Re: Not looking good
"Carl Icahn circling?"
Icahn is circiling HP & Xerox. This article is about HPE.
1706 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2010
"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.
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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
"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?
"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.
"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!
"10 years late for only £3bn extra? Bargain!"
You seem to be describing our own reactor farce here in Finland.
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)
"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.
"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.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
"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.
"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...
"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.
"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)
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?
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.
"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.