* Posts by Steve Davies 3

7136 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

Microsoft founder Paul Allen reveals world's biggest-ever plane

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Coat

Re: Hang on...

But... Can you see the strings?

mines the one with a copy of Andy-Pandy in the pocket.

Elon to dump Trump over climate bump

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

What we need now is

A few major employers to up sticks and move (lock stock and smoking gun) their US operations out of the USA and cite the moves by the President as the reason. These companies would already have operations outside the US.

De-listing on Wall St is not enough. Closed and levelled industrial plants would be a clear sign that the USA is heading for 4th world status under their current Administration (The VP will be worse but won't fluff his lines as often).

IMHO, that is the only sort of message that Trump/Pence will understand.

At the feet of the Great Monad, or, How the functional programming craze plays out

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: ah yes those were the days

Them were the days all right.

Running RSX-11D on a very early PDP-11/40 with 56Kb of RAM and three 2.4Mb RK05's

We developed a flight simulator to test aircraft avionics. We could run the Real Time simulation while others could compile Fortran. All on a 200KHz machine.

So nowadays, we need a 4GHz PC to answer emails? [redacted]

Not sure if things really have got better

Does Microsoft have what it takes to topple Google Docs?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Simples really

One you pay for on a monthly tithe basis. Fail to pay and you are suddenly 'sans data'.

The other one is free (or almost) in cash terms.

Both will either directly or on the sly slurp your data and sell it on.

Personally?

A plague on both their houses.

LibreOffice and Thunderbird do me nicely thanks.

NHS U-turns on blanket IR35 tax crackdown

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Carrying on with the IR35 fiasco

The NHS and others will just engage Crapita (and their ilk) and send it all to India.

After all, all the call centre jobs will be there. I guess to some beancounter somewhere having the development teams in Mumbai/Bangalore/Chennai/Kolkata/Pune/etc will save them money, shed loads of money that will go towards their end of year bonuses.

What could go wrong eh?

Much-hyped Ara Blackphone LeEco Essential handset introduced

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: After all the waiting we have...

not that long ago it was

Just another windows phone...

My how the mighty have fallen.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Dual SIM phones

Don't forget the border areas between N. Ireland and Eire. Have a sim for networks on both sides of the border and you are good to go. Saves having two phones which many people do especially in Derry.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Missing essentials?

Don't forget the swappable battery and the wind up gramarphone while you are at it...

Nest leaves competition in the dust with new smart camera

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: never sell or share your data without a customer's explicit permission

The explicit permission will be on page 300 of the software update agreement in 4pt white on white type.

There fixed it for you.

Sorry but No, just No.

Windows XP crashed too much to spread WannaCrypt

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: One thing to take from this ...

I'm no huge Redmond fan, but XP was a fairly stable OS when installed correctly and then configured/hobbled properly to stop the idiot user from doing things they should not be like viewing Pron in the lunchtime.

There fixed it for you.

Stingy DXC Tech tells staff to breathe in and tighten those belts

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Can your job be sent to India?

If so watch out.

Enjoy the new environment while it lasts. My contacts inside the company are all looking for a way out ASAP. They see the stormclouds building.

I'm glad that I'm out of it all now. My garden had never looked so good.

Millimetre wave.. omigerd it's going nowherrr.. Apple, you say?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

It is all about the Patents stupid

Given the battles that Apple has had and is continuing to have over Wireless patents, FRAND and all the rest, my guess is that Apple wants to be in on the ground floor and get some essential patents to the tech needed to make this all work nicely.

They are advertising for chip designers and they recently hired an engineering VP away from Qualcomm.

If they get in on the ground floor then cross licensing will be a mere formaity.

Well, that's my worthless 2p on it.

Defend yourself against ISP tracking in an Trump-era free-for-all

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Hmm

quote:-

If the minority gets big enough, they'll outlaw VPNs "for our own good".

And all the businesses that use VPN's to get to their corporate networks? What of them then?

