Posts by gobaskof

Keep it Together, Microsoft: New mode for vid-chat app Teams reminds everyone why Zoom rules the roost

Teams does have a Linux app. Work has gone almost entirely MS teams now so I have the app. On the surface it works. But over time the CPU just ramps up and up and up until it is maxed out. The more active teams is the faster it ramps up. The also keep adding features to the Windows version that are not in the Linux version. The most annoying part of that is all the garden variety smug bastards making sarcastic comments about how you should swap operating system, because monopolistic behaviour is to be rewarded.

Teams also seems to be totally unaware that people collaborate in teams that are outside their host institution. Probably because MS hate working with others.

The worst thing about teams is that there are about 5 ways to join a meeting. From a team, from calling someone, from a link, from the calendar in teams, from a chat. This means the start of every meeting you have to find which subset of ways to joining the meeting will work.

Jit.si works fine until there are 15 or so people on the call. Then I swallow my pride and use Zoom.

LibreOffice community protests at promotion of paid-for editions, board says: 'LibreOffice will always be free software'

Re: "Personal Edition"

Libre Edition is a good idea. They can then have

LibreOffice Libre Edition

and

LibreOffice Non-Libre Edition

at least this is honest.

If they say that is for personal use only they may need to change the project name to "The software formerly known as LibreOffice".

Sure is wild that Apple, Google app store monopolies are way worse than what Windows got up to, sniffs Microsoft prez

Stores might suck, proprietary protocols are the real killer

Store monopolies are frustrating (much more so for a dev), but I find it far less sickening than purposefully incompatible services and protocols.

Exchange server tried to only work with through their own protocol limiting access to our favourite email clients. Even now they support IMAP, some institutions refuse to enable it (my university IT team claim IMAP is not GDPR compliant!! so they can't turn it on).

Worse than email servers are all the messaging apps. No one would accept a phone that only calls people on the same network provider, or an email account at only emails accounts on the same domain. So why the hell do we accept that WhatsApp/Teams/Slack/Skype/Hangouts/Facebook-Messenger all can't talk to each other. Same for video calls.

Store policies suck, but I have F-Droid on my phone and I run Linux and as a consumer I avoid most of this pain. But if a collaboration is on slack, or my university holds meetings on teams, or a conference sets up a WhatsApp, etc. This is where I can't avoid proprietary services and still do my job, and for what? Sending sodding text messages back and forward. It is not a Monopoly problem per se. There are loads of the bastards, but companies like Microsoft are able to abuse their monopoly on say office products to funnel universities/schools onto their application. I would take no change in the "app store" world the world could agree on an instant messaging/group messaging protocol, and a voice/video protocol (and all the big players actually use it.)

Google isn't even trying to not be creepy: 'Continuous Match Mode' in Assistant will listen to everything until it's disabled

" you can interact with the big G anywhere at any time, so pervasively that you do not notice it."

As a physicist I would argue that this has always been true for interacting with big G. You don't don't notice it, until you fall over.

Unlucky for some, GitLab 13.0 is DevSecOps in a box, but will it play nicely with others?

Code coverage/defects view for master is not in ultimate/gold nor graphs over time. The only thing is the diff on merge requests. These features are on the GitLab roadmap. I collect the json artefact and have a script that renders the information I need to review the code.

I do my daily work on GitLab, one of my groups has a Gold license through the OSS scheme, the others are on standard GitLab. I can't stand GitHub when I go back to it now for the couple of projects that I contribute to on there, the UI just seems so weird and clunky.

Google+ replacement ‘Currents’ to end beta and debut in G Suite on July 6th

Re: Another artificial need

"Right here, on my desktop, my collection of business emails spans the last 20 years of my life. Easily searchable and accessible, even without the net."

My work have "fixed" this by disabling IMAP so that Linux users are expected to use the outlook web client. The is only accessible online and the search sucks. It is a truly modern experience.

