Posts by a_yank_lurker

Multinationals hiding more than half a trillion from G20 tax collectors

Basic Problem

The basic problem is corporate taxes are built into the price. So ultimately it is the consumer who pays indirectly. I wonder if a more transparent tax scheme (sales/VAT) at point of purchase with no corporate taxes be wiser.

Also, in the US, overseas profits are taxed both in the country where booked and in the US if they repatriated to the US. If a America's Native Criminal Class aka Congress would shut and stop subtracting from the sum total of human knowledge when they speak someone might fix the problem. But that is highly unlikely.

Edge joins Explorer in bumper crop of security patches

Re: It's hard to have an original comment about the drip/dribble/stream of updates from MS/Adobe

"Isn't Edge supposed to be so bleeding "edge" that it has left all the poor coding practices that MS practices in the dust?' - Same trash just a new package.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 10: Uphill battle with 'work in progress'

Re: Oh dear

What 'Slurp needs to do is focus on way customers use their products and their competitor's equivalents.

DC judge rips into the NSA over mass surveillance

There were no stopped attacks only blackmail.

"It will either end up as nice historical document or the government will be forced to adhere to it." The latter would be a lot less messy but I suspect the powers in government will not submit unless there is some red stuff flowing down the street.

Re: Government Denying Wrongdoing

I did not mostly because I do not believe either major party would want to shut it down for their own reasons.

AMD sued: Number of Bulldozer cores in its chips is a lie, allegedly

Re: A bit of a Dickey move

@Disko,

Having built computers, I have learned not to be dazzled by the marketing fluff but to try to find out which chip has the best balance of features with price for my needs. I have found through years sometimes the best is by Big Chipzilla at other times Little Chipzilla is best. The specs and architecture are rough guides to actual performance (more real cores, bigger cache, cache type, etc.) when the box is fired up.

Also, most chips are probably overkill for most users including office drones particularly when you get to beyond 2 cores. And the only reason for 2 cores is they allow more RAM to be installed.

Lithium-air: A battery breakthrough explained

Recharging time

The real problem with all current rechargeable batteries is the recharging time which is relatively long due to current density limitations during the recharging cycle. If this issue is solved so recharging times are minutes instead of hours for a car then EVs will be truly practical and a niche product they are today.

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

@AC - If one has been around awhile one has been burned by a manufacturer before and has learned there is a pattern. Slurp is following this pattern and many have desired to be screwed by another company.

Is It Still a bloody Hoover

Does the new update still vacuum users' data to the mothership? If it still very chatty with the 'Slurp it is still a never go.

Re: Please be upstanding

@Mark 85 Supporters and loyal customers but because 'Slurp does not care about customers have wondered away. Some have gone to Linux and some to Apple. But never to return. At first we may have struggled as we moved away but now that we have learned Linux or OS X we will not return.

Voting machine memory stick drama in Georgia sparks scandal, probe

DeKalb County, GA

At least no one has died yet because of the results. A few years ago the DeKalb sheriff-elect was murdered by cronies of the defeated sheriff. The local Atlanta (DeKalb County is in the metro Atlanta area) news always know if it is a slow news day shake a couple trees in DeKalb County and see what juicy tidbits pop out. The stories are good for a few weeks at a minimum.

A pronunciation note: it is de' cab, accent on the first syllable with the L unvoiced.

Yay, more 'STEM' grads! You're using your maths degree to do ... what?

Re: Bah!

The key for all STEM fields is to reach the necessary mathematical literacy to understand the math in physics, chemistry, engineering, etc. Have the math skills and with some effort and time any STEM field is accessible. Whether you would get hired in that field, another topic.

Top FBI lawyer: You win, we've given up on encryption backdoors

Rule 1 of encryption

The first rule of any encryption system is given enough time and computing resources it will be broken. The question is really how long would a brute force attack take - 1 hr, 1 day, 1 week, 1 year, 10 years, or even longer. The time element is critical for the information to be useful and varies somewhat depending on the purpose. Cracking government signals generally as close to real time the better but for police investigation a month might be fine.

Also, assume that all encryption systems have inherent flaws that are magnified by operator screwups. In WWII, often times daily Enigma settings were broken because a large part of the text could be guessed. Mostly this was due to operator screwups.

