Re: Teams
Don't count on it. Outlook has been around for two and a half DECADES and still shits itself constantly when tasked with core functions, such as synchronising a shared calendar.
46 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jan 2019
""People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms," said Dorries."
Nice to know that, as ever, legislation is being justified with well-reasoned debate, free from bluster and hyperbole. But won't she think of the children?
Five years, and Windows 10 *still* has a dual, even triple personality when it comes to managing the OS. Microsoft cannot seem to make their mind up whether settings should be in the Control Panel, "Settings" app, or obscured behind a PowerShell command, Group Policy or command prompt. So where does this leave the users? Utterly confused and always playing catch up.
"For a company defined by design and attention to detail"
Really? For me, at least in recent years, they have been defined by poor hardware design choices that emphasize form and disposability over function and longevity. Let's take the latest Macbook Air as just one (amongst many) example: Would a company that cares about the performance and life span of their products, and values the input of hardware engineers, design a laptop such that the exhaust fan is placed a good distance away from the hottest components, and with no direct link to any heatsinks? Early reports of high CPU temperatures, thermal throttling (and even some rumours that motherboard components are frying themselves) suggests not...
""All of us as individuals pay a variety of taxes. We all pay our council tax, and we pay VAT.
"We don't think that absolves us from the duty of paying our income tax.""
Bollocks. I wouldn't pay income tax if I thought I could get away with it. The state of public services (that in many cases we're made to pay for upfront as well; see transport, passports, licensing) suggests we're not exactly getting value for money.
"Google put its Home products under the Nest brand and announced the end of its Works with Nest developer program, which will shut down on August 31, 2019"
Reading this from other sources, I understand that Google is effectively removing support for existing third party integrations for Nest hardware that people have already installed in their homes. Why is this allowed? You can buy your Things™, adorn your home with them, but they will never truly belong to you - at Things™ inc. we reserve the right to render Things™ useless with OTA updates. Just another page in the book documenting the never ending farce that is IoT.
I have often wondered whether you can render the 'smart' functions of a so-called smart meter inoperable by wrapping the thing in foil. Alternatively, if you find yourself with a smart meter (e.g. by moving into a property with one pre-installed), is there anything stopping you from tearing the thing from the wall and installing a good old dumb meter?
I could be very wrong here, but as I understand it, the SLS upper stage engines in particular are much more efficient (higher specific impulse) than the Merlin engines in use on Falcon Heavy. The later iterations of SLS are intended to carry much larger payloads, much higher than Falcon Heavy is capable of - of particular concern to NASA, who want to launch large chunks (which may not fit in Falcon's payload fairing) of the new 'Lunar Gateway' in as few launches as possible. Of course by then, Space X may well have completed development on their methane-fueled Raptor engines, retro-fitted them to Falcon, or even have BFR in the skies.
Is for universal USB-C compatibility. Time was, you could plug a cable with a shaped plug into a port with a matching shape, and could reasonably expect some level of communication between the devices at either end (driver or software problems notwithstanding). With USB-C, you have ports and devices that natively support USB 3.0, USB 3.1, USB 2.0 Thunderbolt 3, charging, DisplayPort, HDMI, Ethernet, even PCI-E - the host device may support all of the above OR NONE AT ALL, and the only way to check is by looking up compatibility against a spec sheet. Try getting a non-technical person to understand that... It's even more confusing than the M.2. PCI-E / SATA debacle.
I have had enough bad experiences (slowness, disconnects, crap configurability, woeful firewall) with ISP-issued routers (mostly Virgin Media) to know not to trust the damn things - they all go straight in modem mode to be replaced by more reliable kit. Currently a pair of Ubiquiti APs and Edgerouter do the lifting, but thinking of putting something together with PfSense for routing / firewall duties.
As far as I'm aware, Gmail on desktop doesn't have offline availability. Outlook is generally fine if you stick it online mode (assuming you have a capable Exchange and network infrastructure) since you're relying on the database, and not some rusty 12rpm laptop hard drive. Still, I have Gmail for personal use, because who wants to faff with Outlook in their own time?
My experience with supporting users' Outlook woes, is that that they expect miracles from what is ostensibly an email client. Yes, your computer is likely to crash while loading 70GB of items in 11,000 mail folders from 20 different mailboxes attached to one window, and no there's not much I can do about it (as long as you insist that you absolutely must have all of it available offline in the same profile). It's a communications tool, not a CRM database.
I recommend taking a look at Techmoan on YouTube. Lovely anorakky sort of bloke - takes apart and inspects all kinds of weird and wonderful audio/visual kit from the miscellaneous format wars of the ages. He even plays samples recorded from defunct audio formats, so if you were ever in doubt as to whether to revive that obscure 1980s Japanese mini tape recorder (with 5(!) albums available), you can be safe in the knowledge that you're better off saving your money for another stupid eBay purchase.
Perhaps before we start drawing up Asimovian rules for AI, such as "a robot must never lie to a human", we should teach them the difference between fact and fiction! Incidentally, how did El Reg play with this thing? I smell an opportunity... Train the wordy bot on my past catalog of emails and ticket notes, let it loose on my PC, and sneak out early for a ---------->
Spot on. Orwell was very set on highlighting the dangers of controlling thoughts and actions by manipulating speech. People often ignore or miss this fact when quoting passages from 1984, as if it were a general warning against all forms of non-descript totalitarianism. I also recommend reading his essay "Politics and the English Language" (available through all good search engines) which discourages readers from using overly complicated or flowery language, to enhance clarity of meaning.
"There is unbound potential for nerdery in that two-second wake-up phrase"
Now that you mention it, and in keeping with the Star Trek theme, I now feel the disgusting urge to buy an Alexa just so I can trigger it with "Captain to engineering" and turn off the lights with "reduce our energy signature!"
I have also been puzzled by this. Having been interested in fitness wearables for some time, I've yet to invest in one, for the simple reason that I can't find anything halfway decent that doesn't also depend on cloudy nonsense. It's bad enough that these companies can potentially sell your health data to drug companies, health insurers, or lose it to malicious hackers, let alone making you *pay* for the privilege.