Posts by RegGuy1

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Active White Space

I learned decades ago about the power of active white space: use newlines, asterisks (ie bullet points) and if the medium allows it, indentation, to manage the flow of text. You don't need much, too much dilutes the effect, but using paragraphs and bullet points to bring out key information it can transform a block of text into a feast of information.

Layout the text so:

* It leads the eye down the page;

* makes it easy to find key points;

* lets you organise your thoughts in a clear way.

White space: it costs nothing but can do a great deal more.

*** For FREE *** :-)

[BTW, this is *especially* true for code.]

IBM orders US sales to locate near customers or offices

Re: New euphemism

I've been moved. I've been married. I've been made-redundant.

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

Re: Meh

Running them in the cloud when local compute is so cheap these days is a sales fest only rivaled by selling ice to Eskimos.

Or water in bottles to the dim and gormless.

UK officials insist 'murder prediction tool' algorithms purely abstract

Re: Minority Report

Hey you! Yes you.

We saw you in town on CAM0539 but your phone records show you as at home.

Why did you leave your phone home?

We NEED TO KNOW where you are at all times.

Expect a knock any time soon...

TSMC blew whistle on suspected verboten exports to Huawei – that may cost it $1B+

Re: The lesson you learnt today: Don't dickride.

Yeah, but from what I understand from this side of the pond, which is admittedly not too much, is that he got in to 'shake things up' ('drain the swamp', etc).

Well he's certainly doing that. It's just that those who voted for him didn't expect him to shit on them, too.

Hey ho. You pays your money ...

EU may target US tech giants in tariff response

Re: Protecting consumers is BAD!

Hated by whom? The muppets that voted for brexit?

As time moves on it is clear our economy has been well and truly shafted and that we 'only' got 10% tariffs is not really a respite. It looks like the orangutang is going to press on with his stupidity, and we'll have tariffs on services as well. That will really shaft us, our economy is predominantly services but we won't have the benefit of a 500m strong economy to protect us.

Brexit wasn't a one-off. It is a continuing process, where we have to respond to changes that the EU make. But because our country is still full of dim-witted racists (the number one issue for Reform voters is immigration, even though many of them live in places where there aren't many immigrants) we can't put our hands up and say sorry, we got it wrong. We have to continue bulldozing down the road of utter stupidity, reloading the shotgun to shoot ourselves repeated in both feet.

We done brexiters. Now hurry up and die, then the generations you have damaged can start to undo it.

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Well the moving walkways at Manchester Airport haven't worked for years. Apparently it was too expensive to pay the maintenance. But they managed to find £2bn to upgrade Terminal 2. Hmm.

IBM Consulting workers told management wants to 'more closely align pay, performance'

Re: Recursion is a dangerous tool

it's obvious as the stock value is tanking

Hmm. Have you seen IBM's share price recently? Tanking is the last word I'd have chosen.

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

Re: Yeah I had this cobblers with my bank yesterday...

Err, I thought Hebrew ran right to left, so the full stop should be at the other end.

Re: for fuck's sake

Haha. Good man: http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm

UK council selling the farm (and the fire station) to fund ballooning Oracle project

Re: Lemmings

Well I used to work for a council, but coz I knew what I was doing I got to double my salary by going to a big US corp (defo NOT Oracle).

If you pay peanuts you ain't going to get quality staff to stay. But hey, these are only local government workers, and their wages come out of our taxes. So fuck that, cut local government workers wages and see what happens. I don't want to pay more tax ...

... oh fuck.

Astronomers red-faced after mistaking Musk's Tesla Roadster for asteroid

AI, anyone?

Surely this is the sort of problem space AI would be good at?

Biz tax rises, inflation and high interest. Why fewer UK tech firms started in 2024

Re: What sort of country prevents able-bodied and willing people from working ...

Just to add, read this guy https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com to get a detailed view of how things are failing.

He's less gobby than me, and now has years of even-handed commentary that is a very useful reference.

What sort of country prevents able-bodied and willing people from working ...

One full of ignorant, racist, greedy pensioners that understand nothing of the modern world and still think we are a superpower, top-table country able to do whatever we want.

A country full of people, whose parents fought for a better world, only to grab with both hands what they had achieved and refuse to let their children or future generations enjoy the same benefits they had. Many were brought up in the new modern council houses that were built after the war, by a generation that remembered what the Tories did to them after the *previous* war when, promised homes fit for heroes they didn't get them. But hey, one generation of greedy people, and yes, of course I'll vote for you coz you're giving me a cheap home to buy ...

