* Posts by VicMortimer

403 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Feb 2017

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Grab a helmet because retired ISS batteries are hurtling back to Earth

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Re: From the heavens above

What kind of cretin doesn't like melted cheese?

Not that SickDonald's serves cheese, of course. Nor meat, nor bread. It's just plastic and cardboard.

Pretty sure the pickle doesn't have any sugar, if it did I'd have noticed and retched, I despise sweet pickles. Those and the onions are about all that place has that's edible, even the lettuce is somehow substandard.

X protests forced suspension of accounts on orders of India's government

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The US isn't going to extradite anybody to India for something that would be a 1st amendment violation here.

I'm not sure if Xitter has employees in India. They don't have a call center at all, so that's not going to be there. I'm guessing they probably have a few servers to handle the local traffic.

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Re: "Topkat"

Unnecessary.

Xitter (pronounced "Shitter") is already a word.

UK minister tells telcos to share telegraph poles if they can't lay cable underground

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Re: The experience in the US

Federal, state, and local laws all apply. The FCC essentially forces it to happen, states tend to set rates, cities regulate where they can be placed and when poles can't be used and everything has to go underground. In general if the electricity is underground nobody is getting permission to put up a pole for anything.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

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Well, that's certainly a take. A very, very wrong one, but a take nonetheless. A thorough misunderstanding of what Sendmail is and does, even. It's an email transport server, not a client.

Also, an email client should do email, NOT calendars, contact lists, or task lists. And it should do email with internet standard protocols, not proprietary crap. Outsuck is quite possibly the worst email client of all time.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

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Re: Interesting

Apple decided to roll their own instead of using Samba. It... wasn't as good. The biggest problem was file permissions, it wouldn't set them correctly for new files, they'd be user rw but group read only. My nasty fix was a cron job that reset permissions on everything in the shares every 5 minutes.

Users who have local admin (and that's VERY common in small businesses) will find a way to install updates they aren't supposed to.

I've heard "It just did it itself!" more times than I can count. I know the user is lying, but it's generally easiest not to call them on it.

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Alert

Shenanigans!

I'm calling shenanigans on this entire story.

It has NEVER been a thing that updating macOS makes shares on a server running previous versions of macOS unconnectable. I've got clients right now who have servers running Mac OS 10.13 (because that's the last version that Mac OS X Server actually ran on) and macOS 14 workstations. I've got one client still using Mac OS 10.6 on their server (and yes, I've told them to stop, they don't wanna, so I still maintain it, they keep paying me). Uptimes in years can be a thing for those old ones that aren't getting updated any more (and yes, that means they go behind a firewall).

The USB story sounds like nonsense. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying I've NEVER seen a macOS update break USB drives. Of course, in the old days only an absolute moron would use USB drives on a Mac server, FireWire was MUCH faster and more stable. Today you use Thunderbolt, OWC makes some nice Thunderbolt SSD RAIDable boxes.

The Mac mini was sold AS A SERVER until 2014. There was a server configuration, shipped with dual hard drives to make setting up a RAID mirror easy. They still make great servers for small offices, they're tiny and easy to hide in the wiring closet, you can even mount one (or two if you want redundancy) to the wall. I just installed a M2 mini as a server in a law office late last year, it's been up since the last time I installed an update, ZERO user complaints.

And of course this "Aaron" character decided a homebuilt 'server' was somehow better. I'd call him a moron, but....

This never happened.

NASA missions are being delayed by oversubscribed, overburdened, and out-of-date supercomputers

VicMortimer Silver badge

That's exactly how it works in the US too.

Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4

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Mushroom

Chrome? You get what you deserve.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/08/28/stop-using-google-chrome-on-windows-10-android-and-apple-iphones-ipads-and-macs/

2021.

You should have deleted Chrome years ago. If you're still using that garbage, you get what you deserve.

Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in

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Facepalm

Re: "simply vandalism"?

Dunno if you noticed, but there's a little bit of a war going on right now.

One of the combatants is being supplied with weapons from a group of countries. The other one has historically been hostile to that group of countries. It's also historically had an extensive foreign intelligence operation that has at times been quite effective.

At the same time, you've got a group of morons who think 5G is going to kill them.

For a hostile country to NOT take advantage of that, they'd have to be utter fools. Now, you might have a good point by saying that they ARE utter fools, given the body count of their troops in that little bit of a war. But that doesn't necessarily mean their foreign intelligence operations are as ineffective as their military.

So yes. Morons be morons to foreign state actors is exactly what the thought process of anybody with two brain cells should be. I'm not saying that's necessarily what it is in these cases, but it's absolutely worth looking into.

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Angel

Re: Hostile state action ?

Nope. You're misunderstanding the story.

Bubba called the "call before you dig" line. They sent somebody out to put down flags indicating where the lines were. They failed to mark where Bubba was going to dig. Bubba proceeded to dig where he was informed that there were no utilities. Bubba had dealt with this shit before, so before he started digging, he took pictures of the area that had no flags.

