* Posts by ITMA

1039 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2019

Real-time software? How about real-time patching?

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Re: Site Acceptance Test

Back in my younger days - some time in the precambrian - those two basitans of Government were know by their "alternate" names:

Job Centre - The Joke Shop. Need I say more....

Local DHSS Office - The "Fun" Factory, as it was always such fun everytime one had to go there about your benefits claim (like it not being paid)

Experiments and hidden features: Microsoft plans Windows Insiders shakeup

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Flame

Why bother???

Why are Microsoft even bothering with the "Insiders Programme" since they seem to have adopted the policy of using paying customers to do almost all of their testing anyway - whether customers want to be used as guinea pigs or not?

As a paying customer one could be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft do sod all testing themselves.

Their own QC and change management appear to be garbage verging non-existent.

Update 'designed to improve user experience' takes down the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal

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Devil

Oh what a f**k up....

Now here is a question - how the hell did this "update" get through Change Management?

Any answers from your side Microsoft?

You DO do proper change management.... DON'T YOU???

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I'm afraid there is one thing I can say about this....

WHAT A FUCK UP!!!!!

Still down with:

Service Unavailable

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

Saved by the Bill: What if... Microsoft had killed Windows 95?

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Devil

OS/2

Does anybody know who/where the definition of "OS/2" standing for "Oh Shit/2" came from?

LOL

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Re: Windows 95 was more masterful marketing

Has it been officially denied?

If it has, then it must be true... LOL

EC president promises European Chips Act to quadruple homegrown production by 2030

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Re: Hmmmm

The booze I've drunk or the booze she has?

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Joke

Hmmmm

Is it me or does the positioning of the mic and the blue background make her look like some Pythonesque cartoon cutout?

Or is Ursula really a cardboard cutout? LOL

Fix five days of server failure with this one weird trick

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Trollface

Re: The "inspector"

TWO TV channels????

How the bloody hell did you get two you rich bugger?

Microsoft brings Jenny, Aria, and more interface tweaks to new Windows 11 Insider build

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Re: Microsoft is starting to nag you about your PC bneing too old...

Now here is a thought...

To what degree is this "stagnation" of innovation due to the ability to "patent" software and, more than that, ever more ridiculously vagure concepts?

For example patenting "swipe left to right"

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Re: Microsoft is starting to nag you about your PC bneing too old...

I feel a class action being brought against Microsoft - probably in both the US and Europe....

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You missed a word out....

"So apparently I'm to be nagged to replace my 1 year and a few months old box so that Microsoft can shill their SHITE software.."

OpenShell has been working on a classic replacement for Windows 11's Start menu

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"whereas 11 not only maintains its egotistical belief that it knows better than any of its users do"

That reminds me of the my automatic response everytime I see the Windows 10 "Welcome" shite wizard:

"Leave everything to us...."

NOT A F****** CHANCE MATEY!!!!

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Like my wife

Just like supermarkets....

And probably with the same motive.

And while I'm here - which twat at Microsoft thought it a brilliant idea to rollout that predicitive text feature in Outlook and Word TURNED ON!!!!

I fully appreciated some may find it very useful. But they are MY COMPUTERS and MY BLOODY PHONE so stop forcing crap on me. Tell me it is there and let ME decide if I want to use it.

DO NOT turn it on and then leave me having to f**** about wasting time finding out how to turn the stupid thing off..

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Flame

You may think him a twat - but he's no where near as big a twat as the one who decided:

"I know! Let's put the Windows 8 Metro shite interface on Server 2012!"

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: Dear Microsoft.....

"> Rule#1: If it ain't broke ...

Not relevant to Microsoft products."

Ah... You mean the Microsoft internal memo:

"If it ain't broke - BREAK IT!! If it is already broken, break it some more!"

ITMA Silver badge

Re: "If it ain't broke..."

Sorry - actually no I'm not sorry - but that is a load of dingo's kidneys.

You are confusing "ludites" with those who just don't see the point of change for the sake of it.

Change that produces benefit can be fine, providing the benefits it brings outweigh the downsides - and there are almost always downsides to any change.

Too many of the more recent changes in the Windows GUI, are "New Coke" fiascos.

Nothing wrong with the old one and the bulk of the changes seem to have no real benefit for most - the biggest benefits I can think of being to those who thought up these changes to try to justify their jobs.

