* Posts by AlbertH

603 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2012

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Microsoft to force Windows 11 24H2 on Home and Pro users

AlbertH
Linux

Re: Straw man much?

Really? Neighbours of mine have two Windows 10-certified machines that can't upgrade to W11. Those two machines are <2 years old. They started dual-booting (with Linux Mint), and find that they're booting Windows less and less frequently....

M$ do not support a huge lot of hardware with their latest versions, and their market share will diminish markedly when W10 support ceases. They really have got it wrong this time with their hardware demands.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

AlbertH
Linux

Re: Desktops

I have an improvised "desk" which consists of a tabletop supported by four desktop "tower" computers! There's also a 4-drawer cupboard under there, full of consumables. The Filing Cabinet behind me has a Brother Laser printer sitting on top. I have plenty of computing power, taking up very little space.

The rest of my little office is taken up by a drawing board (remember those?) and an ancient bureau that provides the housing for a comprehensive radio studio - CD players, MP3 players, MP3 recorders, a couple of Dell USFF Optiplexes, a mixer, audio processing rack and a couple of microphones. The record / CD library is next door!

Vodafone and Three permitted to tie the knot – if they promise to behave

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: insist on wearing a t-shirt and shorts

I had a similar fight with an incompetent Ombudsman. They found the Court Proceedings and Press Publicity VERY embaressing - several of their senior staff "retired", and I won in Court. I won Costs too, so their failed defence cost them £Millions. If you're really sure of your ground, take 'em on and bask in the glow of your win!

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

AlbertH

The smell of melting lens cap should have been a clue!

Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused

AlbertH
Linux

Getting Paid

There were several tactics I used to use - including the "Early Settlement Discount". GOF above is entirely right about reputations - it's usually very effective to make someone's non - or late - payment known to the local Chamber of Commerce. In extremis I've used the "Small Claims Court" in the UK, which can be especially effective, particularly if you get to know the "Clerk of Court", who will help you with the paperwork. The other upside of the Court procedings is that they get reported in the local newspapers, further trashing the reputation of the non-payer!

BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies

AlbertH
Flame

Re: So true to life

One room, I went as far as Supergluing the connectors in place to stop the cretins Managers fiddling with them.

Linux Mint 22 'Wilma' still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows

AlbertH
Linux

Re: My choice for a decade

Perhaps I have a more intelligent wife: She moved from Windows XP at work to Mint at home entirely without issue. She had a couple of questions about Open Office (at the time) but they were easily answered, and she got used to Mint in an evening. She's used nothing else for about 10 years. As a Trinity, Dublin alumnus, she appreciated its provenance too!

We have Mint installed on a couple of laptops, all the desktops (except one test machine, running Fedora) in my workroom, and everything Just Works™. I also run my little online radio station using exclusively Mint, and all the DJs have no issues using it.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

AlbertH
FAIL

It is anti-virus software. It always gets updated automatically, otherwise the update comes too late to be effective.

NO "anti-virus" software actually works. It's always reactive, so if the (l)user gets infected with something new - and bearing in mind that putting together a couple of dozen variants of an obsfuscated Windoze virus takes about 5 minutes - none of the AV snale-oil works effectively. The only real cure is NOT to "run" Windows...

Switzerland to end 2024 with an analog FM broadcast-killing bang

AlbertH

Re: The fundamental issue with DAB

Despite the limited audio bandwidth of FM (15kHz at the top end), the quality is very significantly better than the highly compressed, limited bit-rate rubbish being foisted upon us by the greedy broadcasters. The previous poster was (mostly) right - DAB is capable of reasonable quality, but as implemented, it's usually unlistenable.

In my recent experience, the vast majority of in-car listening is to internet audio streaming stations, rather than DAB. The problems inherent with mobile reception of DAB aren't shared by internet radio streams - and these are usually received on mobile phones, and played through the car's speakers by Bluetooth connection. The reliability of a mobile phone connection far exceeds that of DAB!

