Posts by gv

IBM: Remote working is great! ... For everyone except us

Re: Is it just me, or is this "retro" trend appearing in workplaces ?

I once worked in a development team where the management decided everybody had to be in the office to improve team communication, cooperation and, ultimately, the quality of the deliverables. People started quitting fairly soon afterwards.

S is for Sandbox: The logic behind Microsoft's new lockdown Windows gambit

Re: Sorry

"What a long, strange journey it has been getting to the point where Windows was decoupled from the Intel instruction set – and we're not even there yet."

Usually at various points in this journey, Microsoft will lose interest and veer off on a different (probably incompatible) direction.

Scratch the Surface: Slabtop sales slump takes the shine off Microsoft's 2017 so far

Re: Old Tech

It's unclear what problem this hardware is looking to solve. Clearly the insipid, cliched ad campaign did nothing to inspire the hipsters.

TVs are now tablet computers without a touchscreen

Re: I upgraded my "dumb" TV...

I agree. The TV is just the display hardware. The "smart" should be your media centre computer which you can upgrade on a schedule that suits you.

Stanford Uni's intro to CompSci course adopts JavaScript, bins Java

Re: Is there any correlation between "popularity" and

As it's a computer science course, the actual implementation language used should have no bearing on the overall objectives.

Silicon Valley tech CEO admits beating software engineer wife, offered just 13 days in the clink

Re: Cuberon

It would be interesting to see how co-workers react to this.

Why Firefox? Because not everybody is a web designer, silly

There's always links or lynx.

Boaty McBoatface sinks in South Atlantic on her maiden deployment

Re: second favourite

Certainly is in my book.

Outsourcers blamed for cocking up programmes at one in three big firms

Clearly you need to a team of expensive consultants to write a report to confirm this and proffer suitable amelioration strategies.

Huawei mystery memo (and phone strategy) confirmed

Words to live by

“In the end it’s not marketing that makes your success. It’s product and service."

There are quite a few companies that should adopt this paradigm.

Y'know CSS was to kill off HTML table layout? Well, second time's a charm: Meet CSS Grid

Some of us have earned some decent wage from having to handle standards + Microsoft.

Creators Update gives Windows 10 a bit of an Edge, but some old annoyances remain

I still use fvwm -- lovely window manager.

Carnegie-Mellon Uni emits 'don't be stupid' list for C++ developers

Re: Good advice but

Good fun and interesting times can be had by doing the opposite of those rules.

Nest cameras can be easily blacked out by Bluetooth burglars

Re: In other news

"Challenge accepted, anyone?"

IT nerds doing physical labour?

Samsung's Bixby totally isn't a Siri ripoff because look – it'll go in phones, TVs, fridges, air con...

Re: Bixby?

Presumably at some point it will turn into Lou Ferrigno.

Confirmed: TSA bans gear bigger than phones from airplane cabins

Metal detectors

"... who's metal detector should be checked as neither my belt nor watch triggered it."

It should probably be renamed the random ping machine. I'm pretty sure it doesn't "detect" anything.

Germany to roll out €100bn gigabit internet network

Government Investment

The government investing in critical infrastructure (internet access, public transport network, health service, education) for the public good is quite a novel idea. I wonder if it'll catch on?

HPE unscrambles its services eggs, calls the results 'Pointnext'

Long Term Plan

So what's the long term strategy regarding the aim "to have 60 per cent of its workforce do their thing from low-wage countries" once those low-wage countries reach wage parity?

FBI boss: 'Memories are not absolutely private in America'

Re: Memories up for grabs?

Room 101 awaits.

Trump, Brexit, and Cambridge Analytica – not quite the dystopia you're looking for

Re: Looking for something to blame?

I agree. I think generally there are one or two "hot" topics for an individual and, as long as you push those buttons, their vote is in the bag.

Java? Nah, I do JavaScript, man. Wise up, hipster, to the money

Re: Crippled C++

"I can get why COBOL is still doing well today. It's a well-designed language which went through literally decades of improvements to add to its versatility."

In what parallel universe is this even true?

Amazon S3-izure cause: Half the web vanished because an AWS bod fat-fingered a command

PEBKAC

That is all.

$310m AWS S3-izure: Why everyone put their eggs in one region

"This could come in the form of setting up virtual machines in multiple regions or sticking with the hybrid approach of keeping both cloud and on-premises systems"

Beancounters take note.

Skype-on-Linux graduates from Alpha to Beta status

Re: What is the benefit putting a cloud in the middle?

I've come across quite a few large companies using Skype Meetings or whatever the webex equivalent is called.

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

Sony should have ruled the roost

I'm guessing the rootkits, DRM, the bluray vs. the other format war, dropping Linux from the PlayStation, those weird Dixons-esque high street stores that never seem to have any customers in them, have all contributed to the overall decline.

