Posts by NATTtrash 338 posts • joined 6 Apr 2019
Maybe, but notice realising more and more that these "productivity software", "new, new, new!", "revolutionary", "can't miss", "exclusive" thingies... erm... take more time that the stuff you needed to do to begin with. Ah well, it all has more to do with "creating needs" than "saving lives" I suppose...
(Rounded corners? It's a feature™! Clippy, where are you?)
I think you're right. Furthermore, as with some more "nowadays" developments and ideas, it ignores basic things that always have been, and will not cease to exist all of a sudden. People are inherently lazy. Thus rather use some super software to do a humans job. Yes, that will also let them rather cheat than face the music that they might be sub-par, do it for real, and maybe fail. And let's not start about people dominating other people, telling them exactly what (they will allow others) to do, and accepting no variations? Nothing to see here, move on.
I'm not a techie like many of you here, more into human tinkering and fixing. Therefore I still hope that humans working with humans will stay. Since it proved and proves its worth. Or would you rather have an automated WhatsApp after the "machine" found that you have cancer, and decided you have decreased societal value, fixing cost too much, so won't be treated? "Nothing to see here, move on..."
That said, a quick spin with the new version does show some limitations. Connection to Exchange, Outlook.com, or Office 365 is by IMAP, unless you purchase an add-on called Owl for Exchange at the modest cost of €10 per year. This extension may be necessary if IMAP is not enabled by your organization.
True el Reg, but please note, even after your purchase (or using e.g. Evolution), and gaining IMAP, it still is not without tribbles. The kind people who brought you O365 nowadays will allow you access through IMAP/SMTP, but if you want to exchange, I don't know, something trivial as meeting invites with your colleagues, you will not get the invite (you know, productivity software) but a message to go to settings to allow "external" access (UNSAFE!). No invite. And arrived at the settings of O365... it turns out $USER can't set it, and an admin has to jump through hoops for you. Who then mumbles if you can't buy a Windows computer and leave him alone (yes, really!).
As others mention here too, it also comes down to plain old dirty marketing. I do notice more and more that "helpdesks" for customer conveniences (e.g. banks, stores, healthcare, gov info sites) started giving "advice", if you report an issue with the operation of their site, "that you should install Google Chrome".
If this makes the greybeards here feel like a return of the browser wars and "This website is viewed best with NetScape at 1024x786"... Well... Nobody said intelligence or quality had anything to do with it... As we have seen before...
"That might be true Jim, but not as we know it".
Looking the screenshots of W11, I can't escape the impression that it looks very much like Gnome and xfce. But hey...
London, 1949
Publisher: "Really George? Don't you think this is a bit extreme? I mean, whole departments, whole Ministeries, just to rewrite history actively? Changing pictures just to remove specific people from the memory of millions? Surely that could never happen! People have their own memories, and we all know pictures don't lie."
George: "You will be surprised what humans are capable off. Look at what we just experienced, and be very afraid of where we are heading."
Publisher: "Ah well, we can always sell it as science fiction..."
"It's Hedley Lamar, not Hedi...."
Well, understandable...
Were probably subconsciously thinking of Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), great movie star, inventor, and the mother of frequency hopping in modern wifi/ Bluetooth. Another great female contribution not recognised...
"...you may want to check out Reaper."
THX for this! Had a look, but it looks that this would be more something for a (semi) professionals, or very enthusiastic audiophiles. Thing of Audacity of course is that it is pretty sophisticated, with a low entry level still making it accessible for all the "less involved" (Let's do a quick record/ normalisation/ convert/glue pieces of audio together...). After all, that has been one of the powerful points of Audacity...
That is a very valid point indeed.
"DigitalOcean is looking to hire a front-end software engineer who, if working remotely, is free to live anywhere in America, Canada, Germany, or Netherlands, but not in Colorado."
Having worked in a number of different countries myself, it is kind of naive to assume that salaries, and the corresponding taxes, social contributions, QoL are similar to where you are.
Or that your legislation (should) stretch over your patch of land. Although that last one would not be a first...
Indeed. But let's look at the "compatibility" and "cross platform performance" of their other products, I mean, just as a love indicator. So how is that IMAP of Outlook working for you? Yeah, also blown away by that "let's plan a meeting" compatibility. What do you say? O365 documents? Ah, no worries, enough love for everybody to go around. We're talking productivity software after all...
Had some fun with a W10 install in a non-network connected VM during the Easter days. Just playing around, and not being an MS user, wanted to have a look what all the fuss is about. That iso of W10 installed without any problems. However, when I wanted to clean it up a bit, like deinstalling One Drive (no net, duh!), Edge (no net, DUH!), things started to look less effortless. Sure, the icon disappears, but if you then run something like Piriform's CCleaner, it turns out that Edge is still started at boot. After you deinstalled it. That to me sounds very much like Google kind of practices, preventing $USER from hurting themselves and (gasp!) disabling telemetry...
