Posts by itzumee

Cost of living crisis less of problem for tech pro retirees than others

Re: Cold day in hell

MFC was essentially raw Win32 API without the handles wasn't it? That's all the abstraction it provided IIRC

Using the datacenter as a dining room destroyed the platters that matter

Dining in the datacentre?

Reminds me of my days as a service engineer, when London Underground rolled out their fancy new computerised ticket machines and entry gates back in the late 1980s and early 90s.

Each underground station had at least one DEC PDP-11 minicomputer which was responsible for talking to the local ticket machines and gates and gathering data from all of those devices, which would then be sent to the data centre (comprising DEC VAX 11/785s) in Baker Street via a proprietary network specially developed by the supplier (Westinghouse Cubic at the time). Each of these PDP-11s were located in a purpose-built station computer room which was sealed and air-con and only service engineers had a key for the SC room, which on hot days was used by service engineers to cool off and have lunch or even the odd spliff. As far as I recall, there weren't any rodent ingress incidents and miraculously, no spillage of drinks on the PDP-11 cabinet used as a drinks table, though I suspect that was due more to luck than the service engineers being careful.

Mouse hiding in cable tray cheesed off its bemused user

Re: "Out of Cheese" Error

oh fur f**** sake

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Re: I would get it fired for inventing Powershell

My understanding was that PowerShell syntax was designed to make it easier for Bash-heads to pick up PowerShell?

Distributor dumps Kaspersky to show solidarity with Ukraine

If you've already paid for Kaspersky...

... the only reason to stop using it is that you can no longer trust them, you're not gonna deny them any further revenue until your subscription expires

The right to repairable broadband befits a supposedly critical utility

BT Openreach are pretty hopeless

I had a problem with my FTTC service dropping my broadband connection, contacted Plusnet who confirmed it was a line fault and booked a BT Openreach engineer to investigate. Guy turns up, fixes the problem but a few days later it recurs, so not fixed after all. Another service visit, another part replaced in the cabinet or junction box on the telegraph pole, but speeds are way down on what they were before the fault, but the connection is stable so left it at that.

Days later, the connection keeps dropping again, another service visit and after much bleeping of his diagnostic gear, the guy is telling me it must be the wiring from the junction box inside my front door to the master socket - his diagnostic gear was telling him so. He proposes replacing the cable, but the problem is the tiled floor would would need ripping out to do it, so he then suggests laying the new cable and nailing it to the skirting board, drilling a hole in the wall so get the cable to the master socket.

Given that I'd seen the original cable being installed and that it's relatively new cable, I told the guy I'd leave it and see how it goes. Days later the fault fixed itself. I contacted Plusnet again to see what'd fixed the issue, the report from BT was that they didn't know exactly what had fixed the fault, as replacing parts in the exchange cabinet hadn't fixed it, but something else had.

Reg reader rages over Virgin Media's email password policy

I ditched my Plusnet ISP email about 4 months ago for FastMail, after issues with their IMAP servers meant that email was slow to arrive and/or connections would be randomly terminated when retrieving email. The difference in performance now is like night vs day.

Just two die for: Apple reveals M1 Ultra chip in Mac Studio

"the iPad Air is available with either 64GB or 256GB of memory"

Why not 128GB? I see Apple are up to their usual cynical marketing tactics...

JavaScript survey: Most use React but satisfaction low

What do we want? Static typing!

Why not just use TypeScript then? Yes, it's a lot more than just a strongly-typed Javascript but it also gives you so much more.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

Re: Hitting Enter....

Reminds me of when I was working for a well-known (but now sadly defunct) software tools developer's tech support team decades ago and took a call from a pompous tw*t working for PC World, who was trying to blag free support for an issue that required a support contract. When I pointed out that he'd need to pay a small sum of money for me to open a support case, his response was "... but I'm from PC World, do you seriously not know who we are?!" to which I replied "Yes, you're part of Dixons". His response was a "WTF are you talking about!?", I suggested he read that day's newspapers where the headline was PC World bought out by Dixons Retail Group.

Microsoft rolls out Files On-Demand with tighter macOS integration – but it defaults to 'on' and can't be disabled

All your documents are belong to us

When I recently installed OneDrive on my new Windows 10 machine (to which I had previously copied all the documents and other files from my old machine), it promptly set my standard local user folders Desktop, Downloads, Documents and Pictures to point to OneDrive and it moved the contents of those folders there too, but barfed when it realised there wasn't enough space on my (free) OneDrive subscription and wouldn't proceed until the issue was resolved. I checked the original local folders in c:\Users\myusername\ and they were all empty so I decided the safest way to handle this would be to upgrade my OneDrive sub for £1.99 for sufficient space for OneDrive to do it's thing and complete, which it did.

