Posts by AnotherName

James Webb spies distant exoplanet that could be wet, wild, and Hycean

Danger, Will Robinson!

With a hydrogen atmosphere, let's hope they don't discover fire -->

Florida Man and associates indicted for conspiracy to steal data, software

Every time I see the phrase 'Florida Man' it brings to mind the naming of our prehistoric ancestors. May be, like Plitdown Man, this one is a fake too?

The number’s up for 999. And 911. And 000. And 111

Re: 112

It was easier to dial on a rotary dial, as you only had the find the second hole back from the end stop - easy to use in the dark.

Microsoft says share the wealth with cyber-info for business

Just stating the obvious...

Why don't they turn this inwards and identify the flaws in the OS and all the other products they produce to make the whole operating environment more secure in the first place? There should be an international standard for software security that has to be complied with BEFORE a product can be sold - it it should cover hardware too. Big fines if found to be sold without full compliance.

Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it

Re: wait till a support person arrived

And get bollocked instead for wasting engineer's time travelling on an unnecessary trip?

Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins

Deter people from studying in the field?

I thought they were called farmers, not boffins.

Microsoft breaks geolocation, locking users out of Azure and M365

Perhaps they should start from one on 1st January and count up and see how far they get by the end of the year.

At least they're professionals

Just imagine how bad it would be if they were amateurs!

Hospital to test AI 'copilot' for doctors that jots notes on patient care

Why AI???

Surely all this needs is a speech-to-text engine to write down what the doctor actually said, instead of trying to interpret what they said. Isn't that just as bad as trying to understand the written notes in whatever bad handwriting they have. Overkill, in more ways than one?

Microsoft: Patch this severe Outlook bug that Russian miscreants exploited

Update progress?

Why does every Cumulative Update for Windows versions always go from 0% to 100% fairly quickly, then drop back to 0% and proceed to 20% before sticking there for ages until it finally creeps up to 100% ? It's done this for years now. Why can't they just look at how many files or bytes they have to replace and give percentage progress based on files or bytes copied?

Add to that, the software that updates/installs and sits at 100% for minutes? It's either done or it isn't.

Microsoft and GM deal means your next car might talk, lie, gaslight and manipulate you

Or - anything from Microsoft that "Just Worked" tm

Re: Why is use of a 'phone in a car discouraged ?

I suddenly remembered an audio file I used to have way back in the early 90's that purported to be Bill Gates saying "Don't ever tell me something that you don't want me to use against you...". I feel like that about all voice assistant technology - I don't trust it not to listen in, to record and upload for "analysis", and to then try and advertise, monetise or otherwise screw you over based on that information.

NASA finds crashing spacecraft into asteroids is a viable defence strategy

From orbit?

Perhaps the answer is to put a couple of devices in orbit ready to be sent out when needed. That would reduce the lag from discovery to being ready to intercept.

Ford seeks patent for cars that ditch you if payments missed

What about the buyers?

If I was to go into a car showroom and pay for the car in cash, by a bank loan or other external means of funding, will this still be enabled? Or will I always be at risk of my car turning against me accidentally, maliciously or otherwise? I'd want a written guarantee that the 'feature' had been fully disabled or I would walk away from the purchase. Mind you, if it had keyless entry and/or start, I wouldn't buy it without the ability to disable that 'feature' too.

Remote controlled theft?

Of course, we all know it will be so secure that no-one will be able to hack in and steal your car remotely... don't we..?

Gen Z lingo and search engines: A Millennial Odyssey

Re: If you want to see how nu-Bing will work and what it looks like, you can....

So it's the virtual version of queueing up for the latest iThing?

Microsoft delivers 75-count box of patches for Valentine's Day

Strange silence...

Either no-one dares to try it, or they have and are fighting to regain control of the computers leaving no time to post here?

It seems unlikely that it was fine.

Microsoft's AI Bing also factually wrong, fabricated text during launch demo

Re: The Heidelberg Conjecture

I've been to Bielefeld - it used to have a British Army base there.

US military spends weekend shooting down Useless Floating Objects

Re: Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said it "wasn't an aircraft per se"

It might be an old man and a boy scout, moving house?

Google's $100b bad day demo may be worth the price

I feel that when I use a search engine, I use it to get suitable (hopefully) suggestions related to the search terms I've entered and listing them so that I can see the relevance and the source so I can make my own judgement as to which links to explore further and which to avoid like the plague. I'm not searching for philosophical discussion about the search item or any other bollocks. If that was what I wanted I would start with Wikipedia and search from there, not use a generic search engine. A search engine's job is to aid navigation and filtering of web content based on your query. The only AI it needs is not to show me pages that are only obliquely linked to the search terms, or that are in Polish or Chinese when I've selected UK as a search criteria or controlling filter.

Re: Imagine

Train it to keep its nose out of our personal and private business?

