Posts by bombastic bob

Ready, get Sets... no? App-grouping whizzery for Windows 10 killed

MS - 'majoring' in the 'minors'

"What is it about KDE's 'Desktops' feature" "MS are finding so difficult to implement"

I really like the multi-desktop feature in open source desktops, which showed up OVER 10 YEARS AGO in various desktop managers (like KDE, gnome, vtwm, fluxbox, ...). MS had a 'hackish" multi-desktop attempt-thing for XP back then, that I tried, but it stank.

virtual desktops is the ONLY feature of Win-10-nic that I would say something nice about. That should be *THE* way to organize applications together. Just open the windows up in the same desktop. What's so hard about that?

Anyway, I'm not surprised that Micro-$#!+ is busy "majoring in the minors" again. The article mentions 'fluid design' [and when I remind myself what that means, it's exactly the WRONG DIRECTION - make applications look/*feel* the SAME on ALL platforms? Like dumbing the desktop down to be a PHONE interface, because phones will *FEEL* bad about having OTHER platforms run BETTER than them?]. The 'fluid design' concept is 'Deja Vu' of the *INSANE* design "feature" of Win-10-nic in the FIRST place, that "one application, everywhere" concept that can NOT work unless applications are "dumbed down" (in the UI, in the functionality) to work on teeny-processor teeny-screen PHONES.

It's why UWP is *JUST* *PLAIN* *FAIL* !!!

So I ask this: **WHY** can't Micro-$#!+ deliver what the CUSTOMERS want (3D skeuomorphic as an OPTION, no SLURP, no ADS, no strong-armed MS LOGIN, no FORCED UPDATES, ...) instead of *CRAMMING* what *THEY* want up our as down our throats?

Instead, they bit-fiddle, tweak, use market-speak to re-brand what they've tried several times (and failed at) aka 'fluent design' and 'UWP', yotta yotta yotta I'm sick and FEELING tired of it.

(I wish there were a 'vomit' icon but this one will do)

still using classic shell.

@LenG

see icon

Facebook, Google, Microsoft scolded for tricking people into spilling their private info

The default should be no slurp whatsoever

ack, but the evil genie is out of the bottle now.

Microsoft releases new containerised cut of Windows Server

marketing double-speak

is all this sounds like.

icon, because, facepalm

Microsoft has another crack at fixing Chrome problems in Windows 10

Re: Downdate not Update

'Downdate' not 'Update' - ever since GWX

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

Re: Eh?

most laptop "mice" (i.e. fondle-pad) SUCK (especially when you're trying to type and your thumb causes 'tap-click' to activate all of the time) and so an external mouse and "shut that damn thing off" on the mouse pad is THE option when you wanna get work done. And I need a USB port for the mouse. And speakers/headphones need a proper WIRED jack, especially if you're sitting in an airport etc..

people who design the Surface should be DAMNED into HAVING TO USE the thing, ALL OF THE TIME. And no special treatment, either.

It's like the fastest way to streamline your manual system: assign a programmer to "operate" it. Out of pure frustration he'll streamline the process so that it starts running at 0-dark-thirty on monday, such that by the time he arrives at 10AM or so, it's "all done" for teh week, and he can do fun stuff for the additional 4.9 days. [back in the late 80's, that was ME, and I actually DID that].

Similarly, MAKE the engineers that design the surface ACTUALLY USE IT.

GDPR forgive us, it's been one month since you were enforced…

Re: Don't fret. It is all part of Trumps grand plan

*ahem* - CO2 is **NOT** a pollutant! [if you think it IS then please stop exhaling, you're polluting the environment] [what, you're STILL breathing? hypocrite!]

Re: Don't fret. It is all part of Trumps grand plan

let's all just burn as much fuel as we want to, and erect windmills to chop migrating birds in half for the lulz.

Re: Good luck with that

I think I'd accept customers from EVERYWHERE, and not bother tracking people with scripty ads or cookies that can be used by 3rd parties through some ad network. Customer is king after all (NOT a commodity).

