Posts by intrigid

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Windows 7 was the last truly commercial (customer-oriented) operating system

Around 10 years ago, when I saw a pop-up that said my Windows 7 would be automatically "upgraded" to Windows 8 within a certain amount of time, I immediately downloaded a program to block that from happening. At that moment, I knew the industry had permanently switched from a customer-serving model to a vendor-serving one.

I swore that I would continue using Windows 7 until either something bad happened as a result of using it, or until some use case stopped working on it for which there were no reasonable alternatives. To this date, I'm still running it, and in fact have expanded my usage of it to three additional PCs. And with the ease of accessing newer operating systems through VMs and remote desktop, it's difficult to imagine a scenario where I will feel the need to "upgrade" in the forseeable future. And if I do, it will almost certainly be moving individual use cases over to a parallel PC running something like Linux Mint.

Zuck says Facebook made an 'operational mistake' in not taking down US militia page mid-protests. TBH the whole social network is a mistake

Re: Wow -

He had a deadly amount of fentanyl in his body. He repeatedly complained that he couldn't breathe in the minutes leading up to being wrestled to the ground. Even if they locked him in the back seat of the police cruiser with handcuffs, he probably would have died of his overdose.

When the story came out, it looked like he was strangled to death. After the bodycam footage was released, it's pretty clear that the evidence that he was killed by police is basically zero.

NHS tests COVID-19 contact-tracing app that may actually work properly – EU neighbors lent a helping hand

Re: How will they know it's a false alarm?

The problem is the false notion that if a young person tests positive for the virus, has little to no symptoms (as is the majority of cases), and gets over it, that something bad has happened. This is silly; something very good has happened. Societal immunity has increased, and the potential for the virus to spread has been undermined.

This is why "number of cases" is such a useless, harmful statistic. It lumps in the good events with the bad events into one big number.

Re: "Talk of a second wave is nonsense"

You're confusing case fatality with infection fatality. You're factually wrong; flu case fatality is far higher than 3%. In most countries it's north of 10%. That's because very few people who get the flu go to the trouble of testing for it. Even if they go to the doctor complaining of flu symptoms, very few doctors will send away for a flu test. They save the actual flu tests for elderly and people with pre-existing conditions, which explains why the flu case fatality rate is so high.

If you can read this, your Windows 10 2004 PC really is connected to the internet no matter what the OS claims

Re: Error

I have a bottom-of-the-line Dell laptop with 32gb of eMMC and about 2gb free space. It brings a smile to my face every time Windows fails to update. It says it needs an additional 10 gigs.

The funny thing is that I don't have anything installed on it other than a few hundred megs worth of apps and some old games. Windows 10 is simply an insatiable monster that wants to grow and consume, for no particular end user benefit at all.

I love my top-of-the-line Windows 7 desktop.

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Fujitsu tells 80,000 of its Japan employees: From now on, you work remotely

Re: The hub idea is interesting.

I would be happier with the company estimating the net cost savings per employee of permanent work-from-home, and then offering say 25% of that savings to me in the form of a permanent bonus on my paycheck. Based on industry numbers I've heard thrown around, that would amount to me taking home at least an extra couple thousand a year.

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

Re: Loaded words replaced by euphemisms

In the great words of Homer Simpson: "We don't need a thinker, we need a doer! Someone who'll act without considering the consequences!"

Three UK: We're sending you this SMS to warn you not to pay attention to unsolicited texts

Re: Smishing?

It sounds like one of the steps in making wine.

Remember that black hole just 1,000 light years from Earth? Scientists queue up to say it may not exist after all

Re: Who is stealing the stars?

Not to mention the fact that while our Earthly computers are restricted in their capacity by time, space, and energy, there's absolutely no reason to believe that the computer running our simulation has to deal with such restrictions.

Facebook's cool with sharing the President's nonsense on its mega-platform – but don't you dare mention 'unionize' in its Workplace app

It's literally in the name. Also, there was a recent rally of democratic socialists in the USA where a troll managed to get the microphone and recite Alolf Hitler quotes to the crowd, word for word, and received uproarious applause and cheering from said crowd.