Prepare to be shocked: Employees hate this One Weird Clause

Re: Training costs!

The customer of my ex-employer that I took on (see earlier post) had a no-training policy. They wouldn't invest in their own staff in case they left once their new skills had been acquired. They were happy to pay for expensive contractors to cover the skills gap though. I never did fully understand their logic, even though I benefited from it.

How long is contract valid for?

There's a big difference between leaving a company to join a competitor and being made redundant and looking for work in the same field. When I was made redundant I went freelance (because I was too old in my 40's to be considered as employable!) and approached some of the customers of the old employer to do the same work for them as I was doing before, and got the contract from one as they knew me. Not long after I received an email from the MD of the ex-employer suggesting that I was in breach of contract by approaching their customers. I emailed back saying that I no longer had a contract with them as they no longer employed me, so bugger off - or words to that effect. That was the last I heard from them. A couple of years later they had gone bust, especially as many of the staff who remained decided it wasn't a place they wanted to work at any more.

Global network outage hits Microsoft: Azure, Teams, Outlook all down

Re: 25 Days in to 2023

I think someone at MS has confused uptime with fuck-up time

Re: The Cloud...

And your own data, which you also no longer have control over - or access to.

Re: Downtime?

But Office(insert number less than 365 here) is not resilient. What is the real cost of local support vs. cloud subscriptions? What is the real cost of downtime to an organisation? What about somewhere big, like the NHS, with Office offline?

When the cloud was first offered as a solution, it was assumed that your data would be available from anywhere at any time and it would be held in multiple locations to make it resilient in terms of access, security and backups. Everything is fine while it works, but one screw-up seems to be able to take it all down at once.

I tend to think of cloud services as a form of ransomware - you have to keep paying to have access to your data, and there's no guarantee that it is any more secure than it would have been when held locally. The only thing it seems to be good for is the profits of the cloud companies. I seem to remember when Bill Gates was in charge, one of his dreams was to have a recurring monthly income stream.

Advertising Standards

I think the ASA needs to have a word with them about the number '365' and what it means.

It's probably a warning to people out there not to put all your baskets into one cloud.

Polish for Windows Spotlight and tabs for Notepad in latest Insiders build

SO, more tinkering with shiny bits, rather than fixing the underlying problems?

Texts from your dog and brain-free astronomy: The best of the rest from CES

If it's internet connected to identify what it says it is seeing, how do you even know that the images are from your telescope? It could just be a very expensive way of showing you pictures that have already been taken and stored on the net.

Poked in the eye by an eyepiece icon --->

Just 22% of techies in UK aged 50 or older, says Chartered Institute for IT

Re: hmmmm

Have you been reading my CV? ZX80 and Acorn Atom kits, written stuff in 6502 assembler and understand the way the processor works - not just chucking cut and pasted stuff from a website at a compiler and hoping it works. We had to squeeze the best out of the computer with minimal onboard resources, so it had to be written efficiently - no wasted bytes or cycles. No wonder modern code is often so full of resource leaks and security holes.

Usually at or near the top of the class in all courses undertaken, but once I reached 48 I couldn't get a new job after redundancy as I was considered "too old to learn". Been through CCPM, DOS, Windows from v2 onwards, Netware, NT, Linux. Done hardware, software, databases, websites, system support, customer support, IT management, infrastructure management, networking, installations, consultancy, but still not good enough.

Experience no longer counts, even though we see jobs wanting x years plus of experience with y, even though y has been out less than x years! Business is no longer prepared to train people, but ignore those with the most experience at the same time. I had to go freelance to get any IT-related work at all and I'm finally retiring next year at 68.

Icon: Grumpy old man ------>

San Francisco lawmakers approve lethal robots – but they can't carry guns

Not armed

How long before the robots start demanding their right to carry weapons?

Security firms hijack New York trees to monitor private workforce

Re: Tree torture

I seem to remember when living in Germany in the early 80's that if an accident involved tree damage, the tree had to be paid for out of the insurance claim too. When the RAF Harriers did their field exercises deployed in the edge of woodland for cover, there was a bill to pay for every tree damaged or knocked over - particularly expensive during wet weather when it was easier to uproot a tree or two.

Twitter CISO flies the coop

Socially distanced

I see in other news that Musk has told staff that WFH is over. At least with half the staff gone the remainers can be in the office and socially distanced.

Me, I'll be staying Social Network distanced thank you very much.

Republican senators tell FTC to back off data security, surveillance rules

Simple approach?

Maybe businesses should look at the toughest of all the states' rules and just stick to that set. That way there's no need to apply different rules in each state and their customers get the best level of protection wherever they live. They can then also drop the specious argument about extra costs to meet each different set of rules. But then again, maybe they aren't really interested in consumers' privacy and data protection...

Microsoft tests 'upsells' of its products in Windows 11 sign-out menu

NEED?

