Posts by Barry Rueger

England just not windy enough for wind farms, admits renewables boss

Re: Silly Article

And meteors! And bears! And daredevil motorcycle jumpers who land on your roof by mistake!

No, solar could never work.

Also, shark-nado!

NetSuite hacker thrown in the cooler for a year, fined $124,000

Officer Obie..

He said, "Kid, we only got one question: Have you ever been arrested?"

He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go over and sit down on that bench that says 'Group W'.

Computerised stock management? Nah, let’s use walkie-talkies

In stock?

"In fact, I’m wishing I’d just stayed at home and tried my luck ordering online. That way, I’d be able to see what stock the retailer had available within seconds"

Maybe that works in the UK. But in Canada the words "in stock" often mean "one of our two hundred suppliers claims to have one, and maybe we'll convince them to ship you one."

"Via UPS, who will only deliver at times when you can't be home, and refuse to do anything without a physical signature, including dropping it at the UPS store down the street."

OnePlus: No more rationing

Link?

Is it too much to expect a link to the actual product's Web page?

A link to a forum full of rabid fanboys is pretty pointless.

You deleted the customer. What now? Human error - deal with it

Re: I concur with the procedure guides.

"So I concur that the procedural guides can be a boon. They can help the normal folks to do their own troubleshooting BEFORE having to call up the Help Desk."

If you're working with intelligent people there's a lot to be gained by teaching them to be self-sufficient, both in terms of saving you time fixing routine problems, and in terms of making them feel more in control of their work environment.

And, in a perfect world, they quickly become the defacto Help Desk for everyone sitting with two cubicles of them!

Boring SpaceX lobs another sat into orbit without anything blowing up ... zzzzz

Ob: Pournelle

Every time I see one of these land, I think of the line attributed to Jerry Pournelle:

"Rockets should land on their tails, the way God and Robert Heinlein intended."

As US court bans smart meter blueprints from public, sysadmin tells of fight for security info

What could possibly go wrong?

I'm not a member of the tinfoil hat brigade, don't think that rogue smart meter EMF waves will knacker my gonads, and honestly don't lose sleep over the utility monitoring my energy use.

Still, when perfectly good, simple, reliable technology is tossed out like the baby with the bathwater, and replaced with really expensive, apparently problem prone, super secret high tech, I have assume that something is up.

I'm not an electrical engineer, and my security knowledge goes about as far as trying and failing to make PGP work one time, but even I can think of a half dozen ways that smart meters could go wrong immediately, and another dozen after they've been hanging on a wall for a decade.

Ultimately we can count on one thing: no new technology EVER works right the first time it's launched, and often not in the second or third iterations.

And, of course, it's the poor end user that will pay for the mistakes in order to protect corporate profits.

The fact that a lot of money is being spent to keep me from knowing how these work just confirms my fears.

Bearded Baron Shugs hired by Gov.uk to get down with the kids

Re: apprenticeships

Traditionally, in Canada, apprenticeships were regulated, and mostly involved workplaces with unionized workforces, so the apprenticeship actually meant something.

Our governments are also going on and on about trade apprenticeships, but presumably because so many well-paid, permanent jobs have been off-shored in the name of "free trade."

The cynical among us might think that the aim is to create a glut of post-apprentice tradespeople so that their wages can also be driven down.

(Does the UK government also insist that every third apprenticeship PR ad feature a woman?)

Twitter expands beyond 140 characters

Please, don't break it.

I have no brilliant solution to making it profitable. Maybe it's impossible.

Twitter is something that I use a lot.

The brevity is one of its best features, and encourages smart and concise writing.

The timeliness is unparallelled. Certainly regular media is usually well behind Twitter.

Like any social media, the value of Twitter depends very much on who you choose to follow.

I don't think I ever have more than a dozen names on that list, and they are all high value, low traffic users.

What I expect will happen is that Twitter will do what Facebook did: take what is a fairly simple and useful platform and bury it under a pile of gimmicks, games, and bottom feeder commerce.

At that point the people who make Twitter valuable will be long gone.

Typewriter for iPad review

Re: Adding functionality to a tablet

The problem with shrinking electronic devices is that it becomes increasingly harder to use them for anything serious.

That's primarily because the software on devices is stupendously bad.