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Flame

Dear Microsoft.....

Rule #1

If it ain't broke - DON'T BLOODY FIX IT!!!!!

Almost there: James Webb Space Telescope frees its mirrors and prepares for insertion

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Just think of the cost im guineas! Shocking!

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Yes they do.

He sits at the desk next to A. Smidgen......

Microsoft gives Notepad a minimalist makeover to match Windows 11 style

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Re: Waaat ?

"Not a huge fan of Server Core myself"

I am 100% with you there.

Yes I know PowerShell is very powerful and that virtually all of the server managemenet "applets" are just pretty graphical front ends which effectively "spit out" PowerShell commmanrds.

I also appreciate there is significant overhead to have the WIndows GUI on a server.

But my philisophy is this - I am using and have been using for amany years Windows Server as much because it has the WIndows GUI through which you can do pretty much everything without having to learn a whole load of cryptic commands

If I really wanted to have to learn lots of cryptic commands to do virtually anything, I'd be using bloody Linux and not Windows.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Waaat ?

I'd still like to know which sick **** decided the Metro interface should put on Windows Server 2012 r2.

Find his car on a very hot day and secrete some of smelliest cheese on the planet and let it sit there, baking in the heat.

Payback for the "pleasure" the Metro interface has given on a server.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Dark?

My standard settings for command prompt and powershell are green text on a black background.

Nostalgic perhaps, but I also find green text far more restful toi look at on a black background than white text. White text on black I tend to find harsh.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Dark?

"Don't forget the BBC Micro - white text on a black screen when you powered it on.

Even their word processors used the black background"

Not if you had one of those nice crisp green phosphor monochrome monitors it didn't, such as the Philips BM-7502.

I still have mine. And it still works!

If you were a flash git, you had the amber phosphor version, the BM-7522, just to be different.

And several models of RGB monitor, particularly the later Philips ones, had a "green screen" button - not as crisp text though since you still where reading it on a screen with RGB phosphor triads.

Flash? Nu-uh. Windows 11 users complain of slow NVMe SSD performance

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Re: Microsoft, masters of mediocre

I don't know....

They appear to have managed to scale up the philosophy of the "Focused Inbox" (YUK!!!) roll-out debacle and made it the basis for an entire OS - nobody asked for it, nobody wanted it, yet you are having it anyway.

'AV SUM!!

UK's Surveillance Camera Commissioner grills Hikvision on China human rights abuses

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Re: I've never worked out why being spied on by a foreign Government is scarier...

Ok - try to do almost anything which does not contain ANYTHING made in China.

You'll find it very hard, especially technology.

ITMA Silver badge

What an utter crock.....

Ok, if the route the UK commission wishes to take is "ban HikVision because of the application one of its major customers (the Chinese Government) uses their products for".

Then the next logical step is ban everything made in the UK because we sell weapons and weapons systems to anyone with the money and the rigtht old boys club connections.

How many such products used for "nefariouos activities" by foreign governments contain ARM technology? BAN ARM!

Utterly childish attitude and pure political posturing to be seen to be doing something when the reality is UK commission can do SFA.

It's the old "what does the killing? - the hammer or the killer weilding it instead of using it to build something?"

There's something to be said for delayed gratification when Windows 11 is this full of bugs

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Oh, about a year should do it

The magic words to deploy in business environments when asked about "when can we get W11"? are...

ROI - Return On Investment.

What planet are Microsoft on if they think a small business with 70+ machines, all of which are perfectly good capable machines running W10, are going to chuck them all and buy new ones just to run W11.

Personally, without a bloody good reason not too, I'm going to do what I did with W7. Wait until EOL approaches and we've had maximum value out of the cash we've spent on machines.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Well...

But here is the real question...

What does W11 do for you that W10 does not?

When considering things such as "starts much faster", how much of that is W11 and how much is really the hardware upgrades just to meet W11's minimum system requirements?

ITMA Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Dear Microsoft

"Dear Microsoft

Reinstate your testing team."

Erm.... We ARE the testing team.....

And the scary bit is Microsoft seems to think there is nothing wrong with that....

