Posts by RM Myers

What the hell is going on with .uk? Dozens of domain names sold in error, then reversed, but we'll say no more about it, says oversight org

More proof

That running a nonprofit can be very profitable.

Not content with distorting actual reality, Facebook now wants to build a digital layer for the world

What's wrong with Facebook distorting digital reality?

After all, someone needed to take on the responsibility after St. Steven left earth to join the heavenly host. And yes, I realize other people were distorting reality in technology even before the great one passed on. You didn't expect them to take on this solemn responsibility without some on the job learning period, did you? And what better time to learn than when the master was still among us, wowing the iSheep with tales of personal accomplishments not personally accomplished.

Besides, politicians have been distorting reality at least since homo sapiens first banded together to form city-states.

.UK overlord Nominet tells everyone not to worry about 'distorted' vote allocations in its board elections

Re: Nominet has lost its way

At least he is not a serial cereal entrepreneur! By the way, your comment was quite funny punny.

Amazon Lex can now speak British English... or simply 'English' if you're British

Re: American English is English

What is this American English of which we speak? Have you every been in south Louisiana, or spoken to a real Cajun? Or how about someone from Minnesota? Or someone from New York City? Or as far as that goes, almost any large inner city neighborhood. Within 2 blocks of my house, you can hear English with a Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, or Russian accent, and all from US citizens as well as non-citizens. As a written language, yes there is a reasonably consistent "American English". As a spoken language, not even close.

Financial Reporting Council slaps Autonomy auditor Deloitte with £15m fine over audit 'misconduct'

Outside Auditors

In my experience, outside auditors have a tremendous conflict of interest. They are paid by the very company they are supposed to audit, and partners are largely evaluated based on keeping the money flowing which means keeping the customer happy. What could possibly go wrong?

Safety driver at the wheel of self-driving Uber car that killed a pedestrian is charged with negligent homicide

Re: Distracted Driving

In this case, traffic was actually moving at close to the speed limit. I might not have noticed he was reading a newspaper if he hadn't turned the page.

Distracted Driving

This reminds me of driving to work in rush hour traffic years ago, and noticing that the driver next to me on the 4 lane road was reading the newspaper while they were driving. Needless to say, I slowed down and stayed as far from that car as possible.

'Mindset reset' contributes to £1bn extra costs and another delay – 2 years this time – for Emergency Services Network

Direct Peer-to-peer communications

Why do you need to spend billions on a new direct communications system for the House of Lords?

Brit MPs to Apple CEO: Please stop ignoring our questions about repairability and the environment

Re: Yes, it is the consumers\fanbois

Yes, and getting hit over the head sounds pretty good if the alternative is getting your head cut off. On my previous phone, replacing the battery took about 1 minute (15 minutes if you include the time to order the battery online, etc.) and cost about $11. I now have an iPhone 11, and that 6 on repairability is not sounding very good to me.

Peek-a-boo! Windows Insiders play hide and seek with a Friday night update

"...wonder if remote working has accelerated the move to a paperless future."

Every time I see a comment about the paperless office, or paperless future, I'm tempted to buy stock in a paper company. My first project to replace paper management reports with online (IBM mainframe!) reports and start the "inevitable" move to a paperless office began in the early 1980's. Naturally, the first project scope change was to add the ability to print the reports off. Typically, management had their secretaries print off the online reports for them.

IBM made ‘top-down’ efforts to fire older workers, says US employment discrimination watchdog

Summer in the City - IBM Style

Hot town, summer in the city,

IBM's treatin' older workers pretty sh*tty,

Been down, isn't it a pity,

Workers treated like cattle in the city

IBM calls for US export bans on facial recognition tech including cameras and big iron

Re: Yeah right

Yes, the USA is capable of producing such cameras, and so are a number of other countries. Take a look at some of the satellite photos available online, and then realize these aren't even the good ones - those are military only. There are some truly brilliant people doing research in optics, and the result has been some amazing progress in high resolution cameras. But like most areas of technology, progress doesn't guarantee the use will be benign.

OPPO's ColorOS 11 hits beta, but swerves EU audience over GDPR compliance concerns

As old as 2019

"While that sounds promising on paper, the proof will inevitably be in the pudding, particularly when you consider ColorOS 11 will be deployed on devices as old as the original Reno, which dates back to early 2019."

WTF! I'm running a current OS on a laptop I bought 11 years ago, and El Reg is concerned that a OPPO may not be able to make a GUI change to a phone that is less than 2 years old? Not just any phone with who knows what hardware, but a phone that they manufactured themselves?

What does this say about our expectations for Android smartphones. Can you imagine the reaction if an update was made to a PC operating system and it didn't work on a 2 year old PC?

Microsoft releases kernel for unique (but critically panned) Surface Duo phone

Re: Wow! Brilliant

Personally, I preferred the Windows Phone 10 OS to either Android or IOS. I got 5+ years of OS monthly updates, versus the 1+ years of quarterly updates on my Galaxy. Windows phone also didn't have nearly the bugs that IOS has, which seems to get worse with every update. IOS 13.7 has taken my iPhone from 2+ days on a charge, to less than one day, for example. I guess this is Apple's way of telling me I need to upgrade from my iPhone 11 to the iPhone 12.