BTW, another thing that I noticed is that, yes, the "shine" might look all new (if you're into that kind of click until you're dead, zillion sub menu obfuscation flatness), but the stuff "underneath" (e.g. regedit, diskmgmt.msc, secpol.msc, services.msc) do look very much identical to when I saw it last time, some 20 odd years ago. So why are some so offended by the polished turd, or if you will, turd with a shiny coating remark?
"It would seem to me that they could collect incomplete data for such items, such as a MAC address of 00-26-DD-XX-XX-XX, and it would fulfill that brief."
I've been reading the comments up till here... and am kind of surprised that, even here, another, IMHO crucial and basic point is missed. To reuse a phrase known for another "intrusive" (please forgive me the huge understatement) societal problem:
NO means NO.
What is not clear about that? The user said no to telemetry to begin with. Made use of that so often referred to privilege: choice. Ticked the NO box...
And thinking about where that phrase comes from, and the "sure, but a little is OK/ needed" comments here... So if I say NO, still doing it because you (think you) can justify it so well for your use case, makes it OK?
You do know about the changes coming to xfce right?
Xfce 4.16 is Adopting Client Side Decoration by Default
Xfce 4.16 will look a little different to long time users when it arrives later this year, as the popular desktop environment is adopting client side decoration by default.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/01/xfce-4-16-client-side-decoration
And I'm sure you can find much more on this highly incendiary development/ discussion if you search for it...
"I mostly think the publication model is wrong."
Hear, hear! This is a problem of the "scientific publication" market to begin with. And what do we see? Publishers like Elsevier, who do very little in the publication process (although they don't agree of course, so why do we still have to write in stead of they themselves putting stuff down on paper?). They do FA and still make obscene amounts of money, that helps "science" or what ever you want to call it, in no single way. And all that while we as scientists have to buy back our own publications. With public money I might add. So your money. But hey... We know you love those taxes. Luckily there is a drive to publish in open journals, but that development is painfully slow, and of course hampered by all those other forces in life. Lobbying... Status... Money... Big absentee: science, and all the forces promoting it. "For the benefit of the people" is there, but it seems to be strangely limited to some within certain companies...
Meanwhile we see the same FUD that always is being distributed if some see a movement that costs them money and thus is not liked. Funny thing though if you read this "advice" by our friends in blue: so where do people log in if they have to download that publication? Have to give their email to enable phishing? I know you have to for that great "I-own-you" Mendeley website/ program. Any publishers paywall if you want to enlighten yourself about, well, er, I don't know, any kind of virus, disease, or what ever. But for SciHub? Nope, sorry, no log in needed. None. Works just like that. Even if you have a VPN. Imagine that...
"“Yeah I have no f*****g clue what I'm doing here man. I've been down the rabbit hole of [FILL IN YOUR FAVOURITE SUBJECT] for all of about 2 months (though to be fair in this space that is like 6 f*****g years) so I'm very much just making this s**t up as i go!!!!"
Be honest, when reading this, who did NOT think of their own boss...
"Heck, there's even a Dutch partner called The Good Cloud available, so one could even keep data within their own borders and audit all patches to protect against sabotage!"
Indeed. And please don't forget, we're talking a government here. Not some some shoe string company where the boss has to do this her/ himself during the weekend. In some kind of way I keep being surprised by the "laziness" and "lack of insight" of these institutions. And then even more baffled by the indignation they then show when companies like MS use that to advance their own situation. Need a COVID app? Let's run to Google or Apple. Need a countries digital base? Oh, MS might be a bit iffy, and there is this thing about laws? So let's go to the other big commercial one that says "Trust us, and Bob's your uncle".
Or would it be the "cheap" argument again? Why IT security is always something that the help desk guy has to do on the side? As we all know here...
Now everything is a bunch of sharepoint...
Remember coming into that professors office, where it is a big jungle of paper, journals stacked man high against the wall, drawers open and overflowing with sheets of paper? And if you asked: "How do you manage to find X?", the standard reply was: "No worries, I got my system".
This now moved to digital. Advantage of the modern digital age. It has, as so many other things, become self service. You now have to figure out yourself where stuff is, rummaging through other peoples mess. Without knowing what "the system" is. But hey, you can access it "in the cloud, conveniently from your own home". While the "Activity Overview" registers how long it took you...
"Just as cheap if not cheaper, no walled garden, no telemetry."
And here is another thought for you...
This has been marketed promoted presented as a solution in "home schooling" times, especially for less well of children (and their parents). After all, we have all seen the reports of 3 kids having to share mums mobile to do some school work. However, the basic design and work flow of a ChromeBook is that a continuous net connection is required. I don't know how it is nowadays, but I can remember models not even having office-like applications available locally. Now, we the privileged can shout that net access won't break the bank, but I suppose that's what we are... The privileged, who have to think again...
