Posts by bombastic bob

Outlook outage outrage

msn mail still working via thunderbird

hmmm... my msn mail address is still working via thunderbird.

maybe it's the mail clients? Or maybe it's the UK servers and it's not affecting the USA?

Microsoft's cmd.exe deposed by PowerShell in Windows 10 preview

Re: ksh or nothing, thank heavens for cygwin

"The list of of things PowerShell can do sounds to me a list of things ‘Why the hell a *shell* should do that?’"

ACK

Power-hell was developed [read: excreted] by Micro-shaft to promote their ".Not"tiness embedded in every OS after XP. But the server OS's were the worst. Win2k server ran on a PI with 32Mb of RAM. All versions since then have gotten piggier and piggier, thanks to ".Not".

Micro-shaft TOTALLY screwed the pooch with the ".Not" excrement. And their Power-hell is yet another attempt at cramming it up our collective backsides, more painfully than 19 feet of curari-tipped wrought-iron fence [and without the KY to assist with the jammin'].

".Not" was the beginning of what went horribly, horribly wrong at Micro-shaft. "PowerHell" is their "Rosemary's baby", their bastard stepchild satan-spawn of a command line interface, slow to load and too over-complicated for its own good. I don't have enough adjectives available to describe its horror, other than to call it "PowerHell" in hopes that everyone will intuitively understand...

I once wrote a shell for 3.x that worked pretty well. It extended the 'command.com' capabilities somewhat, offering some windows-specific things like spawning a windows program asynchronously, listing all of the running tasks, yotta yotta and some command/control features that let you send keystrokes to a window and control an application. It was shareware and never really went anywhere. When '95 released, I just stuck with CMD and that was the end of it. But 'PowerHell' - that's like "the dark side" of the force, and NOT in a good way.

Re: Yet another Windows 10 annoyance

"I LIKE CMD.EXE"

"Removing it would be dangerous."

more reasons to stick with 7 and NOT go to "Ape" nor Win-10-nic.

OR... if you're forced to RE-LEARN, then RE-LEARN LINUX! Or, FreeBSD!

Re: Yet another Windows 10 annoyance

"there were simply enough people fed up with having 'cool stuff' shoved down their throats that they neither wanted nor needed.'"

someone else besides me obviously "gets it". Well done!

I mean, how much 'cool stuff'©®™ do we REALLY need? ['cool' as defined by millenials and "snowflakes" and Micro-shaft, at any rate]

and you have the downvotes to go with the brilliance!

Re: MICROSOFT IS OUT OF CONTROL

"I do hope somebody in MS with a detectable pulse reads this."

doubtful. they're all over on answers.microsoft stroking one another's egos and shilling about how great Microshaft and their products are, banning anyone who dissents (or ganging up against them, like bunch of howler monkeys ). Their rose-colored glasses wouldn't allow them to be able to see anything on El Reg anyway.

And I doubt they'd care. They're Micro-shaft. They're *POWERFUL*. They can DICTATE THE TERMS, and FORCE COMPLIANCE. Why SHOULD they care?

Re: Yet another Windows 10 annoyance

"cmd.exe is not good, but at least it is fairly simple, and has "worked" for all versions of Windows."

it does what _I_ want. And I could type in 'cmd' and rapidly create a desktop icon for it, or run it from the start (what used to be) menu EASILY. So what do you type in for 'power-hell' now?

It's just like MICROSHAFT to JAM A CHANGE FOR THE SAKE OF CHANGE into our orifices, just because they *FEEL*.

The reason they're jamming POWER-HELL up our collective backsides is because it SUPPORTS ALL OF THAT '.NUT' CRAP. They've got ".NUT" on the brain, and it's made them ".NUTTY".

D-Link joins hands with Microsoft to give 'Super Wi-Fi' a push

Re: D-Link joins hands with Microsoft

"What exactly does Microsoft bring to the party?"

a) money

b) political influence [though less than they USED to have]

c) the apparent willingness to promote the tech for Win-10-nic [they'd need SOMETHING to make sales increase, as it can't sell very well on its own]

From D-Link's perspective, it's probably a plus.

