* Posts by phuzz

6715 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Feb 2010

The Curse of macOS Catalina strikes again as AccountEdge stays 32-bit

phuzz Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Confusing.

"Obviously Apple could do this, but maintaining backward compatibility with ancient versions of an OS is a pain. Forcing a switch to 64 bit means Apple can bin their old APIs once and for all."

Apple don't care about keeping backward compatibility, because that might get in the way of making even more profits.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: ^^^^ THIS ^^^^

<<<<<THAT>>>>>

Load of Big Green for Microsoft: Lloyds Banking Group inks company-wide Managed Desktop deal

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Re: Office 365

As elReg have extensively documented, 'Office 360' might be a more truthful name in any year.

(PS, As we're two decades into the twenty first century, ladies can propose to their partner whenever they damned well please.)

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Re: Spot on

That's great until they decide that they don't accept receipts.

Plus, do you really think that when you go into a branch to deposit some cash, that the staff behind the counter aren't using the exact same systems as the online banking?

China tells America, with a straight face, it will absolutely crack down on hacking and copyright, tech blueprint theft

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Thumb Up

Re: Disney must be all excited right now

Remember kids, if you ever make a sex tape, play Disney music in the background.

That way if it ever leaks, Disney's lawyers will get it taken down in minutes.

A fine host for a Raspberry Pi: The Register rakes a talon over the NexDock 2

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Re: Why some people keep on reinventing the ill-fated Palm Foleo?

Exactly, as something to drag out to the datacentre, to save trailing a monitor around with you. But my ideal device would be an actual laptop that could do the same thing.

Turn up at a borken server, flick a switch on your laptop and you have your own KVM setup.

Squirrel away a little IT budget for likely Brexit uncertainty, CIOs warned

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Re: Transition will continue after 31 Dec 2020...

"probably not be agreed until just before Christmas"

Yes, but Christmas of which year?

Tabletop battle-toys purveyor Games Workshop again warns of risks in Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP project

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Terminator

I'm going to guess that they're doing ok these days, because their core audience from the 80's and 90's are now in their thirties and forties and have a lot more than paper-round money to spend on miniatures.

I've only avoided it because I have other expensive hobbies to waste my money o,n thank you very much.

pretty sure that's a Necron >>>>>>>

Are you getting it? Yes, armageddon it: Mass hysteria takes hold as the Windows 7 axe falls

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Gimp

Re: one would think

And before anyone complains about the Windows Registry, have you used dconf/gconf?

MI5 gros fromage: Nah, US won't go Huawei from dear old Blighty over 5G, no matter what we do

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Re: This is a Real national security problem. Think hard, Brits!

You seem to be overestimating how much the rest of the world would rather be dominated by the US instead of China.

It's not like the US hasn't been using economic dominance to do it's best to wipe out any competition (western, eastern, north or south), for, well, decades. The choice for small countries like the UK is who would we rather be dominated by, or is there a way to play one off against the other?

As for humanitarian violations, do something about the kids in concentration camps, and then maybe we can talk about who gets to throw the first stone, eh?

phuzz Silver badge
Stop

Re: This is a Real national security problem. Think hard, Brits!

If you're transmitting information over a phone line, whether that's a landline, or mobile, then you have to assume that your communication might be compromised if you're not using suitable encryption.

Us Brits have long known that the government has the means to eavesdrop on pretty much all of our communications, so we behave accordingly. Equally, I'm sure that the security services don't trust any communications equipment, even if it was built by the GPO.

If we used Cisco instead of Huawei then chances are it would be the NSA listening in instead of the Chinese. So given that there's not much difference either way, we might as well buy from the company that sells better equipment for cheaper.

phuzz Silver badge

Hello there, I'd like to introduce you to this marvellous thing that computers can do called Spell Checking.

As a dyslexic, half of this post would be spelt wrongly if I hadn't right clicked in the text box and selected 'Check Spelling'. When you see a little red wiggly line underneath a word (like 'sence'), that means the computer thinks you have spelt it wrongly, and if you right click it'll give you a few options for how it thinks you should have spelt the word.

