Posts by ITMA

How to leave the submarine cable cutters all at sea – go Swedish

Re: Undersea infrastructure

Hang - there are some bits of this missing.

Items 27a, 47c and 85a.

There are clealy in the parts list but not present.

And I've three thingymajigs which aren't listed in the assembly instructions at all.

Microsoft tests 45% M365 price hikes in Asia-Pacific to see how much you enjoy AI

Bullshit!

"The spokesperson did say the purpose of the changes is to allow Microsoft a chance to 'listen, learn, and improve.' "

Those are three words one would never associate with Microsoft, not for a good few years now:

"Listen" - No you fucking don't.

"Learn" - Like bollocks...

"Improve" - Hahahahahaa, now I've heard everything. How does "make shittier"="improve"?

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

Re: "Zuck goes MAGA to save his own skin"

Zuck - "You want answers?".

People - "We want the truth!".

Zuck - "You can't handle the truth!".

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens bowels

There, fixed the headline for you :)

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

Re: Mate away, Microsoft.

"Windows 11 is malware."

I always thought that was Norton.....

Re: When is Microsoft going to realise?

No - it's worse!

With 10 months of support remaining, Windows 10 still dominates

Re: > apart from to keep their own job

What?

Microsoft is a private company - what has government got to do with it?

Besides, if you don't want to make the bodies working on useless shit unemployed, transfer them to testing. An area Microsoft are utter shite at and getting worse. Customers/users are NOT your effing test department

Re: No must have features

Microsoft have made it abundantly clear they don't care what users want - they only care about what they want.

Re: Windows 11 is fine.

Windows 11 is change for the sake of it - and no shite developers spending hours on crap features nobody wants is no justification, apart from to keep their own jobs.

Then an excuse for hardware vendors to try and flog new hardware to users who neither need nor want it.

That's before we even get on to the AI and "Microsoft account" bull....

It is nothing but an utter shit storm.

A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

Re: A New Year's gift from Microsoft: Surprise, your scanners don't work

"The New Year's gift from Microsoft should be that they are now hiring quality assurance staff"

And like most New Year's resolutions, it will go out of the windows on 2nd January.

Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby: Hacking Christmas lights

Re: Check Out

I like Dave Plummer's channel - really interesting stuff there.

I think a better way of describing Dave would be "ex-Microsoft developer". Which is how he describes himself.

Just for context, for a very long time - way before computers existed - in the UK describing someone as a "hack" was a shorthand term for "journalist/reporter" e.g. "He's an Evening Standard hack" usually of mediocre (or lower) standard.

Re: "Hacking" Christmas lights

"Hacking" has become one of those much over used terms to the point it has lost its original meaning - rather like "hologram".

To me, "hacking" (in IT/electronics terms) has always been getting something to do something it wasn't designed or supposed to do. Putting something together to do something as in this article, to me, just is not "hacking".

Rather like those awful "life hacks". They're not "hacks", they are suggestions/tips.

Re. "holograms" - just because an image "appears" 3D or to "float in air", it does NOT make it a hologram.

Suggested Actions fails to suggest its own survival as Windows 11 feature killed

Re: "New Features"

"Who comes up with this sh*t?"

To put it bluntly, people trying to justify their jobs because they have eff all else to do.

Far better the were redeployed to testing. That other thing Microsoft have become utter shite at.

Million GPU clusters, gigawatts of power – the scale of AI defies logic

Re: 1.2 to 1.5 Gigawatts

If we get to 88 miles per hour we're fucked!

Re: Truly exciting.

Never mind Doom - can it run Space Invaders?

'That's not a bug, it's a feature' takes on a darker tone when malware's involved

"That's not a bug, it's a feature"

Isn't that a Microsoft line?

Apple called on to ditch AI headline summaries after BBC debacle

Re: Disgusting of Apple to threaten jobs like this.

But the BBC does have to deal with the consequences:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yd9j8j62go

Re: We know LLMs are poor at summarising

And yet this is one of the key "applications" AI is being sold on.

My own view is that if you ask someone (you employ) to summarise something, you are expecting them to read and understand it. Then write a summary.

If they are just using AI to do it, then why are they being paid as they are clearly neither reading nor understanding the material they've been asked to summarise - in other words not doing the job they've been asked to do.

Microsoft coughs up yet more Windows 11 24H2 headaches

Re: Avoid 24H2 for now

Isn't that standard for a lot of errors Microsoft products throw up?

No information, let alone useful informatioln.

$800 'AI' robot for kids bites the dust along with its maker

Re: But..

You forgot:

"They're eating the cats and dogs. They're eating the cats and dogs".

Re: But..

That's rather unkind of you, insulting baboons.... :)

Re: But..

Is a Trump personality available?

Ughh..

Apple Intelligence summary botches a headline, causing jitters in BBC newsroom

This is similar to my (relatively) new Pixel 7a periodically telling me that I've turned backing up my pics to Google off.

Yes I KNOW! But there is no option present to tell it "I Know! Now fuck off and stop telling me" instead all you get is a nag to turn it back on. I have to close the "Photos" app then re-open it to get past the fucking thing.

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

Testing? Change Managerment?

Those two phrases come to mind when deploying anything to a "live" or "production" system. Especially where payment processing is involved.

Who validated the testing?