The annoying thing here is when installing the OneDrive Windows app, there was no option to specify that you don't want OneDrive to suck up your user folders and empty them! Yes, there's an option in the installed OneDrive app's settings but by then it's too late!

Anyway, I've since copied all of the files back to their original local folders and reset my default user folders to point to those too, but the way the installer works makes me think it's a ruse to get you to cough up money, and it worked, but I've since cancelled the auto-renew so MS will be getting no more dosh from me for OneDrive. I hope.

BTW, when installing Windows 10 (and I guess 11), never ever ever provide your Microsoft ID, otherwise all of your user folders will be on OneDrive and you'll probably never notice until it's too late.

GPU makers promise relief is at hand over chip shortages, prices expected to fall in second half of the year

I doubt prices will come down to pre-GPU-shortage levels this year or next. These days if you need a GPU without paying over the odds then eBay is where it's at unfortunately. I've almost completed my latest self-build PC which includes a 1 year old used GTX 1650 Super which, according to Currys PCWorld retails for £170 (but of course they've no stock) so I've paid £100 more for a used GPU. I don't feel too bad about it though, Amazon lists the same GPU for £385.

Replaced several times but still live and kicking: Windows Forms updated for .NET 6.0

OWL was a proper abstraction of the Windows API, unlike MFC which was essentially the Windows API without windows handle arguments, which meant a less steep learning curve for MFC, not that OWL had a steep leaning curve.

BT's Plusnet shows Google how it's done as email woes enter their third day

Re: Free email?

They've had email issues for years, it's gotten worse this year and has come to a head more recently.

They've had email issues for years now

I've been with Plusnet since the early noughties but since around 2012, I noticed that emails took a while to arrive in my Inbox (didn't matter whether I was using their WebMail or my favourite email client), which was especially noticeable with password-reset emails, registration confirmation emails and the like, which would take at least 15 minutes to show up in my inbox. I often used my GMail account to register with websites and I'd get the confirmation email immediately, so it was obviously Plusnet's email wasn't that great. I've always used Thunderbird email client connecting to PN's IMAP server and occasionally TB would report connection issues, but it still retrieved my emails so despite that I was still happy, but when I recently started using another client (eM Client) because of it's superior filtering function making it much quicker and easier to cleanup my PN email, I found that it couldn't download all of my email from PN's IMAP server, a look at the logs showed that the IMAP server was randomly dropping the connection causing eM Client to stop what it was doing and throw it's hands up. I remembered trying to use Outlook 2019 with Plusnet a few months previously and it couldn't see any IMAP folders for my PN email except for Inbox, which I dismissed as Outlook being a POS and left it at that. A look at the eM Client forums and Plusnet Community forums revealed that many others were experiencing issues with the IMAP server connection being unexpectedly terminated, with forum posts going back to January 2021 and still the issue hadn't been fixed.

I decided to check out a some other paid email services (I didn't want to become the product of a free email provider) and settled on FastMail because it integrates with 1Password (which I've used for years now) to provide on-the-fly masked email addresses (makes it simple to identify any websites that have sold your email address) and provides loads of other useful features, plus it lives up to it's name and "just works".

Migrating my email from Plusnet was a doddle thanks to FastMail's import facility, though it took hours to complete because of the spurious dropped IMAP connections, but when it eventually completed, I was presented with a detailed log confirming that every email and folder had been imported. Just to be sure I eyeballed the contents of my PN IMAP folders with my FM IMAP folders just to make sure everything was there.

So with my email "out-sourced", there's now less to keep me from migrating to another ISP, though I'm happy with my Plusnet broadband connection. Sure, email is now costing me money but it's not too expensive and I found a 25% discount link. Plus a pay upfront 1 year, 2 year or 3 year subscription saves money.

If you're a Plusnet customer affected by their email issues, I'd recommend moving on to another email service. If you're not affected, you may well be sometime soon.

Former Broadcom engineer accused of pinching chip tech to share with new Chinese employer

There - fixed that for you:

It's only a matter of time before China invades Taiwan to get TSMC's semicon litho equipment and when they do, they've basically lost all dependence on "the western world". At that point, there will likely be trouble.

50 years have gone by since the UK's one – and only – homegrown foray into orbit

Yeah, I also thought that photo was a screenshot from an episode of Thunderbirds

Report: Apple short of 10 million iPhone 13s this year due to ongoing chip shortage

Re: Pisses me off

Also the latest IR35 tax rules in the UK have put off many contract HGV drivers and has led to smaller haulage companies shutting down because of the risk of a lengthy and costly IR investigation makes it unviable.

Fake 'BT' caller fleeces elderly victim of £30k in APP app scam

I'd agree that at least a few of these scams are triggered by insider information, as evidenced by my wife paying a monthly care home bill for her mother via online banking, then at around 5pm the same day, getting a phone call from someone purporting to be from the bank saying that the payment hadn't gone through because the payee account details had changed and could she re-do the bank transfer but to a different account number.