Colorado unshackles cities, lifts ban on govt-owned muni broadband

Re: @ Johnr

@Youngons Usually the deal was a long term monopoly preventing any real local competition. What competition is provided by telcos and Google fiber. They side slip by not providing cable services using cable.

Microsoft Windows 7 Pro: Halloween Horror for PC makers next year

Re: Windows versions for developers

You will find out when it breaks. Given the secrecy Slurp has with updates and that you must take them even if they kill you at some point there will be many bricked systems and much unusable software.

Excel macros should be scrapped as a serious security breach waiting happen. I doubt most are much more than amateur hack jobs. Otherwise, transitioning away from Windows may be cheaper than one might think. If most of the applications are browser based using a framework such as Rails, Nodejs, or Django using a proper database most users would not care. It would be very easy to deploy and overall probably easier to maintain and inherently cross platform.

Microsoft's OneDrive price hike has wrecked its cloud strategy

Re: reality check

I have been somewhat leery of the cloud because one is at the mercy of a vendor - no matter how good and competent. If the storage is internal with some backup plan (which may be cloud based) then you have control.

Bait and Switch?

I prefer someone such as Google or Amazon for example that charge me a modest fee for storage and services who does not promise unlimited storage without substantial fee. 'Slurp seems bent on destroy customer trust with this and other stupidities. All companies depend on repeat customers, lose them and you are toast.

I remember talking to a pipe & valve sales I knew one time. He said it took about 7 or 8 cold calls on a new customer to get a sale. But with an existing customer, drop in a few times a year, and will be getting a reasonable number of orders. More importantly you will be consider when the customer is in the market if the customer trusts you.

PC sales will rise again, predicts Intel, but tablets are toast

Mature Market

He must some very good weed. The device market is basically a mature market. As long as all my devices suit my needs I have no real reason to replace any of them. I suspect i am not that different from most. All my planned purchases are replacement for deceased kit never had something like that before kit.

Is the world ready for a bare-metal OS/2 rebirth?

Re: something tells me...

@Novex - What might maul Windows is surfing, emails, Facebook, etc. are largely OS and browser agnostic now. Thus any well thought OS has a fighting chance especially if there is a major player backing it. ChromeOS/AndroidOS have Google, OS/2 has IBM in the background. OS X has Apple. All are major enough players that any of them could the 'Slurps life miserable it they pushed hard enough. Linux directly does not have a major backer for most users but it is readily available, generally works well for most users, and is normally available for $0 or minimal cost.

At Microsoft 'unlimited cloud storage' really means one terabyte

PR Disaster Looming

Do I smell a PR disaster looming? Unlimited means unlimited except marketing PHBs and shysters which seem to be the ones running the 'Slurp.

Windows 10 is an antique (and you might be too) says Google man

Re: Dear Matias,

Most users are comfortable with the WIMP interface (windows, icons, mouse, pointer) on desktop or laptop. Successful implementations feature a well organized menu with an access panel to open programs and various utilities. The basic design was worked by the late 70s and is still successful because human anatomy has not changed.

Touch screens work well on hand-held devices like phones where the user only has one had free to access the device.Again there only so many workable solutions because of human anatomy.

I do suspect though Matias may be more tongue-in-creek about W8 and W10.

Now VW air-pollution cheatware 'found in Audis and Porsches'

Business as usual

Somehow I expect a lot of hot from the EPA then there will be deal signed that indirectly funnels money to the Democrats via a few shady NGOs/PACs.

CSC, NetCracker IT staff worked on US military telecoms 'without govt security clearance'

With OPM handling the data the Chinese have it anyhow. Probably get a clearance faster in China or Russia.

Next year's Windows 10 auto-upgrade is MSFT's worst idea since Vista

Re: Nazi tactics should not be allowed with forced Windows 10 download

My view is the box is my kit since I paid for it. The OS is there by my choice and I will remove it if it annoys me too much.

If Slurp would remember they are a guest on users' kit they would take a very different attitude towards the user. Slurp seems to delight in angering users and apparently assumes user will never leave Windows. There are Linux distros that most users can readily use because the distro creators tried to make using Linux as painless as possible for any user; Linux Mint is a very popular example. Replacing your box with a Mac may not be viable for some but it is still on option.

