* Posts by jelabarre59

2005 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Aug 2013

Toaster cooks network and burns 'expert' user's credibility to a crisp

jelabarre59

Re: Sparky's Magic Fusebox

But if you have a car with Lucas Electrics, you need to keep one of these on hand:

http://www3.telus.net/bc_triumph_registry/smoke.htm

FCC clicks off the safety, fires at America's great cable TV box rip-off

jelabarre59

> If you live in a decent sized market, you'll get far more than 3-8 channels. I get over 20 OTA channels in a city of 250k people.

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Out here we can get all of ZERO channels OTA. I counted them. Twice.

jelabarre59

Re: le -sigh-

> Section 172 of the 2006 Companies Act (look it up) specifically says company Directors must consider the interests of employees, suppliers, community, environment etc, and not just in a short term context either.

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My god, IBM would NEVER survive under *that* law...

jelabarre59

Re: Foxtel in OZ

> I dropped my Hulu subscription when some of the programs I was watching suddenly required a valid cable subscription to watch. I mean, WTF?!!! If I had cable TV why would I be using Hulu in the first place?

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Yes, I hate taht bit, especially when the channels you want to watch are loaded with commercials. I mean, Hello? You're running commercials on it, so you're **already** getting paid for them. In the end I just say "you don't want me to watch your shows? That's fine with me. I'm quite happy NOT to watch them. Goodbye suckers." We have AcornTV for the British shows, once I'm working again I'll subscribe to Crunchyroll and perhaps the high-end Hulu to get all those shows without commercials, and we have Netflix for.... Um.... Well, we had it for something/

jelabarre59

Re: $150 a month?

> I may be naive, but what on earth do you get for $150 a month? That's gotta be about £100 at the moment?

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That's why we dropped cable entirely. Now we just have Crapcast for internet and phone. For the couple of shows we really wanted to watch, it wasn't worth the extra $80/month. Especially since the vast majority of what I was watching was on Netflix, Hulu/Funimation or Crunchyroll anyway.

Putin's internet guru says 'nyet' to Windows, 'da' to desktop Linux

jelabarre59

Re: Putting an extra tax on Apple products

> Does that make any sense?

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At the price of Apple products, would you notice the difference?

jelabarre59

Re: Futile gesture

> There's loads of Russian software developers already in Russia.

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After all, wasn't Tetris originally developed in the USSR?

jelabarre59

Re: ReactOS

Are you kidding? ReactOS is *only* 10-12 years away from functional Win-XP compatibility...

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Of course, ROS should have gotten a group of corporations to throw moey and resources behind it back in 2011, about the time they seriously started considering the impending EOL for XP. For a fraction of what they're going to spend migrating to MSW7, 8.x or (ugh) W10, they could have had a usable drop-in replacement that THEY could exert control on. But the MBAs running companies these days are brain-dead.

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Then again, isn't saying "MBA" and "brain-dead" redundant anyway?

Sick and tired of modern Windows? Upgrade to Windows 3.1 today – in your web browser

jelabarre59

Floppy load

Not quite MSW 3.11, but in the days of MSW 3.0, I had one of those MSW demos that would load *from floppy*. I had found MSW3 so un-inspiring I just continued to use MS-DOS applications. But I *did* want to play Solitaire occasionally, so I cooked up a 2-floppy setup that would boot the computer with a (then) mega-sized disk cache, and then load sol.exe as the MSWin "shell" (so it would boot and immediately load Solitaire). The first game through would be dog-slow (even considering it was MSWindows anyway), but subsequent games would fly.

jelabarre59

>> "It's the computer equivalent of all of Michael Jackson's records suddenly disappearing"

> You say that like it's a bad thing

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Funny, that was EXACTLY my thought. And can you consider trying to render Hatsune Miku or Megurine Luka on an old MSW 3.11 machine?

jelabarre59

Re: Minesweeper

One co-worker said the appropriate name for the included game "Hover" should have actually been "Hoover", because "...it kinda sucks..."

Microsoft offers to PAY YOU to trade in your old computer for a Windows 10 device

jelabarre59

Still new to me

I'm looking at their list of machines they would consider "eligible", and I'd probably be grateful to have something that new. My daughter still uses an HP Pentium4 laptop with Linux, and it just logs into her school Google Docs account. Perfectly functional (which the corresponding MS "trade-up" probably wouldn't be).

