* Posts by Jonathan 27

451 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jun 2010

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Non-existent sex robots already burning holes in men’s pockets

Jonathan 27

Re: I want one.

I don't trust maids. I'm personally MORE interested in the idea of cleaning robots than sex robots.

Jimbo Welshes on pledge to stop fundraising

Jonathan 27

As expected from "Khmer Rouge in diapers".

Oracle finally targets Java non-payers – six years after plucking Sun

Jonathan 27

That's a pretty limited use case. There isn't really much case for a rich browser-based internet client that can't be filled by standardized HTML and Javascript. The reason everyone is moving away from 3rd party browser plugins is primarily compatibility, with a side of security and reliability. Frankly, for anything I'm working on Java is never an option because everything has to be compatible with phones and tablets.

The only places you can still use Java on web applications is for internal company applications at a company that mandates the client configuration and with bring your own device very popular these days those places are a dying breed. And as for desktop applications those Applet in a window apps were always awful, regardless of if they were Java, Flash or Sliverlight.

Stung by Dynamics 365 hike? Microsoft has a deal for you... just don't expect much

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

Trying to push people towards Salesforce then?

Chap creates Slack client for Commodore 64

Jonathan 27

Fake Story

So how is a slack client that runs on an rPi and just pushes input and output to a Commodore 64 a "Slack Client for Commodore 64"? It's just using the Commodore as a dumb terminal. It's the difference between an interesting project and something I could knock off in 10 minutes.

What will happen when I'm too old to push? (buttons, that is)

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

I don't know about that, my 70 year old father asked for a tablet for Christmas two years ago and after a month or so it was his go-to computing device. It might have taken him a few weeks to get the touchscreen down, but he now loves the thing. I didn't even have to show him how to use it, it figured it out on his own.

Excel abuse hits new heights as dev uses VBA to code spreadsheet messaging app

Jonathan 27

This sounds like another example of "wrong tool for the task". If they have Office, wouldn't it make sense to do this in Access, all the controls are in there already. You could have your "messaging app" written in about an hour and messages wouldn't take 40 seconds. Also, you won't hit the issue Excel does as your workbook expands. The solution in the article won't scale very well and will eventually corrupt the "server" worksheet.

Latest Intel, AMD chips will only run Windows 10 ... and Linux, BSD, OS X

Jonathan 27

Then just buy Sky Lake instead, there is nearly no performance difference.

Adobe ices ColdFusion server admin password, file hack hole

Jonathan 27

It's not the age of the platform as a whole, but the age of the feature-set. PHP has been updated many times (as is still not considered state of the art), and includes full class support among other things. ColdFusion is very much behind the times feature-wise. I work with a wide variety of programming languages, including ColdFusion and I would not recommend it for future projects. Adobe is just barely keeping the product alive at this point and you can be more productive using other tools.

If you're one of those guys who "only knows ColdFusion", start learning Python, .NET MVC, Node.JS or Ruby on Rails. ColdFusion has passed its best before date at this point.

L0phtCrack's back! Crack hack app whacks Windows 10 trash hashes

Jonathan 27

What did I say about Linux? But since you brought it up, I might as well pick apart that man page. Salting is industry standard practice, if it wasn't salting the password it would be an issue. You don't get extra points for doing things that are standard practice, you lose them for not doing them.

So, to follow that up. SHA512 is better than NTLM, but if Microsoft is going to change to a new hash, they should go for best in class and not just the trailing edge of what's considered passable today.

Jonathan 27

SHA-512 isn't really a good option to move to either. Yes, it's a bit more complex than NTLM, but it's not anywhere near as time consuming as the algorithms designed for passwords like PBKDF2 (you can use SHA-512 as the cipher if you like) or scrypt.

Robot babies fail in role as teenage sex deterrents

Jonathan 27

Have they tried just giving out free condoms instead?

Tech fails miserably in Forbes' most innovative companies

Jonathan 27

Dinosaur

Who cares what the editors of Forbes think? The only way Forbes would be relevant is if you hopped in a time machine back to 1985.

Google's brand new OS could replace Android

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

They had to do something to make user-mode drivers a reality. I'm not surprised Google is trying this. But it's not likely that it will replace Android. It's more likely to be a new Android that this forms the kernel of.

Nobody expects... a surprise haemorrhoid operation

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

I think it would be much less likely in America, even if there weren't any more rules. The average American who is asked to undress and lie down on a table when they're in to witness their wife giving birth says "no way in hell".

P.S. I don't think this guy should have to pay a dime, in the USA he would be able to sue the hospital for damages.

Latest Androids have 'god mode' hack hole, thanks to Qualcomm

Jonathan 27

Moto X Play, up to date

I have Marshmallow and all the current updates for the Moto X Play, all 4 vulnerabilities. I don't think I would have bought this phone if I had known Moto was switching to a Samsung-like update policy.

Oh, and my Pixel C is immune, of course.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update is borking boxen everywhere

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

"Every 2nd freaking update decides to change my keyboard to UK layout"

Mine keeps trying to change the layout to the Canadian Multilingual layout, a layout that no one uses anywhere. 90% of Canada uses the US layout and the other 10% uses the Canadian French keyboard layout. I keep going in to the control panel and deleting it and it keeps coming back.