American interest in electric vehicles short circuits for first time in four years

AlbertH
Flame

CO2 is NOT a problem

When are people (including The Register) going to realise that CO2 is neither a "greenhouse gas" nor a "pollutant"? It's essential for plant life, and makes up an insignificantly small part of our atmosphere, especially when compared to the only significant greenhouse gas - water vapour! I'm really looking forward to the "Greens" complaining about clouds....

It really doesn't matter how much CO2 your vehicle emits, or how much is emitted by the power stations used to charge the ridiculous EVs. More CO2 just means a greener planet. CO2 concentration follows global temperature, it doesn't cause temperature changes. It's about time that everyone stops worrying about the non-problem of "climate change". It has always changed, and always will!

Windows: Insecure by design

AlbertH
Flame

Re: What other business could get away with having products so bad ?

The reason the British Government is wedded to MS junkware is the same reason that an ex-prime minister was bought a nice house in Belgravia by that corrupt august corporation.

AlbertH
Linux

Re: when I'll have the time to deal with it

Your experience regarding "fixing" other people's machines is just the same as mine. It got to the point that I was burning installation DVDs of (usually) Mint almost daily!

My aged Father (now sadly gone) made the move to Linux in the early years of this century, when he was in his late 70s. He had few problems (and me "on call" if there were any) and within a few months, he'd installed dozens of systems for the oldsters in his community. He never bothered to proseletyze, but would show prospective users just how fast a machine could be, and how easy it was to use.

He set up a group of volunteers to procure cheap ex-corporate machines, overhaul them and install (usually) Mint. These were then donated to Old Folks' Homes in his area and to other deserving organisations.

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: how much punishment are you willing to take?

It does cause me to wonder how far MS can push this but so far they seem to be succeeding in pushing their luck.

It seems that they've (probably) gone too far this time with their hardware demands for Windoze 11 - TCM? Madness. I'd be surprised if as many as 1% of corporate desktop machines are recent enough to have a TCM. That - and their usurous charges for ongoing support - will ensure that corporate users will eventually seek other OSs that aren't as demanding of hardware.

...And the world will be a better place for it!

Has Windows 11 really lost marketshare to Windows 10?

AlbertH
FAIL

Re: I took the plunge into Win 11

That is pretty much the only difference between Pro and Enterprise, Enterprise is Pro but with the ability to turn all that crap off.

You're fooling yourself - both versions "phone home" just as much, but MS claim that "Enterprise" doesn't.

It does.

Just as much as any other version. It just doesn't (yet) serve spurious adverts!

Strong electric car sales expected for 2024, but charging grid needs work

AlbertH

When there's an EV that can give a real 450 miles on a charge, doesn't depreciate to 25% of its purchase price as soon as you leave the showroom, is certain to have the same battery capacity as new in four year's time, and (here's the real deal breaker) can charge to 450 miles range in 3 minutes from empty (like my ICE car can), then I'll consider getting one.

Road Tax should be linearly proportional to the weight of the vehicle - battery powered cars would cost about 3 times as much as ICE car, which would reflect the increased wear & tear on the roads.

It's quite interesting to compare the Insurance quotes for ICE cars against EVs - perhaps the incredibly high premiums are due to the propensity of EV battery fires to destroy the vehicle completely (and often damage others nearby).

EVs are a technological dead-end. They'll be history in a year or two!

Virgin Media sets up 'smart poles' next to cabinets to boost mobile network capacity

AlbertH
Pint

Re: "digital electricity" technology

The really nasty belts are from RF. I had the misfortune to get a "small" shock from the corona around an over-voltaged RF valve and yelled "ouch!" at the time. The following morning, I noticed a penny-sized circle on the bottom of my foot and my knee hurt a lot. The increasing pain got to the point that a trip to A&E proved necessary, where they discovered that I had internal burns down one side of my body!

Very nasty indeed!

Beer - obviously - for its anaesthetic properties!

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: Being polite is great

I'd have given them a figure for a day rate and swung the lead with it.

