Posts by Wayland

FBI Director: FISA Section 702 warrant requirement a 'de facto ban'

Re: Warrant?

In the UK they will take your computers and not give them back for months. If you won't unlock them they will simply assume you're a terrorist and prosecute you on that basis.

Is it left or right wing?

If they are spying on Far Right Extremists and White Supremacists then that's fine. If they are spying on LGBT Woke Progressives then it's a bad thing and should be stopped.

Microsoft, Meta detail plans to fight election disinformation in 2024

Re: Recommendation algorithms and fake accounts

It's like when no one would turn up to Biden Rallies but Trump Rallies were jam packed. You'd not have known Trump was winning from electronic information.

Re: Definition of Disinformation

Election disinformation?

If Trump wins that means voters were swayed by disinformation.

If Biden wins that means all the talk of election fraud is disinformation.

Simple!

Bad eIDAS: Europe ready to intercept, spy on your encrypted HTTPS connections

The EU muppets are not elected.

To be fair, we talking about banning a Far Right party so that does not count as a ban, just common sense really.

Excel Hell II: If the sickness can't be fixed, it must be contained

Re: The career limiting spreadsheet...

True but then that's the nature of Excel. A database can handle missing or extra columns as long as they are correctly named. If you send out a load of blank Excel files asking people to put their data in them, you'll get them back modified and incompatible with your master spreadsheet.

Re: Sure, you could add AI...

AI is a stupid solution to this problem. I expect that what will happen but it's stupid. The AI may do a better job but no one will really know what it just did.

Re: Lotus

Lotus Notes was the tool that people now use Excel for. If you want to quickly gather and organise data then create a Lotus Notes DB and email the link to your people. They can fill in the form you created and the data is all nicely arranged in your central database. Do that with Excel and you will have big problems.

Excel as a user tool

Most complex business processes done in Excel would be better done in MS Access. However my clients have mostly not been computer literate enough to do these in a database. Excel is quite a good tool for business people to prototype what they want before I come along and turn it into a database.

MS Access is pretty easy to use but there are plenty of hurdles that the Excel user finds too challenging. If MS did some really good development work on the Access user interface Excel users could be creating competent business specific database applications.

I suspect there is a conspiracy against such a thing. Years ago Lotus had Lotus Notes which was a far better database generator that allowed the boss's personal assistant to knock up a database application in the morning and have data coming back by the afternoon from those emailed the link. That was 25 years ago but they killed Notes and replaced it with MS Office.

The contemporary equivalent of that is the secretary creates a spreadsheet template and emails it to people asking them to send it back filled in. She will then use copy and paste to merge these individual sheets into her main one. A time consuming and error prone task when the users can add and delete columns to their liking.

Re: Application abuse

CSV is the simplest and most useful data format for tables. There are text formats like JSON and SQL but these are a little too complex for most people. However if these formats were native to Excel and other apps like CSV is then they'd get used.

Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

Re: Confused

"it's always good to see legacy tech being retired in favor of something with a bright future ahead of it." - according to the article, so your clients will be overjoyed.

Re: Does that mean...

I remember a client had a year old printer on his Apple then he updated the OS and the printer never worked again. Simply unsupported.

Re: Printer Features

It seems as if they're saying there can be no innovation in the printer market from this point on.

In the graphics card market there are after market drivers to support legacy cards.

Re: Printer Features

You're spot on. There are loads of things a robotic machine should be able to do when connected to your computer. Why is it limited to printing on one side of A4 paper? Why can't it print a brochure or paperback book? Load it up with blank business cards and have it print them, or postcards or a birthday card.

All of these examples are a total pain to do on a printer but at least if they wrote their own drivers there was a chance printers would one day do these tasks easily.

UK admits 'spy clause' can't be used for scanning encrypted chat – it's not 'feasible'

Re: Only where technically feasible

If the government can find a way of accessing the message before encryption or of having a master key then they will bring that into law. They could require that all messages get CC'd to their spy server.