Then he started digging where there were no marking flags. He dug up a previously unmarked line. Somebody raced out, put down flags where he'd dug to make it look like he'd just ignored them. Telco guy shows up, threatens Bubba. Bubba informs telco guy that he had photographic evidence that there were no flags before he dug.

Telco gets to pay for repairs, because it wasn't Bubba's fault.

FCC ups broadband benchmark speeds, says rural areas still underserved

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Re: I'll wait for it

Have you tried Grindr? Should be plenty of bears on there.

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Facepalm

Re: Teaser text error

Most of the population of the US can get gigabit. That's been true since at least 2019.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

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FAIL

Re: Total confusion

Counterpoint: System Settings

It was bad enough when they kept rearranging System Preferences. But that piece of garbage is over the top bad.

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Coat

Re: "Microsoft has warned that those days will be coming to an end"

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. And yes, M$ is the enemy.

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Re: I need classic outlook

Wouldn't it make more sense to have the mail sent to your server via SMTP instead of a POP kludge?

BOFH: Adventures in overenthusiastic automation

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Re: Good use

Would you, though?

I've had to replace one halogen headlight bulb in my Ford, it's 11 years old. The other one is still fine (if slightly dimmer, I'm considering maybe changing it anyway and keeping it for a spare).

I did, annoyingly, have to pull the headlight assembly to change it, but I think it was only 5 screws. I almost managed it without pulling the whole thing, but my hand was just a few mm too thick.

BOFH: Monitor mount moans end in Beancounter beatdown

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Facepalm

Re: Cost centre round robin

You know that $500 toilet seat turned out to be an entire fiberglass toilet seating surround for an aircraft toilet, right?

And today, I have a $200 toilet seat in my bathroom, I bought a cheapie. $500 is midrange for a bidet seat.

You got legal trouble? Better call SauLM-7B

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Re: Legal Opinions generated By AI?

So, just like Diaper Donnie's lawyers.

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Holmes

Re: Optimism backed by belief

I'm pretty sure that was less a religious pick, and more an indication that they knew they were building a criminal lawyer.

Nevada sues to deny kids access to Meta's Messenger encryption

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Re: So, he's thinking about the children, eh ?

Every accusation a confession.

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Happy

Re: No encryption until you have provided your identity to prove you are not a child

Nah, not like our gun laws. I can still legally buy a gun in a private sale with no paperwork whatsoever.

Olympic-level server tossing contest seeks entrants – warranty voiding guaranteed

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Re: My current record is about 220 feet (67m).

Us VAX haters really wish you'd gotten video.

US wants ASML to stop servicing China-owned chip equipment

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Re: The United States Of America are going too far...

That doesn't really matter any more. He's made himself dictator for life, he doesn't actually have to do anything now.

As long as he doesn't actually attack, he gets to keep living.

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Mushroom

Re: The United States Of America are going too far...

Not going far enough yet.

China has expressed intent to attempt to annex Taiwan by force. The US cannot let that happen, because Taiwan produces most of the world's best chips. The alternative to sanctions working is war.

The EU needs to get on board with keeping China from trying that.

China is the biggest threat to the world today. I wish that weren't the case, but Xi has put the world in a very dangerous position.

(Icon for what happens if sanctions fail.)

VMware takes a swing at Nutanix, Red Hat with KVM conversion tool

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Proxmox

Just when I was getting ready to start moving stuff to Proxmox.

Wait, I'm still doing that. ESXi is done.

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

VicMortimer Silver badge

What Apple is doing is a farce.

We don't need 'app stores'. What we need is Apple to open up the iDevices for normal software installation.

Just this week my Apple TV stopped being functional for a day. VLC updated, and there was a bug in the update. It couldn't connect to my media server because of it. If I had installed it normally, I'd just have grabbed the previous version and reinstalled that. But instead I had to wait for VLC to be updated and Apple to approve the update, because there's no way to revert. And it's still not working as well as the old version did.

On my Mac, I refuse to use the stupid app store to install anything that's available outside of it. It's unacceptable that I can't do the same on other computing devices.

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Flame

And buy what?

Android is hot garbage. I wanted to like it in the early days, I really did. But now it's just a Google-infested data vacuum.

iPhones are much nicer to use, and they're not trying to sell everything I do to advertisers.

For computers, there's an alternative. Linux is pretty nice these days, and I don't care about Adobe or MicroSloth crapware. But for phones there's nothing.

EU users can't update 3rd party iOS apps if abroad too long

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Re: Why does anyone buy Apple?

I wish I could use Firefox's rendering engine on iPhone.

There, you've heard it. Safari and Webkit are NOT ok. I want NoScript and uBlock on my iPhone.

I'm also NOT ok with the stupid walled garden. If there were a viable jailbreak for modern iPhones, I'd have already done it.

At this point, the ONLY reason I still have an iPhone is because Google is a more odious company.

Copilot can't stop emitting violent, sexual images, says Microsoft whistleblower

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FAIL

This generation of 'AI' is not the future

I don't know if any generation of AI will ever be, but what we've got now is absolute garbage. It looked scary at first, but it's incapable of producing anything that isn't so full of errors that it's unusable.

