* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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Virgin Galactic flies final test before opening for business

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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Re: A fad if they don't rethink

"Time flies by when you're the pilot of a space plane..."

Is that...Dare is say it?...you, Dan?

Intel mulls cutting ties to 16 and 32-bit support

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Ramifications

"Nobody is "booting DOS" for diagnostics in 2023, unless they are so backwards they haven't learned anything new in the past 20 years and haven't heard of Linux."

OEM diagnostics and set up tools from both Lenovo[*] and HP (at least) still do. Well, to be fair, I've not delved into either deeply enough to say what the OS is underneath, but it's text-mode, command line and doesn't show any obvious Linuxisms when booting. Most likely it's FreeDOS under the hood. Likewise, using Yumi for a multiboot pendrive is still the easiest and simplest to use IMO. UEFI Yumi still seems experimental and Ventoy still seems a bit primitive if usable.

[*] the OEM setup tool for "branding" a factory-new motherboard runs on some DOS-a-like anyway.. Lenovos bootable diagnostics run on Linux.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Microsoft is preparing for an x86_64 only world with probably only the huge investments that companies have made around 32-bit version of MS Excel holding it back."

Yeah, I wonder how closely Intel and MS are co-operating on this? Can even Win11 and enough relevant drivers work in a pure 64-bit only environment? I bet there's still loads of legacy code still in there.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 8080 and 8086

Same here. It was still early enough in the "PC" market we know now, that having CP/M running ion a PC clone using older CP/M software like WordStar etc was still a viable choice, especially if you already owned a library of CP/M programs.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Happy

Re: Spite, I tell you, spite!

That's no way to talk about this august publication!!!

Ford in reverse gear over AM radio removal after Congress threatens action

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

At least until they identified the one that hit the Pentagon and the one that crashed in Pennsylvania thanks to the passengers trying to take it back and, at that specific time, potentially more that no one yet knew about, so yeah, it affected a bit more than just those few buildings. It took quite some while to cancel all flights and get them grounded so it could indeed have been reasonable to use the EBS for a much wider area if not nationally. I'd certainly not have held it against anyone who authorised its use on that day, and I don't even live in the US.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Pirate

There seems to be a pattern in US of ignoring the regulations and then taking years to get them properly enforced later, if ever. The Starlink/mobile in-fill capability currently being talked about, DISH networks TV shenanigans, the Aircraft GPS/5G debacle. And that's just the stuff I can remember from El Reg coverage. There was even a story on BBC radio yesterday of Governor(??) in the US who dropped his phone in a resevoir while taking a selfy and ordered it drained so he could get is phone back. It was fucked, of course, a bit like his sense of entitlement and authority!

Encoded 'alien message' will reach Earth today, but relax: It's just a drill

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Encoded 'alien message' will reach Earth today, but relax: It's just a drill

Amazingly, it's not the entirety of astronomers downing tools just for this one exercise. And even those that are can multi-task, or leave detectors on auto for a while.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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Re: Message reads:

I'm pretty sure that is one of Nostrodamus; quatrains, although I always thought it referred to David Dickinson

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Do Extra-Terrestrials Speak Encryption?

Looked more like "My hovercraft is full of eels" to me.

Virgin Orbit-uary: Beardy Branson's satellite launch biz shutters

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Whatever else he may be, "techbro" is most definitely not a word I'd use for Branson! Most of his actual businesses are not tech businesses, and the rest are just branding/licencing deals, eg Virgin Media of which Branson may or may not have some shares, but definitely not control.

Microsoft finally gets around to supporting rar, gz and tar files in Windows

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"I always thought internet back in the day had compression so even if you did zip it it still took roughly the same amount of time. Did it or am I making something up my mind?"

Not "the internet" as such, but even in BBS days and especially when the WWW arrived, graphics compression was pretty important to many people, hence .GIF and JPG graphics compression. Even prior to that, there was Run Length Encoding[*], popular both as a very simple graphics encoding format and even built into hard disks, RLL hard disks generally held about 50% more than standard MFM hard disks (some people even used an RLL controller with an MFM drive, living dangerously with their data! I don't recall ever losing data using a an RLL controller to make a 20MB HDD into a 32MB HDD :-))

{*] so primitive that it basically looked for "runs" of the same value and then basically stored the information to say there was a run of 35 zeros, or 29 twelves etc, which worked ok on the basic bitmapped images that were often b/w line drawings or 8/16 colours at most. PCX a slightly more complex format, is still around but has evolved out of all recognition