Re: Is the Windows 10 forcefd upgrade even legal?

@zen1 - I talked to a lawyer friend about that issue and other than a class action lawsuit or governmental investigation proceeding is likely not to result in action but a lot of money spent on fees. I think the best scenario to royally shaft Slurp is for several EU countries to announce they are ditching Slurp and require the direct vendors and company contacts to use ODF files instead of MSO formats. LibreOffice is cross platform and free and there are others.

Re: Only yourselves to blame

@AC "As far as I can see, MS follows a monkey strategy: see who makes money, and then try to ape what those companies do but without paying any attention to the fundamentals which make it possible to make that profit, hence the constant failure to turn those ideas into anything but a negative ROI."

This is come problem in business were the CEO substitutes making hard decisions about what the company should do in the future with aping another company. Slurp has been a software house since day 1. Either they remain a software house which means they need to make sure the software they are producing is relevant to users at this time or they become something else. They core competency allegedly is software not hardware or advertising. They currently have a strong position with businesses and enterprises but they are risking it with various W10 idiocies.

Apple has been a hardware manufacturer from the start. Their forays into software have been to provide users with enough software to make purchasing the hardware attractive. Otherwise, Apple does not seem to show much interest in software or in the software users install.

Google is an advertising agency. They make their money delivering eyeballs to advertisers. Their forays into software, hardware, and services are methods to get my eyeballs in front of ads. They need to make their services and software desirable to users so they will be used. Their hardware forays are an interesting departure from this model. I think they see a hardware niche that Slurp and Apple are ignoring for different reasons and decided to grab it.

Re: Bah!

@Shadow Systems - Some of my family and friends have very marginal computer skills. They are doing well to use Firefox or Chrome instead of IE. Fairly simple tasks such as making a DVD with pictures on them is beyond their abilities. I am worried more about them getting shafted by Slurp. Doing what you suggest is beyond their skills.

Remember users have skill levels ranging from minimal - barely able to turn on the computer and surf unaided - to expert knowledge of Windows registry and POSIX configuration files. Most on this site have advanced amateur to professional level skills in working with various OSes. Advanced amateur level is someone who knows how to research a problem and find the correct fix and can set up home systems without much difficulty and have a good idea how computers work.

Re: Cinnamon Mint so far...

Some of your issues are due to software vendors not supplying a Linux version. Some is due to people writing for Windows only - I suspect many games suffer from this. Hardware issues with Linux seem backwards with newer peripherals not always working while older devices working flawlessly. The Linux device driver model is apparently unchanged so once a good driver is available it will always work.

Sometimes I have found peripheral vendors will supply a Linux driver but you may need to hunt it done. Once I found Epsom drivers on their European site but they were never mentioned on their US site. For a Brother printer, I just went their US site and found it. Once I knew the filename I found it in the Arch repositories and installed from their.

Re: Nooooooooo!!!!!!

The Lenovo sounds like a typical, midrange laptop. According to Slurp, it should run W10 fine. As far as hardware being MIA, I have seen were drivers were not provided for device with the latest Windows release. Actually I have an old Bluetooth dongle from ~2005 that worked on XP but never worked on W7 (I could never find a driver) but it worked perfectly a couple of weeks ago on my fully patched Arch/Antergos/Manjaro box.

Re: 110 million PCs can’t be wrong?

Slurp probably does not know the true screw up rate and definitely will not publish it anyway. The error rate should include total number of attempted installs, successful installs, failed attempts, rollbacks (counting a failures), and complete removals for Linux. About the only number one can be confident of is the absolute number of successful installs where W10 installed and actually worked well enough to activate - this is probably the number MS is tooting. The other numbers are unknown and I suspect MS will not strenuously try to find them out. Some have reported several attempts and failures at installing, others have reported successful installation but after a few days either reverted to the previous version or installed Linux instead (mostly the former I suspect).

My navel, which is not known for accuracy, estimates the overall initial installation failure is about 10% with many not being counted anywhere. Also, my navel guesses there is about same rate of uninstalls. If it is correct, the total number of active W10 installs is about 100M not 110M as reported by MS with total install attempt of about 120 to 125M. Some of the failed attempts may have failed when the W10 installer detected some hardware issue and automatically aborted the install. I count them as failures but would Slurp count them.