English is a pain-in-the-arse language when it comes to spelling, so let the computer help you out.

Amazon to ask court to block DoD's $10bn early Valentine's date with a Microsoft JEDI

phuzz Silver badge

I'm assuming Microsoft (and Google and Oracle and whoever else was up for this), was also trying similar tricks?

For $10B why wouldn't you?

NASA is Boeing to get to the bottom of that Starliner snafu... plus SpaceX preps to blow up a Falcon 9

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Gimp

Re: Is it me or is this seriously creepy?

It does sound creepy, but on the other hand, if his tastes instead ran to older men, then I'd totally be up for whatever to get a free trip around the moon.

phuzz Silver badge
Mushroom

Start with testing it in KSP, and only continue when it has enough boosters and/or struts.

World's richest bloke battles Oz catastro-fire with incredible AU$1m donation (aka load of cheap greenwashing)

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Re: The problem with small-scale private philanthropy by the wealthiest is that it achieves little

Wile that's generally true, I'll bet you'll find it tricky to find even a single story about how generous Jeff is being with his donation in this case.

Every single thing I've read about it has been pointing out how ridiculously tight he's being.

UK data watchdog kicks £280m British Airways and Marriott GDPR fines into legal long grass

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Meh

In some ways, yes. In other ways, no.

Broadly, it depends whether you're talking about political or geographical meanings of 'Europe'.

There's something fishy going down in the computer lab

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Re: Microsoft's cash cow

Of course it's productive. You give your boss Powerpoint or Word, and while he's trying to work out how that works, you can go off and get some real work done.

Tea tipplers are more likely to live longer, healthier lives than you triple venti pumpkin-syrup soy-milk latte-swilling fiends

phuzz Silver badge

Or for that matter, because tea drinkers are consuming boiled water, maybe they're just less likely to pick up waterborne diseases etc.?

Is it a make-up mirror? Is it a tiny frisbee? No, it's the bonkers Cyrcle Phone, with its TWO headphone jacks

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I'm pretty sure my Android phone will only output audio to one Bluetooth device at a time, and I think that plugging in headphones would turn off the BT audio, so the only way to share audio with someone would be a headphone splitter.

At least they're sharing headphones, and not just using the phone speaker and subjecting you to tinny reproductions of whatever 'the youth' listen to these days.

Hey kids! Ditch that LCD and get ready for the retro CRT world of Windows Terminal

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Re: Not 3D...

Microsoft have spent longer with a 2D interfaces than skeuomorphic ones, but some bombastic whippersnappers don't remember back that far.

phuzz Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Does it include..

IIRC lynx isn't installed in Ubuntu by default, but it's just an apt install lynx away after all.

WSL can run a variety of distros, so it's up to you.

Sometimes shining a light on a nuclear problem just makes things worse

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Mice too

I had the opposite problem in a previous job.

The mouse hooked up via the KVM to all our servers sat on a metal tray, with a crinkly white gloss finish. Even when left still, it would detect minor movements, so the cursor would jitter on the screen, and the screensaver, and more importantly, the screenlock, would never engage.

I solved the problem by sticking a post-it note under where the mouse was left at rest, and less reflective surface banished the phantom movements.

More fun can be had by sticking the post-it to the bottom of a colleagues mouse, but they usually work it out quite quickly.

'No BS' web host Gandi lives up to half of its motto... Some customer data wiped out in storage server meltdown

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"It is a hardware failure. Don't tell me you don't plan for that."

Depends if I'm paying another company to specifically take care of that for me.

Why is a 22GB database containing 56 million US folks' personal details sitting on the open internet using a Chinese IP address? Seriously, why?

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Re: CCPA

I assume that law can't be applied retroactively though?

I am broot: The Reg chats to French dev about Rust tool that aims to improve directory navigation

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"I can save a command to do exactly what I want, vs. mind numbing repetition"

That's the main distinction for me between a CLI and a GUI. If you have to do the same (or very similar) thing over and over again, CLI (and scripting) is usually easiest.

If you're doing different jobs each day, the discoverability of a GUI will help.

Personally very little of my job could be scripted.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Really?