As always, YMMV.

Adtech's bogeymen are tracking everything - even your web visits to mental health charities, claim campaigners

On Pro Privacy's Website

UBlock Origin blocked 7 items, and Privacy Badger blocked two "potential trackers". Ah yes, "do as I say, not as I do".

Now that's a somewhat unexpected insider threat: Zoombombings mostly blamed on rogue participants, unique solution offered

Re: Binghamton

Ton as a suffix on a place name comes from middle English ton,which is derived from old English tun, which means town, according to Wiktionary Thus, Binghamton is a town named after Bingham. There are a large number of towns in the US with the suffix ton, but there are also a large number with the suffix town. I assume the names that were suffixed with ton probably were settled by immigrants from England.

Binghamton

Binghamton University is part of the State University of New York, and is located in the city of Binghamton (thus the name). The city was named after a William Bingham, and Bingham, according to the fount of all knowledge (AKA Wikipedia), is "a surname of English origin". Thus, any concerned about the name should be addressed to our English commentards for explanation.

DPL: Debian project has plenty of money but not enough developers

Re: Ubuntu et al

It's okay. He has created a new fork of the article.

Hey, want to make a few bucks? Let Google sell your store's Wi-Fi network capacity

If the carrier decides the connection is good enough, we’ll auto-connect you.

Okay, one more thing to check when choosing your wireless carrier (crosses Republic Wireless off list). Who the fcuk wants their mobile data going through a wi-fi network controlled by a Google owned company. I'm trying as hard as I can to avoid Google tracking, and now they come up with a new way to track you. @#$%^&*()

Apple to Epic: Sue me? No, sue you, pal!

Hot tip for gamblers

Bet on the lawyers, they are the only sure winners, as usual.

Australia starts second fight with Google, this time over whether app stores leak data, gouge devs, steal ideas and warp markets

Re: Thanks

To be fair, the EU has had at least 3 antitrust actions against Google, and the US is expected to file one by the end of this month (just search for "Google antitrust, these have been all over the news websites). Also, both the EU and US are rumored to have active antitrust investigations of Apple currently.

So far, none of these actions have resulted in anything more than fines, which are not going to deter companies as profitable as Apple and Google unless they are in the tens to hundreds of billions of dollar range. Plus Apple and Google are very politically connected, which makes it difficult for regulators to move against them in a meaningful manner.

So antitrust action - yes. Meaningful antitrust action - no.

Vivaldi offers users a 'break' from browsing. No, don't switch to Chrome... don't sw..

"Decreased productivity"

Isn't decreasing productivity the browser's job? Do you really need an extension also?

What, it isn't really intended to decrease productivity? But the name says ...

Newcastle University, neighbouring Northumbria hit by ransomware attacks

Re: Higher Education not Further Education

Further education at both institutions might be appropriate, including education about timely and accurate notification of students and staff.

What a cluster-buck! Nutanix and Microsoft to swap licence credits under new Azure deal

Reads like an ad for cloud providers

Hey! Hey! You! You! Get on my cloud!

Digital pregnancy testing sticks turn out to have very analogue internals when it comes to getting results

Re: "It's not yours"

That does sound fishy. Maybe he is some kind of a clown(fish)?

"Surly we can come up with a similar device with replaceable strips?"

I understand your annoyance, but there is no need to get all surly about the waste. Please, can't we at least maintain a good humor while commenting. Shirley that is not too much to ask.

Astronomers get more than they bargained for, as Mars probe InSight's instruments detects solar eclipses

Question

Does this mean the instruments are photosensitive Phobos-sensitive, or could they just have nyctophobia?

Mate, it's the '90s. You don't need to be reachable every minute of every hour. Your operating system can't cope

installing discipline in the senders of email, that is a wholly different matter...

Very true! Before I retired, I was getting 100 - 150 emails every day, and probably 90% or more were worthless to me. The "all employee" type emails were part of the problem, but the biggest issue was people sending emails to everyone on a project (distribution list) rather than just the people affected. Since I was involved peripherally in a number of large projects, the worthless emails just piled up. In the end, I just ended up skimming most emails at best, and usually limited email reading to once or twice daily.

Cisco mostly silent on when and what it knew about malicious WebEx wipeout

I believe that applies to many more companies than just Cisco. The number of articles in El Reg recently about security cock-ups by "security" vendors themselves has been depressing.

Apple: Yeah, about those ground-breaking privacy features in iOS 14 – don't expect them until next year

Re: Disappointing they are delaying this change

I suspect 99.9% of iphone users are like me, and didn't realize this setting even existed until now. This is definitely the most helpful tip I've picked up from El Reg recently.

There’s no new normal coming for PC sales, just the boring old normal of a long, slow decline

Re: Why would you buy a PC when you can buy a Mac?

A Mac is a personal unicorn.

When low-balled projects go bad: Scottish pensions agency starts £10m procurement to buy the system Capita could not

"They would be in the news a lot less though....."