Classic Shell hackers: We infected FossHub so ransomware couldn't (and yeah, also for fun)

Jonathan 27

This article is a little confusing, does this only affect MBR discs or GPT as well?

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

Try to reduce the amount you care about how incompetent your boss/bosses are. I find that to be my biggest issue with my job and the less I care about it and work around there instead of with them the better I feel.

Windows Phone users beg Pokémon Go creators for attention

Jonathan 27

I'm pretty sure they're not going to do anything about this. Pokemon Go gains 40,000 players every day.

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

40 thousand? Did everyone who owns a Windows Phone sign up?

HPE CEO Meg Whitman endorses Hillary Clinton, dumps on Trump

Jonathan 27

3rd Party

Don't like it? Vote for a third party. It's a protest even though they won't win. If a large percentage of voters vote outside of the entrenched overly corrupt parties it will show them that things can change.

Windows 10 pain: Reg man has 75 per cent upgrade failure rate

Jonathan 27

If you have a problem, try a fresh install. I've found it generally solves any upgrade-related issues with Windows 10.

Anyone who says any Linux distro is easier to install or update than Windows is crazy. My most recent Linux install (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS) was the easiest install I've ever done, but still I couldn't get Nvidia's switchable graphics to work, even on proprietary drivers. I had to try 4 different driver versions (all of which came from Ubuntu "tested" repositories) before I could get one that actually worked. I also get a "Something has crashed" error every time I log in, but it doesn't seem to cause any issues.

The last time I installed Fedora (last year) it took me weeks before everything was working properly. And you know what I think about in-place distro upgrades? Backup backup backup. I think only 1/4 to 1/2 of the times I've tried one of those has it worked properly. At this point I only do it if I have time to do a reinstall.

To sum that up, linux is really useful, but it's not as easy to install or update as Windows, Mac OS, Android or iOS. But hey, pretty much every distro beats FreeBSD!

Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update tweaked to stop you disabling app promos

Jonathan 27

I"m slowly moving towards using Linux for more and more. If only more games were available I wouldn't need Windows.

Tesla autopilot driver 'was speeding' moments before death – prelim report

Jonathan 27

Re: I remember that accident - only in 1967!

So what you're saying is that I need to trade my Mazda 3 in for a car with a longer hood? New Mustang here I come!

Jonathan 27

Re: Mansfield bars???

That's what they call them in 'Murica, yes.

Captain Piccard's planet-orbiting solar aircraft in warped drive drama

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

17 legs doesn't count. That's 17 more stops than is necessary to claim you flew around the world.

Looking good, Gnome: Digesting the Delhi in our belly

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

I actually prefer Gnome 3 to any other Linux desktop environment. Yes, a few years ago it was buggy as hell and weirdly slow for no reason, but they've corrected that now.

My primary reason for liking Gnome 3 is that the interface gets out of your way. All you have to constantly visible widgets is the bar at the top of the screen. I don't want a huge grab-bag of UI elements plastered across the screen all the time (XCFE is good for this as well). Everything looks good and it's easy to customize. Support for High-DPI screens is pretty good too as is touchscreen support, both of which matter to me because I primarily use it on a 15" 4K laptop with a touchscreen.

I'm currently using Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 and it's working for me. I don't like the unmovable shortcut menu, unified menus (yes I know this is optional now) and overall feeling of self-righteous smugness about the design. It's about at Apple level of telling me what I want. Integration with 3rd party apps can be poor as well, with menus in the wrong place and small graphical annoyances.

I'm not saying you should use Gnome 3, just that I like it. If you don't I recommend XFCE or Cinnamon.

Salesforce bins all Android phones bar Nexii and Galaxies

Jonathan 27

Salesforce has plenty of competitors, maybe this will give some of them a chance to steal some of their customers aware.

Full Linux-on-PS4 hits Github

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

That's idiotic, who else could have put the equivalent of a mid-range discrete GPU on the same chip as a x86 CPU equivalent to the one in the PS4?

Oh right, no one. And your idea that AMD hasn't done anything interesting since the K6-II is just as stupid. AMD lead Intel in performance from the launch of the Athlon until the launch of the Core 2.

Maybe next time you should mention some of the stupid things AMD has done recently, like selling the same "high-end" chip series for 4 years despite it not even being competitive at launch. Or how they've now lost the lead they had on Intel in iGPUs.

GitHub: We're sorry (again) about (another) outage

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

How do you benefit in this scenario, you're still at work, all you're doing is killing yourself later to hit the deadline. "Goofing off" at work is for idiots.

Windows 10 won't come to old WinPhones until some time in early 2016

Jonathan 27

Re: Which is worse

It outperforms Windows 7, Major Linux distros and MacOS in tests so why do you think it's bloated?

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

Right, and you don't have to worry about missing major updates because BB10 is essentially abandoned so there won't be any.

Big mistake, Google. Big mistake: Chrome OS to be 'folded into Android'

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

That distinction only exists in UK English.

Work from home when the next big Windows 10 installation arrives

Jonathan 27

Can I finally join it to my Domain?