"or whether they need a Microsoft account"

It's hard enough to get past the personal setup of a new Windows computer without falling into the trap of setting up a Microsoft account. I know I don't want or need one, but how many people can't find their way past all the traps they set when you run the computer for the first time?

China is likely stockpiling and deploying vulnerabilities, says Microsoft

Cut them off at source

Perhaps Microsoft could stop manufacturing vulnerabilities in the first place?

How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

I thought there already was a confirmation bubble - it's call Facebook or Twitter or something like that.

Japanese giants to offer security-as-a-service for connected cars

Re: Old timer doubleplus good...

A simple slide switch on the fob to turn it off would be a good start, so that signal amplification can't be used to unlock and start the car. If the car goes out of range of the fob it should cut out and drift to a halt, and maybe lock all the doors, lock the brakes, sound the horn and flash the hazard lights. Maybe even remove keyless starting altogether - is there really a compelling reason why the driver can't take a key out of their pocket and turn it in a lock to start the vehicle? I'm not interested in buying a car that can't have this feature disabled, or preferably not fitted in the first place.

Re: Old timer doubleplus good...

How about the manufacturers make the cars secure in the first place? Sort of like how they have to make them roadworthy, protect their occupants and other road users.

It’s Patch Tuesday and still no fix for ProxyNotShell Microsoft Exchange holes

A job for Clippy?

I see you have just clicked on a link in an email - do you want me to write your resignation letter?

Cult leader meets the Pope: Apple CEO chats to Francis

Cult leader meets cult leader...

What did the Roman Catholics ever do for us?

Consolidation looms for UK broadband providers

Re: Yeah but...

I spotted a local infrastructure support company laying fibre in the Openreach ducts opposite my house, so I went out to ask them who they were doing it for. Found out it was for YouFibre, so I called them straight away and booked an installation for the following week. Everything is working well and I've ditched BT FTTC and landline and ported my number. Getting double the download and seven times the upload for half the price!

When I first moved in 19 months ago I ordered the BT installation and it took about a month before the landline was installed with temporary internet access over 4G with poor signal coverage in this rural edge of village area.

The International Space Station will deorbit in glory. How's your legacy tech doing?

As much as I love Concorde, it isn't the solution to the problems on Earth right now. It probably spent more years in development than in actual commercial operation. It cost too much to develop, too much to fly in and was never a commercial success that paid its way. What we do gain from projects like these though, is the developments that come out of solving the problems that arise - new materials, new designs, new methodologies, etc.

Space is an even bigger source of new ideas, new technologies, new techniques and should be encouraged. It has helped us learn about and prove the state of the planet, far more than faster holiday trips for the rich ever could.

What we don't see in IT is the adherence to standards and shared goals. It has become a competitive market that makes a few people very rich, who then go on to protect their gains instead of sharing them - both money and ideas.

Microsoft brings more Arm64 support and an updated expiry date to Dev Channel Windows

Re: MS does not care about Windows on ARM

Why on Earth does a company with bank balances greater than the budgets of many small countries need an outside hardware company to fund their development?

Our software is perfect. If something has gone wrong, it must be YOUR fault

Re: UX Designer?

Yes - it has always bugged me that there's nothing databases or spreadsheets (from my experience, anyway) that deals with time as time - it's always a date part. I deal a lot with elapsed time data, time differences, call lengths, recording lengths, etc. I have to add these up and I don't want 1970-01-12 16:27:23 as the result - I want it in hours, minutes and seconds. So I have to create my own functions and store the results as strings to stop them being reformatted as dates.

Enough with the notifications! Focus Assist will shut them u… 'But I'm too important!'

Re: Does your neighbour have kids?

Why, when the power is low enough to require recharging, does the device turn on warning lights, activate the screen, sound out beeps and other noises? Surely the remaining charge would last a bit longer without all these indications and notifications.

Re: The scourge is real

I log into my banking app in the morning, see that some payments have gone out and log out. 10-15 minutes (or even hours) later, the app tells me that the same payments have gone out. I log in to transfer money to/from my saving account and log out. An alert pops up to tell me that I have received that amount in my account. And so on, ad infinitum...

But they NEVER give a warning sign for when the speed limit has changed on a road you've driven down for years and you get caught out by not noticing the numbers on the signs have changed.

The many derivatives of the CP/M operating system

Concurrent CP/M and ICL 80286 hardware

I started my professional programming life using CCP/M on some ICL hardware - each hosting 3 users per PC on colour terminals. The 3 ICL PCs were networked with co-ax (100Kb or1Mb?) around the site. We programmed with the Dataflex 3GL using WordStar as the editor writing a stock and repair control system for a large workshop. Must have been around 1985/6 time. I remember having the rebuild the OS for changes in hardware and peripherals, go through an on-screen questionnaire for each item to set the parameters. Kids don't know how easy things are now!