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Consistency is key

And just to confuse things even more, there are only so many "human readable" 3 letter extensions so they get used, reused and recycled so who the fuck knows what a .dbf or a .pub file *actually* is until you try to open it and fail! It's not like there's any filesystems out there still in common usage that is actua\lly limited to 3 letter extensions any more. An yet new apps still come long and enforce yet another recycled 3 letter extension, confusing things even further. Let's not even go near the MS default of hiding extensions debate.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Consistency is key

Possibly because each app has to out-do the others, so they tweak the compression or the checksumming or anything they can claim makes theirs "better" and so there is a constant arms battle for market share and the punters have to keep upgrading to the next most recent version to open a file not yet supported by the other compression apps.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: but why?

"I'm curious what list of formats you think are "universal standard" ones."

The closet "universal standard" would probably be 7-bit ASCII. Apart from the languages that don't use the same alphabet, ie a fair chunk of the world. And even then, you'd still still need to install bin2hex and hex2bin to convert anything not in 7-bit ASCII.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: That's interesting,

And, something you know but forgot to mention, send a group of files in directory structure so they are extracted correctly at the other end too. Very handy.

Microsoft enables booting physical PCs directly into cloud PCs

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The problem with anything requiring a network

"The corollary... It is surprising how cheaply the great unwashed masses will sell their privacy."

Most of them have no idea that that is what is happening. Worse, most don't WANT to know so long as they get the new shiny.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: If this catches on

"[3] them's fighting words: cue being told off 'cos RDP can do that sort of thing nowadays (? it may well do better now than last time we tried it)"

Yeah, unless RDP has changed since I last used it, the problem with RDP is the D part. I don't want a whole remote desktop appearing on and taking up my whole screen so I can run one app on it. I just want the remote app to appear on my existing desktop :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Microsoft....

You guys all need to go get some support.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Interesting. A good point. Meanwhile, Linux is leaning towards Wayland, which replaces X11 with the networking bits removed, heading down the route of a stand-alone Windows like display.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"No doubt there will be a Windows 11 edition that will only use cloud PCs. And they'll pile them high and sell them cheap at your local Electr-o-Mart where average punters can enjoy being ripped off on a monthly basis, forever."

Sadly, that does seem to be the way things are going. It really took off with mobile phones, when the purchase agreement was hidden in the monthly contract payments and customers were offered a "free" upgrade every 2-3 years, ie buying a new phone as we used to call it in the old days. Then "apps" with a monthly fee to keep them working. Even cars seem to be mainly on lease agreements these days. There's a generation or two out there now who don't seem to understand the concept of owning stuff. I dread to think what will happen to them when they retire, own nothing, and can no longer afford all those monthly bills and they really didn't listen to the pension advice they were given on leaving school, ie if you don't put at least 30% away every month, you'll die in poverty, but since they want all the latest shiny and can't even begin to think about saving for a house, will never actually get around to dealing with.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Nor has it explained why

"If there was a straightforward way to boot a fully updated Windows on demand, that would be useful to me."

With per minute or per hour pricing? Sign up/set-up fee? Account "maintenance" fee payable every month "including the first 3 hours absolutely 'free'", even if you don't use it, unused minutes can't be rolled over. Special hourly rates if you use more that 23 hours in a single day! Careful what you wish for, they only want your cash, not to make you happy.

Nearly 1 in 5 academics admit close encounters of the anomalous kind

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Coat

Re: Interpretations of Natural Things

Was it Christmas?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"caused by a natural event" is a still a belief not a fact if they don't what the event was that caused it.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

Re: Cool

Yeabut, I built my rocket engine from Dark Matter and powered it with Dark Energy. And I have my handy dandy worm-hole opener too. Plug them numbers into your calculator matey!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Cool

"Even mouth-breathing Fox viewers (whatever they are)"

Me too. If a mouth isn't for breathing, why is it connected to ones airway? If the poster thinks only the nose is for breathing, why can't I eat and drink at the same time via my mouth? He used the phrase at least three times, so I suppose it must have sort of cultural or religious significance in his locality :-)

I'm currently suffering from hay-fever and very grateful for the fact I can be a "mouth breather". The other option would be being dead.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Alien

Re: UAPs, previously known as UFOs

Yes, I well remember the entire second or two I was convinced a UFO was pacing my car as a drove up the motorway at night that I saw out of the corner of my eye. Then I remembered the new cigar-lighter USB adaptor I'd plugged in with it's red LED indicator in the centre console that was now nicely reflecting of the slightly curved side window :-)

Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 just has this certain Macbook Air about it...