A country full of people who think benefits for people who are struggling should not be paid and should get off their arses, yet are too stupid to see that the socialist pension payments they get are also benefits. They like to delude themselves that they've actually paid for these, and so must receive these payments and demand as a right their payment of £200 per week, despite the fact that they paid 2/6 per week to 'earn' these.

A country that thinks we can have European[1] levels of public service, but only pay US[2] type levels of tax.

A country that thinks our outdated political system that is turning so many people off (unless you are one of the millions of boomers) should be kept because we've had it for hundreds of years.

A country that seems not to understand the demographic crisis that we (and others also, to be fair) have, that means there will be no one available to wipe their arses, because they want them all deported. And if they do stay, the same ignorant or greedy old buggers are definitely unwilling to pay better wages to attract the good old British worker to perform these tasks. (Fuck off, my house is for my kids, don't you dare tax it.)

A country that is too up its own arse to see that we must get back towards Europe, but because of the ignorance, greed, hubris and stupidity can't. There are the remainers who have known this for ever but were sidelined. The Reform lot who just don't like the EU (but not one of them could tell you why, just we're British). And the Tory lot who can only say we did brexit wrong.

NOTHING WILL GET BETTER until a much larger number of these old people die off. And in the meantime, the country will continue to go down the pan.

That's why this country is shit. (IMHO :-)

[1] Spit.

[2] Hurray!

UK tax collector's phone service 'deliberately' bad to push users online, say MPs

Re: tax rules are overly-complex?

We lost 11 days in September, 1752[1], so we could *finally* adjust to European dates, but the Treasury didn't want to lose part of a year in revenue, so instead moved the new tax year to start 11 days later. And it's been that way ever since.

[1] $ cal 9 1752

September 1752

Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa

1 2 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Re: Never blame on evil...

K.I.S.S. and there isn't the need for there to be entire villages of people that work the support lines. Of course, that leads to government departments with shrinking headcounts which cannot be allowed.

Except it's not. It's to do with votes. The tax system is complicated because it is used to buy people to vote for you. All political parties do it, and the one that agrees to make it much, much simpler is the one that is going to piss off too many people and so lose an election. Until you can stop the politicians dicking about with it it will remain shit.

'That's not a bug, it's a feature' takes on a darker tone when malware's involved

The S in IoT stands for Security

Security is always going to be difficult. But some things are obvious: always have a choke point (a firewall) through which your external traffic must pass. Dedicate this device to only controlling traffic flow, and put as little code on there as possible, the fewer bells and whistles a firewall has the better it should be. Reduce the types of traffic to the bare minimum. Have these choke points actively managed with alerts being followed up by humans (yes, I know they cost money...).

As soon as anything is on the network there is a risk. And remember: The S in IoT stands for Security. :-)

Parker Solar Probe set for blisteringly hot date with the Sun on Christmas Eve

Re: Nine solar radii -- just wow!

Haha. A downvote. It's such an incredible achievement and you downvote it. Where ever you go, there are always knobheads! Jeez.

Merry Christmas.

Er, because i's the base unit of length in the International System of Units maybe?

Nine solar radii -- just wow!

That's just incredible -- literally unbelievable.

3.8m miles is about 6m km. The sun's radius is 700,000km so that means it will be around nine solar radii from the surface of the sun. NINE!!

Wow.

Stranded in space: Starliner crew to remain in orbit even longer as SpaceX faces delays

McDonnell Douglas, please.

SpaceX hits 400 launches of Falcon 9 rocket

Re: Because it would be a waste of time

[*cough*] Boeing [*cough*]

Re: Easy Rider

Yeah, but if you take Musk out of the equation SpaceX wouldn't have happened. He must have done something right.

He might be a dick, but he had the balls, the money and the skill to select and motivate a talented team of people to get SpaceX to where it is today.

Abstract, theoretical computing qualifications are turning teens off

Re: Today's Novelties

I agree mostly with your comments but I have managed to keep well away from Microsoft, and so avoided powershell. However, while Awk does indeed have some limitations, it can shine when you use it with a decent shell, probably bash these days, but I used to use the Korn shell for a lot of my work. One of its biggest limitations is the single quote, but just having a variable called SQ = "\x27" was a workaround, or with other tricks such as tr or sed.

In the 30 years since 1991 I've rarely found the limitations of Awk a problem, and it is present on even basic installations, which I feel makes it essential.

Re: WYF!

Learn to touch type. It's not difficult and the skill will apply in so many areas (such as typing a response on el Reg). I like to live in vi, and my typing skills help lots.

