* Posts by Dan 55

15336 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jun 2009

Tired: Java. Desired: Node.js. Retired: The suggestion a JavaScript runtime is bonkers

Dan 55 Silver badge

Sinclair BASIC had better types.

Take that, gender pay gap! Atos to offshore hundreds of BBC roles

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Its nice to see BBC trying to return to classic quality programming!

Why do you think they pay Huw Edwards so much? (link)

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I wonder what the cost of living is there...

The British government have heard your plea and are currently working hard on driving the UK's economy down to third world levels.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Facepalm

Address the gender pay gap!

Fire everyone because unemployment benefit is the same for everyone.

Dan 55 Silver badge

... and he was from Atos or something?

House fire, walk with me: Kodipocalypse now includes conflagration

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Oh noes!

Don't tell them about Kodi on Android TV, they might be knocking down Sony's door at 3am.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Devil

This is a re-release of something that the Murdoch-backed shitrag the Sun was pushing the day after the Grenfell fire.

And then it was debunked as bollocks (see end of article).

FACT have obviously decided that the average person is too stupid to remember something from a month ago. I expect your average Currant Bun reader to be shocked, dismayed, and surprised all over again but I don't expect that from an author of your esteemed organ.

Please imagine the El Reg gravestone icon to the right, if you would.

Microsoft ctrl-Zs 'killing' Paint, by which we mean offering naff app through Windows Store

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: As usual .....

If they were acting on feedback they'd just leave it in, instead of using it to prop up their tumbleweed-strewn store.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Flame

Re: Required software

Don't make me start on what they've done to Calc in Windows 10...

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: As usual .....

This has the whiff of marketing/PR strategy placement bullshit about it.

They really want to push people to have a MS account and at least look at the store. They're now reduced to putting basic tools into the store to do this, possibly adding ads too, because why not?

Devs shun smartwatch work, gaze longingly at web-only apps again

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: We'd need a simpler remote GUI protocol than HTML/CSS/JS/HTTP

Something like... XUL.

Which Mozilla has let rot for years.

Southern awarded yet another 'most moaned about rail firm' gong

Dan 55 Silver badge
Trollface

If you want good trains, leave Hull.

Firefox doesn't need to be No 1 – and that's OK, 'cos it's falling off a cliff

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Bah!

You've still got Java if you dive into about:config.

(See my post above.)

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: I like Firefox

about:config > plugin.load_flash_only = false

Restart.

That'll get you the plugins back on the non-ESR version (until they completely disabled them).

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: IMO It is an engineering fault for their failure...

I would absolutely agree that they've got an engineering problem. They throw out everything that makes Firefox different for one of two reasons:

1) they just straight out admit they don't know how to maintain stuff any more,

2) they claim metrics say a feature is hardly ever used and maintaining it would take resources away from something else, but they forget that metrics can be disabled, some options they remove are corner cases but very useful, and the Venn diagram of people doing both probably shows quite a big intersection.

Also, the world is crying out for a feature-complete and easy-to-use mail client and Thunderbird was so near, despite it being ignored for years by Mozilla.

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

Dan 55 Silver badge
Devil

The Grauniad says Paint has had a reprieve

It will now be available from the Windows Store.

One could almost think that was their plan all along. Better publicity than their tiles which people completely ignore.

I wonder if it'll get ads.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: What are they thinking?

It's one of the first programs used at my kid's school, but if MS get rid of it that means that people learn to look for alternatives at a young age, so it's probably a good thing.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Want a backup? Save to OneDrive. Only £x a month. Or to save even more money, Office 365 + OneDrive. Only £y a month.

The monetisation of Windows continues apace.

Fat-fingered G Suite admins spill internal biz beans onto public 'net

Dan 55 Silver badge

Google should send out an email giving a week's notice then make it private for everyone. If admins need it to be public they'll find the option, unlike the other way around.

systemd'oh! DNS lib underscore bug bites everyone's favorite init tool, blanks Netflix

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: That what happens...

1. Why can't systemd just use the standard DNS instead of forcing everything to use a broken resolver?

2. I see you haven't read the RFCs either.

Dan 55 Silver badge

You can do that, but don't expect the built in email client to send any emails which criticise systemd.

