office computer is a Windows machine, is the Office applications (purchased, not rented for subscription). And the main Office program I use is Outlook. If they hork that, there is no reason for me to keep a MS machine at all.

Which honestly, I should have binned years ago anyway. I hope this makes business put down the syringe, and give up their MS addiction. It's ugly. And unnecessary.

When I am retired, I can serenely avoid all the 'improvements' of AI intrusion, MS and Apple walled garden behavior, and simply use a nice Linux box to do what needs to be done.

Microsoft trying to stop Copilot generating fake Putin comments on Navalny's death

DoctorNine

Re: Statistics at work ...

"..A quick look at election results or polls in Russia would show that's simply not true..."

The mere fact that you seem to think either of those things are statistically valid representations of public opinion is proof that your conclusions are flawed.

For anyone who actually wants to hear a reasoned discussion on the subject, I highly recommend Vlad Vexler's analysis. You can find him on YouTube, Instagram, and so forth.

Moving to Windows 11 is so easy! You just need to buy a PC that supports it!

DoctorNine

Re: Learning new things helps prevent things like dementia in old age

Regarding the effectiveness of various things in delaying dementia, learning to play an instrument, or learning a new language, both are superior to relearning a previously mastered skill with a bit or bob changed here and there. There are actually studies on tis sort of thing, for those inclined. I'll keep up by reading foreign language papers, and playing my guitar. Yes, I said papers. They still print them.

DoctorNine

Well said. Sooner or later the eye tires of baroque affectation and yearns for simplicity. Not only is it simply more productive to have less steps, all the flash and poof in the evolved Windows UI distracts the user from the actual thing itself which is being done. It's almost as if we are being forced to play PONG through an infinite regression monitor. As every new UI fad is thrust upon us, lamented, and then dies back a bit, only to be replaced with a new subset of changes derived from the initial fad. Enough already. Give me basic 'KISS' design principles, and I will be satisfied.

US regulators crack down on AI playing doctor in healthcare

DoctorNine
Big Brother

Alorithms are written by people

The conceit here, is that the actual people who run the insurance companies want to say, 'Hey, it's not me, the algorithm says that's not covered!' so they can avoid the moral responsibility for denying coverage that will materially cause harm to the covered patient in question. All insurance is a bet. When you buy it, you are betting that the paid premiums will be lower than the possible bill for catastrophic health events. The insurance company, in contrast, bets that it can get more money out of you than it will have to pay out. Whenever the insurance company can do so, it will avoid paying benefits, and take your premium, thus delivering no value at all for that expenditure. Algorithms are just a simple way of standardizing the denials. This effectively saves time on human-to-human interactions, which also cost money, and thus decrease profits. Preventing that assessment of individual special circumstances at all is the goal. It's about them trying to get to zero payout.

Apple Vision Pro is creating a new generation of glassholes

DoctorNine

An Honest Question

Half my life or more is spent in front of a screen anyway. I can't imagine why anyone would want to take the small amount of time one gets to enjoy watching the scenery pass, on the drive to and from work, and put another screen on it. Why exactly would someone do that? For what reason or reward?

Wait, hold on, everyone – Mozilla thinks Apple, Google, Microsoft should play fair

DoctorNine

Trolly! troll troll troll...

This comment section. OMG.

FF has been my favorite browser, regardless of whether I am on desktop, mobile phone or experimental device, pretty much forever. The tight commercial vertical integration which Apple, Google, and Microsoft seek is manifestly NOT in my best interest, regardless of any minor technical issue which arise in the FF browser as a result.

I am personally glad that the discussion of how and why that may be is finally being openly discussed with regulators. It should have happened years ago.

That's really about all I need to say on the subject. Carry on.

Chip wars could lead to oversupply as China increases domestic capacity

DoctorNine

A comparison

Nominally adequate is absolutely fine for some things, but not others. I would expect that PRC chips will compete for space in industrial applications, but not be able to hold market share for consumer products. Sort of like Chinese motorcycles are right now.

Besides, Russia is going to need as much of that stock as they can get hold of for tanks and drones. You can only go so far cannibalizing washing machines and microwave ovens.

Google Groups ditches links to Usenet, the OG social network

DoctorNine

Re: Good

That's why I left. Spam volume made finding anything almost impossible.

HP printer software turns up uninvited on Windows systems

DoctorNine

It's like an STI...

"Excuse me, Mr. Consumer person. Please review what your license allows us to share with our partners. Never mind us here under your kilt. All legitimate, I say. Only the necessaries."

