* Posts by Zippy's Sausage Factory

766 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2008

OpenBSD releases Meltdown patch

Zippy's Sausage Factory

@HieronymusBloggs I might try it again. My problem is my inherent laziness, not OpenBSD itself. :)

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Personally I've tried OpenBSD and never really got very far with it. But then I guess since my start with Slackware* I've become weak and coddled by Ubuntu...

* Just realised that's now over 20 years ago. Sheesh.

UK.gov: We're not regulating driverless vehicles until others do

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Meh

Hmm...

"It is worth noting," added Baroness Sugg in her letter, "that necessary powers already exist to create new Motor Vehicle Construction and Use Regulations for automated vehicles through the Road Traffic Act 1988. It is for this reason that new regulation making powers are not necessary in the Bill."

Regulation making powers.... that usually means some government ministers / quangos have the right to create the rules without parliament having a vote on the rules, doesn't it?

I smell a large, brown-envelope-stuffed-full-of-used-tenners* shaped rat...

* I was going to put fivers, but inflation...

Intel admits a load of its CPUs have Spectre v2 flaw that can't be fixed

Zippy's Sausage Factory

This is typical Intel - "support? No, we don't care about anything that might cost us money. Besides, that part should have been replaced by now."

Also, anyone else noticed there's a lot of Xeons here? I'm wondering how many are in use in corporate servers. Or even government - replacement cycles in government tend to be longer than the private sector because if they're not the press start screaming about "taxpayer's money"...

Billion-dollar investor tells Facebook: Just Zuck off, already!

Zippy's Sausage Factory

It would be interesting if Zuckerberg did get fired from Facebook. No doubt he would cry and whinge about it, more or less forever, but his gaffes as CEO (rampant ageism, calling users 'dumb f--ks', etc etc) are bound to come back and bite him sooner or later. These things always do.

What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Facepalm

So if you try and write an episode of a modern TV show in Word, you'll lose the Office 365 licence you paid for? Interesting.

Please, Microsoft, do tell me how well censorship will play with your customer base...

What a mesh: BT Whole Home Wi-Fi users moan over update

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Hi AC!

How's the weather on Newgate Street, EC1A?

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Meh

My guess it that could be every single person complaining and it would still be "a small number of customers", because they daren't publicly admit anything that someone might want to use in court against them.

Fleeing Facebook app users realise what they agreed to in apps years ago – total slurpage

Zippy's Sausage Factory

It isn't.

You can still use iTunes to do a full backup and then restore them to another phone. I did it just a few weeks ago.

User asked why CTRL-ALT-DEL restarted PC instead of opening apps

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: Feeling Old...

I'm getting the impression that the whole development of personal computing was driven by the desire to play games?

And porn. Don't forget porn.

BOFH: Give me a lever long enough and a fool, I mean a fulcrum and ....

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Pint

Re: cellphone, mobile, handy

Thus many oikers and kIwis will use pants to mean trousers, cellphone for mobile, and a few others.

I used to know a tailor, who insisted to me that trousers is, essentially, a subset of pants. It was at this point that I realised that every profession has its own jargon which is generally speaking impenetrable to outsiders. I also suddenly remembered an urgent appointment, elsewhere*, for which I was running late.

* Probably to meet a Mr L Ager at the bar...

Symantec cert holdout sites told: Those Google Chrome warnings are not a good look

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Meh

Is the karma from all the years where Symantec have acquired companies that make good products and then as soon as they took them over, turned those products to useless garbage* until they just plain stopped making them finally coming home to roost?

* With the exception of Ghost, I suppose. Maybe.

Cambridge Analytica CEO suspended – and that's not even the worst news for them today

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Devil

Didn't the Tories do something similar in Glasgow* in the 70s?

Only in their case, they took an election car with a loudhailer, covered it with Labour stickers, turned up the PA to 11 and drove round the housing estates at 3am shouting "vote Labour".

Memory escapes me whether that worked...

* I only think Glasgow because I was told this by an English teacher who comes from Glasgow.

Addicts of Facebook and pals are easy prey for manipulative scumbags – thanks to tech giants' 'extraordinary reach'

Zippy's Sausage Factory

I'd argue less for "mirror" than "be much tighter than", myself...

US govt's final bid to extradite Lauri Love kicked into touch

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Black Helicopters

Re: Wishful thinking

I doubt it will end there. He'll never be able to travel to the US, ever. And it's likely that if he moves to another country they'll try again there.

That's assuming that they're not already on the phone to Theresa May, politely* suggesting** that some sort of forced rendition take place as soon as possible if they want any chance of a post-Brexit trade deal.

