Posts by Doctor Syntax

No more feature updates for Windows 10 – current version is final

"but I'd still have to invest masses of time to convert"

If you have the space you could install Linux as a dual boot and try running your Windows essential stuff in Wine.

Have you noticed the comments up the page? The ones about disregarding the Windows GUI menus and typing in the search box?

"The UI is important, but the UI is not the OS"

So why keep braking it. The whole idea of splitting interface from implementation is so that the implementation can be changed whilst the user, human or software, of the interface doesn't have to.

And people complain Unix and Linux are obscure.

Re: Truly, certainly not

"but has all the flexibility of a turd,"

Dependent on the state of your digestive system.

"After 2-3 years grace period, you can announce that this function will be going away in a future version. If you really need some legacy app you can always load up a copy of Windows in a VM on your own."

Sometimes those legacy apps are the sole reason the computer was bought. They're the ones that control horrendously expensive H/W whose cost still hasn't been amortized and the app authors have long since closed the business.

"it would give them a chance to redo the UI from the ground up, which hasn't been done since Windows 95."

They've been faffing around with it ever since 95/W2K

Re: Splendid!

"tolerably secure"

You forgot the telemetry?

Re: Linux desktop

The usual reason for Linux not working on some H/W is that it's too new and the distro hasn't caught up with it yet. This is particularly the case with very conservative distros such as Debian and derivatives such as Devuan. The solution there is to install Mint, wait until the new release of your preferred distro or just buy non-bleeding edge H/W which is likely to be cheaper. The opposite side of that coin is that you will be supported on H/W at which Windows has long since turned up its nose.

Re: It's the hardware, innit ....

"knowing that Microsoft could at any time decide to severely bork them"

But that's always been the case.

Re: improvements?

If I'm already running Linux WSL is meaningless but I suppose from a Windows PoV it's a step in the right direction. Terminal? - had that for years. Chromium Edge? - no thanks. Sandbox? - dunno, is that something like chroot? DoH? - wazzat, Department of Health? I gather, however, that you now have options of tabs in your file manager and that somewhere along the line you also got multiple desktops but that's just playing catchup.

Legacy has two meanings.

1. It's the fully paid-off house of your parents you hope to inherit.

2. It's the old, stable system that runs the operations what make the business's money that keeps getting spent on new shiny (and everyone's salaries).

Re: Err

If you go through a doorway you end up beyond it so obviously "through that date" must obviously mean "beyond that date". I'd hope that an English court and jury would interpret it that way if it came to a breach of contract.

And are there any videos of top MS management saying Windows 10 will be the last version? Deepfakes excluded, of course.

Re: It's the hardware, innit ....

"Is TPM 2.0 really that good"

At a more basic level by whom is it trusted? The user, the H/W or the OS vendor?

Shocks from a hairy jumper crashed a PC, but the boss wouldn't believe it

Re: True story

We had the lift shaft problem with our Z8000 Onyx back in goodness knows when.

These either side of the wall stories remind me of Feynman's which, of course, is one up on the rest of them: visiting Oak Ridge and discovering the enriched uranium being stacked up in the required small lots but back to back against a wall.

" Unless they’re French, where they use half a dozen existing words. Because le Academie says so."

Or just use the English word in spite of the Academie.

Or, in elReg's case, the subtitles.

Re: capital of BC

Are Rust and Go competing to take over?

There are more ways than static to generate high voltages. The microspectrophotometer had a Z80 S-100 box attached and, for fluorescence work had an XBO (xenon) light source with a stabilized PSU that provided a hefty pulse to strike the arc. We learned to turn on the light before powering up the X80 box.

Re: Static

For a moment I thought you were suggesting the secretary was average.

Intel to rebrand client chips once Meteor Lake splashes down

Re: Fiddling while...

I do like a well mixed metaphor.

Bingo!

"We are making brand changes as we're at an inflection point in our client roadmap in preparation for the upcoming launch of our Meteor Lake processors."

"We will provide more details regarding these exciting changes in the coming weeks."

I'm not sure about Patel's point, however. i5, 10th Gen (which is what the label stuck on this laptop says) is probably just a meaningless cluster of letters and numbers to the general computer-buying public. Their concerns, at least regarding laptops, are more likely to be "What's the screen size?", "What does it weight and how thin is it?" and above all "How much is it?". Personally I'll admit to the first and last of these along with "Can I buy it without Windows?".

EU legislates disclosure of copyright data used to train AI

"Operating robotaxis in SF has become a litmus test for business viability. If it can work here, there's little doubt it can work just about everywhere,"

Try rural Cornwall and Devon.

Or test your pothole avoidance on some of the roads round here.. ("Here" being almost anywhere in the UK.)

ESA's Jupiter-bound Juice spacecraft has a sticky problem with its radar

Then you need a second one to hit the first one when it gets stuck.

Tesla ran over worker rights, again, US labor judge finds

Years ago EDS had a rule about not discussing pay and another that employees who quit had to repay recent training costs. It always seemed to me that anyone wanting to quit would simply start discussing their pay and get fired.

Re: Penalties

I'd hope the employee who get suspended and fired would have been awarded a payout - or maybe that was a separate case.