Or Spacemonger if you prefer.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Stopped reading at "command line tool" ...

"muscle memory works with the latter but not the former"

My muscle memory works just fine with a gui. In fact, given the various strengths (spacial and layout) and drawbacks (memorising strings) of my memory in general, I'd say I works best with a gui.

AMD rips covers off 64-core Threadripper desktop monster, plus laptop chips, leaving Intel gesturing vaguely at 2021

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Re: AMD must be more broad in software support

Thanks for that particularly passive-aggressive insult, I suppose it's more gentile than "omg ur a idiot".

Anyway, a quick glance at AMD's most recent earnings show that they made $1.28B in revenue from desktop and mobile CPUs, and only $525M from enterprise and embedded (which includes the CPUs for the PS4 and XboxOne, I can't find any figures that just break out the server/enterprise revenue).

AMD are concentrating on where they make the most of the their money (ie consumer), rather than enterprise, an area where Intel completely dominate.

So perhaps I should clarify my previous comment, AMD's financial success comes from the end user market.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: AMD must be more broad in software support

Short answer; because there's a lot more desktops and laptops out there, running Windows in people's homes, than there is large animation studios.

Sure, AMD probably make more margin (which is a polite way of saying "overcharge") on their server chips, but the low end market outpaces that in volume, by spades.

Financial success comes from the end user market, not government and enterprise.

phuzz Silver badge
Flame

Re: A bit much

I've just upgraded form a quad core, to a 8core/16 thread monster...and most of the time all 16 threads are ticking along at <5% usage.

Still, transcoding video using Handbrake does use all the cores at full speed, and lets you find out if your cooling system is up to the job.

my computer goes a bit like this >>>>>

phuzz Silver badge

"2TB should keep most desktop workstations happy."

It'll certainly keep your memory seller happy, 256GB DIMMs do seem to be available, if you have £3000 per DIMM to throw around.

Still, that's only £24,000 worth of RAM. Totally makes sense to pair it with a £3000 CPU.

Chin up, kids, and mind the webcam: Honor lifts lid on MagicBook 14-inch and 15.6-inch laptops

phuzz Silver badge

How long before someone sells puts out a press release trying to sell a drone with a camera, which is specifically designed to take video of you from a more flattering angle during video-conferencing (etc)? You start up a skype call, and it whirs into life and hovers about a meter away, just above your eyeline.

You could probably power it purely from a USB port because it would never need to fly more than a few meters, although everyone wants wireless everything these days.

Shhh! It's us, Microsoft. Yes, it's 2020. We're here with a new build of Windows 10

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Stop

"Timer work in English (United Kingdom) is a tad tricky due to all those pesky regional variations."

That's because we use a sensible date format, unlike the Yanks and their middle-endian nonsense.

(Although I will admit that the Japanese/ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD is the most sensible format)

The Nokia 3.2 is a phone your nan will love: One camera's more than enough, darling

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Unhappy

Alas, there's no factory method to unlock the bootloader, so there's no (easy) way of moving to a custom ROM after the two years of support have ended.

Ring of fired: Amazon axes multiple workers who secretly snooped on netizens' surveillance camera footage

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I read the phrase "once Ring was made aware of the alleged conduct" (emph mine) to imply that it was an outside complaint, that Ring was 'made aware' of.

There's also the thought experiment "what would the scummy company likely do?".

Would they fire someone if it was an internal audit and they could otherwise cover the whole matter up?

If it was an external complaint, would they fire someone so that they could show they were "taking complaints seriously"?

Hash snag: Security shamans shame SHA-1 standard, confirm crucial collisions citing circa $45k chip cost

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Stop

Re: Linus Torvalds dismissed concerns about attacks on Git SHA-1 hashes

It was in 2017, as linked in TFA.

I'll link it again here for you because you missed it the first time.

GSMA report: Sorry, handset makers, 5G is not going to save the smartphone market

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Re: "palatable $520"?

I earn a pretty good wage, and probably could afford to spend £500 on a phone every year, but I've yet to find a tangible difference between a £100 phone and one five times that price (except that the cheaper ones are more likely to have things like a headphone port, and an SD card slot).