Re: It's 2020 people

I appreciate some of your sentiment, but your spelling and grammar, and your ability to organize coherent thought, is pretty brutal.

S20 Ultra 5G: Samsung unfurls Galaxy flagship with bonkers 108MP cam, 6.9-inch display

Have we reached peak phone absurdity yet?

When are we going to see a backlash against the trend of removing every possible useful feature from a phone in order to make internal room for 7 inches of screen covering 99% of the surface, which will shatter into a beautiful glass spider web the first time it slips out of your hand?

I could really, really use a sequel to the Galaxy S5.

Windows 7 will not go gentle into that good night: Ageing OS refuses to shut down

Re: Adobe testing

If you're going to hide your swear words in an acronym then wtf is the point

You think that's what OS updates are? Periodic reminders to the OS about how exactly it's supposed to function, just in case it forgot?

Captain's coffee calamity causes transatlantic flight diversion

Re: Elf-in-Safety

IANAE, but I don't see why you couldn't have some push-button type mechanism in a screw-on lid that releases the seal and allows liquid to flow. Accidentally knock the vessel over, no problem, the button isn't pushed and the seal remains intact, with the screw threads keeping the lid securely in place.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I _have_ a receptacle at home that is almost identical to what I just described.

Windows 7 and Server 2008 end of support: What will change on 14 January?

Re: "Although it is not unreasonable...

"Windows 3.11 is a lot better to use than 10."

You deserve an upvote for the edginess of this comment alone.

Re: "Although it is not unreasonable...

2000 was stable, intuitive, and incredibly fast, but software and hardware compatibility was bad. Then XP came along which hit the sweet spot perfectly, and (glossing over Vista), Win 7 took everything great about XP and made it better. And that was the final chapter of the glory days of Windows.

Re: " to just plug in a thumb drive and print straight from it. "

That's been the Linux "comic book guy" mentality for as long as I can remember. It's not Linux's fault for lacking compatibility and features. It's the user's fault for having those bizarre needs in the first place.

Re: Upgraded W7 to W10 via MS's continuing free offer last month

The problem with the "world didn't end" mentality is that there's no upper limit, literally nothing that can't be magically justified by uttering those three little words. So yes, downvoted.

Re: "Although it is not unreasonable...

Windows 95 was a dramatic improvement over Windows 3.11, and users everywhere were thrilled by the upgrade.

By the same token, Windows 10 was a dramatic downgrade from Windows 7, and users everywhere are desperately pining to go back to Windows 7. So your analogy doesn't hold.

UK culture sec hints at replacing TV licence fee, defends encryption ban proposals and her boss in Hacker House inquiry

Re: TV ownership fine

I like how your distinction between a fee and a fine is that a fee is something that a bunch of people pay for some particular thing that they shouldn't be allowed to do without paying for, which goes to provide funding for some greater good, and a fine is, well, let's stay on the topic of fees. A fine is something else.

TV ownership fine

As a non-Brit, it boggles my mind that an entire country feverishly defends its government fining people for owning TVs.

And before you explain to me the difference between a "fee" and a "fine", I would like you to first explain it to yourself.

Tinfoil-hat search engine DuckDuckGo gifts more options, dark theme and other toys for the 0.43%

Mobile app could use a major improvement

The mobile search widget is still inseparably linked to the proprietary DuckDuckGo browser, which unfortunately is very bad at basic features like ad-blocking and preventing HD videos from autoplaying, thereby eating up half a month's worth of mobile data if you aren't quick enough to back out.

Chinese sleazeball's 17-year game of hide-and-seek ends after drone finds him on mountain

Re: This is the Chinese government we're talking about

Both are bad. Your argument supports mine, not contradicts it. If we already know that the US engages in political imprisonment, and we already know that China has a far worse track record on human rights than the US, then that's all the more reason we should be skeptical of this entire story.

Re: I cant understand the mentality...