I learned when I was 11, on a device, I believe it was called a typewriter; longer documents could be tiring. Years later I discovered a package, Mavis Beacon teaches Typing. It had a useful exercise where you had to type the text that appeared at the top of the screen. If you made a mistake a bug (fly) would appear squashed on the screen. The more errors you made the more the screen (which simulated the forward view from a moving car) would get filled with more and more squashed bugs. Quite a fun activity and helped to hone my typing skills again. (Of course by this time I'd moved on from Tipp-ex to just using the backspace!)

Re: Today's Novelties

In 1991 in the central library in Manchester I found a book, it was called The AWK Programming Language. Wow, that was an interesting read. And the skills it taught me have lasted a career. I've never needed to update my programming skills, althought I've learned a few others. Microsoft? Fuck off. Get your data into text format and the world is your oyster. (It was for me.)

SpaceX claims another Starship success, but fumbles the catch

Huge progress?

Mr Musk said the booster was planned to land harder on the tower. Apparently the automated diagnostics decided this wasn't a good idea, and so it went for a swim instead.

But the relight (for about a second) in orbit[1] was one of the big gains. They are looking for permission to launch 25 times next year: that's once every two weeks. And these early flights are deliberately pushing the boundaries to gather data. I expect this time next year no one will really care, as, like the Falcon launches now, it will be routine. What? They landed a 70m 250 ton skyscraper on a pair of metal arms 100m above the ground. Again? Yawn.

Gwynne Schotwell has said she wouldn't be surprised if there will have been 400 Starship flights by 2028. And if their plan works out, it will almost just be the cost of a bit of oxygen and natural gas to get to orbit. The $40m, or whatever it costs a Falcon second stage, will not need to be paid any more. Just as the Internet transformed the world in the 90s, so the 2030s are going to be unimaginably different to today.

[1] It was in orbit, it's just that perigee was below the Earth's surface. :-)

Five Eyes infosec agencies list 2023's most exploited software flaws

Re: These would be great

That depends upon which 1970s radio DJ you're talking about...

Jimmy Saville?

Now then, now then...

Icon, for obvious reasons ----->

Here's how a Trump presidency could change the tech industry

Re: "regime"

There's a "not USA" ?

/s

Clues to Windows Intelligence found in Windows 11 builds

Re: Will there be one button...

All I want to know is how to disable it.

You don't know? Format c: then install Linux. Simples.

Robots crush career opportunities for low-skilled workers

Hmm. What does Starmer do now? If he pushes for a trade deal with the US he will have to sacrifice our agriculture sector, so we can be swamped with hormone-infected beef and chickens washed in chlorine. If he decides getting nearer to the EU is the way to go the biggest thing he can offer to get them to take notice is to ease on migration, thus risking the wrath of the racist pensioners, and thus affecting his re-election chances. If he does bugger all we'll get squeezed by Trumps tariffs and the EU's indifference: no growth and inflation.

Difficult.

Re: No. Just, no.

Productivity is the key metric. A worker needs to earn more for the business to get more wages. This means adopting technology that helps, and often that means fewer workers using new technology to improve the product or service by making it better or cheaper. I'm often reminded of the pain in the 80s, when thousands of dockers lost their jobs to new technology -- containerisation. But now that has created huge increases in the global economy. Rather than taking days using thousands of dockers to unload and then reload a ship, it can be done in hours with very few.

The effect is that it is unbelievably cheap to send stuff around the world, compared to when there were so many wages to be paid. At the same time the service has improved immensely, and breakages, accidental or deliberate, are hugely reduced. Now if you want to be a docker you have to have a different set of skills.

If you are unskilled, tough. There's lots of people out there like you, so the employers can pick and choose. The answer has always been to skill up -- education, education, education.

Just to be clear, even though Trump is president-elect, it won't ever go back to how it was. Would you be willing to pay 35 dollars/euros/pounds for a kettle, when you can buy one for a fiver? Thought not. If you think Trump is going to push up wages, you're deluded.

SpaceX plans next Starship flight just days from now

FAA to be rejigged?

Presumably they will have a buoy (boy) as before, but we'll get much better views of the Starship landing. I'm expecting now Trump is in place Musk will be pestering him to get the FAA to speed up its licence approvals for subsequent flights. He wants to fly the next test flight as soon as possible, which seems to be a couple of months from the last one and to think that Starhopper, that 'small' thing they've moved to the side of the road by the launch pads, only flew in 2019. Just incredible.

Your air fryer might be snitching on you to China

Yes, and if you want the fucking thing to reconnect you have to turn location on.

Fuck off Google.