Got $50k spare? Then you can crack SHA-1 – so OpenSSH is deprecating flawed hashing algo in a 'near-future release'

I used to work at NIST, which famously does a lot of security research and advised SHA-1 be disallowed. However, the IT teams inside NIST were often total dogshit, there was a lot of SHA-1 floating around on internal sites. In 2016 they started providing a new VDI service which allowed Linux users like me to access Windows on the occasions that we needed. The service was given a new SHA-1 cert. When I was unable to connect due to security policy the IT team happily gave me instructions on how to turn off disallowing SHA-1.

The only way forward is to just remove support!

OK, so you've air-gapped that PC. Cut the speakers. Covered the LEDs. Disconnected the monitor. Now, about the data-leaking power supply unit...

Re: Yes we know they squeak

Just your air gapped PC in a room with incredibly loud white noise right across the audio spectrum. That won't annoy anyone.

Eclipse boss claims Visual Studio Code is an open-source poseur – though he would say that, wouldn't he?

But it is quite good!

I have often been described as a "tin-foil twat" based on the strength of my anti-Microsoft sentiments. I am one of those people that migrated away from GitHub the week Microsoft bought it. However, I bent the knee and installed VSCode about 2 months ago as I couldn't get the refactoring tools I needed into Kate, and I hate the full fat Eclipse IDE. It really is a great editor.

What I came to realises is that if I can't get behind a cross-platform open-source project with over 1000 contributors, then what am I really fighting for? Having to turn off the telemetry crap was rather discouraging, but the actual editor experience is really good. I cannot think I have ever said that the user experience was good for any Microsoft software before, and that is the power of open-source users added the features they needed. I think we the nerds won this round, Microsoft are doing it our way, we should encourage that.

Microsoft decrees that all high-school IT teachers were wrong: Double spaces now flagged as typos in Word

Re: Isn't it just a historical anachronism?

LaTeX adds a stretched space between sentences, so that there is extra spacing than between words unless \frenchspacing is enabled. See https://latexref.xyz/_005cspacefactor.html#g_t_005cspacefactor

Re: The Brexit brigade will be up in arms!

Doesn't matter how many spaces I type LaTeX will remove excess ones. I always get an extra space after a sentence even when I don't type it (unless I enable \frenchspacing). All spaces are equal but some are more equal than others.

We could all do with a bit of empathy in our systems, says Mozilla as it ships Firefox 75 in the thick of global pandemic

Re: I wish they'd stop messing with things that don't need "fixing"!

I might have to give that a go. I can't see any benefit to the God-awful new bar.

Canary-build Microsoft browser blocks Microsoft extension from inflicting Microsoft search engine

Re: "I just can't take it seriously with a name like that."

As a weirdo Duck-Duck-Go user that hates Microsoft the only thing I have to say is.. Good point.

Thunderbird is go: Mozilla's email client lands in a new nest

Re: I've stopped using it

How do you use TB when forced on Exchange? Do you use DavMail or ExQuilla? I have not tried ExQuilla (it doesn't support calendar I think), and I have found that DavMail auto accepts calendar requests which is really annoying as everyone at work uses calendar requests.

I am stuck in webmail hell as my work machine is Linux, would like a way out.

Chrome suddenly using Bing after installing Office 365 Pro Plus... Yeah, that might have been us, mumbles Microsoft

Antitrust

It seems Microsoft will never stop being a company that abuse their monopoly to promote their other "services".

The delights of on-site working – sun, sea and... WordPad wrangling?

Science equipment to this day is still sometimes shipped new with GPIB (IEE-488). Some are finally taking up USB. However often if there is USB and GPIB, you find yourself using the GPIB because some companies do crap proprietary DLLs for the USB communication that go out of date or don't work on your operating system (some of us run experiments on linux). Some do use USB as a simple virtual serial port, and slowly people seem to be moving onto USBTMC.

Oracle and Google will fight in court over Java AGAIN and this time it's going to the Supremes

Oracle’s innovations

"for copying Oracle’s innovations"

You mean "for using something that Oracle purchased afterwards, just so they could sue"

Larry, Larry, Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow

With patent fights and IP rights

And lawyers all in a row

(Poem attributed to an El Reg comment from donkey's years ago)

Microsoft's phrase of the week was 'tech intensity' and, no, we're not sure what it means either

Re: Tech Intensity is nearly always 1

Exactly, I have a negative amount of trust in Microsoft yet they still get a positive result!?