On the few times I've been in that situation, my Consultancy Rate has risen to exceed the monthly turnover of the clowns begging for help. I have never needed that kind of work, so I make sure - in the most obvious way possible - that they can't afford to pay me and that they'd really fouled up! In a couple of instances, it has resulted in the demise of those companies.

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

AlbertH
Facepalm

It's like every Microsoft attempt at "security" - it's a bolted-on afterthought, and like every Microsoft product "feature", it's poorly thought-out.

Linus Torvalds flames Google kernel contributor over filesystem suggestion

AlbertH
Linux

Likewise - I'm a long-term contributor / maintainer, and have also been shouted at by Linus - both on the Mailing List and in person! In each instance, I deserved it!

Linus (and the rest of us) don't have time for the idiocies of the ill-informed (or just plain wrong!).

United Airlines’ patience with Boeing is maxed out after repeated safety issues

AlbertH

Re: The 737 Used To Be A Good Aircraft ...

Indeed - the older 737s were wonderful. Unfortunately, there's a fundamental flaw in the design of all the 737MAX variants - they are aerodynamically unstable. Boeing had to make a software fiddle to try to make them behave within their permitted flight envelope only. Actual pilot control is minimised, because they might try to make the plane do something that it can't handle!

Because of the compromised geometry of the aircraft, the engines had to be moved (to prevent them dragging on the ground during take-off and landing), and this altered the fundamental balance of the airframe. Every last one of the series is an accident waiting to happen. The collapse of manufacturing standards at Boeing, and their reliance on flight control software and firmware bought in from India means that there's precisely no chance whatsoever of those aircraft ever being safe.

It's just a matter of time before Boeing collapses altogether.

I'm also unhappy with some of the standards at Airbus - indeed, their larger aircraft still scare me - but their standards are somewhat better than Boeing's....

I still won't fly on either 737MAXs of any variety or on any of the later fly-by-wire Airbuses. I value my life!

Batterygate bound for Blighty as UK court approves billion-dollar Apple compensation case

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: Even if Apple lose

class members are expected to receive $65 each (which sounds reasonable for a relatively minor defect in a $600 device)

It's certainly not a "minor" defect. It was a 40 - 60% slowdown of the device, partly to improve battery life in aging batteries, but more to persuade the iFaithful that they need to buy a new phone. It was a cynical ploy to push sales, and should be punished as such. After all, Apple have a captive market, and they're going to exploit it just as much as they can!

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: Perhaps Ofcom will take inspiration from the Home Office

No, this labour leader is the one that had all-night courts to deal with protestors

No - this is the Labour leader that failed to prosecute any number of well-known kiddie fiddlers, can't define what a woman is, and changes his "mind" every hour.....

Make-me-root 'Looney Tunables' security hole on Linux needs your attention

AlbertH

Config Files

Yes - I've heard of config files and they're just another vulnerability. Several of the recent zero-day Windoze 10/11 zero-day exploits worked by manipulating or replacing config files.

Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye

AlbertH

Re: No...Not "Free"......Actually "Pre-Paid"!!!!!

Most of the bigger manufacturers - Dell, Lenovo, HP and so on - pay between $66 and $92 per install according to version of Win 10 or 11. The discounts are for when they bundle Office 365 - they get around $50 off per install. This is why sales droids at those bigger companies always try to up-sell to include Office and other junkware.

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: Not holding my breath

Saddiq Khan (taqiya spoken here) has done more damage to London than anyone else has ever managed (including the Luftwaffe!). He has turned what was once a thriving modern city into a morass of slowly moving vehicles, uncontrolled crime, collapsing businesses and white flight, leading to falling property prices and so many societal ills that the place is largely uninhabitable.

Every major company with a London Head Office is moving elsewhere - often out of the country altogether. It has become apparent that Khan's aim is to destroy London - presumably for some bizarre "religious" reason - and he's mostly succeeded.

