Posts by MadocOwain

Linux Mint 22 'Wilma' still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows

Dropping legacy GPU support is a killer, why do I need a modern GPU in my 2011 PC? Now I have to fish around to find non-NVIDIA graphics cards to drop in?

FCC wants telcos to carrier unlock cellphones 60 days after activation

US here - Verizon charges $35 if I (outright) buy a new phone to replace the one I was using on their network. Our telcos will charge for anything and everything, and I expect they won't really fight this regulation as it could become a new revenue stream.

Apple crippled watchOS to corner heart-tracking market, doctors say

They sued Apple for infringing on patents in v4, then when Apple changed the features in v5, presumably to avoid the infringement, they are suing Apple because they're not using their patented feature any longer and their add-on watch band won't work? Am I parsing this correctly?

Oracle Java police start knocking on Fortune 200's doors for first time

Oracle software I deal with that contain Java, or WebLogic, or other Oracle Middleware products? Those products' licenses come bundled with the software. No double-dipping (yet).

Google flushes cached search results forever

I use this functionality A LOT researching issues I encounter at work. Sometimes a relevant phrase or keyword will appear in Search, the post or blog entry may have been from several years ago, but when I go to the linked page, I get redirected to a newer version of the page and the post is not present. Rather than scour that site for content that MAY be relevant to my search, I could instead refer back to the Cached version from my Google Search result and immediately find what I had been searching for. HUGE time-saver.

Meta starts rolling out end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger

Push notifications?

Are the push notifications sent from Meta, or from the local app? More importantly, are those push notifications then sent back to Meta in any way?

Broadcom to divest VMware's end-user computing and Carbon Black units

Thanks for the push!

I had forgotten to get my update to 17.5 for Windows, now all I have to do is hold on to this version with it's permanent license until Microsoft breaks it.

Lenovo's Yoga 9 is flexible at home, but stretches the friendship at work

Are you using VMWare Workstation Pro 16, or 17? 17 is supposedly able to handle the newer Intel core types properly. v16 does not, and requires some work-arounds to force it to address the P-Cores instead of the E-Cores, which has been the source of my VMWare issues with the Yoga 7.

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

UMBRELLA Corporation, Resident Evil

REKALL - Total Recall

Samsung: We will remotely brick smart TVs looted from our warehouse

Unfortunately the TV is barely useable as you have to accept an EULA before being allowed to watch your content.. and the EULA requires internet connectivity to clear. Went through this a few weeks ago with my dad's new Samsung. Very disappointed in them for forcing the EULA for a TV my dad will never ever connect to the internet with or use any of the built-in apps.

IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster, sources say

Re: All good [law] firms

Finding an adapter to go from the large 5-pin DIN to the smaller connector is easy enough, many were made in the 90s. From there you can get a Y adapter to allow you to plug in two devices (generally 1 keyboard, 1 mouse) into one USB port.

Fee, Fi, bring your own one... Google opens up Project Fi to mobes built by Apple, LG, Samsung

No HTC?

I'm a bit surprised no HTC phones are on this list, given their Google affiliation..

Once more with feeling: Windows 10 October 2018 Update inches closer to relaunch

Turn on metered connection in your network preferences

..if you haven't already. I have, it works great to stop those pesky unwanted, untimely updates. It can't update if it can't download.

Facebook flat-out 'lies' about how many people can see its ads – lawsuit

Facebook and their lying bots

I stopped paid advertising with them after finding 8 of 10 shares of a boosted post were from bots - users with a single friend kinda tipped it off - and the number of people reached was over 50K, but not a single customer reported seeing the ad. Google AdWords seems to be the way to go these days.

Oracle? A strategic priority for CIOs? Nope, says Goldman Sachs

Oracle forces Cloud down your throat

In order to force analytics/BI customers to the cloud, they removed their top salespeople from the equation if you wanted your software on-premise. They also wouldn't bonus the salespeople if they sold non-cloudy licenses. So, our consultancy's network of hight-falutin' Oracle salesreps evaporated, replaced by a phone bank of anonymous sales folks in Hyderabad. Sad.

Open plan offices flop – you talk less, IM more, if forced to flee a cubicle

Tour of Fortune 50 companies in the US

As a former finance IT consultant, I got to spend a lot of time in many different US office complexes for a few days up to 4 years. All of the companies I went to in the past 10 years were trying to ditch expensive real estate as a benefit of having these open plans/hot seats. Having their contractors and consultants close by was the usual. The worst 3:

3. Eli Lilly, General Electric (tie) - Headcount was always a concern for the shareholders. One benefit to the open office plan was that no one missed "Bob" when he was fired or replaced by "Contractor Bob" - no office to clean out, no visible sign "Bob" ever worked there existed. All phones were VoIP through your laptop. There was no place to put your "De-motivational" posters, and every day you had to pack in and out everything you thought you would need for your day at work.

2. Cummins - For my first two years at this client, I was assigned a "cube" in their open office. It was an older location so they still had offices lining the edges but they were all glass so "fishbowls". The fortunate folks were assigned cubes about 2 sq.m., 6' walls. I ended up in a SLOT, a half-cube I shared with a building support pole. Said slot was 1 m. x 2 m., full walls all the way around except the 1m wide entrance on the 2m side. 2 years. The alternative, I was told, was a basement conference room shared by 15 people, most of whom thought personal hygiene was optional. I was allowed to keep things on my 'desk' and on the walls, but my monitor screen was a large enough percentage of the total space I simply kept them on my PC's desktop wallpaper instead.

1. Cummins again - Remaining 2 years for this client was in their "brand new" open office, a converted department store in downtown nowhere, about 14,000 sq.m. of open space and a 6m high ceiling. "Desks" were 12m x 2m tables with tiny frosted plastic dividers between the individual's seats, said seats lining both sides of the table. Glass fishbowl rooms lined the outer edges but were for quick 1-2 person meetings, or larger conferences, and were not reservable by contractors. Any management up to director level was forced to sit with the plebs. Like #3 above, you had to schlep in and out everything you needed for the day. Employees got lockable cubbies to stash crap in, contractors not allowed. 90% of this office space was contractors.

In the center of this glorious space was an attempt at a small shoppe, but no human attendant, just a kiosk and a bunch of snacks and microwavable foods. No cream for coffee or tea, no silverware, so pretty useless. The smells from the various foods brought in wafted through the entirety of the office, as did any B.O. or perfumes. And.. the noise.. so much noise. It was the single worst location I ever spent time in, and I previously worked for 7 years in an air route traffic control center's sub-basement.

I spent much of my time "squatting" in various fishbowls in that building and in an adjacent building, until caught and forced back to the squalor. An alternating schedule of weeks at home and on-site helped as it was harder to notice the same person was in the area 4 or 5 days every other week. My productivity soared once I was allowed to work from home.

I escaped Cummins last year and quit consulting, I opened a virtual reality arcade close to home for my sanity's sake.

Good luck building a VR PC: Ethereum miners are buying all the GPUs

I ran into this as well when trying to put together 16 PCs for my new VR Arcade. My frustration in June was the 1-2 per household limit, which was attributable to those cards being marked as "loss-leaders". Now in July, the cards I like are marked by Amazon as 4 weeks backordered. Some of the pricing of the non-TI 1080s is ridiculous. Fortunately, if you are patient, and willing to buy cards from different manufacturers, it's possible to get what you need, eventually.