Posts by Anonymous Bullard

Is your kid looking at GCSE in computer science? It's exam-only from 2022 – Ofqual

Bonus points for copying the code in the SO question, rather than the answer.

Three quarters of US Facebook users unaware their online behavior gets tracked

The median.

(sorry, just trying to stop it lowering)

Oh, SSH, IT please see this: Malicious servers can fsck with your PC's files during scp slurps

If they've compromised your server, then can now compromise your client.

I use scp for one-off transfers.

If you wanna learn from the IT security blunders committed by hacked hospital group, here's some weekend reading

Re: show me the money

Just keep a paper trail of your recommendations, suggested workarounds, and potential outcomes if nothing is done (in plain language), along with their refusals.

Document these known issues in your infra docs, with reasons why they exist. Increase monitoring+logging in those areas. Prepare for the post-incident audit before it happens.

Arse covering.

Excuse me, sir. You can't store your things there. Those 7 gigabytes are reserved for Windows 10

Re: Changing programme files location

If I had the misfortune to use Windows, I'd just use symlinks: `mklink /D d:\myshit c:\users\butthead`.

Re: All well and good...

What the hell is a jiga byte??

Re: Not a dig at MS, but a question.

5% is usually reserved for root. So, the users can fill up the disk.. but not disable the ability to log ("hmm, my disk had filled up - but I saw no mention of it in the logs..."), for example - and updates too, I guess... so it looks like Linux has had this feature this for years.

(it's set by the tune2fs command)

Whatchu got for us this week, Microsoft? Skype, Powerpoint tweaks and – oh – another foldable

Skype??

Wow, that's a blast from the past!

UK rail lines blocked by unexpected Windows dialog box

Re: Windows

Anyone able to shed some light on this?

Yes. It's all about economics.

The companies that produce these aren't trying to make the best product possible - but the most money possible.

Windows developers are 2/1p.

If their "wiz kid" nephew can whip up a billboard in VB6, by copying stackoverflow question code, then so be it.

But yes, this isn't completely the fault of Windows - the consumer OS designed for Grandma - but perhaps the fault of those deciding to use it.

Windows 10 Pro goes Home as Microsoft fires up downgrade server

So, Windows regularly contacts the licensing servers to check if the licence is suddenly no longer valid.

What could possibly go wrong? Oh, wait...

GCSE computer science should be exam only, says Ofqual

At GCSE age, I'd expect anyone who would be a good programmer later on, to already be beyond GCSE level.

Also, beyond moving to a higher qualification, GCSEs are next to useless. GCSEs == I managed to finish high school without belting the teacher.

Well slap my ass and call me Judy, Microsoft's Surface Pro 6 is just as hard to fix as the old one

Re: Overpriced

"over-engineered"

The chance would be a fine thing!

Microsoft has signed up to the Open Invention Network. We repeat. Microsoft has signed up to the OIN

Re: OIN(K)...

Each one will have it's own Patent Indentifier Guid.

Microsoft yanks the document-destroying Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Re: "were made available for other OS"

some desktop tool

No need to insult them. They're trying their best.

Google taking action against disguised code in Chrome Web Store

Re: Unreadable code

I think you're talking about me.

That syncing feeling when you realise you may be telling Google more than you thought

Re: er... does this apply to those of us who don't allow Chrome to store our passwords?

Update: It doesn't actually sign me into Chrome. Just tells me I'm signed into Google.

My diagnosis? Fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Re: er... does this apply to those of us who don't allow Chrome to store our passwords?

You need to have previously signed into chrome (and not disabled syncing) for it to work. I only use Chrome for development, never signed in - but I was able to login to gmail without any side effects.

I'm guessing chrome "sniffs" the security token from google sites, and detects that it's one of the user's it knows about, and uses it to sign you into chrome.

Microsoft lights a fire under .NET Core teams, just in time for Ignite

Re: what if you 'outgrew' ".Not" (aka ".Net") itself?

I don't develop desktop applications (anymore), I don't run on Windows, and anything that's time critical (very rare - .NET core produces reasonable machine code) would be written in Rust, but only after the speed improvements are required and measured.

I grew out of C++ a decade ago, when my clients decided they no longer require desktop applications.

.NET Core's killer feature? You don't need Windows (in dev or production).

It's great for us developers who've outgrown Windows, or have been screwed over enough, but still want to take their skillset with them.

One of the very few things I'm happy with from Microsoft. They showed they loved me enough to let me leave. (well, almost)

Microsoft accidentally let encrypted Windows 10 out into the world

Re: Does anybody here remember...

I do. I'm in their "insider" program, receiving early releases from their ring.

But it's only to test our own stuff, see what they've broke next and fix our products before their general release. It's all in a VM (as is nearly all our Windows machines), and mostly automated.

