* Posts by Roland6

10615 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2010

Microsoft pulls the plug on WordPad, the world's least favorite text editor

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: The right tool for all the ... tools.

> Wordpad always struck me as having just a few more features than the great unwashed could competently use

MS did bundle Works, until they decided it was competiting with Office…

I suspect an assumption is that users can now read various documents such as .doc in Edge, however, like Adobe Reader and Acrobat (£), if you want to edit them you need to sign up for O365 (£).

New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Think

> Here's a fun paper on this

Nice to see someone being prepared to take on the “at scale” problem/challenge.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Think of the Grid!

> As a quick example, Sizewell B expected life to 2035 could be extended to 2055 ...

Okay Sizewell B is the only one of the five currently operating nuclear power station's not listed as being due for closure by/in 2028, however, it is listed as being due for closure 2035. Depending on whether you want to mislead or not, I suggest it should not be included in the (initial) list of power stations operating in and beyond 2035.

Yes, EDF are expecting it to be granted a 20 year extension; I also anticipate given the situation, attempts will be made to extend the operating lives of the other currently operating reactors. These however, are distractions from the real issue - the UK isn’t in a situation to turn off its fossil fuel power stations and switch to nuclear, within the next 20 years….

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Think of the Grid!

> For that price it must be so old that it's carbon footprint must be awful

For EVs to make any real difference, they will need to last just as long and with most of them still using the factory installed batteries, motors and dashboard instruments…

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Think of the Grid!

> We import quite a bit of electricity

On average 5%…

If we are to decommission our fossil fuel power stations that needs to go to 50~80%…

Hence why numbers don’t add up.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Think of the Grid!

Nuclear?

With all of our existing nuclear due to be shutdown by 2028, will need some good luck to have Hinckley Point B, Bradwell B and Sizewell C up and running at full capacity by 2035; these being expected to generate circa 18% of the UKs current electricity demand….

Looks like the numbers are not going to add up…

Windows boss takes on taskbar turmoil, pledges to 'make Start menu great again'

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Honestly

> If you invest the time and effort into learning to use the search function

It would be nice if the Windows Help actually gave relevant help rather than either nothing or some random MS webpage either telling you the resource you are looking for has moved etc. or trying to induce you to download the lastest version of Windows, buy M365 etc.

Windows keyboards to get a Copilot key – but how quickly will users jump?

Roland6 Silver badge

Once again MS generating more unnecessary E-Waste…

Let’s hope sensible governments/political unions demand MS process all the E-waste this will generate.

Also give the “right to repair”, surely, this should be just a simple key cap replacement or even just a remap of one of the Fn keys.

Personally, given what MS have done to the W11 menus, I am a little surprised they haven’t simply made Co-Pilot the default initial behaviour of the Windows key; requiring users to use a second key press or mouse to gain access to the previously normal functionality…

BT misses deadline for removing Huawei from network core

Roland6 Silver badge

Ofcom can’t really issue any fines, they are the ones preventing the decommissioning of the 2G and 3G networks…

Windows 11 unable to escape the shadow of Windows 10

Roland6 Silver badge

> give people advance warning of hardware changes for Win12

AI coprocessor to make CoPilot faster…

Just that the majority of W11 systems don’t have an AI coprocessor….

So I suggest advanced warning needs to be, like IBM announcements back in the day, 7 plus years in advance…

Roland6 Silver badge

Fingers crossed copilot is optional…

CoPilot, AI is likely tax older and more constrained hardware, .. expect W10 on such platforms to start performing like a dog…

Given MS don’t currently produce hardware in any real volume, I see little real value to MS shareholders of having users upgrade their (non-MS) hardware…

A ship carrying 800 tonnes of Li-Ion batteries caught fire. What could possibly go wrong?

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: I assume they discharge batteries before shipping them?

Determining whether the replacement laptop battery you wish to order has been sitting on a shelf for few years or not is one of the uncertainties of replacing laptop batteries.

Is it time for 6G already? Traffic analysis says yep

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: I'm glad a commenter above says 2G is staying

>If it's a dongle, then it likely doesn't have full access to the EE 4G network as it does not support voice over LTE.

If it is an EE branded device which the manufacturers specification includes VoLTE (eg. Alcatel 3T), you need to check the EE specifications - if EE do not say it has VoLTE, assume EE have used firmware that does not include the VoLTE capability...

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: It's not that we don't need 6G.

If you need the higher data rates, you really need to be using something other than a phone as your router, plus you need to look at the details of your mobile contract as that will typically have a speed cap.

Roland6 Silver badge

>I haven't noticed 5G being any faster than 4G, what I have noticed though is better performance in congested urban areas.

Which was the real purpose of 5G.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Bring back the art of low bandwidth coding

Don't disagree, however, there are times and places (ie. right now in my house) where the EE 4G network delivers sub 3kbps, hence the phones are using VoWiFi service.

So whilst it is great to be able to use HD voice, there are times when the service needs to be able to down grade to significantly lighter data rates. Hence why services such as SMS should be maintained.