Remember when the lawyer in NY tried it? Bogus case citations of cases that didn't exist. He got lucky, only got a $5k fine.

It's a party trick. It's ELIZA with more random responses.

The best thing you can do is disable it in Windoze immediately.

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I'm torn. While I would like something seriously disgusting involving Drumpf to be released, I really don't want to ever see an accurate looking recreation of the cheeto-faced, tiny-fingered, ferret-wearing shitgibbon's little malformed mushroom.

And I don't think anything would really make a difference at this point. Even if the actual pee pee tape were released the MAGAts would just use it as masturbatory material and vote for the scumbag anyway.

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

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Re: Never did make sense

We're trying to set the wrong standard.

Humans are TERRIBLE drivers. Even at their current levels of screwups on those same roads, autonomous vehicles (real ones, not Turdlas) seem to be safer than humans.

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I'm typing this on a 9 year old Mac. I have no plans to replace it any time soon.

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Re: I don't get it either

That was the standard for American cars back then. Manuals had 4 pedals.

Health system network turned out to be a house of cards – Cisco cards, that is

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Pint

Re: Heading off after completion of a task

These days, I can solve a lot of them with a phone call.

The act of me answering the phone resolving the fault has happened an insane number of times.

Electronic Arts frags hundreds of workers 'to grow fandom'

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Re: Yeah, no.

Yep. I am utterly uninterested in online games. If I'm playing a game, I want other people to leave me alone.

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

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Thumb Down

Re: Bring back 3.11

Ubuntu has the best OS names. I do wish Wanking Wallaby was a real one.

And... you don't have to use the names if you don't want. Ubuntu version numbers are MUCH better than MicroSloth's, being just a year and a month.

And for the record, Windoze 3.x were some of the worst releases ever. The IRQ nonsense alone was enough to make me want to throw those garbage computers through a wall. And the user interface... ugh. Compared to the Mac back then it was astonishing how incredibly bad it was.

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How to Disable Windows 11 Copilot Through Registry File or Group Policy Editor

Just thought I'd toss that up in case you didn't already know how to block that garbage.

White House goes to court, not Congress, to renew warrantless spy powers

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Mushroom

Re: Or perhaps it's

The only "well thought out Section 702 revision" would be to let it expire. It should never have been law in the first place.

Judge orders NSO to cough up Pegasus super-spyware source code

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FAIL

Re: I'm glad

Stating that Israel is perpetrating a genocide is stating the facts. The International Court of Justice agrees with me, ordered them to stop, and they're ignoring the ruling.

I suppose you also think it's antisemitic to state the fact that Israel has been committing the crime against humanity of apartheid for years? It's not, of course. The government of Israel does not speak or act for all Jews.

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FAIL

Re: I'm glad

There is no "far left wing" of the Democrats.

The best you get is center-left, and there aren't many of them. US political parties are extreme far right wing and center-right.

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Flame

Re: I'm glad

Opposing Israel is NOT antisemitism.

And, dunno if you've noticed, but Israel is currently perpetrating a genocide. The US government, unlike the rest of the world, is supporting it.

Ransomware ban backers insist thugs must be cut off from payday

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Facepalm

Yes, there needs to be a ban. And it needs to not just be a fine for companies that pay, it needs to come with prison time for the CEO.

No, there does NOT need to be any corporate welfare to go with it. I'm sure the usual suspects would love that, but for-profit companies do not deserve help for being stupid.

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

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Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

Buttwiper IS an off flavor. Why would I bother trying to recreate that piss?

If I'm going to bother brewing, I'm brewing an ale.

City council megaproject to spend millions for manual work Oracle system was meant to do

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Re: You would have to wonder...

I thought you had to be making that up.

But no. Turns out it was the equivalent of $14.20/hour, almost double the US $7.25 minimum wage.

Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs

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Re: Sweating assets

I replaced a client's 2100 last month, it had a gear failure.

I replaced it with a Brother.

Cybercrims: When we hit IT, they sometimes pay, but when we hit OT... jackpot

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Flame

Time to ban paying!

The ransomware problem will NEVER go away until there's a ban on paying.

It needs to be criminal, not civil. And it needs to come with real prison time for the CEO of companies that pay, as well as anyone actually involved with making the payment.

KDE 6 misses boat to make it into Kubuntu 24.04

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Devil

Nah.

No thanks. I'll stick with Xubuntu.

Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

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Re: Do not Google.

Weird. That query works fine for US results if you leave off the "site:uk" but gives you a bunch of Amazon UK results with it.

That's probably because "site:" on DDG doesn't work like you think it does. https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/syntax/

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Alert

Re: What are they good at?

That's because you should NEVER use ANY laptop with the lid closed.

It doesn't matter that it (sort of) works that way for a while, you're causing thermal damage to ANY of them long term.

Don't do that. Don't ever do that. If you don't want to use a laptop properly, get a desktop.

I mostly deal with Macs, and I tell users exactly the same thing, you're going to destroy your computer even though Apple says it's fine. It just won't usually cause a problem until the warranty expires, at which point the manufacturer won't care.

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