Posts by Zippy´s Sausage Factory

Oracle's revised Java licensing terms 2-5x more expensive for most orgs

Does this count? A C# dev kit for Visual Studio Code... that requires a Visual Studio licence.

And so it begins.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/announcing-csharp-dev-kit-for-visual-studio-code/

And now, wait for Microsoft to realise that they can do the same thing with .Net...

PowerShell? More like PowerHell: Microsoft won't fix flaws in package gallery ripe for supply chain attacks

I've never understood what the business case for PowerShell actually was.

"Let's create another, totally incompatible shell that nobody knows how to use and then force people to use it whether they want to or not"

"Wouldn't it just be easier for the users, and cheaper for us, to improve the tools we already have?"

"Heresy! You're fired"

Indian armed forces gives Windows its marching orders, but only for desktop warriors

I have a sneaking suspicion that ditching Windows may be also have something to do with government paranoia. India's membership in the BRICS consortium and friendliness with China and Russia probably makes India believe that it's a top target for US surveillance - especially with their extensive use of English in government.

UK voter data within reach of miscreants who hacked Electoral Commission

No doubt the UK government will use this as evidence to make Voter ID more strict as well as the banning encryption nonsense.

Europe sticks a monopoly probe into Adobe-Figma merger

Re: Just a minute

I've never known an Adobe takeover that wasn't designed to extinguish a competitor.

RIP Bram Moolenaar: Coding world mourns Vim creator

Re: Curious

I have a feeling they replaced the charitable message with their own modification message. Very bad.

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

The whole "Windows in the cloud" thing is going to be looked at askance by a lot of people. Not only will it cost more (of course), it will give the US government the power to order Microsoft to hand over your data (Cloud act) or worse.

That said, the NSA and GCHQ must be loving the idea.

Meta says it'll ask Euro peeps nicely before hitting them with personalized ads

Re: Income

Oh I don't know. TV advertising persuaded me to buy a subscription to F1TV. Not because they advertised on TV, but in order to stop seeing adverts...

Re: Nice one Boris

Because someone has to complain to trigger things. If nobody complains, nothing gets done. That's just how bureaucracies are all around the world.

UK watchdog reopens consultation on Microsoft's bid for Activision Blizzard

Probably they just withdraw from that marketplace I'd think. It wouldn't be out of the range of possibility that the regulators could make it a very difficult place for them to do business should they so choose.

Musk's X tries to win advertisers back with discounts

Re: Watching Musk run this into the ground...

There's a few replacements on the way, BlueSky seems the most promising so far.

Google's next big idea for browser security looks like another freedom grab to some

There will be plenty of holes to exploit anyway, this sort of scheme is ripe for abuse, especially given the false sense of security it provides.

The moment this starts governments will want to take over that certification. And believe me, they will. Google won't know what hit them.

/edit: thinking about the laws currently getting passed in the UK, for a start...

Cigna sued for using software to deny healthcare insurance claims

And yet many Americans still think a universal taxpayer-supported healthcare system is the work of the devil. I don't understand it myself.

FTC boss Khan shrugs off Microsoft, Meta defeats: 'Losing two is okay'

Re: Monopoly

Every time they say "this will increase efficiencies, better customer service blah blah blah" what they really mean is "greater profits, more layoffs, more stock options, higher share price".

In ALL cases.

Logitech reports broad declines as pre-pandemic buying cycles return

I've just bought a vintage keyboard from ebay - works perfectly. I'd be using it right now if it didn't desperately need a clean (job for later - no, it's not going in the dishwasher).

So how they are managing to make so much out of peripherals, I wonder? Maybe because everyone nowadays makes them to break irreparably almost the day after the warranty ends. Or worse, puts a one-way "recycle" setting on them and makes it way too easy to click...

Linux lover consumed a quarter of the network

Re: Charlie Says

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a jiffy bag stuffed with CD-Rs

Lawyer sees almost 1,000 complainants sign up to Capita breach class action

Given recent developments, my money's on Azure.

Now, where did I put that popcorn?

