Posts by aks

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Facts versus persuasion

AI and other inputs to conversations relate to the powers of persuasion. They use facts, conjectures, theories, and downricght fabrications as ammunition, facts playing only a minor rôle.

Europe preps Digital Euro to enter circulation in 2029

eurozone fulfilment platform

I'm assuming that the EU wants to provide a replacement of the service currently provided by Mastercard and Visa for debit cards, maybe also for credit cards.

It would need to interface with them for use outside of the eurozone.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Baloons

Baloon trip of the century. Take as long as you like, even round the world.

Legacy Update updated – so your old Windows can be, too

The bottom line question about running such unsupported OSs on antique hardware is "what do you want to run on it that doesn't run on your main platform?".

It can't just be nostalgia.

Microsoft agrees to 11th hour Win 10 end of life concessions

Re: I wonder how they determine if you are in the EEA

Running Windows Update on my old Dell Optiplez SFF automatically gave me the one year extension at the end of August.

I'm in Guernsey, which is not and never has been part of the UK, EU or EEA but is part of the European continent.

India’s IT minister moves to Zoho’s spreadsheet and word processor, urges 1.4 billion people to do likewise

North Korea call it Juche.

FCC plans to kill Wi-Fi on school buses, hotspots for library patrons

Re: Civil Vandalism

You're correct. They don't want Socialism.

Why Microsoft has the name of an old mouse hidden in its Bluetooth drivers

I grew up on BCD and its many EBCDIC children and have fond memories of cross-relating them, including the various ASCII and ANSI children. After extending this mapping to the much larger issues of Asian encodings, I was well on the way to building my own Unicode database before discovering it had been standardised.

Armed with these tools and mindset, this kept me happily employed for a decade or two.

Happy days.

Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates

Re: A strong case for two track OS development

That's exactly what Microsoft offer to Enterprise customers many of which use their IT department to install updates and firmly control acces to the external world.

The devices don't stop working, simply become unsupported.

My phone still works although it dropped out of support in 2017.

At most, vendors (not only Microsoft) could provide some security patches and satisfy the critics. Why does this have to be free support?

Will this proposal also apply to cars, refrigerators, etc?

Brussels faces privacy crossroads over encryption backdoors

Cashless society

Meanwhile, tracking your every movement and purchase. What else is big data for? Profiling is the name of the game.

Of course, avoidence of being profiled sits in its own profile category.

I'm not paranoid! They're after all of us.

Google’s latest renewable energy deal is all gas bags and hot air

Re: 30+ years?

As with all such schemes, there is the usual avoidance of the "total cost of ownership" over the total life of the project.

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved

Re: "15 separate controls that define where to look for Majoranas."

Snark rathrr than Shark?

Otherwise, an upvote from me for the alignment of quantum physics with Edward Lear's nonsense poetry.

Both spooky actions.

Network scans find Linux is growing on business desktops, laptops

Re: Security

Windows 2000 was based on Windows NT, not 98.

User unboxed a PC so badly it 'broke' and only a nail file could fix it

Re: Re:high pitch noises

I swear that my tinnitus was caused by working in noisy computer rooms in my firt two jobs atound 1970.

Re: In denial

My road awareness skills were honed by commuting 17 miles each way by bicicle across the centre of London in my first job. This served me well when I was forced to learn to drive at the age of 35 as I was about to relocate to the USA for my new rôle.

Microsoft dangles extended Windows 10 support in exchange for Reward Points

Re: How though?

I've currently got about 12k points but have mostly spent them on Skype credit which I use for diailing out to an overseas number my current £42 credit has survived the transition to Teams Free on PC and Android mobile. I've never paid a penny in "real" money.

European consumers are mostly saying 'non' to trading in their old phones

Re: Safety goggles + drill press + salt water

What"s wrong with the traditional, low tech hammer? Who needs all this high tech electric drill stuff?

If you say that using a hammer doesn't reach all the components, *get a bigger hammer*

Microsoft to preload Word minutes after boot

That reminds me of the old adage that 87.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Apple drags UK government to court over 'backdoor' order

Re: Surely a logical backdoor already exists

There are already ways to compromise specified users and devices once a search warrent has been issued.

The UK clearly want to trawl through big-data at will on a "big data" fishing expedition.

Non-biz Skype kicks the bucket on May 5

Re: Teams? Forget it..

Microsoft's announcement

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/skype-is-retiring-in-may-2025-what-you-need-to-know-2a7d2501-427f-485e-8be0-2068a9f90472

Re: Teams? Forget it..

£42 for me

Microsoft trims more CPUs from Windows 11 compatibility list

You heard it here first

I assume that this is our first glimpse of the Windows 12 minimum requirements.

Rather than add a backdoor, Apple decides to kill iCloud encryption for UK peeps

Location or Network or SIM

The article suggests that Apple cripples the service for UK SIM card users.

Questions are:

Will this apply to all users of a UK SIM card wherever the are located or

All users of a network in the UK whatever their SIM.

Depending on the answer, there are obvious was aroud the restriction.

Microsoft to kill off Defender VPN this month

My only motive for using a VPN is to avoid geo-location problems when I travel.

Too many web services ignore my declared preferences for language and region and insist on showing their content in Spanish or Japanese, just because that's where I happen to be.

Other web services lock me out because their advertising revenue is region specific.