Talk about a slow pour: Oracle now brewing late Java EE 8 for July 2017

Re: Does anyone really care?

"Is anyone still working in JEE?"

I'm guessing large enterprise companies who standardised on the platform are still using it. However, the latest "cool" dev toys are microservices and devops.

IBM to UK staff: Get ready for another game of musical chairs

Re: Change, the only constant

Death by a thousand cuts.

Ditching your call centre for an app? Be careful not to get SAP-slapped

Re: This behaviour

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Oracle/SAP/Microsoft, etc. This should be a salutary lesson, but somehow I doubt it.

Nokia's 3310 revival – what's NEXT? Vote now

Still got these...

I still have a floppy drive (although it is an external USB affair) and a cassette player.

Used the floppy drive last week on a box of disks and found both it and the disks were still usable. Kids played a Michael Jackson cassette yesterday.

The Mail vs Wikipedia: They're more alike than they'd ever admit

"Wikipedia's exhaustive detailing of sexual practices – including masturbation photos thoughtfully uploaded by contributors – is a wonder of the age."

I'm pretty sure the ancient Greeks had most things documented.

Brought to you by UK.gov: 'Most ambitious programme of change of any government anywhere in the world'

Perhaps you should stand for election on a "drain the swamp" and "Make Britain Great Again" platform?

SQL Server on Linux? HELL YES! Linux on Windows 10? Meh

I'd like to do this, but I'm forced to run Win10, so I have an Arch VM where I do my real work.

Cattle that fail, not pets that purr – the future of servers

Every silver lining has a cloud.

For every benefit, there's a cost.

Vivaldi and me: Just browsing? Nah, I'm sold

Re: Closed-source browsing?

Nope.

I've been playing around with https://minbrowser.github.io/min/

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

Re: Marissa Mayer

Of course Mayer's policy was such a complete success, a yuge success.

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on 'core scenarios'

Re: Oh yeah .....

I think it was fairly obvious that if you were going .NET then C# was the best option. I'm surprised they persisted with VB for so long.

Most VB6 programmers that I know jumped to Java.

Facebook's dabblings in TV suggest Zuck isn't actually a genius after all

Re: Genius

It's amazing how much serendipity and luck are actually involved in these successful businesses, or indeed a top performing sports team. Human life is intrinsically stochastic, but it doesn't seem to stop people trying to emulate their 'heroes' by blithely copying their habits/practices.

UK.gov hiring folk to watch smutty vids? All hail our blind censors...

"Keeping children safe" is a job for parents/legal guardians. And not just online.

Corn-based diet turns French hamsters into baby eating cannibals

"Improperly cooked maize-based diets have been associated with higher rates of homicide, suicide and cannibalism in humans"

Now there's a health warning!

Oh, the things Vim could teach Silicon Valley's code slingers

Frameworks

The problem with "frameworks" is that, like buses, there will be another one along in a little while.

Google loses Android friends with Pixel exclusivity

Re: Given most OEMs' approach to Android updates,

I would quite seriously consider buying a Ubuntu phone if only the damned things were available rather than just "coming soon."

Maps and alarm clocks best thing about mobes, say normies

Improvements

"the real value for developers lies in improving already established features"

I'm guessing there's only so far you can go with an alarm/clock app.

For Fark's sake! Fark fury follows 5-week ad ban for 5-year-old story

Re: Welcome to the New World

I believe this is called "improving the customer experience."

Microsoft quietly emits patch to undo its earlier patch that broke Windows 10 networking

Re: Emergency boot partition

The correct way to run Windows, should you need to, is as a virtual machine in some other (non-Windows) operating system.

Outlook outage outrage

Welcome to the Cloud

Where all your data is safe and secure, and accessible whenever you need it.

Allegedly.

Put down the org chart, snowflake: Why largile's for management crybabies

Re: In 5 years?

Undoubtedly there will be a new set of buzzwords created each time.

Firefox hits version 50

Re: Android

Use it daily and, apart from a very rare odd lockup, it works fine.

Vodafone blames €5bn H1 loss on cutthroat Indian competition

Re: Or it could be .....

I agree. The mid-contract price hikes were enough for me to move from them. Unfortunately, they then bought my ISP, the one I had been with since I first went online, and then cut the bundled email service. That was enough for me to rouse myself from my lethargy and I cut my service with them.

Yeah, that '50bn IoT devices by 2020' claim is a load of dog toffee

Re: Meh - seems legit IMHO

"it's about anything that needs an IP address"

Are all these IoT thingies going to be on IPv6?

Ubuntu Core Snaps door shut on Linux's new Dirty COWs

Re: Joke Alert?

Those of us old enough will remember all the vulnerabilities in the old Unixes. I particularly liked the old fake terminal login prompt.