Ah! Excellent! I hope this all comes through quickly! I can only see the price on my Volvo Amazon go up and up! Old timers rule! Even the Karman Ghia of the missus, despite being a VW, will increase in value! I can retire! Pension assured!
..."wearing silly costumes & comicly oversized crotch protectors..."
I'd rather go reformat my computer & reinstal Windows ME.
Hmmm. Rather watch some real sports in stead of its over-padded copy with hand cream using gentlemen who are afraid they hurt themselves...
Six Nations Wales vs. Ireland this weekend for example. And the good thing? Next weekend we will have even more. Looking forward to Scotland vs. Wales. Sad though that I can't watch it in my favourite watering hole. Bloody virus...
If permission is granted, Facebook's app can access what Apple calls its Identifier for Advertisers – a unique per-user ID that can be used to identify and track you from app to app and website to website on iOS...
Am I outing myself too much as somebody with a "geriatric privacy perception" if I don't see the "protection" of Apple as a solution? Whatever happened with those red phone booths at the corner of the street?
...we need more rendering engines to prevent a monoculture.
Indeed. But that might not be the thing that is all decisive. The world changed since the Netscape days...
Gmail struggled a bit, as Google insisted "this browser or app may not be secure" on some attempts, but loaded the email client on others. Similarly, Google Maps was also a little unhappy; fine showing satellite and Street View imagery, but less so with displaying an actual map. Web versions of Microsoft Office also struggled to load and Netflix simply ignored the entered password.
In today's world others will decide what is the best browser for you. So that you don't hurt yourself. And thus the most likely course of history will be that this either dies, or is bought and integrated into an "acceptable business proposition".
...there is nothing wrong with a good cock and balls drawing.
Penis in the sky: US navy pilots grounded over 'obscene' stunt
Dudes are drawing a 'dick and balls' with their GPS trackers for a good cause
Teenager's 60ft painting of penis on parents' roof spotted in space
Bromley's 'Cock And Balls' Christmas Lights And Other Phallic Urban Legends
The web started like a free living anarchist commune...
...and great times they were.
But more to the point: one of the remnants of that time is the discussion that is still actual up to this day: the fact many platforms can still label themselves as "just a service provider", which then benefits them greatly because they can never be touched while making money. Thus, FB will never be liable for what some morons do on their platform. Amazon can sell lead pencils for kids and claim it's just facilitating an external seller. Uber or AirBnB have a similar business models, and we all are familiar with the stories how they claim to just "facilitate their clients/ customers/ independent contractors".
Reading between the lines of this piece, it would not surprise me if some time (soon?) this "facilitating" thing is going to change. And no worries, if that happens we will still have freedom of speech. But me wonder how much these freedom loving platforms (businesses) will then still allow/ facilitate that if they are the ones that will get the court cases and corresponding fines each time their users breach the rules. That's what they are afraid of. That's why there are open letters and sudden "we care and therefore self regulate". Because if the situation changes to something where more normal world rules are applied (to them), then making money becomes very scary and less lucrative...
Playback in YouTube seems snappy enough and, it being 2020, video conferencing clients such as Google Meet and Teams all performed well in our quick test.
Since natural, continuous, non-interrupted video conferencing in Teams is a pipe dream any way, it won't be hindered by the perhaps less optimal specs of the Pi to begin with.
"How am I supposed to tell the fucking difference to its "regular operation"?"
Ah, that must be why Teams users seldom turn their video. And people on e.g. Zoom do more frequent. Or Teams members always mention you can DL it from ShitePoint while others just share their screen. Must be just like with Skype from the past, which also always gave better results if it didn't have to work that hard.
Not that I'm looking forward to staring up people's noses that is. But with video at least I can have a Teams <u>conversation</u> because it gives you different cues which you can combine: sound... lip read...
But this is typical marketing BS.
Indeed. I suppose it's about time to replenish that popcorn. The timing is also not surprising, especially since now all the tech oriented reviews declare that "Intel has been overtaken officially by Team Red!" with the Ryzen 5XXX series. Seemingly even on gaming, Intels marketing dept. main USP to go to in case of doubt over the last couple of years. And I can't suppress the feeling that the technophile population (does that mean us?) isn't that much their concern. But if the lappy producers start offering AMD based machines, often cheaper than the same model with Intel Inside™, that makes some Inside Intel™ nervous about their end-of-year bonuses.
Don't you just love the smell of competition in the morning?
"Then wonder how a company with coders like this came up with IE, Teams and ShitePoint."
"Enthused by then-CEO Steve Ballmer, who had originally dismissed the iPhone..."
Everybody leaves an heritage, although direct causality isn't always that clear to us mere mortals. We all see it when a start up with passionate inventors realise they have to work with M&S people (and to their standards) when they actually want to be "successful"...