I have zero interest in making Windows better. You're fighting the largest company in the world with that.

In fact, I discovered a bug and reported it (twice) over a year ago. I probably "reported" it more times, via telemetry. It's still there now, I just work around it. I've spotted a few more, but I'm not wasting my time with them.

Had it been something preventing cortana starting, they would have flew in a team of developers.

Raspberry Pi supremo Eben Upton talks to The Reg about Pi PoE woes

And that's why, even though there may be better boards, I go with RPi.

Canny Brits are nuking the phone bundle

Re: I never quite understood why one would get a bundle

I once worked it out.

Well, there you have it. You just made yourself not their target customer.

The train of thought is: Hmm.. 300 quid is a lot of money... £45? I can afford that!

Microsoft Visual Studio C++ Runtime installers were built to fail

Re: Seriously

Surely, that's not your name...

you have to download some executable file from the internet that nobody can trust

Yes. Not only that, even if you download an executable that you trust (even one you made yourself), and there's a rogue DLL lying around in your Downloads directory - boom!

Windows supports MSI

Don't get me wrong, I like MSI in principle, but the implementation leaves much to be desired.

The main trouble with that is it's so damn slow. When selling your own software, you want it to install as fast as possible. My completed installation count almost halved when I used MSI instead .exe (I still made the .MSI download available to those who actually wanted it)

Also, it's a nightmare to do the simplest of things with WiX.

It may be poor man's Photoshop, but GIMP casts a Long Shadow with latest update

Re: Forget the geeky stuff, sort out the user experience.

I miss Paintshop Pro.

Don't we all!

I was using that from when it was just a converter. Up until Corel got their mitts on it. 9 was the last good version.

.NET Core 2.1 – huh, yeah – what is it good for? Bing, apparently

It's a funny world when I can wholeheartedly recommend .Net devs to migrate their sites to Ubuntu.

Yes, same here! No more pissing about with IIS... and editing XML configs in notepad over RDP.

And thanks to Rider, I can also develop on Linux. :D

They're comparing .NET fat with .NET core - that's all.

But of course core will perform better - thanks to it being open source, it's had outsiders contributing to optimisations (blog post confirms this).

Linux 4.18 arrives fashionably late while Zorin OS shines up its Windows

Re: not sure if I want to fork over money...

Actually, the paid-for edition has:

Added macOS, Gnome 2 and Unity desktop layouts in Zorin Appearance

So, you would indeed be forking out money to remove the Windows look.

Dropbox plans to drop encrypted Linux filesystems in November

Re: Good Move

Even better: create the ext4 image on the encrypted partition, and make it the same size as the dropbox.

Just because dropbox isn't 100% secure, doesn't mean your local version should also be weak.

Span hits F#, LinkedIn gets mumbly, and UWP (yes, it's still clinging on) furnished with new toys

Re: Fluent

I read it as "flatulent"

USB-C for Surface owners arrives in form of a massive dongle

I had a surface laptop, only for a month because they're absolutely useless because of this. 1 usb, and a display port which always requires a dongle. That's it.

Microsoft sinks another data centre with Natick 2

Brings another meaning to "flooding the server"

Microsoft doubles Azure Stack's footprint, embiggens Azure VMs

I dislike Microsoft as much as the next geek, but they certainly are pushing Azure hard, and have demonstrated their commitment to it.

What interests me is that they're no longer investing as much into Windows, which is now effectively in maintenance mode, and going to turned into a gateway for their new priority.

I'm now able to develop and serve a .NET + MSSQL application without purchasing a single Windows license, all from the official instructions from MSDN. When I last heard, 40% of their VMs where Linux.

They've done the right thing by reducing their reliance on Windows.

Max Schrems is back: Facebook, Google hit with GDPR complaint

Re: Whos'e on first...

This isn't an argument...

Microsoft gives users options for Office data slurpage – Basic or Full

Re: It's a subtle plan

By the way, LibreOffice supports the ribbon (aka "Notebook bar") : https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/how-to-enable-libreoffice-ribbon-notebook-bar, and it's slightly customisable.

You can even have the menu, toolbars, and ribbon at the same time. They did it right: you get to choose.

Greenwich uni fined £120k: Hole in computing school site leaked 20k people's data

Privacy has a price.

£6 per person.

Microsoft programming chief to devs: Tell us where Windows hurt you

In other words: "It's been at least a year since we've made you all re-learn, our current shiny-shiny isn't as shiny, here's the next churn".

Anyway, now that I can develop C# in Jetbrains Rider on Linux, the majority of my pain points have been quashed by another company. At a fraction of the price, too.

