* Posts by Mage

9265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

Voila! Bazinga! Amazon turns Alexa into an annoying 'cool' aunt

Mage Silver badge

No problem

I wasn't going to ever let one of these in the house anyway. Now I have another excuse.

Nokia wheels out a complete MVNO package. Makes a change from WinPho

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Igor said

Igor Leprince, Nokia’s head of global services, said in a canned quote: “IoT connectivity as a managed service is an answer for enterprises to the current IoT deployments that are hampered by the patchwork of business agreements to connect devices around the world.”

"Master, you can use it for your international spy-ring!" enthused Igor. "Car diagnostics, burglar alarms, cat feeders, Uber Taxis, drone deliveries, portable TV & radio usage!"

Sorry is it Google, Facebook or Nokia we are talking about?

Crack in black: Matte iPhones losing paint at alarming rate, gripe fans

Mage Silver badge

Re: I'm not a major fan of Apple stuff (more Android/Linux for me) , but ...

Sir Jony only dictates the appearance. Real engineers design it. Mechanical, Electronic, Software, Product, Manufacturing.

Samsung's Chromebook Pro: Overpriced vanilla PC with a stylus. 'Wow'

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

School Lock down

The only suitable windows for total lock down and School was NT4.0.

Linux can be locked down for school use.

Chromebook may not even be legal for minors in many countries! Dataslurp.

Mage Silver badge

EFI

Though the Lenovo EFI didn't mind at all. I had to disable "legacy/both" and EFI only in setup so that the Linux live / USB stick would do the EFI based Grub.

Mage Silver badge
WTF?

Also

What's the point of a Chromebook compare to same HW with Linux?

You can add whatever cloudyness you want to Linux. ChromeOS seems just like crippleware in comparison.

Looking at a Lenovo X201 Tablet. Decent touch screen which doubles as a Wacom tablet. It's six years old. It had Win7, but works better with Linux Mint + mate.

I can accept Android on my phone, because it's just a phone, I don't create more than notes with it and the realistic alternative is iOS with an iPhone at a higher price.

Similarly unless you MUST have windows on a laptop or possibly convertible laptop/tablet, the better options than Chrome OS are MacOS, Linux or maybe iOS on the Apple equivalent to a Surface.

I just can't see the point of this or Chromebooks in general.

My own workhorse is a Lenovo E460, i5 + GPU + HD display running Linux., My previous nearly 15 year old Inspiron 8200 still goes (XP so no longer on Web and not used since Nov 2016), with a slightly more useful 1600 x 1200 display. The Lenovo display is a little small at 14"+, but then a 17" laptop (the traditional 1920 x 1080 replacement for 15" 1600 x1200) is too big

Windows 10: What is it good for? Microsoft pitches to devs ahead of Creators Update

Mage Silver badge

Re: The use case for W10 is now very small...

Win7 or XP in a VM on Linux if native Linux or WINE doesn't work for the job.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

In conclusion then

Win 10 is not much use for business, it's a lacklustre alternative to PS4, XboxOne etc for gaming, and no use for phones or tablets, because really x86-64 is no use for them and Windows on ARM is just too confusing. Windows CE and later Windows Phone should never have been branded "Windows", egotistical branding stupidity, as it was the same thing and trying to make it the same thing either cripples phones or desktop. If it had been called Microsoft Mobile from the days of PDAs to Zune (more silly branding) with NO mention of windows, then Windows Mobile would still exist and the stupidity of win8 would never have existed.

Desktop / Laptop users creating content or in business using more than web & outlook (or shudder Sharepoint) are better off with Win7 or migrating to Linux.

It's time that Sage supported Linux properly.

Adobe are pricing themselves out of market for all but top end corporates with "subscriptions".

USMC: We want more F-35s per year than you Limeys will get in half a decade

Mage Silver badge

Re: persistently scrapped good and useful projects

Black Arrow,

Blue Streak,

The 1950s experiment where a rocket engine was fitted on a bomb bay for embryonic spaceplane testing (it worked).

Inmos Transputer

I think nuclear weapons are stupid, but the UK abandoned their own to import USA models. Trident is practically a rental.

Gave up nuclear power, so now has to have Chinese/French one.

I'm sure there is a lot of other things since 1945. Bean counters, Asset strippers and Government destroyed UK Domestic Electronics. Ever Ready was blocked from taking over Mallory (now called Duracell), asset stripped by Hanson, then brand sold to the pet food maker that bought the USA Eveready/Energiser.