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Re: Short, shameful confession

I think I might manage all three providing the carbons of OU marking sheets from my Tutor-Counsellor days can count as mark-sense. I'm sure I most have a few old files of those somewhere.

Emulators don't give you the warm glow of - well, a warm glow. Nor the faint whiff of PCB substrate although PCBs have never been quite so fragment since fibreglass replaced Paxolin.

There was a weird desktop that HP made as a lab. computer. Silicon on sapphire with tungsten interconnects. They must have expected it to get a bit warm.

Re: BT?

That's just the current Boss. There have been and will be others.

Joke alert? No joke!

Online Safety Bill age checks? We won't do 'em, says Wikipedia

Re: The Lords said they felt that "anonymous age verification is possible."

I suspect some think it possible and some don't. Some get into the life peerage due to being good at something even though most are refurbished ex-MPs and hangers on. Personally I'd like to see the presidents or equivalent of the the chartered institutes being ex officio members.

But as to anonymous age verification and safe back-doored encryption the same test applies: commission a proof of concept implementation and then let the experts take it apart.

Musk tried to wriggle out of Autopilot grilling by claiming past boasts may be deepfakes

I'd guess they demand money in advance. Suing for the fee would just be throwing good money after bad.

Lawyers are disinterested to the extent that they'll just as readily represent you or your opponent providing their fees are being paid. They may also advise you as tot he strength or weakness of your case but when it gets to court the case they put will be the case they've been briefed to put. Privately they may believe it or believe it to be all bollox but they'll put it to the court to the best of their ability and with a straight face.

Amazon axes Halo gear as job cuts hit cloud segment

So they're stopping supporting an app that relies on a remote server. It's just as well Amazon doesn't offer such remote services elsewhere, otherwise it might cause customers of such products to worry that they might be next.

US watchdog grounds SpaceX Starship after that explosion

Re: Good thinking that man

"With hindsight, using all the launch slots will now be difficult because of the 2 (probably x2) months delay for repairs to the ground support equipment."

Hindsight. All that you have left when you don't use foresight.

"but it wasn't ready in time for last week's flight attempt"

Project management usually requires some tasks can be completed before others can start. I'd have thought two such task would have been "Build launch pad" and "Launch rocket" in that order.

UK watchdog blocks Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition

If regulators get a taste for this sort of thing we ould even get to the point of Microsoft getting broken up. The case must be even stronger now than when they wriggled out of it. I don't think promises to behave would carry much conviction this time round.

Re: Wrong solution to the problem

"A similar example would be to stop Amazon bundling prime video with delivery."

An excellent idea. Let's hope the CMA's Digital Markets Unit stamps on Amazon's efforts to trap the unwary into a Prime subscription every time they make a purchase.

"Laws would have to first be passed to allow that."

Like this: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-bill-to-stamp-out-unfair-practices-and-promote-competition-in-digital-markets

Microsoft probes complaints of Edge leaking URLs to Bing

" the feature was limited to a subset of social media sites"

That's not a feature, that's a bug.

Re: One question?

Grandchildren are just as likely to do that, maybe more so.

Elizabeth Holmes is not going to prison – for the moment

None of whom are likely to have any knowledge of biological or medical science. But that's true of most investors and the domains in which they invest. The system depends on honesty when the investment is offered. I could envisage a less extreme case where the investors do have some knowledge and the project looks sufficiently feasible but isn't.

A good idea would be to add the length of time delayed by failed appeals to the overall length of the sentence. Delay 6 months, get to when the sentence would normally have ended and there's still a year to go, 6 months due to the late start and another 6 as added time.

Techies all GUI-eyed as Xerox says goodbye to Palo Alto Research Center

Re: Need to cut them slack

But they still didn't when others proved it had become practical. There's no point in commissioning future-looking research if you ignore it when the future arrives.

Re: Need to cut them slack

AIUI the H/W the code ran on emulated a DG NOVA The microNOVA would have been a possibility for a production model although I suppose it could have been ported to any of the 16-bit chips as they became available.

Re: Need to cut them slack

"no time travelers to say which one was right"

It didn't need time travel, it needed a bit of vision and a lot of application. Those are things senior management are paid to provide. Plenty of people had the vision about one innovation or another and succeeded. It was Xerox who had the best opportunity who didn't.

Re: Not for profit

The management certainly didn't realise how much money they could have made themselves. Once others were making the money I don't think they'd have dared realise how much they lost. The risk of shareholders suing them into oblivion would have been too great if anyone had put a number on it.

UK becomes Unicorn Kingdom, where AI fairy dust earns King's ransom

Re: How many times?

"Any system of Proportional Representation would have forced sensible compromise government for as far back as you wish to look"

I remember having that hope when PR was introduced in N. Ireland.

It didn't work out that way. Instead of the moderates such as Alliance coming to the fore it meant that eventually even the existing sectarian parties were pushed aside by their more extreme rivals.

Re: How many times?

45 years takes us back to 1978. It includes the time that Gordon Brown spent getting us into a big financial hole under labour. I also remember the years that lead up to 1978 and the winter of discontent as it was called. No party in my lifetime has had a monopoly of governing the UK badly.