Re: 54MHz?

keep in mind that there's a limit to the data rate based on the frequency the higher the frequency the higher the potential data rate. 54mhz would have 1/10 the theoretical data rate cap as 540Mhz, which would have ~1/5 the max data rate of 2.4Ghz (and so on).

Now, for "last mile" intarweb access, this might not be so bad, as we're dealing with 10's of mbits, and not 100's of mbits. But the antenna SIZE argument still stands: you don't want something the size of an old-style TV antenna receving that...

Google gently leads Intel into its cloud: This is for your own good

that's a big surprise...

Google may have been trying for a better deal by hinting it would 'look elsewhere'.

In any case, no surprise that Intel + Google wants to power "the cloud".

NOW: all they need is RELEVANCE ["the cloud" is HIGHLY overrated!]

AI, AI, captain: Royal Navy warships to set sail with computer officers

Re: And so it begins

more likely it will think like a robot and just blast out orders "from the manual" for any given situation, including those that are a close approximate match according to the AI. [comedy ensues if life preservers are distributed during a fire, for example].

unlike humans, for which (above the rank of Lt JG) we would expect at least SOME intelligent decision-making to happen before orders are given...

Experts to Congress: You must act on IoT security. Congress: Encourage industry to develop best practices, you say?

Re: Be Careful What You Wish For...

a gummint "solution" is likely to breed PROBLEMS that require MORE "solutions" from gummint, yotta yotta. It's like an INFECTION with cyclic mutations.

Instead, do this: pass laws that put the BLAME for 'lack of security' on the producers of insecure hardware and software, making them responsible for ANY liabilities caused by NEGLIGENCE when it comes to security. This would include DDoS attacks, mass infection/intrusion on IoT devices [requiring expensive 'fixes' on the part of end-users], and so on. Then, let the class action lawsuits fix it. I know, it's like calling down a napalm strike on your own head. Just make sure you duck for cover.

And simple fixes by IoT vendors might include simple things like holding a button while changing settings or flashing new firmware.

Searching for 'Fatty Kim the Third' banned on Chinese social media

"now Trump wants to be buddies with him"

first I heard of THAT. Source, please, [or I'll just assume it's B.S.]. And no, "the Onion" isn't a source.

Re: Not "Fat Elvis II"?

"Thankyouvewwymuch."

You'll see that in 'Team America II'. Along with more puppet nastiness.

Re: Gugle Trainslate

"Fatty Kim the Third"

I can think up a bunch MORE nice names for Mr. Kim III, which include anything said to describe Cartman in S. Park. Oh, and 'Cartman' too. "RESPECT! MY! AUTHORITAH!" [Imagine 'Dough Boy' saying THAT on camera!]

And when China bans THOSE search terms, we'll just have to make up NEW ones.

Here's how the missile-free Royal Navy can sink enemy ships after 2018

Arthur C. Clarke's "Superiority"

"German anti-aircraft gunners aboard the battleship Tirpitz were reportedly unable to hit attacking Swordfish because they flew so slowly the gunners, used to fast modern aircraft, kept missing in front of them."

Like it was taken RIGHT OUT of Arthur C. Clarke's 'Superiority'.

And the converse is also true: all of this "bleeding edge" tech and no effective way to sink an enemy ship.

Besides, as I understand it, those old wooden biplanes can turn on a dime, and take a zillion hits before they actually crash. Just wear a flack jacket when you fly them...

NO school like the OLD school, eh?

Microsoft ❤️ Linux? Microsoft ❤️ running its Windows' SQL Server software on Linux

"they've done a proprietary alternative to Wine in order to run SQL Server under Linux."

that sounds about right. And, they should offer that alternative to 3rd party windows application developers, too. In My Bombastic Opinion.

Re: SQL Server 7 was a re-write

"All DBMS bypass the filesystem cache for fast non-blocking asynchronous IO."

you sure about ALL? that's a very 'broad' categorization.