Hollywood studios agree AI-generated content should not reduce humans' pay or credit

DoctorNine

Hungry Eyes

As I am completely uninterested in comic book superheros, Hollywood hasn't been providing me with much commercial content in the last, oh, decade. Reality TV is likewise useless to me. About the only style of cinema that can get me to sit still for over an hour, is arthouse stuff that teaches me something fresh about the human condition. Explorations of unique contemporary moral dilemmas are an area of art that I remain unconvinced AI can even approximate. Large statistical models can't really get you there. So what big producers in Hollywood do or do not agree to, is pretty much irrelevant to me at this late stage of the game. Choosing to produce AI generated movies would just make it less likely that I woud ever want to purchase any of their product. My interest is already pretty sparse. That would almost certainly kill it.

Charging your iPhone literally costs Apple millions as Batterygate saga slams shut

DoctorNine

Old Man Yells At Cloud!

So basically, at this point, you've got no choice. You are tied to one walled garden or the other. I've stopped buying newer Apple iPhones, because I want a 3.5 port. So I've gone to the trouble of learning how to take apart and repair my iPhone SE myself when it needs work. I've done it enough, that I can replace the batttery pretty quickly when needed. Just replaced the screen a month ago, actually. I even have a brand new one in the box to switch to, when repairing this one will no longer work. By that time, changes in the cellular network will be the use limiting factor, not battery life. By then, I'll probably have something imbedded in my cochlea. "Hello SkyNet, it's DoctorNine!"

These phones are consumer electronic devices. They will not last forever. They will occasionally break. I think blaming Apple for this is kind of missing the point.

We'd pay good money to see... oh dear, Elon Musk 'needs an MRI scan'

DoctorNine

Give me a Brawndo with my popcorn

The longer I live, the more certain I am that 'Idiocracy' was written by time travelling aliens....

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

DoctorNine

It's like real estate...

People developing internet destinations have an innate bias toward trying make that sure they have iron-clad control of those destinations. So they have designed systems that work like home-owners' associations, which require anyone who lives there to cede a substantial portion of their rights to that organization. In some destinations, you aren't even allowed to own the property. It is only leased to the occupants.

This works only if the destination is so compelling, that most people are willing to buy in. If either the destination is insufficiently unique, or the relationship requires cedeing too much control, then buyers will vote with their feet, and not participate.

In my estimation, we are nearing that last condition, but have not quite gotten there yet. Developers will always continue to try to get purchasers to cede more and more control. They will dance on the edge of that knife ad infinitum, because it is in their interest to do so.

It's a 'boiling frog' question. Will this strategy will lead to a rebellion, or total control of the end user? Understanding the Dunning-Kruger curve, I am not optimistic about the former outcome.

Google's next big idea for browser security looks like another freedom grab to some

DoctorNine

Re: ODFO, alphagoo.

My father taught me this important principle before there even WAS an internet. In order to assure harmonious social functioning, everybody needs to be responsible for their own end (that wasn't the word he used) and keep their nose out of other peoples' ends. Those individuals or organizations who choose not to follow this golden rule, must occasionally forcibly be reminded that there is a cost to this behavior. In his world, if people wouldn't listen to reason, violence was not out of the question. And a poke in the nose could reasonably be expected.

NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2

DoctorNine

The definition of perspective

I've been reading science fiction since the 1960's. In almost every novel or short story, the protagonist talks casually about how many light years away the action is taking place. Yet here, in the real world, our most profound effort at exploration, which is and was a crowning technical achievement of the human race, has only traveled LESS THAN A LIGHT DAY.

It is import to realize sometimes how small and insignificant we all are.

RIP Kevin Mitnick: Former most-wanted hacker dies at 59

DoctorNine

But why tho...

Interesting that both Kevin Mitnick and Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer. I wonder if there is something in their common history which led to that.

Ariane 5 to take final flight, leaving Europe without its own heavy-lift rocket

DoctorNine

Re: But wait! There's more...

I forget where I read it, but government sponsored space missions, and their associated research, which indeed WERE paid for by taxes, directly or indirectly resulted in like 80% of all innovation and economic expansion in the last half of the 20th century in Europe and America. It's fairly well understood in economics, that one of the main functions of government, is to use taxes to initiate capital intensive infrastructure projects, which thereby facilitate subsequent, more broad-based, private economic growth. Admittedly, reusable systems are better. And the the Ariane 5 clearly lost the competition with SpaceX for market share. But even if you have a 'gubmint bad' mindset, seeing less players in the heavy launch space tends to produce less competition on price per launch. This isn't a good thing. I'd rather rockets and airplanes, and things of that nature, had multiple workable sources, to decrease the likelihood of monopolistic markets.

