Posts by Hogbert

I was told to make backups, not test them. Why does that make you look so worried?

Always consider backups to be a quantum phenomenon. Unless you observe it, it's state is unknown.

Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'

But surely you must want a Recommendation panel taking up some space there too!

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

something went wrong...

I have been able to get some good coding advice from it, tho it can take a few iterations refining your requirements and telling it which bits it got wrong. In the end I have usually done good research of the subject matter to confirm if it was correct.... Or I just start debugging to see the results.

My usage dropped off because so often it failed with that annoying "something went wrong" response. It feels wrong to have the overloaded system respond with that message instead of just saying it is too busy prioritizing paying users.

Windows 11 update breaks PCs that dare sport a custom UI

Anyone had this problem with Start11?

I'm using Start11 to have a functional and nice looking menu.

I haven't installed any optional updates so far this year, but I noticed the Start menu button changed back to the Microsoft icon recently.

Hospital IT melts in heatwave, leaving doctors without patient records

Re: How is this the fault of "Legacy Systems"?

I suspect the problem with the legacy software could be lapsed support and the inability to run up duplicate installs on new hardware or virtual hosts, in a different location.

The software itself was likely still doing it's job, tho probably only to the minimal original specifications from way back when it was purchased.

Healthcare organizations face rising ransomware attacks – and are paying up

Re: “Health Care”

Outside the US, quite a few countries have tax payer funded healthcare. Such organisations usually struggle to get by under strict limited budgets, and have staff who are dedicated to providing the best care they can with the available resources.

It seems particularly stupid for ransomware attackers to target hospitals which have been running many millions over budget for several years, so have no available cash to pay out anyway. These evil people are not very good at researching their targets.

RAD Basic – the Visual Basic 7 that never was – releases third alpha

I'm amazed to see people asking VB6 questions on Reddit, regarding training course work they are doing. I don't know why any educator would still be using it.

Re: Xojo

I still need to support VB6 legacy code, but have not been able to install it on Windows 11. MS have a check for potentially unsafe software that kicks in.

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

Re: Not exactly much incentive to move

I installed Start11 and got a great looking task bar and menu.

I mostly use Double Commander for files and project work, saving multiple tab sets as favorites makes it a winner for me.

Explorer with it's mess of multi level context menus is a disappointment.

Re: Wasn't Win 10 suppossed to be

My i7 was around 8 to 10 years old, the ancient graphics card couldn't support the resolution on a huge new curved monitor, so I decided to build a shiny new Ryzen based box. This was able to install 11 so I went with it.

Since I had a spare case and enough parts around to put the old i7 to use, I made it a Linux system and currently have it running Pop!OS. It performs very well and has drivers for all the hardware, there is nothing obsolete about the CPU or motherboard, and the old Nvidia card can play a lot of Steam games still.

Apart from matching the development environment which I use at work, I'm not seeing much point in keeping Windows on my newest PC, when I there are so many lovely Linux DEs to choose from. One day we will replace our software at work with something cross-platform and hopefully move on from supporting win32 vintage software. Then I won't feel the need to stay on windows at home.

Re: Is anyone else seeing a major opening for switching to another Operating System?

Windows 11 is helping developers make that move away from win32.

I tried to install VB6 (to provide support to an old client) and it refused, claiming it could introduce security vulnerabilities.

Had to install it on a win 10 virtual instance instead.

Wolfing down ebooks during lockdown? You might want to check out Calibre, the Swiss Army ebook tool

Re: Upwards thumb

Agree, I think I have donated twice, maybe 3 times.

The tools for categorizing are quite excellent. You don't have to have everything in one huge list; if you don't want to sort and group by tags, it is actually quite easy to set up different libraries and move books into the appropriate one. If I want to look up technical books I switch to the tech library. For cooking and food books etc I switch to the home library. Scifi is by far the largest library, and for that I am more interested in grouping by author and series number.

People should really learn to use their tools before complaining about them.

Microsoft's do-it-all IDE Visual Studio 2022 came out late last year. How good is it really?

Re: The Microsoft naming department

True, they have made a total mess of the naming and versioning. Trying to search for documentation on specific .Net or C# features is a bad experience as the Microsoft docs try to direct you to the latest version with features that are not present in the framework you have to work with. VS started suggesting code changes which are not compatible with the version of framework we run with, so that made VS code helpers a bit less helpful.

Their philosophy seems to be that everybody should throw out their old software solutions and write a whole new set in the latest version of language and framework. This seems quite disconnected from reality to me.

I keep on working with old ASP.Net forms and would dearly like to be able to start replacing it with their shiny new .Net, but I'm kind of frozen whenever I try to determine which bits of the technology I should concentrate on learning. There are just too many different streams of toolsets and frameworks. At least ASP.Net development and debugging in VS is simple and mostly trouble free.

Pop!_OS 21.10: Radical distro shows potential but does not play nicely with others

Giving it a go

I have switched between Debian, Ubuntu and a few others for decades. Decided to give Pop a try on a i7 (home built) PC, which I thought I might use for programming, learn a new language or two.

It's working quite smoothly without major probs, but I'm not comfortable with their preference for flatpak. Things like VS Code seem to need a lot more setup and messing around, making flatpak less appealing.

Now I'm getting notifications popping up telling me that I should reinstall some of the apps I chose to install from debs as the flatpak version is the only one getting future support.