Even Microsoft's lost interest in Windows Phone: Skype and Yammer apps killed

Re: MS kills UWP apps, Telephony API appears in Windows

No no, not an addiction.

An addiction is when you actually feel relief when you get a hit.

Microsoft patches patch for Meltdown bug patch: Windows 7, Server 2008 rushed an emergency fix

It's looking like a good time to jump off the sinking Windows 7 ship.

Out the frying pan into the fire.

Five things you need to know about Microsoft's looming Windows 10 Spring Creators Update

Re: 'A Microsoft spokesperson refused to tell us what was actually arriving in the Spring release'

Yep.

"Mobile first, cloud first" - so where does that leave desktops/laptops?

Oh yes, my next OS will probably be Windows. That's normally what's pre-installed.

I'll boot it up, next, next, next, bypass the "create a microsoft account", next, next, next

Leave it to update & reboot, check the device manager that the everything appears to be ok, download Linux mint, write it to usb, then reboot

Creaking Chromebooks getting Meltdown protection soon

Re: Creaking Chromebooks

It's how a consumer computer should be.

I got myse^W my wife one christmas before last. Zero problems, highly recommend them.

Got the in-laws one last summer, haven't had a "tech support" call yet (compared to every other month, previously).

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn't default browser

forced to install Chrome

I'm surprised to hear that - I wasn't forced to install anything. Google are normally good with cross-browser support (for FF, at least).

I can't say I've tried anything with Edge (apart from mozilla.org), so YMMV.

Mind you, not many people do test their sites with Edge...

1. It's not available on the OS that the majority of developers use.

2. It's effectively in the "other" category.

3. IE (upon which Edge is based) is historically developer unfriendly in general.

I'm all for choice in browsers, however for those of us who remember the original browser wars don't want Microsoft dominance again. For those too young, Microsoft is irrelevant.

This current stunt, and the hoops you need to jump through in order to switch browsers, has a very bad smell.

Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office not over cost but because Google G Suite looks sweet

Re: Given the choice

It's very laggy when you are collaborating across the world. Stuff just takes too long.

Is it laggy because it's laggy, or because it's going across the world? Is there a faster alternative?

I'm in a remote team, edited documents while skyping, and haven't noticed any more lag than I'd expect. I can see their typing "seconds" later.

It's not like I have to dodge their bullet points.

The accounts department is going to need Excel

Because a single department possibly uses the advanced features of Excel*, the entire company must also use it?

*(Let's ignore the fact they're probably using dedicated software)

I agree that Word+Excel are probably the best - as a Linux user I do miss a few features when writing software specs. However, that's because I actually know how to use ~50% of the feature set.

But let's face it, the majority of users are better off with WordPad... where there's less chance of fucking things up. They never venture beyond the first ribbon tab.

We use G-suite at work, there's no pissing about passing files, we can edit documents in real time, there's history, permissions, and 95% of Word documents are... "readable" (if you want pixel perfect, use PDF).

Me? I write my documents in markdown or html, like I should have been from the start.

Airbus ditches Microsoft, flies off to Google

Re: 99% of business users won't max out the capabilities

Word and Excel are specialist applications.

It's like buying photoshop just to crop & scale a few photos.

Re: "In a modern environment plain text is UTF-8."

"Total lack of understanding."

ASCII, EBCDIC, UTF-8/16 specify the encoding of plain text - how a series of bytes represent characters.

"plain text" is just plain text.. no formatting, markup, or structure.

It's March 2018, and your Windows PC can be pwned by a web article (well, none of OURS)

I'm sure it's a coincidence that they've got so many fixes in, just before Pwn2Own.

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'

Re: S for...

Just because something is in the store for Windows 10 does not mean that it is available for Windows 10S or S-mode.

Well, one of the requirements of store apps is they must work on Windows 10 S. Meaning, every app in their store is restricted.

Of course, that restriction doesn't apply to Microsoft - Linux isn't available to Windows 10 S, and their apps (like Office) are allowed to do more things than normal apps.

Windows 10 S to become a 'mode', not a discrete product

Nice spin

It's already a "mode", normal editions can already be changed to it (for testing). There's nothing new.

They're just discontinuing it because it hasn't caught on. Having used Windows S myself I'm not surprised. No firefox/chrome, command line, notepad++, vlc, ...

It's funny how they have a sleazy smear campaign targeting Chromebooks, then they desperately attempt at copying them but fail spectacularly.

They just don't get it. Windows is about the wide range of software, and that's all. Remove that, then there's no point in using Windows.

And their app store is absolute shit. Not only because vendors don't wish to give their 30% or join the $1 race, but because an app is restricted in its own little silo. Which might be good for idiots who download untrusted software - but does that cover all Windows users?