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"At least the left Ctrl key is back where it should be."

I know! It's very confusing when the left ctrl key is on the right. It needs to be in it's proper place :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Soldered SSD ?

"Not mentioned in this article if this device has or not"

The hardware service manual says not. But the RAM is :-(

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Windows repair?

"I've never understood the purpose of Windows Repair."

Think of Windows Repair as being the level 1 service/help desk. It can fix the most basic of problems, ie the most common ones, the sort those us with a bit of experience rarely cause because most of the time we know what we are doing. But your average user, who doesn't always understand why Windows should be shutdown properly or the battery should not be forced to keep going even after the OS warned you to shutdown or plug in, or who doesn't understand the difference between Restart and Shutdown (helpfully obscured and bastardised my MS), or or or etc and "break" things the equivalent of "is it properly plugged in" and "have you tried turning it off and on again" situations that 90% of users have 90% of the time when there is a "problem".

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: USB

Based on that, you are not the target market. the Z16 is more what you'd be looking for. 2xUSB4 & SD card reader on the left side and 1xUSB3 on the right edge.

Looking at the shape and size of the Z13 and Z16 system boards, I'm not sure they could fit more ports there without interconnects and daughter boards. They both look to have some pretty hefty heatsinks and dual fans too.

The Hardware Service Manual is interesting. The entire screen assembly is classed a single unit, so no replacement of a failed camera without a new screen and even the CPU cooler is not classed as a Customer Replaceable Unit, which is unusual even for Lenovo. WiFi is built-in on the system board, Wireless WAN and SSD are both plug-in devices and, unusually for a business grade Thinkpad, soldered on RAM with NO DIMM slot for additional RAM, which will be a deal breaker for many readers here.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: USB

"that are small enough to fit in a bag."

s/bag/pocket/ :-) Admittedly, mine doesn't have the SD card reader but it's small enough that I sometimes have to rummage around in the bottom of the laptop bag to find it. There's plenty of really small ones to pick from these days, pretty cheap, work just fine.

I agree with other posters about the limits of only two USB ports on this new model, but it's not as if a power user wanting to plug in multiple devices in all sorts of different locations isn't going to know what they are buying up front. They'll either buy something with the ports they need already built in or probably already have hubs/docks/adaptors they need anyway. I think someone earlier also wonder why Lenovo don't provide a PSU with ports on. Well, the answer is probably that they looked at the market and calculated that making it an optional extra or 3rd party purchase is better and cheaper for the few that want one rather than providing one in every box by default. Sort of the same argument for mobile phones often not coming with a PSU by default these days. Saving on waste and improving their "green credentials". Which kinda makes sense.

More UK councils caught by Capita's open AWS bucket blunder

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hmmm

And another is one of Ank Morporks finest!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"which is why they 1. outsourced to 2. the lowest bidder."

I was speaking with a guy who handles a local councils outsourcing and procurement deals a couple of years back and he said they are legally obliged to go with the lowest bidder who can meet the criteria, even when they have an existing and preferred supplier and really don't want to go with the actual lowest bidder because they know they will shit service. The best they can hope for is that they can get or keep in enough penalty clauses to mitigate the problem they know will come down the line. But the big outsourcers and/or suppliers can afford much better lawyers.

Microsoft and Helion's fusion deal has an alternative energy

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: It's a sure thing

"I'm hearing echoes of Theranos"

Same here. With MS associated with them, even if only as a potential customer, others who know little about the tech or the industry will likely invest, exactly the way Theranos got more investors based on existing "high profile" but otherwise ignorant investors.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Boffin

Re: It's a sure thing

I wonder if I should be having my granite kitchen counters tested? Or is that why my baked good seem to be better now than when I had wood counters?

China seeks space cargo launches well below prices NASA pays SpaceX

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: The metric tonne - 1000kg

I think it's just one of those long winded exclamations so many Americans are fond of and they probably have no idea what a "metric tonne" is. They just know it's "a lot". eg phrases like "there's gonna a metric fuck-ton of pain commin' your way" hard-man Hollywood-style :-)

And anyway, from what I see of US TV and movies, few people other than in certain industries ever use tons of any kind. Everything seems to be in pounds, at least into the 10's of thousands, maybe even the 100's of 1000's. Maybe they just like huge numbers as compensation for other short comings? :-)

(Someone should tell them there are more centimetres than inches when measuring lengths. You only got 6? I got 15 mate! LOL)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Yes, when they are being created and haven't been publicly announced. Getting a heads-up in advance can be very lucrative when you more time to prepare in advance of the upcoming changes. Ideally, all tax changes should be flagged so far in advance that even a sneaky and surreptitious early warning would be of no real help, but we all know how governments like to introduce changes to increase the tax take so they are implemented almost instantly while those changes which reduce the tax take are announced to take effect in the next tax year (or even later in some cases), especially if they can announce the tax reductions multiple times so it appears there are even more reductions than are actually happening :-)

Sci-fi author 'writes' 97 AI-generated tales in nine months

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: “Impressive returns”, or not.