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This stinks of the same sort of BS as President Obie's "cash for clunkers" scam, where every car I had and was still using would have been too old to qualify. I might (emphasize "might") have been happy trading one of mine for one of those so-called "clunkers". Are you sure MS isn't part of the Obama administration?

jelabarre59

Re: But

My daughter is still using a 12-year old HP ZX5000 for her schoolwork. It runs Linux Mint, and her profile automatically logs her into her school Google Docs account.

jelabarre59

T2x

I have a perfectly functional ThinkPad T23, would make a great trade-in. Unfortunately, the new unit would probably be made to intentionally lock out Linux (what, you mean I was supposed to *use* the copy of MSWin10 that came on it???)

Little warning: Deleting the wrong files may brick your Linux PC

jelabarre59

> Are you still using that old fashioned analogue electricity ;round your way? Still waiting for the upgrade to the new, faster and more efficient digital electricity?

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"digital electricity", that must be what Dyson is using in all those "digital motors". (as in "WTF is a 'digital motor'?"

Who would code a self-destruct feature into their own web browser? Oh, hello, Apple

jelabarre59

Re: Nice to know..

> You'd have to sacrifice the whole population of London in order to upgrade iTunes into a simply dreadful programme. Anything less and you just make it stronger.

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The only reason I ever installed whyTunes (and in a MSWin VM at that, since it just refuses to work under Wine) was to use a $50 gift card I got. And you know what? Over a year later, I still have $12 credit on it (the jPop selection on whyTunes stinks).

What's it like to work for a genius and Olympic archer who's mates with Richard Branson?

jelabarre59

> For one awkward moment I read that title as "Olympic archer who mates with Richard Branson".

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Same here. I had wondered if anyone else had the same sort of twisted mind. Now if they were in Japan someone could draw up a clever yaoi doujin of it...

'Printer Ready'. Er… you actually want to print? What, right now?

jelabarre59

Re: I can point you to some code

> Like it or not paper is better than a monitor if you are trying to comprehend

> something mindboggling with a pen/highlighter in hand.

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Is *that* why I have to keep washing my computer screen every day or two?

Five technologies you shouldn't bother looking out for in 2016

jelabarre59

> 5. IT jobs get sexy

If you mean that to say you get screwed on a daily basis, then yes.

Microsoft herds biz users to Windows 10 by denying support for Win 7 and 8 on new CPUs

jelabarre59

Re: The more they push

> Another year or so of updates and it should be one of the better OS MS have shat out...

If you don't mind that the interface/desktop is severely F-U-G-L-Y....

There is simply NO way to make the W10 interface look other than something designed by a 6-month-old with crayons and a full diaper...

Women account for just one fifth of the EU’s 8m IT jobs

jelabarre59

Smarter

Perhaps there are so few women in IT because they're *smarter* than us dumb males, and have *avoided* that dead-end career...

jelabarre59

Re: none issue

> That's because IT is a career that really makes a difference, with incredible

> job prospects, high earnings, and near infinite social status.

Did you forget to attach the SARCASM flag to that post?

Microsoft’s Get Windows 10 nagware shows signs of sentience

jelabarre59

Re: Well, if it wants to jump species...

>> "I have just bought a GPS that REQUIRES Windows (or a Mac) to upgrade

>> the maps. Imagine my disappointment"

> Always read the small print.

> But check if Wine will do the trick. Or Vista in a VM.

Or RearmWizard with a MSWin7 evaluation install....

And, seeing as it's a hack on top of the Enterprise version, it will never *offer* to upgrade to MSWin10 either.

But definitely in a VM. I would never waste physical hardware on MSWin. Except for some crap laptop (dead battery, broken DVD drive, falling-off keys, etc) with MSWin10 TP. Which I haven't booted in months anyway (hoped to find some parts to make the lappy usable again).

Was Android moving to OpenJDK really a Google gift to devs?

jelabarre59

Re: What a fucking mess!

The only reason I ever considered working for Oracle was because they were a significant competitor to IBM, and I was quite happy with the idea if helping ANYONE in the job of kicking IBM's ass.

jelabarre59

Re: Java is a steaming turd.

> STOP ambushing this thread!! Grumble grumble....

And GET OFF MY LAWN!

Is ATM security threatened by Windows XP support cutoff? Well, yes, but …

jelabarre59

Re: How many ATM's are properly updated anyway?