The truth about Dropbox opening up your files to AI – and the loss of trust in tech

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: The Dropbox CEO is lying

I suspect the Windows Eula is sufficiently broad to permit Microsoft to use the contents of windows users hard drives to train its AI…

Here's who thinks AI chatbots will eventually be smart enough to be your coworker

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Making a list and cheking it twice

Boss AI

>thinking up imaginative tasks to fill in the timesheet

Thinking up imaginative ways to query and reject timesheets (and expenses).

>attending meetings (that will be run by other AIs) which never produce anything useful

Running meetings and ensuring no actions are assigned to the boss.

>responding to the boss' communications

Creating boss communications to occupy underlings.

>responding to everybody else's communications

Responding to communications from underlings.

>going on HR's "mandatory" courses

All this plus, ensuring actual hiring and firings are all in accordance with company policy, especially when they are not.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: An AI

>” when these companies have replaced all their staff with AI, who do they think will have money to buy their products?”

…Just shows universal income might be a good idea:

The government pays individuals, obviously this will need to be at a higher level than “welfare” so that people can afford “luxury” goods.

To regulate money in circulation, Companies will need to actually pay much higher taxes.

However, the low tax/small state obsessives will object, wanting people to have subsistence levels of welfare etc. and demand that the government should use its much reduced tax revenues and ability to print money to print money to subsidise their loss making businesses…

Programmable or 'purpose-bound' money is coming, probably as a feature in central bank digital currencies

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: "Demurrage can de-incentivize the hoarding of money"

> "Inflation is a good thing"

Only because it is a key part of the modern economic model, which was designed to fleece the masses…

Roland6 Silver badge

Whilst many places are now cashless they are also selective; there are relatively few places that accept prepaid debit cards.

I find it strange how many petrol forecourts don’t accept them, yet treat conventional cards as prepaid cards, by getting the bank to okay spend up to a preset limit.

So I expect many places would refuse to accept the new CBDC…

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Alternative Currencies

Also those bottles of Laundry detergent aren’t individually serialised, so are effectively untraceable.

Roland6 Silver badge

>” Now, it costs them y + 4%”

That’s what the idiots want you to believe, in actual fact it now costs them y - x where x is greater than the rate of inflation.

Eg. Three’s then landmark contract of 15GB for £15, today the deal is at least 60GB for £15…

War of the workstations: How the lowest bidders shaped today's tech landscape

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: What Is A “Workstation”?

I would say (ignoring Unix/Xenix) that NT and its successors turned the Microsoft PC into a workstation. Obviously, WfWg (once it got TCP/IP and few other bits) was a good initial attempt…

California approves lavatory-to-faucet water recycling

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: California water...

At its peak, the UK only had circa 6 weeks of water, because until recent decades the weather pattern and thus rainfall was predictable, ie. In a 6 week period sufficient rain will have fallen to prevent the reservoirs running dry, except in exceptional conditions, like the summer of 1976.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: California water...

> “Like water is a limited supply of fossil fuels or something like that”

Fresh water is in short supply, particularly in California. Even the UK, which has significantly more rain than California, has a fresh water supply problem…

Roland6 Silver badge

You might have a new bottled water product there:

Spring water filtered through our 100% Xeon datacentre…

Microsoft offers rollback for those affected by Windows wireless futility

Roland6 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Design over usability

That’s obvious, the same one as the power adapter uses…

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Ethernet.

>” And a lot of laptops don't have spare USB ports anymore.”

If it has a USB port, I’m sure some permutation of hubs and power supplies would enable the attachment of a Ethernet adaptor.

Which is a lot of hassle and expense, which was why I included the ”(not)” in my comment.

However, if there are modern (Windows) laptops without USB ports…

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Ethernet.

Modern laptops still have "Ethernet ports"....

Just need a working USB port and a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor, which naturally everyone carries around with them (not) these days....

Women in IT are on a 283-year march to parity, BCS warns

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Cognate disciplines

> 《The fact that 94 percent of girls and 79 percent of boys drop computing at age 14 》

The published report (linked to in the article) does not include this claim of Julia Adamson, focusing instead on the 16-64 age group.

I suspect the drop rate needs to be put into the context of just what is meant by "computing" and the drop rate of other subjects (STEM or arts); I wonder if someone was obsessed and lost sleep over pupils at my secondary school dropping the second foreign language to study computing GCSE subject...

Biden urged to do something about Europe 'unfairly' targeting American tech

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Shall we go back in History

>” All invented/developed outside of the US”

As were computers…

Okay the British government, true to form, were a bit dim and secrecy obsessed and so allowed the Bletchley Park workers to take up posts in the US that enabled them to further develop their knowledge and ideas…

China's GPU contender Moore Threads reveals card that can cope with Nvidia’s CUDA

Roland6 Silver badge

>”… and we'll have another Huawei on our hands, except…”

With a home grown industry the balance of power will also shift, so all the tech documentation will be in Chinese (if you are able to get your hands on it) and thus we will need to purchase Chinese engineers at elevated salaries ( that’s if China allows them to leave the country) to get our hands on it and thus keep up with the innovation…

Roland6 Silver badge

> Has the software evolved to any level even remotely near usable?