Open-source defenders turn on each other in 'bizarre' trademark fight sparked by GPL fall out

Re: Standing

Christoph Hellwig sued VMware not SFC. He is a key linux dev who wrote the code and owns the copyright. SFC, supported and financed the lawsuit.

"hasty" litigation

SFC started trying to negotiate with VMware in 2011, and were instantly directed to the lawyers. They tried to negotiate without litigation for over 3 years, then eventually filed suit in 2015. If this is too hasty, what do you want? Should we wait until everyone who wrote the copyright has been dead for 70 years, that would solve the problem.

Stallman's Free Software Foundation says we need a free phone OS

Fingers crossed

I hope they will succeed in a feasible phone operating system where others have failed, as android is getting more and more frustrating. Hopefully they will take the easy route of starting AOSP and building something from there. No it is not perfect or ideal but it would foster compatibility and it might actually get finished unlike GNU HURD.

Also a pity to see octave fall off the list. I know many people are moving over to numpy, but personally I still prefer Octave for data analysis over numpy.

'Geek gene' denied: If you find computer science hard, it's your fault (or your teacher's)

'Big cock gene' denied: If you find your penis is small, its your fault (you didn't wish enough!)

Intelligent Richard from the Institute of Male Members has a keen interest in other men's trouser snakes. Clever Dick, as he is most commonly known, has devised a hypothesis to disprove that penis size is genetic. "If penis size is genetic then logically there is exactly one gene that switches, and thus penis sizes will fall into two distinct categories: tiny todgers and enormous erections. If penis sizes show a single Bell curve then genetic theories of penis sizes will be at an end." Reports Clever Dick, explaining to us his Bell-End hypothesis.

The results are in with a clear Bell curve, thus disproving the genetic link to penis size. Clever Dick reports that the most likely explanation is that how much time children spend thinking about their penis size is far more relevant than genes. He goes on to explain that he hardly ever thought about his John Thomas as a child, a decision he severely regrets. He does, however, hope that online news will pick up on his dubious research and present it as fact with exaggerated headlines.

City of Moscow to ditch 600k Exchange and Outlook licences

Well if it can support standards then it is aleady ahead of the game

Put in some SMPTP, IMAP, LDAP, and maybe CalDAV, and you are well ahead of sodding Exchange for adhering to the standards the rest of the world use.

Exchange is the software metaphor for an iPhone7 lots of shiny alternatives you don't want and no way to connect it so normal stuff you already have.

GitHub gets all grown-up with better code review, project management, etc

Re: Getting ready to be bought by Microsoft

"That would certainly give GitLab a major boost in popularity."

I would move everything next day. Microsoft already deleted all my emails from a dormant hotmail account in an "upgrade". Customer service usefully told me to "log in more often" to prevent this. With GitHub they can delete my code too if they feel like it.

Baidu peddles PaddlesPaddles, floats open source AI tech

Not a promo

This article is clearly not a promo because I can actually comment on it. Huawei must have given them less money, as their article was clearly labelled as a promo (comments non-existent) rather than masquerading as tech news.

Ice to see you! Windows 10 fix for freezing PCs finally flung at folks

Re: WTF?

You portioned your system to put core OS files on one partition and data (including app data) on another? This way what ever happens to the OS you can replace it while keeping your data. Standard practice for the competent computer user...

"The competent computer user" - no wonder it broke Windows 10, no one expects a competent computer user to have Windows 10.

BSODs at scale: We laugh at your puny five storeys, here's our SIX storey #fail

Re: and over at the entertainment industry . . .

Chinese knock off sound desks causing conference interruptions? Windows on supported hardware is normally the culprit. The only conference interruption I have ever had when speaking was at a conference where we couldn't use our own laptops. Adobe reader decided to notify me of a new version 10 mins into a full screen presentation. This, I suppose, is Adobe incompetence not Microsoft, but still it felt like a Genuine Windows Experience™.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update is borking boxen everywhere

It is good that microsoft is on hand with excellent advice

Just wipe your machine and re-install.

Luckily most of your average Windows users are completely backed up, and those who are not can easily get the files back with a linux live CD.