It has been a nice experience, it's easy to use and doesn't look much like a Gnome DE, I can see it being an ok Linux for some types of user, but I don't think it will stay on this box for too long.

Survey shows XP lingers on while Windows 11 makes a 0.21% ripple in the enterprise

I was feeling reckless (and have a separate Linux PC anyway) so I went ahead with the upgrade. First action was installing the Start11 menu replacement, which has made it look quite pleasant.

It's not too awful to use, except there is a bit of weirdness going on with the sound, not sure if that is realtek drivers or win11 that keeps losing the plot tho.

Have to admit I have spent very little time on it, as after it was loaded I moved on to rebuilding my Linux PC and installed Pop!_OS, just for a change. Much nicer experience than Windows.

Brit MPs blast Baroness Dido Harding's performance as head of NHS Test and Trace

You may not expect a lot from your fellow countrymen, and you probably know better than I, but a certain percentage of them should have at least accidentally achieved something.

Health IT continues to absorb the most astonishing budgets while appearing to produce nothing it. News headlines at 6.

Reason 3,995 to hold off on that Windows 11 upgrade: Iffy performance on AMD silicon

Re: Running Windows 11 on AMD

I just upgraded mobo, CPU etc, as my gen 2 or 3? i7 and board were not win 11 compliant. It was getting old but still ran super fast, but whatever.

So my rebuild with a Ryzen 7 went well, reinstalled win 10, and the windows update panel now tells me my gear is ready for windows 11, coming soon. I guess it's being pushed out to OEM builders only for now.

.NET Foundation boss apologizes for pull request that sparked community row

Re: Microsoft buys github

It sounds more like a contract which project administrators accepted, possibly without contemplating the consequences. As usual with contracts, it's never easy to just say 'I changed my mind'.

Re: What a shame

Actually yes, I trust Sourceforge. The mistakes they made were made by previous owners, and only applied to a very small number of projects, then got overinflated and ranted about all over the internet.

My project was there before those nasty events occurred, and it is still there, and was never troubled by that bad memory which so many people have not been able to let go of.

IBM's 18-month company-wide email system migration has been a disaster, sources say

Re: Dark, chaotic pit of not being able to access email or calendars

Sounds idyllic, except that it's easy to pass blame onto someone else by simply saying "I never said that".

In some company environments people will do nothing without having a trail of instructions or authorisations in writing.

Docker introduces developer environments in containers

Sounds scary. We require useful descriptions on code check-in and having the full change history is so very useful.

Maybe you could start using local GIT instances to maintain projects, then slowly introduce others to the benefits it brings.

Microsoft revokes MVP status of developer who tweeted complaint about request to promote SQL-on-Azure

Re: Bloody Azure

The weak spot we all need to be wary of is the accounts department. Buying and upgrading servers and software packages gets dumped under capital expenses and goes under the 'bad' column, as it can have large one-off costs. The 'good' column contains operating expenses, which are relatively fixed known amounts per month, such as cloud services.

Once your accountants get control, none of your logic about owning on premise equipment will ever sway them.

helloSystem: Pre-alpha FreeBSD project chases simplicity and elegance by taking cues from macOS

Re: Further simplicity and ease of use...

But wasn't that a semantic rule, where T prefixes a type, I prefixes an interface etc?

The silliest naming, I think, is when people make a programming language with a single letter or common word for its name. Then they think about how it will be indexed for searching and add 'lang' to the search keywords. Then again, even .net can retrieve a lot of unrelated search results if you don't include enough specific search terms.

Motorola Moto G 5G Plus: It won't blow your mind, but at £300 we're struggling to find much to grumble about

Re: Likely to be supported

They will do one OS update and I believe security updates for 2 years.

After that you get no more cover from them.

I like my Moto G4 plus, but was very disappointed when the security patches stopped coming. I wouldn't buy another Moto device again, unless they have a revelation and start providing ongoing OS upgrades and updates.

For real this time, get your butt off Python 2: No updates, no nothing after 1 January 2020

No, you are thinking of Python 4, which will use braces to define code blocks instead of indentation.

<ducks>

Re: 20 years is a lot of time.

Absolutely right. It's almost like the release of Python 3 was a foreshadowing of the future of the internet and social media; people chose to be outraged, and swore they would stand their ground, because no programming language upgrade should ever lose backward compatibility.

I thought at the time, sure, they will all come round to using the new version when they realize why the improvements were made. But some of them didn't, and still refuse to. I guess they just choose to remain outraged, as is the current fashion on so much of the internet today.

I can't remember the details from back then, but I think there were a few quirky command constructs pre version 3, and there was an effort to make some of the language features more consistent with other parts of the language. I remember reading about people who found the task of transitioning existing code to the new version was not really a great ordeal. I can't be sure tho, I haven't used or followed Python discussion for some time.

Click here to see the New Zealand livestream mass-murder vid! This is the internet Facebook, YouTube, Twitter built!

Re: Why share?

Anybody old enough to have a gun license should be able to differentiate between fantasy and reality.

We have had movies depicting good people fighting bad people for about as long as we have had movies.

I have been playing first person shooters for at least 25 years, and have never had the urge to obtain a weapon and start attacking people in real life. I have watched violent action, fantasy and sci fi movies for even longer, yet have had no desire to blow up anybody's planet.