Microsoft 365 price rises are coming – pay up or opt out (if you can find the button)

I hope these comments are completely sarcasic as they're utterly untrue. Microsoft's internationalisation isn't perfect but it's very good and continues to improve.

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

Fried printer

Back in the late 80s we'd got our software running on IBM mainframes, including in Japanese for screens, printers and pen-plotters. We were then tasked with making the software work on a semi-compatible Japanese mainframe. All went well until an office rearrangement when someone decided that the 100v plug on the dot-matrix printer should be replaced with a 230v one. I did finally find a uk company who repaired the blown components.

Happy memories

NASA’s radiation tolerant computer lives up to its name after surviving Van Allen belts

AFAICR the Space Shuttle used the same voting concept plus a differently designed and programmed box that would take over if all else failed.

UK Home Office silent on alleged Apple backdoor order

Re: Which is exactly....

As I remember it, it was the other way round.

The USA wasn't allowed to spy on its own people within the USA so they asked the UK to spy on Americans and pass the information back to the USA. Not sure of any current arrangements.

Amazon, Google asked to explain why they were serving ads on sites hosting CSAM

Re: Why do they host ads?

Surely, that's a tautology. It's the purpose of business to make money. They're souless machines, not humans.

Any appearance of humanity comes from the Marketing and Brand Image budget.

Seems to me that this website simply doesn't spend the big bucks using the automated filtering systems used by the big players. I wonder how much they take to run. These filtering tools don't come cheap.

Microsoft quietly erases Windows 11 TPM 2.0 bypass workaround from help page

Re: MS doing their best to slow down the adoption of Windows 11

Off-topic rant.

UK biz dept overspent by £208M prepping to pay workers hurt in Post Office IT scandal

Re: Porridge time

No argument with the criticism of all of the above but *why on earth* did the courts rubber stamp these convictions? It can't be solely the bottomless pockets for lawers that the Government-backed Post Office had.

Why did no judge raise a red flag?

Apple offers to settle 'snooping Siri' lawsuit for an utterly incredible $95M

1984 Telescreen

We now live in the surveillance world described by Georgo Orwell. Telescreens in every home (and in your pocket).

The channel stands corrected: Hardware is a refresh cycle business now

Re: 'Beacons of hope'

That reminds me of the most successful busineses during a gold rush were the suppliers of shovels, food and women.

Fully agree but would choose endemic rather than epidemic.

Re: Computers for Low-Income People

Many of us here on El Reg have been there, done that with a Bluetooth keyboard, but how many of us use it regularly. Use with a tablet a little more so.

Axiom Space shuffles space station assembly sequence – to get it standalone sooner

Re: Relook at

"trendy, cutting edge" how quaint.

Apple and Meta trade barbs over interoperability requests

Re: cry wolf

Specifically regarding IBM:

IBM were quite lax regarding any lock-in to their mainframes. I worked on many of their, and three competing machines in the 1970s and 1980s.

IBM diid use litigation against them with little real effect. It was when the world changed from massive centralised power to smaller, more varied equipment that their semi-monopoly was fully broken.

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Search by keywords

All I ever want from a search engine is for it to point me to pages that refer to the precise keywords in my query and to allow me to include negative keywords to filter out irrelevant pages.

That's how I was able to use the first search engines and was quite happy if there were no matches, I'd then refine my query.

I hate having to pose my question as if I were speaking to a person, with full grammar. Most results nowadays are way off the mark.

British Army zaps drones out of the sky with laser trucks

Re: Sadly not a item of bad englishes

Not that Columbus actually got to the mainland. Me punished anyone who said that Cuba was an island. He believed he'd reached eastern Asia. The people living there were not Christian so he happily made them slaves. Not a nice man at all.

Mr Intel leaving Intel is not a great sign... for Intel

Re: "it was a very bad fit for investors"

Agreed. They're simply gamblers in the Stock Exchange Casino.

EU irate about geo-locked Apple IDs

The entire basis of the EUs complaint is that the Single Market does what it says on the tin.

Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework

Re: Are we being fair to the AI ?

In its updated version, this AI will be offering discounted tickets for the B Ark.

Huawei's farewell to Android isn't a marketing move, it's chess

HarmonyOS goes global!

There are other countries who might be interested in using HarmonyOS. The West and China are not the whole world. I'm thinking of BRICS. India, Brazil, Indonesia are all large markets. Some of them would like to disconnect from Apple/Google if they could control their own markets.

China could easily produce a FOSS version of HarmonyOS to achieve this.

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Being from Greenwich, I'm biased. Officially, it's called UTC and aircraft use it universally, naming it Zulu.

If I ran the world (heaven forfend), the whole world would run on GMT and simply get up and go to bed at the appropriate time for their longitude. ;)

Re: I disagree

They did that as a wartime measure.

Simply get up earlier. Solves your problem without affecting the rest of us.

Arm reportedly warns Qualcomm it will cancel its licenses

Re Microsoft: It seems to me that Microsoft want to unhook from x86 and become much more architecture independent. Assuming a more layered approach to their offerings. If that is so, x86, arm and RISC-V will reside within a discrete layer. Windows 8 (spit0 was an attempt to unify the UX layer across desktop, tablet and mobile, albeit a failed one.

$180 for an overpriced, dubious SSD drive? Maybe don't join the USB Club

Re: The quacking, walking duck.

My 1TB USB stick is on my keyring as we speak. It's not USB 3.0 but cost £5.