Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.
How else could I have done that?
Signal would be a good option.
Posts by Zippy's Sausage Factory
766 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2008
WhatsApp? You still don't get EU privacy laws, that's WhatsApp
Forget One Windows, Microsoft says it's time to modernize your apps
Wednesday 25th October 2017 11:31 GMT
Re: Sort of on the fence...
The difference being that the repositories are maintained by the distro makers as a courtesy to their users, usually at no cost to the end user.
Whereas Microsoft's Store is intended, in the long term, to be only for the benefit of itself.
Last time I looked the cost of Visual Studio (which you probably will, at some time in the future if not already, need one of the paid versions to submit to the app store) was pretty eye-watering. The cost of, say, kdevelop or netBeans? Not so much.
Wednesday 25th October 2017 09:41 GMT
Re: Fluent Design System
Hey, they've updated the W10 Calculator app with the fluent design system - it's not just flat anymore, but flat with some annoying animations every time you put your mouse near it.
Oh great, so it's like some of those annoying *nux Window Managers that everybody stopped liking ten years ago then?
Wednesday 25th October 2017 09:40 GMT
Shifting sands
It's no wonder people are writing web based stuff these days. At least iOS and Android you don't have to throw away six months work and rewrite it from scratch every six months.
Right now, it honestly looks to me like Microsoft are intent on killing off the concept of third-party software for Windows and allowing everyone else to go away and develop for other platforms while retaining Windows as their personal fiefdom. I can see the logic, as they're trying to be more like Apple, and they want those high margins as well, but the truth is there's only room for one Apple and there's a whole lot more people who don't want to Apple money and not get Apple stuff.
Sarahah anonymous feedback app told: 'You're riddled with web app flaws'
Didn't install a safety-critical driverless car patch? Bye, insurance!
Thursday 19th October 2017 14:45 GMT
Re: Safety-critical updates?
Logical conclusion - as soon as manufacturer is aware of a flaw that will require a safety-critical patch,they must order all affected vehicles off the road until the patch is availableinsurance companies can rub their hands with glee as they won't have to pay out.
FTFY.
But seriously, did anyone else immediately see a loophole there, or am I just paranoid?
Windows Fall Creators Update is here: What do you want first – bad news or good news?
Wednesday 18th October 2017 16:01 GMT
Re: Inivitably!
"Well the default setting is to pop up a notification to alert you that the system has downloaded and installed updates and that it's going to restart in X number of minutes. Usually 10 I believe. "
Nope. That's turned off by default these days and in the same dialog as the "active hours" nonsense.
'Open sesame'... Subaru key fobs vulnerable, says engineer
Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it
German Firefox users to test recommendation engine 'a bit like thought-reading'
Online criminal records checks to take a punt on troubled Verify system
Facebook, Google, Twitter are the shady bouncers of the web. They should be fired
Thursday 5th October 2017 15:49 GMT
Re: Just like the Sun (News of the World) then
@Voyna i Mor
In the US by far the largest bad actor was the SCOTUS by its decision on Citizens United. $100000 dollars is a big ad campaign? The two major parties attract $billions in funding.
There's two issues here: one is Citizens United, which is a massive problem that neither side is ever going to want to fix.
The second is the Russian adverts. Is the $100K the total sum of it, or is it just the tip of the iceberg? Is there more, and if so, why don't we know about it yet? Is it because nobody found it yet? Or are the ad sellers simply not looking? Or maybe the ad sellers sold it to front companies who sold it on to another front company who sold it on to another front company, you know, masking the trail like a competent security service would do...
The URL of sandwich: Microsoft Office blogs redirect snafu foils users
Thursday 5th October 2017 11:55 GMT
Still down, since the 29th. That's what, nearly a week now? OK, it redirects back to the Office homepage which is... slightly better, I suppose?
Seriously, this isn't a technical site, it's basically information for the guy who knows how many pencil sharpeners the company ordered last year and knows a few formulas in Excel. Perhaps more worryingly for MS management, it's for the decision makers who buy office, or don't.
Is it me or are MS breakages getting more and more prevalent?
2019: The year that Microsoft quits Surface hardware
Oath-my-God: THREE! BILLION! Yahoo! accounts! hacked! in! 2013! – not! 'just!' 1bn!
The axeman strikes again: Microsoft has real commitment issues
Guntree v Gumtree: Nominet orders gun ads site must lose domain
Microsoft downplays alarm over Windows Defender 'flaw'
Thursday 28th September 2017 12:19 GMT
So, users have to click through a boatload of warnings to make it happen?
Hmm... I've known users who are worse.
Case in point: a user calls me (DBA, at the time) directly, bypassing helpdesk, screaming because he can't print. Yes, he's logged in. Yes, he can open the print queue. It says "offline - error". What am I going to about it?
So I ask if he has checked to see if the printer is plugged in.
Well yes it is. But there's smoke coming out of it, would that cause a problem?
Since then, users have failed to surprise me.
CBS's Showtime caught mining crypto-coins in viewers' web browsers
NASA, wait, wait lemme put my drink down... NASA, you need to be searching for vanadium
How Apple is taming the ad biz. Just don't expect Google or Zuck to follow
Sysadmin tells user CSI-style password guessing never w– wait WTF?! It's 'PASSWORD1'!
