* Posts by Sandtitz

1706 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2010

HPEeeeeek! Our sales have been decimated by worldwide slowdown, trade wars, say execs

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Facepalm

Re: Not looking good

"Carl Icahn circling?"

Icahn is circiling HP & Xerox. This article is about HPE.

Microsoft stocking fillers: Powershell 7, maybe even next year's Windows 10. But forget about Surface Earbuds

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Facepalm

Re: "the ability to nuke a PC from orbit by installing directly from the cloud"

"Typical."

Silly you.

"here comes Microsoft who imagines that everyone had a gigabit connection and nothing to fear from hackers"

How so? Directly installing from an internet server is nothing new. Apple has done this for almost a decade and e.g. my HP laptop has an OS recovery download option built-in.

This is only an avenue to download an OS to a blank drive.

"I'm just waiting for the patch that will "ensure that the cloud service called is a proper Microsoft-certified server" and not an unregistered 3rd-party server in Hacker Homeland."

So far MS servers have not served malware, so where do you base your FUD?

Just don't mention this.

From July, you better be Putin these Kremlin-approved apps on gadgets sold in Russia

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Stop

Re: I know this is article just part of the anti Russia propaganda

So it's anti-Russia propaganda for El Reg to report of the decision made in Duma?

Living in an adjacent country to Russia where a whole lot of Russians are already making daily visits to buy food, clothing, electronics etc - this will just make more citizens to cross borders for their electronics.

Microsoft joins Google and Mozilla in adopting DNS over HTTPS data security protocol

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Re: Windows Server

"Curious here: how will all of this work with captive portals?

i.e. when I connect to the 'free' wifi network on the subway, a captive portal opens which I have to click an 'I agree' button."

Perhaps some of them will break.

If the user is first redirected to a web page with only an IP address - the captive portal should work.

At least Firefox can be configured to use traditional DNS as a fallback if DoH queries fail. (network.trr.mode=2) So it still should work.

Intel end-of-lifing BIOS and driver downloads for dusty hardware

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Boffin

Re: Hosting Costs

"The "cost" is probably more in the management of the website."

What Intel only needs to do is place all files on an FTP site, and keep a FILE_ID.DIZ (I'm nostalgic) with description for all downloads. Keeping all the BIOS and related files for all Intel motherboards (pre-2010) would take what, a couple gigabytes?

NB: my Intel Zappa (1994-1995?) was a great motherboard with a 3rd party BIOS. The stock BIOS was limited to 8GB hard drives, because Intel didn't bother to code LBA support in it. The MRBIOS update had that and many other features as well.

The silence of the racks is deafening, production gear has gone dark – so which wire do we cut?

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re:Identification light on servers

"IIRC, it was Dell PowerEdge series servers."

I'm pretty sure it was Compaq DL380 G2 that introduced the UID button, back in 2001. (?)

Don't miss this patch: Bad Intel drivers give hackers a backdoor to the Windows kernel

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Stop

Re: Trust Me. I'm a Microsoftie

"In one of their Scooby-Doo raids in the past to keep out BSDs, Linux etc. etc., didn't poor old Microsoft call this sort of thing, 'Trusted Computing' ?"

Trusted Computing includes many things, not just the TPM part. Trusted Computing Group was formed by AMD, Intel, MS, HP and IBM (according to Wikipedia). Are you sure they're not all conspiring against 'BSD, Linux etc. etc.'?

I remember conspiracy theories how TPM chip was going to end Linux usage. Obviously didn't happen, but people here still are scared by with its magic sauce. Just like AMD and Intel are not open yet everyone are using them without a second thought.

The same arguments with TPM were (re-)used with ACPI (Linux support was patchy when introduced), UEFI (same) and Secure Boot as well. I don't think any of those affected Linux usage at all since ACPI computers still had APM, BIOS support is/was still there and Secure Boot can be toggled on/off, and it was toggled off many times because people and companies wanted to run Win7 instead of Win8.

From AV to oy-vey: McAfee antivirus has security hole of its own

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WTF?

@Cavehomme

"Checked my home PC and mine is 16.0.R22

That means that some people are using SERIOUSLY outdated versions of McAfee

ElReg reader actually using McAfee at home? The mind boggles.

