Is AROS still going? And can it be installed on x86 hardware yet? If so I might try it out in a VM.
Posts by Zippy's Sausage Factory
766 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2008
What's your flava? Ooo, tell me what's your flava... of Ubuntu
Wednesday 6th September 2017 14:07 GMT
Re: Well don't I feel smug...
Last time I tried kubuntu I just hated it. Had been a KDE fan years ago but it's all the new terrible not-quite-as-nice-as-Windows-3-running-on-EGA flat look that all the idiots in charge of software design departments seem to like these days.
Incidentally, they're trying to ruin iOS even further, I'm awaiting the screaming when 11 finally gets released.
Indian call centre scammers are targeting BT customers
Wednesday 6th September 2017 14:04 GMT
This makes me want to build an OS/2 VM just for the fun of letting them loose in it. I'd be amazed if they even knew what it was. I could pretend to be working for MSFT and pretend it was a preview build of Windows 11...
Except I'm not on BT and haven't ever had a call like this, so that's spoiled my fun. :(
Microsoft extends free Windows 10 S to Win 10 Pro upgrade offer
Facebook's music plans mean you'll never leave Facebook
Wednesday 6th September 2017 13:00 GMT 
Facebook seems to be becoming everything AOL ever tried to be.
Because that seems to be working really well for AOL.
(Example of how well AOL does business: anyone remember xDrive? It was basically Dropbox, but about three or four years before Dropbox ever started. AOL killed it, as per everything they ever touch that has potential.)
UK not as keen on mobile wallets as mainland Europe and US
Tuesday 5th September 2017 16:37 GMT
The more I hear about systems like this, the more I start to develop a twitch and think "hmm... time to start paying in cash. Nice, impossible to clone, can't be hacked, cold hard cash."
Fortunately I have a non-Internet non-contactless card from the bank. Which took a little bit of asking for, but that's what the Electron card still gives you.
Smart meters: 'Dog's breakfast' that'll only save you 'a tenner' – report
Tuesday 5th September 2017 13:08 GMT
Re: Benefits
@Ken Hagan The UK won't have left the EU until March 2019. Until then the UK is still a full member of the European Union.
Unless you consider that you've left work and are already in the pub while you're still sitting at your desk at half past three on a Friday? Nope, didn't think so.
So you're already in the cloud but need to come back down to Earth
Tuesday 5th September 2017 13:04 GMT
I think on premises is probably going to start becoming more popular again, especially as we're starting to see more and more troubles in the cloud sector.
I basically see "cloud" as being a fancy way of saying "time-sharing". It kind of feels like the 1960s all over again - the cloud is a new, shinier, more buzzword-friendly mainframe, but at the end of the day, it's still very much the mainframe mindset from a business point of view.
And the whole point of on premises was to cut costs and break away from vendor lock-in. It's the cycle of re-invention, once more.
As Yogi Berra once said, it's like deja vu all over again.
Oracle staff report big layoffs across Solaris, SPARC teams
Couple fires sueball at Amazon over faulty solar eclipse-viewing goggles
Stephen King's scary movie reboot provokes tears from 'legit clowns'
Microsoft's fix for web graphics going AWOL? Disable your antivirus
Wednesday 30th August 2017 17:40 GMT
Re: Is IE still a thing?
I'm actually finding I'm using it more. It's still not as good for day to day use as Pale Moon, but in terms of development, I find stuff works in IE11, Firefox/Pale Moon and Edge or IE11, Firefox/Pale Moon and Chrome.
I still despise it (the insistence on the horrendously misnamed crawling horror that is "ClearType", for a start, is a black mark) but at least it helps me work out whether Edge or Chrome is making my life a living hell right now.
Fewer than half GCSE computing students got a B or higher this year
British snoops at GCHQ knew FBI was going to arrest Marcus Hutchins
CMD.EXE gets first makeover in 20 years in new Windows 10 build
Friday 4th August 2017 10:03 GMT
Re: What's the point?
Personally I'm of the opinion that they should just go all-in on bash support. cmd.exe can stay around for legacy support if needed, but is kinda optional. PowerShell, on the other hand, should be given the Old Yeller treatment, as soon as possible. It's kind of the worst of all possible worlds.
Skype for Business is not Skype – realising that is half the battle
Autonomous driving in a city? We're '95% of the way there'
Monday 31st July 2017 11:29 GMT
Quick thought
Insurance companies are involved in this. So I'm thinking...