For Slurp, the only meaningful number is the total number of active W10 installs not the total that have ever been installed. I suspect from above the actual number of active installs is about 10% below what is reported by the PR flacks/failures/liars.

Re: @koswix

My suspicion is the migration away from Windows will mostly be driven by W10 stupidities and EOL of W7. W10 is being excessively irritating and the Slurp is pouring gasoline on the fire. Most probably will sit on the sidelines until they absolutely need to replace W7. The migration of the technically literate away from Windows sets up a situation in 2 or 3 years were they are recommending migration to X. The literate would already have some experience with X and can give very good support from first hand knowledge.

Many have suggested Linux Mint as a good alternative, which it is. As many who not used a Linux distro before gain comfort with a Linux distro they will be more confident in recommending any distro to their family and friends. I am hardcore Linux only for my kit - Arch/Antergos/Manjaro. A couple of family members dual boot between Linux Mint and Windows (mostly Linux Mint). They are sometimes more aggressive at suggesting Linux than me.

The first defections will be relatively small numbers which probably would be overlooked by market research. Linux instead being at 2% is no running nearer 3% let say next year. But the 1% bump is primarily ex Windows users. In a few years that number could grow because they are actively switching many to Linux and suddenly there is an "unexplained and inexplicable" growth in Linux usage.

Re: All this has convinced me Win10 is bad for you

@Chika - "In some ways this is little different to the way Fedora and openSUSE are used to test RHEL and SLES" is true to an extent. Fedora and openSUSE are stable distros in their own right not beta releases. However they are both are closer to the bleeding edge than the enterprise versions. So Red Hat and SUSE work with the respective Fedora and openSUSE communities fairly closely.

Re: Make your bloody minds up!

@Pompous Git - Your point is valid. People buy devices for specific purposes. If the devices and associated software is functional, people are satisfied. I use a cheap Android phone for phone calls, texting, and mobile surfing (mostly to check when the next bus is due and check on the weather). It does those things flawlessly and it is not connected to my bank, main email (it has its own email account), or online shopping. However I use may PC for more strenuous computing activities and activities which require more security.

PHB

Dilbert must work at MicroSlurp. The PHBs running Slurp are doing more to make Linux desktops, Chromebooks, and Macs much more attractive to users. The amount of grousing by the technical literati does not bode well for the future. We have the power of persuasion and can make finer tuned recommendations to friends and family than any sales person or ad can do. If we are collectively angered, irate, etc by the Slurp we can influence people to avoid W10 and possibly ditch Windows altogether.

Re: Bah!

Those of us we read and understand the tech press probably can handle the curve balls MicroSlurp is tossing. But most will not. Mucking about in the registry is not something I like doing and it scares the bejeesus out of me when some of my friends and family have to do. It means a full reinstall after attempting to salvage their data. Good way to destroy a weekend.

US Military enlists radio hams to simulate fight with THE SUN

Interesting

Morse code anyone. Depending on the damage one might need to brush up on Morse code. MC transmissions are the least affected by technical failures since it relies on the simplest transmitter and receiver. It will be slow but it would through. Ironically a Twitter user would adapt best since there is low upper character limit per tweet.

No, we're not sorry for Xen security SNAFUs says Ian Jackson

Bugs

Ian is correct all but the most trivial software is riddled with bugs and potential security issues - no exceptions. He is also correct sunlight is the best antidote. As Linus says "All bugs are shallow with enough eyes."

The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!

Re: Paint balls vs CCTV

Private gun sales are not regulated and they would be very difficult to regulate. However, it is a felony to engage in a straw purchase - buying a gun for someone (usually a felon) who is not legally allowed to possess one. Unless all the serial numbers are removed, a gun is traceable to the first dealer sale. So if your gun was found in the possession of felon you better have a very tight (true) story of how that happened.

The nuances of US gun law are somewhat confusing because most, even in the US, get very inaccurate information about gun rights. Also, most gun violence is concentrated in gang infested areas of the US with most people rarely carrying a weapon.