Out of curiosity, though, if you perform a financial transaction (which kinda has to be tracked in an accounting system, for audit purposes if for no other reason) then is that affected by 'right to be forgotten' ? You buy something from Amazon. Amazon knows they sold it to you. If GDPR were to force them to (effectively) erase the transaction info, it'd mess up their accounting. However I think it would be perfectly reasonable to require them NOT use the data to recommend products for you, if you want to be forgotten. "Forgotten" for advertising purposes at least (the actual transactions will have to be kept,).

Re: How difficult is it to disable slurp?

"most people who would opt out would also wipe their cookies at the end of every session."

Already being done in my browser, via a nice plugin "cookie whitelist with buttons" and I can enable session-only cookies for most things so they'll at least WORK (but autodumps them if I turn it off and back on again, muahahahaha!). Also running NoScript. that blocks a LOT of it.

From the article: "How fast the internet could be without all the junk"

Yes, this was observed when the first TRUE adblockers were being used on phones, how much FASTER it got!

I was, at first, going to snark a lot about EU being effectively "blocked" by these sites as the side effect of gummint regulation. Then I read the article and realized it was happening from the SAME (kinds of) sites that have kept me from viewing them while I had NoScript running. Thing is, I just avoid them anyway and I think I'm better off because of it. But I blame the web providers, not the people for whom the web site is dedicated. For those web providers, I have a nice cat-5-o-nine tails and a clue-bat I'd like to test out... and maybe a 2nd floor window that tends to flip open when you lean on it.

So now everyone in EU gets to see the internet in about the same way I've been seeing it for YEARS... except, unfortunately, for those 'once in a while' times where I need to access such sites for truly important reasons, for which I will run the "jailed" browser that runs from a truly non-privileged login and deletes _ALL_ history when it closes. That would be YOU, [well known electronic parts supplier]. Your order forms are unnecessarily NoScript unfriendly. It's from bad web design, as far as I can tell, not sinister around-the-net tracking. Sad.

GDPR in the USA might be a good thing, too. Imagine the SCREAMS from "Big Intarweb" !!!

Qualcomm still serious about Windows 10 on Arm: Engineers work on '12W' Snapdragon 1000

Re: Fire the Marketing Department?

I once bought a Travan backup tape drive from HP that had the model "T-1000" - kinda like the liquid metal guy from 'The Terminator'.

(now we just need something that has 'snapdragon' in it for them to capitalize on)

"a lot of modern x86 software is very under-optimised because they expect people to have cycles to spare on their Intel/AMD cpus."

the influence of ".Not" and UWP no doubt. I remember seeing Windows 2k3 server running on the same (older, underpowered, test) platform as Windows 2000 server, and it was SO piggy I couldn't even use it. Long stutter times in the GUI. It was TRULY pathetic.

Ultimately I blamed the presence of ".Not" and the kinds of LAZY thinking that is described in that quote, something like "we have cycles to spare, so don't bother making the code efficient".

Yeah, lots of THAT in "modern" windows, too, or so it would seem, like all of that "the Metro" garbage. I tried playing games like Solitaire and Mahjong in the Win-10-nic pre-release, and it was LAUGHABLE, especially when you consider how SNAPPY and FAST solitaire was in, *cough*, WINDOWS 3.0 !!!

PATHETIC performance with those "modern" 'The Metro' and/or UWP "The Store" versions. Thanks, Micro-shaft!!! And the ads, too. Oh, joy!!!

icon, because, facepalm. [yeah I was a windows fan until ".Not" and then Vista and then "Ape" and then Win-10-nic]

Re: Microsoft! Please get modern!

the way fans of "The Metro" throw around the term 'modern' like a pejorative, particularly with respect to the 2D FLATSO, 'borderless' windows, low-contrast display layouts, and fat-finger-friendly 'hamburger' button menus (aka anything NOT that isn't 'modern' and you're a LUDDITE for NOT loving it), I think it' GREAT that SOMEONE finally "pushed back" and THREW IT IN THEIR FACES!