Banning all VPN's would not work. The French tried it back in the days of Dialup.

Seminal game 'Colossal Cave Adventure' released onto GitLab

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Xyzzy

PLUGGH to you too!

Internet of snitches: Anyone who can sniff 'Thing' traffic knows what you're doing

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Watch the windows

Now you can have a thief sitting in the comfort of their own home monitoring tens if not hundreds of houses.

IOT becomes a tool for 'remote casing' of properties.

And people will still want to and do install this crap in their homes.... {mind boggles}

None of this stuff will be allowed in my home.

Thanks for the list of Domains that some of this TAT uses. I'll be adding them to my firewall later today.

Google can't spare 113 seconds of revenue to compile data on its gender pay gap

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: (.) (.)

Ever thought that the comment was supposed to get that sort of reaction and that it might not have been a bigotted comment?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Of course Google can do it

but they don't want to. Perhaps it might prove a tad embarasing.

Other Tech Companies can do this and do it every year so why can't google? Don't they have the mother of all AI systems that apparently holds all the data in the world on each and every one of us.

Or isn't it the best thing since sliced bread that they claim it to be?

WannaLaugh? Funsters port WannaCrypt to Commodore, Cisco, Nintendo and Tesla

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Does anyone seriously use the in-car stuff ?

I can't even get updates to the maps on my '15 plate car. If I could it would cost the same as a cheap TomTom with lifetime updates.

What planet are these people living on.

As for the UI etc being crap... Same here. AFAIK, the only ones worth a toss are the BMW iDrive and the Jaguar system.

I bought a TomTom Rider for use on my bike. Lifetime update and they included a car kit as well.

I rarely bother with my in car SatNav now. At least the Entertainement system can take an SD card.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

They won't stop

even when say a Tesla[1] that got hacked and the driver was suddenly unable to control the vehicle and someone died as a result.

[1] Other vehicles that allow Over The Air Updates are/will be available.

surely it is better to NOT allow OTA Updates to things like this?

Even if the update is encrypted and everything, there is an attack vector present in every vehicle by design.

IMHO it is better to only allow updates to be done by a dealer.

US laptops-on-planes ban may extend to flights from ALL nations

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

Another Brick in the Wall

{of the USA's Isolation from the rest of the world}

Gotta start somewhere

And we are gonna pay for it.

Sad times we live in.

TRUMP SCANDAL! No, not that one. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Why bother?

His Tax returns haven't leaked (yet).

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Sounds like a

script for "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, World" that was rejected for being too far fetched.

As each day goes by he seems to be morphing more and more into the George C Scott character from Dr Strangelove.

"Do as I tell you and F**k Congress and the Senate, I'm the effing President and what I say goes or else....?"

This does not bode well for the future of the planet.

Andy Rubin teases next week's launch of Essential phone

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Maybe that's a camera protuberance?

It does not matter what the 'bump' is. People will hope that it is a heck of a lot better than any current Android phone (learning by past mistakes perhaps?).

I really hope it is.

Your job might be automated within 120 years, AI experts reckon

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Can Machines really learn 'experience' and 'judgement'?

To me that is one of the biggest questions. There are things we do that are very much based upon experience, skill and intuition.

How much salt is enough when seasoning something? 6.4g or 7.9g?

You taste the food and judge. The strength of other ingredients can affect how much salt you need to add.

Can you write an algorithm to describe that? Can you programme that? Can an AI learn that?

Touch, taste, feel and everything else all go together and our complex brain sorts it all out and we come up with an answer.

I think we are a long way from everyone being replaced by robots.

Besides, there is a lot of other social issues that need to be addressed in society before this can happen.

If no one has a job how will we be able to afford to buy/rent/hire/lease all those things that are made by the armies of Robots?

Will there be a Robot/AI version of a P.45?

Done and done: BlackBerry ties up $940m settlement with Qualcomm

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Big pile of cash

After their recent spat in Korea and now this, how much is left in the QC Coffers for Apple and the rest to fight over?