Still drive yourself, no assistance? Higher premiums, because that's not safe any more with all the self driving cars on the road.
Drive a car that can drive itself and has accident avoidance systems? Higher premiums, because these systems aren't proven.
Self driving car? Higher premiums because that's not safe either with all the human drivers about.
Oh and no claims discount? Sorry we don't do that any more because everything has changed. Oh and we've raised everyone's premium by an extra 10% to cover... erm... increased costs?
The life and times of Surface, Microsoft's odds-defying fondleslab
Friday 28th July 2017 14:07 GMT
No, Chromebooks aren't laptops that run Android. Think Android Remix.
And my point was that given MS previous anti-competitive behaviours, they undoubtedly have an anti-Linux clause in the OEMs - "thou shalt not deliver non-Windows laptops unto the retail channel".
Yes, you can get laptops that run Linux or Android, as well as Chromebooks. But I've never seen one on sale outside Amazon, have you?
Wednesday 12th July 2017 11:33 GMT 
The only fly in the ointment I can see is if the OEMs decide to do something like complaining to the EU antitrust bodies - if MS control their own hardware and their own software on the Surface book, how can they get away with telling us we can't sell Android laptops?
Because don't tell me Android laptops wouldn't sell. You know they would. To be honest, I can see a use case for them replacing Windows laptops at a corporate level - there's enough office-like apps on Android the average management type wouldn't need much other than that.
Apple exits music player biz by killing iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle
Slapping crap bosses just got cheaper: Blighty's Supreme Court nixes tribunal fees
Wednesday 26th July 2017 12:28 GMT
Why do I have a sinking feeling
I doubt the government will accept this, but try and rush through a bill not only enforcing the change but also taking back the fees again from the people who have already paid. And probably adding interest if they've already paid them back.
Cynical, moi? You betcha...
Firefox doesn't need to be No 1 – and that's OK, 'cos it's falling off a cliff
It's 2017 and someone's probably still using WINS naming. If so, stop
Thursday 15th June 2017 09:02 GMT 
I once had an argument with an MCSE who was adamant that, come ten years time, the Internet would be using WINS naming exclusively, and that DNS would be totally gone because it was "obsolete".
This same MCSE, I should point out, once spent thirty minutes looking for the power switch on a server to switch it on.
I'd love to say it was already on, the VGA had fallen out or something like that, but no. He genuinely didn't recognise the same symbol that was on the front of his video recorder.
And people wonder why I never took any of the Microsoft exams...
DIY music veteran SoundCloud flounders, lays off 40% of staff
Microsoft hits Alt-F4 on 3,000 global sales staff
In the week Uber blew up, Netflix restates 'No brilliant jerks' policy
Thursday 22nd June 2017 10:47 GMT
Re: Well they already cut themselves off from a big portion of the "market"
For downloads, I'd agree. But actually, they're a streaming service, not a download service. Essentially it's like cable companies encrypting their content before it hits the set top box - they're trying to stop freeloaders piggybacking a free ride off people like myself who are paying for it.
And yes, I know, there is DRM on DVDs and BluRays. It's not very good and easy bypass tools are available, and some of the commercial DVDs I buy are unencrypted. Heck, ALL the vinyl I buy is unencrypted, but that doesn't mean I want to go back to vinyl for all my music needs (Id have trouble fitting a turntable and a dozen LPs into the iPod pocket in my coat, for example).
I think DRM for streaming is fine. For media I've purchased, not cool.
Microsoft totters from time machine clutching Windows 10 Workstation
UK PM Theresa May's response to terror attacks 'shortsighted'
Monday 5th June 2017 18:11 GMT
Why encrypt at all? There's so many channels of communication they can't monitor them all. All you need is a Flash movie on a page that provides a public chat box and doesn't store the history. Then just create a free chat site using that Flash movie open to the public, with standard chat topics - Marvel, Superman, Batman, Pokemon, Doctor Who - and allow people to create their own rooms. Now all you do is create one with a seemingly non suspicious name and use the "private chat" function. Done.
Silicon Graphics' IRIX and Magic Desktop return as Linux desktop
Monday 5th June 2017 14:45 GMT
I actually still use CDE quite a lot, on a SUN workstation, even.
I'm sure they open sourced CDE a while ago. If I ever win EuroMillions I intend to quite and start rolling my own Linux distribution to answer silly questions like
- what does Linux using real CDE feel like?