Well done! beer, sir!

Re: If ARM is so good

"ARM on Windows failed a few years ago for the same reasons it'll fail now"

ARM isn't restricted to the performance specs of the Raspberry Pi model 1...

I think the 'fail' of the ARM stuff in the past (running windows I might add) was simply a combination of things, like a bad recipe. The hardware being under-powered for what people wanted to do was a big problem. There's also the complete INCOMPATIBILITY with "legacy applications" compiled for x86. And vendors weren't in a hurry to compile native ARM versions of their stuff.

The bigger part of that was the overall UN-appeal of Windows "Ape" and Win-10-nic, when compared to the highly successful Windows 7 and XP. 'The Shaft' stopped selling a SUCCESSFUL product in favor of INFERIOR ones, and did it DELIBERATELY. This happened when ARM was seriously under-powered compared to x86 architecture, which effectively killed ARM+Windows.

Now, when companies like Qualcomm are trying to produce ARM cores that are 64-bit and (apparently) equivalent performance to x86/amd64 architecture, they have a choice: do they hitch their success to an operating system like Win-10-nic, or do they do something _BOLD_ like target Linux?

When most of the software that people use is ALSO available on Linux, the concept of 're-learn' or 're-train' is no longer relevant. The learning curve is extremely short. Mint makes that transition pretty easy.

I mean, how much difficulty was there learning to use a SMART PHONE? There ya go.

Qualcomm should do their own marketing for ARM+Linux, maybe get some popular software vendors to ensure that there are ARM64+Linux versions of their software available, for things that people complain "aren't available on that platform". And it would be MUCH better than the nauseating 'Surface' TV ads, I would imagine.

Re: Targeting Win-10-nic is a mistake

"And with a Secure-Boot-based UEFI locked down beyond hope"

_*ONLY*_ because of Micro-shaft STRONG-ARMING vendors. THAT should be ruled anti-competition and monopolistic by a competent court.

"What does the -nic in Win-10-nic mean/stand for"

It's a reference to the Titanic, you know, icebergs ahead, but "all ahead full" anyway, "this ship is UNsinkable". That's Micro-shaft's attitude about customers *HATING* what they did to windows in Win-10-nic. And "Ape", too (that would be '8'). "All ahead full" towards those icebergs, who cares if we hit them, we're UNSINKABLE!!!

Targeting Win-10-nic is a mistake

as has been proved for YEARS.

Better to target Linux, then make Linux ARM laptops not only affordable but DESIRABLE, and leave Win-10-nic in the dust where it belongs.

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

Re: Pavlovian In-Betweener Message

That whole in-article snide comment about "Trump backing down" is a complete *FARCE* - Trump had instructed law enforcement to FOLLOW THE LETTER OF THE LAW which was signed by Bill Clinton and also enforced by Obaka, and insisted upon by the 9th Circus Appeals "court", the most liberal left-leaning of them all. When pictures of children being allegedly "caged" (taken in 2014 as I recall, not 2018 - WHO was president then?) and the complete BAT-GUANO-INSANE "reaction" by "the media" caused Trump to do something absolutely *BRILLIANT*: he GAVE THEM WHAT THEY 'WANTED'.

Now the kids aren't being separated. Wait for courts to catch up and try to put a stop to THAT, too, and the media going hysterical AGAIN only THIS time because the kids are IN JAIL with their PARENTS, who DESERVE to be there for BREAKING THE LAW. So what were we SUPPOSED to do, just LET THE PERPETRATORS GO FREE? I doubt that even happens in the UK.

So anyway, stop PANDERING TO THE PERCEPTION about Trump, please. Get the facts RIGHT, and if you want to be snide and snarky about it, at least be snide and snarky with TRUTH and not fake-news-fiction. [then I'd probably laugh at it]

Have YOU had your breakfast pint? Boffins confirm cheeky daily tipple is good for you

Re: What measure of 'drink' did these Americans use?

"What is a drink? Why can't they use units like every other sane study?"

