Posts by jelabarre59

Sync your teeth into power browser Vivaldi's largest update so far

I like thunderbird, and have used it extensively for years multiplatform. However, I feel that it is the unloved stepchild of any hair colour in the Mozilla family. I would like to see something that continues refinement to something that is nigh on perfect (I still suspect memory consumption could be easily improved with Thunderbird, althought checking it now I am pleasently surprised. Maybe I am being harsh. ).

I am seriously concerned about the future of Thunderbird. As the Mozilla-based backend continues to migrate in inexplicable ways, they'll have to expend more and more effort shoehorning it into the client. And they're finding themselves with fewer and fewer staff, rather than the more that they need. If TBird breaks, there really isn't a usable replacement for it. The calendaring functionality (at least when tying into the Google Calendar we use at work) is already severely broken, I don't see them being able to fix that with the resources they have now.

Throwing money at them will only go a little ways towards fixing their problems; what they need is development staff, and they need it quickly. Just dread the thought I'd have to resort to web-based email (*ugh*, *spit*). Would definitely be cancelling a majority of my mail lists at that point.

Holy smokes! US watchdog sues Elon Musk after he makes hash of $420 Tesla tweet

Re: Margin Calling..

Best case may be a buy-in/out and an experienced automotive board appointed to rescue Tesla..

Oh yes, "experienced" auto execs like the ones that, in a market that has been rigged heavily in their favor for 40-50 years, *STILL* had to be bailed out by the US Government. Yeah, *they're* going to do a real bang-up job of it. /sarc

Re: Maximum Hubris

Battery technology still isn't there. Electric cars will not take off until I can travel 300+ miles in a 5 minute recharge. As it is with internal combustion engines, I pull into a gas station and, assuming it is not busy, 5 minutes later I am leaving, including the time it takes to pay.

But then you need to factor in the hundreds of thousands of years it took to create that oil that became petrol. Getting energy *out* is always much faster than getting energy *in*.

Trump's axing of cyber czar role has left gaping holes in US defence

Re: It's just a figurehead

I had wondered the same thing. Perhaps by having a figurehead the other lazy & corrupt agencies could point to, those other agencies figured they couldn't be arsed to think about security concerns. Realistically it should be an integral part of every agency's infrastructure, and eliminating a convenient patsy means they'd have to get off their asses and do the job themselves.

Not that they will, mind you.

HP Ink should cough up $1.5m for bricking printers using unofficial cartridges – lawsuit

Re: broader scope

personally, think there should be a wider rule - if a device has a function/feature when you buy it, the manufacturer should not be able to remove that feature afterwards

"We are altering the driver, pray we do not alter it further..."

Git it girl! Academy tries to tempt women into coding with free course

Smarter

I've often suggested the reason there are fewer women in the IT field is because they're smarter than us men, and therefore less likely to get roped in.

Linux kernel's Torvalds: 'I am truly sorry' for my 'unprofessional' rants, I need a break to get help

I do wonder though if it might have been brought up by family, not fellow developers. His kids are old enough that their friends will know who Linus is, and they might have asked dad to tone it down for *their* sakes.

Big Cable tells US government: Now's not the time to talk about internet speeds – just give us the money

"why is the most technologically advanced nation on the planet providing slower speeds to fewer people at higher cost than any other comparable Western economy?"

I expect that aging existing infrastructure has a lot to do with it though. Granted, that can *also" be put down to companies that want to charge more for doing less. But that also points to governments and special-interest groups blocking efforts on those occasions when a company *does* want to fix things.

Garbage collection – in SPAAACE: Net snaffles junk in first step to clean up Earth's orbiting litter

Re: I suppose it's better than by hand...

...but I really liked the anime series "Planates", which focused entirely on a orbital garbage collection crew on a knackered space station. 'Twould be cool to see it as reality.

Yes, I need to get a copy of that, it could be useful for a story I'm working on.

Re: Orbital velocities

Requiring space operators to build end of life deorbit procedures into all objects being launched, include booster stages is going to be helpful.