Apple aims to replace Broadcom, Qualcomm wireless chips with its own

DoctorNine
Meh

Re: Walled Garden or Prison

For most things that's true, but not high fidelity audio or virtual reality appliances. The limits of current BT data transmission will spark innovation here eventually. As others have said, Apple prefers NOT to just accept crap spec standards. They tend to consider alternatives which are cheaper, technically superior, or help with vertical integration in their ecosystem. Nothing to see here.

South Korea relieved US China chip ban won't bite, as Beijing fumes

DoctorNine

Re: There is no such thing as an illegal invasion. @martinusher

Whataboutism isn't a logical rhetorical argument anyway. It makes about as much sense as Putin claiming that sending cruise missiles into civilian apartment blocks is justified by the Ukrainians blowing up a bridge that carries bombs and war supplies into Crime.

No. No it's not.

Such apologetics are typical of Russia and China these days.

California to phase out internal combustion vehicles by 2035

DoctorNine

Re: America without V8's just isn't America

I did get mildly excited by the reference to fornication though. I know, juvenile of me..

The internet's edge routers are all so different. What if we unified them with software?

DoctorNine

Biology is informative

In biological systems, monoculture is a risk, because then a single type of attack opportunity risks compromising the whole biomass. It seems to me that similar logic may apply here.

Lawsuit accuses Oracle of facilitating sales of 'billions' of folks' personal data

DoctorNine

Re: It's not just what they can collect themselves, it's what other companies can give them too

Many larger tech concerns simply ignore laws which cannot be adequately surveilled.

It's as if the pertinent laws simply do not exist for them. C'est un monde heureux!

If anyone notices, there is always a convenient employee to be blamed, and never the corporation's fault.

Apple tells suppliers to use 'Taiwan, China' or 'Chinese Taipei' to appease Beijing

DoctorNine

Re: CHINA IS NOT GOING TO GO AWAY...

No one wants China to go away. The Chinese people are some of the most industrious and productive people anyplace. What WILL happen eventually, is that their authoritarian government, which increasingly poorly represents their actual interests, will be bypassed by the population, who will get tired of the ossified politics of the CCP, and creatively reinvent themselves. It may not be soon, as demonizing an external enemy will help Xi cement immediate patriotic influences and maintain control. But the whole of Chinese history is a recurring cycle of consolidation, bureaucracy and then either revolution, or conquest by an outside power. Some of the forces causing this were pretty well outlined by Wittfogel in the 19th century, but even accounting for the limitations of that model, more contemporary analyses still give Xi little options besides opening up authoritarian control.

It therefore makes sense for capitalists to be exceedingly cautious with investment in a social model that is teetering on the edge. As a fairly well invested individual myself, putting more of my own resources in Apple, are definitely predicated on a judicious balance of moving production to less threatened locales, and also simultaneous constructive engagement with the current Chinese government to encourage First-World behaviors.

It can't be just one or the other.

DoctorNine

Re: Cook's China: Criminal Nation Enablement Rewards

You weren't the only one, Derek. Lots of us did.

DoctorNine

Re: Red-line

Well, they recently got their f-keys back, but I think the dalliance with that touch strip thingy has messed with their muscle memory. Apple needs to press PRAM and go for a hard reset in India or something.

And to their credit, I think that's the direction they appear to be moving. So.

Nancy Pelosi ties Chinese cyber-attacks to need for Taiwan visit

DoctorNine

When internal domestic politics starts looking iffy...

..then you look for some handy foreign stalking horse to publicly flagellate, hoping your loyalist partisan base overlooks the domestic issues, and rallies against the specter of a foreign aggressor.

The fascinating thing, is that both the principals here are doing the same thing.

Xi is very worried about maintaining his remarkable run of economic growth, now that the West is getting tired of unfair business practices, lies about 'two systems' in Hong Kong, and various pugilistic forays abroad, while COVID19 is putting a serious damper on PRC economic output. He has to keep up delivering the expected growth that got him where he is, or his fortunes may turn south. Having a spat with Evil America is just the thing to brighten up an otherwise not-so-cheery political horizon for him.