The error message given is "La la la, I can't hear you", the same as his bug report replies.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: That what happens...

Poettering is not a volunteer, he's paid for this crap.

Sweden leaked every car owners' details last year, then tried to hush it up

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: marketers?

The DVLA does it too. Why? It's a nice source of money.

What could possibly go wrong? Naaah, nothing could possibly go wrong.

'Millions of IoT gizmos' wide open to hijackers after devs drop gSOAP

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Requires an incentive

The same way you stop them listing and selling other banned goods. They have to follow the law.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Requires an incentive

If you stop all bricks and mortar retailers, all web retailers based in the country, Amazon, and eBay, you've basically stopped the problem. There are a few that can still get through, but that doesn't mean that the effort was in vain.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Requires an incentive

You've just shown how incentivising the owners doesn't work.

Retailers are the gateway into a market, that's where the pressure should be applied if the manufacturer itself has no presence there.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Pirate

That's probably because they're not doing it right.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Computers tend to get updates eventually, IoT tend not to.

What we now have is a whole set of devices which can be owned and there's nothing anyone can do about it apart from throw them in the bin.

That is why it is newsworthy.

This is why old Windows Phones won't run PC apps

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: It would appear...

S for "Security"? Is that the same S as in IoT?

UK mobile number porting creaks: Arcane system shows its age

Dan 55 Silver badge

There's the chance that a call from EE to EE would fail because one of them was previously Vodafone (possibly?).

If Syniverse are part of the problem, why would they be part of the solution? Operators should all part-own a central number authority which would route calls directly to the operator they're supposed to go to.

Another Brexit cliff edge: UK.gov warned over data flows to EU

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

Liam Fox has said this morning the UK can survive if there's no deal. Perhaps that should have gone on the big red bus instead.

If a politician, whose job it is to talk up whatever point is making, says it's a matter of survival then whichever way you look at it this is a shit sandwich.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

Experts say a no-deal Brexit would spawn 'legal morass and economic disaster', but hey, people have had enough of experts.

And, by the look of it, exports.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Happy

Re: @ codejunky

Instead I guess we all live in a tiny bubble afraid of the world and hating those foreigners.

I take it you're talking about the Brexiteer vote, the ones still hanging on believing in spite of all the evidence for it being a national tragedy enacted by an incompetent government?

Any half-way competent government would have taken Brexit to mean a move to the EEA and once in the EEA tried to push for a two-speed Europe.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

You can't get it back just by asking, there are conditions attached - read the guidance notes for form RS1. Would you really want to plan your future on the whims of a Home Office civil servant?

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

Wrong, you fill in form RN (Application to renounce British citizenship) from the Home Office.

If the other country is serious about it, they will want to see the reply confirming that you have renounced your British citizenship.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

Good old Tim W quoting BoJo the Clown to back him up. You could have picked any other article but that one.

There will always be a need for 3rd party arbitration between two countries, this existed before the UK's membership of the EC/EU and saying now that Brexit means the UK is a law unto itself and doesn't recognise 3rd party arbitration is absurd and unworkable and throws our relationships with other countries into doubt.

"and is proposing residency rules for EU citizens that can break up their families"

Wow the smell of bull

No. Family reunion rights were dropped by Maybot in 2012 and full rights will only be granted after 5 years residency.

There are families in the UK which have some British citizens and some EU citizens. Under the proposal, EU citizens must earn more than a certain an income level and if they leave for two years (e.g. university in another EU country) they have to start to build up rights again.

If some EU citizens were to try to obtain citizenship, they may lose their other nationality (e.g. Dutch).

More or less same problem is faced by British citizens in the EU. For those that cannot use family reunion rights, they may have to take up citizenship. Some countries want you to renounce your foreign citizenship if you take up theirs, meaning they lose right to residency in the UK.

We just wanna leave and that involves..... us leaving.

Polls seem to be throwing that whole "we just wanna leave" thing into doubt, but anyway.

If we do cry and take our ball home without negotiating then we will end up economically fucked. Imports and exports require cooperation. Flights require cooperation. Data protection requires cooperation. If we make no attempt to negotiate or cooperate then we can't complain when the country is royally screwed.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: @ codejunky

What a strange back-to-front world it is where you are. The EU are publishing everything, it's all there on their website.