AlbertH

Re: Not holding my breath

None of the ULEZ schemes are anything to do with cleaner air! How can paying a fee clean the air? Saddiq Khan believes it can, while driving around in his convoy of bullet-proof diesel-powered SUVs. The hypocrisy of loons like Khan is breathtaking. The thing that is truly amazing is that these council clowns actually believe this arrant nonsense, whilst destroying the economy of the city they're supposed to be running for our benefit.

AlbertH

Re: Computer MOT

I had a similar issue with several phonelines into the building I lived in. After several phonecalls to BT, eventually culminating in employing the "Old Pals Act" with the local area manager (who I'd been at school with), I got a couple of engineers to turn up at the building, to investigate the fault. It was obviously due to the cabling that ran just over 700m to the local echange. After replacing the microphone in my telephone and those of my neighbours, they decided that there really was an external fault on the cable....

Three hours later, the "External" crew arrived, and - after they'd gone back to the exchange to collect a ladder - they decided to follow the cables (which were overhead). One of them climbed up the front of the building on the ladder and opened the Krone connection box beneath the eaves. The splat of green mossy crud that hit him in the face could be heard from quite a distance! A replacement Krone Box was installed - including the sealing rubber ring this time - and all was well for the remaining two years that I lived there.....!

Mint 21.2 is desktop Linux without the faff

AlbertH
Linux

Re: The best

And most frustratingly of all, they just rudely cut in when you’re trying to shut down your system in a hurry or boot it up quickly to check something. Nothing like shutting down your laptop because you have to board a flight or it’s almost out of battery charge, only to be told “Windows is updating. Do not turn off your computer. 1% done…”

The second time that happened, my Father deleted Windows from his laptop and installed Mint. He never used anything other than Mint and found that it was perfect for his personal "use case". After a while, when he'd leaned a bit more about it, he began proselytising, and installed Mint for all his friends, colleagues and acquaintances!

Clingy Virgin Media won't let us leave, customers complain

AlbertH

Re: Simple approach

That's close to what I did....

There was a nearby lightning strike a few months ago. The resultant spike down their unprotected network smoked their "Hub" and destroyed most of the things connected to its Ethernet ports. Two days later, they sent 'round an oik with a replacement "Hub" - and then proceeded to try to charge me for an "engineering visit". I pointed out that their bloke had just dumped the Hub in my doorway and beaten a hasty retreat. I connected the Hub, and after several hours managed to get a connection at less than 10% of the speed I was paying for....

Phone calls to their "help desk" were pointless. Their people mostly couldn't speak English, and were connected over the worst VOIP connections I've ever heard..... I decided that this had to end, so I wrote a firmly worded letter to their CEO, and made sure to send it by Recorded Delivery. I also cancelled my Direct Debit.

The next day I was connected to "Zen" via City Fibre. I now have a connection more than eight times faster than I was paying for at VM at slightly less than half the monthly price. Zen also provided a nice "Fritz!Box". I now have a proper internet connection, and for the last four months it has been flawless. In the meantime, all the neighbours have migrated from VM to City Fibre.....

Brit broadband subscribers caught between crappy connections and price hikes

AlbertH

Re: Ofcom rules?

VM are probably one of the worst companies I've ever had the utter misfortune to have to deal with. Their "Customer Service" is an expensive joke - they expect their victims users to pay to talk to their "help desk". Their "help desk" staff seldom speak English very well, are usually connected over an appallingly bad VOIP connection and never have any sort of clue.

I suffered their "service" - with its frequent drop-outs, wildly variable speeds and heavily limited access to much of the web for several years. Every year they increased their prices, but their service never improved (despite their claiming that my connection speed had been increased by 30%)....

The final straw came when their cabling sent me a huge spike due to a lightning strike a few hundred metres away. Their modem smoked, and anything connected to its ethernet ports was fried. I got off lightly - my neighbour had all the wiring in his house destroyed, complete with exploding computers, Playstation and TVs..... VM - of course - denied any responsibility and tried to charge me for the replacement of their router!