DXC's new boss has quite the cleanup ahead after frankenfirm exits Q2 nursing $2bn loss

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Joke

About that subheading

"This poisoned chalice had better be delicious"

No, the chalice (from the palace) has the brew that is true.

The poison's in the vessel with the pestle!

Europe to straggle Japan, China, US and Korea in 5G adoption stakes

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Re: Humbug... @Charlie Clark

"Apple may support the devices longer but the forced OS upgrades make them obsolete faster."

Nonsense (except for longer support part).

a) Apple doesn't force OS upgrades on iPhones.

b) my iPhone 6 may be in its death throes when it comes to support (last update was about a week ago) but IOS 12 was faster than its predecessor and while I have no way of comparing it to what it was 5 years ago with IOS 8, I do not remember the phone being any faster back then.

I remember reports of Apple releasing final updates that slowed down the EOL devices, but that hasn't so far happened to me with my first Apple product so far.

Need a special something on which to spank $3,500? HoloLens 2 is finally shipping

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"Holopromise?"

It's a Holo-in-wallet gadget.

WTF? Apple iPhones shrank by more than $22bn in fiscal '19

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Re: The Thrill Is Gone

"Who on Earth was still using an iPhone 4 (a 10 years old phone) in 2019, and then exchange it for an iPhone X (a 2 years old phone)?"

A budget conscientious person perhaps? The retailers still have brand new iPhone 7 models available for those who prefer iPhones but can't be arsed to fork a kilobuck for it. I'm sure X is (or was fairly recently) available, and is probably a nice phone.

As for iPhone 4 usage - Imhotep wrote about lack of innovation between 4 and X and therefore probably does not find use in the upgraded camera, lightning port, wireless charging, the missing headphone jack and other "innovations" (=natural advances in tech). Therefore some chap using iPhone 4 as a cell phone and maybe as an email client - why not?

FBI extends voting security push, LA court hacker goes down, and more D-Link failures

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Thumb Down

D-Link

"If any of those routers are under 10 years old"

Oh, some of those are ancient, over 10 years old, but DIR-866L - a fairly modern 802.1ac wireless router shamelessly modeled after the dustbin Mac Pro - was introduced in late 2014 and still available from resellers.

Fast, Good, Cheap - pick two. In D-Link's case, just pick Cheap.

Pentagon beams down $10bn JEDI contract to Microsoft: Windows giant beats off Bezos

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Pint

Re: Bad week for Bezos

Yeah, we all feel sad for Jeffy B.

I cried me a river, then I drank like a fish.

Samsung on fridge cert error: Someone tried to view 'unsavoury content' in middle of John Lewis

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"The bigger question is why the feck would you want a screen on your fridge?"

To one-up your neighbours of course.

I can't believe you've done this: Cisco.com asks visitors to explain to IT why they have broken the website

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Thumb Up

Re: Like rain on your wedding day

"...some men you just can't reach"

Tetraplegic patient can now move his four limbs with the help of a badass neuroprosthetic suit

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Re: Great stuff; could be boon to the elderly as well.

Aliens Power Loader, surely.

Bug fixes abound in Microsoft's freshly Cascadia fonted Windows Terminal

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WTF?

Re: I would rather

"I would rather they stopped dicking around with fonts and moving settings, apps and other sit around and did something useful like getting rid of the bugs that lead to blue screens"

Blue Screens? That was all the rage back in XP and earlier, but these days BSOD is usually just a sign of hardware failure.

If MS can come up with good monospace fonts I'm all for it. It's not like the font designers' work is taking any resources from the coders - I certainly hope it's not the same people coding kernel and designing UI elements!

Hinkley Point nuclear power station will be late and £2bn over budget

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"10 years late for only £3bn extra? Bargain!"

You seem to be describing our own reactor farce here in Finland.

Nine words to ruin your Monday: Emergency Internet Explorer patch amid in-the-wild attacks

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Thumb Up

Re: understatment of the century

"because...??"

Because of Micro$oft of course, duh!

"This is why I tell people that the using Microsoft, formerly WIndows, Defender is the most recklessly stupid thing you can do after"

Empty barrels still make the most noise.

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Facepalm

Re: I this just a problem with Windows 10 or is it also present on Windows Hate

The article has links to the the CVE articles where affected products are listed.

