* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25250 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

Page:

COVID-19 has done what Microsoft and Intel couldn't – given people a reason for a PC upgrade

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Follow the money

"when I ask "Well who benefits" at that point he goes quiet,"

Even the thickest of conspiracy theorist could answer that in a heartbeat with "BigPharma" at the very least. Not to mention "Deep State", or "Bill Gates and his chip implantation program disguised as vaccines". I'm sure there wilder and more convoluted ones out there, possibly multiple theories interlaced. Actually, the Bill Gates chip/vaccine things is weird. If that was true the "miracle vaccine" would have been "discovered" at the height of lockdown. Not still be months (if ever) away, still. I'm sure the conspiracy theorists have an answer to that.

ZX Spectrum reboot promising – steady now – 28MHz of sizzling Speccy speed now boasts improved Wi-Fi

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Get an emulator

To be fair, you could say that about many, many products on the market, especially Kickstarter-like projects. Just because a market is small and niche and not for you doesn't mean to say the market, however small, isn't there. The likes of Kickstarter for gauging interest and fundraising, 3D printing for rapid and cheap(er) prototyping and far-eastern short run board assemblers has made this sort of niche market possible for those who do want them.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: £300

"It's a really nicely-specced,"

I saw what you did there!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: ZX Spectrum - best keyboard ever! (nt)

"decent laptop keyboards"

Isn't that an oxymoron? I suppose there can be keyboards that could be described as "decent enough for a laptop keyboard", but even the best laptop keyboards are pretty shite for serious use.

America's largest radio telescope blind after falling cable slashes 100-foot gash in reflector dish

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: That incident

I doubt the budget stretched to a trip to Aracebo, even with a TARDIS. It was most likely Goonhilly, and if not, certainly somewhere in the UK.

Bratty Uber throws tantrum, threatens to cut off California unless judge does what it says in driver labor rights row

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Ride Sharing

"Fares were low, so the driver just saved a lot of petrol money but didn’t make any money."

Yes, that works because I'd guess the law is similar in Germany as it is in the UK. You can give someone a lift and they can contribute towards your costs, but once a profit element creeps in, you need business insurance as a driver.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 100% market share for Lyft

"Is the Judge being threatened?"

In effect. yes. Uber are attempting to build outrage in their users who will direct it at the judge in attempt to get the ruling overturned. They tried this in London too and the wheels of justice ground on as usual while Uber were forced off the road for the duration. There were a few outraged tweets from Uber users wailing about how they'd get around town which amounted to nothing because there are so many alternatives anyway,

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I am conflicted on this

"high-traffic areas like Manhattan can't dish out taxi medallions willy-nilly or you're gonna end up with gridlock."

Any time I see Manhattan on TV or in films, it seems that about 50% of the vehicles are yellow Cabs and it always seems jammed :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I am conflicted on this

"I've worked with employees with that much flexibility. They'd tell us when they were available and when they weren't. We offered work, they took it or didn't. They were all employees with full rights."

That sounds like a zero hours contract, which can be great for some people with a good employer. But we already know how that system is being abused by other employers. Sadly, no matter what kind of flexibility is introduced to help people, there will be big money grubbers who will abuse it.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I am conflicted on this

"When I say flexible, I mean a totally flexible schedule, i.e., you choose how much and when to work on a weekly basis."

Not sure why you are getting so many downvotes because this is how Uber and their ilk marketed themselves in the early days and is pretty much how they operated when "ride share" was their stated aim. Since then, they have pretty much evolved into a standard Taxi company and are no longer what they claimed they were at the beginning. Clearly they have at least two classes of drivers. Those who want to contract a few hours here and there to supplement an existing income and those who see it as a full time job.

For those who may have forgotten, the original stated aim of Uber was pair up drivers going from A to B at X'o'clock with others wanting to go the same route. It wasn't about people making a living doing that randomly driving around town. That original business plan was a great idea because it had the potential to reduce traffic. The current model has just put more and more Taxis on on the road.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Call his bluff

Yep, it's not just the local incumbants either. With Lyft also there and in the firing line, who will blink first? Or are they in cahoots over this? That could turn into a cartel issue too if that happens.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Haven't been to Austin in a while

"That would be easily fixed by someone creating an app that connects you to the local options depending on where you are..."

If only mobile phones had some sort self-location facility that could link to the Google Play Store and suggest suitable local apps for those apps that are localised. Taxi apps, store finders apps etc could all benefit.

Splunk sales ace wins sex discrimination case after new boss handed her key accounts to blokes deemed 'flight risks'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Oh?

"Hopefully Splunk will get chopping and remove some of these individuals from the payroll. I don't have a great deal of confidence in that as these types are very good at looking after number 1."

Well, yes. They are sales people. The primary product they are selling is themselves. Selling actual product is secondary, no matter how they do it or at what cost, Then they sell themselves to the next sucker company before the previous one realises what deals were actually made.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: one that includes the old boys club and not any women

She's HR, not sales.