According to a blood alcohol chart that I found online, "one drink" is "1.25 oz. of 80 proof liquor, 12 oz. of beer, or 5 oz. of table wine." So not quite 1 shot (1.5oz) of distilled liquor, a bit less than a pint of ale.

YMMV based on lots of things. These are units made up by the bunch that created blood alcohol charts for DUI arrests and DMV regs and things like that.

Re: Interesting.

looks like the magic number is around 4. Good to know. Anything between 1 and 4 is a "net win". less than 1, it's a little 'iffy'. Better have at least one a day.

Great news, cask beer fans: UK shortage of CO2 menaces fizzy crap taking up tap space

that's because SHE needs to drink...

Re: Vegan CO2

CO2, CO2, CO2, spam, CO2, CO2, ...

(yeah that's not got much spam in it)

Re: "Pick up that can!"

"Why haven't the American people risen up against the current regime, then"

We _DID_, and that's why Mrs. Clinton did NOT get elected!

Trump _IS_ the revolution!

India tells its banks to get Windows XP off ATMs – in 2019!

Have a cup of WINE

I have to wonder if WINE would run their banking software as well as (or better than) XP, and then have a nicely maintainable OS afterwards, without having to "UP"grade EVERYTHING.

It would make a nice solution wouldn't it? NO NEED FOR WIN-10-NIC!!!

Ubuntu reports 67% of users opt in to on-by-default PC specs slurp

Installing in a VM

is what this sounds like, for "the most poular" configturation.

Think: "only one CPU" is suspicious. Systems under 10 years old usually have at least 2 cores, and older ones significantly LESS than 1G of RAM. However, a VM install is likely to have one CPU and 4 or 8 Gb of RAM devoted to it, unless you have some compelling reason to multi-core the VM. I've done it, but the benefits are unclear. One core seems to work just as well.

it's what _I_ do, anyway. Ubu in a VM, for a customer who insists on it (with Mate it's not bad). Devuan or maybe Mint anyplace else. Backup the VM periodically and hand a backup copy to the customer for safe keeping. works for me.

The strife of Brian: Why doomed Intel boss's ex86 may not be the real reason for his hasty exit

Re: "So if Intel wants to sell CPUs, they should invest in Linux and the BSD's. "

"their CPU + chipset + firmware stacks are trivial to crack remotely and locally so they are not fit for use for multiuser applications"

not so 'trivial' in real life. POSSIBLE, yes, but I always assume that all of the time. Besides, what ELSE are you going to do your (potentially insecure) web surfing with? A PDP-11?

(practice 'safe surfing' - NoScript, non-windows host, non-MS browser, non-privileged login)

Re: Bring in someone more Linux friendly?

"phones are more apt to be bought on a shorter time frame that PCs."

very true, so that's why Qualcomm and Broadcom and other ARM-makers are building those. So is Intel, actually, but I don't know how much Intel silicon is going into phones these days.

Slabs were a bubble market but new phones come out all of the time. I still use a "dumb" one but it's got a low-power ARM in it, probably.

The whole slab/phone vs PC thing though is completely misreading the market. Slabs and phones are their own thing and have their own lifecycle. People really aren't buying phones INSTEAD of PCs. But without some compelling reason to get a new phone, don't people hang onto their old ones? Same idea I think.

I'd consider a new laptop if they all didn't have Win-10-nic on them... [I just wish it were easier to fix my OLD one, which has a bad motherboard - capacitors, probably]

Re: They could have used the "He said Jehova" excuse instead

"what on Earth is an N-word in this context? A noun?"

It's a pejorative term beginning with 'N' that generally refers to black slaves back in the 1800's when slavery was still legal. Often found in Mark Twain books like "Huckleberry Finn" where it was commonly used to refer to black slaves (note that the theme of that particular book was FREEING a slave named Jim, so Mark Twain really wasn't a racist after all). If I quoted the actual word here I'd probably get a ban.

Bring in someone more Linux friendly?

Maybe it's time that chip-zilla starts acknowledging the CAUSE of sales slumps in the x86 world: MICROSOFT.