Fortunately, the lightning splat coincided with the arrival of FTTH to our neighbourhood, and I had City Fibre installing three days later. I connected via the one at the end of the alphabet, and found their service to be exactly as advertised - their "900 Mb/s" service is actually closer to 1 Gb/s and is symmetrical, so large uploads are no longer painfully slow. Their prices are roughly half of the VM tariff for a service that's ~12 times faster....!

VM used to have >95% of the households around here connected because of poor off-air service around here - they now have fewer than 5%. Most folks have moved to Sky (satellite) for their TV service and to City Fibre for their 'net connections.

Virgin Media email customers enter third day of inbox infuriation

AlbertH

VM are Totally Clueless

I was a VM victim - sorry - "customer" - for several years since moving out of London. The only way to get a tolerably speedy service appeared to be VM. The clowns in their local shop claimed that they provided "fibre internet" - they don't. They have some FTTC, but most of their network is just run over the cheapest, nastiest coax they could find. The ratty old pieces of coax in our neighbourhood would fail almost daily, with random outages sometimes lasting for hours. I was supposed to be on their "M350" service, but seldom got "down" data rates of more than 45 Mb/s. I pointed out several times that I could get better than this with cheap 'n' nasty ADSL, and each time I complained they claimed to have "fixed" the problem. I would get marginally improved data rates for a day or two, and then we'd return to the same old slow, unreliable rubbish.

Because I was frequently out of the country, I didn't have the time or inclination to complain further. However three events meant that I cancelled my "service" from this crowd immediately and am seeking significant financial redress from them....

Firstly - we lost all service for over a week.

Secondly - service was restored (sort of) and after a few days there was a lightning-induced spike down their (obviously unprotected) cable that blew up their Router ("Hub"), destroyed my telephones, wrecked the ethernet cards and the power supplies in three of my computers, and left a lingering smell of burnt electronics from my fried ethernet switches..... I got off lightly - my neighbour had three TVs and most of his household wiring destroyed, along with his fusebox, gas boiler, and virtually everything connected to mains sockets in his house!

VM (of course) deny liability, but they didn't know that lighting protection has been a part of my engineering remit since the 1970s.....

Thirdly - "City Fibre" ran fibres around the town, and covered my address.

I immediately cancelled VM (their "minimum period" expired some time ago), and four days later, was connected to Zen. I now get a symmetrical service at around 980 Mb/s with almost unmeasurably fast ping times at slightly less than half the monthly extortion that VM used to apply. I also discovered that they don't restrict IP addresses at all (unlike VM's Bowdlerised "service"), and they don't sell details of my browsing habits to "Phorm".

I got the infamous "Final Bill" from VM for some arbitrarily high figure (in the low hundreds). I counter-billed them for the destruction of my equipment and have given them 28 days to pay. If they fail to pay up (and I'm sure they will), my Barrister brother will take them to the cleaners....

I must also add that any attempt to phone up VM "Customer Services" is either answered by someone who can't speak or understand English, answered by a clueless Scottish woman with a bad attitude, or just get endless recorded messages telling me just how important my call is to them followed by some distorted "music" obviously intended to deter persistent callers......

When I cancelled, I received a phone call from their "Retentions Department" offering a monthly reduction of 70p, and when I pointed out that this was derisory, was threatened with "Disconnection Charges" and "Equipment Retrieval Charges".

The sooner this crowd of criminals goes out of business, the better!

Keir Starmer's techno-fix for the NHS: Déjà vu disaster or brave new blunder?

AlbertH

Re: It's not THAT hard!

Just remember - Labour destroyed education in this country by introducing "Comprehensive" Schools, ensuring that the best and brightest students would be held back by the dullards. Labour also presided over the bizarre grade inflation that means that "nobody loses" - today's GCSEs are virtually worthless when compared to the REAL examinations back in the 1960s. Back then, three UK A-Levels were roughly equivalent to an American MA / MSc! We had the very best education system in the world, then Labour decided that the last thing that would ever get them elected was an educated populace.....