Usually in web browsers, including in IE, the links are underlined and coloured, usually in blue. HTH.

Disgraced ex-Kaspersky guy made me do it, says bloke in Russian court on hacking charges

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Unhappy

Re: As far as I see,

That's just a crooked cop - happening everywhere in the world.

Other than that, yes, the Russian courts are not independent at all, the judges are kowtowing to the ruling party and try to pre-empt what Putin and his cadre would like to see in the sentences.

Not unlike in the Soviet Union, anyone can go missing, have evidence fabricated against them or just be shot dead in the streets unless you do what's expected. (the shooters are somehow usually from the ex-soviet states and they'll probably die from internal injuries waiting for the trial)

GitHub gobbles biz used by NASA, Google, etc to search code for bugs and security holes in Mars rovers, apps...

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Holmes

Re: Does that mean that Microsoft will try to identify bugs before it releases its updates/patches?

Skype? Winternals? Frontpage? ...Bob?

Microsoft plays chicken with Extended Support for Exchange 2010 end date and swerves first

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Re: Makes no sense

"It makes no sense for Microsoft to prolong the support of the Exchange server, but not that of the Windows Server it runs on."

Exchange 2010 is supported on Server 2012 and 2012 R2, both of which are supported until Oct 2023, somewhat aligning with Win 8.1 lifecyle.

Server 2008 shares the codebase with Vista, Server 2008 R2 with Windows 7.

Since most of the Win7 patches apply to 2008 R2 and vice versa, it is logical that both meet their demise at the same time. 2008 (sans R2) is the oddball here since Vista was already killed couple years ago.

Vulns out of the box: 12 in 13 small biz network devices terribly insecure by default – research

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Re: I had to Google

"The article was also sparse on QNAP details, are they the worst? Doubt it could traverse the subnet but.... Asking for a friend."

The article has a link to the report. QNAP certainly wasn't the worst offender. Bit of apples-to-oranges since some devices are routers and some NAS devices.

I have no mouth and I must scream: You can add audio to wobbles in latest Windows 10 patch

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Trollface

Re: Windows 10 audio _never_ works properly

Microsoft should just replace their wonky audio system with PulseAudio or ALSA...

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw: Well, lookie here! For once a space game that doesn't promise the universe

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Re: Privateer 2

Privateer 2 was available in both Win32 and DOS versions.

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Re: Privateer 2

Works perfectly in Dosbox and with a Thrustmaster T16000m. (joystick is mandatory, really)

Mozilla shaves down Beard to a luxuriant mustache, looks for new CEO by end of year

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Re: I Truly Loved Firefox

"And Mozilla is dead for me."

So...what are you using then?

"Also, what's with the quick rate of releases ?"

Fast release cycle also gives the impression that they're really pouring resources and inventing new stuff on monthly if not weekly basis. Has worked for Google with their 76 major Chrome releases in just 10 years.

Back to school with El Reg - how about a chunky Lenovo for the student in your life?

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Thumb Up

Re: Screen Resolution

I gave up with the review at "1366 x 768". How on earth can that be an acceptable screen resolution (actually, how did it ever become one)?

It would have been a perfectly acceptable resolution back in 1990 (or so) when I bought a 14" 1024x768 interlaced CRT...

Can't bear to part with that well-worn copy of Windows 7? Microsoft might let you keep it updated an extra year

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Holmes

Re: The cost of Win10 is far too high.

Keyboard shortcuts are a huge pain. To shut down Windows 7 (assuming it is the default option) is Winkey+Tab+Enter. On Windows 10, it is Winkey+Tab+Down+Down+Down+Enter+Down+Enter.

I just press Winkey+D, then ALT+F4 to get to the shutdown menu.

I'm more annoyed by the new settings menus, hiding of the old Control Panel and so on. I'm sure they're easier to use with a touch screen but they're making things harder with the keyboard warriors.

Oh, and "Lock" and "Sign Out" are in a different part of the menu as well, rather than all in the same place.

Winkey+L has locked the desktop since W2K. And C-A-D+Enter has worked since at least NT4 to lock and the C-A-D menu also contains the sign out option.

Once again, I'm more annoyed by the change of "log out" to "sign out" in the shutdown menu...

Interestingly, search for solutions for lots of these things and MS just recommends using Search.