" The Linux asi_write and writev glib functions either do async or scatter/gather, but not both"

'asi_write' doesn't exist in FreeBSD [I just checked], at least not the version I'm running. So using it is not truly portable for POSIX systems (a big 'minus' if it's required for performance). Anyway, if _I_ needed that kind of I/O specialization, I'd write a kernel module to do it. And if you use threads in a very clever way, async I/O isn't all that hard... [been there, done that]. But I'd rather let the OS handle all that for me, then use 'flush()' to make sure it writes. In a thread. So it doesn't block anything else. It just blocks "that transaction" waiting on the I/O to complete.

And then, maybe, you FIX the operating system so it's faster? As long as the patches are not written using a crap-code style, heh. - what was the term Linus used, 'compiler masturbation'?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/01/linus_torvalds_fires_off_angry_compilermasturbation_rant/

So yeah, I've been there with the async I/O stuff, and though 'gathered' writes do have their appeal, I'd have to wonder what kind of performance boost you really get from that, over [let's say] a memory mapped file, or multiple threads making separate but parallel I/O requests. You definitely get the kernel layer speed benefit from making a single I/O request, though, using 'writev' to get them all done at once. I just haven't measured the differences in actual practice to see how much of a boost you'd get.

in any case, translating "all that" across a layer between Micro-shaft way and POSIX way might cause a performance bottleneck on its own...

Re: SQL Server 7 was a re-write

"A picokernel of some sort would be needed because Linus wouldn’t allow these kernel extension in Linux."

Or, leverage the Linux ability to do all of that write-collection FOR you via cacheing and 'lazy flush' instead of "paranoid writes" which is what Winders seems to be doing...

and then, it's FASTER!

so you do a bunch of 'teeny writes', then hit 'flush()' for your completed transactions. So simple.

Re: "Can it run Crysis?"

"user friendly but insecure and bloaty Windows; versus slick secure Linux that has poor app support and in my experiencce requires you to learn an archane annd unintuitive commmand line language to make it work"

uh, not exactly. mac OSX has users for whom you show a command shell and they're like "WTF?" and blank stares, etc. most recently I was trying to explain how to use command tools to ssh into an embedded device that has an RPi controlling it, to a mac guy. he's got a mac. that means he has ssh. Well, he gave up and said "I'll just bring it by so YOU can do it..."

Re: Drawbridge

"So let's find a fancy new name so we can pretend to innovate!"

Hooooooold on, thar! [vague Quick Draw McGraw reference]

Let's step back about 2 meters and see what this REALLY means...

THIS means that MICROSOFT has a 'Wine-like' CONTAINER that could be used by *ANY* windows application maker to, *ahem*,

*QUICKLY*! *PORT*! *THEIR*! *WINDOWS*! *APPLICATION*! *FOR*! *LINUX*!!!

Which implies... that a LINUX PC could (theoretically) run *ANY*! *WINDOWS*! *APPLICATION*! if Micro-shaft would *BOTHER* *TO* *RELEASE* *THIS* the way they had a nice XP subsystem for Mac OSX a decade or so ago... remember?

LinkedIn officially KickedOut of Russia

Re: Owned

pwned by Micro-shaft - the main reason for the inquiry.

Microsoft's development platform today: What you need to know

"many flavors of XAML"

This is where things went HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY, WRONG.

A couple of quotes from the article:

"Developers who have followed the twists and turns of Microsoft's developer story over the years will know that there are many flavors of XAML"

"There are WPF XAML, Silverlight XAML, and UWP XAML, all different"

sort of like "you are in a twisty little maze of passages, all different" (from a version of RJR Cave that had the batteries in a vending machine within the 'all different' maze).

Did Micro-shaft *MISS* *THE* *BOAT* on this? If we wanted an XML-based UI description, then there's already a simple way of doing it: HTML FORMS. Like web pages, only internal to the application. I'm pretty sure that Webkit has a means for doing this...

