Posts by NoneSuch

Wargames Reference.

The only way to win, is not to play.

Meanwhile...

Amazon workers have begun wearing wooden shows to work.

(Few will get the reference, but I though it punny)

Re: Bravo

"Let’s get rid of Google. They’re a cancer."

Facebook first. Then Microsoft / Amazon. Then we'll discuss Google.

Re: I have just one question

An attack on infrastructure from Russia could be construed as an attack on a NATO member.

Putin is no idiot. He's a lair, bully, overconfident and deluded, but not an idiot.

Competition is always good for the consumer.

Microsoft knows this. That's why they buy out so many of theirs.

Windows 11, or Windows 10 - Integrated MS Spyware Edition, is garbage.

Spent fifteen minutes helping the neighbour set up his new laptop on his printers and vowed to never use it again.

When I leave W10, I'm going straight to Linux Mint.

Slamming the phone down is reflexive, but if you don't TELL them not to call again, they can, and will.

If you tell them not to call again and they do, then you have recourse in several jurisdictions.

Work phone only here. If it isn't my boss or colleagues it goes to voicemail which says "Do not call this number for marketing or robo calls..."

Simple Cooperation Technique

Find the IBM Board of Directors and senior execs in contempt of court and lock them up. The board, CEO, CIO, Head of HR, lead legal counsel, the lot.

Then be amazed at how many documents arrive within hours.

Do it once. Just once, and for the next ten years you will have no warrant issues with corporations.

Re: rule 1

B: Admit nothing and cover your tracks.

The mantra of the IT professional. AKA CYA.

Subscriptions make accountants happy.

And anything that makes an accountant happy is a BAD thing.

When corporations started making billions invading privacy with cookies / data mining, when they began offering MS in the cloud for a monthly fee (while cutting on-prem functionality) and when state sponsored hackers began undermining everything, we should have stood up as one and said, "No, enough!" Instead, people gave up their privacy for emoji's, businesses paid MS so they could have cute animated GIF's in Teams and governments placed their own selfish needs above the people they are supposed to represent.

We, as a free society, have lost. The freedoms we signed away in one sided EULA and orders from secret courts are never coming back without stark measures. Democracies no longer exist as governments have stopped looking out for their citizens unless there are votes to be gained. Laws are broken daily by corrupt politicians / civil servants filling up their bank accounts and no one is punished. Greedy corporations sacrifice hundreds of human lives for a bigger profit margin for their shareholders while paying millions to large law firms to protect their reputations. GDPR fines to Google, multiple Boeing 737 MAX crashes, the 2008 real estate collapse caused by outright deception and multi-million dollar CEO payouts while their workers make minimum wage under draconian conditions. That's just the price of doing business.

We, as a species, have no right to go to space and inhabit other worlds until we clean up our act and start making personal responsibility mean something again. If the Boeing board had faced Felony jail time for the MAX deaths, airplane safety would improve dramatically as one example.

Corporations are recognized as "people" in the US so they can make political donations. Time for the board members to be treated as "people" in the eyes of the law. Lock up one crooked politician or corrupt CEO and the rest will fall in line very quickly.

Re: "Have you seen the forms?"

Report the error to the link at the bottom of every article. It is usually fixed in minutes.

Re: Browsers

I use Brave as my daily driver with DuckDuckGo as my search engine. Based on Chromium, but no Google hooks. Blocks lots of the crap automatically and I have granular control over what it does run. Plus, it has a decent Dark Mode.

I run Google search and my work Gmail accounts in Chrome for browser separation. Everything else is in Brave.

Give it a shot.

There is no reason why any MS software cannot be uninstalled. Their 'hard wiring' of Edge, Cortana, Bing and all the other data slurping software is designed to make them money and screw your personal privacy. Windows is spyware on a grand scale with its legality enforced because you clicked acceptance to their ToS.

Anyone doing what MS did independently would be hunted like a dog by the FBI and jailed indefinitely in a SuperMax.

"The only way to win is not to play." War Games, 1983.

Re: 3+ for internal ?

Most managers get promoted by not getting caught.

First Amendment Says Yes You Can Say That...

Amazon says No. No, you can't.

Any corporation that only wants to hear good things is doomed.

Re: Of course...

"Mossad would never do something like this, would it? It's another case of pot meeting the kettle."