Luckily all their personalised settings are simply in a few plain text (hidden) files in their home directory so after the reinstall all personalised settings can be restored.

And most Windows users pick Windows due to the speed of the install and their love of making their own bootable disks. Not just because it comes as standard.

Personally, I feel I am missing out on the fun here. None of my Kubuntu installs have ever kerploded on me like this.

Quip away, but Microsoft Excel 365's REST APIs win the day

300 excel functions!?

I can just imagine the tears of joy streaming down the faces of web app programmers. Previously stuck in an environment where they are forced to use awful Turing complete languages, they will now have OVER 300 excel functions!!! It is like Christmas came early! I hope they integrate MS paint next, how can I design websites without a shitty spray can?

Mozilla 404s '404 Not Found' pages: Firefox fills in blanks with archive.org copies

As long as there is a big clear message saying that this is an archive and the real page is missing.. then this is a good idea. I assume they will do this, but who knows..

Microsoft takes five months to replace broken patch

5 months

5 months to fix a critical update to a core service? That is fast for Microsoft...

Apple gets judge to hit ctrl-alt-delete on $625m FaceTime patent troll

Patent reform

Now please

Windows 10 grabs 22 per cent desktop market share in a year

Other headlines:

"Despite being hugely unpopular, 150 million Windows 8 users don't want a free copy of windows 10."

"Nearly 80% of Windows 7 users dexterous enough to avoid Windows nagware!"

(I suppose 2 isn't really true with Enterprise being nagware free, but still..)

My Microsoft Office 365 woes: Constant crashes, malware macros – and settings from Hell

Re: Thunderbird with Lightening

Thunderbird is great. But if you are forced to use Microsoft's awful exchange nonsense to connect to the email server, you need to install davmail to translate (unless you want to pay for the custom exchange addon someone made). I use thunderbird and davmail at work, it works, but it is definitely not a simple solution would recommend to someone who isn't tech saavy.

This is why we have standard! It annoys me when a proprietary protocol becomes more common that a recognised standard. It is a step backwards and everyone else suffers.

Microsoft adds useful feature to PowerPoint. Seriously

This will make conferences hell - like prezi did

These features are probably good in the hands of serious presenters. As a scientist at conferences, there are too many people who present badly, and spend too much time designing overcrowded slides rather than considering 3 things:

1. What do I want the audience to learn?

2. What do I need to say so they can learn this?

3. What visual information will add to this?

When Prezi first introduced its non-linear presentations, suddenly a bunch of enthusiastic PhD students spent hours writing incomprehensible talks, where the field of view spirals around zooming in and out of a giant page, inducing motion sickness to the audience. The first one I saw got people somewhat engaged, I heard the audience guessing where it would next zoom, no one learned anything.

Bringing these features to powerpoint will bring the ability to write mind warping presentations to everyone who has never strayed from powerpoint. And you just know that everyone who still uses slide transitions will be all over this feature, like a tramp on hot chips.

We ain't in 1996 anymore, Dorothy: SQL Server 2016 proves it

Was this an advert or an article?

Windows 10 a failure by Microsoft's own metric – it won't hit one billion devices by mid-2018

Re: "run MS Office"

"Appears you can use Office365 using a Linux based web browser:"

I have to do this at work occasionally when people send me things. Normally presentations to look over and forms to fill in.. But large files wont open in the browser version so the presentations rarely work and lots of other features don't work including the in-word form thing. Maybe this improved over the last few months. I just log into a VDI machine for these things, but it is ridiculous that we need to do that.

@ mark 177

"Historically, yes. But those monopoly days are over for MS. Now we can tell them to take a hike."

Try buying a laptop from a major vendor without Windows (or Mac). You can either go the somewhat specialist route of system76 or the like, or start arguing with sales about Windows refunds which is often near impossible. Acer will let you buy the computer then mail it to support (at your own cost) for an unspecified refund. Dell used to offer some linux machines but that is harder and most Dell's suck.