The F35 thing is totally logical and predicable given last 65 years.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: Whatever happened

Like Inmos and other UK industry, Thatcher.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Irrational

Maybe if it's irrational enough, May would buy them?

Otherwise some evil anti-human rights regime will buy them.

SQL Server on Linux? HELL YES! Linux on Windows 10? Meh

Mage Silver badge

Re: CYGWIN

Or the bought in Unix for Windows tools (MS Services for Unix?) distributed for years, that however lacked a X server.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Worse than Vista

Oh, yes especially as Win7 is a service pack for Vista and you could turn junk off in Vista. Also no-one was forced to "upgrade" to Vista from XP. It was easy to wait for the Vista SP, known as Win 7 (Windows NT 6.0 and 6.1?)

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Windows ME was worse

I regarded Win9x and ME as game consoles. Never sold or installed them for business. We stuck with WFWG3.11 with Win32s till NT4.0 came out for workstations and NT3.x for servers.

Win9x and ME were hardly more than GUI shells, not real OS like NT3.1, NT3.51, NT4.0 and Win2K, so I didn't include it. I agree, the Win98 SE was far superior to Win ME.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

SQL vs Linux on Win

Having option of MS SQL on Linux for people migrating to Linux servers from Windows is good.

Unless you are forced by "management" why bother with Win10 at all to run Linux applications? Win 10 is the worst windows so far and even Linux Mint with Mate Desktop and WINE (Redmond Theme) runs more old windows apps than 64 bit win7! A VM with XP and no internet works fine on Linux.

Linux update FAR more user friendly than Win7 / Win8 and especially Win10 nonsense.

Cattle that fail, not pets that purr – the future of servers

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

Cloudiness: No Silver Lining

Unless it's for a temporary test or the Internet public to access, outsource to the "cloud" is madness. Even for public facing server loads, the database, financials, stock etc should be in house, only the web server in the cloud.

Otherwise, given the automatic patching, lack of transparency on security and backup and increasing monoculture, a cloud based apocalypse will come.

What happens when all ATMs, POS, Mobile Billing is on Cloud and it "goes down" due to an inept patch of edge routers or load balancing servers or actual servers on a Friday evening?

It's the plot of a believable book, "No Silver Lining" where one character likens the Cloud to potatoes, which allowed massive cheap food production and then population growth, but then famine, not just in Ireland but many countries. Monoculture.

Hence Cloud & Apocalypse icon.

The Cloud operators need to make profit. Right now they are in market acquisition mode, hence the pricing.

Euro bloc blocks streaming vid geoblocks

Mage Silver badge
Pirate

FTA / State PSBs etc

"Freebies such as TV catch-up or radio broadcasters won't yet be obliged to make their services portable"

Why?

Anyway, it will remove one driving factor for piracy and even if "abused" by someone in France taking out a Croatian sub, it can't be a bit part of market. The rights issue is mostly part of USA Corp's "divide and conquer" approach to Europe. Imagine the outcry if they treated USA states and cities the same way? I can't see the rights holders losing much money, any losses are out of their excessive greed as ultimately subscription services are a rip off. Note that Netflix's prices are probably predatory to build market share at expense of established pay TV.

Who's behind the Kodi TV streaming stick crackdown?

Mage Silver badge

Re: Copyright Terms

Frand should apply and no limitation on retail.

You don't need to do a copyright deal (usually) to sell distributed books, CDs, Magazines, DVDs (either from a publisher or a wholesaler) in Retail.

Smashwords is non-exclusive on eBooks and distributes to other retailers.

Amazon will distribute your book, or eBook, but offers incentives to publishers or authors to give them exclusivity. That ought to be illegal worldwide.

IMO exclusive to consumer via a SINGLE retail source is an abuse of copyright. Especially if subscription services are involved.

I'm none too happy either about content sold via Amazon being offered on "prime" with the misleading on page advert that it's "Free". It's not, it's a subscription that devalues the ordinary retail product.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Satellite or Cable?

So it's imaginary that to get all the football and rugby, that at one stage in Ireland you needed three subs?

Cable is irrelevant anyway as it's in much fewer places than broadband, which in turn is much less coverage than Satellite.

Also Netflix is RUBBISH at long tail.

Actually I want to buy content I want (on disk), unless the streaming service has every content always. Also the subscription model is more profitable (cf Netflix or sky vs Sony) BECAUSE it's a rip-off. You pay the same all year even if you watch very little, or some months nothing. It relies also on Cable or Satellite or uncapped high speed broadband.

