Posts by Claverhouse

From WordPad to WordAds: Microsoft caught sneaking nagging Office promos into venerable text editor beta

Microsoft Newspeak

"showcase how digital advertising can be more interactive and revolve around customer-initiated experiences that can be beautiful, relevant and useful."

Just don't.

Re: On loathing ads

What bills ?

This is an operating system already bought, not a webpage.

A very few places still have billboards by the roads, whilst noisome and intrusive one might live with such; but not with one's paid-for car reciting an advertisement every quarter of an hour.

Alan Turing’s OBE medal, PhD cert, other missing items found in super-fan’s Colorado home by agents, says US govt

The Way We Live Now

Exactly what happens over here: tell the local plod some thieving little git has some property of yours and a picked squad of BORDER FORCE! *, MI5, the National Crime Agency and the local Crime Squad will swoop and ransack the miscreant's house.

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* Customs & Excise in reality.

And we laugh at Trumpo's ridiculous SPACE FORCE!... The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

South American nations open fire on ICANN for 'illegal and unjust' sale of .amazon to zillionaire Jeff Bezos

Re: TLDs - I am confused

All TLDs were a scam from the start: designed to produce the Variants Pressure mentioned above.

ICANN Will Regret Betraying Their Principles & Giving It To A Greasy Tradesman

To each thing in itself there is a Maximus, a Major and a Minor; and sometimes a Minimus. 300 years time supposing the internet exists, the River will still be there; maybe even the name --- but not the company.

How long do the greatest companies last ? In Britain, Europe or anywhere ?

Wave goodbye: DigitalOcean decimates workforce as co-founder reveals lack of profitability, leadership turmoil

Sithee

"The more time you spend in the corporate world, the more comfortable you are with corporate speak," he said. "I haven't spent any time in the corporate world and I personally value honesty very highly, so I always try to be as forthright as possible, while still respecting the privacy and feelings of other individuals."

Errhhr, I'm a plain man an' ah' spek me mind plainly: no fancypants gobbledygook laik those poncy southrons; just honest Yorkshire plain-speaking honesty and forthrightness: which means you can trust me to spek the plain truth forthrightly and honestly.

Whoa, whoa... Tesla slams brakes on allegations of 'unintended acceleration' bug: 'Completely false and was brought by a short-seller'

It's terrible when stupid people just make up wanton slander and get away with it.

Hospital hacker spared prison after plod find almost 9,000 cardiac images at his home

Re: But why?

Rule 34.

Re: Differences...

Don't forget all the interesting things happening with local schools and local schoolchildren and local teachers, and all the local people running around local fields kicking balls !

And local car-sales...

LastPass stores passwords so securely, not even its users can access them

On The Not Trusting of Strangers

One of the many, many reasons I would never place my passwords online.

As a non-internet repository Empass is pretty good. Somewhat confusing, with too many categories, but excellent at it's purpose. Indian in origin, so safe from Western curiosity *.

I would back up to other drives, naturally.

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* No offence, but even for offline apps I can imagine some American 3-letter entities leaning on a maker to include backdoors for dear old Uncle Sam.

Apple calls BS on FBI, AG: We're totally not dragging our feet in murder probe iPhone decryption. PS: No backdoors

"It is very important for us to know with whom and about what the shooter was communicating before he died," Barr said.

Seeing as it's America, my money's on ordering a 3 foot pizza for one.

Updated your WordPress plugins lately? Here are 320,000 auth-bypassing reasons why you should

Auftragstaktik is Actually Best Practice

My own shuttered WordPress site will eventually be converted to either a flat html or some other platform.

Mostly because of their filthy motto, the fascist 'Decisions, Not Options', which translates as 'Developers Decide, Little User', and is really the most offensive decision on the Web. Plus the lunatic upgrade frequency which rivals Firefox for stupidity, and the worst parts of PHP as a language.

But in this instance, because all outside extensions and add-ons are bound to be unmaintained and die eventually as either do their creators or their creators' interest.

Which means in effect, if it wasn't for their dumb command conceit, had they wrapped useful conceptions from add-on creators into Core, easy to be included or modified or turned off, as in the Linux Kernel --- by Users, as Options there would be far, far less of a problem.

Their ultimate control would even be enhanced by having everything under their roof: but that would mean letting Users make Decisions and not themselves. And they can't stand that.

