* Posts by Sandtitz

1706 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2010

Huge Apple news confirmed. Software deal with Accenture is official

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Happy

Re: Desk Drawer Fluff @Khaptain

"...desk drawer that is full of bottle openers/keychains/pens/500Mb USB keys etc....

Bottle openers, but no corkscrews? What sort of workplace is that?

I've still got a couple 16MB Fujitsu Memorybird USB drives from ca. 2001 in my desk drawer at work. They still work and with DOS boot files I still (rarely) used them for some BIOS/firmware updates.

New York Police scrap 36,000 Windows smartphones

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Joke

"Most 8.1 phone apps run just fine on Windows 10 Mobile. The ones that don't are usually the ones written by muppets."

So, they'll need to ditch Kermit then?

Bombastic boss gave insane instructions to sensible sysadmin, with client on speakerphone

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Happy

I tried to explain what he was asking while not impossible wouldn't work

Reminds me of The Expert sketch...

Logitech's security cams allegedly suck so bad, this US bloke is suing it

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Re: Security Camera Blues

"Are there any really good security cameras out there?"

Axis is Good. Mobotix also had good cameras, but I haven't dabbled with them for several years so things may have changed.

Logitech may be fine for webcams and for hobbyists. Logitech security cams? GTFO!

Headless body found near topless beach: Missing private sub journalist identified

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Happy

Re: This story is still nowhere near as strange as...

I have this hunch that someone has actually come up with a time machine and stepped on a butterfly in a bygone era.

Intel stuffs extra cores into latest mobile Series U Core i5 and i7 chips

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FAIL

Re: Intel giveth and taketh @Mr Davies

"So these fancy new chips don't have LPDDR4 support and only 2 memory channels making the max RAM still languishing at 16Gb."

The maximum RAM for these mobile CPU's is 32GB, not "16Gb" (sic).

Some will want more memory than that in their laptop. They have an option to fork out for a mobile Xeon (max 64GB + ECC) or a "mobile" DTR (128GB+?) or just wait a bit and see if AMD can come up with something usable now that they are back in the business.

Samsung drops 128TB SSD and kinetic-type flash drive bombshells

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Re: Rebuild times?

Samsung 960 Pro can write roughly 2GB/s, so a 128TB drive would take roughly 18 hours to fill, so that's the theoretical minimum. Array usage during rebuilt etc. will of course be a factor.

This is in the same realm as rebuilding hard drive arrays with 10-12TB drives. (assuming a very generous constant 200MB/s write speed)

The M.2 PCIe3.0 x4 is limited to about 4GB/s, so there's still pleanty of headroom for Samsung to develop a faster controller.

Wait. What? The IBM cloud's APIs use insecure TLS1 crypto?

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Equally disabling SSL3 breaks even older clients. At some point you just have to let them go.

Nest security camera captures landlord's romp on tenants' bed

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Thumb Up

Re: Not impressed

"Only 6 minutes?"

When you're with me you only need two minutes, girl,

'Cause I'm so intense,

Two minutes in Heaven is better than one minute in Heaven, mmm

You turn to me and say something s*** like:

"Is that it?"

I know what your trying to say, girl,

Your trying to say:

"Aw, yeah, that's it!

Then you tell me you want some more, well uh,

I'm not surprised

But I am quite sleepy

Sysadmin jeered in staff cafeteria as he climbed ladder to fix PC

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Happy

Re: Clothes optional

"The joy of been on call to get that call in the middle of night that the streaming computer wasn't working, and having to go into work to fix the computer in front of the less than clothed "premium adult content"."

Did you enter with 'Meine Dispatcher says there is something wrong with deine cable?'

This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most so you better learn to channel your inner Karl Hungus!

Microsoft: Get in, IT nerds, you're now using Insider builds and twice-annual Windows rollouts

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...

If the updates were called Service Packs, there wouldn't be so much furor from both side of the aisle, even though the situation has turned to worse with Win10.

With each earlier Windows version you needed to install the Service Packs to receive support and updates. Windows 7 RTM lost support two years after SP1 was released and while there undoubtedly have always been cases where Service Packs broke something in some specific system configuration or the applications needed updates to continue working - every operating system got better over time. This has been the case with Windows 10 as well - the updates have broken things but the OS has gotten better. (and in some cases also worse)

It's just the 18 month update policy that needs extra effort from the IT to handle these major updates. MS wants companies to pony up for the enterprise agreements and the LTSB versions with 10-year support.

