Re: Machine Operating System
!BOOT?
Anybody ever write a virus for one then? :)
Posts by Zippy's Sausage Factory
766 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2008
'Oi! El Reg! Stop pretending Microsoft has a BSOD monopoly!'
Double-negative tweet could be Microsoft Surface Phone hint
Apple: Crisis? What innovation crisis? BTW, you like our toothbrush?
Apple killed OS X today and binned its $10,000 BlingWatch too
Adobe reverses decision to kill NPAPI Flash plugin for Linux
Tuesday 6th September 2016 10:35 GMT 
Anyone else get this mental image?
I have a mental image of someone repeatedly hitting a zombie with a shovel saying "why... won't... you... die?"
Probably Shaun of the Dead, but maybe not. I probably watch too many zombie movies (or not enough, take your pick).
Skull and crossbones because there's no brains icon...
OpenBSD 6.0 lands
Tim Cook: EU lied about Apple taxes. Watch out Ireland, this is a coup!
Thursday 1st September 2016 14:15 GMT
Re: Missing the bigger picture...
And there aren't similar rulings the EU instituted against EU companies then?
If the US government start crying that US companies should be able to flout rules that EU companies cannot, I suspect that will pretty much be considered the opening salvo in a rather long and unpleasant trade war.
Thursday 1st September 2016 14:11 GMT 
Didn't some German car companies get stung for billions a few years back?
I'm sure I recall that the US government pushed hard for this to happen under the auspices of illegal state aid? Even if not, it's happened to Spanish football clubs - even the Lloyds bailout had to be structured VERY carefully to avoid it being illegal state aid.
Given that these sorts of issues have happened a lot (the Spanish football clubs lost, incidentally) I can't help but feel that if I were an Apple shareholder, I'd be calling for Tim Cook to be fired right now - for incompetence in allowing what was clearly an illegal tax avoidance scam to go ahead in the first place.
Dropbox: Leaked DB of 68 million account passwords is real
Labour's Jeremy Corbyn wants high speed broadband for all. Wow, original idea there
Windows Update borks PowerShell – Microsoft won't fix it for a week
Excel hell messes up ~20 per cent of genetic science papers
Thursday 25th August 2016 12:54 GMT
Re: My pet gripe is
I'm guessing the problem the OP is having here is other people. Namely that there is a specific need to format the dates and times in this format. The fact that Excel doesn't contain the format with seconds means people are using the format that contains only minutes and then there are support calls when they don't understand why the data doesn't look right.
In other words, Excel is making people take a shortcut down the wrong route.
(As an aside, if I had all the money I've seen wasted thanks to Excel diverted to my bank account, I'd be able to own my own private island, which I could fly to and from every day in a helicopter made of solid gold piloted by a hired supermodel.)
Microsoft’s Continuum: Game changer or novelty?
You shrunk the database into a .gz and the app won't work? Sigh
Friday 19th August 2016 09:05 GMT
Re: Replace tape
I finished reading this and got three comments further down until I realised I wasn't paying any attention and just thinking about Susanna Hoffs.
Saddo that I am, I was actually thinking "I know that name from somewhere, who is she?"
Ah yes, Bangles. My one chance to see them we got lost - wandering around Hyde Park with "Walk Like An Egyptian" blaring out...
Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell for Linux, Macs. Repeat, Microsoft has open-sourced PowerShell
Thursday 18th August 2016 17:03 GMT
Yecch.
Having had the misfortune of having had to work with PowerShell, I'd prefer their bash for Windows get prime slot, and PowerShell be taken out behind the shed and dealt with in much the same way as Old Yeller.
Really, it's just one of those hellish products that sounded like a really good idea until you saw how genuinely awful it was to work with.
New UK trade deals would not compensate for loss of single market membership
Thursday 18th August 2016 09:41 GMT
Er...
People do know that we're only WTO members by virtue of our EU membership, right? Once we leave, we're no longer members.
Basically, we'd have to negotiate to join the WTO in order to get people to play by WTO rules. And all it takes is one veto to make sure it doesn't happen. I'm sure the corporations are drooling over the concessions that they can get from the UK in exchange for no veto: selloff of the NHS to US health care companies, all GMO agriculture, relaxation of gun laws...
Hey, turn down that radio, it's alien season and we're hunting aliens
This local council paid HOW MUCH for an SD card?!
Wednesday 29th June 2016 14:08 GMT
Legal reasons
My guess would be they're used for prosecutions - e.g. by health inspectors to take pictures of rats with a digital camera (not a phone).
Probably they need a separate SD card for each prosecution so that it can be verified when the pictures were taken rather than copying stock photos into a folder (you know - forensic copy, store the original in a safe).
This is why councils buy big expensive WORM drives to store council tax records in case they get challenged in court...
Wednesday 29th June 2016 14:04 GMT
What's the source?
When I worked for a council, the local paper reported that we spent £11 million on an email system.
How anyone can spend eleven million quid on Exchange 2000 boggles me, but they basically read the accounts wrong - £11 million was our entire IT budget, including staff, Oracle licences, Sun hardware, Exchange - everything. For three years*.
* Yes, this was a few years back, just in case you skimread the "2000" bit...