Re: re: unfriendly shocker of a watch

Er. How on earth can something on your wrist measure blood pressure? You need a cuff on your arm to do that, as that is designed to stop the flow of blood, then gradually let it flow back and measure the pressure changes. The best a watch can do is tell you your blood pressure has changed, but not from what to what. When I stand up I can tell you that without a watch.

My son has a smart watch. It tells him he has a message (as does his phone). It means he can lift his arm to read it, rather than getting his phone out of his pocket to lift it up to read it. Oh, and it also tells the time.

My review: bag of shite.

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Re: One good sanction deserves another

The problem with sanctions is that it is encouraging dedollarisation, where countries try to find alternatives to networks such as SWIFT where countries do not need to involve the US. It's longer term effect is to reduce the ability of the US to influence the foreign policies of those countries it (the US) does not like.

Re: World record?

But how many Ningis is that?

IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4, argues APNIC's chief scientist

Re: NAT should be enough for everything

44? Why is Ingerland 44? Shouldn't we be 1? Or, at least if we have to acknowledge the US then number 2? Why 44? Are we not as special as everyone (here in Ingerland) seems to think we are? Why has the Daily Mail never explained this?

Chinese chipmaker Loongson now just three to five years off the pace on the desktop

Re: Déjà vu

It's not "the dark side". I remember I said that about a year ago, too.

Openreach reveals latest locations facing the copper chop

Re: Which decade?

I can confirm it will be one of them.

First time's the charm: SpaceX catches a descending Super Heavy Booster

Re: To the Moon and Mars

Ah, but the second tower at Boca Chica is being built to take into account the lessons learned from the first tower. That's why, incidentally, they demolished the legs at Cape Canaveral based on the experience of the first tower, and will likely build a flame trench there, just as they are with the second Boca Chica tower. The orbital launch mount as a stool idea is clearly not as effective as they first thought, but at least they have tried it.

If there is one criticism of SpaceX it is that they go ahead and do something, then back out, undo it, and do something else. But that is inherent in the way the company works. There is no better data than real-world data and it means they can respond very quickly. So if there ever is a mishap with a Booster landing they will likely already have one or more launch towers available so it won't stop things, and they'll at least get valuable data to improve reliability for all subsequent catch attempts. A catch failure, while unwelcome, can still be very much a positive.

They all laughed when they said they would land the spent Falcon booster on a boat in the middle of the sea -- what a stupid, crazy idea. But now everyone is being forced to reassess how the space industry operates. Even the Europeans, who are very upset that the rug has been pulled under their cosy corporate featherbed. That's what disruptive technology does. Gwynne Shotwell has said SpaceX must be disruptive to itself, always looking to see how it can make its current technology obsolete before someone else does. Hence Starship will make Falcon 9 obsolete.

... and bean counters took over

So sad.

Merger with McDonnell Douglas: In 2020, Quartz reported that after the merger there was a "clash of corporate cultures, where Boeing's engineers and McDonnell Douglas's bean-counters went head-to-head", which the latter won, and that this may have contributed to the events leading up to the 737 MAX crash crisis.[21]

Raspberry Pi AI Camera takes inferencing load off the CPU

Re: Yes

Or they are really smart and someone doesn't like you. :-)

Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate

Re: Hard truths

Or Cb (c-flat). Or is that just B? :-)

Sorry, I'll get my coat.

Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war

Re: end Game

Of course not. Some long dead dude said the land belongs to them. We're not sharing coz this guy said it's ours.

That's it.

Pat Gelsinger's grand plan to reinvent Intel is in jeopardy

Kodak...

Who?

Cloudflare calls for regulatory harmonization amid rising internet challenges

You are Elon Musk and I claim my five Euros.

Chrome Web Store warns end is nigh for uBlock Origin

Re: Firefox anyone?

Anything else means Google can go forth and multiply.

I'd just tell them to fuck off.

IBM Canada can't duck channel exec's systematic age discrimination claim

s/here/hear

Doh!

Hmm. I'm not so sure. How many times do we here 'Opps, sorry. That was a mistake. Lessons will be learnt...' And yet we keep hearing that same phrase. (There is probably a corporate playbook somewhere that has these words written down, because I read them so often in the reply to some disaster or other.)

As for IBM I do wonder where in the organisation this obviously unwritten policy is based. They keep changing those at the top but -- did Ginny whisper this to Arvind before she left? Or is there a cabal of senior people who demand this happens? And for what benefit? For the company to look young and virile, while its core customers are the financial service sector that doesn't give a shit about this -- just make sure you give us what we want?

I don't get it.