Posts by Champ

Google to pull plug on Play Music, its streaming service that couldn't beat Spotify, in favour of YouTube Music

YouTube Music is not available in your area

Looks like I'm not going to be migrating my music to YouTube, then...

I found Play Music very convenient; I ripped new CDs I bought [1] my CDs via a desktop to my NAS, and then uploaded them to Play Music, which made them available on my phone and other portable devices. And I could 'pin' favourite albums to the phone, so could play them when I had no connection.

<sigh> So now more research and tech implementation required

[1] I'm definitely of the generation that buys, not rents, its music. Spotify? Fuck off

The incumbent President of the United States of America ran now-banned Facebook ads loaded with Nazi references

Re: I didn't know of the triangle badges in the prison camps

Seriously? You think this sort of tragic trolling will work here?

You should probably go back to plying this shit on Facebook

The girl with the dragnet tattoo: How a TV news clip, Insta snaps, a glimpse of a tat and a T-shirt sold on Etsy led FBI to alleged cop car arsonist

Re: Thoroughly deserved

So you're anti-antifa? Which make you pro-fa, yes?

You do know what the 'fa' stands for, don't you?

Repair store faces hefty legal bill after losing David and Goliath fight with Apple over replacement iPhone screens

<shrug>

Just one more reason not to buy Apple. But I already had plenty of those

PC owners borg into the most powerful computer the world has ever known – all in the search for coronavirus cure

Re: Very worthy

Just joined :-)

Your Agile-built IT platform was 'terrible', Co-Op Insurance chief complained to High Court

Re: Erm

As in this feature, Agile is mostly the current whipping boy for stuff going wrong.

Firstly, "Agile" is a catch-all term for multiple working practices. These can be used brilliantly to deliver high quality, useful systems. But they are no guarantee, and you can definitely produce garbage with them too.

If this project had been run under Prince 2, would anyone be blaming the methodology?

Brexit Britain changes its mind, says non, nein, no to Europe's unified patent court – potentially sealing its fate

Re: Promises, promises...

So, not Barnier, then. Not even Brussels, in fact.

Just Greece maintaining its entirely justifiable position of wanting back its stuff that the british stole.

Re: Promises, promises...

> Barnier is increasing his demands. In the last 3 months he has demanded access to UK fishing waters just to start negotiations, plus the Elgin Marbles.

Really? Barnier has demanded the Elgin Marbles? Care to cite a reference for that?

Australia down for scheduled maintenance: No talking to Voyager 2 for 11 months

The Dish

Is this the same dish that we the title star in the movie, er, "The Dish", starring Sam Neill?

Quite a nice little picture, that

Uncle Sam's nuke-stockpile-simulating souped-super El Capitan set to hit TWO exa-FLOPS, take crown as world's fastest machine in 2023

Re: And the most unintelligible article title award goes to....

Really?

It was pretty damn obvious to me. Which is why I clicked on it from the daily headlines email

Open-source, cross-platform and people seem to like it: PowerShell 7 has landed

Re: Who are you and what have you done with Microsoft?

>But Microsoft isn't a normal company. All evidence suggests they haven't listened to what their customers actually want[0] in a couple of decades.

As a former Microsoftie, I really marvel at comments like this. In 35 years in the industry, with 3 at Microsoft, I never worked *anywhere* that paid half as much attention to its customers and what they wanted than Microsoft.

But, I guess it's easier to just keep slagging off the old big bad wolf rather than realise the world might have turned a little.

In case you wanna launch your boss into the Sun, good news: Earth's largest solar telescope just checked and, yeah, it's still pretty fiery

Re: Reg units

> I expect the Aussies use Tasmania.

Do you have a map?

IT contractor has £240k bill torn up after IR35 win against UK taxman

Re: I cannot understand why HMRC pursues contractors so much.

> Amazon pay every penny they owe

In Luxembourg

There, fixed that for you

Scientist, war hero and gay icon Alan Turing is new face of the £50 note

Re: "Cue gags regarding this note being more bent than a 9 bob note"

Can you please list the parliamentary powers which you claim were ceded to the EU?

Take your time.

Brexit: Digital border possible for Irish backstop woes, UK MPs told

Re: "if Europe agrees to a Brexit transition period"

Where "Leave win #1" was a pretty finely balanced 52:48

Where "Leave win #2" was the UK electorate gaming the UKs FPTP electoral system to deny May the very mandate she went to the country to seek.