Pelosi, meanwhile, has just had the door slammed in her face by the Supremes over Roe v. Wade at home, and wants to buff her cred with a little China-bashing. She's always been keen to parry accusations of being a clueless Democratic Dove, by living out her 'tough-on-China' fantasies whenever and wherever she can. This is another one of those.

In the end, Pelosi is probably right that the CCP is going to do whatever the CCP is going to do, regardless. And Xi is probably right, that his loyal partisans will be successfully distracted by some good old chest-thumping anti-Americanism, especially if it's served piping hot, and fresh.

It's kind of pathetic, if predictable. But well... Here we are.

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

DoctorNine

The Beths

http s: / / www.youtube.com/ watch?v=-KACt6YhOyY

How does it feel, to be an expert in a dying field?

Amazon’s Kindle bookstore to quit China

DoctorNine

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

"Nice distribution company you've got there. Shame if something were to happen to it..."

Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux

DoctorNine

Re: choose how the OS will annoy you

Well said. This is perhaps the crux of the issue. Choose how you want to be annoyed. Using Windows, Mac and various species of Linux, It's always been my feeling that you look at what you need to do with the machine, and choose your poison. As others have mentioned, Linux has some nice choices for low overhead work-oriented boxes (I used to be an OpenSUSE partisan, but have grown past that) and game with WinWorld, but like OS X for setting and forgetting with family home computers. And they really aren't that expensive anymore. £699 for a Mac mini isn't that big an ask. Besides, most of them just use their desktops to port stuff to their iPad...

macOS Server discontinued after years on life support

DoctorNine

Saturday Night Live

Kind of reminds me of that old SNL gag that 'Francisco Franco is still dead'. I haven't relied on OS X Server since 2013 for anything at all.

Apple is beginning to undo decades of Intel, x86 dominance in PC market

DoctorNine

Re: So no one around for the PPC transtion in 1994 then?..

I was there and mostly agree with you. Particularly the server/performance per watt ARM situation. As far as I can tell, x86 will continue to bleed market share due to ongoing performance pressure though. Still, it will be a slow decline, since there is enough legacy software that needs x86, and gaming prefers it. The only thing that could change this, would be MS pushing more development efforts into ARM. However, I think this is unlikely, considering the direction they appear to be going with Windows 11.

FYI: If the latest Windows 11 really wants to use Edge, it will use Edge no matter what

DoctorNine

Recidivism

Some criminals realize that the price wasn't worth the crime. If the cost of the crime is too low to actually change behavior though, then it will almost always simply result in a return to the original criminal behavior, once the social sanction costs expire.

It's been about a generation since IE. I'm sure this MS overstep will go by the same playbook.

Internet Archive's 2046 Wayforward Machine says Google will cease to exist

DoctorNine

Re: Fuck Google/YouTube

Ever since the 'Google Account' thing first started, I've given them my 1/1/1901 birthday, and they've never as much as sneezed. My first reason to sign up was when they used to host Usenet.

Ahh.. the memories...

China sets goal of running single-stack IPv6 network by 2030, orders upgrade blitz

DoctorNine

Re: A possible truth?

The number of reader upvotes or downvotes does not correlate with the veracity of the observation.

Especially when it involves the CCP.

On a side note, you should probably learn English better before posting in an English language tech forum. Your attempts at insults are making everyone laugh, because they are either meaningless or just plain silly.

Cheers.

DoctorNine

Re: A possible truth?

The rhetorical error you are here exhibiting, is called 'false equivalency'.

You need to lay off the pipe weed, Chinese Gandalf.

DoctorNine

Re: A possible truth?

Euphemisms. I just love euphemisms.

Linus Torvalds tells kernel list poster to 'SHUT THE HELL UP' for saying COVID-19 vaccines create 'new humanoid race'

DoctorNine
Pint

Re: Wonderful

With a little ingenuity, we could encode it as a checksum, and use it for a security key...

The Epic vs Apple trial is wrapping up, but the battle has just begun

DoctorNine

Re: "Apple’s ironclad control of the iOS platform"

That's not really true. Maintaining an environment in which business can be conducted, has value of its own, and has been recognized as such since the first organized markets rented out stalls in the Neolithic. What can be observed with dead certainty, is that 'value' is always extant, when one person is willing to pay someone else for it. What the thing is that gets paid for, is not always so cut and dried though. It can be hard goods, services, or even a chance at the possibility of future profit. Humans are insanely creative when it comes to figuring out how to make a profit.