There's a somewhat-nice implementation of this for Android. I made use of it once to display a web server's screens as *IF* they were an application running on a slab to control a device. [it was a nice rapid hybrid prototype solution to the problem of getting a GUI on a 'droid slab to control stuff on an Arduino over a serial cable, while displaying live video capture and controlling tests in real time]. The wrapper Android application was pretty simple. All of the work was done on a custom-written Linux web server. [it went into clinical trials that way, being a device associated with certain kinds of eye exams].

So with Java sitting pretty at the top of the TIOBE index for the last SEVERAL YEARS, why is Micro-shaft *BOTHERING* with their C-pound ".Nut" "solution" for cross-platform, with XAM-IT-UP-YOUR-BACKSIDE for GUI screens?

Simple: they want to CONTROL THE DIRECTION for software development. More like DRIVE it, like cattle across the plains, heading for the slaughterhouse. THEN, their PATENT ENCUMBERANCE will keep OTHERS from competing, in THEIR playground, by THEIR rules.

No thanks.

Re: Visual C++ for Linux Development

"Seems like you can avoid the expense of 1) and 2) by just using Linux in the first place."

ACK, and for commercial GUI-related tools, I understand Qt is pretty good. or you can use (*cough*) Eclipse and gtk. Or just use 'pluma' (gedit's gnome3-ness is irritating for coding) which is what *I* do, and run gdb on an application that displays it's GUI within a VNC X server [so you don't lock the system up debugging a GUI from within X11 - yes, it does do that, but the workaround is sufficient]. There are also GUI wrappers for gdb (at least one really good one). Dunno about Eclipse, though. I find it slow and irritating when I need to do something.

Micro-shaft's IDE *does* make life easier, however, in many (but not ALL ways). It's just that I find porting "their stuff" to Linux to be more work than suffering with "what I just mentioned", line endings and unicode forcing being one of those things. [aka WHY can't Micro-shaft just use UTF-8 like everyone else?]

And yet... even with MSDN subscription and more than one windows 7 computer/VM to code within, I find myself writing just about EVERYTHING either on Linux or FreeBSD, using pluma or an older gedit [that was from gnome 2], command line tools, 'autotools' with configure scripts, yotta yotta. It's so much *cleaner*. Or, the Arduino IDE (for microcontroller stuff).

After Microsoft joins Linux, Google Cloud joins .NET Foundation

Google and '.NUT' - if it ends up in 'droid we're SCREWED

If ".NUT" ends up in 'droid, we're SCREWED.

And you all thought the JAVA interface for 'droid was cumbersome and irritating...

And with one stroke, Trump killed the Era of Slacktivism

Re: "Better broadband could be a grassroots cause"

well, if I had enough money I'd call the phone company and say "I have money, and I want XXX now how much to set me up with that?" if they said "no" I'd be like "ok, I'm willing to PAY SOMEONE to RUN WIRES TO MY HOUSE. Now, HOW MUCH?" After a few of THOSE, I'd eventually get in touch with someone who could help me work out the details.

NOW... if that process were made SIMPLER, maybe those lines being brought in for YOU could then provide competing service to all of the neighbors. A telco SHOULD want to JUMP at that possibility.

Unfortunately, city gummints "gum up the works" by requiring things like "you must provide equal service in a POOR neighborhood for every well-to-do neighborhood you do this for". Nevermind that poor neighborhoods generally can't AFFORD "that service". but that's how gummints do things. or you pay them off to shut the hell up, and get it done before someone notices...

Re: One thing we can count on with Trump

"won't be appointing Carly Fiorina"

why not? the election is over now. time to get work done. Ted Cruz is being considered for a cabinet position, as one example. It might be fun, seeing Carly as FCC chair... or in charge of the patent office... or running something ELSE that she'd be really knowledgeable about.

Strap in and hang onto the safety bar, we're going for a ride! And it cost an 'E' ticket for THIS one! [ok who else is old enough to remember the 'E' ticket rides at Disneyland?]

