* Posts by Falmor

31 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Sep 2016

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

Falmor

Apparently its not even true that Control Panel is being removed (https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/27/24229436/microsoft-windows-control-panel-removal) so even basic fact checking has been missed by the author of this article.

Check out Codon: A Python compiler if you have a need for C/C++ speed

Falmor

Me too. It's always been faster than Python on the things I do.

An open-source COBOL contender emerges

Falmor

Re: How did it come to this?

There was an interesting article in the Guardian about this a few years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

Falmor

Re: I must be missing something...

The default CSV import settings seem to have been designed to do the worst possible job. Think they may have been trying to discourage people from using Excel to look at CSV files.

Linus Torvalds pines for header file fix but releases Linux 5.8 anyway

Falmor

Google Sharing

Wouldn't a more pertinent question about Google sharing be 'Does the Google code share any of the users activity with Google or any affiliates?"

Oh what a cute little animation... OH MY GOD. (Not acceptable, even in the '80s)

Falmor

Re: All of these tales and comments...

Share permissions often seem to be left at full permissions for everyone but NTFS folder permissions are usually set correctly (not always though). That does mean the files are properly protected but anyone could remove the share (or change it's permissions) and thereby block access.

Falmor

Re: Regrets cut both ways

An up vote for that final reference. Always amuses me that I was 22 going on 23 when I first heard that album.

One map to rule them all: UK's Ordnance Survey rolls out its Data Hub and the juicy API goodness that lies therein

Falmor

Re: Could this become the official UK postcode and address database?

The official address database is maintained by GeoPlace, this is a public sector company jointly owned by the Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Land_and_Property_Gazetteer

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

Falmor

Wasn't there a time when Facebook were tracking even non-users around the web? If I'm not misremembering this, it gave them the ability to sell your data to advertisers without having to provide you with any service what so ever.

Wow, Microsoft's Windows 10 always runs Edge on startup? What could cause that? So strange, tut-tuts Microsoft

Falmor

Auto App Start

Sounds a bit like what ever it is in Windows 10 that restarts any apps that were active when you shutdown or reboot. Feels like I have to disable this after every windows update.

Nice to see Microsoft still using stdout redirection with "> c:\users\edgelogfile.txt" rather than the more verbose "| out-file c:\users\edgelogfile.txt".

25 years of PHP: The personal web tools that ended up everywhere

Falmor

Glad to see I'm not the only one who likes Perl. Have an upvote for TMTOWTDI, haven't seen that for a while.

Huawei gets misty-eyed for the good old days (of a year ago) with maudlin P30 Pro remaster

Falmor

While I'm only really interested in a new phone when my old one starts to break down, it is good to see an article reference my favourite Jeff Buckley song.

'VPs shouldn't go publicly rogue'... XML co-author Tim Bray quits AWS after Amazon fires COVID-19 whistleblowers

Falmor

Re: Who are the downvoters, in this comment thread

Funny, that's not how I read it at all. To me he is concerned that workers who are bring up issues are being fired. That's not being a trouble maker, that's a social conscience.

Apple: We respect your privacy so much we've revealed a little about what we can track when you use Maps

Falmor

Re: If this worries you...

Seem to recall an iPhone user saying that Apple maps shows moving dots for a car that has a iphone in it. Presumably only if location services are turned on. This was before GDPR so it may have changed now.

US prez Donald Trump declares America closed to those flying in from Schengen zone over coronavirus woes

Falmor

Re: Well

There's quite detailed analysis of the likely number of cases at https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

Huawei unfolds latest shot at the phone-tablet hybrid with reinforced hinge and reassuringly Xs-sive price

Falmor

Re: Ahhh...

Doesn't GDPR apply world wide? Its the UK that is removing itself from the countries that have GDPR.

Hey, Brits. Your Google data is leaving the EU before you are: Hoard to be shipped from Ireland to US next month

Falmor

Re: Convenient BS from Google...

I have a German friend who lived in the UK 20 years ago. Even back then he said, "The problem with the English is they are living in a 3rd world country and don't realise it." Things definitely haven't improved since then.