Where "Leave win #3" resulted in Remain advocating parties getting a bigger share of the popular vote than Farage the Fascist.

How's those lessons in counting coming along?

I am just a mapper: Solar drones take to the skies above Blighty

Just because you're paranoid...

...doesn't mean they're not out to get you. I started typing this as a joke, but now it sounds a bit too believable.

The OS story is a cover. These devices are really so the authorities can track and respond to the brexit riots

Treaty of Roam: No-deal Brexit mobile bill shock

Re: So predictable !

Of all the places for the "technological means" unicorn to rear it's head - not the Reg! Nooo! Here the forums are full of people who actually understand IT, and what it can, and more importantly, can't do.

I'm now very depressed that even here, amongst "my people", someone should seriously promote this nonsense

Congrats, Satya Nadella. In just five years, you've turned Microsoft from Neutral Evil to, er, merely True Neutral

Yes to Media Center going open source!

There are still quite a few of us running a Win7 box and Media Center to drive our TVs. I'd love it to go open source, so that it might have a future

Microsoft delivers a second preview of Visual Studio 2019 (a Redmond thing we actually like)

>> Those hair-shirted individuals who like their code to be of the C++ variety

> No women code in C++? Not very inclusive from pro-SJW El-Reg!

Not sure why you think women can't also wear a hair-shirt.

Influential cypherpunk and crypto-anarchist Tim May dies aged 67

Photo correction

I must be bored, and it's just before Christmas, but I've just uploaded a correct photo to the wiki. It's been "sent to moderation" apparently

Google internal revolt grows as search-engine Spartacuses prepare strike over China

Re: My advice to Google employees

Maybe it's because I'm in the UK, or maybe because I've just never been that important, but I've never had any problems with criticising my employers.

ICO poised to fine Leave campaign and Arron Banks’ insurance biz £135,000

Re: Will of the people my arse

>those who supported remain and the ever closer political union, with the

>ceding of sovereignty to un-elected officials

It's my experience that those who most play the 'but sovereignty!' card least understand it.

The only way to be completely sovereign is to be completely isolated. Like North Korea. Otherwise...

- want to join the WTO? Need to abide by rules, that limit sovereignty

- want to join the UN? Need to abide by rules, that limit sovereignty

- want an FTA with <country>? Need to abide by rules, that limit sovereignty

The EU is really about pooling sovereignty, not ceding it.

Goodnight Kepler! NASA scientists lay the exoplanet expert to rest as it runs out of fuel

Fuel? Why no solar panels?

I didn't think spacecraft were generally powered by a few gallons of 4 star? Why did Kepler use (exhaustible) on-board fuel, rather than (inexhaustible) sunshine?

Love Microsoft Teams? Love Linux? Then you won't love this

Re: "Vanishingly Small"

> For around 10 years, nearly all the devs I've worked with use linux

Conversely, since I moved away from DEC/VMS in the early 90s, all the dev I have done, and all the Devs I have worked with, have used Windows

Re: Teams is wonderful if you only talk to one team

You're definitely doing it wrong - it's a piece of the proverbial to engage with multiple teams in Teams.

The only bad thing about Teams is the name, giving rise to sentences like "I've set up a new team on Teams", "Is your team using Teams", etc

Take my advice: The only safe ID is a fake ID

Mickey, is that you

My disposable email address of choice is [e-mail], which I came up with after watching a documentary on how delightful Walt was.

HMRC rapped as Brexit looms and customs IT release slips again

Re: no surprise

> Assuming (no evidence to support this, but it's a reasonable hypothesis) that most people that voted for Brexit agreed with the ideals put out at the time of the referendum, and which have been repeated continuously since then, Brexiteers voted to leave the single market and so end free movement.

I'd say your very first assumption is incorrect, and therefore invalidates the rest of your argument.

Many prominent brexiteers said that brexit didn't mean leaving the single market:

Daniel Hannan: "Nobody is talking about leaving the Single Market"

Farage: "Wouldn't it be awful to be like Norway?" (i.e. proposing that we would in fact be like Norway, who are in the Single Market)

Also, your argument is based on people following the logical conclusion of their thinking. Most people don't do that, most of the time.