Each story can be sold as a "book" purely because they are e-books. The economics would never stack up in the dead tree world so you'd have to stick a bunch together and call it a collection or anthology. There are plenty of "classic" shorts out there of those word counts, even some very much shorter, but would never be published standalone. It's how many aither get started, being published in magazines etc. Surely you bought Playboy to read the articles and stories like the rest of us. Or did you just buy yours for the pictures? :-)

Teen in court after '$600K swiped from DraftKings gamblers'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

It was DraftKings customers who were robbed.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
WTF?

relevant jurisdictions?

""DraftKings provided notice to customers in relevant jurisdictions..."

What does "relevant jurisdictions" mean in this context? It seems redundant, unless they really mean to say that those customers not living in jurisdictions where notification of a data breach is required were NOT told about it. In which case "The safety and security of our customers' personal and payment information is of paramount importance to DraftKings," is a lie.

Phones' facial recog tech 'fooled' by low-res 2D photo

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Biometrics!

"A password you can never change, and which you leave around everywhere you go! Best idea ever!"

Exactly! It's more akin to a user name than a password. You rarely, if ever, want to change your username. A password needs to be easily but securely changeable for various reasons. If your password is compromised, for example. If your biometric hash is compromised, you can't really change it so your screwed.

On the other hand, law enforcement probably quite like face unlocking. "Is this your locked phone sir?", holding it up to the likely owner. "Oh look. It's unlocked now! Good-oh!". At least for the more secure versions of facial recog. Clearly for the cheaper phones, you just need the official police mug-shot, or something fairly close :-)

Russian IT guy sent to labor camp for DDoSing Kremlin websites

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Alert

Re: Possibilities

Or at least make sure it's a ground floor window.

Guess who is collecting and sharing abortion-related data?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Pirate

Re: The USA

Or just have enough political/societal/moral divisions on as many topics as possible so there's always an "us" to surveil the "them" because "them" are clearly Satan worshipping heathens who going to bun in hell for all eternity if they don't agree with "us".

Freedom, the great American "right". So long as you agree with "us"

Meta facing third fine of 2023 for mishandling EU user data under GDPR

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
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Re: Easy fix

The UK government, at least, possibly others, were kicking around the idea of using Facebook as a login gatekeeper for public access to government services a while ago. It might be a different story if that had come to pass.

Don't panic. Google offering scary .zip and .mov domains is not the end of the world

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

".sh is potentially quite dangerous, but most people don't know what a shell file is to start with and hopefully (!) won't try and run it. It won't get you very far on Windows anyway."

It won't get you far on Linux either unless you manually chmod it to give it execute permission. If the system automatically gives it execute permission because you downloaded and executable script, then the OS and browser are VERY badly misconfigured and you already have MUCH bigger problems :-)

Electric two-wheelers are set to scoot past EVs in road race

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Lesson from history

"An eBike isn't a good fit for me."

...and don't forget, I'm talking about EV equivalents of everything from a basic Honda 50 moped up to a Harley hauling a trailer or with a sidecar fitted, not just a standard pedal cycle with electric assist, which is what most people envision when you say "eBike" :-) Something for everyone :-)

Cheapest, oldest, slowest part fixed very modern Mac

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Bridge technologies

Same here, including the Amiga experience (CD-ROM and Zip drive). The only time I recall a specific SCSI problem wasn't a SCSI problem per se, more of a firmware compatibility issue. The card wouldn't boot with the default F/W version on a Compaq server with a F/W level below some version# or other. Guess which combo I had to deal with. Unfortunately, the only box the card would go in was the wrong one! Bit of a catch-22 since the card had to go in something for it's firmware to be upgraded. (It was a WFH customer even all those years ago). Had to go to another site to do the f/w upgrade then return to site to replace the failed card which thankfully booted first time and pulled the RAID config data from the drives so almost Plug'n'Play :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I can never ....

Yes, but ALWAYS widdershins first THEN deosil or it won't work!

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