Windows "Ape" and Win-10-nic, along with the lack of "the appearance of" Moore's Law improvements (today's computer is no longer 50% faster than last year's model), have basically motivated people to hang onto their existing gear, and just make the kinds of improvements that include more RAM and larger hard drives. No longer does that "new, shiny" machine, laptop, or whatever, give you reason ENOUGH to abandon what you already have for the "new, shiny".

That's because Micro-shaft has RUINED the 'new PC' market by RUINING WINDOWS.

More than enough El Reg articles pointed this out. Sales slumped for "Ape" while 7 boxen still ran off of the shelves, until you could no longer buy them.

It wasn't slabs, smartphones, or overpriced "Surface" laptops that people wanted. People wanted a computer that they did NOT perceive as running SLOWER or giving them LESS freedom to do what they wanted with it. And that includes the SLURP, the ADS, the FORCED UPDATES, and the 2D FLUGLY.

So if Intel wants to sell CPUs, they should invest in Linux and the BSD's. They should make sure that Linux and the BSD's support their newest stuff, make sure that the most popular software is properly ported to RUN on these computers, that open source equivalents have ALL of the features that business want, and maybe do a LITTLE promotion of the same.

If they do, they'll succeed where MICRO-SHAFT has FAILED.

Micro-shaft is in "shoot own foot" mode with the way they're flopping and twitching around and spinning in-place instead of heading in a direction that leads towards more success. If Intel continues to hitch THEIR wagon to Micro-shaft's "star", they'll be in for the SAME kinds of FAIL.

Or, is Micro-shaft just letting them devalue enough to BUY them?

COME ON, Intel, time to step up to the plate, PROMOTE LINUX, and hit a HOME RUN! Or, as appropriate, kick the game-winning goal!

In huge privacy win, US Supreme Court rules warrant needed to slurp folks' location data

Re: Orin Kerr is posting on the subject.

"I find it almost ironic that Trump's appointee has been pretty solid on civil liberties."

I don't, not at all. You can't believe the fake-media perceptions and pre-conceptions if you want to understand this. An "originalist" with respect to constitutional law would ALWAYS side with freedom and protection of individual rights, i.e. "non-statism". 4th ammendment.

(that's who Trump and Gorsuch REALLY are, by the way - don't believe the nonsense)

Re: Victory! for now

siding, even slightly, on the side of privacy, is a good trend.

"Get a warrant". works for me.

Now Microsoft ports Windows 10, Linux to homegrown CPU design

Re: Computer says "No"

"Microcode was the way of getting the benefits of RISC on the horrific X86 instruction set."

Actually, microcode has been around since CPUs existed. it's how they work internally. From what I was told (in a college class) the IBM 360 had microcode on plastic cards with holes in them, which were read by changes in capacitance for sense wires running along the top and bottom (rows and columns). that way you could re-program the IBM 360's microcode by using a stack of cards.

The concept of RISC (as I recall) was to get closer to the microcode to streamline the instruction pipeline and reduce the size (etc.) of the core, though it's not the same thing as BEING microcode.

I don't recall MIPS or ARM _EVER_ being faster than the high-end x86's. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I don't remember hearing that. I'm pretty sure it was the other way around.

Re: So have they ported Edge to this EDGE architecture?

PUN-ishment. Heh.

Re: The processor really shouldn't matter to applications these days.

"building some of the higher level apps in a noarch format and compiling them to binary during installation."

Already being done, by FreeBSD in fact. Check out FreeBSD's "ports" system - build from SOURCE, baby! OK they have packages too, but the option to EASILY build from source departs from the Linux distros I've seen [where loading all of the correct 'source' and '-dev' packages can become tedious]. FBSD is designed for compiling, so the headers and stuff will all be there whenever you install a library.

The downside, it can take several hours to build firefox or libre office or any version of gcc, like for a cross-compiler or because the dweebs that wrote 'whatever' software _DEMAND_ the bleeding edge version (or a specific version) of the compiler. So yeah, best to install THOSE as pre-compiled binary packages. And having the option is worth it.