Forgotten motherboard driver turns out to be perfect for slipping Windows ransomware past antivirus checks

Falmor

Re: Driver Signing

The driver was signed with a certificate from a Symantec owned company, not Microsoft. The driver has been updated by Gigabyte to remove the exploited flaw. Presumably revoking the certificate will stop machines working that haven't been updated. If the certificate is revoked, the original Sophos article points out that there a plenty of other signed drivers that could be used.

Falmor

Missing Recommendation

You missed one of the Sophos recommendations: “Make regular backups, and keep them offsite and offline where attackers can’t find them.” Probably going to be tricky in these cloud based backup times.

Vendor-bender LibreOffice kicks out 6.4: Community project feel, though now with added auto-█████ tool

Falmor

Re: How's the page layout engine tho?

Although LO Calc does keep the current cell highlighted when you move focus to another Window. That Excel doesn't I find very annoying.

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

Falmor

Debug

Almost forgotten about debug but it was a very useful tool to have around.

The time PC Tools spared an aerospace techie the blushes

Falmor

Re: Not me personally...

In the 90s, I once had a call from someone who couldn't get their PC to boot. A few questions revealed that they'd deleted a sub-directory from the root using something like the following commands:

C:\> cd subdir

c:\subdir> del *.*

Are you sure (Y/N)? y

c:\subdir> dir

Volume in drive C is DOS

Volume Serial Number is D4F6-F60C

Directory of c:\subdir

24/12/199? 09:27 <DIR> .

24/12/199? 09:27 <DIR> ..

0 File(s) 0 bytes

2 Dir(s) 779,776 bytes free

c:\subdir> del .

Are you sure (Y/N)? y

c:\subdir> del ..

Are you sure (Y/N)? y

Still makes me smile.

Oi, Queenslander who downloaded 26.8TB in June alone – we see you

Falmor

Forty six comments and no one has mentioned the 'and chill'. Must say something about the age of Reg readers.

Darkest Dungeon: Lovecraftian PTSD simulator will cause your own mask to slip

Falmor

Re: Nice

I'm with you on Borderlands 2. Funny and difficult, especially in Ultimate Vault Hunter mode.

User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?

Falmor

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

In the 90s, I saw this sort of thing so can believe this is true. Once CDs became established, I also had someone write on the silver side of a CD with a ball point, ripping the surface and making the CD unusable. Working a materials science lab, they'd sputter coated the CD but couldn't understand why the data hadn't been restored.

Who needs malware? IBM says most hackers just PowerShell through boxes now, leaving little in the way of footprints

Falmor

Re: Not true

Both Per and Python allow you to call shared libraries on any platform.

Falmor

Default for .ps1 files is edit

Also, Powershell scripts don't run if you click on them or a link to them. Instead they open in an editor, either notepad or the ISE. Makes it much more unlikely that someone would accidentally run one.

Crash, bang, wallop: What a power-down. But what hit the kill switch?

Falmor

Cray Red Button

I used to work at a site that had a lot of mathematical modellers. One of the Cray Supercomputer models we used was just the right height for a raised elbow. The designers hadn't considered this but did consider the perfect place for an emergency stop button was on the top of the box. We put a plastic cover over ours so no one ever accidentally shut the thing down. Seeing this a Cray engineer tells he'd been to a site that had used half a coconut shell for the cover.

CMD.EXE gets first makeover in 20 years in new Windows 10 build

Falmor

Re: What's the point?

Not everything works in a Powershell console. Legacy Perl scripts are the only thing I can remember at the moment but there are others. Biggest improvement to CMD has been allowing Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to cut and paste. Not having to reach for the mouse to paste when you're typing is so much better. If I could remap Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V to Alt-W/Ctrl-Y for the whole of Windows, I wouldn't then keep pressing Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V in Emacs.

Take that, creationists: Boffins witness birth of new species in the lab

Falmor

Re: Meh...

Viruses aren't technically alive but its not the viruses that showed evolution, it was bacteria who were infected with the virus. If you want strong evidence for evolution, take a look at Ring Species: http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.html

Pass the 'Milk' to make code run four times faster, say MIT boffins

Falmor

Re: Language feature really?

Didn't sound like a language feature to me either. A compiler that knows what data will be handled at runtime would be very impressive.