I expect that Apple's (and others) lawyers are licking their lips and hoping that QC will be weakened by this.

Popcorn anyone?

Pirates hack was a hoax, says Disney boss

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

But is the film any good?

as it wasn't launched in London but in Paris and none of the cast would come to London, (according to Mark Kermode on Radio 5 a couple of hours ago) I get the feeling that it is a bit of a lemon.

A case of too many sequels with a diminishing rate of returns perhaps?

Sainsbury's IT glitch spoils bank holiday food orders

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Joke

There is a simple solution

and that is go and get the stuff for youself. Even go to other supermarkets. It isn't the end of the world.

or is it?

Perhaps these TITSUP events are just a prelude to IT Armageddon?

Then it is back to the Abacus.

[see ICON] as I hope it is just that.

Init freedom declared as systemd-free Devuan hits stable 1.0.0 status

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Already have it running.

IMO, systemd is a cancer that is growing out of control, and needs to be cut out of Linux before it infects enough of the system to kill it permanently.

Sadly, that ship has sailed. systemd is here to stay apart from niched like this fork of Debian.

Personally, I thought that it was a problem that didn't need fixing but what do I know eh? Zilch.

but I grit my teeth and get on with it.

Windows 10 love to see PC market grow again. Future iPhone to be clear. Elvis to re-appear

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Elvis isn't dead...

Don't you mean

Elvis has 'left the building'?

UK ministers to push anti-encryption laws after election

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: As if the government had done so much...

Conspiracy is a crime in many other countries as well.

You don't have to actually commit the crime just be intending to do so.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

The encryption horse is free

shutting the stable door now won't get it back.

No encryption means no use of the internet to fill in tax returns, VAT forms, No internet banking. No ordering things online because you can't make payments in a secure manner.

It could mean no ATM's (they are all connected to the internet these days)

and no funds transfer between banks thus forcing Companies having to pay workers in Cash again.

etc

etc

Then there are the plethora of VPN's use by companies to allow their staff to work while on the move..

As usual, the civil servants are too timid to point this out to their political masters (Yes Minister!)

Back in the 1990's, France banned Encryption apart from banking use.

but sorry the encryption Horse has bolted and this move won't get it back in the stable.

Nokia's retro revival 3310 goes on sale and disappears immediately

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: How much

Yeah, like O2, they seem to think that 250Mb or 515Mb of data is HUGE.

These companies need to think again.

Drones over London caused aviation chaos, pilots' reports reveal

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Inevitable

I guess we will have to wait for a 'heavy' A380 to lose an engine just after takeoff before anyone does anything to stop these idiots.

Distro watch for Ubuntu lovers: What's ahead in Linux land

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Printing

Strange that I've found more issues with Windows and printing (And especially scanning) than with Linux or OSX/MacOS over the years.

Lets take the case of my Brother Laser PRinter.

Point Linux or MacOS at it (on the LAN) and that's it. IT is all connected and works and not a driver to load.

With Windows, I have to download and install a driver to get duplex printing.

Then with Scanning...

I have a perfectly good Canon EIDE 20 Scanner. There is no windows 10 driver for it. It works without issue on Linux (CentOS) or MacOS.

YMMV

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Linux

Re: Slackware

Once upon a time, it was difficult. Oh, back around 1998 or so it was a PITA especially when trying to install it from Floppies (remember them?). But now? Nope.

Your roadmap to the Google vs Oracle Java wars

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Oh dear...

At least he has stopped quoting Florian Muller!

Wow, another blast from the past. The aforementioned Groklaw had more than a few run ins with Florian who at the time was revealed to be a paid-for shill (for Microsoft and others).

Have an upvote

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Groklaw

Have an upvote from me for remembering that link.

I suggest that people read PJ's last post http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175 and reflect on what little has changed in the almost 4 years since she signed off. Ok, it is not directly relevant to this case but to security of what we do on the internet in general.