Labour always bankrupt the country - each time they've been in power, they've destroyed the UK economy within 3 years by squandering borrowed money like a drunken sailor. As Thatcher said all those years ago "Labour always runs out of other people's money to spend".

Unfortunately, we're now beset by an ill-educated and rather stupid "political class" none of whom have the slightest idea about anything even vaguely scientific - which is why they're always in awe of any charlatan with some spurious "degree" in some subject they just can't understand. That's why they've been so easily fooled by the idiocies of "St" Greta and the IPCC, so now we're condemned to the "Net Zero" stupidity...

The UK is in a hole - neither of the political parties that could win the next General Election have a clue between them. It really is time to find somewhere nice abroad to live out the rest of my days....

UK government scraps smart motorway plans, cites high costs and low public confidence

AlbertH
Big Brother

Fortunately, the hard shoulders are to be reinstated and the "smart" nonsense to to be ditched. It's been a disaster, and now we're saddled with endless electromobiles running out of charge at awkward times, the sooner the better!

Fortunately also, the electromobile nonsense is also going to end since the "Greens" have finally realised that they're not "Green Vehicles" at all, and are in fact significantly less "green" than a conventional petrol-powered car!

This is just the first part of the roll back of the "Net Zero" claptrap. The UK isn't going to cripple itself for the supposed benefit of not using fossil fuels.

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: And Again

...Probably something to do with VM still selling every detail of what you connect to online to "Phorm" (even though they publicly claim not to....).

The fibre arrived in my street last Thursday, and today I started the dance with VM to cut them completely out of my life.... Zen have been very helpful and have suggested that they may be able to help with cessation of VM "service".

Interesting VM factoid: A "Speedtest" on VM shows down speeds of 255Mb/s here, and a couple of the others show similar speeds. A proper test shows real speeds of around 22Mb/s - less than a tenth of the rate I pay for. The sooner this crowd are consigned to history, the better. I'm considering legal action to get 90% of my bills back!

Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system

AlbertH

Re: One C, one R

Not a topic I have any particular knowledge about - but might a broader bandwidth allow improvements in speech recognition in noisy situations.

Nope. In most instances you want to restrict the bandwidth to improve intelligibility. Obviously there's a limit to bandwidth reduction before you get to the point of reducing intelligibility, but if you cover the "speech band" - which is that which was conveyed by the old telephone network - (300Hx to 3kHz is normally enough, sometimes with slight emphasis around 2kHz), you achieve maximum intelligibility, even in noisy environments. The use of noise-cancelling microphone methods really help (two microphones in opposite directions - the user talks into one,and both receive the ambient noise. By phase reversing one of the mics, the common-mode signals - ie: the ambient noise - is cancelled, and the difference - the speech - is transmitted).

The "hi-fi" bandwidth of mobile phone microphones is probably provided to enhance recording. It's trivial to filter the speech input to these "digital assistants", so it should be done!

The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

AlbertH
Flame

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

I was caught by Gordon Brown bringing in the first and only retrospective change to inheritance tax via trust fund rule changes. Cost me about £100K.

Gordon McDoom cost me rather more than that, stolen from my pension savings!

AlbertH

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

Speaking of which, whatever is going on with those many, many allegations of bullying from Dominic Raab?

They've been shown to be malicious fabrications - a fiction created by some BBC "producer".

AlbertH

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

... Then they're not "One Time" Pads at all. A real "one time pad" is non-repeating.....

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

Cretins also. The whole political establishment is the modern equivalent of the Victorian family idiot being sent to be ordained into the church: The family idiots are usually dispatched to third class redbrick "universities" (former Polytechnics), where they're indoctrinated with various amounts of left-wing nonsense whilst doing their worthless "history", "sociology" or "media" "degrees", then they're consigned to the various political parties, and we all have to suffer their stupidities. The whole "political class" are dangerously clueless fools.

Service desk tech saved consultancy Capita from VPN meltdown, got a smack for it

AlbertH
Coat

Re: Wrong Visa

Moral? **it always runs downhill.....