Antitrust clouds continue to gather over Microsoft's European business

Re: Cry me a river

How's the weather in Redmond today?

Twitter name and blue bird logo to be 'blowtorched' off company branding

Re: "This is an X Twitter"

X is going to mark the spot where he buried it.

As for the "everything company", I'm guessing this will alienate more advertisers? Making it the "nothing company" fairly soon if it ceases to exist.

Stolen Microsoft key may have opened up a lot more than US govt email inboxes

Re: Shouldn't such keys only be issued

Easy... make issuing or receiving any monetary bonus, stock award, or dividend from a company that has had a security breach in the last 12 months a felony with a minimum five-year term (along with stock buybacks for the same period). That would concentrate the mind wonderfully, as Samuel Johnson might have put it.

I mean, that'll never happen, of course, but it's nice to dream.

MOVEit body count closes in on 400 orgs, 20M+ individuals

They own Telerik as well now. That said Telerik hasn't actually become horrible so it seems to be OK for now.

How long before the companies start suing Progress? I mean, if their install of the software was up to date, that is.

(Where's the "jaded, tired and cynical" icon when I need it?)

Weird radio pulses could be coming from new type of stellar object

Re: I'm not saying it's aliens...

It's either a traffic beacon or an intergalactic number station.

With limited space for tourist attractions, Singapore bets on augmented reality

I think I've just come up with their new tourism slogan:

Singapore: no room for any tourist activies, plz play Pokemon Go instead. Kthxbai

Nailed it.

Meet the guy trying to drag HM Treasury's data strategy into the 21st century

Re: google on Synapse data warehouse:

So basically "blah blah big data blah blah delivering synergies blah blah new ways of working blah blah leveraging efficiencies blah blah unlimited rice pudding" etc etc?

Norway bans Meta's behavioral advertising with threats of wrist-slap fines

Re: CJEU?

It sort of is and sort of isn't. As I found out when I ordered something from there. Single market for me in future, thanks.

Network died, hard, during company Christmas party, leaving lone techie to fix it

Re: "for VTP to work, the command had to be sent to each of the switches"

Ah yes, I remember technical manuals like that.

"Note: configuration of the switch may optionally cause reset of all ports. If you do not want this not to unhappen, please do not refrain from not excluding the omission of the --ignoredonotexcludeomitnoreset parameter (please note that --ignoredonotincludeomitnoreset is deprecated and will be ignored)"

Microsoft kicks Calibri to the curb for Aptos as default font

Re: I like serifs

Corbel is another one I can't stand. Tahoma was OK, but it's one of those that's tuned entirely for ClearType and looks awful unless you use only a specific point size and have MS' proprietary* font blurring turned on.

* although I seem to remember Steve Gibson did it first. Oh well.

Re: I like serifs

Calibri and Cambria are both totally soulless. Times New Roman looks elegant on paper but on 72dpi old school monitors was really tiring to read. Ironic it was replaced just in time for true HDMI monitors coming in.

Well, I'm sure we'll all have to suffer another terrible Microsoft typeface for the next five years, until it's again replaced by something even more awful.

Feds want to see what ChatGPT's content is made of

OpenAI is starting to look like the next FTX or Theranos to me.

Producers allegedly sought rights to replicate extras using AI, forever, for just $200

Maybe they should change copyright law?

Anything even partially generated by AI is no longer protected by copyright. Include software, movies, music, books, tv shows, everything.

Then we can get back to using AI for things to make life for everyone better, rather than dumbing the arts down to a bland, grey pap.

Funnily enough, AI models must follow privacy law – including right to be forgotten

Re: 7 Data Protection Principles

Yep. I'm wondering how much longer OpenAI will be around. Probably it'll declare bankruptcy and sell all its assets to Microsoft... which sounds like a worse outcome to me.

"However, there is a clear disconnect here between law and technical reality."

That's a bit like inventing a new weapon that can kill someone, killing someone and then claiming that it's perfectly legal because the law as written didn't encompass the new reality of your new weapon.