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

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WTF?

Re: Now just notepad, and we can write off builtin apps completely. @me

"At least Dell and HP sell some laptops with FreeDOS, and Dell also had (has?) Ubuntu preinstall option."

4 thumbs down already, but no-one has the balls to tell why...

I was just stating a fact - you can buy a Dell or HP (and others) without the MS tax, so Mr Bombastic's 'NOT selling anything without a Micro-shaft Win-10-nic license' is obviously just FUD.

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FAIL

Re: Now just notepad, and we can write off builtin apps completely.

"It's the monpolistic "deals" that Micro-shaft makes in order to strong-arm the largest PC vendors into doing what they want, i.e. NOT selling anything without a Micro-shaft Win-10-nic license."

Your whole premise is wrong. At least Dell and HP sell some laptops with FreeDOS, and Dell also had (has?) Ubuntu preinstall option.

.. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. .- -. / .-. . .- -.. / - .... .. ... then a US Navy fondleslab just put you out of a job

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Coat

"And when the tablet is shot out in battle, how do you call for help?"

Well, there are the maritime signal flags and the semaphore flags. Wuthering Heights and all that...

BTW, if the engine fails are the seamen equipped with oars? There's only so many reasonal backup systems. How often these ships need to rely on signal lamps?

"Sometimes there's a good reason to have someone with a bit of knowledge on the bridge, especially in the military."

Even a dummy like me with no interest in learning the Morse codes knows the SOS code.

China's censorship cyber-missiles shoot down pics flying through WhatsApp, chat apps

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Unhappy

Per article:

"It is notable, however, that the Chinese government was only able to shoot down specific images on the chat apps based in China – strongly suggesting that the government has access to the company's backend systems."

Well, duh. Was anyone really really thinking otherwise?

ElReg should've mentioned that Winnie the Pooh is also banned.

Linus Torvalds may have damned systemd with faint praise

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Man facing $17.5m HPE fraud case has contempt sentence cut by Court of Appeal

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Holmes

Re: Automatic halving of sentence

IANAL as well, but that Section 258(3) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 states that "Where a person to whom this section applies is also serving one or more sentences of imprisonment, nothing in this section requires the Secretary of State to release him until he is also required to release him in respect of that sentence or each of those sentences."

If I understood the legalese correctly: prison sentence for just contempt of court is always halved unless you also have other sentences - then it's the full monty.

Such a pity that Sage didn't get a sentence regarding the HPE fraud... (alleged fraud I'd like to add)

Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? Get this – It's just hit the US appeals courts

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Meh

Re: if cost == 0 then panic

"You don't need to even consider AI, What happens if a photo is set up so that a ball is released at a random time, rolls down a slope breaking a sensor beam and releasing the camera's shutter? I.e. no photographer pressing the button. Who would own the copyright of that?"

Well, that's just a randomized Rube Goldberg timer which someone set up. You could very well just release the ball manually but the time for the ball to roll down would still never have the exact time if you drill it down to milli- or microseconds.

I think a better analogy would be:

If an animal triggers a (concealed) wildlife camera to take a picture - who owns the copyright?

The animal very likely doesn't understand the concept of pictures or taking them. Probably the monkey in question saw its face in the LCD view finder and kept pressing the protruding trigger which made a funny noise. (don't know which sort of camera and set up it had)

Trump tramples US Constitution by blocking Twitter critics – lawsuit

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"The funny thing is that no other Presidential communication venue requires him to listen to critics of that communication, whereas this one would."

Like a stand up comedian, Trump has chosen a venue where his messages may be applauded or lambasted. Stand up comedians may have to endure heckling and they'd need to improvise something in return to counter the offenders.

If Trump can't stand the heat - he could very well start blogging and disable comments.

"Further, Obama was tweeting a bit too, but no one suggested this kind of thing in his case. What's different now?"

Were people banned in this manner?

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Thumb Up

Re: ID 10 T alert

"I'm glad Hillary didn't win, that would be like having to sit through 4 years of adam sandler films, now we get eddie murphey, dan ackroyd, John Balushi etc... some of the greatest comedy legends of all time."

You forgot Bill Cosby. And Rupert Pupkin.

Dell goes swimming in Skylake to source 14G server line

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Re: just be prepared to wait if you want SSDs

"I would of bought HP but they do not offer the CPU I need(none of their systems in their online store have it anyway), which is an Xeon E3-1240L V5 (2.1Ghz quad core 25W - I could go with the 1235L V5 as well but not even Dell has that chip)."