> (no way of loading malware, unless you are tom cruise),

Ah, he's going to stand next to it and rant about Scientology? Or will he actually make it watch one of his movies? Either way, the hardware will fry itself just to be relieved of it's misery.

Commodore PET lurches out of its 1970s grave – as a phablet

jelabarre59

Re: Not *another* cheap nostalgia-exploiting "revival"

I find it amusing to see the defunct brand names companies will fork over money for. For those in the NYC/Tri-state area, there was an electronics chain called "Crazy Eddie". Eventually the company was forced into bankruptcy (but not after Eddie and family spent the entire lifetime of the company skimming profits and cooking the books), with Eddie Antar being extradited from Israel and sent to federal prison for a few years. So tell me, why would ANYONE in their right mind want to buy the rights to THAT name? I mean, you could hire their hyperactive pitchman Jerry Carroll without having to own the extremely tarnished Crazy Eddie name (presuming Carroll is still alive, that is).

Sysadmin's £100,000 revenge after sudden sacking

jelabarre59

Re: James is a dick...

Yeah, I had one job where a couple of months after I was sacked, the owner called me and wanted some technical advice. I gave him some vague, useless and sufficiently BS answers (hey, I could be a politician or IT salesperson <g>), I proceeded to send him a bill for 2-hours colsulting time (was a 5-10 minute phone call). Needless to say, he never bothered me again.

New edition of Windows 10 turns security nightmares into reality

jelabarre59

IoT = Internet of Trash?

Now just *why* would you want to buy an embedded device built on/running any version of MSWin in the first place? Isn't that just asking for trouble in the first place?

Mozilla: Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Thunderbirds are – gone

jelabarre59

Re: Kmail

> Am I the only one that's been using kmail for the last ten years ?

Oh, was that you?

jelabarre59

> ...most business users use Exchange,...

Except for those 2 or 3 companies *outside* of IBM still saddled with Blotus Notes...

jelabarre59

Re: I don't get the thinking at Mozilla.

> Plus the reason people usually use Firefox is that they don't like Chrome. But Mozilla just want to turn Firefox...into Chrome.

Yeah, that's part of it. Another *significant* reason is that GoogleChrome tends to bring my system to a standstill (and that's on a Linux box, where applications should never have the ability to kill the OS itself). Chrome must want to be the only app running on a system, because as soon as it starts, nothing else will run. And on MSWin? I found on *multiple* machines (and multiple MSWin versions) that, even if you were to set the home/default page to a *completely blank* local HTML page, the browser would barf on loading that page, or just crash altogether.

Yeah, TB is significantly more important to me than FF. Maybe the LibreOffice folks can take it and clean it up from all the MozillaSuck it's weighed down with.

Remember Windows 1.0? It's been 30 years (and you're officially old)

jelabarre59

> Windows ME wasn't all THAT bad, personally I found it a better OS especially compared with the shite they called Windows 98.

The MSWin ME CDs were handy for extracting some updated files in order to install a "hacked" version of MSW98. When I was running MSW98, I would install it using the "98lite" utility (which actually pulled files from MSW95) in order to (of course) remove the cruft from '98. But the ME files were useful if you were running the highly-unofficial "Win98 Third Edition", which was a lot of aftermarket, 3rd-party patches which would bring MSW98 up to Win2K or WinXP compatibility.

jelabarre59

> Anywaym this means I'm definitely in the "feeling old" camp ... may even start reminiscing about loading bootstraps using front panel switches and stackes of fanfold paper tape if I'm not carefull!

You mean like the hardware I had to use in my high school days? This was my "terminal" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33) attached to one of these: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11)

jelabarre59

Still here

And here we are, 30 years later, and MSWin once again has a flat, boring, lifeless look, and they even brought back the "hamburger menus" (that's right, does that object in the window corner look familiar?) So I guess all that *really* changed with MSWin10 is they moved the decimal point over one space and bloated the code up with lots of extra cruft.

Block storage is dead, says ex-HP and Supermicro data bigwig

jelabarre59

> IIR Hollerith punch cards derive from Jaquard punch cards used for controlling mechanical looms.

Never let *facts* get in the way of a half-wit anecdote.

jelabarre59

Re: really?

> Does this mean I need to start yelling "get off my lawn" to all the neighborhood kids?