Of course, being a council-estate girl made good, she was immediately suspicious and phoned the care home directly to confirm they'd received the original transfer, which they eventually confirmed they had.

British gambling giant Betfred told to pay stiffed winner £1.7m jackpot after claiming 'software problem'

I'd like to know whether the judgement was based on the fact that 49 pages of T+Cs is excessive and that, frankly, no-one could reasonably expected to fully read.

If so then it means that overly long/verbose terms and conditions are a weakness in legal cases brought in front of a judge.

Name True, iCloud access false: Exceptional problem locks online storage account, stumps Apple customer service

Re: My name is

'; DROP TABLE Users;--

FTFY

1Password has none, KeePass has none... So why are there seven embedded trackers in the LastPass Android app?

Re: Just justified the reason to leave.

As a long time 1Password user, I can recommend it

Re: KeyPass as an alternative? Are you sure you didn't mean KeePass?

You mean there's a CPM-86 version? Well I never...

Troubling news for JSON tinkerers? Windows Terminal unveils The Settings

Re: I sense a sea change at MS. And I'm not sure it is all swells from here on....

"nearly, but not quite, bash"

Do you mean PowerShell? If so then yeah, it's not quite bash but it _is_ a lot more than bash

Microsoft Edge goes homomorphic: Nobody will see your credentials... but you'll need to sign in to use it

Re: Huh?

Wahey! I'm an innovative software developer who's way ahead of the infosec curve

Visual Studio 16.9 Preview 3 brings Chromium WebView debugging, noisy tests for visually impaired, and more

Just had a quick look at the MS docs for WebView, seems pretty limited in what it can do compared with the old IE-based equivalent which allowed manipulation of the DOM.

For every disastrous rebrand, there is an IT person trying to steer away from the precipice

My university work placement was at Wang's manufacturing plant in Limerick, Ireland and because the Mr Wang's first name was An, he was known as The Wang, which makes perfect sense in that part of the world and would probably do so in Scotland too.

Apple to halve commission for developers turning over up to $1m in sales via App Store

"It can't be a coincidence that Apple's gesture also comes as myriad large developers make forceful complaints about the practises of Apple and the 30 per cent commission it charges devs."

So refreshing to see the correct use of "myriad" rather than the all too common and incorrect use such as "a myriad of".

Aside from that, I can't see how Apple can justify taking a 30% cut of App Store purchases when said store hasn't changed much in years and so ongoing development costs would be either very low or close to zero, unless Apple employs huge numbers of dedicated App Store-related staff?

They're just a greedy company who are willing to shaft both customers and developers, and they mostly get away with it because of the lock-in to their walled garden.

Blazor: Full stack C# and Microsoft's pitch for ASP.NET Web Form diehards

I must’ve been the only person who wrote ASP server-side code in JavaScript (or JScript as per Microsoft) rather than VBScript (ugh), I never got why folk seemed to think that ASP was VBScript

Developer survey: C# losing ground to JavaScript, PHP and Java for cloud apps, still big in gaming

Why...

... did they lump TypeScript and JavaScript together?

A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong

Re: Is my memory failing..

"We could also do with a CSV editor capable of handling any CSV file output - no NOT a spreadsheet because most of these are too fond of silently reformatting data input as CSV files and/or imposing limits on the number of rows and/or columns in such a file."

Check out EmEditor - not only can it present CSV files as a spreadsheet-like grid but it also handles unlimited file sizes

There’s no new normal coming for PC sales, just the boring old normal of a long, slow decline

Re: Why would you buy a PC when you can buy a Mac?

Yawn

The sun is shining, the birds are singing. You can shut the curtains and tour The National Museum of Computing in VR

Re: no bombe at TNMOC

I recently went to Bletchley Park for a 10.30am entrance and due to the social distancing currently in place, visiting the exhibits took much longer than usual and even without looking at every exhibit in detail and having an hour for lunch, barely made the last showing of the film in the small cinema in one of the huts, so I doubt you'd do both BP and TNMOC unless you plan on an earlier start and a shorter lunch.

Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds

A working from home colleague had recurring issues with her broadband connection which would die at random times of the day, IT support asked her to send a photo of the back of her home router so that a replacement could be ordered. The photo received showed the router with a large table lamp sitting on it and blocking the air vents on it's top surface, so the poor thing was overheating and shutting off, only recovering when it'd cooled down, and so on.

When asked why she'd placed a table lamp on top of the router, her reply was that there are vents on the sides and front of the router, so she thought it'd be okay.

As the old saying goes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

Three words you do not want to hear regarding a 'secure browser' called SafePay... Remote. Code. Execution

Re: Yet again ... yawn ...

