Posts by JoeCool

You're not getting Huawei that easily: Canadian judge rules CFO's extradition proceedings to US can continue

Re: This post makes the same mistake that the Chinese are making

In _some_ places the political parties can subvert or politicize the process of appointing federal judges, or have them run an election campaign at the state level.

This post makes the same mistake that the Chinese are making

The "Government" has no ability to turn her loose. In Canada the judicial system has independence from the government, and operates on legislated codes of law not in response to state kidnappings.

The end really is nigh – for 32-bit Windows 10 on new PCs

Sentence two

"Certain 32-bit versions of Windows Server running on x86-based systems can use PAE ... "

That's not describing a generally available solution

Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style

Re: So the pizza shop got 56 separate faxes all the same.

A few duplicates 2,3,4,5 ... would be suspicous. 56 is clearly intentional.

Suspicious senate stock sale spurt spurs scrutiny scheme: This website tracks which shares US senators are unloading mid-pandemic

"... does not qualify as insider information"

Says the non-lawyer, non-stock trader.

There is a reason that some people in that position put their holdings in a blind trust.

Commit to Android codebase suggests Google may strong-arm phone makers into using 'seamless' partitioned updates

You shouldn't be surprised

"Astonishingly, over 9 per cent of Android phones use Version 6.0, which is no longer supported by Google."

There are a few reasons this is inevitable.

First is that Google itself doesn't support older devices; why would anyone else ?

Second is accumulating slowdowns. I have a 5 year old tablet that gets noticably slower with every major version update. I'd go back to 5 if I could, just to get the snappy start up back.

COBOL-coding volunteers sought as slammed mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response

Re: Despair & worn out wires

Sure some wiring can wear out - check out electric ranges that have been in use fo 10-20 years. But mainframes are in slightly more protected environments.

You'll get your money – when this bank has upgraded Windows 7... or bought extended support

Do I have this right ...

A MS marketing message disguised as a security alert has pre-empted the secure banking app from running on the ATM ?

Almost sounds like a reason to sue their a$$e$.

If you're serious about browser privacy, you should probably pass on Edge or Yandex, claims Dublin professor

Re: GDPR

Firefox policy & practices is pretty clear to me. I don't need a splash page every time I fire it up.

The Settings menu | Privacy page is really nicely laid out.

Forcing us to get consent before selling browser histories violates our free speech, US ISPs claim

The answer is ... google "Citizens United"

Or just go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

You know the President is able to shut down all US comms, yeah? An FCC commish wants to stop him from doing that

The ultimate authority

"But what is the alternative?"

Democracy, obviously.

Meaning specifically that

- the law in this case is seen for the fact that it terminates free speach and a free press.

- that a free press is seen as the foundational requirement of a Democracy.

- that the citizens in that democracy are prepared to fight for it.

LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary

O365 does not have the upper hand ...

based on any technical merit or superior useability.

It's dominance comes from Microsoft's strength as a Enterprise vendor. The fact that they can sell the whole integrated MS catalogue to corps based on a smorgasboard relationship is what makes it so hard for anyone else to get a foot hold. even GSuite's success is based on getting to Google's collaboration/sharing services, and familiarity with the free versions.

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

Feature of the copy software

It's in the story.

Internet Society's Vint 'father of the 'net' Cerf dodges dot-org sell-off during public Q&A

Flow of the article

Part way through is this:

At around 1550 local time, Cerf, as meeting chairman, was handed an iPad and the top question, of 172 asked, was: “What’s your opinion on the .org sale and what this means for not-for-profits?”

Should that not have been immediately followed with the clear statment that the question was ignored ? Why bury six graphs later:

He needn’t have worried because, despite the internet community actively voting to have the issue of the .org sale raised on stage and despite it being the issue of greatest current concern to the 'net governance world, neither the moderator nor Cerf asked it, nor even mentioned its existence.

In Rust We Trust: Stob gets behind the latest language craze

Re: Do...While

The Do point is to ensure that the { body } is executed at least once. Without introducing a bogus while-counter or duplicate statements before the loop.

Googlers fired after tracking colleagues working on US border cop projects. Now, if they had monetized that stalking...

Re: I find the argument bizarre

You are equating an internal corporate policy/process issue with an invented social-norms and criminal law situation. Nice combo of ridiculous and inane.

Power to the users? Admins be warned: Microsoft set to introduce 'self-service purchase' in Office 365

Shadow IT

Is a repsonse to Sh*t IT.

The end-run around you're objecting to is because you can't figure out how to manage desktops without deploying policies that are more intrusive than the monitoring conditions for registered sex offenders.