Re: We do not know what Trump will do or will not do

Google might have a lot of influence, but every once in a while a "Teddy Roosevelt" will go into office and carry his BIG STICK. I can see Trump doing that...

(but Trump would rather stick a carrot on the end and make a deal - a GOOD deal)

also privacy issues make strange bedfellows. I find myself actually AGREEING with the ACLU at times. I expect Trump to be more for individuals than mega-corporations, at least if his campaign speeches reflected his true passion. I think they did.

Re: Yes and no.

"You say it's propaganda, but you don't show how that is so"

I agree with you questioning that assessment. I agree with some of the posters above, that the article was well balanced.

Re: net neutrality

the original intent of 'net neutrality' was "no packet favoritism". However, that fails to make faster pipelines a reality, as they just get clogged with more CRAP, all equally prioritized.

What might work BEST is a 'hybrid system' where the netflix-like providers pay a premium to get a priority code. If only a percentage of traffic is prioritized, let's say no more than 30% when traffic is heavy, then everyone else shares the 70% of the total bandwidth [not a bad deal, really]. The extra revenue from selling the "preferred pipeline" could then go into upgrading the overall pipeline. EVERYBODY wins! But in a communistic "all traffic is the same priority, regardless" system, you get lots of CRAP that nobody pays for. And the infrastructure doesn't improve. EVER.

And like communism and socialism, when everybody is LOWERED DOWN TO THE SAME COMMON DENOMINATOR, then everybody is EQUALLY MEDIOCRE.

Instead of 'net neutrality', the "fair prioritized pipelining" technique would go a LOT farther in delivering content AND not destroying high speed traffic for non-pay-to-play-ers. It's like a private toll road intended for those willing to pay (one where the cost varies depending on how much it's being used, in particular). It ultimately lightens traffic for everyone else, too. You may hate it, but it works.

But yeah, you won't see THAT idea coming from a "slacktivist" any time soon...

/me wonders if I'll set a new personal downvote record with THIS post

Fujitsu: Rumours of our PC demise have been greatly exaggerated

Blame Win-10-nic for bad PC sales

Fuji needs to put blame where it belongs, directly on Win-10-nic, for declining new PC sales.

Perhaps their new "partner" needs to be a commercial version of Linux, and some major software publishers WILLING to do Linux versions for the PC desktop, instead of half-baked "mobile versions" for smart phones (that are laughably crippled).

Satya Nadella hits Sydney and channels Steve O'Ballmer from eight years ago

Re: Missing in action?

"was there any sign of a Monkey Boy dance?"

'developers developers developers developers'

and look where THAT took us...

Married man arrives at A&E with wedding ring stuck on todger

all they really needed to do...

all they really needed to do, to get his member 'small enough' to slip the ring off, would be to:

a) show him hot naked pics of radical feminists like Mrs. Clinton, Patricia Ireland, Gloria Steinam, etc.

b) a (naked?) pic of his wife after 30 years and 50 lbs have been added

c) a virtual reality "divorce court" simulation in which he's taken to the cleaners by multiple women making false claims against him and deliberately keeping their own personal income LOW so that HE must pay MORE (and pay ALL of the attorney's fees on top of it).

yeah, THAT'll make your penis pucker!

Fake election news meltdown vortex sucks in Google

Re: BBC

"The fact is that they have given up fact checking, given up real journalism"

ack. Blogs typically report *FEELINGS* and not *FACTS*. And everybody has FEELINGS, and they all *LIE* and are INCREDIBLY UNRELIABLE, and are IRRELEVANT as HELL on any subject.

Feelings should be jettisoned with the weekly trash pickup.

But, then we'd have no ONLINE OUTRAGE nor DRAMA to snark and lampoon.

/me points out that 'feelings' are not the same as passion nor conviction. 'feelings' are like BEER GOGGLES. Passion and conviction are MOTIVATORS.

Re: I for me

"Everyone knows the rhyme about Nelly the Elephant."