Looking good, Gnome: Digesting the Delhi in our belly

Re: Dead Parrot

Also the F3 to split screen in Nautilus disappeared. When people complained on a forum that it was a good feature, they were told to set up pack left/right hotkeys. Simply failing to realise that on a small screen the sidebar now appears twice and there is little space. Plus all the move/copy to other pane options disappeared.

Still, Unity is the worst. An almost uncustomisable is about the most arrogant program you can design. Do you really believe your favorite layout is SO much better than anyone else's in every single possible situation that you can just remove any other options. Are you Steve Jobs?

Microsoft joins battery-saving browser bandwagon with Edge claims

Billions of data points of aggregated telemetry

"Average power consumption per browser based on billions of data points of aggregated telemetry."

What is the power consumption associated with monitoring, logging, and sending data about everything the user is doing constantly?

Stopped buying Oracle's kit? You've literally decimated its profit

Re: "[L]iterally decimated"

Good use of the word "Decimate" bad use of the word "profit".

Kill Flash now. Or patch these 36 vulnerabilities. Your choice

US Goernment also hooked on flash

I am currently working across the pond at a US Federal government institute. On one hand they talk the talk about how all the computers must be super secure, on the other hand all of their IT security training (and all other online training) is only accessible with Flash.

Microsoft planning blockchain-as-a-service for Azure apps

Re: BaaS

BaaS, Nowhere near as useful as FOaaS!

http://foaas.com/

Apple WWDC: OS X is dead, long live macOS

Great idea!

'an "SOS" function that automatically places an emergency call and sends medical ID information (such as allergies or health conditions) when the side button is held down.'

Luckily the emergency services wont have to deal with nuisance calls, because no on has ever accidentally held in a watch button.

Facebook to kill native chat, bring opt-in crypto to Messenger

Urg

I hope the browser chat will still work on the desktop site. I work in a basement deep underground. No phone signal, no internet for non-work devices, and I don't install non work software on work machines. Facebook is very useful because I can still contact people if I need to and have them respond quickly. (Email would work except most people check it so infrequently.)

Why Oracle will win its Java copyright case – and why you'll be glad when it does

This article conflates two important issues

There are two distinct issues in this case and they have very different results for the FLOSS community.

1. Is and API itself copyrightable

An API is how other programs interface with your software. The people writing that code, as far as I am concerned, are users of your software. Hence the API is the user interface. Copyright doesn't extend to user interfaces as was decided in the case Lotus v. Borland. If the court rules against Google this then this is devastating for open source efforts to duplicate the functionality of propriety software while maintaining compatibility.

2. Direct copying of code sections:

IF it is clear that google did copy the Java source code then this article is correct. THEN result for FLOSS should rule in Oracles favour, as we need to be able to protect our source for the GPL to be powerful. It is a big IF and a big THEN and I admit I haven't delved into the code, but a cursory glance at the example seem to point to code stealing as all the private variable have identical names.

So as long as the court decides that an API is a user interface and copyright doesn't extend to it, this becomes just a code stealing case. I am disappointed that the API distinction is largely glossed over in this piece.

Broadcom, Apple sueballed

This nonsense has to stop

All the patent nonsense has to stop. Look at the first patent it is essentially a mathematical formulation. If we can patent maths then all bets are off. Normal software patents, are bad enough, but this is frankly insane.

US tech CEOs demand Congress programs US kids to be tech workers

Re: @noh1bvisas

I am in the US on a J1 visa in a university setting. There are academics who are exceptionally important to the work that goes on in this physics department who are past 5 years on their J1. These people are on H1B and applying for green cards. This is very common in an academic setting. Yes tech companies abuse H1Bs, but just completely removing a system rather than clamping down on abuses is crazy.

Linux greybeards release beta of systemd-free Debian fork

Init freedom

You have "init freedom" as demonstrated by your new distro, easily created with your favourite init system. Other people exercise their "init freedom" by choosing to use systemd. And others are aware they have an "init freedom" but are unsure how best to use it so they stuck to what they knew.

In short, some people didn't like a new feature so they used the free software to make a version they were comfortable with. This is perfect, however much you do or don't give a shite about systemd, you have to love that people have the tools to do what they want.

Not sure it is "news", but then El Reg has the freedom to decide what it calls news, not I.