I'm against Piracy, but "exclusives", lack of distribution, regional zoning (can be turned off on DVD, but not BD), regional releases, lack of long tail etc encourage it.

Digital content should be available to purchase on media (or download to storage) and stream, forever once published. No distribution platform should have any exclusivity (Sky was forced to allow Virgin cable to buy re-distribution rights). Content should be universally available simultaneously, the cost of film prints for cinema should no longer apply.

Intel Atom chips have been dying for at least 18 months – only now is truth coming to light

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Maybe everyone from Pentium FDIV bug days has retired?

What about the 1980s '386 mult bug?

About 30 years ago. Before there were web sites. I remember the company I was working for implementing a work-around on the compiler they were developing. Or talking about it.

I bet not many people from those days are still working as Engineers.

This seems informative on the 386 steppings. MS even decided to stop 80386 support with NT 4.0. I'd forgotten that!

So the Atom C2000 issue isn't new, it's just that now these things can't easily be swapped.

Mage Silver badge

Re: sanmigueelbeer

Are the replacements going to fail, as they don't have a new stepping yet, or can the people making product change their design slightly?

Blighty watchdog Ofcom has a butcher's hook, clocks spectrum for 5G

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Ofcom has identified

Ofcom has identified a way to raise revenue selling spectrum licences.

It's not really anything to do with 5G

Also above 2.6GHz is really only femto cells and the cells are too big and ill-defined at 700MHz for decent speed/capacity. It's basic physics, the *G standard is irrelevant. The 5G can't magic decent mobile above 3GHz or capacity below 900MHz.

Build more masts and have smaller cells between 900MHz and 3GHz.

Set sensible licence conditions on coverage and capacity/speed to force the investment, otherwise ROI (Customer revenue vs number of masts) means it won't happen.

Have a single wholesale RAN for ALL mobile. Splitting spectrum between operators at LEAST results in loss of half capacity, or more, statistically, as at a cherry picked urban location one operator's mast sector could be oversubscribed while the others sit idle.

The problem is that regulators are no interested in efficiency or the consumer, but raising revenue. VAT serves that purpose better.

Ofcom's proposal is worthless, short term greed.

Pulsating white dwarf described as a 'dynamo' found, no, not in the back pages, 380 LY away

Mage Silver badge
Alien

Earth's location is mapped

"Earth's location is mapped out using pulsars on Voyager's golden record"

Why are we potentially telling anyone? No-one asked my permission to share location data.

Otherwise, wonderful boffinery

Vizio coughs up $2.2m after its smart TVs spied on millions of families

Mage Silver badge

Re: Adobe was doing the same thing

Still are.

Any ebook using ePub using Adobe DRM.

Amazon also does the same unless you turn it off. Amazon eReader App on Android tries to call home ANYWAY, even if you are not using the reader, so I removed it.

Kobo does it on non-DRM ePub unless you turn it off.

This is one reason I remove DRM. I don't share copies.

I only use my "smart phone" as a feature phone, Data isn't enabled on my mobile package and I've only turned on WiFi a couple of times to try apps that allegedly work without Internet. Same with my tablet.

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Fuck you

Indeed.

Also what about Android TV.

TV sets where YOU CAN NOT SKIP agree with Google to use the set at all. Even though these sets sold by companies that used to use their own BETTER GUIs on a Linux base.

All so they can market them with "Apps".

Really there should be a fine of $100 per TV sold. All of World. I can't think of any democratic country where such behaviour as Vizio and Google is legal.

Japanese team unveils terahertz band 100 Gbps wireless tech

Mage Silver badge

It's very niche

High Altitude platforms (which as yet are not viable). Satellite mesh networking among satellites.

Actual terrestrial range is pure line of sight and very limited by weather.

Infra red laser is nearly more useful. It's a lab party trick, because they can.

The "spectrum" shortage is a myth. The whole point of Cellular is to re-use the same nine channels (minimum is three, but nine is better if a mast only uses 3, one each per 120 degrees). The problem is two fold:

1) Stupidly having more than one wholesale operator. If you have four, then you need x4 spectrum.

2) Not enough basestations. Because of ROI, it's not economic to have smaller cells and give people x10 speed as they won't pay much more.

The real impetus of selling off TV spectrum, Army & satellite spectrum to mobile is:

1) Extra licence revenue to Regulators and thus Government.