UK PM splits govt department in 4, creates dedicated 'Science and Tech' bit

AlbertH
Pirate

Oxymoronic!

The clowns in Downing Street haven't realised that "Net Zero" is directly counter to their wish for "reliable power generation".

As long as Westminster is peopled by arts graduates with no practical experience of anything, it doesn't really matter which variety of political dolts gets elected, the results will be largely the same. They're ALL incompetent, troughing fools!

Arca Noae is modernizing OS/2 Warp for 21st century PCs

AlbertH
Linux

Re: 16-bit sw in Windows x64

I do work for a multinational pharmaceutical with a lot of Windows computers running their machinery. Not an issue.

That's really scary! I have never seen any Windows installation of anything that wasn't "an issue"! I remember being pointed to the EULA when I complained to MS about the fundamental lack of stability of any version of Windows: "it's your problem, not ours" is the gist. We solved the problem entirely with a move to FOSS software that was easy to maintain, and entirely reliable.

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

AlbertH

Re: IoS

I get the same laughter for my >20-year-old radio controlled solar-powered Junghans analogue watch. Entirely accurate, elegant, utterly reliable....

My nephew's iWatch fails if he moves more than a couple of metres from his iPhone, and persistently bursts into life telling him that it didn't understand his last verbal command (that he hadn't actually made - Siri had just assumed that the conversation was directed at it!)

This can’t be a real bomb threat: You've called a modem, not a phone

AlbertH

Re: Work bomb scare

Same deal in Bush House, except the Internal Shelter Area was the canteen.

.... not in my days there - we used to use the Club Bar in the Basement (the one with all the Fish Tanks).

Royal Mail, cops probe 'cyber incident' that's knackered international mail

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

The BBC are confirming the Russian ransomware theory

There is a famous saying in our newsroom: "Is it true or did you hear it on the BBC?"

Shame really: The BBC was the world's premier broadcaster until the late '90s. It's now a "woke" shambles of lefty disinformation.

Microsoft to move some Teams features to more costly 'Premium' edition

AlbertH
Thumb Up

Re: This is silly MS

Nope - this is (of course) entirely deliberate. MS want to push everyone to pay - repeatedly - for their products as "services". This will sooner or later lead to the demise of Windows in the commercial space. They've already alienated the owners of "non-compliant" hardware by refusing to left them use Windows 11. This idiocy is going to push ever more corporate clients towards other solutions.

Our consultancy stopped dealing with MS products entirely about three years ago. Our hassle to remuneration ratio has significantly improved, and our market share has grown massively. We no longer have to deal with MS' brokenware!

Corporations start testing Windows 11 in bigger numbers. Good luck

AlbertH
Linux

Re: Fast machine required

There is a perfectly viable alternative if you don't want the expense of new hardware - any modern Linux replaces the latest offerings from MS easily and economically.

AlbertH
FAIL

Re: it's the GUI, stupid

The GUI is appalling (as described above), but the underlying code is even worse: Once again it's spaghetti. It's another bunch of kludges, hacked together to make it - sort of - work.

The "qualification" specifications for the latest iterations of this mess means that it won't run on many machines more than a couple of years old. In fact it never "runs" - even on the fastest modern hardware - it just sort of stumbles along.....

It's dreadful.

Techies try to bypass damaged UPS, send 380V into air traffic system

AlbertH

Re: Testing, Testing, and More Testing

We used to get our standby diesel fuel "polished*" periodically!

* It's a thing: look it up!

AlbertH
Mushroom

Re: Carbon Footprint

Simply because it's total nonsense. The infamous "97% of scientists agree" is a figure made up ONLY of workers for the IPCC. The IPCC's name alone tells you that the expect "Global Warming / Climate Change".

There's a saying in both the Scientific Community and in the Media: "Is it true, or did you hear it on the BBC?"

The BBC used to be the world's premier broadcaster, but since the mid 1980s has been an embarrassment!

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