Posts by Matt Black

UK seeks light-touch AI legislation as industry leaders call for LLM pause

LLM FFS

Please would El Reg expand acronyms. This is just yet another example

Will they try it for 30 days first? McAfee goes private again in $14bn cash deal

McAfee (and Dell) are scum

I failed to fully remove McAfee from my wife's new Dell despite spending hours trying - you still have to dismiss some dialog that turns up every few days. And I get junk mail about my subscription to it having expired from all sorts of sources just about daily. Almost to the point of being like ransom-ware - pay up to get rid of the endless crap.

I don't want McAfee, am not going to pay them any money, and wish I could opt out of being bullied about it.

'It's where the industry is heading': LibreOffice team working on WebAssembly port

Basic compatibility with Office (my reality)

Until I can generate/read basic Word and Excel using Libre Office without significant format errors... I am locked to MS. I don't like that but it's true... This is therefore mainly irrelevant to me.

Retired engineer confesses to role in sliding Microsoft Bob onto millions of XP install CDs

Rory Bremner 'Bit of a Pratt, Sorry 'bout that' springs to my mind...

Interpol: Strong encryption helps online predators. Build backdoors

FOSS?

Even if the major messaging providers bend over to provide back-doors, the FOSS community will make end-to-end encryption available.

Give yourselves a pat on the back, top million websites, half of you now use HTTPS

El Reg?

Doesn’t seem so long ago this site changed over to https...

Lenovo denies claims it plotted with Microsoft to block Linux installs

ASUS Guilty Too

Recent purchase of 'Republic of Gamers' ASUS high spec PC suffered 'RAID only, no AHCI' in the BIOS. It went back. I would like support for Linux from vendors, but in the absence of that I do expect the option to boot the machine in a 'standard' mode not encumbered by M$

End all the 'up to' broadband speed bull. Release proper data – LGA

Why not publish what exists?

Pay Ookla and other similar providers of 'speed testing' to publish their data at a local level - oven better aggregate it and publish it.

Banning computers makes students do better on exams – MIT

'Do Better On Exams'

Like 'on the weekend'. Can we manage some more old fashioned and correct prepositions here in Blighty such as 'Do Better In Exams' and 'At the weekend' or even 'During the weekend'? I'll fetch my coat...

UK.gov unleashes 3D virtual world to train GCHQ's kiddie division

Tag them now...

Consider their motives: I imagine anyone playing on the site will be logged, probably along with my post here...

Maserati Ghibli S: Who cares what Joe Walsh thinks?

7:05 Good Call!

The Archers drives me round the bend. There must be a decent pun in there that ties in the lack of simultaneous gear change ability, I just can't put my finger on it...

EU VAT law could kill thousands of online businesses

Know your customer

To allow small (or any) business to 'know the customer', how about some EU sanctionned scheme that allows citizens to have a 'known identity' sanctionned by approved institutions (Banks for example - they have to 'know their customer' already in law I think) that would include the email address and such information (vouched for by the Bank/Government) as is required to conduct business?

Radiohead(ache): BBC wants dead duck tech in sexy new mobes

FM Reception Crap, Ditto DAB

I have spent/wasted £100s on several DAB radios since FM reception where I live is dodgy. The DAB reception is marginal - radios have to be positioned in just the right place, and the level of service is awful (some types of weather seem to kill it). I just hate that mud-bubbling sound.

As for DAB on the move: just laughable, quite unable to begin to complete with FM.

It seems incredible that Freeview TV works but basic radio services don't. It also seems incredible that UK Government continues to peddle basic DAB that doesn't really work and never will.

Perhaps some variant of LTE to rule us all will provide an alternative - sometime, maybe...

Barnes & Noble: Swallow a Samsung Nook tablet, please ... pretty please

Bundled with, Worth, Free, ...

At least this comes 'bundled with books, magazines and video worth more $200' rather than 'with FREE $200'. But 'worth'? Only if you could persuade folk to purchase all those items at resale price.

Stone the crows, Bouncer! BT defends TV recorder upgrade DELETION snafu

Vision Plus box - just awful

Aside from wanting Sky3 and Sky4, the sheer awfulness of the Vision box is what made me switch to Sky.

