Posts by Roland6

Re: “My Lifetime as a Lettuce”. The memoirs of Liz Truss

>"Maybe this will help-

Its the post brexit trade and cooperation agreement."

Interesting, possibly a good example of a failure to do detail...

Whilst it would seem everyone assumed the UK would be part of Horizon Europe, the withdrawal agreement fell short, as it did not include the EU conferring the fundamentally important ‘associated country status’ on the UK.

The devil is always in the detail...

Re: From the horse's mouth

They only have themselves to blame, it was obvious if the payload suffered a total lost of its floatation aid ie. balloon, then even from 20,000 ft it is going to hit the ground hard.

The US are going to have to get better at in-flight capture and intercept at results in a more controlled descent.

Re: Nice

>It should also concern the UK's CMA (Competition and Markets Authority), they need to start acting NOW pre-emptively and not once all this is in place.

It should also concern the EU - who have the bigger teeth.

There really isn't any reason why any PDF reader should not be able to be a plug-in replacement for Windows and Edge's PDF functionality, just need the API's publishing.

That would be even better for productivity, customers, competition and security.

Re: signing

>there's pdf forms where they can be filled out and signed

Yes MS and the Windows ecosystem are a long way behind Apple here.

>You sound like you’ve never experienced Adobe’s lovely well designed and crafted software before

The difference is between Acrobat Reader as was and the modern incarnation. Reader as was, was just a good PDF reader, it did not have pretensions to be Adobe Acrobat.

In more recent years, Reader has effectively become a trial version of Acrobat with only the Reader functionality provided for free, click on anything else and you get the sales pitch.

Re: I don't understand why we still use PDF

> Why do we have to pay to edit, sign or save to other format?

Your choice whether you pay or use the free toolsets such as PDF24, and if MS provide it for free then you are paying for it in some other way.

> How's that many other companies tried to replace PDF (Microsoft comes to mind, I forgot their file extension, was around Windows Vista) and none managed to do it?

They were late to the party and were application and platform specific...

>Think of this file format...

Reinvent the wheel if you want to, but expect your efforts to go the same way as MS with XPS etc. ...

>Why is that nobody managed to get rid of PDF and Adobe?

PDF solved a real-world problem, Adobe own a lot of fonts and Postscript, naturally with PS v3 there is a direct mapping between PDF and PS, if you want something printed (by a third-party) exactly how you designed it then your best bet is to use Adobe fonts...

But more simply, for similar reasons as to why we are still using the QWER keyboard, TCP/IP, Unix like OS's/commands...

>What is it so special and complicated that we still depend on Adobe?

Well you could simply replace Adobe with: Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, SAP, etc. and the question would still be valid.

Re: Mechanical watches

I really like my 17 jewel fully mechanical wrist watch I received as a 16th birthday present.(*)

The only problem with mechanical watches (and clocks) is the cost of maintenance - that is if you can find someone willing and able to service them; you've either got to really like your chronometer (and thus be immune to servicing costing more than it is worth) or it has to be a recognised name and thus ridiculously expensive.

(*)The laugh is this watch isn't worth very much as it isn't a collectors piece, however to buy the equivalent new today, I would have to spend a few thousand to get the same level of craftmanship and quality of movement.

>The Datasheet says: Vista 64 supported. So Windows 7 should have worked.

Yes W7 32-bit...

There was some information on the Fujitsu website which detailed the compatibility issues.

If I remember correctly my main problem was the SAS RAID controller driver.

Given I had built a (quiet) system based on an MSI X570 motherboard and Ryzen 5 5600x nearly two years back and hadn't touched the R650 since, it seemed best to accept that it was a project I wasn't going to complete.

Re: It's Not About New PCs

>It's not about buying a new PC/laptop with small amounts of RAM.

However, given MS and Windows Starter edition...

This looks like a nice way for MS to enlarge the W11 machine base, if they were to purchase Tiny11 off NTDEV, without actually changing the currently shipping W11 build.

Mind you suspect many would prefer a smaller and more streamlined OS footprint, provided they could also install .NET framework, AD domains, Hyper-V ...

But does W10 x64 run on it from a clean install?

I had a dual xeon system of similar vintage (Fujitsu CELSIUS R650) which ran XP x64, but because of some motherboard chipset and driver issues it couldn't be upgraded to W7 x64 and thus a W10 x64 upgrade was not an option.

This hassle, the fan noise and the weight and size of the cabinet, were the reasons I finally scrapped it just before Christmas 2022.

Re: 16GB of RAM is the minimum

>And yet my 2013 MacBook with only 8GB comfortably runs the latest version of MacOS

Congratulations!

A friend has been unable to perform the upgrade due to a lack of disk space caused by the amount of cruft MacOS has tucked away in the caches - obviously the caches aren't pure temp files as they also include installed application updates such as Garmin maps...

Re: 16GB of RAM is the minimum

But have you tried it with same laptop but with 16GB (preferably 2x8GB)?

Yes W10/W11 does run in 8GB, I have found running MS Office (desktop), Chrome etc., Teams, Zoom etc things seem to be a little smoother and snappier with 16GB.

Re: Late stage capitalism

Well I know two wrongs don’t make a right, but he did also break the USSR’s economy…

Re: @AC

> would seem the brexiters were right-

And wrong at the same time!

