Posts by TurtleBeach

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

Re: Strange words

Funny you should mention batteries. There was a time I would only buy HP laptops, but my purchase a few years ago will be my last. A mid-to-high end ENVY with core i7 and 17" screen. After about a year, the battery failed (actually had been failing: when I finally truly bit the dust, the couple of loud 'pops' I had heard over a period of 3-4 months but could never explain, turned out to have been capacitors). BUT when I tried to find an HP replacement, there were none - the link to batteries on the HP site for the specific model went to a generic 'not found' page, and nowhere else could I find one specifically for the unit I had. So I finally bought a 'brand x' battery. Now, every time I reboot, I get a warning that a non-HP battery has been detected. And the reboot will not proceed without physically pressing a key.

Other quality issues (symbols on 6 keys smudged within 6-8 months; HDMI port will not drive an external monitor) are irritating but not yet preventing me from using the laptop; but I've learned my lesson with HP junk. Fool me once or twice or 3 times, shame on me, but eventually I learn.

Boeing takes flight in sustainability battle with carbon data cruncher

Or - "Those that can't teach, write about it" (or become consultants or politicians or whatever other less-than-admirable profession you like...)

Microsoft's AI Bing also factually wrong, fabricated text during launch demo

Re: The answers may not be accurate. It's just such a superior experience

Shades of the Firesign Theatre...

Goodbye, humans: Call centers 'could save $80b' switching to AI

Re: But they already do...

All well and good, except when the back-end systems are so pathetic that such identifying information isn't linked. Comcast voice bot asks for Zip code at the start of a call, then replies that no company with that zip code could be found. My company had service for 7 years, at a location in a zip code that has existed since the start of zip codes, and initially Comcast was the ONLY provider, yet Comcast couldn't find my company.

With service drop-outs and increasing prices, I switched to Verizon Fios. Fios is great; Verizon systems are arguably even worse that Comcast. 6 and counting calls to get service fees correct. Go to account to view bill - not visible - click the link, page refreshes. A representative (through chat) had to e-mail it). Receive a separate e-mail to register to receive promotional gift card. Go to web site to register. Click register link. Page refreshes to initial page. And round and round. To their credit, eventually Verizon staff are usually helpful (voice or real person in chat), but otherwise Verizon systems are a disaster. Hard to see how the company manages to get anything done (other than its billing is so Byzantine that annual profits are probably greatly enhanced by incorrect charges).

The BoD of every company implementing customer-facing technology should require CEO and CFO to use the systems under the watchful eye of an independent auditor before foisting the systems onto the customer base.

Offering Patreon subs in sterling or euros means you can be sued under GDPR, says Court of Appeal

Re: On the other hand...the corollary

IANAL but not completely true regarding copyright in the US. The copyright must be registered TO SUE FOR AND POTENTIALLY receive damages in the event of infringement. No registration is required in order to secure a copyright, and in the event of litigation, be successful in proving ownership (as demonstrated in the case you mentioned). An after-the-fact (after winning in litigation) registration will then provide a path for FUTURE damages, but not for retroactive damages as a result of infringement prior to registration,

A moment of tension as the James Webb Space Telescope stretches sunshield on way to L2 destination

Re: GoPro

In lieu of cameras (for all the reasons noted here), they did what I think is a pretty decent alternative - an animation system that mirrors, as it were, the telescope so that engineers and the rest of us can visualize what is going on. Some description of it is buried in the 'real time' video of the unfurling process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBPNi7uGgWM (NOTE there is music for several minutes before the actual content starts, and the discussion of the animation is further along. If you have the time, it's interesting.)

Microsoft customers locked out of Teams, Office, Xbox, Dynamics – and Azure Active Directory breakdown blamed

I Hope El Reg Stays on This

The gremlins started several hours before 19:15 UTC. From noon Eastern time in US (17:00 UTC) onwards I was trying to figure out why access to an Azure Key Vault that worked yesterday didn't work today. When I finally (~5:00P) decided to look at the status in the Azure Portal, I find that the Portal says I have no subscription, hence no resources, even though it also says I am logged in. Not a good day.

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

Re: Agreed

While I fully agree with you - an editor should stay out of the way, that is my greatest complaint with VS Code. Auto completion when I don't want it ('else' becomes element...), can never get braces to act like I set them to act, etc. And it subjectively seems to not respond to mouse movement and cursor positioning in the way other IDEs (e.g., NetBeans) do on the same computer using the same mouse.

That said, I use it because it seems far and away better for creating/debugging/deploying Java functions on Azure. I am amazed at the number of problems people report on GitHub issues threads trying to deploy C# functions to Azure using Visual Studio. I don't see how anyone manages to deploy production C# function code to Azure using that bloated mess. It's only redeeming feature is relatively decent support for ARM chips, if you can manage to get the environment set up.

Wanted: Big iron geeks to help restore IBM 360 mainframe rescued from defunct German factory by other big iron geeks

Yet another batch (job) of memories

How time flies when you are having fun. In the early 70's I paid my way through the University of Virginia engineering school baby-sitting from midnight to 8:00A a 360/50 (8-10 tape drives, 8-10 drum discs, line printer, card reader) - used to reduce radio telescope data from the "Big Ear" in Greenbank West Virginia. Every day someone from Greenbank would meet someone from Charlottesville midway (the top of a mountain) and exchange tapes. The new tapes returned to Charlottesville, and I ran them overnight. Rinse and repeat 5 days a week, catch up on weekends. I learned to sleep with all the noise, but would get awakened when something finished and the console started typing away (I hated the short jobs).

My last year, I had to write a thesis, but had no typewriter. Begin an engineer, and more interested in solving a problem rather than concentrating on the thesis, I wrote, in PL/I using the console as my input device, what is now called a word processor, so I could finish the thesis (An Analysis of the Judiciary as an Information Processing System) and print it legibly. According to my faculty advisor, I almost was not granted my nuclear engineering degree because I printed it on the line printer, which did not have lower case.

While all this was going on, I was constantly harassed (in a collegial way) for writing software instead of my thesis, by a radio astronomer named Chuck Moore, who led by example and developed the Forth language (written in Fortran and run on the 360/50), since he was not satisfied with the telescope control system he had to work with. I'm not sure he ever processed any telescope date.

Those were the days...

Official: Perl the most hated programming language, say devs

Re: Perl.... Arrggh

Ah yes... a toast to APL, and Forth...