Android is an obvious example, where even text messaging and Twitter is a challenge.

The saving grace is BlackBerry's keyboard software, which can now be loaded to Android phones.

Don't know if it's actually in the Play store, but the apk isn't hard to find.

The predictive text is excellent, and I'll happily write multi-paragraph message without spelling mistakes.

It's good.

Re: I'm advocating for my company returning to typewriters...

The last time I used a dial telephone I actually had to stop and think what to do.

And wow, is it a slow and painful way to enter seven numbers when you're used to speed dial on a smart phone.

(If you think the phone is primitive you should see the mechanical switches at the other end!)

Modular phone Ara to finally launch

Not on Your Life

A whole whack of detachable bits stuck together, bouncing around in your pocket, purse, or in a cubby in the car?

Good luck with that.

The ongoing success of products like the Otterbox Defender are proof enough that this tech is not rugged enough for many people.

At least my Moto is more or less one solid block of stuff, with nothing to shake loose.

Until I added the Otterbox I was averaging one phone a year.

I can't see this lasting three months.

World goes SIM-free, leaving Sony and HTC trailing behind

Re: "SIM free" ?

hat the hell are people doing with their phones that they can't get through a day on battery?

Short answer: using them.

I mostly use mine for email, some texting, the very occasional photo, rare phone calls, but run GPS that tracks my location for a few hours each day.

I usually just manage a day on a charge, but that depends also on whether I'm downtown, or out in fringe reception areas.

I don't stream media, or do big downloads.

Dark net LinkedIn sale looks like the real deal

Still Confused

...about what real use LinkedIn is to most of those 100+ million people.

Aside from being a handy place to post a seriously detailed and long form resume - more than you would ever commit to paper - the only thing that I ever seem to see are "friend" requests from complete strangers, in even stranger places.

LinkedIn, like far too many Internet sites, did itself in by trying to turn a relatively simple service into something large, overly complex, and in which the useful bits are buried under layers of pointless junk.

(I guess the reason why I don't understand the usefulness of LinkedIn is because I foolishly ignored its invitation to give it the keys to my Gmail, Facebook, and MySpace contact lists.

Silly me!)

Google tries social again

'Ello? Can you hear me?

It's almost certain that Spaces (or is it "Space?") will run headlong into the same problem that G+ and other new social media have faced: it's not enough to be better, you have to find some really compelling reason for a very large number of people to move over from Facebook, Twitter, or... um... Ello.

Facebook sucks, and sucks more every month, and arguably does nothing even satisfactorily, but it is still the juggernaut for one reason: pretty much anyone you might want to find is already there.

Because they have their hooks in such a large part of the population - or at least all of my relatives - they can be crappy and annoying, but still survive.

So the question isn't "What can Google do to invent a better social media platform?"

It's "What can Google do that will convince several million people to abandon Facebook for Spaces?"

I doubt that Google can figure that out, and intead will manage to alienate even more Google+, Gmail, and other Google users.

Bots half all web traffic

I'm sure that I read that porn is the other two-thirds.

Ooh missus, get a grip on my notifications

Re: Notifications... Off

Up vote! Why is it that every guy developing an app is convinced that it needs to notify me EVERY time it does something?

Or, in the case of news media apps, every time something happens to a footballer I don't care about, or in a far-flung country of even less interest.

Opera claims 50 per cent power savings with browser update

Was just wondering why the 'net seemed so SLOW today, and found that Firefox was using 1.5 gigs of RAM and 100% of one CPU core. (of 4 and 2 respectively)

Even allowing for a couple dozen tabs open, that seems ridiculous.

(Changed to Firefox last year because Chrome had become even worse!)

Blocking ads? Smaller digital publishers are smacked the hardest

Re: My heart bleeds

I did not start using ad-blockers the minute I discovered one. Nor for a long time after. I even click(ed) on ads to help the sites gain revenue, and sometimes because the ads were actually interesting*.

This! I only added ad-blockers this year when stuff became too objectionable to not do so.

My biggest gripe though is how seldom sites serve up an ad that is remotely relevant or interesting to me.

Google usually manages to serve up something I might want, but everywhere else it's just a large and irritating waste of my time.