Why machine-learning chatbots find it difficult to respond to idioms, metaphors, rhetorical questions, sarcasm

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Temba his arms wide :)

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Re: Just one slight problem.... AAA+ Rules in All the Very Best of Almost Perfect AIRoosts

"The ones who are complaining that a machine is not replying to questions equally as well or even better than a smarter human might"

That's not my issue at all.

I don't give a monkeys about the technology or how good (or crap) it is or is not. If I contact any organisation about anything I want to communicate with a HUMAN BEING. I do NOT want to communicate with a F*****G "bot".

Frankly I find being met by/directed to any type of bot as a form of communication personally insulting.

The ONLY thing a bot communicates to me is that the organisation using them doesn't give a sh*t and is not interesting in my business.

The technology will NEVER be good enough becuase it is not nor will it ever be a human being. And I wish to communicate with human beings.

ITMA Silver badge
Mushroom

Just one slight problem....

There is just one slight problem with all these chat bots and the time, effort and no doubt money, going into their R&D and it is this...

If ever I'm online or even other situation (such as phone) and want to chat - it is to an EFFING PERSON!!!! Not some bloody piece of software!

If I wanted to "chat" a none human, top of my list is my cat.

Some s**t's bit of software that they think is clever is so far down my list it isn't even in this solar system.

I loathe bloody chat bots.

Product release cycles are killing the environment, techies tell British Computer Society

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Re: Complete waste of time.

You can sort of understand this approach when many "unbranded" spares are NOT from the same factory as the branded ones, but are instead cheap, very poor quality rip-offs from a certain part of the world.

You have to see some of the horrors of electrical "cheap knock-offs" on Big Clive's Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtM5z2gkrGRuWd0JQMx76qA

Or Dave Jones EEVBlog channel, who is even closer to the source:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2DjFE7Xf11URZqWBigcVOQ

But that will always be an issue for as long as (say) a printer costs £50 but almost anything for the same printer classed as a "spare" costs more than the bloody printer!

ITMA Silver badge

Re: "annual product release cycles"

But the point is we shouldn't HAVE to faff about like this.

What on earth does Windows 10 do that absolutely cannot be printed using PCL4?

Fundamentally printing is making (predominantly black) marks on paper. That hasn't changed for a long time and printers today are still doing the same thing. So what is so earth shatteringly spectacular that Windows 10 can do when it comes to making (predominantly black) marks on sheets of paper that it has to use the latest PCL and can't do it with PCL4?

BOFH: You'll find there's a company asset tag right here, underneath the monstrously heavy arcade machine

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Re: Personal heaters

Not to mention the fact that if the "master clock" was controlling the same "heaters with timers", unless they had battery backup every time the master clock switches them off, all the timers go out of sync with the actual time.

That is/was the favourite exploit of the chairman at an outfit I know. He would go around and switch the heaters, each with its own timer and adjustable thermostat, off at the wall if it felt too warm and out went the time settings.

He obviously hadn't heard of a "thermostat" to set the temperature or that "if too warm, turn it down it will go off by itself".

Cisco to face trial over trade secrets theft, NDA breach claims after losing attempt to swat Leadfactors lawsuit

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Re: Cisco Webex Hologram

Just becaue something looks 3D deos NOT make it a hologram.

The data content of a true hologram is hugely, staggeringly VAST.

The images Microsoft's Hololens produces are NOT holograms.

Those Tupac on stage things are NOT holograms. Strictly speaking they are video version of Pepper's Ghost, a Victorian optical illusion, with no parallax. A person to the left of the stage sees EXACTLY the same as a person off to the right. With a TRUE hologram they each see a different view.

So even if three people, wearing a headset each, saw the same "projection" from a different viewpoint, that still doesn't make it a hologram, since each would simply be viewing a different projection generated for their viewpoint only by their device.

It would require all three seeing the same "projection" from a SINGLE device but viewing from different places - one on the left, one in the centre and one to the right - and yet EACH seeing a different image with correct view for their position to even get close to a hologram. And if they moved position their viewpoint they see should also change to match - all from the SAME projection.

How to keep a support contract: Make the user think they solved the problem

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Devil

I find waving one of those orange plastic "dead-blow" mallets from Rapid Racking in the air with "obvious malicious intent" in the vicinity of "problem pooters" fixes no end of problems - especially "user induced".