This story is the only one I have heard of where someone actually shot down a drone. The more details I have heard - shot gun, long loitering times, previous incidents, etc. - leads me to believe it was reasonable to believe his teenage daughters were being stalked with the possible intention of rape of his daughters. Also, what was overlooked in the hype, the shooter did have to appear before a judge to defend his actions. There was the real possibility of a conviction. I happen to agree the judge got the decision right in this particular case but another vaguely similar case may have a different outcome even in Kentucky.

Re: Paint balls vs CCTV

Felons are not likely to obey the law so the point is moot. The mentally ill are often not listed in the database.

In the US, to buy a gun you have to fill paperwork for a background check before the dealer can even consider a sale. The background check is then run throw a FBI database which has the names of those who can buy or possess a gun. This takes a couple of minutes. Assuming you pass the background check you can then buy the gun. Some states have stricter rules such as a waiting period before the final sale.

Re: Paint balls vs CCTV

The primary difference in the US is whether the state has a "Stand your ground" provision or a requirement avoid shooting if there is a possibility of deescalating the confrontation. In any case, a shooting will almost certainly result in an investigation as to whether it was justified. Contrary to Hollyweird and the US media, no one in the US has the right to shot anyone except certain narrowly defined situations.

Re: Paint balls vs CCTV

Strictly speaking, in the US you can only shoot another legally if that person is endangering your life or the life of another person. Generally, the rule is in the US an intruder inside someone's house is fair game because the residents do not know if the person is armed or not. But you can not legally shoot someone who is fleeing or leaving aka in the back. Occasionally there have been situations were an armed third party intervened and shot the perpetrator in the act. This is considered legal because the intervention protected someone else's life.

If you are in the metro Atlanta, GA area do not try to break into house in Kennesaw. Kennesaw has a law (unenforced I believe) requiring residents who can legally own a gun to have one in their home. US gun law generally forbids convicted felons and violent mentally ill people from owning guns.

Think Fortran, assembly language programming is boring and useless? Tell that to the NASA Voyager team

Re: Don't forget the BUNCH

Before that it was IBM (I've Been Moved) and the 7 dwarfs - BUNCH plus RCA and one other.

Re: Competent C programmers

Two problems with C programmers and neither has to do with competence. First the FORTRAN dialect is probably something like FORTRAN IV which is very different from the modern version of FORTRAN. Lots of nasty differences between the versions. Second is assembly language instruction sets are processor specific. So someone familiar with the assembly language of current processors would be unfamiliar with the quirks of this processor. To add to the problem, apparently the processor is effectively a one-off. Finding documentation for either language would be difficult. You might find a used copy of a FORTRAN IV text but I suspect the assembly language would be difficult to find. The assembly language documentation was probably very good originally but how much has been lost, misfiled, etc. in 40 years is an open question.

Programming in the mid 70's was more concerned about absolute memory management and accounting for memory usage than today. The economics of programming has fundamentally changed from programmers are relatively cheap compared to the hardware to now were most hardware is cheap and this the programmer becomes relatively expensive. The two schemes require very different approaches to programming.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller special: The WHO bacon sarnie of death

Only two hot dogs, go for the whole package and which kills first - heart disease or cancer. lol. More seriously, WHO is over-hyping the risk to just all the money they wasted. I saw (Bloombergview?) a post that noted one's chance of cancer increased from under 5% to just over 5%.

Use Skype if you want to report a crime, say cops

I thought US flatfeet where pretty clueless but Skype? Not everyone has Skype or VoIP installed. Did the local flatfeet raid this side of the Pond for some genuinely clueless wonders?

Deutsche Bank to axe 'excessively complex' IT, slash 9,000 jobs

Re: Just a couple of idle thoughts

Worked for the Fatherland at one time, what I noticed was tendency to overcomplicate things. 45 OSes sounds believable because it would satisfy the inner Teuton's urge complication. And yet they would have it humming along.

Why was the modem down? Let us count the ways. And phone lines

Back in the day, we have vacuum tubes (valves to the Brits). Lots of fun finding the one that burned out and replacing it.

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

From what I understand Ubuntu is partnering with Amazon for suggestions based search results. If there is a sale Canonical gets a small finders fee. I have read is can be easily turned off and only reactivates when the user decides to.

The various Ubuntu descendants generally do not have this. I know Linux Mint does not. I believe Pinguy, ZorinOS, Bohdi do not. Also, I am not aware of any other distro that has any thing like what Ubuntu has.