Do advertisers really not understand how bad Twitter and Facebook (as examples) are at delivering ads to people who would actually care.

Good advertising is useful to both the reader and the advertiser.

Sadly the Internet hasn't learned that.

Official: Microsoft's 'Get Windows 10' nagware to vanish from PCs in July

Re: Serious question

All things considered, is Windows 10 worse than Vista?

I'll bite. I still use Vista in a VM to run bookkeeping software, and my partner just upgraded from an ancient XP box to a shiny convertable HP laptop.

Windows 10 seems positively Apple-esque in its determination to make you do things in the way that it wants.

In particular the assumption that touchscreen is everything. Problem one is that UI design that works great for a phone or tablet is nearly useless for a laptop.

Don't get me wrong, love the touchscreen, but hate the UI.

Problem two is that it's damnably hard to disable the tablety default. Finding the setting to change took ages.

Our second big issue is with hardware support. Win 10 couldn't even find the networked HP printer, and didn't support it until a driver/software/crap ware pack was downloaded from HP.

A USB connected Samsung laser also was not detected or configured - something that earlier Windows, and lately even Linux, does with great ease.

Finally, the OS seems to crash about once a day. Googling the error messages suggests there are some widespread issues.

Still, once you beat it into submission, and kill the "improvements" to make it like "classic" Windows, it's really about the same.

Watch it again: SpaceX's boomerang rocket lands on robo-sea-barge

Sadly, every time that I hear that - and I'd wager it's a pretty international workforce at SpaceX, which makes it more annoying- I immediately hear "Team America! Fuck Yeah!"

Xiaomi takes aim at Apple, Qualcomm

Re: Sounds like Newton vs Palm Pilot all over again

Every time that I find myself struggling with the calendars or contacts on my Android phone I find myself looking back very fondly on my Palm Pilots.

As much as I like the convenience of having the Internet and email on hand (as well as a phone), the truth is that the Palm did lots of stuff better, simpler, and with considerably more reliability.

Some day maybe techies and programmers will learn that shoving in every possible function, customization, and gadget isn't necessary a good thing - often less is more.

(not buying a smart watch until they have a VR version....)

Sat TV biz Dish: I'm not an authorized iPhone repairer ... but $20 is $20

Dish installers and iPhone?

Seriously? I've installed a few dishes, and am generally good with tech fix-it, but would think twice about cracking open an iPhone.

Sounds like Dish may be overestimating their employees.

(1. Screw dish to wall. 2. Adjust axis A according to chart you found on the Internet. 3. Adjust axis B til the TV beeps.)

Oh yeah, drill holes through wall for cable.

What do you call an old, unpatched and easily hacked PC? An ATM

Banks? Security?

I am not in the least surprised.

Bad enough that my bank STILL refuses to make passwords case sensitive, or allow "Special" characters.

This week though they trumped themselves with repeated messages on-line, in app, and even via Robo phone call "encouraging" me to make sure that both Android and the Banks' app on my phone were up to date.

My bank has never phoned me for anything, so I'm assuming that the app has the mother of all security holes in it.

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Everything on my phone is as up to date as possible, so I'm really left wondering.

If my account had any money in it I'd worry.

Thunderbird is GO: Mozilla prepares to jettison mail client

Re: Still around?

Moreover, now that people access mails from more than one device,

This is the single biggest barrier to escaping Gmail etc.

I'd much prefer a local desktop client (although not TB, which feels about a decade behind everybody else), but shudder to think how difficult it might be keeping an Android version in sync.

I've had calendars and contact lists totally mangled by competing systems in the past, and for now will stick with a single vendor, even if I dislike them.

A perfect marriage: YOU and Ubuntu 16.04

Re: The past is un-dead

a) I generally have found both the Mint and Ubuntu Web forums pretty good.

b) Then again I'm old enough to remember the days when Linux "support" was limited to "READ THE FRUGGIN MANPAGES NEWBY."

I'll grant you though that it's annoying to find a 'solution" that dates from four versions earlier and 2009.

VR sales to 'skyrocket'

Re: Well, duh!!

Ack. Beat me to it.

If world + dog concluded that being forced to wear cheap sunglasses to watch TV wasn't worth the hassle, I'm pretty sure that strapping a VR rig on their head will get old equally fast.