BlackBerry says it’s virtualised macOS for M1 on an x86 CPU

DoctorNine

George Mallory's Acolyte

Well it's there. And it just pokes up so high. It's almost as if we are being asked to climb it.

Indian government says 5G doesn’t cause COVID-19. Also points out India has no 5G networks

DoctorNine

As reference to Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law

Once the unwashed masses have correctly identified that technology is indeed magic, it should come as no surprise to anyone, that they suspect the intent of the evil sorcerers behind it all. Their only mistake of course, is related to WHICH magic is causing the problem.

'A fair amount of stuff, all over the place': Torvalds closes merge window for Linux 5.13 with support for Apple M1

DoctorNine

Theoretical versus observed

I am somewhat hopeful that the benefits of the shared memory design and increased internal bandwidth could be utilized by Linux in the same way as MacOS does it. But the problem here, is that the M1 (and subsequent) chip hardware is tuned for Apple's software pretty specifically. One of the reasons why I am interested in the Linux reverse engineering, is to see how much of that theoretical hardware advantage could be used by another, different software approach. It's not a slam dunk. But it does show promise.

Mac OS X at 20: A rocky start, but it got the fundamentals right for a macOS future

DoctorNine

Re: Hardly a success

It's not volume alone that determines sales success. It's profit per unit sales. For reference, see Chanel. Or Porsche.

I suppose the utilitarian view of the computer as a machine, which those of us at The Reg can espouse since we generally use whatever is thrown at us, would simply assess capabilities and compare the cost to obtain them within each ecosystem. But consumers don't generally do that. They want a curated, premium experience, and will buy based upon that criterion.

Apple delivers on that.

Since the desktop is no longer where most consumers do their computing, by far the most important thing to them is ease of use with their watches, phones, intelligent houses, and cars. In this competition, which you can see with Apple Car Play, Apple watches, and Apple phones, they have a reasonable amount of success.

So despite the desktop OS per se not holding a great percentage of the desktop market, the ecosystem which it created, has a very large percentage of mindshare. And that's what's important.

Google vows to build its own server system-on-chips, hires Intel veteran

DoctorNine

Linux, do you love me?

If the Google goes SoC, there is a huge upside for general purpose Linux on the same hardware. It may be time for people to stop optimizing the OS for general purpose chips, and instead, start building chips for specific OS's.

Sure, Dave might seem like he's avidly listening to this morning's meeting, but he's actually doing a yoga routine

DoctorNine

Just the facts, ma'am.

Since there is little cost to sending another invite to the Zoom meeting, I find myself roped into many things that wouldn't justify taking admin people out of their offices in the past. This does mean many more people can hear the important bits of new plans and ideas than would have been possible before. But the best thing, is that I can be officially present for the 5% of the time I'm really needed, and snoring loudly for the rest. I love it.

Just a note: herbal teas don't actually keep you awake. But they ARE yummy.

Nvidia exec love-bombs Arm's licensing model, almost protests too much

DoctorNine

Re: Rather like a politician

"We totally LOVE the ARM. They are the best. The new chip thing is gonna be YUGE!"

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Microsoft to lure users with industry-specific solutions in the cloud

DoctorNine

"The suspenders are there so you naturally fall into the pants when dropped from the cloud..."

I'm very interested in learning more about this 'leveraging into the client' business. Is there a video demonstrating the appropriate procedure? And just to be safe, is this something I can watch at work, or should I wait until I get home behind locked doors?

Huawei loses attempt to rescue CFO Meng from US clutches despite using 140-year-old law in High Court

DoctorNine

Re: Don't break my laws but I can break your laws

You are wrong.

Here's some propaganda for you:

1.) Over 502,000 people have died in America from this pandemic.

2.) More people in the US have died from COVID19 than all the US deaths in WWII.

3.) About five times more died here from COVID19, than all the US deaths in WWI.

4.) Almost ten times more have died here from COVID19, than all the US deaths in Vietnam.

Clearly, COVID19 is not a negligible hazard.

As an academic physician who is here because he dabbles in theoretical computing and simple network stuff, I don't usually comment on such idiotic spew as you have here inflicted upon us, but this is right out there. I am now, currently, taking care of these people in hospital who are the ones dying. And they are not only old people ready to die anyway. One recent victim here was a 35 yo colleague who had just been married a month before. A triathlete actually.

Please refrain from your non-scientific pandemic denial conspiracy theories, if you expect anyone to take you seriously. It is at very least in poor taste, if not downright offensive.

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