- can a Linux distribution function without using any GNU software? (not because I have anything against gnu, just that I want to see if it can be done)
and finally, and most important
- do I actually have the patience to bother tinkering with all that stuff anyway?
Plastic surgery patients face extortion in wake of clinic data breach
Wednesday 31st May 2017 16:23 GMT
Re: Why did they have that data?
Nude pics are standard. Basically covering themselves in case you sue them for a problem you already had, so you can't say "well I never had this big scar before I want a million Euros compensation and you to fix it" they can pull out a photo and go "yes but we took this before we started and you can clearly see that scar, so sorry mate, nice try but not gonna happen."
Azure Portal rejects Firefox after certificate revocation SNAFU
Windows 10 love to see PC market grow again. Future iPhone to be clear. Elvis to re-appear
Cisco warns: Some products might have WannaCrypt vuln
Shadow Brokers resurface, offer to sell fresh 'wine of month' club exploits
Lib Dems pledge to end 'Orwellian' snooping powers in manifesto
Sophos waters down 'NHS is totally protected' by us boast
Monday 15th May 2017 16:24 GMT
Re: Depending on Microsoft..
There's not much for LInux or macOS by comparison because Windows is currently the big dog in the corporate kennel. There's almost nothing for OS/2 because there's not enough users to make writing ransomware for them profitable, but if people suddently switched to OS/2 as a desktop OS (well, eCS then - the modern equivalent thereof) you can bet there suddenly would be a great deal of ransomware available for it.
It no longer matters what it's running - routers, cameras, baby monitors, routers, interactive toys, smart headphones - if it has some kind of OS on it, someone will be trying to hack it, usually for profit. And will probably succeed.
This isn't going to be the last of its kind, it's probably just the beginning of a long spate of nastier attacks. Will there ever be a malware attack using zero-day for Windows 10 that makes this look like a walk in the park? Probably - I wouldn't want to bet against it, at any rate.
Dell EMC's Azure Stack: Get thee behind me, Microsoft subscriptions
Monday 15th May 2017 16:01 GMT
Hmm
For buying the hardware and running it on our dime we are to get slightly lower prices for our on-premises instances. Anyone willing to give odds on just how much lower?
However much lower it is, I'm guessing it'll be 10% higher than "public" cloud as soon as they feel they can get way with it.
PC repair chap lets tech support scammer log on to his PC. His Linux PC
Friday 12th May 2017 09:53 GMT
There's a load of YouTube videos of people setting up scammers along these lines, but this is one that I would like to see.
I now kind of want to set up a VM with OS/2 Warp 4, stick VNC on it, sit back and wait for a phone call just to see what happens when they try to get their heads round that :)
Mozilla takes a turn slapping Symantec's certification SNAFU
Unpaid tech contractor: 'I have to support my family. I have no money for medicines'
Microsoft sparks new war with Google with, er, $999+ lappies for kids
Tuesday 2nd May 2017 15:56 GMT
Well, that's the end for Desktop Windows
Windows 10 S only supports the app store, so that means everyone writing desktop Windows suddenly will lose market share. Let me guess - Windows 10 S machines will be cheaper than full fat Windows 10 machines? And then what happens to the developers?
To me, this feels like a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, I can't help thinking this is the sort of thing entire books will be written about in a few years: "(Un)Securing The Future: How Microsoft Blew A Multi-Billion Dollar Business"
FTP becoming Forgotten Transfer Protocol as Debian turns it off
Thursday 27th April 2017 15:02 GMT
So someone encourages their users to use a different method of doing stuff, then turns off the old way of doing things because users aren't using it any more.
Hmmm... couldn't this have easily gone the other way if they'd put the ftp link at the top and the word "recommended" against it, then hidden the http links smaller and lower down. Of course it could. It's simply Debian trying to only have one way of doing things rather than two.
I must put something in my calendar to download the lot in October and stuff it on the Internet Archive in their "ftp mirrors" collection (an absolute treasure trove of weird and wonderful stuff, well worth a browse)
Peace in our time! Symantec says it can end Google cert spat
Thursday 27th April 2017 09:31 GMT 
No.
I think this should be it for Symantec. They've flouted the rules too often and too long.
I personally don't trust them. In fact, I haven't trusted ANY Symantec product for a good few years now - and even that last holdout was Ghost, and they killed that rather than put the effort in to make it work properly.
Nope. Actions have consequences. Hold the line, Google.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