HPE (ahem!) seems to offer 1240Lv5 only with DL20 and ML30 gen9 servers - according to the Quickspecs. Perhaps the margins and customer interest in these CPUs are so low that HPE can't be bothered?

HPE Partsurfer comes up with the 842928-001 SKU for E3-1235Lv5, so you could ask a Proliant service partner whether they could order one for you. Or get a CPU and cooler from Ebay.

May the excessive force be with you: Chap cuffed after Star Trek v Star Wars row turns bloody

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Happy

Re: "Get a life will you people, I mean, for crying out loud, it's it's just a TV show"

I'll raise you with roasting of SW nerds.

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Happy

Re: How wude!

Of all the JarJar (de)motivational posters I'll never forget the one with "meesa a stupid geeza" caption.

UberPOP is Finnished in Helsinki until 2018

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Exec

According to Finnish media, Mr Järvinen is suspected being "an accessory in running an unlicensed taxi operation", so he isn't punished just because he was an exec.

Well, that escalated quickly: Qualcomm demands iPhone, iPad sales ban in America

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"The Day After, the director's cut. Something ABC never dared release"

Why wouldn't they? 'Threads' was much worse than TDA. We've seen worlds collide (literally) in cinema after those films, can't be that shocking.

US Senators want Kaspersky shut out of military contracts

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There is a hypothetical risk

Technically if the US-Russia situation escalated further, Russia could very well weaponise Kaspersky software no matter what Eugene himself thinks or whether he would protest it.

Since AV always run at very high privileges they could just push out an AV or program update that changes system behaviour. The updates could be directed via geolocation or if the update requests contain eg. the Kaspersky contract ID or other identifying material. This would of course leave a smoking gun.

Similarly any American AV software could be used for attacks if need be. The US government has their FISA and other avenues to subvert companies under their will.

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Mushroom

Re: Military is presently out of control

"The incident with the F16s harassing Russian defense minister jet over Baltic international waters last week has shown that US military is doing whatever the f*** it wants"

Nice one, Anonymous Comrad. That's the RT version, right? How did RT and other state news report the 2 meter flyby of an SU-27 over a Swedish military plane?

It is customary for Baltic Sea nations to do recon missions on other nations' military aircraft to photograph and identify them. That is not harassment and the F16 incident shows the aircraft at least 50m away from the jet.

Russian military aircrafts routinely tresspasses Baltic/Swedish/Finnish airspace with their transponders turned off. No explanations or apologies are ever given because Russia does whatever it wants to. Just like the US.

Huge ransomware outbreak spreads in Ukraine and beyond

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Joke

Re: Superfluous commas

That, or the author was pedant in making sure the line lengths are matching.

It is very important when dealing with monospace fonts!

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

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WTF?

Re: Next up -Microsoft... @Adam 52

"Ever tried viewing a pdf document on Windows 10?"

Yes. And?

Edge has a capability to show PDF documents and is the default PDF handler in vanilla Windows installation. I'm sure there is no current popular OS available that can't handle PDF's upon installation via a (web) browser.

In Windows 10 (and others) If you have installed a software the is able to show PDF docs, e.g. Chrome/Acrobat/Firefox, then you can make it the default application for PDFs with the "set default programs" widget in Control Panel.

There is no conspiracy.

Who will save us from voice recog foolery from scumbags? Magnetometer!

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Coat

!

"I place a thin sheet of metal between the speaker and the phone."

I just use the tried and tested 'Hankie over telephone mouthpiece' method.

The harsh reality of Apple's augmented reality toolset ARKit: It's an incredible battery hog

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Joke

"BTW, it's also a good idea to bring along one of the smaller maps just to keep yourself grounded. Ikea stores are purposefully designed to desorient you so that you feel there is no other option than following the path laid out by the store."

Shouldn't be that hard if you ever mapped adventure games with pen and graph paper. (and who didn't?)

Ikea showrooms are rectangular and the paths always have 90 degree corners so it's easy. Just watch out for those disorienting teleporters!

Microsoft totters from time machine clutching Windows 10 Workstation

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FAIL

Re: Linux and all its variants.

"No, any Linux distro has only "versions" for CPU type. The actual OS is the same."

Not that simple. RHEL has similarly crippled their "single user products" to 1 or 2 CPU sockets and limited memory access. Evil?

"Then with Vista they started the EVIL "home" vs "pro" workstations."

XP introduced Home and Pro versions, not Vista.