2) Cheap low capacity for rural without building new masts, use the GSM ones,

3) Cheap extra capacity in cities, to compete with WiFi points, without extra masts. This is why they want LTE on WiFi, use existing band, tech and charge you more.

Why does it cost 20 times as much to protect Mark Zuckerberg as Tim Cook?

Mage Silver badge

Re: Tax avoidance?

No, that's certain Presidents, not CEOs.

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Choose your enemies

Certainly you don't even need to be a conspiracy theorist or any sort of nutcase, just analytical, to wonder if Zuckerberg or Eric Schmitt (The least spoken of Google boss) is more evil and wonder how much like the corporate guy in Fifth Element they are.

Maybe the security is in case Bruce Willis or Chuck Norris comes after him, because Zuckerberg seems to have a tenuous grasp of reality, he may not realise that (a) Fictional, (b) Getting old.

Also he doesn't seem to care about our privacy any more than Schmitt does.

A non-Standards Soviet approved measure of weight? Sod off, BBC!

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: That's a selkie

Sometimes I can't be bothered and like making random comments?

My bad, It was indeed Selkies I was thinking of. Now I'll have to research Kelpies. Obviously my personal library is lacking in Scottish content.

Mage Silver badge
Linux

takes the form of a horse or a pony.

Sounds like a Púca not a Kelpie

I thought a Kelpie was a Scottish / Irish were-mer-creature that looks like a seal. I never heard them described as horse like. Though Celtic myth is strong on magical fairy horses.

BBC and Snap. But, why?

Mage Silver badge
Devil

BBC stupidity

The only more stupid PSB broadcaster I know is RTE.

They have a MASSIVE web infrastructure, with comments.

Yet they wanted to ditch HGTTG "wiki"

They push everyone on their website and R4 to Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is probably incompatible with BBC Charter, UK Law and EU law. Both are commercial third parties.

So no surprise.

Update or shut up: Microsoft's choice for desktop Skypers

Mage Silver badge

Re: Skype as a free alternative to H323

I thought "Skype for business" was a completely different system, just a rebranded MS Lync?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_for_Business

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Another Cloud con

I thought it had ages ago at the LAST blocking of Skype Log on?

This many standards is dumb: Decoding 25Gb Ethernet and beyond

Mage Silver badge

Re: cat-8?

Or Cat-4. You hear about Cat-3 (phone cable, from 2 to very many pairs, maybe 25?) and Cat-5 (basic LAN quad pairs)

Mage Silver badge
Coat

I can't figure why

Thank you.

And in Mage Towers we still wonder why only some 1Gbps Ethernet computer ports work with the cheap 3com 8-port switches. Most don't. Some work if you set them manually to Master or 10Mbps in windows! I don't know how to do that on Linux, so I use the WiFi. Nor have I sussed out why one Airport is 54Mbps and another is 250Mbps, probably g and n standards.

Yes, I love the XKCD.

Great article.

Chrome 56 quietly added Bluetooth snitch API

Mage Silver badge

Re: perfectly reasonable?

Why does this stupid API exist at all?

A web site only ought to know the window size.

Far too much information is given away by web browsers.

GCHQ cyber-chief slams security outfits peddling 'medieval witchcraft'

Mage Silver badge

Re: Whatever it takes to make a sale

I gave a presentation once.

The chairman of the board complained that it was over the top security and lock down. He said most students wouldn't have a clue how to hack stuff.

I pointed out:

a) They could look it up on the internet.

b) What about the other expert students? Were they trustworthy? It only needed one expert bad egg, and he might even explain it to the others.

Despite being the most expensive, we got the contract.

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Losing Customers: cf fake Domain parking and evil DNS

Convinced that it should be subscribers, rather than the operator, who chose who was called—anecdotally, Strowger's undertaking business was losing clients to a competitor whose telephone-operator wife was intercepting and redirecting everyone who called Strowger—he first conceived his invention in 1888, and patented the automatic telephone exchange in 1891. It is reported that he initially constructed a model of his invention from a round collar box and some straight pins.

See Wiki on Almon Strowger

Certainly that's what I was told in the 1970s,

Would you like to know why I get a lot of action at night?

Mage Silver badge

Re: Sorry

Antihistimes are not a generally good solution. Nor are decongestants (which actually make it worse). Specialist prescription cortisoids are effective. Like the steroid nasal sprays. Interesting that some are now over the counter. I didn't know that.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Thanks...