We're doomed: Defra's having a cow over its Brexit IT preparations

Re: Omnishambles.

>THE EU has declared war on the UK, for daring to ask for more...And people had better work out which >side they are on before its too late.

More? We already had significant concessions and opt-outs

>We are witnessing the ugly side of realpolitik, The ugly side of the EU and the ugly side of the Deep State >as well.

Your tinfoil hat has slipped.

Pluto is more alive than Mars, huff physicists who are still not over dwarf planet's demotion

Surprised no one has posted the XKCD link yet

...so here it is

https://xkcd.com/473/

NASA's Kepler probe rouses from its slumber, up and running again

Re: 12 kg fuel

> given that a gallon is 4.2L

er, a Real Gallon (tm) is 4.54609 litres, not 4.2

It walks, it talks, it falls over a bit. Windows 10 is three years old

Re: "the Windows 7 hold-outs should finally feel able to make the upgrade"

> Not while there are features that disappear with the upgrade. I'm not the only person who

> uses Media Centre as a television

Well, yes. While I seem to be in the minority here, and quite like Win10 for desktop/tablet use, the machine I built 10 years ago which sits under the TV and runs all my home entertainment with Windows Media Center will be staying on Win7 for obvious reasons.

Done and dusted? Vast storm gobbles NASA's long-lived Mars robot

>As someone who cried as a girl to the ending of Silent Running...

C'mon, who doesn't cry at the end of Silent Running?

And if you don't, I don't think we can be friends

Microsoft commits: We're buying GitHub for $7.5 beeeeeeellion

Re: Shite

> Er, insist all development is on Microsoft platforms and none of this Linux malarkey?

You do know that over 25% of the VMs in Azure is running some version of Linuxm, yes?

UK.gov expected to quit controversial harvesting of schoolchildren's nationality data

>> "So are we saying that anyone from anywhere in the world can come to the UK and get free healthcare >> and education?"

> Have you been to a UK inner city recently? - they are stuffed with Muslims and similar foreigners. This isn't exactly new news.

Seriously, who the fuck upvoted this rascist drivel?

Us? Reverse engineer HoloLens? No way, not us, nuh-uh – Magic Leap

Re: 1st of March is the first day of March, not spring. Check back on the 21st.

Better tell the TV weather forecasters. They routinely quote 1st March as "start of meteorological spring", completely correctly, in my view.

This is the small hill I have been dying on for the past 20 years, and will continue to do so. "Spring", as referenced by the vast majority of people, is a meteorological, not astronomical concept, as are the other seasons. It makes absolutely no sense to say that summer *starts* on the longest day, or, for instance, winter starts just 4 days before Christmas.

If we're going to divide the calendar up into four seasons, then this correspondent is going to continue insist that they start on 1st March, 1st June, 1st September and 1st December.

<deep breath>

Ghost in the DCL shell: OpenVMS, touted as ultra reliable, had a local root hole for 30 years

Re: Wasn't VMS...

> The pattern used for Windows NT. It was my understanding (I could be wrong though) that the head of VMS development went on to Microsoft to do Windows NT development.

Yes, this was the legendary Dave Cutler, referred to up there.

The other story is that W(indows) NT is one letter on from VMS (compare and contrast with HAL and IBM)

$14bn tax hit, Surface Pro screens keep dying – but it's not all good news at Microsoft

Re: Nobody ever got fired

> No one really wants their shit, and deep down no one thinks it's anything other than shit, but people buy it because the Microsoft FUD works. Every time you hear of them getting a big customer you know there's an incompetent CTO who has taken the easy option. The only dev fanbois they have left are the ones too scared or useless to learn a decent toolset... all the others have jumped ship.

This is so wrong, in so many ways, that I really don't know where to start.

But heh, I hope your prejudices keep you warm at night

Kremlin social media trolls aren't actually that influential, study finds

Re: Oh no

>It was a choice between sovereignty or become a state in a United States of Europe.

Can you list for me the sovereignty that we have lost, or might lose? Even the tory white paper said "while no sovereignty was lost, it doesn't always feel that way".