The future of signage is here, and it wants an update

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

MA are on the list of active contributors to Linux. Back in 2011 they were in the top 5 contributors. More recently it's been suggested so many of their employees are involved with and/or contributing to open source, they may actually be the world biggest open source contributor by head count. Saying that does tend to stick in the throat a bit, but it does appear to be factually accurate from a cursory web search.

Xiaomi turns 10 and celebrates by sitting down to relax in front of its new transparent television

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's a gimmick

...assuming you want it to look the fish are swimming through the air.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Possible a see-through fridge door that is also a display screen? eg retail fridges with cans of pop etc.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Transparent phone, please?

"But otherwise, yeah, not much point, and a whole TV, don't really care for that being see through when it's off.."

I just had a look behind my telly. No way in hell do I want that dusty tangled mess of cables in view either through an active display or through a clear glass turned off screen!!!!

Steve Wozniak at 70: Here's to the bloke behind Apple who wasn't a complete... turtleneck

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: There’s a quote:

"Visicalc actually did something unique and useful. And until Lotus-123 was launched in 1983, it was, so far as I know, the only spreadsheet show in town."

Just so you know, Supercalc pre-dates Lotus 1-2-3 by 3 years.

What are you gonna do? Give me detention? Illinois schools ban pyjamas in online classes

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Slippers?

"But why should anyone give a shit what I happen to have, or not have, on my feet?"

Exactly! I'm more concerned about the numbers of people who don't seem to realise we really don't want a view of their nasal hair or any bogies that might be just inside. If only people would either place their cameras a bit higher or, if like most people, are using a laptop, stick it on top of a couple of books while on video. This applies doubly so to those "meeja professionals" who seem to have managed to completely ignore what a camera operator does for them every day by making them look good.

You had one job... Just two lines of code, and now the customer's Inventory Master File has bitten the biscuit

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Adding a comment sometimes caused compile failure

"BBC BASIC went full Spinal Tap and the above statement allowed subscripts 0 to 10, thus allowing 11 members."

In terms of home/micro computers, that was pretty standard with BASIC arrays already. Both TRS-80 and Commodore PET, at least, did that.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The House of Lords

You forget the Sex Party (now sadly renamed). They deserve at least a (dis)honourable mention :-)

Apple's at it again: Things go pear-shaped for meal planner app after iGiant opposes logo

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "everything, everywhere" trademark

"OTOH, if The Donald keeps alienating every other country on the planet, the American legal system may soon find out how valid their opinion really is in the rest of the world. Good luck trying to force your own narrow self-interest on everyone when nobody's listening."

Not relevant in this case. A registered trademark in one country has no or little legal standing in another country. You need to register your trademark everywhere you plan to use it. IIRC, Apple failed to get exclusivity on "iPad" in Chain because there was already a long-standing home grown product there called iPad.

Whoops, our bad, we may have 'accidentally' let Google Home devices record your every word, sound – oops

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

The Matrix? The Forbin Project? Certain episodes of Dr Who, The Outer Limits, The Twighlight Zone?

It's not as if every generation since the invention of the computer (and earlier, eg Metropolis) hasn't been given warnings in print or film about the machine taking over.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Simple Solution

Don't forget the grounded metal box by the front door where all visitors must place their devices or be refused entry.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Until the next update (hah!) when the phone app becomes part of the Google Play Binary Blob and you have to grant the entirety of Google Play access to the mic just so you can make or take calls.

What happens when holes perfect for spyware are found in the engine room of millions of Qualcomm-based phones? Let's find out

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why do us customers bother?

"Remember a while ago (last month...) when, after Intel posted yet more security updates, it was claimed that ARM "is more secure and never have these problems"..."

When did ARM become responsible for Qualcom Snapdragon chippery?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why do us customers bother?

"these vulnerabilities will last the life of the product."

So, that would be an inherent manufacturing defect which the manufacturer or retailer is directly responsible for under the terms of the guarantee, yes? After all, if software/firmware is designed and "built" by engineers, then it's an "engineering" issue.

How did you spend your time at university? Pizza, booze, sleeping? This Oxford student is snooping on satellites

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Forget it’s a satellite link for a moment, this is nothing other than an RF connection carrying unencrypted traffic,"

This was my thought too. Few providers other than specialised ones offer in-flight encryption. Most ISPs and/or transit providers only send and receive data for their customers. It's up to the customer to decide if the want to encrypt their data. It's a non-story to anyone who has given it more than a moments thought. Anyone who hasn't given it a moments thought isn't sending anything important or is in the wrong job.

British Army does not Excel at spreadsheets: Soldiers' newly announced promotions are revoked after sorting snafu

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: Training

"some data I'm dealing with follows formatting rules from the 70s, "

Have you tried VisiCalc?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Perhaps the person

Well, at least Private Data didn't get spaffed all over the place when the data bomb went off. I wonder if the offenders name is Will? Might he be fired at?

The sun is shining, the birds are singing. You can shut the curtains and tour The National Museum of Computing in VR

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Up

More to see, even if you've been before.

Watch out for the clickable circular viewing spots up close and personal to the exhibits on the other side of the barriers. Even if you've been before, it seems you virtually get behind the barriers for a much closer look than on a real visit.