So I'll be sticking to my £100 phone with LTE. If I need more speed I'll just jump on the nearest wifi network, because in a big city (ie the only places getting 5G for the foreseeable future), there's a free wifi network within range most of the time.

5G signals won't make men infertile, sighs UK ad watchdog as it bans bonkers scary poster

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Flame

In Soviet Russia, oven microwaves YOU!

I'm not going to tell you not to try that at home, but I am going to tell you not to try it anywhere near my home.

phuzz Silver badge

Well, most of us have burnt our fingers touching a 100W bulb for just a brief moment, so I fully agree.

My problem with the original article was that they said there was no danger from non-ionising radiation.

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Boffin

"As for their capacity to do harm, millimetre waves, like all radio waves, are not ionising radiation, and thus don't have the capacity to break molecular bonds or damage biological tissue. This is all a simple matter of basic chemistry."

Go rig the microwave in your kitchen to run with the door open, microwave your hand a for a few minutes, and then come back and tell us that non-ionising radiation can't "damage biological tissue". (Or just use a sausage or something I suppose).

A sufficiently high power level of non-ionising radiation is quite capable of dumping heat into biological tissue (and much else), and that will damage that tissue.

The important thing to note here is that this effect is relatively easy to predict (eg), and that maximum power levels are limited specifically so this isn't a problem.

Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways

phuzz Silver badge

Re: No no no

Yes. They should have been landing from the cockpit of an Airbus instead.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: Why is the company still alive?

The military can definitely force someone to fly Boeing if that person is in the military.

Fortunately most of the aircraft with a Boeing logo on in the US military these days was actually built by other companies which have since been bought out, and the ones they've supplied recently (eg the KC-46) are mostly grounded due to Boeing-related issues (debris in the fuel tanks, cargo locks unlocking in flight, etc).

The Six Million Dollar Scam: London cops probe Travelex cyber-ransacking amid reports of £m ransomware demand, wide-open VPN server holes

phuzz Silver badge
Windows

Re: into the public domain unless the company pays up

And they can keep Uncle Bill, he's a racist old prick.

I won't accept less than twice the ransom to take him back!

Microsoft engineer caught up in sudden spate of entirely coincidental grilling of Iranian-Americans at US borders

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Facepalm

Re: silly parents

Wasn't searched as a kid, in a car or otherwise. Didn't die in a car bomb (despite the ongoing campaign of bombings in the country where I grew up at that time).

It's almost like your logic is faulty or something.

phuzz Silver badge

Re: And the consequenques fo failing to act?

"Their security services and revolutionary guard are hyper-paranoid"

Can't imagine why that might be...

Having trouble finding a job in your 40s? Study shows some bosses like job applicants... up until they see dates of birth

phuzz Silver badge

I've heard the name " The Oragon Trail generation", which would fit, except that as a Brit I never played that game. Perhaps the "Grannies Garden Generation" for us Brits of a certain age?.

It just exposes the limitations of trying to separate people by arbitrary generations. I have far more in common with someone born a few years earlier than me, who is technically 'Generation X', than I would with someone born almost twenty years later in the late 90's.

Perhaps it's slightly better than just dividing everyone into "young whippersnappers" and "old farts".

To quote Douglas Adams:

“I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

phuzz Silver badge

Re: HR is the problem

I've never worked anywhere where HR had any influence into the hiring process until after the job offer is made.

Why you you let a separate department dictate who you're interviewing?

That Pulse Secure VPN you're using to protect your data? Better get it patched – or it's going to be ransomware time

phuzz Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Yeah but...

Well, Microsoft take the approach of forcing end users to patch, and look how popular that is.

I'm the queen of Gibraltar and will never get a traffic ticket... just two of the things anyone could have written into country's laws thanks to unsanitised SQL input vuln

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Thumb Up

"this section of the website will, in any event, be relocated to an entirely new website."

Someone finally got the budget for the new site that they've been asking for for years. And all it took was a publicly embarrassing vulnerability.

(I hope you kept copies of the emails where you told your manager that this would happen, oh unnamed Gibraltarian bofh).