Well if it supports Nvidia’s CUDA without recompilation, I suggests that’s good first step to getting usable software without having to develop it yourself…

Shame about those wildfires. We'll just let the fossil fuel giants off the hook, then?

Roland6 Silver badge

From something I read, CO2 was just the starter, the main contributor now to global warming is water vapour…

Roland6 Silver badge
Pint

Re: Diamond Battery

Alternatively, I’m as hopeful as those pursuing fusion… one day fusion might produce MWs of energy…

Roland6 Silver badge

>” There's far more money in maintaining and promoting the dogma. Why? Just look at the US IRA and the $600bn being wasted on 'renewables'.”

The difficulty is determining whether it is the researchers who are maintaining and promoting the dogma or those who have spotted and climbed on a money making “green wash” bandwagon…

Trouble is we need people to explore stuff, as it helps both to determine if something is or isn’t green wash and to get people receptive to real initatives..

Roland6 Silver badge

> Ah the hockey sticks of doom.

And the graph of our fossil fuel consumption also bears a strong likeness to a hockey stick…

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Change that to "Fossil Fuel Giants and anyone who buys their products"

>” However your numbers are hardly representative of reality.”

The condensing boiler only achieves the high efficiency levels only when operating under certain circumstances, trouble is when used as an on demand flow heater they are only marginally better than my ancient convention boiler with an efficiency rating of 78%. Interestingly, my boiler has a lower ozone and nitrogen oxide output than the equivalent condensing boiler…

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Its all very depressing

>” There has to be a way to more efficiently convert nuclear energy into electricity (eg. more directly)”

Perhaps the diamond battery is a start, given it converts radioactive decay (of carbon) directly into electricity.

Trouble is the price…

Roland6 Silver badge

Note I used the word “chance” for a reason.

I’m well aware of the “break through” research results which were initially accepted but some years later were proved to be false.

>” If you set out to question the canon of climatology, no matter how rigorous your methods, you won't get funding.”

That might in part be due to a well funded group of deniers who finally got around to building their own models and discovered they reflected the orthodoxy…

However, I agree there can be a degree of group think or blindness, you only need to look at the development of atomic physics.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Wildfires

Depending on location, in circa 150 years it could look a little like New England today…

Roland6 Silver badge

> you will own nothing agenda?

Ownership is only temporary, you can’t take it with you…

Roland6 Silver badge

> "we've made up our mind about the answer, now let's choose some data to prove it".

That’s why you get it peer reviewed etc.

If others can’t find data and logic flaws that shows you have been selective etc. then there is a good chance the assertion is correct.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Just... Wow.

The 2020 MIT report - using new data, basically confirmed the general forecasts of previous models going back to the 1970s.

I suspect the 80s scientific thinking was highly influenced by chaos theory and the extent to which it permeates things like climate.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Oh dear

> The fires were caused by half management.

Perhaps we need to be a little more precise. The seemingly increasing number of fires seems to be linked to climate change and things being drier and thus more combustible. The management practises merely determine how much combustible material is around and this is a factor in how fierce and how far the fire spreads.

As to actual causes, would not be surprised if many are discarded cigarettes, discarded bottles acting as sunlight lenses etc. okay some will be lightning etc. and a few due to plants spontaneously combusting.

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: When will Big Oil face the heat?

>” If you were to literally take away fossil fuels overnight, the majority of humanity would die. Is that what you want?”

“Overnight” in climate terms is probably a few decades and could be stretched a century or so…

If the 2020 MIT report is to be believed doing nothing, our increasing consumption of what is effectively a limited resource, will have the same effect in circa 2040…

Surprise! Email from personal.
information.reveal@gmail.com is not going to contain good news

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: Basically, never use exchange

Whilst I agree with your sentiment, if you are a user due to employment etc. you don’t have a choice, but you do have a choice (I assume) on the way you access a business exchange based email account from your personal device.

The ability to perform a full factory reset via the email app is concerning: compromise a companies exchange server and thus gain user administrative access and the first the company knows about it is all their phones get reset and thus locked out…

I wonder when this threat will gain a bitcoin value…

Roland6 Silver badge

Re: but it's not always as easy as that to implement.

Thanks, did a quick Google and discovered this useful resource

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients-and-mobile-in-exchange-online/exchange-activesync/remote-wipe-on-mobile-phone

The Note and Caution are worth reading.

Basically, only use Outlook to connect to exchange and not the native android/ios mail client.

China's first undersea datacenter sinks – as planned

Roland6 Silver badge

Given I have been able to prevent my phone from being used abroad, for some decades, it is about time bank accounts had the same level of user specified access control.

A side effect might be to force companies such as Amazon to route more transactions from UK customers through Amazon UK rather than some tax haven…