Posts by Mage

Re: Complete with Excel English packing list

And while the sanctions against Iran may be valid, why are transactions between 3rd parties that are not American, even it was Huawei, actually crimes with extradition to USA? A Country proven to be biased against people not American and against foreign companies that rarely ever permits any of their citizens to be extradited, especially if soldiers or diplomats. Diplomatic immunity isn't a wildcard get out of jail free thing.

So yet another one sided USA case, even if the allegations are true. This, Assange and Autonomy should be chucked out. These people are not people that have fled USA and are unlikely to get fair trials.

Re: Call Waiting...

It's simple. Only sales and customer retention makes money.

So they will only ever have the minimum number of call centre staff for complaints, in terms of keeping a Regulator happy.

"Yes, Sir, Comreg," enthuse eir (really still eircom but moved from Dublin to the Channel Is since stricter offshoring and banking laws came in). "We are adding more call centre staff."

>

A novel idea? Improve the actual service quality.

But that reduces profit more than adding a few call centre staff to satisfy the regulator.

Good form this week, Dabbsy.

Re: Is proofpoint being malicious

But this and many other cases by companies like Coca-Cola are simply corporate bullying, over-reaching just in case. This isn't real trademark protection. It's scorched earth policy. It's not just the domain names, but they seem more narrowly policed by aggressive companies like Facebook. They'd be better occupied policing their own nasty, malicious and lying content. The same rules that are applied to radio, TV, papers and billboard surely shouldn't be ignored because it's the internet. Seems they only want laws that suit them applied. And overly harshly.

Re: The Windows way

"The Windows way was to check the Windows version and refuse to install if it wasn't high enough."

No, that was lazy programmers.

I'm sure back in the early 2000s there was a TechNet or MSDN article warning NOT to do it. Certainly I read an MS article explaining. Because features supported is more important than OS version.

I had preview USB stack for NT4.0 and of course USB device drivers mostly wouldn't install, because instead of looking for USB they looked for NT5.* (2K was 5.0). Naturally some suspect NT9.0 was skipped due to programs looking for 9.x, but really Win7 should have been 6.<something> as an increment to Vista, Win8 was really win 7 and Win 10 should have been Win 8.

Re: mulii-core killed Itanic

64 bit XP for Itanic was very short lived, killed off years before 32 bit x86 XP.

It was the 2nd 64 bit Windows. The first was a version of NT4.0 for the 64 bit Alpha.

DEC and demise of the Alpha wasn't really anything to do with the doomed Itanic. That was a more complex thing and also it was great pity Intel got the DEC StrongARM and that HP got Compaq and DEC.

Nearly 11 years ago:

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2010/04/05/microsoft_pulls_plug_itanium/#c_733422

Re: need to do more than that

I put up with increasing daft Firefox mobile on phone and tablets for years. Had to recently change to Brave (based on Chromium) because Firefox just got too stupid on GUI and also seemed to remove settings.

You do need to change some defaults on Brave.

Also I now don't use any site where I have to login on my mobile or tablet, mostly Waterfox on desktop Linux. I have Chromium on Linux to access some Google Services / Accounts and Firefox for maybe two sites so I don't have to remember to use the Cookie Swap plugin on Waterfox.

And who was the idiot that decided tabs should be separate from the document, above all control interface GUI elements? At least Classic Theme Restorer on Waterfox Classic fixes that. You also need the Classic Plugin Repository plugin on Waterfox since Mozilla purged.

Brave is less than I want on phone/tablet, but seems better than Android's cut down Chrome called Browser or Firefox mobile.

Re: Google spyware is the bane of Android

Some gadgets have an on/off setting for Google Framework. Your local Google books, comics and audio in Playbooks are inaccessible without it as the Google Playbooks App vanishes along with PlayStore icon. They do come back when it's re-enabled.

I added FairEmail when I discovered the stock Email client on Android is just a sort of Google Terminal and you are actually telling Google all the email settings.

Re: captcha

But aren't most captchas now Google Crowdsourcing data for various projects?

Malicious parasites.

Self Driving I remember when Self Driving meant hiring a car without a driver.

Re: People use Chromium to get away from as much of Google

This SHOULD be true, or else they might as well use Chrome.

Re: GDPR

Facebook ALREADY shared the data between all their companies and harvests via the scripts on the default website icons.