Mossad pioneered a lot of this along with GCHQ and NSA. It's necessary to keep tabs on journalists and their sources. Oops, I mean terrorists and their supporters. How silly of me.

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

I sound like a premise in a buddy cop movie, but I'm close to retirement and looking forward to a MS free house.

The number of times Microbork has disappointed me after releasing glowing marketing horse dung would kill someone coming out of school today. They care nothing about your privacy, freedoms or choices and offer crap product for a monthly fee.

Apple Silicon Running Linux

No walled garden, better stability, much better support and a chance of figuring things out on your own without getting a devban from Cupertino. .

Re: Extra credit

Microsoft did that, a lot.

After seventeen hours straight being on the phone with several Indian consultants for an Exchange 2010 issue, I got transferred to a guy in Dallas who really knew his stuff. Took him six hours of rebuilding my Exchange files to sort out my issues (including the ones introduced by the other engineers.) Last part of the call he told me he was the last Dallas staffer. The rest of the Exchange group had been let go after training their replacements in Mumbai. He was due to clock out five months earlier, but they kept extending his contract a month at a time. He knew the systems inside out and the Indian call center guys kept referring the tough cases to him.

He confided that this was his last month come what may as he had a new job lined up. Stupidly, the re-engagement employment contract they had him sign had no notification clause. They came to him on the last day of the month long contract with a new one for him to sign. At the end of his contract, he could just walk away and he the intention to do just that on the last day.

A brilliant engineer sacrificed for Microsoft's bottom line.

PS. The quality of the Indian call-centers has improved dramatically since then and I'm not slamming them as individuals. However, at that time in history, their skills were remarkably underdeveloped.

"really simple: DON'T use products that phone home. They are insecure by design if they phone home. I never saw libreoffice complain about being on an air-gapped machine."

Start by using Linux and go from there. That runs Lire Office nicely.

Re: "Engrave Danger"

It should just be China, not Hong Kong and China. Hong Kong is no longer independent and with the PLC crackdowns and BS "support your government or else" laws in effect, there is no difference anymore.

Once Russia is sorted out with sanctions, attention should turn full onto China and their belligerent attitude towards their maritime and bordering neighbors.

The "South China Sea" should be renamed "South Pacific Sea," or something else neutral. Their artificial atolls should be isolated and blockaded until they leave. Taiwan should be recognized by all democracies and Tibet freed.

It's time to promote democracy, along with human rights and freedoms globally. The time of despots is over.

Re: Canada Kissing US Rearward-Facing Growths, Again

When travelling through the US I always factory reset my phone on the inbound flight.

That is the recommended process after a firmware upgrade. If I'm ever asked to unlock my phone, I hand it over and say "There is no password," and they can take any data created during the reset, which is very little. It's a work phone and easily recreated once I clear Customs.

If asked to sign into my accounts, I refuse. They have the right to inspect any data on the phone. You have no obligation to sign into any account that does not exist on the device.

FYI.

"Do evil," makes more money than "Do no evil."

That's the market. Blame scalpers and miners.

I had budget for a new 5000 Threadripper. Now that dream has evaporated I'm looking elsewhere. If that chip can play Crysis, I'll take two.

The plural of die, is massacre.

Re: Google is in bed with the NSA

It's easier to apologize than ask for permission.

At least until those nasty multi-Billion Euro fines come along, but even those don't stop the abuses.

Few objected to US - UK Gov / Google / Microsoft / Meta / Apple et al pillaging of personal info. Now you've pretty much given up those rights for convenience. Getting them restored will take ten times the work of stopping it in the first place. Thank God the EU at least tries to keep them accountable.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke.

China, Russia and North Korea are living examples of this. Where will you be in twenty years?

Re: Actually...

I'd bet some Intel (and ARM / AMD) engineer is making a decent living as a part-time consultant for the NSA.

There's no way these continuously exposed "flaws" are accidental when seen on different generations of chip designs and across multiple vendors.

The one thing you can be assured of is Microsoft is hoping for a way to make more money from this situation.

Their silence is hoping the storm passes with them doing nothing.

Re: I was there

Productivity has gone way down.

Back then, all you dealt with was pure coding. Now you have MS continually interrupting you with pop-ups to sign into their (unnecessary) services, an OS that spies on you and multiple features you cannot turn off or uninstall.

The minimal install size for a program generated using MS coding tools today is eye-wateringly ridiculous.