You seem to be overlooking the fact that this story took place in CHINA

This is the Chinese government we're talking about

Why does everyone automatically assume the prosecution of this man was legitimate? China has a well documented history of railroading people into being convicted of certain crimes on little to no evidence, when the actual crime they committed was mild to moderate dissidence against the government.

The fact that they went to these lengths to find this individual makes it seem more likely, not less likely, that this was the case.

#MeToo chatbot, built by AI academics, could lend a non-judgmental ear to sex harassment and assault victims

How about making an AI program that is 90% effective at identifying false sexual assault accusers, by cataloguing their story in detail, and running an algorithm that finds critical factual errors and logical inconsistencies? That would be funding well spent.

Not so easy to make a quick getaway when it takes 3 hours to juice up your motor, eh Brits?

Re: Charging your car

The energy needed to run a block heater is literally zero compared to charging an EV.

Business PC sales up as suits flee looming end of support for Windows 7

Not only am I going to continue using Windows 7 on my main PC...

I haven't downloaded or installed any Windows updates since 2016. Everything seems to run stable and quiet, CPU idles at 0-1%, and I haven't had any mysterious logins, or unexplained charges to my credit or bank accounts.

Why exactly should I change anything?

Dry patch? Have you considered peppering your flirts with emojis?

Statistics failures 101: Lumping men and women in as "people"

I notice that this study made no attempt whatsoever to measure the effects of emojis on men and women separately.

For all we know, cutesy emojis make it 500% easier for women to get laid, and 400% harder for men to.

"Emojis make it easier for the average person to get laid!"

And we're back live with the state of the smartphone market in 2019. Any hope? Yeah, nah

Sales 101: When you can't sell by adding new features, take away existing ones.

We all know the industry is going to respond to this with even more aggressive efforts to make it as intolerable as possible for people to continue using their perfectly good phones. Removable batteries will continue to be banished from the industry. Non-refusable, non-reversible software patches will even more aggressively slow down older model phones. Rooting will be rendered impossible on more models of phone. Apps will continue to balloon in size, with even very simple ones occupying hundreds of megabytes, to force users of even 32 gigabyte models to upgrade.

Still using my Galaxy S5, literally the most recent phone that has the features I want.

Oracle sued by ex-sales manager who claims she was fired in retaliation for suing former bosses

Is it always a mistake to sue an employer?

Let's assume she's right. Let's assume 2 consecutive employers massively dropped the ball, wronged her, and she wins several years salary as compensation.

Then what? What employer in their right mind would ever hire this person again? A simple Google search, from then on, will reveal that this person sued her most recent 2 employers. Those radioactivity levels are rarely found outside Fukushima.

Unless you're rapidly approaching retirement age, you're simply better off in the long run not doing this, no matter how right you are.

Alexa Conversations: Amazon's AI assistant is about to get a whole lot more like Clippy

Once again, AI reinforces its stereotype as the delusional wet dream of marketers, who continue to tell themselves that end users will abandon all human instinct and start opting in to voice-activated advertisements. Even Indian tech support workers continue to be on the order of 1 million times more intelligent than our most advanced AI. When will journalists drop the notion that this underdeveloped technology is of any meaningful value to any but the tiniest minority of end users?

Introducing 'freedom gas' – a bit like the 2003 deep-fried potato variety, only even worse for you

Re: Sleep is a Good Thing(TM)

"Plants, all of them from the algae in the seas to the forests ran out of capacity to absorb the extra carbon a long time ago."

You're assuming there's a fixed supply of foliage in the world. There isn't. CO2 is to vegetation as vegetation is to gazelles, as gazelles are to lions. As the CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the overall "greenness" of the planet increases. Forests, plants, algae grow thicker and faster in a warmer, higher CO2 environment. How else do you explain why the extremely high levels of CO2 identified tens of thousands of years ago, far higher than today's concentrations, did not result in an irreversible climate catastrophe?

Re: Sleep is a Good Thing(TM)

While there is a difference in the academic influence of climate alarmists and bible thumpers, there is a striking similarity in their overall track record of successful predictions.