Lack of ethics and trust

I was a bit disturbed when I realised that the Email Client on Android is really a shell on gmail and all the credentials for the pop3 or imap are actually being used on a google server.

So then I looked at the only SMS client on most Android phones and read about it. Google Messages. Maybe best replaced by Signal or a dedicated SMS application.

Google can't be trusted. It's time they were forced to divest of Android. They don't do wardriving (WiFi) when doing Street View because (a) They were caught. (b) With Android, Chrome and Chromebook they don't need to.

Google are not trustworthy enough to own Android, Chrome and Chromebooks.

Zuckerberg isn't trustworthy enough to own any Apps. Or even Facebook.

We have a problem.

Re: Have WhatsApp halted the "privacy" change?

But didn't they secretly combine much WhatsApp info not long after acquisition? Yet again a major company lies to get take-over approval.

Re: Attaching a tractor-fed Epson LX-80 dot matrix impact printer was the height of luxury

And MX-80 on Apple, Research Machines and BBC micro.

The RM 380Z (I think that's the model) only had 7 bits on the port. We modified a few to have 8biits. The I/O chip and the OS supported 8 bits (needed for graphics or extended characters), so the missing wire was a strange decision by Research Machines. As was having the bus ribbon cable on the top of the cards on the shoebox case instead of various other possible methods that would let you swap a card without unplugging all of them. It seemed a big step back from S10, 0 bus machines. A little later we had the Act Sirius 1, which was far superior to the IBM PC which arrived in the UK slightly later. Victor 9000 in USA, where the IBM was earlier.

IBM original: No graphics, no HW clock, no audio, low capacity floppy, shiny screen, edge connector ISA. Parallel and Serial needed an option card.

ACT Sirus 1: 800 x 400 graphics, matt screen, HW clock, Audio, parallel, serial and maybe GPIB? High capacity floppies. Though you could blow the fuse in the monitor if you set a wrong refresh rate.

You could just about cut stencils with the 9 pin Epson DMPs. We had a 132 column Epson up till late 1990s. The MX80 maybe bought in 1981 or 1982.

Brother Duplex Colour laser / scanner now.

I do have USB parallel and serial ports that are not that old. Work on Linux and Windows. Also I have HP and Dlink print servers. I've been meaning to see if my Roland A3+ plotter works on one. I did find that on Windows it doesn't work properly on parallel and much searching was required to find a serial cable from 9 pin to 25 and wired to suit. I've toyed with getting a knife blade to cut vinyl or a UV led with a set of adapted pen bodies to vary the spot size to expose either UV film for screen print or a PCB. But it's cheap to get PCBs in China or Eastern Europe and really a mill is better for instant PCBs than UV plus etching. I did have a mill set up for 0.8mm thick double sided PCB prototypes. Slow but less messy and more accurate than etching and faster than ordering.

My coat has a booklet of Epson DMP commands.

Re: A matter of interpretation

Maybe they meant human sized.

Greek and Assyrian deities were depicted with wings.

I think Cherubim and Seraphim are described as having wings.

The bible mentions Angels: (a) Looking like men, (b) Not being sexed, no male or female, (c) No mention of wings. (d) Occasionally create feelings of terror. Read about visits of Angels to Abraham and Lot.

Mediaeval depictions of Angels are very like those of Nemesis and related Greek entities as well as Sumerian and Akkadian 3D relief wall sculptures.

So while there may be UFOs mentioned in the Bible, none are Angels.

UFOs may be variously electrical phenomena, metrological effects, weather or other research balloons, meteorites, mirages of distant aircraft, actual known aircraft, secret aircraft, drones, rockets etc. Or deliberate fakes. Sometimes lens or radar artefacts. You can get a bunch of UFO shaped objects on many cameras if the lens is a certain angle to the sun or some other object much brighter than the desired view.

Reports start about the time of publicity about balloons, increase with airship deployment and peak at the time of each Cinema or TV new release of related content. The reports of crypto-zoological creatures and UFOs have dropped with widespread phone cameras and dash cameras, but verified sightings of rare birds or animals (in that locality) or Meteorites have increased.

Previously rarely reported electrical phenomena include earthlight, ball lightning and sprites. Sprites are common and regularly seen now by satellites. Earthlight and ball lightning are not understood, except they are natural events.

Even one UFO being actually an Alien visitor is extremely unlikely. If a Flying Object has no explanation it's Unidentified, not automatically an Alien craft.