In particular the EU's position on EU/British citizens living in UK/EU was published some two weeks before the UK's position.

When the UK did publish their position, it was found not to be reciprocal (did not keep all rights that people who have used their EU treaty rights have, all rights were lost after two years if the EU citizen left the UK, no mention at all of cross-border workers).

If the UK is leaving but doesn't know how to solve the Irish border problem (and now probably never will be able to because the government is hamstrung by the DUP), doesn't know what kind of access to single market and customs union it wants, and is proposing residency rules for EU citizens that can break up their families, it's upon the UK to come up with some solutions. One year after the referendum vote with no answers to any of these questions is shocking incompetence.

Crazy bug of the week: Gnome Files' .MSI parser runs evil VBScripts

Dan 55 Silver badge

Over complicating things

Whenever an icon for a Microsoft Windows executable (EXE), installer (MSI), library (DLL), or shortcut (LNK) should be shown, Gnome Files calls /usr/bin/gnome-exe-thumbnailer to either extract an embedded icon from the file in question or deliver a fallback image for the appropriate filetype.”

Just deliver the fallback image. Nobody needs to start up WINE once per file in a file browser nor are they really interested in the icon, they just need to see if it's a Windows executable or whatever. Exploits like this happens when people over engineer stuff.

UK.gov watchdog didn't red flag any IT projects. And that alone should be a red flag to everyone

Dan 55 Silver badge
Paris Hilton

Re: Amber is the new Red

I blame the autocorrect for putting representatively when I meant preventively.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Amber is the new Red

Red means "this project has just irrevocably failed, bury it".

There doesn't seem to be a way of representatively taking action, it's as if that's the natural way of things.

Stop all news – it's time for us plebs to be told about BBC paycheques!

Dan 55 Silver badge

Broan Cox is expensive but I can understand why. What does Chris Evens do that gets him at the top of the list?

Dan 55 Silver badge
Meh

Re: Who cares?

I'm waiting for Andrew's take on it.

I'm sure it will be educational, entertaining, and informative.

Tapping the Bank of Mum and Dad: Why your Netflix subscription is poised to rise (again)

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: Netflix Worth It?

GoT is in its 7th series and HBO has always pushed the boat out a bit. Netflix started streaming in 2008 and had little of own content then. If anything HBO showed Netflix what to do when it comes to content.

Dan 55 Silver badge

Beyond the Originals, there are the acres of dross, a TV and movie graveyard stretching to infinity

Netflix is why we should dismantle the BBC, apparently. Well it's not looking too good. And Amazon's worse.

Yes, I thought I'd crowbar that in there.

SQL Server 2017's first rc lands and – yes! – it runs on Linux

Dan 55 Silver badge

So the question is why is it being released to Linux

It's about being able to run SQL Server cloud, but happily it helps datacentres move away from Windows servers.

Disneyland to become wretched hive of scum and villainy

Dan 55 Silver badge

Disneyland to become wretched hive of scum and villainy

And here's me thinking The Princess Factory was that already.

It really should have gone under and made way for better things.

Dan 55 Silver badge
Trollface

Re: In the words of daughter, age nearly 5, re: Small World:

She's obviously a Trump-supporting isolationist.

Now your boss can tear you a new Glasshole: Google's techno-specs reborn as biz gear

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: The Camera is also very useful

Obviously they won't be happy with 1.6 million records, they want the whole lot...

Radiohead hides ZX Spectrum proggie in OK Computer re-release

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: The ZX Spectrum does not have 'apps'.

It was Webster who chose spelling which would be different from British English.

Noah Webster's Spelling Reform

Thanking you...

Dan 55 Silver badge

Re: ...prevelent and popular

The Spectrum was pretty much done at the +2. If almost then everyone used the Spectrum for games then there was no need to make it more expensive than necessary.

Amstrad took a computer which was perfectly good at what it did, added hardware which wasn't needed, introduced incompatibilities, and upped the price so it was little cheaper than the 16-bit computers.

The disc drive should really have been separate but widely available, i.e. like the C64.