Down in Vancouver
Can't get in here at the UBC campus.
1171 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Feb 2007
I'll acknowledge that some jobs, in some places, require features specific to MS Office. Those people are in the minority.
After a decade or more I can't see giving Microsoft any more of my money. For the vast majority of home or business related tasks LibreOffice is more than capable.
And free.
And can even save your work in MS Office formats.
(This week I find myself using a shiny new Windows laptop, and cannot grasp why the Start menu is now located in the middle of the bottom task bar, and not on the left.)
I assume that any information about me, anywhere on-line, has been, or will be hacked or stolen.
At this point it's simply inevitable .
Can it be stopped? I'm inclined to think that most IT infrastructure has grown to the point where no-one entirely understands it. The size and complexity makes it a great target for hackers and governments.
Until something really, really, REALLY massive happens I can't see that changing.
Forget the Chinese government, how many Reg users don't have an on-line Google ID? Or use Gmail, Drive, and Maps in a daily basis?
The on-line privacy battle was lost at least a decade ago, and it was a voluntary program - until services you need started demanding your on-line info just to enter.
I'm past wanting or needing novelty. I just want to get things done - mostly writing.
I've been running Mint for more than a decade. On a new system it's a 15 minute install, all defaults, just disable CapsLock and I'm happy.
Best of all is that year after year, version after version, it looks, feels and works the same. None of those "why in the hell did they do THAT?" moments.
I honestly believe that 90% of end users would be fine with an out-of-the-box Mint install instead of Windows or Mac OSs.
And as far as I can recall there gave been maybe two bugs ever that actually bothered me.
FWIW we've spent two years trying to convince Google Maps that we live on "Lighthouse Rd" (what the sign says) and not the imaginary "Breakwater Rd" (what Google calls it.)
They simply refuse to even respond.
We did though convince them that the 100 year old lighthouse at the end of our road had "moved to a new location."
So delivery drivers remain a struggle, and directions sent to anyone include a paragraph beginning "... if you're using Google maos .."
France seems to have solved this issue (except for BMW drivers of course.) People for the most part drive at or near the legal limit on highways. Big, monumental speed cameras remind you why this is a good idea.
In towns though they use a decidedly non-digital toolbox: 30 kmh limits, lots of roundabouts, and LOTS of speed bumps.
Somehow the French managed the seemingly impossible feat of deciding "in towns, cars need be slowed down down to protect the people walking or biking."
I'm not really interested in nit-picking various people's suspicions, though I'm inclined to think, "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck."
What this long comment thread demonstrates is that none of us has a clear idea of how, and by whom, we're being watched, or where that data ends up.
I don't trust Google or Meta, or the rest of them, and assume that EVERYTHING that I do on-line can be tapped by someone.
I remember when Yahoo was the most amazing place to find answers.
I remember when AltaVista was the most amazing place to find answers.
I remember when Google was the most amazing place to find answers.
For whatever the reason, Internet people have a remarkable talent for taking great products and destroying them.
As of today the app with the most stringent, and pointless, control is for my supermarket points card.
Other entities vary all over the map, but ultimately I assume that their back-end is as sloppy as their front end.
I assume that any on-line actor has a good chance of being cracked open, whether by criminals or government, and the information that I provide reflects that.
In other words, I'll take a paper receipt before handing over an email address.
When I look at these major corporations I look at how likely it was that they had a secure, off-site, and tested backup. Often it sounds like they relied on "cross your fingers "
And do they have a realistic plan, and the people, to actually restore themselves? These days the answer is likely "no".
Beyond that is the question of ransom payment. If your systems are safely backed up your only concern is shielding your clients from damage. Except, of course, that you're negotiating with criminals, so your working assumption is that they're lying to you and will sell your data regardless.
By now surely everyone remotely awake assumes that every word they tap into a web site is immediately and irrevocably out of their control.
Think before you type and, sadly, don't ever assume that web site owner will behave with honour.
Why, even at The Register there been cases wher.. x.&*/......
no carrier
As does my wife. She's cursing her brand new, near top of the line Samsung as I write this.