/me points out that kernel modules are typically build-from-source, for obvious reasons.

(also worth pointing out, I understand that java p-code is 'compiled' into native code when you install Android applications on any version since [I think] Android 5)

Re: Computer says "No"

along with that, consider ONLY running apps from "The Store", mandatory updates, and the worst possible extreme incarnation of 'management engine' you can possibly think up, in your worst nightmares...

Oh, and DRM. Of course.

I admit the tech sounds interesting, but this almost sounds like using microcode as an instruction set, the same *kind* of way RISC made CPUs lightweight but not necessarily faster (ARM still catching up to x86 tech).

But it may have a niche market for cell phones and other 'slab' devices. It almost sounds too late because windows phone is officially _DEAD_.

From here on, Red Hat's new GPLv2 software projects will have GPLv3 cure for license violators

I have a better remedy...

I have a better remedy. Make it all BSD 3 or 4 clause and be done with it. No 'remediation' needed.

If you TRULY want to contribute, that's what you'll do. Otherwise, you're trying to control too much on how people use it.

I don't like [L]GPLv3 for many reasons, starting with the lengthy lawyerspeak and WAY too many implied and explicit restrictions, particularly for commercial use, with terms like "aggregate" being applied to GPLv3 licensing where one GPL component may or may not force "the entire work" to be GPLv3, basically MAKING ROOM for L[aw]YERS to sue/settle and get paid at YOUR expense. [L]GPLV2 is much cleaner, simpler, common sense, etc. and I tend to 'dual license' everything I put online anyway, such that either BSD or [L]GPLv2 license applies at the discretion of the person using it.

It's not like I won't get credit for writing those things anyway, with a non-GPL license. I just prefer freedom over "copy-left" and Stallman's anti-capitalist attitude as reflected in the licenses. If you restrict what people do with it, it's not "freedom" any more. "You're free to play with my toys, but you have to make a bzzzzz sound when making the airplane 'fly'" <-- like that

(understandably, Linux is GPLv2 but you can run proprietary binary-only stuff on it if you want to. RH could simply ship it separately as an add-on if they wanted to)

Apple hauled into US Supreme Court over, no, not ebooks, patents, staff wages, keyboards... but its App Store

Re: Apple Hauled?

Building and then loading your own APK isn't all that hard. I wouldn't own a device that tries to prevent it.

'No, we are not rewriting Office in JavaScript' and other Microsoft tales

Re: It'll be clippy all over again

"Clippy on Steroids"

"More like Clippy on Laughing Gas"

How about Cortana in Dominatrix garb?

"You've been a bad, *BAD* user!"

Re: AI requires an Internet connection

"Forget about Office 365, offline Libre Office is what we need."

fixed.

What can you do when the pup of programming becomes the black dog of burnout? Dude, leave

Re: Burnout isn't unknown in IT

"There aren't any prizes for being the bestest whatever in the company"

There SHOULD be. 'The Best' should have the highest pay rate. Either that, or he should QUIT and go elsewhere for more money...

(any decent manager would recognize this and try to retain 'the best' with cool assignments and higher pay).

And this 'culture' thing makes my stomach turn. I can taste my lunch coming up... *urp*

Google cloud VMs given same IP addresses ... and down they went

'The Cloud' - highly overrated

'Highly Overrated'©®�⍟☂☢™ since its invention around 2005 or 2006 (when AWS came out). Market-droids have been pushing it ever since.

US-CERT warns of more North Korean malware

I changed 'itok' to a profanity, and also removed it entirely, and it still worked. Also did it from a somewhat-sandboxed browser, just in case. Did you need to include the 'itok' part on the link? Or does it now always show up as "you" surfing that site when people try the link?

just wonderin'. strange graphic, black&white parody of U.S. flag [obviously]. What was the point, again?