I love the kung-fu nature of this move. MS has spent years and buckets of money on all of these corporate management systems. Corporations have spent years and buckets of money managing their employees to the lowest common denominator, and building obstacle after barrier after obstacle. Now MS comes along and decides, that's just so counter-usefull, that they need to adjust that framework ( a tiiineeee little hole ) for the sake of getting stuff done in a normal lifetime.

Chemists bitten by Python scripts: How different OSes produced different results during test number-crunching

Re: Regression testing

Yep. I was going to post "let me google python unit test framework for you. huh look at that".

I appreciate, once again, scientific proof that programmign is indeed a skill that is not posessed by everyone capable of running a script.

Father of Unix Ken Thompson checkmated: Old eight-char password is finally cracked

Re: Hacking Ken

Are you thinking opening moves only ? doesn't have to be. Castling, end game scenarios, "isolation" exercises. And it could be a sequence of moves.

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

And yet, no-one has. Maybe it isn't feasible, and GNU does indeed deserve more recognition than it gets.

Dropbox would rather write code twice than try to make C++ work on both iOS and Android

How are we equating C++ with Javascript

From the article:

"Dropbox may have made cross-platform coding particularly challenging by choosing C++ rather than C# or JavaScript."

If someone is using C++ to kill a problem that is reasonably solvable with JavaScript, then I'll go out on a limb and say that's a bad technology choice. But I cannot think of any case where a C++ code base would be better rewritten in standalone JS. This statement deserves a little more explanation.

I could throttle you right about now: US Navy to ditch touchscreens after kit blamed for collision

Re: Generation Moron rules the waves. . . and so much else, too.

Yes! my biggest question from the article: how did this make it past ANY design reviews ?

I also find it hilarious that almost all of the comments relate the story back to car control design.

Re: Touch screens

I upvoted because 90% of your post is exactly right. The place I have doubts is the Catalytic converter comment. According to the Internet "The normal operating temperature of a catalytic converter is between 550 and 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit with the optimum temperature being about 806 degrees"

Point #1, There's no way 1 to 2 minutes of idling is going to reduce the stored heat out of that range, by much.

Point #2 Stop/Start is primarily about reducing Fuel consumption. Converters are about reducing smog-producing particulates. Converters actually CREATE greeen house gassses.

ReactOS 'a ripoff of the Windows Research Kernel', claims Microsoft kernel engineer

Re: He may be right

OR ReactOS can post their audit results, showing the published/public sources of their reverse engineering, were mr. Rietschin detailed enough to list specific references.

Amazon woes and wins, IBM thinks it's solved employee happiness and Duplex phony phone calls everywhere!

Re: it really understands what is said

And that's why as an IBM employee, you need to be rigorous in your use of the Joke Icon - otherwise the AI will make a wrong conclusion.

Lenovo kicks down door of MWC, dumps a stack of sexy new ThinkPads

You missed out on the TP25 ?

Lenovo claims that the "island" style KB is mechanically the same as previous kbs, but in a more modern frame. Is your issue the keycaps, or the key-switch feel.

I'm a crime-fighter, says FamilyTreeDNA boss after being caught giving folks' DNA data to FBI

you want to own your own DNA ?

See Lacks, Henrietta

Developer goes rogue, shoots four colleagues at ERP code maker

Scumbag ?

There's quality reporting. Is El Reg scraping twitter for news stories ?

"At this time, there is no indication as to what caused the murderous outburst and they have appealed for witnesses to get in contact."

Clearly, it's because he's a scumbag. Don't the police research their shootings on the Internet ?

BlackBerry KEY2: Remember buttons? Boy, does this phone sure have them

Re: Phone cameras

Phone cameras have completely displaced compact "snapshot" cameras. So basically 100% of people that are carrying around a camera for casual photography are actually carry around a phone and using it's camera.

Amazon staffers protest giant's 'support of the surveillance state'

Re: Hmmmmm

They are trying to give a corporation a conscience, and doing it from within.

That doesn't fit your understanding of actions ? Then post your attempt to publicly shame your CEO into social responsibility.

You can bet a senseless rant that reveals the poster to hold moronic views described with trite cliches is getting downvoted.

Wait! Before you fire up that HP lappy, check the battery

Is this surprising ?

Functionally any battery is an energy storage device that makes the most energy the most easily accessed, in the smallest space possible. Isn't there always going to be a line to walk between basic physics and safe operation ?

Simon's Cat app rapped for random 'racy' advert

@Anonymous Coward with the Garfield fixation

Garfield is a fat slovenly man in a cat costume, drawn with the intent of maximizing marketing potential (Although I will say the Blues album tie-in has a pretty good roster of talent).