Android user chucks potential $10bn+ sueball at Google over 'spying', 'harvesting data'... this time to build supposed rival to TikTok called 'Shorts'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: "The case is McCoy v. Alphabet, Inc. et al, case number 5:20-cv-05427"

And where does Hatfield stand on all this?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Well Doh!

Not quite how it's supposed to work. What should happen is when they caught with their hands in the cookie jar and lose the case, they are supposed to stop putting their hands in the cookie jar. Not find other ways of getting the cookies out of the jar until caught again. FFS, even a 3yo can figure that out! But not $big_corp.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It is their nature

Maybe you're using the wrong setting? Mine calls it "Airplane" mode. I wonder if Airplane is translated into other languages on phones set that way? If so, why would they think all English speakers understand American and don't offer localised translations?

Search for 'things of value' in a bank: Iowa cops allege this bloke broke into one and decided on ... hand sanitiser

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: "....perhaps hand sanitiser remains highly sought after in some parts of the US"

Isn't the mid-west protected by God and therefore people don't need to worry or panic buy?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Warning labels

Mines all nice and fluffy. It's an Angel Grinder :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: the money's in the vault

I'm pretty confident that is the case in ANY bank in ANY part of the world. I can't imagine any bank would think it a good idea to leave any cash in the tellers cash drawers overnight.

I got 99 problems, and all of them are your fault

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It sometimes works the other way

"On phoning before even dropping the customers into an ACD system as limited as the FAQs, they're played a long recording to the effect that they could get in touch via the website."

Pretty much every local Council I've ever dealt with do exactly that. The helpdesk is invariably understaffed and the attempts to stop users from phoning have resulted in culling even more helldesk staff. The solution to the long wait times when phoning is the only option? Departmental "digital champions", ie people with minimal training or a "hobby interest" in IT becoming voluntary level 1 support in addition to their own job and, if lucky, get a pittance extra in their pay packets.

Toshiba formally and finally exits laptop business

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Toshiba commercial

Now it's "Bye Tosh, don't got a Toshiba!"

Trump administration labels WeChat, TikTok ‘threats’ to national security, bans transactions with both

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

The difference is that the Chinese didn't just have a strop and ban them, They may have had a strop behind closed doors, but they used their actual laws, ie they have strict censorship laws which Google et al wouldn't or couldn't adhere to. You may or may not agree with the censorship laws in China, but they are the laws in place. AFAICIS, Trump is simply going after the Chinese companies "because he can", ie they are not breaking any existing US laws.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The DeathStar analogy is apt...

"That would make Trump into Darth Vader"

Well, they reckon their Deathstar is "firing on cylinders" implying the entire things is powered by an internal combustion engine, so that will need on hell of a huge exhaust port! Easy target!

China slams 'dirty' America's 'clean network' plan, reminds world of PRISM snoop-fest exposed by Ed Snowden

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"China holds plain-vanilla U.S. Treasury bonds. Those are bearer and fungible, i.e. the U.S. can't selectively default against a holder they don't like, not without reneging on their whole debt."

The current President of the USA has form in that department. He sees bankruptcy as just another fiscal tool in the armoury.

Geneticists throw hands in the air, change gene naming rules to finally stop Microsoft Excel eating their data

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I must be missing something...

"Excel's import of text files has always been miserable, though this isn't helped by the deficiencies of the CSV format. But it really would be useful to be able to disable type inference as a preference and not fiddle with it, file by file."

Thankfully, I've not had to deal with the vagaries of CSV files and various programs' methods of imparting them for many, many years. But I do remember having to wrangle CSV files to get them into DBase II, Delta, SuperCalc and Lotus123, often writing code specific to a particular CSV file to make it look like what the destination program expected.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I must be missing something...

On the other hand, Microsofts handling of this PR kerfufle makes them look like a bit of a Gene Hunt.

Intel NDA blueprints – 20GB of source code, schematics, specs, docs – spill onto web from partners-only vault

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

...and now we know why the barge landing cameras flake out so often.

The results are in: Science says the Solar System's magnetic heliosphere looks like a deflated croissant

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: A nice cuppa

"but it's what I grew up with"

Smell and taste are fantastic memory triggers. They can bring back memories from way back in the past, and happy childhood memories are often the best for many people.

Anyone remember that horrible smelling brown liquid soap from school? :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"If they had paused at the heliopause, the heliosphere wouldn't be depressed?"

Hah! Brain larger than the solar system and all they do is poke fun at the shape of it. You wonder why it's depressed?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Aren't we lucky!

No, it's Uranus!

US voting hardware maker's shock discovery: Security improves when you actually work with the community

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: What he didn't say...

"The days of the 1990s, when companies I worked for didn't get to release new products until QA said they were allowed to, are long gone."

In general, those days are still here where the application is life or safety critical. Clearly something as critical as an election should be treated the same way. If only one of the "voting machine" builders would work that way, they'd amortise the cost over the much larger market they could command for a reletivley modest increase in the sale price.

Page: