Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

That 70s Show: Windows sprouts Sets and Timeline features

Re: Sets = SuperBinder?

Office Binder in its Office 97 guise and couldn't get it working reliably

So, much like modern Microsoft software then?

Re: Oh so THAT'S what Hypercard was for

as there were NO support docs of any kind

Of course not. This *was* the 70's! Where anything to do with computers was mysterious and involved techo-geekology.

(My first computer was a Nascom-1. It arrived as a bag with a motherboard and lots and lots of components. ISTR that a lot of soldering was involved. I think I'm going to blame everythings that's happened since on inhaling lots of lead vapours in my teenage years..)

Re: the 70's? *ANYTHING* but the 70's!

Prog Rock and the early days of electronic music

Hmm.. Yes, Genesis, and Jean Michel Jarre..

(For some reason I never got into Kraftwerk and can't really stand their music..)

Re: the 70's? *ANYTHING* but the 70's!

There were *some* good things about the 70's...

One of them being prog music. The other is that I became a teenager during the 70's.

One of those is better than the other.

Oops: LinkedIn country subdomains SSL cert just expired

renewed on 3rd November and they didn't install it until after the old one expired

Which is (somehow) even worse - they have gone to the trouble of renewing, but not the small bit of extra effort to install it..

certs are still as secure and valid as they were yesterday

Secure - yes (possibly - if an organisation isn't organised enough to have people or processes checking for certificate expiry, it makes you wonder what else they have failed to do..). Valid - no. Let me explain the concept of an expiry date again..

Re: And who is to say Linkedin doesn't run on Linux?

I'll simply say that Emacs and vi are both terrible, and nano is the only decent Linux text editor.

Burn the heretic! The holy Vi should *never* be mentioned in the same sentance as the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned Emacs[1]. Nano is all right though.

[1] It corrupts my soul to have even typed thaT evil name. I shall now repeat 500 :wq! commands until all is clean again.

Win 10 creators update offers new reality opportunity

Re: What about Valve/HTC/Vive?

An article on VR and AR that fails to mention the Vive?

Presumably because it's an article paid for by Asus and Asus and HTC are competitors..

"This article was supported by: Asus"

Wouldn't it be better to have that in a larger font and at the start of the article? After all, if it's a bought-and-paid-for article it's better to notify the punters up-front..

Dawn of The Planet of the Phablets in 2019 will see off smartphones

back streets of an urban town with one of these monstrosities clamped to their skulls

You obviously don't remember the days of the stereo boomboxes that the 80's yoof used to carry..

Re: They cast the bones....

And we all assumed the era of the charlatan soothsayers was long over..

No - the discolourations on the lobe of this sheeps liver means that it will continue for at least a couple of years.

Anybody else read that sentence and think WTF?

It's IDC. Much like politicians, they have learnt the art of saying nothing while using a large number of words..

Re: Pocketalypse

ideal form factor for a phone is about 3.5"

Unless, of course, one is partially-sighted.. Yes, you can make things bigger but once you start losing most of the information off the screen it all becomes a tad pointless.

Yes, I could take my glasses off and hold the screen closer but then it's too close for stereoscopic vision..

"Analyst outfit IDC"

Shouldn't that be: "Haruspices-reading outfit"?

After all, their "predictions" are about as accurate as telling the future from a flight of birds[1] or the state of a dead sheep's liver..

[1] "One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy".. Or, in ancient Rome, the flight of geese or eagles..

We go live to the Uber-Waymo court battle... You are not going to believe this. The judge certainly doesn't

Re: Uber...

order it online and by the case

I've ordered the "by conveyor belt from a tanker" option..

As Apple fixes macOS root password hole, here's what went wrong

Re: Looks Like Violation of the KISS Principle

If the user does not exist, fail the login and that is it

You seem slightly slow of comprehension so I'll use small words:

A root user is created on every install but is marked as disabled and has no password. This has been the case for (pretty much) every version of OS X.

This bug comes about because of a logic flaw that makes the root account active, even if it doesn't have a password. This is unacceptable. But it sure as hell ain't "CREATING" a new user..

Re: Everyone hyping - slow down a little

Not denying it hasn't been witnessed - just not on EVERY machine.

As I've posted previously, I can't get it to trigger on Macs joined to an active directory domain. I suspect that those are going to be a small minority though.

Re: Oh good, auditing the process

I have to laugh at the number of bugs that slip through.

I'm reminded of the old phrase: "The enemy of security is complexity". And modern OS's are very complex indeed..

Re: Bad but...

I have been hacked once due to a FTP bug in 2000

I've only been hacked once (that I know of!) - I set up an account on one of my linux boxes for one of my brothers and he changed his password to be the same as his user name..

Found someone busily trying (and failing) to install a rootkit the next day. Fortunately, it was a pretty stripped-down box and had a minimal attack surface (apart from squishy-meatbag induced ones).

Re: Mistakes happen

Twice is enough.

Interestingly, I couldn't get the flaw to trigger on any of our AD-joined Macs (but could on ones that were not joined to the domain).

As other people have said, it would be nice if Apple were to spend less time carefully designing more emoticons and more doing basic QA.

Lauri Love appeal: 'If he's dead, no victim's going to get anything'

Re: The UK government - throwing it's citizens under a bus...

Of cause we are, we need a trade deal post Brexit

Although, judging by the Orange Baboons' current conduct, that likelyhood[1] is getting less and less..

[1] Leaving aside the question of whether he can actually deliver on any promises that he's made - after all, his current track record isn't good.

Scotland, now is your time… to launch Brexit Britain into SPAAAACE!

and the obvious place to base it is Prestwick

Well - it benefits the local area economy too - think about how much wealth can be extracted from those who don't make it all the way to the spaceport..

Isn't Scotland (at least currently...) a little too far from the Equator for launches to be efficient/economical/competitive?

Don't be silly and bring mere physics and orbital mechanics in! After all, this being a political process, making sure that votes are bought in is *far* more important..

Can't wait for 5G? Don't then, Gigabit LTE will be around for ages

Re: Gigabit LTE & 5G, what a f**king joke!

my indoor signal is almost non existent

@PiltdownMan

It's because either:

a) you live in a castle and your walls give a 99% signal degradation or

b) You are only a historical scientific fraud created during the Edwardian era and thus don't exist..

Whatever happened to that plan of using old BT phone boxes as nanocells?

I suspect that they came up against the fact that most of the old red boxes have been ripped out and are not available for use.

After all, why leave them in place as a target for vandalism?

FCC boss Ajit defends axing net neutrality by… attacking Cher

Prioritizing packets according to the type of data they contain? That's fine and is standard practice

Indeed. VoIP being one thing where it's very good that packets are prioritised.

They already throttle the heck out of sites... but so does Google

Out of interest, how do you think that Google is throttling sites?

iPhone X Face ID fooled again by 'evil twin' mask

And it can't be changed

I think you'll find that diabetic retinaopthy (speeling? Doesn't look right) can sort out changing your retina for you..

Bulletproof Coffee lacks bulletproof security: Nerd brain juice biz hacked, cards gulped

Re: gotta love the quotes in fastcompany

IMO Butter belongs on toast, crumpets, baked potatoes

And (as ghee) in cooking curries. Adds plenty of flavour (as long as you don't have the curry so supersaturated with chilli that you can't taste anything else)

Military test centre for frikkin' laser cannon opens in Hampshire

but needs to be a bit smaller for a shark :)

Combine the two - hence 'whale shark'.

Would give it some teeth too. Assuming that the target is out of the water..

Dark fibre arts: Ofcom is determined to open up BT's network

Re: The consumer would like some of Ofcom's attention too

What they care about is cost, and what they can do with their Internet connection.

Let me guess - you are fairly young. There are a *lot* of older people who don't care about such things - they just want to be able to pick up the phone and call someone. They see "the internet" if they have it as a necessary evil to be able to do email and (maybe) look at some websites. They didn't grow up with computers (let alone intenet) and just don't see things that way.

So why force them into something that is of no value to them and that they won't know how to use?

Re: The consumer would like some of Ofcom's attention too

These days, we should be plugging our telephone handsets into our routers

Which of course, work really reliably if the power goes off..

There is a very good argument for keeping the POTS - it's (largely) independent of local power. Sure, you can use a UPS but how many people know what that is, let alone have one?

And yes, a lot of people have mobiles - but a lot of people don't. Or can't remember how to use or charge them..

Boss made dirt list of minions' mistakes, kept his own rampage off it

Re: Ah - the loud bang

I worked for PC World

And are prepared to admit it? You are braver then me..

Re: We turned it on its head

Plugged 110V kit into 240V supply

We had a whole shipment of Trigem 386 (or maybe 486 - it was a fair while ago and some bottles of wine have been had since..) machines delivered to us with the power supply switch set to 110v (this was the days before autosensing PSUs).

We used to build the machines in tranches of 20 (unbox, cable up, flick bench power supply on). 20 almost simultaneous pops as 20 PSU units emitted the magic smoke. And 20 motherboards fried be oivervoltage leakage.

At least the supplier admitted their mistake and replaced the machines at their expense. We did add a "check power supply settings" to the workflow though.

SurfaceBook 2 battery drains even when plugged in

thought that someone would buy a computer and use it to its advertised max potential

In the early 80's, we bought a set of mains-bourne intercom units for use at home (and up to Dad's greenhouse) from Radio Shack[1].

They kept failing - they would work reliably for about a week and then one (or more) of the units would fail and need to be replaced.

In the end, Dad asked for our money back. Shop manager tried to argue with us that they were failing "because you keep them plugged in all the time and they were not made for that". Dad pointed out the fallacy of selling intercoms that required you to go to the other end to ask someone to turn on the intercom before you could use the intercom..

All done in front of a fairly full shop. Money was refunded ASAP so as to not lose more business than they already had..

[1] Which was our first mistake. Every bit of electronics we bought from there seemed to fail after a couple of months. Stuff bought elsewhere was reliable..

Royal Navy destroyer leaves Middle East due to propeller problems

Re: Sand I guess.

Iran/US conflict? Did I miss another war?

Give it time mate, give it time. The orange baboon will order an invasion to distract from his disasterous tenure as Gibbon-in-chief..

a variable pitch prop that doesn't vary anymore

Military science - constants aren't and variables won't..

Re: Navy Lark Questions (@TRT -:you beat me to it again)

<correct size Allen wrench^W^W big hammer[1] for</i>

FTFY.

[1] If at first you don't succeed, use a bigger hammer..

Re: Propellor problems?

Cavitation damage, I wonder...

Too many sweeties perhaps? And not brushing regulary?

(Yes, yes, I know that cavitation is bubble-erosion caused by incorrect design.. surely the RN can design a propeller properly though?)

Re: Less is more? -@James O'Shea

A lot of our present military kit seems to be the exact reverse.

Hence Heinleins' comment about someone in a high-tech war outfit being finished off by being bashed over the head by a caveman while high-tech guy is trying to read the status indicators on their battlesuit..

Re: Less is more?

I'm rather hoping that they will invade us to restore order and get rid of a dysfunctional government post-Brexit, as the Dutch did in 1688.

I think I'd rather prefer that it was the Norwegians and Danish like it was in the 900's (minus the looting, rape and pillage of course).

Bring back Danelaw!

Re: Less is more?

We also need to be able to invade France when the time comes. The time will come, obviously

Indeed. However, given how well it turned out last time[1] I suspect that the Scilly Isles might be a better target.

[1] Won the military battle, lost the political process..

Re: I knew it was a mistake

and that sound Nigel Farage

What sound? Hopefully the sound of pips squeezed..

Permissionless data slurping: Why Google's latest bombshell matters

Re: our data has value

So our data has value, shouldn't we all monetise it.

This is my line with the marketing survey scammers - if they want my data (that they are going to sell), then I was a fee for providing the data.

Somewhat surprisingly, they tend to put the phone down at that point..

Re: Google is the retail arm of the NSA

"Disaster Resilience"..

I saw them at a festival once. The guitarist was OK but the lead singer needs to go..

Re: Google is Evil

They won't stop until they have ground you down into the ground, you are bankrupy, penniless, homeless and completely destitute. Then you won't be a target for their advertisers any longer.

Does not compute. Google don't want you penniless - they want you to carry on spending so that advertising and marketing companies carry on buying adverts and data from Google.

Google exists to make money. End of story. Like most large corporates, morals are discarded the moment that they interfere with the holy process of making money.

Re: You can accuse Oracle of many things but it isn't an ad-slinger...

You very much are, indirectly, by questioning the credentials of someone trying to break up an important monopoly.

In your zeal to convict Google of everything, everywhere, you seem to have got a tad mono-focussed on the subject.

It's possible to hold the two opinions at the same time:

1) Google is bad

2) Oracle is also bad and trying to find any vulnerability in Google that they can (and there are plenty to find) because it suits their business objectives.

So, it's entirely possible to point out that Oracle is not accusing Google out of an overwhelming zeal to preserve the body politic but rather out of the desire to (possibly) deflect observation of their own dirty linen.

My take? A pox on both their houses. Both deserve more governmental and social oversight. Both deserve having their wings clipped (as do Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft etc etc etc) and some transparency applied to their actions and what they do with data about people.

Re: Are we surprised?

rest assured it will happen sooner than you or I might wish for, I suspect

And, at about the same time, BASILISK STARE will also go live.

Be afraid, be very afraid..

Possible cut to British F-35 order considered before Parliament

Re: First sensible comment I have seen.

The drones of course are controlled from thousands of miles away so no pilots necessary

So - how would they cope with jamming and/or EMP effects? Pretty hard to remote-control something if you have no connectivity to it..

Crypto-jackers enlist Google Tag Manager to smuggle alt-coin miners

Re: Google Tag Manager allows marketers to create code to dynamically inject JavaScript snippets

And, having updated Firefox to Quantum, I'm happy that the NoScript dev has produced a version for the new plugin type..