Pwned with '4 lines of code': Researchers warn SCADA systems are still hopelessly insecure

SCADA systems running windows

well, THERE's your problem!

last thing we need is having them "up"grade to Win-10-nic as a "solution". Forced updates? "line stop" while we download 4G, spend 30 minutes installing, and add new features, on OUR schedule! Ooops BSOD!

A proper solution awaits! (see icon)

Boffins offer to make speculative execution great again with Spectre-Meltdown CPU fix

Re: Hard as I try...

"SafeSpec is actually viable"

At least one person proposed something even simpler, in essence saving the speculative state along with thread/task state, and restoring it on thread/task switch. That way it wouldn't really be possible to have "the same speculative state" across thread/task switches. Couple that with actual security tests on speculative memory access [at the time of access, not 'some amount of time after you did it'], and the leaks SHOULD be plugged.

you wouldn't need any 'shadow states' or anything like that. Just normal task state stuff inside the kernel would do. And if you don't want anybody accessing that info, you DO! NOT! MAP! IT! INTO! USER! SPACE!!!

Re: Hard as I try...

mandatory programming standards? who would enforce it? what's the punishment for violating it, 'whack my pee pee' or 'take away my birthday' ???

last thing we need is MORE regulations on software. say buh-bye to open source if that ever starts, because once gummint gets its grimy paws on something, it NEVER! LETS! GO!!!

Former FBI boss Comey used private email for official business – DoJ

It's a swamp!

It's a swamp. DRAIN it!

I bet Admiral Ackbar thinks so., too [he kinda looks like a swamp creature, heh]

(I invented a new meme! Oh, noze!)

Shatner's solar-powered Bitcoin gambit wouldn't power a deflector shield

Re: Too late...

Well, a 3MW solar array is still a potential money-maker so who cares WHO your customers are!

But then I read THIS in the article:

"Crypto mining has also wiped out gains from the vast investments made in solar and wind renewable energy in recent years."

'wiped out gains' - what the HELL does _THAT_ mean???

It's like this: If you're SELLING A PRODUCT (electricity), and MORE PEOPLE BUY IT (business is UP), you should be CELEBRATING the SUCCESS!!

What kind of SMUG, ARROGANT, HUBRISTIC attitude _IS_ this to COMPLAIN about people BUYING YOUR PRODUCTS? Oh, they're not using it the way YOU want it used? SO _FEELING_ _WHAT_ !!!

the fact remains that if you BUY ELECTRICITY, it BELONGS TO YOU. You can do with it WHATEVER _YOU_ WANT at that point. It is YOURS. You BOUGHT it. Any kind of ANTI-FREEDOM ATTITUDE that tells how WHAT TO DO with what YOU BOUGHT sounds like "Micro-shaft Electricity" to ME. You know. like WIn-10-nic except it's ELECTRICITY now, not just YOUR computer used THE WAY THEY MAKE YOU DO IT.

If you hate it when Micro-shaft jams THEIR WAY up your, er,down your throats, then why care how or how much ELECTRICITY people use? "Oh they're using too much." WHO is the one who determines THAT?

Out here in Cali-Fornicate-You, the Demo[c,n][r,R]at "super-majority" passed "yet another law to CONTROL THE PEOPLE" saying that by 2020, every person in Cali-Fornicate-You can't use more than 55 gallons of water per day per person. And that number drops to 50 gallons a few years later. *HOW* *DARE* *THEY*!!! This is not a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY here. If there is a SHORTAGE, you MAKE MORE! You *ENCOURAGE* the private sector to PRODUCE ENOUGH. (there is this ginormous water source out here on the left coast, called the PACIFIC OCEAN, and San Diego County *ALREADY* has a de-salination plant up and running - MAKE MORE and we NEVER run out!)

People forget what CONTROLS ON SUPPLY cause. There were GASOLINE LINES in the late 1970's, because the SUPPLY of gasoline was controlled by gummint. When Ronald Reagan became President, all of that STOPPED because he got RID of that nonsense! And, gasoline prices *DROPPED* as a result!

So what do we do about things like electric power and water? *MAKE* *MORE* and LET people use it HOWEVER THEY WANT, as long as they PAY for it!!! Otherwise, it's NOT FREEDOM!