* by which I mean "in a threatening manner".

** by which I mean "or else".

1 in 5 Michigan state staffers fail phishing test but that's OK apparently

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Thumb Up

Re: about right

Some of the places I've known, 20% sounds pretty good to me.

I do remember one client where the manager instructed staff that they had to click on every attachment, just to see what it was, in case it was important. One of the many cases where our "that's not a good idea" lectures had no effect until it got to the "we told you so - and here's a fat invoice to clean up your mess" stage.

BOOM! Cambridge Analytica explodes following extraordinary TV expose

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Anyone want to guess the odds of whether Facebook still exists at the end of the year?

And no, I don't mean bad publicity alone will sink them. I mean a combination of lawsuits, criminal charges, investors pulling out, advertisers leaving in droves, etc.

Those odds seem to be getting worse for FB by the day... (Although not as bad as CA's, I'm guessing they're heading for 100% right now.)

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn't default browser

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: Analysis of the email market in 2007?

Anyway, it’s good to see MS holding true to their long standing asshattery. At least you know where you stand with them.

I'm not sure why but the phrase "bend over, here it comes again" springs to mind...

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Meh

Re: Fucking idiots

Speaking as a Penguin who also owns Apple and Windows kit (as well as an old copy of OS/2 in the back of a cupboard), I personally don't care that much. I can see why antitrust people might care, however, as it is an attempt to leverage their position to distort a market.

Apple's iOS stance is basically around security, and not wanting battery/space munching web rendering engines loaded on iOS when theirs is already painful enough, thank you. And they might support Flash too, which would be worse.

Fun fact: Adobe Flash comes pre-installed on Windows 10 and you can't remove it without butchering the system. Given that you can remove that small slice of purgatory that is OneDrive from Programs & Features, I wonder how much Adobe are paying for that little privilege?

Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office not over cost but because Google G Suite looks sweet

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Hi AC!

How's the weather in Redmond today?

UK.gov urged to ensure punters can 'still roam like at home' after Brexit

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Meh

Given the difficulty we've had here in Portugal getting the three main operators to abide by it when we're not leaving the EU, I doubt that there's much hope for the current roaming plans to continue even a single second after the Brexit date.

I could be wrong, but I'm guessing the networks like money more than they like good PR, especially when they can blame a price hike on the government and "the will of the people"...

Cynical, moi? Youbetcha...

18.04 beta is as good a time as any to see which Ubuntu flavour tickles your Budgie, MATE

Zippy's Sausage Factory

I'm liking the sound of MATE. My next upgrade will probably be either ubuntu MATE or Ubuntu Budgie, but I'm tending towards MATE.

I have to say I'm an LTS fan these days... must have gone soft since I used to be a bleeding edge Slackware headcase (although I do still fondly remember Linux-FT, Mandrake-before-it-became-Mandriva and old school Red Hat)... :)

OK, deep breath, relax... Let's have a sober look at these 'ere annoying AMD chip security flaws

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Sounds like the lab are trying to make a name for themselves. Although rehashing old vulns and putting fancy names on them doesn't sound like a sensible way to do that...

Microsoft's Teams lights solitary candle, hipsters don't notice

Zippy's Sausage Factory

"200,000 organizations in 181 markets and 39 languages have had Teams automatically installed on their computers, whether they like it or not."

FTFY.

Age checks for UK pr0n site visitors on ice as regulator cobbles together some guidance

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Meh

That last paragraph just made me wonder... do any of the Tory politicos pushing this deluded nonsense have shares in companies that sell VPN services, I wonder?

HP is turning off 'Always On' data deals but won't say why

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Joke

Re: Samsung Smart TVs

90% of people don't care though, because they only use three apps: Netflix, YouTube and the one that sends every word they send direct to the NSA...

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: "No contracts, no commitments"

Certainly "no commitments" from HP, at any rate :)

Good news: Apple designs a notebook keyboard that doesn't suck

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Apple used to make great keyboards

They had wires on them. They discontinued them recently.

Unfortunately the keyboard controllers in them were prone to dying. Which means next I might have to find a ewent keyboard from somewhere as that's one of the few I've ever found that I prefer typing on more.

(My favourite was a 1980s Compaq PS/2 keyboard, which alas died a spectacular death when a power spike took out my motherboard, CPU and graphics card while the PC was turned off. Strangely, however, the HDD, old faithful Taiwanese NE2000 clone and PCI USB card were all fine...)

