Posts by AMBxx

Ditching VMware over the Broadcom buy? Here are some of your options

Oracle?

Why would someone concerned about uncertainty in pricing move to Oracle?

Running DOS on 64-bit Windows and Linux: Just because you can

Re: Not Amazing

I'd just like Excel to do 2+2= 4 instead of returning '2+2 as text. Quattro pro had no such problems

WordPerfect 6.2?

Come on, proper typists want 5.1 back.

Tropical island paradise ponders tax-free 'Digital Nomad Visa'

Re: Recipe for resentment?

Stage 8 - Poverty for those that remain

Stage 9 - see Stage 1

Re: Recipe for resentment?

Stage 2 - the new nomads have secure, gated housing developments

Stage 3 - resentment builds

Stage 4 - nomads build their own social stuff within their secure, gated areas

Stage 5 - sales of machetes increase

Brave Search leaves beta, offers Goggles for filtering, personalizing results

Re: redefine the relevance of search results

Pinterest is one of the first goggles they list, so you're not alone. Oddly, I rarely see Pinterest. Could that be a duckduckgo quirk?

Looks like an interesting idea. I'll have a play.

Japan makes online insults a crime that can earn a year in jail

Re: OK, I'll bite ...

Or worse - somebody else decides that they were offended by something that wasn't even said to them.

I had some banter with an old colleague on LinkedIn. All in good nature and we both gave as good as we received. Somebody else decided to take offence on behalf of my old colleague.

I love the Linux desktop, but that doesn't mean I don't see its problems all too well

Re: Computing smarts in the cloud

DaaS is also very expensive considering the requirements of most users.

For 99% of office work, all you really need is web browser and any OS. If you have a 365 subscription, try using all the Office Apps in browser form - they're surprisingly good.

I'm just surprised that MS haven't come up with a browser only version of Windows that hooks into OneDrive, Office 365 etc.

Police lab wants your happy childhood pictures to train AI to detect child abuse

Re: The great trust pairing

Wait until they find that the majority of the pictures are of white kids. The AI then identifies all pictures of non-whites as child abuse.

Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? Consult our cynic's guide to desktop Linux

Re: Control Your Own Upgrades

Do what everyone else seems to do - Install Mint, then write a blog about your experience.

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

Re: E-sports professionals?

Well, you forgot your charm pills this morning.

Re: E-sports professionals?

It's that old argument of sports vs games again. Darts, Bridge, Snooker etc etc.

Bit I find odd is that people want to watch other people play video games.

Dutch public sector gets green light to use Google Workspace

Just the size of the offered brown envelope.

Keeping your head as an entire database goes pear-shaped

Should have used a cloud DB

Then someone else could have dropped the database for him!

Snowflake stock drops as some top customers cut usage

Hmmm

Where did all my data go?

User-built low-code apps tipped to dominate analytics by 2025

Then, in 2030

Management will realise that multiple versions of the same thing is both a waste of their employees time and an unmanagable, inaccurate mess.

Apple to replace future iPhone Lightning port with USB-C next year, this guy claims

My Lumia running Windows did the same. It was great to play with, but I never felt the need to use it for more than play.

Re: Confused

With the speed the EU moves, we'll all be on USB-D by the time C is forced.

Re: "The UK Government"

All the UK government is saying is that it won't force a common charger. Nothing to see.

Uber, Meta to reduce hiring as stocks slide

Those of us of a certain age are getting a very strong feeling of deja vu.

At some point, a company has to start thinking about profit and not just market share or how disruptive they are.

iOS, Android stores host more than 1.5 million 'abandoned' apps

12 months?

Glad I'm not expected to update everything I've written in the last 20 years every 12 months. Sometimes, something is written to do a specific task. If the task doesn't change, there's no need to tinker with the UI every other week.

Phishing operation hits NHS email accounts to harvest Microsoft credentials

Re: Correction

It's not just NHS employees. My wife's an Optometrist, so not employed by NHS. She still gets the email account for (supposedly) secure communication with the email. I assume dentists and other private healthcare workers have an NHS address too. That's a lot of people!

Re: Correction

Just a shame they didn't fix the email account names at the same time.

My wife's account is [e-mail]. Someone else has the same name, so has [e-mail].

Lots of email is sent to the wrong woman.

Microsoft, Apple, Google accelerate push to eliminate passwords

Re: It's def about money. Just not yours.

Try using paragraphs. Then try to make a reasoned point without insulting people who aren't like you.

India seizes $725 million of Xiaomi's cash

Re: Everyone does it

You can't tax turnover.

If I sell £1000 of software, I make about £200

If I sell £1000 of my time, I make £1000

Taxing turnover would need to take into account the mix of business. I'd have to stop selling software as the tax would probably be greater than the profit.

That's why we simplify and tax profit.

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

Re: Outrun for the win!