Or setup a VPN that uses port 80?

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on 'core scenarios'

Mage Silver badge

Re: Oh yeah .....

They have never properly supported VB since after VB6. Easier to re-do from scratch in Java or C# than port from VB6 to VB.NET, and that was with decently written stuff (Option Explicit, no "clever" tricks, just Modula-2/Pascal/Delphi style programs). For a start no support in VB.NET for arrays of form widgets.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Oh yeah .....

One of the top VB book writers argued "forget VB.Net, it's a C programmer's idea of VB."

I decided very quickly that VB.net was inferior to C# and for RAD and Prototyping (of microcontrollers in another language) that VB6 was superior.

So mostly I used Java if it wasn't private prototypes (for which I stuck with VB6).

So VB has been dead since Vb.net "replaced" VB6. C# was really MS replacement. YET!!!! They could not decide on a "model" for the GUI or APIs! It kept changing and there seemed to be three competing "solutions" none of which seemed sufficiently finished to really replace VB6.

Also why has 64 bit Win7 "broken" VB6 apps? Stuff compiled for NT3.51 using Stony Brook Modula-2 STILL "just runs" on Win7 64 bit and most VB6 applications don't!

Why too did MS not put the 64bit code in Program Files(x64), and instead broke everything (starting with XP Itanium 64 bit or NT4.0 Alpha 64? I don't know) by putting 32bit in Program Files (x86) and 64bit in Program Files?

Back in 2003 or so, I think they started to lose the plot.

Ribbon,

Aero

Direct 3D API for regular forms!

"Metro" / Win8 / Win10

Facebook's dabblings in TV suggest Zuck isn't actually a genius after all

Mage Silver badge

Genius

It was pure luck.

He's a one trick pony that copied other people's trick. (Social Media).

He's been buying up other companies and breaking privacy laws even before that. (Instagram)

Also

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38834867

AT&T ready to trial latest attempt at pumping internet over power lines

Mage Silver badge

Re: What everyone here seems to be missing

It's not internet over power lines at all then.

The talk of "waveguides" is bonkers. It's either microwaves just using towers to mount dishes, or wires for lower frequency RF.

Mage Silver badge

Re: I sensed a disturbance in the force

Hams are not the only people using MW & SW.

Ordinary people, spies listening to number stations, CB users :D

Also ESB trials (Ireland's Electricity service) found that licensed low band VHF mobile and also CB disrupted the powerline data.

In China, Apple's gegenpress doesn't scare the locals

Mage Silver badge

was supply constrained on the Pro

Ha Ha

Pull the other one.

Well, Apple has enough inertia to be profitable at least another 10 years. But I doubt they can ever repeat the success of the iPod (initially due to iTunes content) and iPhone (initially due to operator bundling and data deals) with any new product type.

Baird is the word: Netflix's grandaddy gets bronze London landmark

Mage Silver badge

Re: What a difference a word makes

Marconi got his first big breaks with the UK P.O. That started his career.*

The P.O. was surprised at his good English, but his mother was posh Anglo-Irish and had encouraged him to experiment on their Italian estate.

One of his wives was Irish too.

Marconi had more difficulty in USA, eventually being forced to sell his holding in what became famous RCA.

[* There is even an accurate Ladybird book on the subject]

Google mistakes the entire NHS for massive cyber-attacking botnet

Mage Silver badge

Re: Why?

Also use of Chrome (Google Spyware) should be illegal in NHS anyway.

GitLab.com melts down after wrong directory deleted, backups fail

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

GitLab last year decreed it had outgrown the cloud

Irrelevant,

Either way, it's only a shared service to allow collaboration. EVERYONE should have their own complete backups.

Gitlab itself is surely a "Cloud" service?

Samsung is on fire, overtakes Apple as world's #1 chip-shifter

Mage Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Apple

Apple bought in an existing expert ARM licence SoC design company. The first iPhone used the Samsung SC6400 family ARM SoC.

Also on what basis is this assessed? Apple doesn't have even a quarter of mobile phone market. What about chips in washing machines, router/modems, TVs, Radios, Flash (used in phones, eReaders, USB sticks, SD Cards, HDD parameters, modems, TVs, etc), RAM.

Really this sounds dubious that Apple was ever at #1. Also what foundry makes the chips that Apple's bought in company uses?

Also "sales value" for chips only used in house might be quite fictitious.