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Unhappy

In other words, "We'll keep 'accidentally' turning it on after every update, and make it really hard to turn off again"

For all we know, aliens could be as careless with space junk as us

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Plus, of course, we'll be detecting how they were several year, decades, or even millennia ago...

Does Parliament or Google decide when your criminal past is forgotten?

Zippy's Sausage Factory

I'm with Google here...

Yes, I know, this is probably an unpopular opinion.

The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act states that there are circumstances in which certain offences can't be considered - for example, if someone was fined for protesting on a demo ago, that doesn't count against you on a job application ten years later.

It doesn't, however, say that the newspapers shouldn't report on that. The fact that newspapers do, and have, reported on things is a given. What Google is doing is finding an easier way to locate this information than having to go to a dusty cupboard in the back of a library and look through old newspapers.

Now, if the information presented were untrue, that would a very different problem. But in this case, it isn't.

I don't think the right to be forgotten should be shelved. I don't have an easy answer to all this, either, and nor do I think there is one. I just think that, in this instance, Google is in the right.

UK.gov cooks up code of conduct to enforce a smidge of security on Internet of S**t kit

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: If only

I think what they actually mean is

"Most manufacturers are updating their Ts&Cs to include forced arbitration and the buyer indemnifying the manufacturer from all liability as their way of addressing IT security in devices"

And they're probably fine with this...

UK data watchdog's inaugural tech strategy was written with... *drumroll* Word 2010

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Mushroom

Re: in fairness

I'm defending my Office2010 install against the hoards of IT support - it's the last version of Excel that doesn't do cutesty little fruit machine animations when it updates a cell FFS

Excel 2010 was solid as a rock. Excel 2016 from Office 365 however... well let's just say it's better than it used to be.

OK, let's now. It has more bugs than a cockroach farm, crashes at the drop of a hat, corrupts your files.

Seriously, I used to just use Excel when it was 2010. Nowadays I have Libre Office installed because... well, because Excel.

Sorry I needed a chance to vent... now I need to go recover some workbooks, if you'll excuse me...

Swiss see Telly Tax as a Big Plus, vote against scrapping it

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: Basic maths?

The BBC don't get all of the licence fee anyway. Quite a bit goes for "rural broadband" and other initiatives, at least some of which are provided by the Murdoch empire.

How about just slashing the licence fee by 20% and giving everything they collect to the BBC?

WordPress is now 30 per cent of the web, daylight second

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: Well that's depressing

As a WP user, I can agree with that. But it is getting better.

And let's face it, there are worse commercial offerings that will cost you an arm and a leg and won't deliver the same functionality as WordPress will.

Farewell, Android Pay. We hardly tapped you

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Where does coffee cost 60 cents?

Portugal.

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Windows

I like cash, personally. Even Sweden, which was going to be the first "cashless" country, just started wondering whether it's a good idea.

Cash isn't traceable.

Cash doesn't occur a 35 cent fee if I try a buy a 60 cent cup of coffee.

I can still pay by cash when my phone is out of juice.

Cash doesn't get erased if I stand too near some big magnets.

I don't have to remember a pin for every transaction.

There will always be another tenner - if I lose my debit card I'm screwed for about a week.

Nobody can steal the contents of my wallet with a sniffer.

I can't drop a tenner on the floor and break its screen...

I could go on, but I'm getting bored. I know, you're all going to say I'm "resistant to change" but cash... it's just actually quite convenient thanks. (And yes, quite a few of the above have happened to me...)

Boring. The phone business has lost the plot and Google is making it worse

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Windows

Re: Stock Android

Recall the period from 1995 to 2012, when Windows barely changed. You could learn Windows NT 4 (released back in 1996), fall into a coma for a decade and a half, and come back to find the Windows 7 desktop experience almost exactly the same. Same for Microsoft Office, right up until that bloody ribbon.

Mmm... NT 4 with Office 97. Now I have a warm and cosy nostalgic feeling.

That's a Virtual Box I need to make for myself, I think...

Wearables are now a two-horse race and Google lost very badly

Zippy's Sausage Factory

I must admit I have a Chinese fitness band (I actually paid £20 for it rather than £30).

Not only does it do everything I need it to do, well enough that I'm happy with it, it doesn't look like some horrible great 1970s retro digital nonsense.

So I have no wish to upgrade it for an Apple one or a fitbit or whatever. Especially as my record of watches over the years is such that I forcibly stopped myself buying any watch over £30 on the grounds that I'll either break it, lose it or - in one case - take it off, leave it on the edge of my desk, accidentally knock it into the bin and have it found by the cleaner at the end of the day. (And yes, fortunately, I did get it back in that last case...)