Meteor Storm for me. Just for the reminder of the attempt at speech with a Speccie.

Brave, DuckDuckGo to unplug Google's AMP where possible

Re: Firefox

That's really helpful - thanks. I've not used your greasemonkey script, just the firefox AMP to HTML plugin.

Windows 11 usage stats within touching distance of... XP

The new Task Manager lies about RAM usage!!

It's all such a shame. There was genuine excitement and enthusiasm for Win 95, XP, Vista (until release) and 7.

It's not just MS though - there's not much new to get excited about any more. All that's happening is a cloud migration to allow software companies to have consistent income.

Under pressure, SAP shuts down Russian operations

I think there'll be a clause in the contract relating to wars.

Twitter faces existential threat from world's richest techbro

That's why I mentioned the social angle. "Can a woman have a p3n1s" would have been a music hall joke 10 years ago. Now the question scares labour politicians.

Go back 25 years. If 0.1% of the population believed the world was flat, chances are that they would never meet someone with the same stupid opinion. Now, with Twitter, they find millions to agree with them.

Combine that with some sort of social angle, and those millions can shout down anyone who disagrees with them with the rest of us too scared to intervene.

Do what?

Someone's been inhaling this morning.

Qlik moves to boost position in crowded automation space during IPO year

Getting desperate

Qlik were well ahead of the game with their clever in-memory database technology. The move to 64 bit was timely for them too.

That was all very well when they were selling thick client technology. It was never quite so good with the move to a server for processing as the scalability was a hard problem.

Now, they have QlikSense which is just not as good as the old QlikView. In desperation, they've bolting all sorts of targetted products on to their range.

For those with long memories, Cognos PowerPlay was in a similar position in the mid 90s. Well ahead of the competition, but never managed the move away from client technology.

Why the Linux desktop is the best desktop

"Linux Desktop"

Next question - which one? there are multiple distributions and multiple choices of UI. I don't see that as a good thing, it's just confusing for new users.

Blood pressure monitor won't arrive for Apple Watch before 2024 – report

Re: it's not measurements

Not a difficult calculation - you've done fewer than 2000 steps per day for the last year. Therefore, you're probably fat, have high blood pressure and at risk of diabetes!

Re: Well...

I was thinking they'd bought Theranos' intellectual property.

Wing launches drone deliveries in the US where people actually live

Re: Mixed emotions

Swallows are the least of their concerns. Lots of gun owners in Texas. If these things were constantly flying over my house, I'd soon start shooting.

DeepMind 'grossly inadequate' at tackling sexual harassment, says former staffer

HR!

I find it odd that HR is dominated by women, but stuff like this isn't treated more seriously and much more quickly.

SAP hits 50: Entrenched, spread out and fully middle-aged

Re: on the one hand.....

I hope you paid the licence for all 3 calculations!

It worked though!!

Now they're pushing everyone into cloud - stop paying and your business stops.

SerenityOS: Remarkable project with its own JS-capable web browser

Re: "Just for fun"

It's comparable to people who have old cars or like to work with wood using just hand tools. An enjoyable hobby even though it can be done more easily with modern stuff.

It's not something that interests me but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.

Google resumes shoveling stuff into its 'Privacy Sandbox'

Re: I wonder

I've never intentionally clicked an advert. 100% of the clicks from me are accidental so of no use to anyone other than the company displaying the advert.

I don't know what proportion of the 0.2% to 2% are accidental but I'd guess that with touch screens, it's getting higher.

Oracle's compliance cops now include Java in license audits

Confusing mess

Java is a nice enough language, but the rest of it is a confusing mess. Lack of compatibility between versions, confusing version numbers and alphabet soup mess of products.

Containers may be more effective than VMs for hybrid apps – Gartner

DISTINGUISHED vice president

Is that really a job title? Some serious ego problems at Gartner

Microsoft Visual Studio: Cluttering up developer disks for 25 years

Re: oh good

It's a shame that MS tried so hard to make VB a 'proper' language. As an almost codeless environment for windows forms, it was very good. Then they just made it more difficult for amateurs to use, so everyone cross-trained co C#.

Boys outnumber girls 6 to 1 in UK compsci classes

What about girls' schools?

What percentage of girls in single sex schools are interested compared to boys in boys-only schools? Would be a more useful comparison.

Arm to drop up to 15 percent of staff – about 1,000 people

I've been made redundant twice. Dodged the 3rd one by leaving before the company went bust.

It's an unpleasant experience but with hindsight, has always worked out for the best.

Most of these people are highly skilled and will have no problems finding another job. The ones without useful skills can always work in the public sector.

Google introduces new Cloud infrastructure pricing

Get ready

Next up, we'll up be migrating cloud stuff back to on-prem to reduce costs!

Ukraine president namechecks software giants to end support in Russia

What about open source?

Has anyone seen any announcements from open source project sponsors?