Step away from that Windows 7 machine, order UK cyber-cops: It's not safe for managing your cash digitally

Would you rather the Internet was awash with compromised machines that affect everyone?

I wouldn't care that much. It will affect mostly Windows users, and is very very unlikely to affect Linux, Apple or BSDs etc.. I'm not even being callous, just realistic.

If they didn't want to get infected they shouldn't have chosen Microsoft.

Re: Upgrade from Windows 7

Basically get it off the net and any network connected to the net and enjoy.

Not just Windows 7: this is imperative for all Windows machines.

Geoboffins find the oldest matter on Earth: Ancient stardust created before the Solar System formed

Star Dust

...dust grains that were formed around five to seven billion years ago - before the Solar System had even formed.

“This is one of the most exciting studies I’ve worked on,” said Philipp Heck

I got over it after the first billion years.

UK data watchdog kicks £280m British Airways and Marriott GDPR fines into legal long grass

The EU is to Blame

They easily created the excellent GDPR without thinking it through how simple-minded and weak-willed countries could apply it, or their incorporation of it into their own law, when they light-mindedly wandered off to achieve Independence ( and no doubt FREEDOM! ) afterwards. A government of imbeciles cannot be expected to adequately fund anything, especially when it has a philosophical horror of government spending any money whatsoever...

We won't CU later: New Ofcom broadband proposals mull killing off old copper network

Re: Spare a copper?

Also what of low income families or people who simply choose to have a credit meter... when the juice goes off.. so does their ability to dial 999 from the landline.

Having a pay-as-you-go meter [ Ecotricity: the rates are the same for direct debit or pay-as-you-go ] I would point out that without electricity you are not going to use a computer anyway, and that most people, even the poorest, now use cell-phones --- which can dial 999 calls even without credit. With Talkmobile I am paying £5 a month for unlimited calls, which actually cheaper than 20 years ago, not that I use it much.

I long for the day when the landlines are ripped out.

We’ve had enough of your beach-blocking shenanigans, California tells stubborn Sun co-founder: Kiss our lawsuit

Re: I am rather surprised

If he chose to build a mansion whose worth with be diluted by having proles about --- and believe it or not I have some sympathy with that point of view --- then he should have built the mansion elsewhere.

I'm Surprised He Hasn't Found a Rare Insect or Flower that Needs Protecting

Were some 19th century Duke to forbid access by the common people the American rabble, Congress, and Yellow Press would have howled like blue blazes of aristocratic wickedness and loathsome undemocratic greed.

When it comes to the oligarch by wealth, he mostly gets away with it.

Not that I ever understand how a human --- temporary as the blink of God's Eye --- can own land, which lasts pretty much forever as far as our puny human lives can tell.

Long-term Linux Mint: 19.3 release unchains the Gimp, adds HiDPI, is kind to your older, less-beefy kit

S'fine...

Using Mint 18.3 on this machine --- after which we had to amicably part ways because they were stupid enough to junk KDE in further editions --- and it does most stuff well.

As for the start menu the first 2 things on any installation of any OS I do is to shove the taskbar in the sky and revert to Classic Start Menu --- when I can't do that I give up on an OS. Why mess with cascading perfection ?

My motherboard onboard sound died, so I bought a cheap Chinese USB soundcard dongle, and Mint handled it immediately. Anyway good luck to Mint.

We live so fast I can't even finish this sent...

Re: Twinning toilets

Not only is it not cost-efficient for them to go round photographing every single toilet in Africa

Dunno, my pal Quentin --- well, acquaintance, really -- was in charge of a scheme to twin public toilets [ men's only ] between London & Home Counties and Newcastle and mining villages, to encourage a warm brotherhood or something: so he spent a lot of time hanging around public lavatories in Hampstead or Blaydon with his little camera in his hand.

I really didn't know him very well.

Two missing digits? How about two missing employees in today's story of Y2K

Re: real issues

The old ways are the good ways.

Another free web course to gain machine-learning skills (thanks, Finland), NIST probes 'racist' face-recog – and more

'Hemmingway', eh ?

Isn't it time to accept that everything done by a white person is racist, and they need to be pre-emptively condemned beforehand, as a matter of course ?

Just like all deaths, if you positively correlate hard enough, are ultimately due to smoking.