No 4King way: Dolby snuggles its high-def TV tech into MStar SoCs

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

Does anyone really care that much about high-dynamic range? Most people don't care enough to bother upgrading from 1080p, and I doubt this will change a thing.

You know when you spill your drink but keep on dancing anyway? That's totally Intel right now

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

I guess this is what happens when you don't listen to your customers and release 4 generations of CPUs that aren't significantly faster than the previous one. Devoting 60% plus of the die to graphics that are still worthless is not a great strategy. Most people would be happy with 1/4 of that for the GPU and everyone else buys a discrete GPU anyway.

Watch out Seagate: Here comes WD with a hybrid flash/disk drive launch

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

Seeing as SATA Express is a flash in the pan connector that most new boards don't even have, I'd say this has quite limited applications.

Vintage Ask toolbar is malware – and we'll kill Jeeves, says Microsoft

Jonathan 27

I just disable IE's extension support for my older relatives, it solves a lot or problems.

MORE Windows 10 bugs! Too many Start menu apps BREAK it

Jonathan 27

I never ran into this problem with the beta, I used it for 6 months. I've got a lot of junk installed, games and development tools.

Apple Watch is such a flop it's the world's top-selling wearable

Jonathan 27

I think it will be more interesting to see how many they sell in the next quarter, after the initial rush of people who bought one without actually knowing anything about it dies down.

'Real' vampires reluctant to 'come out of the coffin' to social workers – barmy prof

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

I don't know, if you're not undead, you can't be a real vampire.

P.S. destroying a vampire is not illegal because it can't be classified as murder. Do you really want to tell people you're a vampire? It gives them plenty excuse to murder you and claim they thought you were a real vampire. Vampires also can't vote and have no human rights.

Microsoft's magic hurts: Nadella signals 'tough choices' on the way

Jonathan 27

Foregone Conclusion

Microsoft has bungled the sales and marketing of Windows Phone from day one. They dropped support for all Windows Phone 7 handsets, after saying they wouldn't and that included devices that were only a few months old. Updates for the OS were slow and lacking in features and marketing support was functionally non-existent. Microsoft seems to think that people will buy it's phones based on name recognition alone and that's just not going to happen. Right now Windows Phone is in the state it needed to be at at launch, more than 4 years ago. Not only that they keep changing the SDK you need to develop to. Windows Phone 7, 8 and now 10 have different tooling and APIs. Sure, some of the code ported over easy, but only if you were lucky. The result is that what is a fairly new OS overall has to ship with 3 sets of APIs to support all existing apps.

The interface design behind Windows Phone was a great idea, that they've been slowly making worse with each version. Everyone else Microsoft has bungled badly. You hear a lot about "App Support", as if more apps is all that would be needed to make Windows Phone competitive. that's silly, Apps come if you sell enough phones, not before (and constantly changing your platform so that apps need to be constantly rewritten doesn't help). Take it from a previous Windows Phone (and current iOS and Android) developer, apps will only show up if we think they'll sell. I don't develop for Windows Phone (or BlackBerry) anymore because it's not worth my time. You need a compelling product to make those sales and people need to want that product. Microsoft doesn't know how to market hardware and it almost doesn't matter how good their hardware is, they can't seem to move it.

MARIO MOBES: Nintendo hooks up with DeNA, births NX gaming system

Jonathan 27

How long before they're selling "Mario Boom" (which will be terrible) for PS4 and Xbox One?

Mozilla: We don't give a damn about cheap smartphones

Jonathan 27

Too many mobile platforms make devs lives a pain. As a dev that means I must hate FireFox OS on principle. That and an OS based entirely around web apps is kinda pointless.

Sorry, Windows 10 early adopters: Microsoft Edge WON'T block ads at launch

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

Longhorn was Windows Vista, not XP. XP was Whistler.

'Android on Windows': Microsoft tightens noose around neck, climbs on chair

Jonathan 27

I actually liked Windows Phone, but Microsoft has done everything possible to torpedo the OS. They've spent millions integrating the Windows Phone and Windows codebases with little benefit, all the while not adding anything useful to Windows Phone and actually making the interface worse.

They also lost all of their biggest supporters when they dropped support of ALL Windows Phone 7 devices, some of which were only a few months old, when they launched Windows Phone 8 and the whole thing has been down hill ever since. Now, in following BlackBerry into the realm of giving up entirely they've essentially admitted that they think that their phones are totally doomed. What happened to hyping universal apps? Might as well just give up at this point.

Microsoft set to penetrate Cyanogen, promises app-y ending

Jonathan 27

Sounds like Microsoft is going to "buy 'em out", in the style of Bill Gates on The Simpsons.

Microsoft: Profit DECIMATED because you people aren't buying PCs

Jonathan 27

Yeah...

Yup, copying Apple is their plan alright.

Pitch Black: New BlackBerry Classic is aimed at the old-school

Jonathan 27

I predict they'll be a huge flop, BlackBerry is the laughing stock of the industry and their sales numbers are getting murdered by Windows Phone. If Microsoft is destroying your phone sales numbers it's time to pack it in.

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