Re: Not sure I understand this.

You mean they could mandate breakable encryption? There was once a drive to have all encryption keys held by the government.

If it does become crackable then they will have to keep it a secret or it will simply be secured again.

Logical fallacy of cracking encryption

Unless there is a mathematical breakthrough (quantum?) then is not possible to crack current encryption. Were it to become possible then that same mathematical breakthrough would again produce uncrackable encryption.

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

Re: What killed USENET was ...

Outlook Express took quite an arbitrary decision. They could easily have set it so usenet was in text format by default.

Re: IRC

I left when the spam became greater than the content. Others left too so there really was no reason to stay. With it being a bit technical for normies it could be good again. The Internet on the whole was good because normies had not figured it out. No point in spamming smart people.

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

Re: The Reg goes all EFF, yet again

Cats are YouTube. Every video no matter what it's about must have a cat in it or it gets shadow banned.

Re: Good encryption by default

Selective enforcement. They don't just lock people up because they broke a law. They lock people up because they want to and they look for a broken law in order to do so. As long as they like you then you're free to break laws. It's called Abuse of Process and it's an essential and integral feature of our Justice System so don't knock it (or they might lock you up).

Re: Not holding my breath

Look at your down votes! Clearly the lefties are conflicted between what was a leftist idea of freedom with the current leftist belief that freedom is a right wing idea.

Re: Computer MOT

Windows 2000, that's a high number.

Re: Not holding my breath

The PCI test that card companies require if you have a credit card machine is like that. It's just a port scan carried out from the Internet but it costs £40/year and does not really do much of any use. I have a customer who regularly fails this every time they set their router back to factory settings. The default is the router has a remote login page which fails due to an old version of encryption. £40 for me every time I fix this. Every time I say get a new router and they never do.

AWS: IPv4 addresses cost too much, so you’re going to pay

Re: Now it costs money

Every time a company switches to IPv6 they free up some IPv4 making it easier for the people who don't want to switch. Not everyone can be on IPv4 but some people can stay there for ever. Only once you can't do something you need to do will the IPv4 people be forced to switch.

Re: They should just add more ipv4

You forgot the joke icon.

Re: Couldn't they just use names instead /s

I know you were joking but names only works fine for websites. Multiple websites off a single IP address. It's a shame there is no such thing for other services.

Three signs that Wayland is becoming the favored way to get a GUI on Linux

Wayland is pretty good actually

Thanks :D

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

Re: Everyone is missing the point

It gets increasingly difficult to resist giving them power. Lloyds Bank came out with a system where you could photograph a cheque with your phone and they'd pay it in. Wonderful. Except I want to do it from my computer because I don't have that sort of phone. Just one example of the constant pressure to get a spy phone.

They usually give a reason like "you violated our terms by saying a rude word, saying something anti-semitic or you murdered one of our staff" they never say which actual thing you did, just that it was one or all of them.

Florida man insists he didn't violate the law by keeping Top Secret docs

Re: What I cannot understand ...

Biden took the papers when he was not president, therefore does not have that defence.

Trump took the papers when he was president and removed their top secret status.

Re: What I cannot understand ...

No, I'm sorry, Reg readers disagree that there could be a logical tactical reason for holding on to these documents. It's obviously simply because Orange Man has a big ego and any other failing they can include.

Personally I believe he is using the secret nuke plans to build a bomb in his garage. It could not be anything more mundane like holding dirt on his enemies.

Re: I can finally admit something

Clinton had her email server. Biden had documents. Neither of them were POTUS when they took them. Orange Man is the only person who can declare them no longer top secret, which he did by removing them from top secret storage.

Re: as did his aide Walt Nauta

Why are they going after him for papers when he's been murdering his neighbours? Why have we not heard about this in the news? Perhaps you need to report this to the Florida police.

Re: What I cannot understand ...

Double standards. Clearly Biden broke the law as VP because he took secret documents.