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One campaign, originating in the country of Georgia, had 39 Facebook accounts, 344 Pages, 13 Groups, and 22 Instagram accounts, now all shut down. The network was linked to the nation's Panda advertising agency, and was pushing pro-Georgian-government material.

Adding to the noise on the internet, and I agree advertising is a pest, but I'm struggling to find the real harm here.

Couldn't be that Facebook is holding up a minor scapegoat to show it's deadly resolve ?

From Georgia: Georgian authorities appear linked to hundreds of fake Facebook pages

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Speaking of deadly resolve... The Georgian opposition has some skeletons...

The survey findings showed that for many people in the post-Soviet circles, the spirit of this bloody tyrant of the 20th century, who shot and exiled over 20 million people, is still alive and highly respected. For example, in Georgia, 45% of respondents expressed a positive attitude towards Stalin.

In Stalin’s native town – Gori, ‘the Great Leader’ is almost equal to God–inviolable and immortal. He has many followers there: people who believe that Joseph Dzhugashvili (Stalin) is the greatest person ever born (or who will ever be born) in Georgia.

Stalin: God, Superstar

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I have absolutely no idea why fondness for a noted villain, like Cromwell in the Eastern Counties, or Napoleon in Corsica, or the Krays in London Town should be positively correlated to the fact they were adventitiously born in a particular place.

What's that? Encryption's OK now? UK politicos Brexit from Whatsapp to Signal

All These Cameras Photographing Cameras...

I don't even have a smartphone, but wouldn't they have native and app Screen Capture utilities, like Spectacle on Linux, or KSnaphot, anyway ?

No need to photo anything.

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Obviously other OSs have snapshooting: crude as it may be for Apple:

On macOS, a user can take a screenshot of an entire screen by pressing ⌘ Cmd+⇧ Shift+3, or of a chosen area of the screen by ⌘ Cmd+⇧ Shift+4. This screenshot is saved to the user's desktop, with one PNG file per attached monitor

Wiki Screenshot"

ACLU sues America's border cops: Tell us everything about these secret search teams targeting travelers

The New USSR

Uh, was the German venue equally as filthy as the Washington one ? EG, is this now a standard feature of airports universally, or sloppiness in Washington ?

Admittedly I think American bureaucracy 3 X worse than even our own, but I'm not a fair judge.

'Tis the season to be wobbly: HSBC online and mobile banking services suffer not one but two major outages in 12 hours

Re: Cash is King.

Are you paid in cash ? Straight from the cashier's cage ?

Email blackmail brouhaha tears UKIP apart as High Court refuses computer seizure attempt

Corbyn is now Left-Fractionalist to The New Tory Bolshevikism...

Well ---- apart from the set pattern of Presbyterian splits [ and the various bunches of 17th century Independents/Congregationalists that went into ever nuttier groups ---- still happening in America ] which inspired the Trotskyists in the second half of the 20th century, it is worth remembering our Prime Minister, the victorious Billy Bunter is helped in No. 10 by Spiked persons, once extreme-left British Revolutionary Communist Party, now extreme-capitalist Libertarian loons.

So sometimes they get lucky.

The Pity of It All

And it all started off with such hopeful innocence. A group of valiant patriots wanting only the best for the country and willing to put all their combined brainpower to getting the very best deal for BRITAIN.

Where did it all go so wrong ?

The best remedy lies not in courts but in appealing to their hearts. Take the whole lot, along with those who were allies in the Brexit Party and the Conservative Party and put them in a room on a tiny uninhabited island in the Atlantic, perhaps one of the smaller islets of Tristan da Cunha, without distracting communication, and not come to take them off until the entire bunch have hugged and made up.

Moderate = Non-Socialist Labour.

Das Reboot: Uni forces 38,000 students, staff to queue, show their papers for password reset following 'cyber attack'

Re: Expensive

I too thought it was large, so checked.

Apparently 274,000 current students, and godaloneknows how many previous graduates in America, can proudly emblazon their T-shirts with CUNY.

Hate speech row: Fine or jail anyone who calls people boffins, geeks or eggheads, psychology nerd demands

For Those of a Certain Age

Calling someone a swot, whizkid, brainbox, smart-arse, or dweeb may seem “harmless banter,” but it is equivalent to hate speech, she reckons, and should be recognized as such in British law – with punishments including fines and imprisonment..