HPE claims new gen-10 ProLiants have more mem persistence, more secure server firmware

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Meh

Blah.

The firmware security sounds like marketing talk. Very unlikely stuff IMO.

I'm more interested whether HPE will resurrect the Proliant 385/585 lines if and when AMD releases their Zen server products.

The persistent memory also sounds great but how much TB of it will cost? (if I have to ask I can't afford it, right?)

And how does it work exactly - does the OS see it as an ordinary drive, or do the applications need to support it?

Azure Backup cuddles up real close to Windows Server

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You're comparing the "free" built-in thingy to a commercial product? That's like comparing tar to Veeam + Linux agent.

Windows Backup is a very rudimentary system that offers the basics and is fine for... basic backups. It serves small shops without their dedicated IT pretty well, and does the usual deleted file recoveries and even total recovery pretty well.

I'll stick to Veeam as well. But I still use the backup in Hyper-V hosts and guests to ISCSI targets as an added protection, because I don't trust any single backup software, be it Veeam or BE. Similarly the Linux installations may be backed up centrally but I still do extra (tar) scripts just to protect my ass if/when and when the main backup fails.

Qualcomm names its Windows 10 ARM PC partners

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Stop

Re: Stop me if this sounds familiar...

"MS has a history of "supporting" non-x86 CPUs then burning its customers (Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, Itanium, ARM) so I would be suspicious."

MS cut the support early for the first three as they probably didn't get too much interest for those ports. I sure as hell wouldn't have bought a rather expensive MIPS/PPC/Alpha system to run NT back then (20+ years ago), when the commodity (and cheap) 486s and Pentiums did the job well enough.

MS dropped Windows RT because of poor sales. They burned almost a $900M on the debacle, and since there were very few customers for it why would they burn untold man-hours to port Windows 10? Windows RT still gets security updates for years to come, AFAIK.

Itanium support lasted until 2008 R2 Server, RHEL dropped support around same time.

I'm sure there are a lot better examples of abysmal MS support than the NT era systems or Windows on Itanium/ARM. I'd start with the different Windows Phone versions.

WebAssembly fandom kills Google's Portable Native Client

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Joke

PNaCl

Someone at google noticed that Phosphorous Salt wasn't a good product name after all?

India sets June 5 as the day it will join the heavy-lift rocket club

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Re: Ariane

"Europe owes India bigtime anyways. Allowing them a little flag waving after massive exploitation that barely ended a quarter century ago is the least we can do."

If anyone owes India, it would be just the UK. What massive exploitation of India ended in the 1990s?

Germany, France Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Portugal and Italy had their own playgrounds where sins were committed. (did I miss any European players?)

Andy Rubin teases next week's launch of Essential phone

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"Total BS. Bluetooth goes up to 25Mbps."

I stand corrected then. What is your exact configuration? Macbook 201x and which phone?

Any pointers how I could speed up my iPhone 6 and "Intel AC7260 +BT4.0 Combo" to speeds above ~2Mbps?

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Boffin

Bluetooth is suitable only for very low bandwidth devices. It is next to useless with cameras, external storage or tethering beyond 2G EDGE.

Setting up adhoc wifi between devices is not as simple as pairing Bluetooth devices, and you'll also lose your network wifi access. If you are proposing connecting devices via wireless access point then you're confined to your home wireless.

USB-C only specifies the connector. You could still be capped at USB 2.0 speed without alt mode, power delivery etc.

The phone manufacturers should just team up and start to standardize to Thunderbolt 3 and come up with standardized (magnetic? mechanical?) mounting for peripherals akin to VESA mount.

Unlikely to happen for many reasons. Apple probably won't play ball and what's there for the big manufacturers unless they were to profit from all this in short term? The market would be instantly flooded with cheap 3rd party devices - who would buy e.g. the Samsung/LG peripheral when the cheap no-name knockoff will suffice?

Windows 10 love to see PC market grow again. Future iPhone to be clear. Elvis to re-appear

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Happy

Re: Elvis isn't dead...

"He's just gone home."

Yeah, into a nursing home.

Init freedom declared as systemd-free Devuan hits stable 1.0.0 status

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Thumb Down

@kryptylomese

"You don't like choice"

No. Choice isn't a bad thing per se.

It just feels like the whole "community" is spreading itself thin as so many people are inventing the same wheel yet again with slightly different configurations. Are you unhappy that there ain't a few dozen forks for kernel and CUPS to chooce from?