America's vendetta against Huawei is stupid and performative, whether having their CEO arrested by Canada customs, or forcing a really good product off the shelves.
Now, in Canada, you need to hunt far and wide to find a smartphone that isn't Samsung or Apple
This is all very charming, but am I alone in finding that Google, Facebook, and the rest consistently deliver ads for things that I don't want and have never considered?
Whether it's search results or advertising, my experience is that in recent years the web giants have really lost the plot.
I'm sitting here waiting for the day when Musk or Google or Facebook finally figure out how to kill off email and force us into some variant of Slack or YouTube.
And yes I'm serious.
One by one it feels like every on-line tool that I've ever relied on has been bought up and either ruined or shut down entirely.
It's a shame. I can recall when the Internet was a shiny new thing, full of hope and opportunity. Now it's an ad-infested mess and a constant battle to do simple tasks.
Dell laptop, Mint Linux. Tapping the middle of the trackpad = paste, especially when you've previously copied a three page document.
For me it's a nightmare, but I wouldn't even mind if there was an easy way to disable it.
I honestly can't comprehend the thought processes of many people in IT today
This is hardly the first time one of the big on-line giants has done this, which is why my files live on my local hard-drive, and backup drive. I simply don't trust Google, Apple and company to protect me.
Beyond that though is the reality that if my rural Internet or mobile service go down - a fairly common thing around here - I can still keep working on projects until it returns.
We chose HSBC as the best choice when moving between Canada and France. Over the course of 18 months we spent literally hundreds of hours on the phone, being disconnected on the phone, and hanging up the phone because the low paid Asian call center drone was incomprehensible.
They are, without question, the most technologically inept company I've dealt with.
I now bank with the decidedly tiny Lahave River Credit Union, where I can even phone the branch directly and talk to a real person.
Just dumped out of Twitter and moved to Bluesky.
It's a good fit, and growing past a million users.
One user explained it nicely:
Bluesky has no algorithm. Who you follow and what they post is your feed.
Don't argue with chuds or quote-reskeet dunk on them, just block (and maybe report)
Starve the assholes out and don't give them the attention they crave
I remember when everyone was going to wear glasses to watch 3D TV...
I remember when everyone was going to wear Google Glass...
I remember at least a few other companies flogging some kind of 3D VR goggles...
And most recently I remember when Facebook was going to change the world with Meta goggles...
Then Apple..
But surely THIS time!
Here in rural Nova Scotia we've been trying for nearly a year to correct the name of our road from "Breakwater", which it's not, to "Lighthouse" which is what the sign reads.
We have failed, so every delivery includes special instructions for drivers, and new ones invariably phone us in confusion.
We did though convince Google to change the address for the 150+ year old lighthouse at the end of our road. We know the request worked because we received a notification that the "Western Head lighthouse has moved to a new location!"
I've heard this claim before:
as its software "powers nearly half the web"
Has anyone ever documented, or challenged, this claim? I find it pretty dubious.
I have one site still using Wordpress, mostly because it's super low maintenance so I only get annoyed by WP every couple of months.
Businesses will stumble around, either relying solely on outdated email, or switching to consumer-grade messaging services in an attempt to keep communication flowing.
I'm sorry, is this guy denigrating E-MAIL at a time when Slack is crashing itself? Is he suggesting that we shouldn't default to a system which seems to be 99.99% reliable and instead should twiddle our thumbs waiting for the latest Slack outage to get fixed?
I say nonsense to that! For me it'll be Threads... or maybe a fax.
It's a well known fact that the "Bastions of Freedom(tm)" all use the imperial units. USA, Burma and Liberia.
Yo Buddy! And Canada! Sometimes, not all the time, but especially in construction, lumber yards, and baking.
Shoe and clothing sizes just pick a random number
ChromeOS is a desktop Linux with the Linuxiness stripped out. No choice about partitioning. No weird dual-boot mechanisms. No choice of desktops or package managers. No package manager!