The start menu search from Vista onwards has been very handy. No need to navigate the menus for something, just start typing e.g. 'notepad' and on my Windows it immediately suggests Notepad++ and Notepad after the first letters.

Sandtitz Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: "things have moved on, like it or not"

"newer hardware not supported by 7 and earlier"

Does every/any new gadget work with OSX 10.1 or with 2.x kernels? No, they don't.

Microsoft Surface users baffled after investing in kit that throttles itself to the point of passing out

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"400 MHz almost unusable"

Almost.

I usually run my home laptop (4th gen i7 ULV) at its slowest, 780 MHz. Usable for browsing, email, DOSBox games, music, videos. At 0,78 GHz the laptop is cool and the fan doesn't kick in. I'm sure I'd notice the difference @400MHz (starting the programs already lot slower) but if the battery life was extended even more - I could live with it.

Of course MS should receive all the bollocking for their numerous Surface snafus. Their laptops look all right, have great specs, a few innovations even, and have had some part in the OEMs raising their standards. Still too bad many models have had big bugs like this. I wouldn't buy or recommend MS laptop. Way too many misses vs hits.

Cryptocurrency lovers slip US watchdog $7m to make claims of ripping off investors, other rule breaking simply vanish

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Re: Hm.

Raised $15m, paid $7m, does not include any admission of wrongdoing, still sounds like a net win to me.

Perhaps that $7M covers the US investors idiots and the Canadian Government could and should make their own case then.

Here's to beer, without which we'd never have the audacity to Google an error message at 3am

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Thumb Up

"It still amazes me just how many IT workers are incapable of using Google"

I usually email or IM thost simple answers as an lmgtfy URL, and select Bing as the engine. Lessens my support burdens though the bosses don't seen to appreciate it.

Chap uncovers privilege escalation vuln in Steam only to be told by Valve that bug 'not applicable'

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Facepalm

Re: Running a gaming PC without local admin rights is frustrating

"Are they actually Linux Devs slumming it on Windows and refusing to do things the Windows way or just incompetent?

Just incompetent is the correct answer.

Brit couch potatoes increasingly switching off telly boxes in favour of YouTube and Netflix

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Re: Brilliant?

"Horizon, I gave up watching many years ago when it became dumbed down, less information and more ostentatious display. If you put on a science programme, I'd expect to come away knowing more about the subject, rather than just being impressed with the camera work, the graphics and the music."

I partly agree.

I'm just watching The Planets documentary series with my kid (7yo) and I approve the content very much. Yeah, it's got impressive visuals but that's not a hindrance. BBC production, though not part of Horizon.

The problem with BBC is that they're expected to keep the standards high (with Symphony orchestra etc), yet at the same time they need to justify their existence / the TV license when many people are turning into (paid) streaming.

Sandtitz Silver badge

Re: Brilliant?

"Brilliant? I've not turned my TV on for the past four years. I'd waste far too much time waiting for one of these "brilliant" programmes to come on, to make it worth while."

To which do you compare the British TV content you so much dislike?

In my mind,

- the BBC/Attenborough nature documentaries are second to none.

- BBC Horizon and Panorama have often good content.

- Black Mirror (Channel4) was great, but lost something when Netflix started to produce it. (YMMV)

- I watch the occasional Graham Norton or QI episode and they're just as entertaining as American shows. (less low brow though)

Every channel has garbage content as well, the aforementioned Channel4 is rife with it.

"leads me to seek day by day news from other sources."

Which sources? Come on, list them.

I really don't watch British news at all for the simple fact that I'm not British and I don't live there...

Rome wasn't built in a day, wasn't teased in a day, either: AMD's 7nm second-gen 64-core Epyc server chips finally land

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Joke

Re: Shut up & take my money! =-D

"finally be able to run a decent game of Nethack!"

I've been running Nethack for a decade and half decently after ATI (pre-DAAMIT) came up with the ASCII acccelerated GPU.

Disabled by default: Microsoft ups the ante in its war against VBScript on Internet Explorer

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Meh

Re: allows only software downloaded from the store

"So the Surface RT is really a tablet sized unsupported Windows phone rather than a Win 10 tablet"

Not unsupported - just unloved.