The problem is there's a lot of small bits out there. The bigger pieces like satellites are easy enough to spot, it's the tiny debris, like trying to avoid a USB stick on the highway while you're driving at highway speeds.

Microsoft accidentally let encrypted Windows 10 out into the world

Re: Does anybody here remember...

Honestly, exactly, what do these people get out of testing windows for MS for free?

Entertainment value? Finding new-found appreciation for your primary machine that's running Linux?

Actually, I have an old scrap laptop running the tech preview, mainly so I know what shit is coming down the tubes before friends and family encounter it.

You'll never guess what you can do once you steal a laptop, reflash the BIOS, and reboot it

even simpler

The most effective workaround this problem is not to have anything on your laptop worth stealing (or at least not worth the effort this would take)

You know all those movies you bought from Apple? Um, well, think different: You didn't

Re: @karlkarl

No, Apple let you download a purchased movie from iTunes to an arbitrary disk drive of your choice. Said file will only be playable via iTunes on an authorised device, however. i.e. one that is associated with your iTunes account.

And fuck-all use that is to me if I'm not using an iTunes-compatible platform (Linux, Android). I have a test-machine that happens to have a redmond-flavored OS on it, which can be used for downloading music to play on the aforementioned Linux and Android devices (and converted to MP3 to play in my car), but I'm not going to be watching movies on it. So no movie sales to me. I'll stick with DVD for purchases, and streaming for everything else.

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms

Penny for your thoughts

Is this like the whole rabbid movement in Liverpool where they decided to rename all the locations named after slave traders, including a particular lane named after James Penny?

Re: that's the point where things start to go downhill.

c) Tori / Uke (Judo terms. Judo.)

I was thinking more like "Seme / Uke" ("yaoi" fiction)

Or if you want to make a reference to a well-known fictional Python programmer, you have "Kobayashi / Tohru" in the master/servant roles.

A boss pinching pennies may have cost his firm many, many pounds

Re: Developer PC

There was the time our company upgraded our NetWare 2.01 (running on a '286) all the way up to NetWare 2.15. That seemingly small jump (I don't think the 3.x series was out yet) turned a decently-performing network into a SLUG. A slug on a sub-zero January morning.

I managed to memorize the key sequences needed to log-into my system in the morning (depending on whether I had to run an EDI pull at the time). I would boot my machine (which loaded it's basic boot from floppy, no HDDs here) and type in as much of my morning login procedures into the keyboard buffer as possible, then go get my morning coffee. Then go back and pick up at whatever point it had ended up at. Entering customer orders was horrible, you could watch the order entry screen redraw line by line. Fortunately the boss accepted the point that the server HAD to be upgraded (a shiny-new '386, woo-hoo!).

Of course, running on ArcNet, there was only so fast the system was ever going to be (ethernet still being wildly expensive at the time), fortunately RealWorld accounting was text-only at the time.

Microsoft's next Windows 10 release creeps closer with a cluster of builds

Re: meh?

The Microsoft Launcher is quite nice, though. Clean, efficient, nice interface, prefer it over may of the other Android launchers out there. In fact, it's *so* well done I have to suspect it was the work of some short-term intern at MS, one that hadn't yet been corrupted by MS design/programming practices.

Which means in a year or so, once the regular staff start getting their grubby fingers into it, it'll turn to shit.

(yes, i did try it out on a sacrificial device first)

Nokia reinstates 'hide the Notch' a day after 'Google required' feature kill

Re: It is all Apple's fault

I'm just waiting for the interocitor phone...

Re: Black electrical tape will suffice for me

... but I never gave much of a sh*t about phones.

This is all about trying to make "smart"phones 'usable" for things they are sorely inadequate for.

They want to impress me with smartphone design? Make it work in the dead-zone that is my street, improve battery life, stop making them so thin that corrugated cardboard seems heavy by comparison (and this will improve battery life too), stop stretching the screen out so far I can't actually hold the device, and very importantly; add the ability to synchronize data (contacts, memos, calendar) *LOCALLY* rather than having to rely on distant, insecure servers. The PalmOS sync protocol is still available to implement that last bit.