Another Star Trek reference from 'Cloud William' - Freedom was a 'worship word' to his people. but they had forgotten its true meaning...

Microsoft tries cutting the Ribbon in Office UI upgrade

face-wall time

Article: "cut its “Ribbon” toolbar from three lines to two"

How about cutting it to *ZERO* lines, and putting a *REAL* menu back? (and NO HAMBURGER BUTTON)

"like adding paper to a blocked toilet"

paper? you sure that's what they added? (it smells a LOT worse than paper)

/me face-walls

Microsoft says Windows 10 April update is fit for business rollout

In the time it takes to update win-10-nic...

in the time it would take me to update win-10-nic (from start of downloads to final reboot), I could download the latest source for FreeBSD, do a build/install world+kernel from source (while the system still runs like normal), reboot one time, and THEN have it all back up and running without any "super+new+shiny features" to get in my way and FORCE me to "re-learn". I might even have to do LESS work.

Microsoft loves Linux so much its R Open install script rm'd /bin/sh

Re: Today's story...

"There we go, page clicks. All good."

it's a title that attracted MY attention, and the article made it worth the time to read it. It demonstrates (once again) what we all believe about Micro-shaft and their alleged "love" for Linux. And it re-enforces our opinions of giving Micro-shaft *ANY* decision-making authority in the Linux realm, because they do things *LIKE* delete whatever shell the OS installed [because doing that would NEVER break any OS shell scripts] and "sneak" A DIFFERENT SHELL in there, instead, WITHOUT telling you or asking permission.

This is _SO_ like Micro-shaft, for THAT level of HUBRIS.

As for the title - I liked it!

Well done to El Reg - BEER, sir!

Re: Typical installer written in a large company

"I'm actually encountering this on an open source thingy I'm writing. I can write the code, no idea how to get it installable (yet). *sigh*"

Here's my suggestion (assuming it's Winders):

a) avoid shared components. static link everything (including DLLs). Don't use ".Not" or rely on it being there.

b) install your application into a predictable directory. Allow it to be wherever the user wants it to be.

c) use only simple keys in the registry, all under HKCU (abbreviated), and only if you MUST. If the user wants a system-wide install, add an option to make it HKLM. Your code can check for both. Under NO circumstances do you need to pollute the registry with even MORE 'cruft' than it already has in it!

d) think "how would I do this on Linux". It's probably correct for Windows, too.

e) document type associations aren't all that hard, but I'd just look at a few examples to see how it's done (etc.). Fortunately they're all in the same place.

f) let the application do the 'setup things', not the setup application. I suggest a "/s" switch to the application (or similar) to do 'setup'. Similarly a '/u' to do 'uninstall'. The application can then clean up its own mess.

At this point the installer would be simple: a) copy the files to the right place, b) run "application.exe /s", create some kind of an icon [however THAT process works nowadays, win-10-nic being what it is], make a registry entry for 'uninstall' so it shows up in the list o' installed things, and you're done. Uninstaller could be a very simple application to run 'application /u' and remove the application registry entry and installed files.

Years, decades ago even, I wrote an installer for windows, which never sold. I guess people were willing to tolerate InstallShield because it was FREE, as well as other overly-complicated installers. It was worth doing for my own stuff and for this one customer, though. So eventually I open sourced the thing and put it in github. It's there, just look for 'setup' utilities for windows. You'll find several others, too. I'm not the only one who wrote an installer that's simple and makes sense. This is a VERY common problem for WINDOWS applications, after all.

On Linux and other POSIX systems, installation is very simple. You don't have a @#$% registry to deal with. (there may be a package system, but those are distro-specific). You can put things in your ~ directory and just add ~/bin to your path, and install 'whatever you want'. Sometimes '.local' or similar is supported for various settings files. It's really not that hard. You don't need 'root' to install something. You just need BRAINS. (and you DO NOT need to screw up SYSTEM FILES like '/bin/sh'!!!)