Anybody knows what the old fumbling CancerMaster is doing nowadays?
I also hope not needing Teams installed also equates to not needing a Microsoft account to join a meeting, that was the prime restriction that drove me to implement Zoom over the other offerings last year.
Hear, hear! But...
I hadn't counted on the great "flexibility" of the rest of the world, who find it difficult apparently to breath outside their carefully cultivated, locked in Microsoft garden. So there you are, all multiplatform considerate, Zoomed up and ready to go. And then you get that nice Teams invite. Again. For the 642 time. "OK, if it has to be Teams... Can you give me a phone number so I can call in?" "Noooooo, that won't work! Impossible! It has to be Teams, otherwise we can't go through the documents and presentations. Get Teams because that is the only way. Otherwise just buy a Windows computer!"
Me thinks: 'Gosh, what have we been doing since 1987 in all those conf calls before this thumb typer was born?"
In the end I lost confidence in humanity, ordered another, admitted defeat and installed the repolished Skype turd Slack rip off quick Electron Sunday afternoon botch *nix version of Teams. After jumping through one million hoops, burning through 6 email addresses and forced to give up 3 phone numbers "so we can send you a security code for your convenience since you don't seem to have an account with us!". So much for the much lauded productivity...
But, must admit reluctantly that it does work. Sort of. No white board, no specific window choice for sharing (so watch what you have on your Desktop), no PiP when screen sharing, no quick additional cam plug in to show something close up, not even simple address book entries for "your contacts". But hey, the MS users seem impressed...
Now they started on "you have to get on SharePoint".
Only 3439 days to go...
On the rare occasions that I visit an evil beef clown joint I always make a point of bypassing the machines and ordering at the counter.
Good for you...
For those in doubt: read the microbial swap test studies that found more poo buggies on those screens than there is meat in those burgers. Which end up on your hands... With which you eat that "tasty burger"... And since the evil clown pushes out so much crap for the virginal target population child mind so no more resources were left for plain utensils...
Assuming you have the right hardware that is. And the cam is positioned correctly. With many you can't even see their eyes, since it hides behind their nose hair. And with others the cam is not in the line of view of your conversation partner, who looks at you on an other screen. And thus is talking "past" you by default...
We can use Teams but can only share screens if we use the desktop version (not via browser) AND have to register with a private Microsoft account -- work logins are fine for Windows and Office but no Teams support.
You're so right here. Nowadays with all the different options were right back where we were: "This page is best viewed in Internet Explorer at 800x600 resolution". Yay, progress! It already started with the SfB thing where SfB uses were not allowed to chat with "consumer" Skype users. Now with Teams it's even more fab... if you have all the MS certs/ registrations/ paid packages/ approval (Your organisation does not have a registration. Please refer to MSurl to purchase...). And since some think no further than "What's the issue because I can do it?" I have to suppress the feeling to ask for a conference phone number continuously. And then I'm not even talking about those w****kers who insist on a vid call... and then don't turn their cam on, so you end up talking into a black hole.</rant>
I'm afraid I'm right behind you there. With the "mix" of different application interfaces in xfce already, I've also grumbled in some applications, spending (too much) time trying to figure out where basics like print or edit were hidden this time. It's a shame, but it looks like basic conventions will go down the Ribbon route. And we all know how well that worked out...
Hmmm, I can even see a more disturbing future there. As we all know here, "some" are easily persuaded to believe that some net propagated opinion/ behaviour is the new normal/ truth. Deep fakes are limited only by the imagination of the "creator", and can be applied to cater for any individual, highly personal preference. And (IMHO) that's fine, everybody is entitled to her/ his own poison. But... The adult industry is there to make money. And the top shelf days are over as my grand daughter can show you in 3 mins. So what if this very personal view is rolled out widely because there is money to be made, and becomes regarded as the new normal? After all, deep fakes don't complain about rape/ amputating a ball and letting you eat it/ any "alternative fact" you can come up with yourself...
Logic says I should probably just junk 'em.
NOOOOOOooooooooooooo!
BTW: https://soundcloud.com/search?q=John%20Peel%20Show%20%2BdB
Even more fun...
https://github.com/FuckTheRIAA/FuckTheRIAA
...which holds...
Icona Pop - I Love It (feat. Charli XCX) [OFFICIAL VIDEO].mp3
Justin Timberlake - Tunnel Vision (Official Music Video) (Explicit).mp3
README.md
Taylor Swift - Shake It Off.mp3
Oh dear. Looks like Barbara is not amused...
Honestly, it's quite a useful tool...
I agree. Then again, I can't escape a deja vu moment, where I see kids nowadays enter their (digital) cassette tape in their (digital) cassette player (simple screen recorder? audacity?), and wait to press RECORD just when that annoying gentleman stops talking...
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