Re: Isn't adding black bars on either side of the notch

The only remaining issue is an aesthetic one, but that's trivial.

I just want parts of the phone I can hold/touch (with these clumsy fingers) *without* it activating something on the screen. Forget wrap-around screens, give me a 1/8" bezel around the edge. It isn't like I'm going to need those extra pixels for viewing email/webpages, since those are unviewable on anything smaller than a 7" tablet, and realistically need a 10" tablet. Make the phone actually USABLE for it's base functions, and stop listening to Jony Ive-wannabees.

Microsoft tells volume customers they can stay on Windows 7... for a bit longer... for a fee

Re: Education

It is but Office is not supported on LTSB and the latest Office versions wont run at all.

That's not a flaw, that's a bonus.

Trainer regrets giving straight answer to staffer's odd question

Re: Phones too

The replacement car they gave him was a lime green 1987 Austin Metro.

He didn't crash the Porsche again.

I don't know, some of us Yanks are intrigued by quirky Brit cars like that. Some 30+ years ago I had a handful of Austin America's. None of them was on the road, so no problem with breakdowns either. Had to go for the closest-looking alternative, which was the Ford Festiva (don't know if they ever sold under that name in the UK, it was also the Mazda 121/Kia Pride).

VMware 'pressured' hotel to shut down tech event close to VMworld, IGEL sues resort giant

Between this and the disgraceful treatment of Defcon attendees, Las Vegas is telling the IT world that they do not want our money and we are not welcome. Hopefully next year conference organisers can find different venues in another city where they will be welcomed rather than persecuted.

Could probably find plenty of places in Westchester County NY to host moderately-sized conferences, and it's still close enough to major transportation. Certainly cheaper than NYC and not beholden (as much) to labor unions. Beyond that there's Poughkeepsie or Kingston, although they're not so "pretty" to visit and function space is smaller and farther between. But even cheaper than Westchester.

Toshiba crams 14TB into another helium drive, this time with SAS boost

pitch

So when the helium-filled drive starts failing, only your dog will be able to hear the bearings squealing?

Defense Distributed starts selling gun CAD files amid court drama

Re: Cute, but not for long

Ask the French Resistanca about the "Liberator" pistol. Cranked out in large numbers from stamped parts, with the clips essentially built-in, then air-dropped over France. They didn't need to last long, just long enough to kill some members of the invading forces, then take *their* weapons.

Always an important part of defending your liberties is the ability to make things very difficult and painful for the enemy.

Intel rips up microcode security fix license that banned benchmarking

Re: Open source works

Or more likely, they were happy to use the patch and just didn't give a shit about the license. As the article notes, Red Hat had happily ignored the prohibition and already published benchmarks before Debian started complaining.

Could be that those vendors (at least one or two) knew how indefensible the clause was, and may have been inviting Intel to just *try* to uphold it.

Apple tipped to revive forgotten Macbook Air and Mac mini – report

nice, but...

I have delusional moments where I think it might be nice to have one Mac device around the house (Mac, not that iFad crap). Then I watch some of Louis Rossman's videos on the nightmare of fixing Apple hardware, and realize just how bad the HW is, that on top of the Walled Garden(tm) that is the Apple ecosystem.

It liiives! Sorta. Gentle azure glow of Windows XP clocked in Tesco's self-checkouts, no less

I don't understand why NCR and the lot their peers bother to use anything so bloated when an R-pi properly configured could do the job. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)

I't probably because whomever originally specced out the system design was only familiar with Point-and-Drool MSWin dev environments.

Now if these companies had been anything less than abject cowards, they could have funnelled a bunch of money and effort into ReactOS development in 2009 or earlier (when they'd realize they were setting themselves for the situation), it might have been ready by 2014. They'd have full source code, wouldn't be dependent on questionable updates, and could save boatloads of money on licenses. But as I say, it would require companies not suffering from Cranial-Rectal Insertion.

Texas ISP slams music biz for trying to turn it into a 'copyright cop'

the music industry itself contributes to copyright infringement, by making its materials available. if they were better about keeping new albums locked away securely, there wouldn't be a problem with people copying them.