Translated: BlackBerry CEO John Chen on cops-snooping-on-BBM

So, what are YOU doing to protect yourself?

Arguably you, as a customer, will generally want the company that you're dealing with - or investing in - to act lawfully.

Whether it's Apple, or BlackBerry, or Google, or Joe-Bob's neighbourhood computer store, you should assume that when the Feds arrive with the proper papers they'll be given what they ask for.

Although there may be the occasional company that is prepared to mount a million dollar court battle, or even close their doors, most won't be willing - or able - to do either.

If you really, truly need security that bad you need to make it YOUR project, not rely on outside suppliers to do it for you.

Daft Punk: Snowden goes electronica

What? Just a song?

I'm waiting for Snowden's inevitable appearance in "Dancing With The Stars."

Big telco proxies go full crazy over cable box plan

Re: No No No

The phone company owned the phone, the network, the switches, and all of the phone wiring inside your house.

And they swore up and down that letting customers buy a phone, instead of renting one, would present a significant risk to their networks, and to your own safety.

Phones in those days were nearly indestructible, so one installation could deliver years, or even decades of monthly rentals.

Plus if you wanted a model other than a big standard rotary phone, or one that was a colour other than black, you paid another monthly charge, forever.

Damn. This really does sound like my cel phone company.....

Uninstall QuickTime for Windows: Apple will not patch its security bugs

Re: WTF!

2016? I'm fairly sure I haven't used it since 2006!

Hey, tech industry, have you noticed Amazon in the rearview?

Only in Canada....

For some reason Canadian retailers and suppliers seem to have a special affinity for refusing to take our money.

To the extent that we often go directly to a US supplier because even after duty, taxes, and brokerage it's just easier.

Plus the American company actually sells what we want.

(Insert rant about so-called "free trade")

Just this week I was idly looking at using AWS as a home for some decidedly small Web sites and ancillary items.

It would represent significant overkill, but at first glance would be cheaper, and more ïmportantly get me away from the latest hosting disappointment.

As much as I dislike Amazon's business and labour practices I keep returning to them specifically because they always greet me with "Hell yes we'll take your money! How can we make it easier?"

Half of people plug in USB drives they find in the parking lot

Truth in Advertising

I'm willing to wager a Cold Refreshing Beverage that every single commenter here has plugged random, or unknown, or found USB drives into their computer.

Whether it came from the woman at the desk next door, or was found in the parking lot, or was purchased brand new, you have NO way of knowing what's on it or what it will do.

US govt says it has cracked killer's iPhone, legs it from Apple fight

What you don't know won't hurt you

My assumptions with anything like this are:

a) someone, somewhere probably already has a way in. Usually government or other bad guys.

b) the really talented bad guys do it well enough that you're unlikely to know they've arrived (only stupid crooks get caught)

c) the moment that someone like Apple or the DOJ admit that there may be a way to break in, legions of bad guys are hard at work to open the door.

Adobe will track you across all your devices with new co-op project

Truth in Advertising

Gotta give Adobe credit for being open and honest about what they're doing, instead of presenting some song and dance about "enhancing the user experience."

Serious unboxing: 230 node research cluster down under

Not mentioned in the article

Hmmph. I was impressed until I found out that the OS uses systemd.

Google emits Android N developer preview early to smoke out bugs

N = "Not For You"

Yeah. My year and half old Moto phone apparently will never see Marshmallow, much less anything further up the alphabet.

At this point, given the near complete lack of any sort of updates, I'm assuming it's roughly as secure as my Windows XP box.

Everything bad in the world can be traced to crap Wi-Fi

Re: I have been the person...

"... people showing up with shiny iStuff that won't connect to anything and expecting us to have adapters for it..."

Lord save me from Apple people who are unwilling or unable to comprehend that no matter how wonderful they may think their stuff is, if they walk into another business or venue they may may need to interact with Windows, or even a VGA connector.

Part of "professional" is being prepared for different scenarios instead of whining.

"That said, why is a "bus station" not a "road station" then?"

Because, at least in these parts, busses arrive at the Bus Depot, not at a "station."

(Traditionally in Canada the "bus depot" is in the downtown core, while the "train station" is on the furthest outskirts if the city.

