Posts by Sandtitz

Cane toads!

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.

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.

Re: This whole fully autonomous thing remains a complete fantasy.

"I've been waiting years to get a car that can drive me back from the pub!"

I want a car that drives me back TO the pub!

Re: Finally a killer app for Google Glass

Is there a goggle app to plaster "They Live" faces on all/random passersby?

Re: Windows Phone could have been a viable competitor...

Ah, thanks! Didn't know since I've been out of WP loop for a couple years now.

Re: Unlimited!!

"I used to hammer the torrent sites so would frequently be transferring lots and lots of files."

You were just testing a lot of Linux distros, right?

Re: The Borg

"They are killing open source"

Yes.

Dr. Evil himself couldn't have conjured this evil scheme of ...joining a mailing list?!

Re: Good old days...

"Just like the good old days, when we would load ANSI.SYS in DOS"

Those "in the know" preferred NANSI.SYS or NNANSI.SYS or even ZANSI.SYS...

Re: Too many heads in the trough

"Windows Phone was the first indicator (at least to Bill) that maybe his leadership was getting hopelessly out of touch with customer demand."

Gates stepped down and gradually let go of the daily grind since 2000 or so. Perhaps for that reason?

Steve Ballmer was the CEO when Microsoft got started with the phone business, with those Pocket PC PDA's and phones. I'm sure BG monitored it all and in the end could have vetoed anything but he seemed to trust Ballmer and a missed million or billion here or there didn't matter that much.

Re: I'm reminded of... @Dazed

"When my much loved box started to play up I bought the replacement system, a ZBook or some such, which I loath, partly as the display is crap and partly because it is so damn heavy"

According to HP quickspecs, Zbook 17 G1 (I'm guessing the model here) is no heavier than 8730w or 8740w - as always, depending on the configuration

You're boasting about a 12-bit display (it isn't) with the 8740w, which is the HP "Dreamcolor" option for select laptops. The same type of display was (and still is) available with the Zbook and others. but since you didn't opt for it, you're comparing apples to oranges. The older models had the preferred 4:3 1920x1200 displays whereas the Zbook and 1040 have just x1080 FHD display.

"They think it's OK to load updated and reboot my laptop when it's in sleep mode."

Then you should disable that setting.

Not only that but for example DVR systems from Dahua by default open a reverse proxy through common ports (80 and 443) and all you need are the DDNS name along with login/pass to see and operate the cameras and the whole system.

I've seen many companies deploy these in their LAN without any thought for security.

Re: Talking of which ...

> "This is akin to a constant issue with software, where holders of patents (or other intellectual property) may seek to sneak something in to widely-used products, then sue for infringement."

Often enough to have a specific name

Quite, but has there been many software issues where copyrighted code has been intentionally planted?

Nick Kew mentioned the GIF format, but the LZW compression patent was granted before Compuserve created GIF and the patent was already licensed to other organizations.

SCO claimed copyright infringement, but they didn't sneak anything into Linux kernel code, as far as I'm aware.

Re: King Leo, nor Mark Hurd , nor Carly Fiorina, nor Whitman herself...

"Which huge acquisition WASN'T a bust? Seriously, which acquisition that HP ever made turned out the benefits promised from said acquisition?"

3PAR? Don't know what was promised, though...

There's a handy List of acquisitions by Hewlett-Packard at Wikipedia for perusal.

Re: I just did a clean Win10 install...

I couldn't decide whether it was aggressive (USE ME!) or pathetic (I'm here! I'm here! Pick me! Please!).

No different than Google advertising Chrome in Google Search for non-Chrome browsers...

Re: Who watches cartoon porn anyway?

"How the feck (pun intended) can a cartoon be erotic?"

I don't know the answer, but Jessica Rabbit sure fits the description!

Re: Auditors

“Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.” - Woody Allen

Re: Slack fixes

Why not, surely Willow isn't the first wizard in this field.

Re: MFA

"If you connect to the company intranet or to company email from a company workstation on the company network, no MFA needed."

That's true - IF you have defined your company network as a trusted network in Azure. By default there are no trusted sites. Your IT admins have decided to do this, probably for convenience.

"If you connect to the company intranet or to company email using a personal laptop on the company network, that laptop must be added to Active Directory and then functions as though it were a company laptop."

Not necessary to join AD.

"You can't connect to the company intranet using a personal laptop which has not been blessed by IT. You can connect to company email. You need to use MFA, and you must reauthenticate every 24 hours."

Complain to your IT if this bothers you.

If you're using Outlook in your personal computer, the particular Outlook can be trusted with a secret key installed (copypaste) to the Outlook. No need to reauth. Fine if the laptop is encrypted or otherwise secured.

"Because IT security makes everyone change their passwords every 60 days and mandates 'complex' passwords, people write down passwords,"

You're complaing about Microsoft when in fact you should be complaining to your IT dept who have implemented the things you complained about in your message!

Re: Errr

I actually thought about GIFLink, an external X/Y/ZModem protocol software that showed GIF pictures as you downloaded them from BBS's, although interlaced GIF images were not that common, IIRC. It also allowed you to abort the currently transferred image if the image didn't fill your needs...

@mark

"I noticed that the article doesn't mention Vista, is that because Vista is immune or just because even Microsoft don't want to admit they even made that OS any more?"

...Vista who?

Vista certainly isn't immune as everything from XP to 7 is vulnerable, including 2008 Server which uses the same codebase as Vista. From another website:

'Users of Windows Vista can download the updates (Monthly Rollup or Security Online) of Windows Server 2008 from the Update Catalog and install them manually.'

I'd just turn off the Remote Desktop in public networks if I was caught using Vista...

Re: They ought to teach this in schools.

"Because if the answer is: "We pressed the wrong button in Word, we've never imagined it could be a problem for a multi-national company to use Word mail-merge and not check the 'double-sided' option on our major print runs, and we'll slap the wrists of the intern involved but the next run will probably be done by a different guy anyway", then I have absolutely no interest in retaining your services."

This obviously was a mistake and as Phuzz added, a series of mistakes. Creating the document and printing is done by multiple people except in small companies.

It however appears to be in Chubb's best interest NOT to publish the post-mortem since the reason is probably something on the lines of what you wrote there, and admitting this schoolboy error would result in not retaining a customer such as you and many others.

Unofrtunately these kind of useless blanket replies do the least harm and most people - unless direcly harmed by the letter - will forget this episode in days. If however they did the noble thing, people could remember the company whose mailing division is not to be trusted, they'd receive ridicule for a long time, with funny memes created, commercial jingles re-worded etc.

Re: Oh dear

Only about $10 billion. Not that big of a deal.

"I can't imagine much success if the property was largely at risk of being invalidated by the ongoing court case."

Some Chinese company would have instantly bought it at a premium.