Microsoft grabs employment guns, aims at British sales units
Gullible Essex Police are now using junk science lie detectors
Microsoft adds useful feature to PowerPoint. Seriously
Boo hoo. Brexit to hit Capita's bottom line
HMRC research finds 'resistance' to proposals to shift contractor tax compliance burden
UK's climate change dept abolished, but 'smart meters and all our policies strong as ever'
US drug squads told to get a warrant before tracking mobile phones
It's 2016 and Windows lets crims poison your printer drivers
Germany: If Brits vote to Remain, we'll admit Hurst's 1966 goal was a goal
Man-in-the-middle biz Blue Coat bought by Symantec: Infosec bods are worried
Thursday 23rd June 2016 14:14 GMT
Re: So Symantec bought them?
Quarterdeck had a bit more than that, especially since I don't even remember the DOS stuff you're talking about. I was actually thinking of CleanSweep (rock solid reliable until Symantec made it as buggy as the Okefenokee swamp), PartitionIt!, Internet Suite (which was actually a very useful bit of kit, if I remember right)...
Although to be fair, reading the Wikipedia article I'm not sure whether they acquired those. Either way, I was annoyed that some stuff I paid good money for and used and found very useful I couldn't get any more. (Eventually I might tell you the story of how I used CleanSweep to save people a small fortune in council tax, but not right now...)
Tuesday 14th June 2016 09:28 GMT
So Symantec bought them?
I expect BlueCoat's business to go the same way as did QuarterDeck, Norton Ghost... oh god how many acquisitions have there been where they've destroyed perfectly good product lines?
I fully expect that none of BlueCoat's product lines - except the one that Symantec will for some bizarre reason manage to keep profitable - will be around in a year or two...
12 years of US Air Force complaints lost in database crash
The Microsoft-LinkedIn hookup will be the END of DAYS, I tell you
Microsoft buys LinkedIn for the price of 36 Instagrams
PC market sinking even faster than first thought, thanks to Windows 10
Friday 10th June 2016 09:40 GMT
Desktop Android is the future
I kind of wish it wasn't, as I've been a Windows developer for 20 years. But I have a feeling that the writing is on the wall. Sooner or later, it's going to be Android on the desktop, Windows or Linux on the (mainframe - ahem, sorry - cloud) server and that's the state of the world. There will still be a few % of desktop Windows, Linux and OS X ( or macOS or fruitbat or whatever name they finally decide to change it to ) but I think it's inevitable...
UK Home Office is creating mega database by stitching together ALL its gov records
Scrum.org hacked, may have lost crypto keys and some user data
Life after Safe Harbour: Avoiding Uncle Sam's data rules gotchas
Wednesday 1st June 2016 10:55 GMT
Re: Summary
That's true in every agreement. Take the agreement that led to the UK's Extradition Act 2003. The USA can extradite anyone they want from the UK, for any reason, without evidence. The UK was supposed to have the same powers in the USA but Congress vetoed it. Although it was made clear the UK *must* stick to its end of the deal though...
Same with TTIP, CETA, TPP, you name it. That's one reason I'm totally against trade agreements with the USA - they tend to be as equitable as a deal with Al Capone...
Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'
GM crops are good for you and the planet, reckon boffins
Wednesday 18th May 2016 15:51 GMT
GM is all well and good, but the risks aren't all about the science.
For a start, they are patented technology. You buy from Monsanto, you can never grow your own. Monsanto control your business. (Or Bayer Agri, Syngenta, whomever. But Monsanto are the big player here). Now what happens if, say, Monsanto gets bought a foreign power? Suddenly your entire country's food supply is controlled by a foreign power. (There's a bid by a Chinese company to buy Monsanto, incidentally).
Plus, of course, there's the problems of monocultures - if everywhere in the world uses the same pesticide it just takes one species of pest to become resistant to that pesticide and suddenly every farmer who plants that GM crop has the same problem at the same time. If that's a staple foodstuff, that becomes everybody's problem.
As for scientific consensus, don't make me laugh. We all know these surveys are paid for by the very companies whose products they so enthusiastically endorse as "good for you and good for the environment". I'll remind you that there were similar studies in the 1950s that showed the positive health benefits of smoking.
The 'new' Microsoft? I still wouldn't touch them with a barge pole
Friday 6th May 2016 13:38 GMT
Like a drug pusher...
"Over and over Microsoft is trying to herd businesses into using its cloud services. It wants subscriptions for everything, and they doesn't seem shy about turning the knobs on pricing and/or feature-busting once enough customers have migrated."
First hit is free, then you pay. Unless you want the withdrawal symptoms...
Intel has driven a dagger through Microsoft's mobile strategy
Wednesday 4th May 2016 13:32 GMT
Re: Logic & Gui
Didn't they almost split the logic and the GUI once - or at least, make a start on it? It was part of the philosophy of Windows NT <= 3.51 if I remember right.
I also seem to remember Gates felt it was too slow so they ditched the idea of trying to move to that sort of idea with NT 4.
UK.gov refuses to give surveillance commish enforcement powers
Switch survives three hours of beer spray, fails after twelve
Friday 29th April 2016 10:30 GMT 
Reading that made my eye twitch...
Weirdly, I've known people worse than that. Usually they were MCSEs.
I did once witness the exciting spectacle of a helpdesk person teaching an MCSE how to plug in a server and switch it on. This took half an hour. She seriously had to explain power switches to the guy.
I seem to remember she got another job quite soon after that. Allegedly it was because the commute was shorter in the new role...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