I didn't, being 'across the pond' is probably why. you made me look it up. Wikipedia had it. "Trump trump trump" indeed. Heh.

Re: We will never know

"As many states stop counting votes at all once a winner is sure"

also, if you count ballots PROPERLY you'll discover JUST how many Demo-Rat ballots were 'stuffed' (i.e. people voting multiple times, dead people voting, illegal aliens voting, yotta yotta). So heavily-Demo-Rat districts don't want that kind of light shining in their dark recesses...

it's also why Demo-Rats don't want proper ID checks at the polling place, either.

So when Mrs. Clinton is reported to have a "less than one million vote" popular 'win' over Trump, it's probably due to 'ballot box stuffing' *In My Bombastic Opinion*

Firefox hits version 50

Re: This being an IT site

"Perhaps it is worth noting that we have version 50.0 on FreeBSD as well."

right, but tracking 'bleeding edge' on something like FreeBSD isn't always practical, ESPECIALLY when you prefer to build from source. I'd rather not be a slave of "new, shiny" and have a stable platform to 'get work done' on.

Re: Innovation?

"I'm sure they've heard of it, but nothing much going on here."

I agree in principle. CHANGE != INNOVATION especially when it's "change for the sake of change" or "change because millenials think it's 'cool'" or "change because Micro-shaft is doing it *THAT* way" or "change because we *FEEL* everyone needs {whatever}"

Let's not forget how long XP stayed THE SAME, and how it remained POPULAR the entire time.

Let's not forget the ~30 years of GUI being done "that way" and GROWING in scope and market from the mid/late 80's through now.

Let's not forget the *FAIL* of Windows "Ape", Win-10-nic, and the entire premise of "make your desktop look {read: be crippled} like a 'smart' phone".

And, unfortunately, FF's direction has been TOO MUCH like the above statement. FORTUNATELY you can turn the REGULAR MENU back on again, though it's not always easy to figure out the first time you go W.T.F. when you see NO MENU and a FORNICATING HAMBURGER ICON.

So this "every few weeks" release cycle is not only HIGHLY OVERRATED, it's HIGHLY UNNECESSARY.

I have a better idea: Just *FIX* *THE* *DAMN* *BUGS* (after putting the >2 year old user interface BACK, thank you, WITHOUT A DAMNED HAMBURGER ICON for non-touchy devices), and spend your ENTIRE development time cycling EVERY bit of code through ANAL RETENTIVE REVIEW, for efficiency, security, and size.

Oh, but that's not *FUN*, right? Too bad. REAL programmers know how to Q.A. their own schtuff. And they don't need rapidly increasing major version numbers, either.

Re: @Mage

"and one of the reasons (in comparison to Firefox) is that the interface hardly ever changes."

YES YES YES!

This is a BIG THING with ME. I *HATE* 2D flats, fat-finger-friendliness [at the expense of screen real estate on my *DESKTOP* computer], and that *HIDEOUS* *HAMBURGER* *MENU*.

Using Firefox 27-ish on my GNOME 2 DESKTOP at the moment, on a FreeBSD machine with ~2-year old 'ports' (built from source), with plugins *like* noscript [the MAIN reason for using Firefox at all]. If it needs a patch I can re-build it from source.

If it works, *WHY* *CHANGE* ??? Moving targets are HIGHLY overrated.

Microsoft leaks Visual Studio for Mac, then scrubs the news

If it weren't "C-pound" and ".Not" I might be interested...

A true cross-platform development environment is a good idea. I've been working on something _LIKE_ that for YEARS. But just me, and only in my spare time, when I wanna, isn't getting it done very quickly. [I need the toolkit FIRST, then the IDE that does what _I_ like, etc. - still working on toolkit using the IDE and basing it all on X11 and it's pre-alpha - you get the idea, yeah].

Instead, Micro-shaft *EXCRETES* yet another clone of their *FAILING* re-re-re-invention of software development [over which they have 100% control, and wield it at THEIR discretion], only THIS time for THE MAC. Er, doesn't Apple *ALREADY* have a developer environment for THE MAC ?