They should set up a pilot program for this. Start out with the entire catalogues for Michael Bolton, Kenny-G and Justin Bieber...

(mine's the one with the one with the Megurine Luka CD-R in the pocket... burned from tracks I bought on iTunes)

Python wriggles onward without its head

Dropped the box

Maybe it's just that his current employer (Dropbox) needs him there full-time so they can figure out how to support more than ext4.

Beam me up, PM: Digital secretary expected to give Tory conference speech as hologram

Re: Tory conference with a hologram?

As far as an entertaining gig goes, I'd rather go see a Mika Hatsune concert (and that's not even generally a hologram).

Actually the 2013 Yokahama Arena Magical Mirai show had the best staging of any of them. And the band behind them was live, which is more than I could say for any big-production political show.

Now you can tell someone to literally go f--k themselves over the internet: Remote-control mock-cock patent dies

Re: This just underscores that patents are crap

With US patents the rubber approval stamp is pretty much automatic.

They rely on them being challenged in court to weed out the crap ones.

I've thought one solution there (it would need other fixes implemented as well) whereby anyone who has submitted a patent, only to have it invalidated later, would then be able to get a 5X refund of their filing fees back from the USPTO. Enough of those and they'll find it necessary to actually DO their jobs or face their budget being wiped out.

Your Phone prematurely ejected, Skype texting on the way, and 900 more years of Windows

Re: 900 years

eagle-eyed Register reader Philip Coakes found evidence in a security advisory that Windows is with us for the long term.

Another 900 years, to be precise.

No, it will just take that long to get the security update right...

Re: 900 years

So not quite a "Thousand-Year Reich" then.

Thousand-year retch is more like it.

Google keeps tracking you even when you specifically tell it not to: Maps, Search won't take no for an answer

Re: yeah, no...

Huh, this "anonymous" line ends and starts at this particular location every single day. *Crossreference data sets* -> Must be DougS.

Considering I have no cell service at the house, and I have mobile data disabled more than 99% of the time, they're not getting much useful data there.

Re: Stuff Like This Should Be Illegal

The moon missions are not "heavily classified" and never have been.

Considering I was able to personally hold gauges from Apollo 1 (yes, after the fire) I don't think it was *that* locked down.

And I've seen an interesting analysis that it would have been significantly harder (if not outright impossible) to fake the moon landing. Actually going there was cheaper and easier. Of course these days, all bets are off.

Windows is coming to Chromebooks… with Google’s blessing

Marketing

Google is only doing it to prove just how crap MSWin is on equivalent hardware.

Surprise, surprise. Here comes Big Cable to slay another rule that helps small ISPs compete

Our dismal situation now is the result of the decision by all the local governments selecting single-providers for cable services way back in the early 1980's. Had they allocated or allowed competition way back *then*, we'd be in much better condition now. But as usual, the responsible people are now comfortably retired or dead now.

At this stage, it's near impossible to restore/build up the free market we should have had all along, the ecosystem is so contaminated.

Re: Yay for Sonic

That's great if you're in the midst of Silicon Valley, where the market can support a wide range of competitors. Now, go to an economically depressed area like the Lower Hudson Valley, and you'll be lucky they arn't expecting you to use two tin cans with a string between them. A wet, frayed string.

Microsoft's cheapo Surface: Like a netbook you can't upgrade

I got one of the original Acer Aspire ONE netbooks, the ones that came pre-installed with a shitty chopped up version of Debian....

I made use of it for years for what it was made and intended for. lightweight stuff like email and web browsing.... watching the occasional movie...

I have one of those, although it had MSWinXP on it when I got it (a tenant left it behind when they abruptly moved). Works fine for basic browsing, email and document editing (about all I needed it for), but video is unwatchable on it (running Mint 18.x Mate). Perhaps the KAV60 version started cutting corners.

Of course, I have been wondering if a RasperryPi 3 could be modded to fit in the case (it seems a bit too thin to fit the mods needed to support the video, etc). Would probably be cheaper/easier to go for a PineBook.

