Posts by enormous c word 157 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2015
Really? I am very happy for my file names and paths to be case-sensitive.
Unix/Linux also handles spaces perfectly well. No problem identifying which are FileSystems or directories either - maybe you should spend 5 minutes reading a manual - you'll find it really useful.
Look at the use of apostrophes `, ' & " in filenames and variables. Also the 'mount' or 'df' commands.
I beg to differ. Trump is thick as 5hit - he has the barest understanding of the majority of what he's talking about - because he doesnt unerstand, he has no doubts. He's also manipulative, astute and surrounded by admiring flunkies and that's why he is able to speak so convincingly Trump makes even Bush Jr and Reagan appear *bright* (cumulatively speaking of course not individually)
If Ubuntu can produce a Phone OS that can overwrite exiting Android OS installs, then they will have a market - it will start with those who are geeky enough to try it and grow upwards to more general users. No idea of numbers of course - but I'd suggest they look to develop builds of Ubuntu for mainstream phones from say Samsung and perhaps older iPhones to bring new life to old phones or cudos, then I think they will have a better chance than trying to introduce a new OS on a new phone. But then the real competitor to Ubuntu isn't Android it's cyanogenmod... ...why don't phone manufacturers just put cyanogen onto their phones as a differentiator to all the other Android phones?
They are feckin' idiots who speak the same language as the feckin' idiots who employ them. They then tell each other what they want to hear - never bothering (or having the capacity to understand) the organisation they are feckin' up. We all have OutSourcing Horror stories. Does anybody have any OutSourcing success stories (> 4 years after the deal was signed)?
'
'
'
'
'
Nope - thought not.
Trackpads / touchpads are useless - if you used a Thinkpad and enjoy working quickly and efficiently, then you use your keyboard and the trackpoint. touchpads are so slow and unwieldy. Shame they never really caught on beyond IBM / Lenovo. I bought (at great expense) a space-saver USB rack keyboard (essentially a Thinkpad USB keyboard complete with trackpoint) to make any other device I have to use usable. Touchpads waste huge amounts of space and constantly get in the way/get brushed by your palm when typing quickly which moves the pointer randomly.
"Inside this beautifully crafted airframe, we put all our hopes, all our dreams, all the roads we travelled, all the hardships that we faced. All this to bring you freedom."
Honestly, this hoverboard is both pointless and cool. But the American Marketing tosser who put these meaningless *inspitational words* together should be flogged for gross-insincerity. I switched off at that point - which is a pity, cos me and the wife and kids are in the market for a hoverboard each ;-)
- Exactly - all this fine did is to slightly increase the cost of doing business. Assuming an average installation fee of £25,000, then they only have to convert 1 call in 750,000. Of course that doesnt quite reflect the profits made - but you get my drift - the fine is not in proportion.
Yes, this used to be called Rapid Application Prototyping / Rapid Appication Development and has been re-invented as Aglie. By designing the logic flow with/by the users, not bothering with any specialist IT skills, limited testing, negligible documention, absolutely no version control, systems management or handover an application can be brought into production very quickly and inexpensively, then maintained at great effort, risk and cost for all time thereafter. Dont get me wrong RAD/RAP/Agile have their place, but its a double-edged sword.
In a previous job working in support, we FAXed some instructions to a users *Systems Manager* to shutdown some Databases and OS and then reboot their SCO Unix box (so you get an idea of the vintage of this story, right). The instructions went on for a couple of pages, but on the header page, I wrote a note asking them to return the FAX to me as it was the only copy we had - which they dutifully did...
Exactly, Tablets and Smartphones are the disruption devices that new employees into the workplace are already familiar with. If they have iPhones / iPads or Android phones or tabs, then it's not a big leap to use a non-windows device in the workplace. Thats why M$ is betting the farm on Windows 8/10/Metro whatever-its-called on tablets / phones / PCs / laptops - they need to capture users before they enter into the workplace. If they lose the desktops, then the servers will follow - then they just become an app vendor - but not owning the OS, they lose their competitive advantage...
I heard a story that Landrover put a cat with ample food and water in an old Defender and closed all the windows and air vents to discover how well sealed it was by measuring the changed CO2 levels. The following morning, they discovered it had escaped ;-)
The whole emissions things is a nonsense. All the manufacturers cheat on their emissions and mpg ratings. They use rolling roads, tape up door seals, remove passenger side wing mirrors, run on a near empty tank with dangerously over-inflated tyres on deserted roads, driven by *specialist* drivers.
The original buy of vmWare by EMC was a masterstroke. vmWare got the backing of a tech company with deep pockets while EMC as a storage (critically not a server) vendor didnt compromise vmWare's server-agnostic reputation. In time vmWare came to own the x86 space in the DataCenter. Would a buyout by DELL harm that position? Probably not these days - so long as DELL don't abuse their position and keep vmWare as an independant subsidiary.
X-Terminals and Unix. Remember those? Thats the only time Thin Clients ever really worked in a desirable way - put all the presentation stuff (window decoration / keyboard mouse events) onto the local device and leave the application on the server with an efficient comms protocol between the two - designed from the ground up properly. Everything else has been an ugly hack and sucks.