And *WHY* would *ANYONE* actually *WANT* to code C-pound and ".Not" for a MAC ???

It's like the mono project for Linux and other POSIX operating systems: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA (oh, you were *SERIOUS* ???)

Shhh! Shazam is always listening – even when it's been switched 'off'

Re: Meh

"surely if you're really concerned about privacy, that takes precedence over your desire to find out what's playing on the radio?"

well, might be easier to:

a) look on the 'what is playing' section of the station's web page [a lot of them do this]

b) if it's internet streaming radio, you'll see the ID text displayed [probably]

c) who really cares, since RIAA only excretes CRAP these days, with rare exceptions

and anyway, Shazam probably wouldn't recognize anything _I_ listen to, from JPop to old jazz. Except, maybe, for decent 'more modern' stuff like Muse or Metallica.

Re: Overreaction?

"But what happens when the sound you want to search happened five seconds ago?"

someone else already suggested they add an option for that "feature". You know, on, pause, off; or perhaps, on, off, "no, seriously off". whatever.

And the audio may not be tracked by *THEM* but a back door trojan horse application *COULD* perhaps 'hook' it and leverage the user's cluelessness with respect to having the microphone on whenever that application is left running...

[maybe we can blame the "TSR"-ness of phone applications, too? Must they REALLY 'stay running' all of the time?]

Re: Pedantically...

"Switch off your mic and they can still listen in using your speakers."

I think you need a refund on your engineering degree

Re: On the positive side...

"The developers are listening to what their users say."

BRILLIANT! on MULTIPLE! LEVELS!!! (thanks, I needed a dose of snark)

Re: How else are the US corporations and spooks supposed to harvest all your most personal info...

"No need for Big Brother to bug your house when you buy and install this shit for them!"

Someone would STILL have to code a 'back door' zero-day, or pay them (Shazam devs) under the table for it.

China gets mad at Donald Trump, threatens to ruin Apple

Re: Trade War - FTFY

"I think Trump plans to increase the prison population..."

well, with a select few POLITICIANS maybe!

(but I like it when career criminals go to jail for life - it keeps them from victimizing anybody else, FOREVER)

Re: Trade War

"China's possible trade blockade will only be a temporary disruption, not a catastrophe."

Yet, news media will make it SEEM like the catastrophe that it is NOT.

If I were Apple, I'd be 2nd-sourcing EVERYTHING. Or 3rd-sourcing. NOW. There's this other country just south of the USA that has a number of manufacturing sites, and it was only about a year ago that I read on 'El Reg' that THEY might just do these things better/cheaper than China... [and THEN they'll have enough money to 'build the wall']

NHS IT bod sends test email to 850k users – and then responses are sent 'reply all'

OMFG, usage of the 'singular "they"' - ew

Sorry I have to play grammarian fascist on THIS one:

"had understandably turned their mobile phone off"

it's either 'had understandably turned their mobile PHONES off' (referring to multiple people), or 'had understandably turned HIS mobile phone off' (for a single person whose actual sex is unknown, use of the MALE pronoun 'his' would be correct).

post edit: or it could've been a 'typoe'

Swedish prosecutor finally treks to London to question Julian Assange

Re: He faces no threat from the U.S. now

"Trump would probably give him a medal and a job in his administration."

A presidential pardon might be an interesting twist...

[I don't think he'll do it, though]

2016 in a nutshell: Boffins break monkeys' backs to turn them into tragic shuffling cyborgs

Re: Feel sorry for the monkeys

this time, the rats got a break.

Re: Not ethical

re: whale hunting. eating whale meat

in certain parts of Scandinavian countries [I forget where, exactly], Japan, and among certain Eskimo tribes, whaling (and whale meat) has been part of their lives for CENTURIES (if not longer). I've never eaten whale meat, but whale steak used to be generally available in Japan. I think Japan no longer does any whaling, though (not even for research). At one time it was a cheap alternative to beef.