Mint: I buy a new laptop. Spend 15 minutes installing Mint, all defaults, disable Caps-Lock, I'm done.
Been doing this for ten or twelve years with no issues, no real change. It just works.
My wife's Apple on the other hand constatly does inexplicable things. On the odd occasion when I am forced to boot into Windows (yes Adobe, I'm talking to you.) it's dear god, what a mess.
All of which is to say, why do Linux writers take such pride in the Grey-beard scenario? It benefits no-one, and surely does not benefit Linux.
The downvotes on this post reflect the way that Americans have well and truly drunk the Kool-Aid, or have been taught from birth to believe their country's own PR.
This is the country that has a list of seven words that you can't say on radio, that extends copyright protection more or less indefinitely so that Mickey Mouse doesn't go Public Domain, and which accepts both horrendous rates of gun violence, and a truly abominable health care system for large swaths of the population, despite being what is classed as a developed nation.
And yet it trumpets its supposed superiority and freedom at every turn, ignoring a political system that that borders on insane, (seriously? Trump??) a military that is seriously many, many, many times what's needed, and a universe of social media that gets worse by the day.
I believe that America is on its last legs. There will be loud and violent outbursts, but the whole thing is crumbling before our eyes. Whether it's government, or corporations, Twitter or Facebook, I can see that it's all heading for a collapse.
I just hope that Usenet survives, and we can go back to the Good Old Days.
Simply select some text in any program, switch to a different window, point where you want it to go and middle click.
Mint, Dell laptop. I am forever inadvertently inserting blocks of copied text where I don't want them by accidentally tapping the wrong part of the trackpad.
More critically, there is apparently no way to disable the function.
the web stack has become a ubiquitous standard for creating cross-platform user interfaces. You create it once and you have an app in the browser, mobile, and desktop. … It's here to stay and that's not a bad thing."
Unlike the guys in Redmond and SoCal, we live in the poorer part of a Canadian province where the norm is to have power and/or internet outages for hours or even days. And where mobile companies charge an arm and a leg for any decent data allowance.
That's why my email archive lives on my computer, available no matter what. It's also less prone to being encrypted and held for ransom by hackers.
Just this week someone was expressing frustration at news writers who regurgitate Cop-speak.
The example used was "attended a motor vehicle accident" as opposed to "went to."
Also notable was the reporting of pedestrians being run over, referring to them being hit by "a vehicle" with no mention of the driver holding the steering wheel.
On arriving in Nova Scotia we discovered a place where newspapers really didn't exist, many trades and businesses see no need to have a website, and where Google can't be convinced to get the name of our road right.
For us the choices for anything are: ask a neighbour, Facebook, or Reddit. There are literally no other options, and r/NovaScotia and r/Halifax saved us more than a few times.
Now both subreddits are locked up tight, and the only online option left are the bizarre Facebook buy and sell groups.
I was never a Reddit user before, but they've been invaluable in this place.
More and more I'm turning away from the Internet. The greed, the avarice, and the sheer stupidity of the people running sites like Reddit or Facebook have made it next to useless, and often frustrating to the extreme.
I can remember the early glory days of the Internet. Now I feel like I'm biding my time waiting for the whole damned thing to just collapse into a pile a steaming dying electronic trash.
Things like Facebook or Twitter, that used to be fun, and popular, now seem lost, with algorithms that just seem to get worse and worse, and rules and restrictions that sometimes defy all logic.
Tools that only a few years ago were useful, and even essential keep getting "updated" and "improved" to the point where the basic functions are almost impossible to use, with idiotic features and advertising overtaking everything.
Greed rules all, whether greed for money, or greed for power - or, lately, greed for assholery.
What so much of the Internet doesn't understand is this: people do have a limits, and one day they'll just say "to hell with it"
I remember when everyone was going to wear glasses to watch 3D TV...
I remember when everyone was going to wear Google Glass...
I remember at least a few other companies flogging some kind of 3D VR goggles...
And most recently I remember when Facebook was going to change the world with Meta goggles...
But surely THIS time!