As the SCO case it still occassionaly popping its head up above the parapet after more than 14 years, I think that this one (Oracle vs Google) has a long way to go yet. The supremes will probably have to consider it and the implications if Oracle prevail.

{the raft of tech companies leaving the USA will become a tusnami according to one article I read a few months ago}

Feeling Locky, punk? Ransomware grew eight-fold last year

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Coat

Days of Future Passed?

Are the operators 'On the Threshold of a Dream' where all the windows users on the planet pay up their $399?

Or is it more of a case of "Ride my See-saw" and run away with what they can get?

Coat with a copy of EGBDF (on Vinyl) in the huge pocket.

Huawei missed memo that PC's dead – so here are three new notebooks

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Touch screen

But is seems that Microsoft has decreed that laptops shall have a touch screen like their Surface things.

The doids in PC-World will be flogging the hell out of any device that has touch even if like my, you want a matte display and certainly no fingerprints allowed. Greasy fingers stop me from doing real work.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Why the 15in screen cop out? @Steve Davies 3

I did say 'netbook'. Does that not imply a price range?

While I run Linux on a 2012 Macbook Pro many Linux fans I know tend to look towards the bottom end of the market.

They don't have to be cheap but it helps.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Why the 15in screen cop out?

The smaller devices have lots of pixels so why did they revert to HD for the larger device?

Could the cost of an equivalent his res 15in screen be too expensive?

Is the bios locked (Secure boot) so it can only run Windows? Otherwise a nice bit of kit but too expensive IMHO for a Linux netbook.

Google now mingles everything you've bought with everywhere you've been

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Did you know?

But.... Andrew O gives the impression that he does not like Apple... Confused.... I need a beer.

Dixons Carphone: Brexit not a factor as Brits' gadget lust holds strong

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Alternatively

It is the calm before the storm and we get shafted royally by the EU in the Brexit deal. As a result, the pound sinks below 1Euro and reaches parity with the USD.

Then the likes of Dixons/Curry/PC World/whatever will be heading for administration.

AI-powered dynamic pricing turns its gaze to the fuel pumps

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Can't charge one?

Have you looked around your area for charging points? My local Waitrose has two. Costs £8.95/month to use.

It can be done you know. I'm just waiting for my Tesla M3 and I'll be saying goodbye to filling stations.

Google starts enterprise support for Chrome, including top SaaS apps

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: ActiveX?!

The same goes for silverlight. Dead on Arrival.

Google :- Always ahead of the game (not)

Bankrupt school ITT pleads 'don't let Microsoft wipe our cloud data!'

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Once you send your data to the cloud

Could not have said it better myself.

One part of me wants MS to wipe the data. Then it will set a precident that I hope makes ALL CIO or whoever is responsible for the decisions to go to an external cloud provider think long and hard about that decisions.

Here today, gone tomorrow. That is what clouds do in real life. IT Clouds are really no different.

The other part wants MS to be forced to keep the data and the access to it until the Chapter 11/7 is resolved.

Netgear 'fixes' router by adding phone-home features that record your IP and MAC address

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

So we can add Netgear

to the list of companies that slurp our data as a matter of course.

Soon, I guess the list of those who will NOT do this will be shorter than those who do.

A sad reflection on the times but it does worry me.

Hi! I’m Foxy! It looks like you want to run Flash. Do you need help?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Boffin

Until Adobe oficially kills Flash

many sites won't do a thing.

I'm already not using a number of sites that insist on Flash. Yes, I'm voting with my feet and not spending money with them. Perhaps a diminishing value of online sales might get an FD or two to get things done but somehow I doubt it.

Die Flash Die and your execution won't be a day too soon.

Horse named 'Cloud Computing' finds burst of speed to beat 'Classic Empire' in actual race

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Holmes

But...

The 'shoot horses don't they?'

Blighty's buying another 17 F-35s, confirms the American government

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: F-35A

And the proposed F-35C version will be pure Crap