The RT tablets are still supported since they're just an ARM build of Windows 8, and they're set to receive security updates until 2023 - the only redeeming feature in the ecosystem in the end - 10 years of updates would be nice in Android and IOS as well. (some perspective: iOS 6 and Jellybean 4.1 were released in 2012 as well)

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Re: Edge for surface RT?

Windows RT runs on ARM and allows only software downloaded from the store.

Firefox wasn't ported & submitted to the store, and neither were any other browsers.

The democratisation of IT: Amazon and Microsoft own half the cloud infrastructure market

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Re: Who do you make richer?

There is a very simple explanation to all this: Microsoft is hugely profitable company.

Microsoft stock price was about $70 in 2017 and now it's double that - about $140. Even if he had donated half of his MS stocks 2 years ago, he'd be as wealthy now.

BG owns (reportedly) 330M shares. That's $46B. Not doubt the geezer has other stock and properties in addition to just MSFT stock if his net value is double that.

How would you donate those Billions (in reasonable time) for a better lifestyle in 3rd world countries or something similar?

Darkest Dungeon: Lovecraftian PTSD simulator will cause your own mask to slip

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Re: Good {deity}

Reminds very much of Orson Welles reading Poe.

https://www.wimp.com/an-incredible-recording-of-orson-welles-reading-the-work-of-edgar-allan-poe/

Fantastic Mr Fox? Not when he sh*ts on your lawn, kids' trampoline and your soul

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Thumb Up

Cane toads!

South Africans shivering in the dark after file-scrambling nasty hits Johannesburg power biz

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"Why, oh why is Windows (or indeed any consumer stuff from Intel or AMD)"

Where in the article did you read about Windows, Intel or AMD?

Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours

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Re: What is overflowing?

2^31 would be ~600 days. Is it 100% certain that no plane ever is continuously on for two almost 2 years?

I sure hope the fix wasn't raising the time to 2^30 msec... :-D

Dodgy vids can hijack PCs via VLC security flaw, US, Germany warn. Software's makers not app-y with that claim

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Holmes

Re: I prefer MPC-HC

MPC and the derivate MPC-HC have always been lightweight, no-nonsense players which mimiced the original Windows Media Player (well, v6.4) when MS decided to skin WMP in post 6.4 versions, made it more demanding for hardware of the era and just made it less usable.

Back in 2006-2007 Windows Vista brought the DX Video Acceleration 2.0 API which enabled dedicated hardware to decode H.264 and VC-1 - very demanding chore without unless you owned the very latest and greatest Intel C2D CPUs and even then there was a chance of dropping frames in FullHD Bluray playback on PC. At the same timeline ATI&NVidia brought their latest GPU generations which happened to have quite reasonable HD decoding features, called UVD and Purevideo.

MPC-HC was a fork of MPC (or just renamed?) and one of the very first FREE media players to support DXVA2 and thus GPU decoding, around 2007-2008 timeline. VLC took ages to support GPU decoding - v1.1 in 2010 and it was buggy for a long time.

VLC is fine these days, but I still prefer MPC-HC just because I'm used to the UI.

It's a facial-recognition bonanza: Oakland bans it, activists track it, and pics taken from dating-site OkCupid feed it

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Re: Farcial recognition @SNAFUology

"Microsoft had a fingerprint driver that connected with the west coast of US when you booted your pc or laptop."

<citation needed>

We don't mean to poo-poo this, but... The Internet of S**t has literally arrived thanks to Pampers smart diapers

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Happy

Re: Oh Man, this is nuts

"If you aren't close enough to smell the baby crap, then you're not likely to be near enough to do anything about it."

The kid might be sleeping in a pram outside, or inside when the parent is outside. Or upstairs or in the west wing or otherwise nearby.

"And if you're that far away that an app is needed to tell you what's up, who exactly is looking after the little bugger?"

A kid napping does not need constant looking after. Baby Monitor is an old invention, but so far they haven't conveyed the aromatic compounds.

I didn't feel the need for electric diapers when my kids were infants, but there were times when the output tray was full and the baby resumed production. Nobody likes overflow errors.

Microsoft cracks the whip over quality of code in software souk AppSource, orders devs to run the QA gauntlet

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Re: Hippocritical cockwombles.

"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her"

Don't have a (dirty) COW, man.