The age of hard drives is over as Samsung cranks out consumer QLC SSDs

Which could be on a single hybrid drive.

Which will be just as expensive, if not more so, than the straight-up SSD.

Of course, my 10-yr old Dell laptop has 2 drive bays, so I could just get a smaller SSD for OS & home dir, and put media and documents on the HDD it has now. But so many other things are wrong with it I probably won't bother.

You lucky guy ! My first was a 20MB MFM drive. I thought I'd never be able to fill it !

Especially since driver downloads for your network card have been bigger than that for the past 10 years now.

Sur-Pies! Google shocks world with sudden Android 9 Pixel push

Re: "Digital Wellbeing"

"Please connect to the internet to be able to use this feature and share your data with Google's carefully selected business partners

Considering I usually run my phone with mobile data disabled, that's only going to happen when I'm at home.

Is it just me? It seems like a more appropriate name could've been chosen, although I'll admit that I can't think of one off the top of my head.

Pocky?

Re: "We’ve built Android 9 to learn from you—

Learning from me? Can it learn to shut off all the worthless shit I don't want or need? Can it learn I would like to UNINSTALL some (or many) of those apps, or barring that at least pretend they aren't there? Can it learn that if I have an app disabled *or* marked to not auto-update to not show it in my list of available updates? Can it learn that all apps are banned from repeatedly checking for updates every five minutes, like some OCD child, unless I have explicitly given them permission to do so? Can it learn that if I have decided some app has no business asking for particular permissions the OS should lie to the app and let it believe it does?

Can it learn that, if I need *root* access in order to do certain things, I should have that readily available without having to apply for a Papal Dispensation to unlock my device? Sure, I'd accept (and expect) elevated privileges should require a specific command to enable them; maybe we could come up with a silly-sounding command to enable the elevted level, a made-up word like "sudo" could work...

Re: Survey...

And my friends wondered why I went back to paper maps... *Sigh

Not having paper maps for various areas I'd want to visit, I've had to rely on Google Maps or Mapquest. First rule of thumb with online mapping is to immediately add 25% to the estimated travel time in order to get something closer to *actual* travel time. The other problem, which I have yet to find a solution to, is to print READABLE driving directions. Directions printed in 10-point type like they do is hard enough to read when sitting at your desk. Absolutely impossible to read when you're driving. I have *REPEATEDLY* asked the dimwitted Googleheads to make a large-type option (we're talking 22-24 point type here) so they can be quickly and safely read while driving, but I think that's well beyond their programming ability. And because of the way they format their page, you can't simply paste into a word-processor to fix it.

So we expect these dimwits to make Android do what *WE* want? Yeah, not gonna happen.

Re: Survey...

I specifically selected a route avoiding it and set off... only to have it go "faster route detected" and switch back. Several times.

Ah, but we derive such entertainment by taking a different road when we know there's an area we want to bypass, and seeing how many times it has to say "recalculating". We can just imagine the system inside the GPS getting more and more irritated with us (yes, we're well aware it's way less sentient than Hatsune Miku, but it's family entertainment in the car).

Arris CPE revenue hit by component shortages

what an opportunity

A shortage of components from their usual suppliers? Hey, maybe this is an opportunity for Arris to buy different components that ***aren't*** crap. They might even be able to build devices that aren't crap.

Porn parking, livid lockers and botched blenders: The nightmare IoT world come true

Re: Internet of Idiots

But I'm not the target market arguably as I'm healthy and happy to tell randoms to **** off when try to sell me windows for the 3rd time that month.

Did you mean "windows" or "Windows(tm)"? Or even worse, "windows running Windows(tm)"...

Sen. Ron Wyden: Adobe Flash is doomed, why is Uncle Sam still using it?

Re: Flash is still used on a bunch of

And when you compare the Flash versions with the HTML5 versions, you can see why: you can get 95% of the content moved across, but the last 5% is a real bugger to implement in HTML5

So you mean some web designer will have to get off their lazy arse and do some work for once.