Windows is now built on Git, but Microsoft has found some bottlenecks

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Re: Useful I guess if your repo is 300gb @AC

"Linux repository is less than 200MB, that's all sourcecode and all branch history."

Latest kernel 4.11.3 takes about 650MB when unpacked. There are several kernel branches supported concurrently so that 650MB is still way off.

I'm sure just the Windows kernel itself would be in the same ballpark. That 300GB also contains the user interface, web browsers, all sort of applications that come with a Windows install and so forth. Maybe even bitmaps too. Does it also contain every supported Windows version as well (XP, 7, 8.1, 10) and the different branches for each one? The article didn't mention.

Perhaps a more proportional comparison would be to check the default installation of Ubuntu (or Mint or some other popular distro intended for general populace) and count the total size of the repos for all those programs, libraries and such.

Huawei missed memo that PC's dead – so here are three new notebooks

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Re: Why the 15in screen cop out? @Steve Davies 3

"Otherwise a nice bit of kit but too expensive IMHO for a Linux netbook."

I don't get this. Are you saying that Linux devices need to be cheap?

ZX Spectrum reboot firm slapped with £52k court costs repayment order

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Happy

I wish Peter Liepa and Richard Garriott would also join in on the discussion!

Do we need Windows patch legislation?

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Stop

Re: All products have a support life

"But MS have forced the adoption of XP past its natural life."

If your customers are married to XP because of NetBEUI/NetBIOS the reason most likely is the 3rd party vendor and obsolete & unsupported software that forced them to use XP. Not MS.

"Vista killed full screen command prompt (VGA DOS programs) and 7 32bit NETBIOS."

Vista can run full screen text mode just fine if you use WinXP drivers.

Perhaps you mean NetBEUI which was dropped from Vista? It was pretty much obsolete back in 2006 when Vista premiered. Windows XP dropped Appletalk and DLC protocols. I'm sure there were a few complaints too, but to quote Spock: “The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few”

16 terabytes of RAM should be enough for anyone. Wait. What?

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Re: Back in the day... @Adam 52

"That Intel CPU will do 85GB/sec according to the spec sheet (not sure if that's bytes or bits) so it'll take a minute and a half to table scan 8TB - which is a long time for someone expecting interactive performance."

The memory would be divided for several CPUs. A single Intel 8880 v3 can address a maximum of 1.54TB of memory - scanning even that would still take about 20s at 85GB/s.

On a 8-way system you'd need to fire that scan with threads running on each CPU - then that 8TB would take just 11 seconds (under optimal settings). If you'd scan all that 8TB via a single thread and through QPI (NUMA) it would take over 2 minutes. (57.6GB/s with 3xQPI)

Uber red-faced from Waymo legal row judge's repeated slapping

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Joke

Re: "special software called TortoiseSVN"

"Hardly "special" for anyone involved in software development..."

Is TortoiseSVN designed especially for Logo?

DeX Station: Samsung's Windows-killer is ready for prime time

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"I fail to see how lugging around an unwieldy docking station"

I see you're unfamiliar with docking stations.

Docking stations are supposed to be stationary. You come into the office, place your phone into the docking cradle and suddenly your keyboard, mouse, monitor, network and other peripherals are connected, and your phone is charged at the same time. Many business people use their laptops that way because it is a convenience.

If this Samsung ecosystem has good enough applications that scale well on different monitors, and every software is also keyboard and/or mouse aware then why not, especially if you already have bought the expensive S8 since the cradle doesn't add up that much to the total cost.

Samsung can still fuck this all up in many ways.

More UPNP woes: Crashable library bites routers and software

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Unhappy

@Lee D

"I literally DO NOT HAVE UPnP enabled on any device. Everything works."

Are you saying that the Frontier FAQ is wrong and unnecessary, and things will work for everyone since you don't have problems? Come on...

Someone is sending propaganda texts to Ukrainian soldiers

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Stop

Re: "Sinister text messages reveal high-tech front in Ukraine war"

"So far, I see two people have chosen to downvote DAM's comment about the Ukrainian general calling for the destruction of all Jews."

I concur with MiguelC's observations, the comment is offtopic. Whenever Ukraine does something naughty is it okay to post random crazy quotes of Zhirinovsky?

The general seems to be a retired general with no position in government of military. I'm not familiar with the situation of Jews in Ukraine but antisemites are found in every country in every level. AFAIK Ukraine hasn't criminalized Jews in the same way as Russia quite recently criminalized Jehovah's Witnesses as an extremist organization.