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Re: Of course it is do you think ect ect

I used to get really annoyed every time I had to phone the Cumbernauld factory of a certain Japanese printer manufacturer only to be greeted by someone (not just the switchboard) answering with:

"O. K. I.".

It's not a bloody abbreviation like NEC! It's the name of bloody founder Mr Oki Kibatarō!

Can I speak to "F. R. A. N. K."?

Jeez

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Vents

K6 phone boxes (the iconic UK "red" phone boxes for those not in the UK) were designed with that "issue" in mind with appropriate drainage holes in the base and the concrete "floor" with a subtle but deliberate "fall" on it it in the direction of the drainage hole.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Vents

My dad (RIP) spent most of his working life as a TV/VCR engineer back in the days when many people rented such devices (especially VCRs) and they would be repaired in your front room (on site in today's terminology).

The worst was being called to non-working VCRs. Customer would claim "it just stopped working" usually with a tape inside. My dad lifted up the VCR to have look through the front loading slot and out poured pungent yellow liquid...

"Dog must have p*ssed on it"...

A rapid exit and change of clothing was usually required.

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Re: I would have sacked Keith there and then

That reminds of an old joke I saw in one of the electronics hobby mags years and years ago:

The owner of a local electronics shop (when such things existed) had become so fed up with "gifted amatuers" (one in particular) coming into the shop with burnt/charred/broken "bits" of components from his attempts at repairing stuff and expecting him (and his staff) to spend a great deal of time identifying them before offering replacements. Which he would quite often refuse saying "too expensive" that he adopted the following...

Guy comes into shop and pulls out a bag of burnt/charred/broken components, empties them onto the counter and asks "Have got some of those?"

Owner replies "Certainly sir", reaches under the counter and pulls out a handful of burnt/charred/broken bits of components.

:)

Microsoft emits more Win 11 fixes for AMD speed issues and death by PowerShell bug

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Re: Sorry for the pox, but we promise no new infections!

"Its funny as I assume outlook.com is supported by the Office team"

My experience with the "front line" Outlook.com support was that it was supported by the Marx Brothers....

No, that's an unfair insult to the Marx Brothers... At least they were trying to entertain by attempting to be funny.

Outlook.com front line support were just childish, worse than amateur and insulting, And technically utterly incompetent.

ITMA Silver badge

Re: My laptop is supposedly Windows 11 ready

I'm sure Gibson Research are already poised to release "Never11" when needed.

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Re: Upgrade?

"have been buggy and relied on the users/customers feedback and problems"

I think that is what is now laughably passes as "Microsoft Testing and Quality Assurance".

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Re: Sorry for the pox, but we promise no new infections!

My experience is that Microsoft are very good at fixing problems (see my post elsewhere about Outlook.com)....

Microsoft T3 Support: "Please be assured we have definitely fixed the problem".

Me: "No. You may have fixed A problem, but (accompanied by voluminous evidence) you have most defintely have NOT fixed THE PROBLEM. Go back and try again, and this time TRY HARDER."

Oh and according to T3 support, SMTP is NOT a mail protocol..... REALLY??

Microsoft admits to yet more printing problems in Windows as back-at-the-office folks asked for admin credentials

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Microsoft's Effort at Being "Green"?

It was either "Personal Computer World" aka PCW, or "Practical Computing" (not "Computing").

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Devil

Re: Microsoft's Effort at Being "Green"?

Who remembers the cartoon in either Personal Computer World or Computing magazine (who even remembers that magazine??) which showed a guy towing several large trolleys each loaded up with a moutain of paper.

A colleague stopped him and asked "What's that lot?"

Answer: "It's the documentation for the new paperless office"

What do you mean you gave the boss THAT version of the report? Oh, ****ing ****balls

ITMA Silver badge
Devil

Depends WHERE aforementioned flashlight is....

Thanks, Sir Clive Sinclair, from Reg readers whose careers you created and lives you shaped

ITMA Silver badge

Re: Beep

And wasn't the PET's name, Personal Electronic Transactor, so carefully and well chosen...

Unless you were French...where many a many for the European market where made.

You too will will be amazed by the things you can do with the latest in desktop microcomputers.

- introducing "The FART" by Commodore.

Who went on to make the VIC-20....In Germany, ...

Where (apparently) VIC looses translated into equally potentially offensive.