UK's BT: Ofcom's wholesale superfast broadband price slash will hurt bottom line

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Devil

What happens next?

Not to be cynical, but isn't this what usually happens:-

Gov: ISPs, lower your prices, you're making too much money.

ISPs: Oh no, wait! We need that money for more investment in rural broadband.

Gov: Hmmm... well OK then, carry on.

(later)

ISPs: Hey shareholders, here's a huge amount more money than last year before we made more profits.

Gov: Investment in rural broadband?

ISPs: Ha ha ha. Nope.

Cynical? Moi? Yep.

US state legal supremos show lots of love for proposed CLOUD Act (a law to snoop on citizens' info stored abroad)

Zippy's Sausage Factory

I have a feeling all this would already place an organisation in breach of the GDPR. Including, weirdly, probably a US-based company that has no data stored in the EU but has data from EU citizens. I may be wrong, though, I'm not a lawyer.

Either way, I suspect this one will cause alarm in the corridors of Brussels.

Windows slithers on to Arm, legless?

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Mushroom

Re: .Net

Surely the answer to the ARM/Intel software compatibility conundrum is .Net, where your code runs in a VM on top of the native processor?

Speaking as a .Net developer, that's not quite the case. It's more like Java actually, in that it's a bytecode that is JIT compiled (in theory).

.Net Core is designed to run on Mac and Linux as well as Windows, and I suspect they will port it to ARM fairly swiftly.

That said, the point of Core is to be portable, and I suspect it will use the genuinely awful Windows Presentation Framework for GUI apps on Mac and Linux. So you'll be able to write horrible looking apps that don't blend with the operating systems on three platforms instead of one.

UK local gov: 37 cyber attacks a minute but little mandatory training

Zippy's Sausage Factory

I know exactly what you mean.

I used to work in a council IT department and when I suggested we look at security for one of the web services, was told "who would want to attack us? We're just a local council."

I was far from amused, and had to spell out for him that the contract he'd signed to this third party specified traffic by the megabyte*, which was coming from his departmental budget, and that anyone who could hack in could cheerfully host a site of a less-than-wholesome nature hidden in plain sight. After all, who would suspect a local council of hosting a porn site**?

* this was rather a long time ago.

** that was recent news at the time. I believe it was reported on The Register.

Mueller bombshell: 13 Russian 'troll factory' staffers charged with allegedly meddling in US presidential election

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: Many layers of subterfuge

The big question is how long it's going to take to get rid of him...

Microsoft reveals 'limitations of apps and experiences on Arm' – then deletes from view

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Interesting

I'm guessing MS has been working on these features a while, thinking that they are going to start building more Surface hardware on ARM some time soon. Which is interesting.

I also think Intel are also going to be very very miffed at losing some of their Windows advantages here and I'm sure they are going to have some tough questions for SatNad about this one...

Bloke sues Microsoft: Give me $600m – or my copy of Windows 7 back

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Windows

Re: *Ducks* @bigfoot780

You had to agree and you could go back for 30 days

I didn't. Came back after leaving my old Medion running some jobs overnight to find that not only had my video encode not worked, I was suddenly running Windows 10. I wasn't happy.

Violets are violet, roses are... rosy, Dell just got $145.8m for selling Mozy

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Unhappy

This makes me twitchy

Lots of competitors in the "cloud backup" market getting subsumed by one big player.

Less competition = higher prices.

IBM declares it's the 'backbone of the world's economy'

Zippy's Sausage Factory

The few IBM employees that remain are probably polishing their CVs ready for when they get the axe, no doubt...

Despite the headlines, Rudd's online terror takedown tool is only part of the solution

Zippy's Sausage Factory
Black Helicopters

Appeals process?

No doubt, there won't be one. At least, not one that matters. My guess is it might look a bit like this:

"To appeal, send a letter to this obscure government department (email not accepted). Within 30 days we will reply whether to allow the appeal. You then have six weeks to submit any further information for the appeal, and we then will have a target to decide 25% of all appeals within six months of the original takedown date (up from 18% last year). Please note all appeals are under an NDA and it's a criminal offence to reveal whether you have appealed or what stage the appeal is currently at, even when we've decided in your favour (which, let's face it, we probably won't)."

UK Home Sec Amber Rudd unveils extremism blocking tool

Zippy's Sausage Factory

Re: 99.995% is impossible

You laugh but an episode of Peppa Pig is banned in Australia...

(for saying spiders aren't dangerous, basically, which is a little bit misleading in Oz...)