A perfect Giles Cartoon of squat little kids being hauled into the dock...

Stop us if you've heard it before but... Africa's internet management body mired again by corruption allegations

Upward and Onward !

“I urge the community to think beyond the sensation and let us see how to help and empower the people doing useful work for Africa,”

With customary aspirational words like that to persuade people not to dwell in negativity and jealousy of the great ones, Mr. Folayan always has a place here or in America as government spokesman should his present job tire of him.

Amazon Germany faces Christmas strikes from elf stackers, packers and dispatchers

MP for Oinking

Boris had nothing to do with that hideous travesty at the Bullingdon.

He never even met the Demon Butler, let alone Dave's good friend. Nor was he Best Man at their Sporuslike simulacrum of a wedding.

He has never even heard of the Bullingdon; and will continue to deny it under oath unless photographic evidence emerges.

In which case he will steal the camera.

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

Catalogue of Errors

The IT staff were rightly sacked since they committed bad actions, no matter how tasteless their boss was for leaving his crap about.

a/ Whining at Human Resources. [ I would hope the rugged Canadians to be less concerned with effete PC nonsense.

b/ Transferring data to a Windows computer.

d/ Interposing their own judgement as to which data they shall move.

c/ Causing the hard drive with his private information to be destroyed.

You had one job, Cupertino: Apple's Intelligent Tracking Protection actually gets tracking protection

The Solution to all Stasis

The simplest thing to do would be to pass a law banning all tracking. With rather severe penalties --- such as the directors of any attempt being mandatorily sent for 2 to 5 years to a Category A High Security [ Exceptional Risk ] prison.

We cannot stop the Americans tracking and spying on us, as they do their own subject people, nor the Russians, nor the Chinese, they will have to dree their own weird. We can at least stop our own scum.

Advertisers and spymasters do not own us.

Space Force is go, go, go! Because we have a child as President of the United States

It Is With Such Baubles That Men Are Led.

Trump will not lose by this, knowing the American people; any more than he has lost by pushing for a ridiculous Wall.

Of course had the wretched Obama spun this idea the media would be falling over itself to grovel before his 'cool' intellectual brilliance.

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...the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner took time away from restoring peace in the Middle East to reach an agreement with the president’s daughter, who looks lovely in a dress and is also Kushner's wife

Kinda tautological, nu ?

How much cheese does one person need to grate? Mac Pro pricing unveiled

The weird thing from the specs link, is that people who afford all this need those hideous pre-installed 'apps' shown at the last.

I lost all icons from my linux boxen years ago, keeping only the theory in the divine WIMP paradigm [ which I shall never stray from, however the loons demand we shout at our computers or wave our arms about ], and have no idea why people who do far more serious and intense computing than I need these childish helps like apps, tiles, icons etc. .

Non-unicorn $700 e-scooter shop Unicorn folds with no refunds – after blowing all its cash on online ads

Re: Ahahaha

It does. Advertising Must Die.

the Lexus of two-wheelers,

They should have ignored Facebook, and maybe advertising entirely, since Good Wine Needs No Bush, and just concentrated on the City and Wall Street plus Park Lane and whatever equivalent rich district New York has, using 'influencers' and gossip to inculcate the idea that the truly successful and the rich beyond belief desire no object so much as an exclusive top-of-the-range scooter to advertise their wealth.

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BTW a number of recent start-ups here have been headed for 'partial refunds': not in the economic class that spends freely, but don't people ever resent giving over a wodge of money, and in return receiving a small percentage back along with a letter of apology ?

When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games

Re: But on the other hand...

Both America and France's Meat Industries have been trying to make it illegal to use these terms. France via the EU, successfully, which partially reconciles me to Brexit --- I am vegan myself --- and America partially such loyal deputies as the brilliant politician Mitch McConnell, who saw off both Obama and Trump's ill-fated Healthcare proposals through the rummy ways of Democracy and who has received more generosity from the Meat Industry than most Americans have eaten free hot dinners.

Who’s Afraid of Tofurky? Oregon’s Soy Food Pioneer Fights For the Right to Label Its Product As Meat. --- Tofurky’s fight against Arkansas could decide whether nearly every vegan food company should be allowed to do business in rural states whose economies depend on ranching."

It's the end of the 20-teens, and your Windows PC can still be pwned by nothing more than a simple bad font

Re: Out o'curiosity ...