Needless to say we further protect ourselves from transportation cross-pollenation by ensuring that neither rapid transit nor the airport are anywhere nearby.)

Third of US banks OK with passwords even social networks reject

Accept? How about demand?

My Canadian bank still has passwords that are not case sensitive and does not allow "special" characters.

When I last complained, three years ago, they argued, with a straight face, that allowing these would confuse customers.

And yes, the challenge question when you phone them is still my mother's "maiden" name.

Wakey wakey, app developers. Mobile ad blocking will kill you all

Rather filter out crap apps

90% of apps (Android anyhow) are utter garbage.

Anything that will drive these people out of business is a good thing.

I'd rather choose from a dozen quality paid apps than try to guess which one of fifty free, "free', ad supported, or otherwise unpaid ones actually work.

Toaster cooks network and burns 'expert' user's credibility to a crisp

Re: Morphy Richards! There's a brand I learned to really hate

"These days, a new iron is probably cheaper than four bus journeys"

But likely also won't survive much longer than that.

Cheap Chinese crap.

I can remember when you could buy a toaster that was...

Made in this country

Actually toasted bread

Would work reliably for a decade

Yelp minimum wage row shines spotlight on … broke, fired employee

Drivel

When you don't go though the hard times and struggles, you don't have the gratitude, humility or appreciation for what took to get through them."

Whenever I hear drivel like this (or "you have to pay your dues") I immediately translate it to, "I was stupid enough to let some employer treat me like crap for years. If you don't accept the same treatment it'll just embarrass me by reminding me how dumb I was."

Alleged Anonymous hacker rescued off Cuba by Disney cruise ship

Re: I wonder

My thought exactly.

Or more specifically, how in the hell did the Disney cruise people know he was wanted, and why did they call the FBI?

When did cruise ship operators become extra-territorial bounty hunters?

New Monopoly version features an Automatic Teller Machine

Re: Don't like the digital versions

One of my favourites is to put all fines in the middle and if you land on free parking you collect the money.

This!

Also, adding a nuclear bomb in Risk!

Shopping for PCs? This is what you'll be offered in 2016

FWIW, my girlfriend just got new Windows 8>10 HP laptop, which she likes very, very much.

It took more than an hour to get her new system printing to a not terribly old HP inkjet All-in-one on the network.

My Linux box managed that in about twenty seconds.

In fact, it took several hours to get through all of the updates, application installs, fixes, and tweaks to make her system what she needed.

Installing Mint from scratch to full usability usually takes about twenty minutes.

Where's all of the used kit?

For ages I've been just fine with something second hand, and a couple of generations behind the latest and greatest.

For the last year or two though I'm in a quandary since the prices asked for used PCs (on Craigslist anyhow) are pretty much the same as for a brand new system with more specs and a warranty.

Is this just a local Vancouver thing, or it more widespread?

And who is buying used PCs at new prices?

Get out of mi casa, Picasa: Google photo site to join Wave, Code, Reader in silicon hell

My Tracks too

Seriously, how long before they decide to shut down Gmail with two months' warning?

Reader did just what I needed, and they shut it down.

Picasa was exactly what I needed for image handling, and they're shutting it down.

My Tracks, which was on every Android phone, was a really nice GPS tracking app that I used daily, and Google is not only abandoning it, they're actually disabling it!

Especially given Google's insane profits I just can't understand the logic in dumping customers or users in this fashion.

I'm not the only person watching projects like Mailpile and Sandstorm.io with an eye to jumping the Google ship entirely.

Coding is more important than Shakespeare, says VC living in self-contained universe

Nothing but the best

I too suffered through high school Shakespeare, and amateur productions that were long and tedious.

It was only lately that I've started watching some productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Wow. Now I understand what all of the fuss is about.

If you're hating Shakespeare, it's likely because you've been watching crap productions. The RSC make his words sing, and two and three hours can fly by like an instant.

Best of all, they broadcast their plays around the world at one of your local cinemas. It's worth ten bucks to see how truly magic Shakespeare can be.

iPhones clock-blocked and crocked by setting date to Jan 1, 1970

Re: " date format between US mm/dd/yy and the rest of us should die in a fire"

Yes! Anything that goes through many versions on my computer gets named 2016_02_14_filename.txt.