Simon's cat is actual art.

And, Cat Man Do is (still) awesome.

The developers vs enterprise architects showdown: You shall know us by our trail of diagrams

I am astounded by the proportion of EA commenters with an axe to grind. I'd guess most devs read the article, and think "well, yeah. next article".

Don’t buy that Surface, plead Surface cloners

"Clone"

No tablet with a 19:10 screen should be seen as a Surface clone. All they are is a commodity play into the low end space. I am nothing near a Surface fanboi, but MS deserve credit for bucking the indistry trend on the screen aspect, with the third gen version.

‪There's a ransom-free fix for WannaCry‬pt. Oh snap, you've rebooted your XP box

Re: "the antithesis of a strong and stable operating system"

My feelings about windows lies somewhere between "despise" and "hate". Nonetheless the "antithesis.... " comment in the article is unsubstantiated nonsense. As a desktop OS it's uptime is comparable to Linux, if not quite as good. Of course, I am ruthless in minimizing changes on windows, regardless of version.

Windows 10 S: Good, bad, and how this could get ugly for PC makers

education SALES

1. I find it incongruous that locking down a pc, and preventing exploration is seen as a feature, in an educational environment.

2. Since this is such a blatant future mindshare land grab on the part of MS et al., I wonder why the schools aren't simply getting an upfront pay-off and free hardware. Low standards for getting used is not a good lesson for school kids.

A very Canadian approach: How net neutrality rules reflect a country's true nature

Re: there aren't any derogatory terms used by Canadians to describe their continental cousins

"Why would they need another derogatory term? "American" seems to fit all round."

Because, that actually refers to all inhabitants of the entire continent: north, central, and south.

I sometimes break out "Unistatians" to be more specifc.

Beer, so I don't have to think about the closeness of all that instability.

Feds cuff VW exec over diesel emissions scam

Re: 'the Germans can do it".

"urea-based system success ..."

I don't think that assumption warrants belief. No-one has said "how deep" the cover-up goes, but perhaps all diesel scrubbing tech is fundamentally flawed, in one way or another. I believe that MB is being investigated in the US for performance & compliance issues, similiar to VW. Urea is a relatively recent development, and companies seem to have shifted to it as a last resort.

US citizens crash Canadian immigration site after Trump victory

Canadian immigration

Dear USA friends,

I am truly concerned for the instability that is so likely to affect your daily lives. It's a tough prospect, but you are a sturdy, honest people.

I'd like to suggest that to avoid a processing quagmire, that all of the Blue states band together to make a blanket request. I am sure something mutually beneficial can be worked out.

And Puerto Rico. They deserve better too.

Signed, Your (North) American neighbours.

VW Dieselgate engineer sings like a canary: Entire design team was in on it – not just a few bad apples, allegedly

Re: If the government had better tests...

Using a dynometer is the correct way to perform a controlled test. Otherwise your results are plus/minus X% due to wind humidity temperature and road differences, so that the tests aren't actually repeatable.

What VW did is more like a teacher giving his students the answers to a standardized test, and arguing that it is the fault of that test that it uses questions choosen before hand.

We snubbed Microsoft's Surface Pro wooing, says Lenovo exec

Serving the customer ?

In the category of laptops not using 16:9, I think you only have the Surface and the MacBook Pro. That could be part of the demand.

Lenovo is saying they would lose sales, implying that the Surface is in fact competitive, so good for Microsoft.

HP and Dell say they are catering to customer needs. I don't think that sort of decision should be criticized.

W3C's bright idea turned your battery into a SNITCH for websites

Re: Solution?

I tink the stated use case could be supported by a boolean value IsBattTooLowForAds. Then, the 40k of distinct values reduces considerably.

Scientists love MacBooks (true) – but what about you?

Re: The view from Onenote

Onenote has been available in the iStore for about 1 year. Onenote has been available on Windows for 10+ years, so your "insight" is overly simplistic.

I will aso mention that until very recently, the non-free versions were more funcitonal, and useable.

The original statement is a valid conclusion. mmm hmmm.

Our 4King benders are so ace we're going full OLED, says LG

LG OLEDs are already priced in the same bracket as the best Sony and Samsung LCD, so LG is already there ( although Samsung gives you more inches ).

If you're expecting them to attack the "Excellent Picture Quality at a reasonable price" segment, Panasonic's roaring success with their plasma line will discourage that market strategy.

Big Blue promises Big Bucks from Big Bets

IBM is bragging about a 2% dividend yield ?