>>Some useful services like interactive maps currently can't work without scripting. Interactive map, etc

>>APIs would have to be defined and implemented in browsers before scripting can be killed

They could be implemented in WebAssembly assuming the browser provides support

Email innovator Hey extends an olive branch in standoff with Apple, tweaks code to make the iGiant appier

Re: A subscription fee for email‽

I too have my own domain name and use it in the way you've described, but some organisation's email relies on the email address actually existing (or so I was told) and so I'd never receive emails to my [e-mail]

It doesn't happen with many organisations, though Patreon was another from whom I'd never receive emails to [e-mail] until I emailed them to explain things.

Not so nice, we investigated them twice: EU opens double whammy of inquiries into Apple's biz practices

I'm surprised that no-one has taken Apple to court over it's App Store practices - or is there a gagging clause in the App Store T+Cs ?

Bad news: Coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the world. Good news: Nitrogen dioxide levels are decreasing and the air on Earth is cleaner

Re: the sky has gone a couple of shades bluer

It's a shame that covid-19 isn't more Darwinian in the sense that the stupid and ignorant (mostly millennials it seems) get culled. The reality is that they're less likely to and will just carry on ignoring all advice about social distancing, get infected and then spread the virus to the weak and elderly who are more likely to die as a result.

Microsoft's Bill Gates defrag is finally virtually complete: Billionaire quits board to double down on philanthropy

That's a bit rich considering you forgot to mention the "cashectomy" that Lotus decided to inflict on Borland over the Quattro Pro court case that dragged on and on, until Borland caved when they realised they had less cash than Lotus to spend on never-ending court appeals.

Re: Would you like to be fried with that?

Lotus 123's decline and demise was the result of their lawsuit against Borland and it's Quatrro Pro spreadsheet that had a Lotus 123 menu structure option, allowing QP to run Lotus 123 macros - the uncertainty gave MS the opportunity to promote Excel as the alternative to Lotus 123 and the rest is history.

Microsoft picks up Your Phone – unless you're an Apple fan – in a fresh Windows 10 build

Re: Converted

My wife has used Windows for work and home for a long time now and found MacOS frustrating - she's not a techie or a Windows power user in any way, but frequently found herself cursing at the MacBook and eventually gave up on it, demanding we got a laptop instead.

Review of IR35 is in: Quelle surprise, UK.gov will forge ahead with controversial tax reforms in the private sector

A hirer's tax that is the same percentage as employer's NI on the contractor's rate? Wonder why HMRC didn't think of that way back before IR35 was introduced?

Apple tries to have VirnetX VPN patent ruling overturned again, US Supremes say no... again

What??!!

>>It stopped FaceTime working as a peer-to-peer product and instead calls went via a relay run by Akamai in order to avoid the relevant patents

So FaceTime functionality has been hobbled just because one of the richest tech companies in the world are unwilling to license the technology for the cost of a small percentage of their profit and capital?

With Apple the customer comes a distant second.

One man is standing up to Donald Trump's ban on US chip tech going to Huawei. That man... is Donald Trump

Re: Trump leads where others follow

You’ve nicked that from Julie Burchill but I forget who she applied it to, might’ve been Stephen Fry

We’ve had enough of your beach-blocking shenanigans, California tells stubborn Sun co-founder: Kiss our lawsuit

Re: He sounds like...

So his property value falls by 10%, hardly a catastrophe given his probable wealth...

Log us out: Private equity snaffles Lastpass owner LogMeIn

Re: No one has mentioned Dashlane

I use 1Password, it's fully featured and costs me around 30 quid per year, no issues with it so far...

High-resolution display output or Wi-Fi: It seems you can only choose one on Raspberry Pi 4

a PDP11 is a minicomputer

Royal Bank of Scotland IT contractor ban sparks murmurs of legal action

"Not much in the way of staff benefits at rbs.

They dont pay a pension contribution as such. When they give you the job they quote a salary of, say, £55k a year. Then you find out that they really mean a base salary of £42k with an extra 15% to cover your 'value' and another 15% which represents your gross pension contribution. They don't make any employers contribution to your pension whatsoever. You can let them pay the 15% into your pension, or just take it as cash if you want. However when they do something important like calculate your redundancy they use the lower salary figure as that's in their favour."

And if you've worked for them for say 25 years, then switch to a four day week after, say, having a child, then are made redundant a year later, the payoff if calculated on the basis of the 4 day week, with no account being taken of working full-time for 25 years.

Anyone for unintended ChatRoulette? Zoom installs hidden Mac web server to allow auto-join video conferencing

Re: "to avoid this extra click"

"I've said it before and I'll say it again : Humanity will not die in the fire of a nuclear holocaust or an Armageddon from asteroid, it will die of convenience."

Now that's a ripe theme for a Black Mirror episode

Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy: Run Huawei, Google Play, turns away, from Huawei... turns away

Upvoted because you didn't write "I hear the slavering of anti-trust lawyers chomping at the bit!"