More like "get your Surfaces and iPads off my lawn"

Judge bins Apple Store end-of-shift shakedown lawsuit

jelabarre59

Re: Give the employees lockers instead

They'd have to be iLockers. You know, all shiny, flashy, and totally unsuitable for real storage...

Windows 10: Major update on the Threshold as build 10586 hits Insiders

jelabarre59

Re: *Sigh* windows 10 is quite good for a given value of good.

> Unfortunately this is the way everything is going, we can hold out in windows 7 for a few years, but then we the El Reg comentards can go Linux. But our mums will still be bewildered by MS, and we'll still have to help them. Even if we do bang our heads against the screen in frustration.

Hey, could always go for a MSWin-clone like ReactOS. They're expecting to have a v1.0, fully XP-compatible release available in about 10 years from now....

jelabarre59

Re: Please be upstanding

Funny, a "spare PC" is what I was running MSWin10 Preview on. Some old clunker laptop with a dead battery, missing keys, and a non-functional DVD. Ideal system to run MSWin on, as you wouldn't want to use it for REAL work.

jelabarre59

Re: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

> Never did hear much from people who said they were going to switch to Linux, did we?

Maybe because they already switched, and are happily doing *productive* work, rather than fighting against the shitstorm that is MSWindows.

jelabarre59

Re: Windows 10

> I don't want to play in the Microsoft Play School Walled Theme Park Land.

Yeah, it's like the "Apple Touchy-Feely Stalag", except the toilets don't work.

One Bitcoin or lose your data, hacked Linux sysadmins told

jelabarre59

Re: ZFS is looking more and more attractive...

> SELinux isn't much protection against an attacker with root access!

That's presuming SELinux was in use at all. 17 **YEARS** after it was first introduced, there are *STILL* major packages that require you to entirely disable SELinux for them to run. And a large number of them are made by the "geniuses" at IBM.

Linus Torvalds targeted by honeytraps, claims Eric S. Raymond

jelabarre59

> Eric S. Raymond at a party in 2006 ...

Gee, that looked more like Lunacon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunacon) than some random party (I'm sure I've seen the lady in the picture at the con before).

Coding with dad on the Dragon 32

jelabarre59

> ...when computers had ‘Made in England’ stamped on the bottom...

But did they leak oil? And god forbid you accidentally hit the "Lucas" switch...

Old, not obsolete: IBM takes Linux mainframes back to the future

jelabarre59

> ...meaning that IBM uses different terminology

Come on, IBM *ALWAYS* uses different terminology for everything. Who else would call a transparency a "foil"? If IBM actually used industry-standard terminology, you'd *know* they were full of shit.

Big mistake, Google. Big mistake: Chrome OS to be 'folded into Android'

jelabarre59

Re: Might be time...

> To put some linux distro on my chromebook.

I did kind of the opposite. I took some nearly 9lb Pentium4 laptop with Linux Mint, and set up a login that auto-hides the panel and autostarts Google Chrome, logged into my daughter's Google Desktop account from elementary school. Made a free pseudo-Chromebook of sorts. Lightweight it ain't, cheap it is (and if she breaks it, I still have a Thinkpad T23 to use, or maybe I'll have a spare used X64 machine by then).

How Microsoft will cram Windows 10 even harder down your PC's throat early next year

jelabarre59

Re: Idiots

> My wife's Windows 7 laptop just received a huge update...I can only assume it's Microshit's spyware bundle. It totally fucked up the laptop. She turned to me last night and said "I want Linux on this laptop when you get a chance."

All our machines, including my wife's, were running Linux. Then she got into fecking World of Warcraft. Now she has a MSW8 machine for her fecking gaming, and she says "you're not allowed to touch this one".. Hey, fine by me.

jelabarre59

Re: LIARS

> IMMORAL, and all the charities Gates sponsors are UNDONE by this IMMORAL continuance.

Don't think we're too thrilled about some of the "charities" (read: Political Action Committees) that Gates sponsors either.

jelabarre59

Re: Evil

> in fact you can pretty much make it look and behave just like Windows 7. This was the big U-turn people were talking about a little while back that I guess you missed.

Ah, so you can disable the themes service and get back the Win2000 look, just like you could all the way through MSWin7??? What? No you can't? Ah, I guess I must have misunderstood you while you were talking out of your ass.