I assume by a "lot less" you mean never.

Intel screams Tiger Lake is 'world's best processor' (then quietly into its sleeve: for thin Windows, ChromeOS laptops)

Treat these benchmarks with an enormous amount of salt.

Treat ANY benchmarks from the manufacturers with an enormous amount of salt, whether for CPU's, GPU's networking gear or any thing else.

Sounds like the black helicopters have come for us. Oh, just another swarm of FAA-approved Amazon delivery drones

Re: Great

Bingo - you win. It also has a well regarded program in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, although you don't have to have a major in that program to take the pilot training courses.This is a very large state university (60K+ on this campus alone) and the airport is probably 15 miles from the main campus, so I doubt many "rich parents" are using it.

Great

I live on a flight path for a local university airport, and the slowdown in training flights has been a real blessing noise wise. We still get the occasional jet, but only a couple per day. Considering the number of Amazon deliveries and dogs in my neighborhood, drone delivery could be real fun. I can see this making me wish for the old days with training flight noise.

You're stuck inside, gaming's getting you through, and you've $1,500 to burn. Check out Nvidia's latest GPUs

Re: Right

Correct. The 30xx's will cost you an arm and a leg. The 20xx's will now only cost an arm and the leg below knee. Definitely time to buy that 2080 ti.

Samsung reveals new folding stuff for people who like flaunting wads of folding stuff

Anonymous Coward?

Mr. Cook, why are you so tim(id)?

AI world has gone bananas, it's official. This algorithm will help you optimize your peanut butter and banana sarnies

Re: Peanut Butter and Banana?

Peanut butter and bananas for the win - no bread or toast needed!

While you lounged about all weekend Samsung fired up its biggest-ever chip factory and started cranking out 16Gb LPDDR5 DRAM

Re: Always registered.

Most (all?) of the DRAM makers or resellers have similar memory selectors on their websites. I wouldn't buy DRAM without using a memory selector to verify compatibility.

What would you prefer: Satellite-streamed cat GIFs – or a decent early warning of an asteroid apocalypse?

I've not managed to find a balanced opinion on ...

You could have stopped right there. This is the internet - you are about as likely to find a balanced opinion as you are to get hit by one of the asteroid.

Facebook apologizes to users, businesses for Apple’s monstrous efforts to protect its customers' privacy

Re: Facebook Tracking

I'm talking about the fact that the El Reg article had Facebook tracking that Firefox was blocking. I'm not really impressed when a website complains about tracking that it is doing itself.

Facebook Tracking

I have to admit that the anger in this article toward Facebook tracking would be much more convincing if I wasn't seeing a button in Firefox, while reading the article, with the text bubble:

"Facebook container has disabled this button and blocked Facebook from tracking your visit to this page."

East Sussex County Council dodges SAP S/4HANA upgrade bullet, sets aside £25m for a 10-year SaaS ERP deal

Re: Why not get together ?

You do realize that "open source" doesn't mean free, right? There are many open source vendors, and I'm sure many are willing to provide "perks".

Here's a neat exploit to trick someone into inadvertently emailing their files to you from their Mac, iPhone via Safari

Re: "The bug isn't too serious [..] because user interaction is required"

This isn't a security flaw - you're just clicking it wrong.

I do miss St. Steven (RIP). If he were still around, I'll bet he would tell us iphone sheeple users how to hold the phone so the Apple software would work, like having the recent call list actually include the recent calls without having to reboot the phone, or the automatic updates actually, you know, update IOS without manual intervention. Sadly, it is not to be.

Adobe yanks freebie Creative Cloud offer – now universities and colleges have to put up or shut up

Re: "...based on the US universities who are largely for profit and have big bank balances,""

True. Harvard alone has an endowment of almost $40 billion, and is still considered a nonprofit. That is just crazy.

"...based on the US universities who are largely for profit and have big bank balances,""

Wrong on all counts. The most current statistics I could quickly find (2017-2018 school year) had 985 for-profit colleges, 1,626 public (government run) colleges, and 1,687 non-profit colleges. The number of for-profit colleges has been decreasing, and many are in financial trouble (as are many of the non-profits). The colleges with big bank accounts (endowments) are almost all non-profits (think Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, etc.). Other than a couple of colleges with somewhat shaky reputations (especially University of Phoenix), the larger colleges are either public or non-profit.

Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles

"Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world"

We're doomed!

Conflict of interest? We've heard of it. Amazon on selection panel to choose UK.gov's chief digi officer

Re: This is what corruption looks like in the UK

I'm afraid this is true in many more places than just the UK.

IT blunder permanently erases 145,000 users' personal chats in KPMG's Microsoft Teams deployment – memo

"...but at least get the facts right"

Wait, the El Reg comments are still considered part of the Internet, aren't they? When did facts ever get in the way of a good "analysis" on the Internet?

And I'm out the door before the stones start flying.

This PDP-11/70 was due to predict an election outcome – but no one could predict it falling over

Re: Performance Upgrade

Widely assumed, but not "proved". This definitely proved it, thus why the CEO hit the roof.