Maybe I even got it from here, but I recently found the biography of Hermann Zapf, a great typographer --- and married to a great typographer --- interesting.

https://www.linotype.com/1494/the-lifestory-of-hermann-zapf.html

Not Even Complaining

Whatever might be said re Windows versus Linux --- or the BSDs or Apple --- one really strange thing is that MS pushes these patches [ for good or ill ] on a monthly, at least, basis.

I use Mint 18 with KDE, although I much prefer OpenSUSE; every now and again, maybe 6 times a month individual components are upgradable [ Although nothing bad happens if they are ignored ] and here and there a kernel upgrade, again optional. But no grand patches that needs urgent implementation --- and I am told, sometimes with Microsoft incur a reboot.

The computer[s] trundle on regardless, with no disaster. Obviously if I were running a server on BSD or Linux I would certainly patch as required; but why is it Windows needs eternal never-ending patches ?

Huawei 5G kit in Faroe Islands: Chinese ambassador 'linked Huawei contract to ... trade deal' – report

Re: my Danish colleagues and friends

Sort of... But I really think Billy Bunter is so delusional he is sincere calling someone his dear good friend whilst simultaneously slandering them and doing them down,

Same with all his domestic political life --- he sees how colleagues might misinterpret his knocking them over and stealing their wallet, then blaming them, but it's all jolly hi-jinks, isn't it ? Why do people take things so seriously ?

Some form of dissonance.

And then there were two: HMS Prince of Wales joins Royal Navy

"I could walk in and take the whole lot this afternoon"

The redoubtable socialist Governor, Murray MacLehose, Baron MacLehose of Beoch, introduced a lot of Welfare into the colony, but not direct democracy since he thought that would crash when the Chinese took over; he had to start the Talks, but wanted to continue the British administration over both the Island and the extended Treaty bound parts,whilst the sovereignty of China over the New Territories at least would go back to [ the New ] China.

However Dementia, when she became Prime Minister in the traditional Tory fashion, by knifing one's predecessor in the back, was no more skilled in brains, defence or courage [ relying as she did on a few shop-worn mantras to carry her though any challenge ] than at the Falklands --- kicked off by her breaking with the traditions of the socialists Harold Wilson and James Callaghan ( incidentally an ex-Navy man ) and withdrawing ship protection from the area --- caved in before the Chinese Communists' masterful whining about 'Unequal Treaties' [ as if China was some tiny bullied state with not enough people to defend herself and as if she hadn't forced treaties on lesser folk often enough ] and gave away the shop.

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Of course had Britain remained as a steward, there'd still be a lot of snivelling and attacks from the Left. And the Right would be unhappy had further regulations [ which had rarely protected the population that much, any more than in most parts of the Empire, until the Empire was dying ] impeded Hong Kong's reputation as a beggar-my-neighbour libertarian paradise where the poor slept in chests-of-drawers and the wealthy of Hong Kong are in fact quite rich: Amerika's Gingrichian Future.

Join us on our new journey, says Wunderlist – as it vanishes down the Microsoft plughole

A Criminal's M.O.

The Dog Returns to It's Vomit.

Internet jerk with million-plus fans starts 14-year stretch for bizarre dot-com armed robbery

Well, I dunno. It is America,

Advertisers want exemption from web privacy rules that, you know, enforce privacy

Fuck them.

Amazon: Trump photon-torpedoed our $10bn JEDI dream because he hates CEO Jeff Bezos

How To Win Friends And Influence

Whatever Trump is --- and obviously the impeachment will fail; he seems to have been orchestrating it from the start to make sure the Democrats lose credibility --- the antics of Bezos as world's richest man get ever more bizarre.

He dances up and down screaming endlessly at the president and throwing faeces; then turns around and whines "Y U no love me ?"

The Odd Couple

Then ex-pressies Bush and Obama would now be sharing Slobodan Milošević's old cell at the Hague.

Apple sues iPhone CPU design ace after he quits to run data-center chip upstart Nuvia

The Never-Ending Story

After a while, Apple's old misery non-stop bellyaching ceases to be endearing and just becomes the rantings of a tiresome old git.

I cam only surmise as an outsider, but I think Silicon Valley's first decades might have been very different if employees had never quit and started their own businesses.

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That's the way the Cook, he grumbles ...

Nice...