Re: Sleep is a Good Thing(TM)

Climate alarmists do have an overwhelming resemblance to people who say the apocalypse is coming on xx/xx/xxxx date and therefore we need to embrace Jesus Christ.

Hey, those warrantless smartphone searches at the US border? Unconstitutional, yeah? Civil-rights warriors ask court to settle this

Best way to handle the phone searches

1) Take the SIM card out of your main phone

2) Pack your main phone away in your luggage

3) Pop the sim card into a cheap, empty, unlocked phone

4) Enjoy your flight, and if they decide they want to search your phone, let them, knowing how disappointed and underwhelmed they will be.

FYI: Someone left 24GB of personal info on 80m US households exposed to the public internet

I misread the headline

At first I thought that somebody had amassed 24GB of their own personal info, then somehow uploaded it to 80 million US households, and then those households turned out to be completely unsecured internet-facing computers.

Cops looking for mum marauding uni campus asking students if they fancy dating her son

Great news

Good to see that police are getting involved in issues like this! This must mean that assaults, kidnappings, murders, and acid attacks are at an all-time low.

'Men only' job ad posts land Facebook in boiling hot water with ACLU

Racism!

How is this any different than Rolex deciding not to put up a billboard advertisement in an inner-city getto?

HTTPS crypto-shame: TV Licensing website pulled offline

TV licensing agency

Paying the government for the privilege of owning a magic picture device? The whole HTTP privacy debacle should be an afterthought. You brits should hang your heads in shame for allowing such a ridiculous bureaucracy to exist in the first place.

Get drinking! Abstinence just as bad for you as getting bladdered

More likely hypothesis

Alcohol doesn't prevent dementia. Dietary cholesterol prevents dementia. People who are willing to indulge in alcohol are more likely to be willing to indulge in red meat.

A causes B and C. C causes D.

B doesn't cause D or have any connection to it whatsoever, but B and D are correlated, so journalists start reporting "if you want D, consider trying B"

This is why "correlation isn't causation" needs to be hammered into people's heads nonstop. Even people whose full-time job it is to conduct these studies don't seem to have the foggiest clue what the concept means.

Correlation isn't causation

What is it about this concept that journalists are having so much trouble with? Journalists should stick to their pay grade and leave the scientific reporting to actual scientists.

Microsoft devises new way of making you feel old: Windows NT is 25

Peak Windows

Windows 7 is currently Peak Windows, and it may be the only Windows to gain and never relinquish that title.

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

Windows 7 to 10 "updgrade"?

I stopped calling software updates upgrades when it meant "taking away 5 things you desperately want, and giving you 50 new things you desperately don't"

Very glad to still be on Windows 7. Hope I will be 10 years from now.

Stop us if you've heard this one: Adobe Flash gets emergency patch for zero-day exploit

The internet's screen door?

More like the herpes of the internet.

Select few to watch World Cup in 4K high dynamic range colour on BBC iPlayer

Sorry, Europe

I respect that you're trying as hard as you possibly can to make soccer worth watching, but I think it's time you moved on to something viable.

Law forcing Feds to get warrants for email slurping is sneaked into US military budget

It makes no sense

Why would they need to write another law to say something that is already covered in the 4th amendment of the US bill of rights?

If saying it once wasn't good enough, what good is saying it twice going to do?

FBI's flawed phone tally blamed on programming error. 7,800 unbreakable mobes? Er, um...

What difference does it make?

Whether it's 7.8 million phones or 12 phones, shouldn't it be irrelevant? The debate should start and stop at constitutionality and technical feasibility; the imagined benefits to the FBI should not even rise to the level of an afterthought.

About to install the Windows 10 April 2018 Update? You might want to wait a little bit longer

Windows 7

Have been using Windows 7 with Never10 utility installed for some years now. I feel so sorry for anyone who missed out on the Windows 7 train, and I feel like a bystander watching the nonstop trainwreck of modern operating systems.