Yep! I suspect the *outing* of VWs transgressions has more to do with the US domestic car manufacturers killing the competition than a lowly US testing station discovering VWs SW cheat. Few US cars are diesel powered. Many imports from Europe and Asia are - simples...
"How long before customers begin to sue VW for the sudden crappy performance of their vehicles?"
:-) Expect a cottage industry of after-market modders to put the old SW back after VW make their mandatory updates. Its all just one big mess really.
As bad as VW have been - it is the politicians + environmentalists + lobbyists who campaigned for lowered CO2 and the cock-eyed legislators that jumped on the CO2 popularity band wagon and neglected to consider the bigger problem of poisonous NOx.
Used VW prices will plummet either because performance will be cripped post-fix or TAX will increase sans-fix. I said it before, expect to see after-market modders restoring the old EMS SW post-VW-update...
VW Audi are the masters of re-platforming - the flagship VW Phaeton, Audi A8, Bentley Continental all share the same platform. These engine management shenanigans could well cross the whole product line. I wonder which other manufacturers have also cheated the tests - there will be others, have no doubt.
I would put good money on many if not most other manufacturers are doing this.
Interesting that this was *discovered* (actually suspected for years) in the USA (where few US produced cars are diesel) just as their auto industry is expected to go into a slump. I wonder who *dobbed them in*?
If you have an affected diesel VW - you could make the case that it is not fit for purpose or that it was sold under false pretences and just get your money back. What will VW do with a 3 year old car no-one wants. What about all the inner-city located cars that have low/no-TAX concessions due to their stated low-emissions? Where are you going to park now? After the SW *upgrade* has killed performance who will want a gutless VW diesel?
Expect lots of VW diesels on eBay for very little money real soon.
Perhaps some enterprising after-market *downgrades* to restore the performance lost by the forthcoming emissions *upgrade*.
So Winterkorn has quit VW - thus side-stepping the coming crisis and avoiding the horrendous job of rebuilding VWs shattered reputation and the huge sums in reparations that will surely follow. He would have quit anyway - now he doesnt have to bother sorting out his mess. In a couple of years he'll just turn up somewhere else - like they always do...
Rather than waste time trying to force PCs into an inappropriate environment - better to just accept that android smart phones are the platform of the developing world and provide tools to expand on that. eg external keyboard / large external screen
As I understand it, we're on the down-curve of the last IceAge, I never understood why we are sinking so many resources into trying to reverse a planet-wide natural cycle that takes thousands of years and have repeated hundreds of times of billions of years (you know the story of king Canute ordering the incoming tide to recede) when we should be preparing for the inevitabile...
- really? We have a 12year old Dyson. I replaced the motor for one found on Amazon for £15 last year, still goes like new. I have a friend who *salvaged* Dysons from the local tip and re-sold them as re-conditioned - all he ever did was replace the *secret* filter. Dysons are reliable and work. Because they're so common parts are cheap if you really need them.
The Sinclair C5 was neither a car or super.
I'm guessing Dyson are aiming for an autonomous street cleaning drone - inevitably using *ball* technology and twin-helix / vortex and a transparent bin so you can see the used condoms, fag ends, dead pigeons and MacD' Burger packaging whirling around in there...
This is really simple - the TV Licence is _already_ a subscription package to the BBC. Licence fee holders (ie the BBCs existing subscription service) should get access (as they already) do to current programming whether it is via Broadcast or Cable or via Internet. Non-subscribers should be able to pay-per view - including international subscribers. The BBC Archives should be opened up for Pay-per-view.
Unfortunately, the whole renewables / sustainable energy thing was obviously a scam from the start. Starting from the 1970's, environmentalists have gone from one hysterical theory to another by looking too narrowly at data taken from too short a time-scale.
In my life time, we have been about to enter into a new Ice Age, then more recently Man Made Global Warming (later re-branded as Global Warming once it was realised that man had little effect, then more recently re-branded as Climate-Change). The environmentalist scare-mongering was seized upon by academics seeking research-grants, then politicians to control populations with rising se level nonsense, then industrialists saw an opportunity to introduce disruptive technologies and charge premium rates for them before the facts came in and the trough of money emptied.
Burning oil / coal / gas is clearly wasteful (once its gone its gone for good) but a 1.5% reduction of non-renewable energy consumption is dire. Nuclear-energy looks like being humanities only recourse - if the environmentalists hadn't been so successful in moving away from Nuclear to wind/sun, we would be a lot closer to clean nuclear energy today.
Seriously, why do the manufacturers still insist on only supplying shiny screens (I know they look good in the low-light conditions of the PC showroom) but seriously - everyone knows they're shite. I can kind of understand why the manufacturers dabbled with shiny screens to start with - but why keep doing it?
Lenovo / HP / Dell / Apple - listen to me - if it has a shiny screen, I won't but it because it is unusable in the real world.
Just one device with a removable battery and a removable full-size touchscreen or a half-size touch-screen + half-size keyboard. Their choices are simple either innovate back to being cool (in which case, I'd suggest that the *coolness* should be in the physicality of the device - not just the software) -or- re-badge someone else's Android Phone -or- a fork of cyanogen
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
