Posts by Calum Morrison 268 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2007
My first Microsoft updates came on a CD, some time around 2003 if I recall correctly. I'm pretty sure I had to register for it and MS sent it out some weeks later. As an organisation, we were online then - and had been for years - but I don't think updating was at that stage. XP SP3 was another one-off that changed the game - Windows Firewall etc.
I'm torn between coming up with free ways to get around a situation like this and complete disdain for any organisation that can have a team of more than a couple of IT spods and not spend a few quid a month on a password solution.
TBH, if none of those spods can make a business case for it that management finds acceptable, my disdain lies with them. But... when Keepass becomes unwieldy, couldn't they have a Firefox or Chrome account that they all sign into and store passwords there? If that won't work and none of them have the chops to write something that does, I'm starting to think they're a significant part of the problem.
Access predates all this modern open source stuff like MySQL, MariaDB etc. You were *supposed* to use Access, and in the absence of anything else, it's what you did.
When Access was all the rage (late 90s) there were no real viable alternatives. You had this database app (lication - we didn't call them apps) bundled with your word processor and spreadsheet - why wouldn't you? These were the days when you sent half the office off to a local hotel for the day (lunch provided!) for a beginners training session with each of the Office programmes and they came back empowered, enthusiastic and ready to wreak well-intentioned carnage with Excel and its big brother.
And, tbf, as others have previously stated, it was fine, at least until it wasn't. As a quick prototyper or a system for a small workgroup, it could cope. It's when it grew, and grew and grew that you had problems. For a while, you could get by by separating the data from the front end (call in a proper developer on a day rate!) but ultimately record locking and file security were waiting to bite you, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day.
I switched my lovingly created classic ASP-based intranet app from Access to MySQL in a weekend as I recall. As soon as there was a viable alternative, I fled to a "proper" database. But in the 90s? Access was king.
I've never used El Reg's comments as a forum before, only ever added snark to the bottom of an article. Finding this topic list was excruciating and involved fiddling with URLs and CTRL F. The site nav is terrible.
As mentioned in my previous comment at https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2026/06/04/2026/ the lack of topic headlines (On Call etc.) in the article list is weirdly stupid. The front page is annoying and the only way I can use the site now is via the Archive list.
Other than that, great update El Reg!
There still is but - uselessly - like the rest, it's only displayed at the top of the article once you've already opened it.
Why they can't go back to displaying it somewhere in the article list, I don't know - I guess at this point they're just being bloody minded. And yes, I'm still using the Archive view (https://www.theregister.com/archive) to make the site usable. As you say, it's the kind of stupidity you expect/accept from other sites, but it's odd from El Reg.
But that reads more like a quickly dreamt up story by someone looking to get their name and company some free publicity. Whilst the correct password would always be the last one you thought up (why keep guessing when you've won?), there'd have to be a pretty strong reason for him to guess a word from a movie from some time in the past, even if it had just been shown on TV in an era without the multi-channel feast we "enjoy" now.
In an unrelated thought, anyone got the contact details for a reputable firm in the security world?
If Google really just wanted to kick MS in the plums and give us users a decent browser (rather than track the hell out of us), why didn't it just throw more money at Mozilla? Who wants to reinvent the wheel when there's a perfectly good one taking chunks out of IE (apologies for the metaphor mixture)? Chrome came out years after Firefox, just around about the time "Don't be Evil" was looking more and more like a bad joke.
These are hypothetical devices, but very much grounded in experience. Machine tools don't exist on MS desktop cycles and can work well for a business for multiple decades. Unfortunately, the software house that the supplier contracted out the application development to is no longer around to update its software and it only runs on XP. Explaining to a small business owner that the drill / saw / lathe that sits in the corner working as well as it did back in 1999 will need to be replaced because of this - and an otherwise theoretical future risk of attack - is not an easy sell when she has limited cashflow, the rest of the world is going sideways, and it's otherwise working as well as it did on day one.
Would I have even bought these products? In a lot of cases, it's unlikely IT was even consulted - production has a relationship with the supplier and knows and likes it, so it's machine A that gets bought. And it was 25 years ago before threats like this were even much thought about in tech circles, never mind the rest of the business and I was working in a totally different industry. Anyway, it's a moot point as machine B would be giving its owners exaclty the same issue wherever it's installed.
Yes, there are ways to secure and segment them, but it's easy to judge from afar, much harder to deal with the real-life situations that face many many small businesses operating in the real world.
I've just reread it - several times as it's not clear at all, with context and attribution switching across the various paragraphs - and I'm still not certain. It definitely wasn't Sony who said it (contrary to what I stated earlier), but I still don't think it's Honda themselves. I'd assume it's come from someone within the SHM group (i.e. Sony / Honda and more likely an element of the former) as it's such an unlikely thing for Honda to say - Ratner-esque indeed.
I can see Honda conceding their higher costs to the Chinese, but not their quality. It would not only be suicidal, but not even accurate. Whilst Chinese quality has improved massively in a short space of time, the reviews of their cars don't suggest it's up to Honda standards yet.
You haven't been looking closely enough. Next time you see what looks like a slightly wonky Range Rover Evoque, look a bit closer and you'll probably see it's a Jaecoo. Admittedly they're not in every area of the country, but wherever there's a dealer - and they seem to be sold by big chains - they're selling loads. 3% market share in less than a year is not to be sneezed at: https://www.perrys.co.uk/blog/jaecoo-and-omoda-achieve-almost-3-uk-market-share-in-under-a-year
Not a Ratner moment - it's not well written, but I took it to mean that it was Sony who said it, not Honda. Maybe not the best way to talk about your erstwhile business partner, but nonetheless true. Look how quickly Chinese cars have taken over the UK - brands like Jaecoo have now got the market share that the likes of Citroen used to have, from a standing start.
The Edge usage figures can probably be explained by Windows constantly, mysteriously resetting user-chosen default browser, insisting on opening links in err, Edge even when the default is something else etc. etc. It's like IE all over again.
TBH, I don't particularly have an issue with Edge in terms of usability (though its default alt tab behaviour is a pain in the erse) but all of MS' tricks to make me use it just make me actively act against it.
We can't have it both ways - wanging on about Notepad++ et al with all their extras, then complaining when MS add anything to Notepad. I know some of the changes to the latter are intrusive, but from what I can tell, they can be turned off. Personally, I find it storing open files between reboots really handy, but I'm not at all bothered about formatting text or Copilot. I reckon I'll switch them off and get on with my life.
It wasn't jus tme that got annoyed/confused at logging into Office online only to find I was logging into Copilot then? The first few times I had to make sure I was definitely at the right place. I can see why they're doing it (copilotification of f**ing everything), but it's a pain in the browser.
It's too vague a term. One Loch Ness > all the lakes in England and Wales both by volume and general excellence (and obviously deeper than 50 London buses), but a lochan may be no more than a couple of Olympic sized swimming pools and barely come up to an elephant's (backwards) knees.
Some things are just unknowable.
I hear you - I steered the wife in the direction of a Sony Pebble digital music player (ipod knockoff, c 2004), thinking, they can't really be serious that it won't play mp3 files. They could, and they were.
Everything had to be ripped - in their clunky app - to atrac.
Eventually I believe they relented and updated (hit the switch) to allow mp3, but by that time what was a beautiful little device was drawerware, gathering dust and replaced by something that just worked.