Equifax fooled again! Blundering credit biz directs hack attack victims to parody site
Google's Big Hardware Bet: Is this what a sane business would do?
Thursday 21st September 2017 14:18 GMT
I question Google's strategy. They had Motorola - a superb brand name in phones. A nice clamshell RAZR type Android thing might have been enough to tempt me not to get an iPhone 6 back in the day. But there wasn't one.
Nest would have been a cool thing to keep happening. But they killed that.
Even Microsoft are better at hardware than Google. And they're still struggling to get as good at is as the average dodgy Shenzhen Arfur Daley...
Downloaded CCleaner lately? Oo, awks... it was stuffed with malware
UK Prime Minister calls on internet big beasts to 'auto-takedown' terror pages within 2 HOURS
Thursday 21st September 2017 11:33 GMT 
Not sure how she thinks computers work?
Maybe she thinks it's just like Star Trek where the computer goes "would you like me to take down any terrorist content the moment it's created, with no false positives, ever?"
"No, computer, let's not."
"OK, how about child porn or anything else remotely illegal."
"No, computer, let's not. Let's pretend this is actually quite difficult to do and would require human intervention, careful judgement, an ability to read multiple languages, specialised local knowledge and that an omnipotent, perfect all-knowing system doesn't exist."
"Lol, OK. Shall I make Siri and Cortana terrible then?"
"Yes please, and Bing."
"Hahaha... Bing's already terrible, captain".
BoJo, don't misuse stats then blurt disclaimers when you get rumbled
Brit ministers jet off on a trade mission to tout our digital exports...
Monday 18th September 2017 16:11 GMT
Re: Ha
The EU will barely miss the UK as a trading partner - 4% of exports or something like that go to the EU? Whereas about a third or more of the UK's exports go to the EU (can't remember the exact figure and I can't be bothered to look it up).
So if there's no EU trade deal, or exports to the rest of the world don't increase - significantly - there's going to be a heck of a lot of British businesses going under and jobs lost, I reckon.
New HMRC IT boss to 'recuse' herself over Microsoft decisions
Microsoft Office 365 Exchange issues for users across Europe
Your boss asks you to run the 'cloud project': Ever-changing wish lists, packs of 'ideas'... and 1 deadline
Thursday 14th September 2017 15:03 GMT
Re: "Cloud" is just marketing
The point is that it's lots and lots of somebody else's computers, hopefully connected together in a way that takes care of things like redundancy, backups, load balancing and scalability. Time sharing was none of those things.
Well, yes, but I was actually thinking more from a conceptual point of view rather than how it's implemented.
Surely, under time sharing, as with the cloud, you get what you pay for. Pay for backups, get backups. Pay for more speed, get more speed. Pay for more concurrent users, get more concurrent users.
UK Data Protection Bill lands: Oh dear, security researchers – where's your exemption?
This article has been deleted
'Don't Google Google, Googling Google is wrong', says Google
Wednesday 13th September 2017 15:20 GMT
Re: September 13, 2017
But UTC was adopted on the grounds that the UK might decide to implement double summer time, and move the winter time an hour forward, or adopt BST all year round. At that point, GMT would then be different from UTC.
Currently only Morocco uses UTC, as they don't bother with the summer/winter time stuff.
And before you ask, I live in WET, which is currently the same as GMT...
44m UK consumers on Equifax's books. How many pwned? Blighty eagerly awaits spex on the breach
Microsoft says it won't fix kernel flaw: It's not a security issue. Suuuure
Saturday 9th September 2017 14:23 GMT
Re: So since Microsoft are not concerned about the security of windows,
There is no warranty that it is "fit for any purpose"....From the EULA:
The key phrase is "limited as much as your local law allows". If that flaw is used in malware, someone's banking is compromised because of said malware, and money is stolen, then where would the responsibility be?
Or let's try another example, shall we? What if said malware is used by Russian or Chinese hackers against the American security services? Do we think Microsoft might suddenly care about the flaw then?
So you're already in the cloud but need to come back down to Earth
UK not as keen on mobile wallets as mainland Europe and US
Thursday 7th September 2017 10:58 GMT
Counterfeiting isn't cloning though. They can't clone the money in my pocket and spend what's in my bank account that way, not in the same way that they could do with my bank card. Or authorise contactless microtransactions as they walk along with a little skimming device.
Anyway, I must go now as I need to make a new tinfoil hat and hide under the table for a couple of hours...
Microsoft extends free Windows 10 S to Win 10 Pro upgrade offer
Oracle 'systematically denies' its sales reps their commissions, forces them to work to pay off 'debts', court told
Thursday 7th September 2017 10:54 GMT
As a developer of long standing, who's never really had to do much sales, can I just say the sales I had to do - that's hard stuff, man. Kudos to sales people because there's a lot of pressure. Clients think they can dictate everything - they're paying of course, and "the customer is always right" and all that - but dude. Some of the sales conferences I've been in when you've had to grin and bear when they bring a different consultancy in and keep playing you off against each other...
And I have to say, Oracle sales people always had that air of defeat about them when I spoke to them on the other side of the fence. Now I know why.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