Remember one of the complaints was how inflexible the was, the rules around state subsidy supposedly preventing Westminster investing in the UK…

This shows that correctly presenting a case can result in “the EU” being flexible. Although I suspect in this instance the absence of the UK in the decision making is the reason why Germany were able sway this in their favour.

Re: @AC

> Still waiting for your desired apocalypse?

Depends on what you mean by “apocalypse”.

From my perspective, I did a lot of work in Ireland in the 1990s as foreign companies invested there instead of the UK, in part because of the euro-skeptism being exhibited in the UK. So to my mind the UK has lost out as these businesses are now generating revenues in Ireland/EU in direct competition to the UK.

From a personal perspective, losing freedom of working/movement etc. has meant working arrangements are no longer simply an exchange of contracts and jumping on the next flight.

Don’t know about US sit-coms, but some of the UK stuff the same era is definitely cringeworthy and in-PC.

It’s been a bit of an education because I didn’t watch very much ‘ entertainment’ TV, hence missed most of it.

> "sugary bland inspirational" stuff

I find it quite refreshing to watch films etc. that originate outside of Hollywood, they tend to omit the saccharine,moralising and ‘forced’ happy ever after endings.

Re: A Strategy? A Policy? A Plan?

This is one point I agree with the Express!

The UK was a good member of the club and did much to encourage and cajole the other members to do likewise (namely follow the rules they had signed up to), even though at times it disadvantaged the UK.

Re: A Strategy? A Policy? A Plan?

>and brain-drain on the expertise we could otherwise easily draw on from mainland Europe.

That's not what I and I suspect many others would interpret a brain-drain to be. To me a brian-drain is like we had in the 1980's where UK nationals were voting with their feet and taking up jobs (and academic posts) in the US because not only did they pay better but also there was some really interesting stuff going on in Silicon Valley, which just wasn't happening in the UK...

Yes, Brexit has resulted in an exodus of Europeans working in the UK and making the UK a less attractive place of work, but I'm not aware there has been a significant increase in UK nationals leaving the UK, yet. Although, unless the government rapidly makes the UK a desirable destination again for foreign R&D investment, there will be a brain-drain.

Re: A Strategy? A Policy? A Plan? ... no...

>(1) UK GDP growth has been pathetic for thirty years (doubling, so 2.5% per annum -- much less if you allow for inflation)

Worldwide growth has also been pathetic, basically rising in line with population growth which has for many decades averaged 2%. However, maths shows with respect to growth we are living in a world of small and shrinking numbers (probably won't be long before GDP changes of 0.01% are reported). The only real solution is to let go of our obsession with an ever-increasing GDP.

Re: Sounds reasonably sensible...

Be interested to see the actual history of the idea, however, what is known is that Rishi thinks it will be easier to effect change to the civil service and the way departments work by creating new departments rather than to try and change an existing amalgam department.

Suspect this will go down well with the rank-and-file Conservative MP's - four ministerial posts (and pay) instead of one...

Re: Why?

Hate to break it to you, but 2006 is recent, pre-1970 is a long-time ago. But then my initial experience was doing development at a company where the expectation was that the system would run without major failure for 20+ years...

Re: Why?

>When we asked him to change the API to add the cookie and remove the statics to make it at least re-entrant, they flat refused and insisted nobody ever does that for C APIs.

Probably didn't understand re-entrancy...

It was something I started to ask about at interviews back in the 90's after asking a contract VB developer a question on the topic and got the response "what's that?" followed by "why would you want to do that?". I decided this and some other questions was rough-and-ready guide to the level of formal training and experience they had, in general those who hadn't studied computing at University couldn't satisfactorily answer the question.

Re: Whereas, in real life . . .

I suggest a key part of this is having the wallet open . Would not be surprised if there was a NFC/Bluetooth exploit. The other out-of-band exploit would be to assume the local cell had been compromised and the bringing together of the two phones into close proximity facilitated identification etc..

The other interesting thing is the request to use a Trust Wallet ie. a specific wallet, so there might be an insider involved...

Re: But why is this necessary?

Interesting study, however, the UK started replacing paper with polymer notes in 2016 and completed the withdrawal of paper £20 and £50 notes in September 2022....

Re: But why is this necessary?

> Why is it necessary?

The only scenario I can think of is the payment of cash welfare benefits to those without bank accounts. This would potentially mean the government would no longer have to make or distribute coins and notes...

Re: As an owner of a Xiaomi

>The article is suggesting that the android phones made for the Chinese market are the ones of real concern.

Yes, I'm hoping the researchers are already repeating their investigation with OnePlus, Xiaomi and Oppo Realme intended for the European market.

Also deliver a little deeper and determine whether this is just app developers going OTT or the tracking is 'required'...

Re: Zzzzzzz

>The Empire derived from the Royal Navy

We had the better privateers, helped by the British government turning a blind eye to their exploits, which included plundering the ships of other European countries...

The Royal Navy grew to protect the empire its privateers founded.

>Government policies and sponsorship to build better faster vessels than the Dutch.

Not sure about this - suggest you read about the real meaning of the words "Rule Britannia, Britannia, rule the waves"...

Re: Perhaps once burned?

>LOL Is that the level of British microelectronic aspirations now, 50 year old technology?

This is the Tory party, so what is most important is being seen to do something, whilst providing cover for public monies to reach the pockets of party sponsors...

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