What change management process did it go through before deployment?

Hopefully rather more than just that manager saying "put it out there".

Firefox ditches Do Not Track because nobody was listening anyway

Re: Tracking

"enjoyed" is not a word I would have thought I would ever see in the same sentance as "Hershey bar"

Microsoft hits back at claims it slurps your Word, Excel files to train AI models

Re: Let's say that Microsoft is lying...

There is absolutely no reason why Office 365 users should have everything go "to the cloud".

All it takes is a couple of settings in preferences to change that and everything goes to your "local" storage, be that your PC or local network.

Microsoft teases Copilot Vision, the AI sidekick that judges your tabs

Why?

Why oh why won't Co-Pilot just feck off and die?

Veteran Microsoft engineer shares some enterprise support tips

Re: "When something goes wrong in the Enterprise, it isn't always DNS"

Or Klingons off the starboard bow..... :)

Microsoft confirms there will be no U-turn on Windows 11 hardware requirements

Although most (in the UK) will attribute that to Jim Hacker, its origin can be traced back to Otto von Bismark:

"Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/08/07/believe/

What makes you think I want to upgrade?

Does that count as an official denial?

Microsoft doing a U-turn on the Windows 11 hardware requirements has been official denied? So it MUST be true!

""a necessity for a secure and future-proof Windows 11.""

I've a better way of making Windows 11 "secure and future-proof".

Lock it in a very strong metal box. Weld it completely closed and melt the keys.

Then take it deep into some dark utterly remote woods.... and bury it somewhere utterly forgettable where it will never be found.

Then we never speak of it again.

Outlook is poor for those still on Windows Mail, Calendar, People apps by end of year

You poor poor man.... Using your ISP's email client....

Likewise.

I was referring to the O365 "proper" version of Outlook.

Microsoft® Outlook® for Microsoft 365 MSO (Version 2410 Build 16.0.18129.20158) 64-bit

That absolutely DOES have the garbage "Try the new Outlook" swtich in the top right corner.

I think this "misconception" from Microsoft's crap communication is part of the problem.

"New" Outlook is - for the moment at least - a replacement for the "consumer/home user" Windows Mail client and associated apps.

Microsoft may well want it to repalce the full "Classic" Outlook (the one used in corporate environments) but it is nothing but a pale, shite, bug ridden lookalike.

Yes I know it has the "Try New Outlook" switch in the "proper" Outlook. But avoid it like the plague as it NOTHING like the proper Outlook.

AWS says AI could disrupt everything – and hopes it will do just that to Windows

Yup.

"Disruptive" in the same way that dicharging raw effluent (aka generative A.I. "bullshit") into your water supply distrupts it.

Not in a good way.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

No shit!

"Only 10 months left until Windows 10 end of support and people still seem to prefer it"

Who would have guessed....

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: Thermostats

Thernostats should, like all HVAC controls, be locked off so staff can't fiddle with 'em.

What ever temperature is set, someone will not be happy.

The best way is to pick a sensible temperature, say 20 degrees C, and ensure everyone is equally unhappy.

:)

Brits are scrolling away from X and aren't that interested in AI

Quick - get him into the deep fat fryer!

Re: It's not just Brits...

You think companies such as First Essex gives a monkey about their "duty to inform the public"?

They can't even be arsed to run a barely acceptable bus service - what they currently run is shite and most of the information they give on Twatter is stuff like the vacous, content free "due to operational issues".

Don't you mean worrying low?

Unless you are talking about the 82% who don't trust it.

Re: It's not just Brits...

You'd be surprised how many organisations have made Twatter their primary communication route for customers/users, especially when you want/need to find out what the hell is going on:

- Train companies.

- Bus companies.

- Road/traffic incidents.

Abstract, theoretical computing qualifications are turning teens off

Re: WYF!

Did you have a hand in CESIL ? That abortion that was foisted on many a youngling using the ICL CES books?

LOL

NHS major 'cyber incident' forces hospitals to use pen and paper

Re: The COVID internet

Have you stopped taking your medication again?

QNAP NAS users locked out after firmware update snafu

Yeah, their instructions are frankly crap when the problem is that you CAN'T log in to the effing web UI.

Re: Errrrr???

I've three of their units - luckily none of them affected, but then I don't generally upgrade firmware as soon as it is released.

Best to let others find any "show stoppers" first, then upgrade.

QNAP have done themselves no favours in the way this has been communicated - badly.

Trying to hide "bad news" does nothing but piss customers off.

If you want to take them with you, be open and honest and keep them informed.

Now’s your chance to try Microsoft’s controversial Windows Recall ... maybe

Re: Seems something's semantic somewhere

You've copied that from me! Bar steward! :)

AI PCs: 'Something will have to give in 2025, and I think it's pricing'

Re: What in the heck even IS an AI PC?

No no no.

The ads wikll be plaastered on the sides of council shit carts where they belong.

Gartner - Businesses want to move to AI PCs

Bullshit.

I think businesses would much rather not have to scrap shed loads of perfectly serviceable PCs and spend shed loads on new ones just because Microsoft says so.

Andrew Tate's site ransacked, subscriber data stolen

Sorry to be pedantic, but Cnut died 12th November 1035 and was apparently not a bald twat.

Well, he may have been a right twat, but wasn't follicly challenged.