Laws don't work that way. AI has some uncomfortable learning (and unlearning) to do, whether the shyster snake-oil-salesmen in charge of it like it or not.

Adobe's $20B Figma deal hit by in-depth probe in the UK

Re: Freemium will prevail, yeah right...

But they'll start by badly incorporating Figma's features into their existing products, then close it down completely. I seem to recall them doing that a couple of times before.

Miscreants exploit five Microsoft bugs as Windows giant addresses 130 flaws

Re: Visual Studio being attacked is a new one.

Yes, I should have said "news to me" or similar to that. Or maybe "blimey, that's a new one on me". I would have thought the phrase was being used in that context would have been obvious. Clearly not.

Visual Studio being attacked is a new one. Although to be fair I know a lot of people don't patch it because Microsoft keep fiddling with it and there's a good chance you have to reset it after upgrading, meaning you have to reload all your extensions, your settings and so on - which takes about an hour or two, even if they are all synced on "the cloud" (something I do my best to avoid, to be honest.)

Tax prep firms 'recklessly shared' your data with Google and Meta – senators

Just send the investigative department of the IRS into Google and Facebook to find out exactly what data was sent, where it went, how it was used, and then to determine who to prosecute.

I think they'll get the message.

Microsoft whips up unrest after revealing Azure AD name change

Ah yes, let's rename lots of disprate entities into one over-arching and confusing brand. There's no way this could possibly go wrong, is there?

Obscure internet boutique Amazon sues EU for calling it a Very Large Online Platform

Re: "forced to meet onerous administrative obligations"

I do wonder if their lawyers have convinced them that this will automatically apply to all their AWS customers in the EU region?

Microsoft's 10,000 job cuts didn't quite do the trick

Variable by service and product.

Just off the top of my head in Microsoft's case that would probably be poorer quality of testing, leading to more bugs hitting production, more security alerts, slower turnaround on patching. More outages for Azure. Data loss in databases running on MSSQL.

In Twitter's case, outages, flaky APIs, users complaining of tweets double posting or not posting at all.

In the end - in all cases - users losing confidence in the brand and actively looking for alternatives. (In Twitter's case Mastodon, in Reddit's Lemmy/Raddle/etc)

So they're making massive profits and laying people off. That's not really a sensible solution - eventually you get overstretched and you can't maintain services any more.

If they're not careful they'll hit a tipping point, people start leaving and they can't maintain the services and the quality slips, the services slip. Seeing it now with Twitter, wonder how many people M$ needs to fire before they start circling the drain too?

Judge shoots down FTC attempt to stall Microsoft-Activision merger

Re: Size alone should block this

That's exactly what Microsoft want, of course. Naturally they'll come up with a reason why Activision games can't work on the PlayStation within minutes of the takeover, and at that point htey'll pull the "Activision is too deeply embedded into Microsoft to spin off" defence (like Faceb**k did with WhatsApp and Instagram).

The big losers here are everyone that likes the Call of Duty series and everyone who refuses to buy an Xbox.

Surely the judge must have noticed the "we can spend Sony into oblivion*" email?

* words to that effect, probably.

Fedora Project mulls 'privacy preserving' usage telemetry

My main source of reading El Reg these days is through the NewsBlur app. Not sure what the user agent reports but it's probably some sort of iOS Safari thing.

Desktop I'm starting to transition back to SeaMonkey.

Isn't your IP address considered personal data for the purposes of GDPR? Surely a unique system identifier would also count?

BT CEO Jansen confirms he's quitting within 12 months

Strange. Running away before the takeover by Altice and inevitable golden parachute? Or maybe he's got fed up of waiting for them to press the big red button marked "takeover"?

Now that you've all tried it ... ChatGPT web traffic falls 10%

The fad's starting to end. The masses will move over to the next shiny thing, leaving a small percentage of people who actually find it useful.

Does ChatGPT have a future? Meh, depends how heavily they lose in the upcoming lawsuits I guess. Either way, I'm here with my popcorn.

Microsoft drops out of top three for UK software and IT services

Re: Their recent record speaks for itself

Maybe, like me, because he's had to use it?