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked, keygen now works on Linux

It's interesting living history. There is no business case to upgrade unless they intend to upgrade their business practice too. If they took electronic payments then it would pay to have that integrated into the same system but honestly a stand alone card system payment could be entered manually.

A great deal of what we do as a computer industry is to obsolete working systems and replace them with something we claim is better. We know it's better because 32GB is better than 8GB but then that's only true because we did something that makes 8GB not as capable as it was when it arrived. Now we have 32GB we're at liberty to make any 8GB system unable to keep up. Perhaps not 8GB obsolete yet but 2GB is.

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

The attack code is probably as old as Windows so still contains all the old attacks. It has grown to keep up with the latest Windows but has not had the old attacks removed. Who knows the developers may accidentally open up an old vulnerability on the next release.

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

MS Access is excellent although the most sensitive and demanding of all MS Office. I've got most of MS Access 2010 working on Linux and I expect I could get 2019 to work since that's a good one.

The reason we do this sort of thing is the client is happy with the business app they are using and don't wish to change simply because the computer industry demands they do.

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

I have a customer we've kept on Windows 7 32 bit because they have a DOS program that interfaced to old hardware on the serial port.

Windows 7 32 bit was the best I could do upgrading from XP.

I recently regraded them to Windows 10 64 bit and discovered DOSBOX could run the program and interface to the serial port.

I expect that it's not Windows programs keeping people on XP but DOS programs. Windows programs will generally work on newer versions of the OS.

However I await the arrival of WINE for Windows so it can run old Windows programs natively.

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

I'd risk most of those problems but Jethro Tull as theme music to my life would be too much.

Open source AI makes modern PCs relevant, and subscriptions seem shabby

Re: Electrons being pushed

PCs are not the cheapest hobby but they start quite cheap and scale up to not that expensive. You would spend more doing up your bathroom. The fact that the PC is still with us essentially the same as it was 40 years ago is wonderful. AI is yet another thing we can do with it and it encourages hardware upgrades. It really is a Personal Computer unlike a Smartphone which is a person tracking device.

Re: Can't happen fast enough

That should be illegal. The government needs to hear you to make sure you're not shouting at your children or complaining about the King.

Millions of mobile phones come pre-infected with malware, say researchers

Nice bit of trolling. You got nearly everyone.

Dump these insecure phone adapters because we're not fixing them, says Cisco

In 1988 I programmed a laser disc player from a computer to make a multimedia experience. Multi Media was a buzz word that had just been invented along with Raves.

Microsoft cries foul over UK gaming deal blocker but it's hard to feel sorry for them

Fog of Cloud Gaming

There is a fundamental problem with Cloud Gaming as shown in in the 2009 movie Gamer. It's ping time or latency. It's probably the case that most latency is caused by the IP packets moving through buffers than the physics of the speed of light but it's an insurmountable problem.

Yes it's possible to play games remotely via a terminal, which is what cloud gaming is but it's much better if the game is running on the local hardware.

Google tried to do this with Stadia and have now given up. As far as I can tell they did it well but it was ping that defeated them.

Nostalgic for VB? BASIC is anything but dead

This is a very useful article

RAD or Rapid Application Development used to be a very useful way of knocking out a business application soon enough to make it useful. There was a time that the secretary could write a data base in the morning and have it emailed to users by the afternoon with responses coming in the next morning. Very rapid thanks to Lotus Notes. Those days are gone and only highly paid coders can create such things taking them weeks or even months.

I used to rapid develop databases in MS Access which is fine for Windows but deployment is protracted.

It's good to see there is a Delphi alternative but that was never as rapid as MS Access let alone Lotus Notes.

Re: Xojo all the way...

Free on the Raspberry PI i read.

The Stonehenge of PC design, Xerox Alto, appeared 50 years ago this month

Imperial Collage London

Back in 1979 I went on a school outing to Imperial Collage London. They were demonstrating two of these PARC machines. They where doing card tricks on screen with a pack of overlapping cards in monochrome. I was very impressed.