It's quite simple - the EU is a club with rules. If you want to join the club, you have to follow the agreed rules. You can call this loss of sovereignty if you like, but it's not really. And the killer is - if we want trade agreements with any other states or blocks, we'll have to sign up to *their* rules, which will involve much the same "lost of sovereignty". The only way to be truly sovereign in a globalised world is to be like North Korea

>Immigration also featured heavily on both sides as YouGove polls show a majority on either side want immigration reduced and controlled.

"Either side"? No, not really. We have an ageing population, and the only way the economy can support it is by importing labour. Have a stay in hospital, as I did last year, and you'll see a mostly white, mostly ageing population being tended to by young qualified medical staff, of many colours, from all over the world. Personally, I like having a functioning health service, so I'm happy to support immigration.

Look on the bright side, Pebble fans. At least your gizmo will work long enough for you to get beach body ready

> ... when Pebble went bust.

I'm pretty sure Pebble didn't go bust - they were bought by Fitbit.

'There was no monetary incentive for this' = not what you want to hear about your tattoo

>Time that employment (and welfare benefits) were placed out of reach of anyone with a tattoo, or anyone >considering one.

I've noted all the sniffy "well, aren't tattoos jut stupid" comments, without needing to reply. But this one got my goat.

For the record, I'm in my mid-50s and earn (and have always earned) a respectable salary, doing respectable work for respectable organisations. Quite why I should be barred from this because I have a couple of tattoos (one of which is over 30 years old, and *no*, I don't remotely regret getting it) completely escapes me, unless it's because you, Mr "unwarranted triumphalism" want to impose your personal narrow view on what people can do with their own bodies.

Don't like tattoos? Fine - don't get one.

UK competition watchdog: Fox's takeover of Sky 'not in public interest'

Re: Fred

In a 100 years time Gates might be remembered as the guy who rid the world of polio. And possibly even malaria.

Murdoch and Jobs will be completely forgotten.

Why did top Home Office civil servant lobby Ofcom for obscure kit ban?

Re: One of the more interesting questions

> In practice, by the time it even made it to the first hearing the UK,

> we'll have left the EU and the whole thing will be moot.

I wouldn't necessarily bet on that...

MPs sceptical of plan for IT to save the day after UK quits customs union

Leaving EU != leaving Customs Union (or Single Market, for that matter)

Why the fuck are the tories (amongst others) saying that leaving the EU must also mean leaving the Customs Union and Single Market? Despite the fact that, during the referendum campaign, multiple Leavers were at pains to suggest this wouldn't happen?

Oh good, half of Defra's Brexit projects involve IT

Re: Guess the response

> the UK is likely to adopt BINO (in name only)

God let's hope so

Shock: Brit capital strips Uber of its taxi licence

Re: Uber - the real world view

>Maybe you shouldn't be riding a bike on roads paid for by taxpayers. Just sayin'

Another example of where the phrase "just sayin" at the end of a statement predicts the low intelligence of the statement maker.

Want to keep in contact with friends and family without having to sell your personal data?

Well I'm sold

Assuming they fix most of the described issues, I'd buy 3 of them. Maybe more. Er, assuming they'll also sell them in the UK.

Five ways Apple can fix the iPhone, but won't

Re: Bollocks.

I avoided BMWs for years, on the basis that BMW drivers were wankers. Then I drove one, and realised it was actually really very good. So I turned the logic on its head, concluding "You're a wanker, you might as well have a BMW"

Nowadays I have an Audi A7, which is far away the best car I've ever had.

Frankly, "All <x> drivers are <y>" generalisations are pointless and reveal more about the people who cite them.

Microsoft dumps mobility from its Vision

Hybrid cloud

“What differentiates Azure is our hybrid consistency”, which sounds a lot like “we have Azure Stack and no-one's close to us with that."

C'mon, guys - you know there's an awful lot more to hybrid cloud than Azure Stack

Bloke charged under UK terror law for refusing to cough up passwords

Re: "used only in extreme terrorism cases"

"CAGE has plenty of form as apologists for active extremists. As an example, CAGE are the outfit that mentored Jihadi John and subsequently described him as a "beautiful young man".

I'd have the bastards shut down."

That may well be an appropriate position. But being an apologist for extremists isn't a crime, and we all have a strong interest, whatever our views, in not being forced to disclose our private material.

Prepare your popcorn: Wikipedia deems the Daily Mail unreliable

What, the Microsoft and Google who have recently, and separately, taken their government to court?