Verizon finally drags FCC into court fisticuffs to end one-speed internet for all

Someone has to pay

Those who don't transfer vast peer to peer files should not have their service degraded by those who do - an argument for 'pay per byte' . Whether at the client or server end of the link...

Should BT be prevented from traffic shaping to ensure delivery via Broadband of the Sky channels on its Vision service? If not, is this because delivery of pay-TV is somehow different from the hallowed Internet?

Providing the network to support the Internet is not a charitable occupation: it tends to be 'for profit' for better or worse - and in my view better than attempting to pay for it out of general taxation and gave it run by some quango...

Reform candidate gets CISSP tin star sheriff's job

Forget the CPEs

And have the pleasure of splashing £440 every 3 years for the delights of the 6 hour multi-choice exam. At least that forces you to revise - and means an average annual cost including membership of circa £200.

Adobe Reader browse-and-get-pwned 0day under attack

Bad Couple of Years for the Adobe Security Team?

Working in a security team is usually a depressing experience - under-resourced and fixing crap mistakes made by people who should have known better; not being allowed in to the design and review cycle early; etc.

And now you report it as if they are the ones to blame.... look higher up the tree and earlier in the process!

App steers cyclists away from traffic, upward inclines

energy problems solved

Downhill both ways... all our energy problems solved! How many cyclists will it take using their dynamos to charge us all sufficient batteries to power our electric vehicles (or even our puny LED lights that now replace the incandescent bulbs I fondly remember...)?

US word czars unfriend shovel-ready toxic assets

Toujour La Change...

Can I nominate 'New Labour' since the term 'Old Labour' or simply 'Labour' seems to cover the ground admirably?

Faster broadband for free?

Unplug all extension wiring...

I just received an iPlate - net effect an apparent slight reduction in speed.

However, when I unplug the internal wiring and plug a micro-filter in to the BT ‘test socket’ to which my home-hub and a DECT phone are attached, my ‘IP Profile’ rises from 2mbit/s up to 6.5mbit/s.

So I am now thinking of some experiments to cut (or perhaps earth) the bell-wire – or another approach would be to insert a (very short range) DECT extender to link from the micro-filter attached to the test socket through to the internal wiring – more money but might do the trick?

Thanks to Neil from BT who rang to provide support and knew what he was talking about!

Matt Black

Run Mac OS X on a PC

VMWare

Make it run on VMWare 'hardware' without any expert knowledge required - then I will try it!

Microsoft to search browsers for JavaScript compatibility

A Good Thing

Surely it is? And if it leads to modifications (codification of de facto practices) to the standards then that too is 'a good thing'.

MPs praise e-passport roll out

Exemption from procurement rules...

Fine to hear of a success - all credit. Procurement rules seem designed to (a) promulgate an adversarial environment; and (b) thwart the PRINCE2 principles espoused by our own Governments's OGC... So no surprise to me that (again credit where due) something that worked broke the mould...

Only Sky can save digital TV

Most PSB output is shite...

Most PSB output is shite... but SO much better than the commercial channels.

Roll back to BBC1, BBC2 and the 3rd channel I say.

I have spent £thousands on gadgets to show / hear this rubbish - more fool me - and would cheerfully just have radios 3 & 4 - even tho' they have dumbed down in a disgusting fashion. Bah Humbug.

Google's 'Gphone' said to be mobile OS

Adverts Schmadverts

How do I offer to pay NOT to be advertised to?

BT home router wide open to hijackers

BT Fails Duty of Care?

BT has repeatedly tried to get me to take their home hub and sign-up for 18 months. They want me to throw away my firewall/router to replace it with something totally insecure - and the blurb mentioned some 'security device later'. I think this stinks from a major provider - and I think El Reg should take this up with them.

Euro consumers favour plasma over LCD

Freeview made my mind up

I intended to purchase LCD. Helpful chap in shop got the set I had picked, and showed me Bugs Life from DVD with direct digital to the LCD - it looked great. Then I asked to view output of a freeview box since in reality this is 99% of my viewing. The LCD looked terrible - flesh tones of the news reader made her look like a dummy. So I looked at the same output with a plasma and the results were natural. I bought the plasma.