* Posts by jake

26584 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jun 2007

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Trump issues toothless exec order to show donors, fans he's doing something about those Twitter twerps

jake Silver badge

Re: Thoughts and prayers

"What does it mean?"

It means that the speaker (typer) is pretending to be an intellectual.

jake Silver badge

Re: Lets be honest, he is having a blast

"This 73 year old wanker (not fact checked) has managed to lie and cheat through his life to get himself rich"

Actually, his initial wealth was his daddy's money. Which he lost. Trump is living proof of that old adage "The fastest way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one". Hell, the idiot even managed to lose money owning a casino!

jake Silver badge

Re: Trumpetsters Trumpet Drumpfs Lumps

What is (was?) "veep"?

jake Silver badge

Re: Freedom of arrest

Contrary to popular opinion, here in the US "The Press" can indeed be arrested if they are doing something illegal.

Solution: Don't do anything illegal.

jake Silver badge

Re: Wow. What a whiny ass little b**ch.

"Given the astonishing reverence in which the Office of the President is held by Merkins"

That word "merkin", I'm not sure it means what you think it means.

Although, given the subject matter, maybe I'm wrong :-)

jake Silver badge

Re: Is it true

Lines one, two and three for Sanguma ... Line one are lawyers claiming to represent the fine citizens of Nebraska asking for a retraction. Line two is similar from the Piltdown area of East Sussex. Line three is a preemptive call from the Order of Florida Man who make absolutely no claim on the genetics of the idiot in chief, despite the fact that he shoots himself in the foot on a daily basis.

jake Silver badge

Re: Simple Response.

"This would improve Twitter considerably."

Roughly the same level of improvement as removing one turd from my septic system.

jake Silver badge

So how long before ...

... the idiot in chief claims it wasn't a real EO, he was just being sarcastic. And besides, he had his fingers crossed when he signed it, so it doesn't count anyway. But the LiberalMejia fell for it! Look how good a President I am! I'm The BESTEST President ever!

jake Silver badge

Re: Worst American president ever

They were. It's just that the current idiot in chief is well off the top of the old scale,

So you really didn't touch the settings at all, huh? Well, this print-out from my secret backup says otherwise

jake Silver badge

It's always fun ...

... telling a CEO "I told you so!" before setting to work, pulling them back out of the quagmire that is called "the cloud".

'I wrote Task Manager': Ex-Microsoft programmer Dave Plummer spills the beans

jake Silver badge

Re: It hasn't been able to kill lots of stuff

systemd is not a virus. For one thing, it doesn't reproduce itself. Yet.

What it is is a cancer. It takes root in its host, eats massive quantities of resources as it grows, spreads unchecked into areas unrelated to the initial infection, and refuses to die unless physically removed from the system, all the while doing absolutely nothing of benefit to the host.

jake Silver badge

Re: unix

"To be clear: any (grownup) Unix app could be cross-compiled with only compiler-driven porting. AKA tweaking microscopies, no restructuring."

In theory. Reality, however ...

jake Silver badge

Re: Ctrl-Shift-Esc

It wasn't a secret. I learned about it in the early days of NT4.

jake Silver badge

Re: Why wasn't it in by design?

1) Xenix was just AT&T UNIX source rebranded by Microsoft and offered to other companies "as is" to port to their hardware of choice. Microsoft was essentially a reseller of AT&T source code licenses ... I seriously doubt AT&T would have allowed Redmond to ship it embedded in NT.

2) Cutler has hated UNIX since the year dot. Xenix was never going to get into NT as long as he had anything to do with it.

jake Silver badge

Re: It hasn't been able to kill lots of stuff

Yes, we know.

Did you read as far as the paragraph beginning "Plummer left Microsoft in 2003"?

5G mast set aflame in leafy Liverpool district, half an hour's walk from Penny Lane

jake Silver badge

Re: On an electric bike

They are also equally able to have 5G induced covid cobblets. What's yer point?

jake Silver badge

Remember, kiddies ...

... if you feed the troll, you get to keep it.

Microsoft brings WinUI to desktop apps: It's a landmark for Windows development, but it has taken far too long

jake Silver badge

Re: But is it usable?

Arguably, the [windows key] is a pre-programmed macro key that takes the place of many keystrokes, some of which don't exist on a standard 101 key keyboard.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

jake Silver badge

Re: The problem is called "UI"........

"Certainly typing ls or rm used to get me precisely nowhere on a VAX."

My vaxen always ran BSD ....even when I was at DEC. They still do (although I'll admit to having one that runs VMS ...)

"There's so many people who think "shell-script" and "bash-script" are the same..."

That's a wetware problem, not a UI problem.

The difference between the various versions of vi are not all that great when it comes to day-to-day light editing tasks ... which is probably all that you are going to use it for if you are at the keys of an unfamiliar terminal.

The choice of GUI is not all that important when about all you use it for is launching GUI applications, and popping up multiple terminal emulators. I've been pretty happy with the bone-stock KDE, as shipped with Slackware, these last 20 years or so. Try it, you might like it.

jake Silver badge

"Clearly the next step is to put Win32 in a big sandbox of its own."

The ultimate version of that would be Win2K in a VM.

jake Silver badge

Re: Sandbox

"The problem is where people in cat A think they are fine in cat B."

Since when was it the Corporate World's job to make that decision for me? Or MeDearOldMum? Or for you, for that matter? I'm an adult, kindly hold my beer and get out of the way. If I fuck up, let Darwin greet me on the other side.

Inside corporations it's a whole 'nuther kettle o' worms. Corporate computers, corporate rules.

While technically I am on standby for MeDearOldMum, she has very, very rarely needed that support since I moved her to Slackware over ten years ago. My Windows using sibling, on the other hand, is constantly bitching about her computer. Which would you prefer? Choose wisely, Grasshopper.

jake Silver badge

Re: Sandbox

"Why do we always end up with a Sandbox?"

Because the telephones carried by TheGreatUnwashed each have more power than all the Super Computers in the world combined back in the 1970s. Sandboxing MeDearOldMum in her desktop protects her from herself. HOWEVER, she has the root password, just in case something happens to me. It's her choice to stay in the user account that I set up for her. See that word "choice"? It's kind of important ...

The real question is why have we allowed corporations to sell us computers that we don't actually have full control of. Why are we allowing ourselves to live in sandboxes? A walled garden might look pretty, and be nice to visit occasionally ... but there is a great big world outside those walls, and I want to be able to access the entire planet, without restrictions.

Who made the Corporate world the arbiter of what I can and can't do with hardware that I have purchased with my hard-won cash?

jake Silver badge

Re: "... it simply restricts the platforms on which it can run ..."

Maybe it takes four 4 GHz cores and 8 GB memory to run your word processor, but mine certainly doesn't require anywhere near those kind of resources.

jake Silver badge

I stuck a fork in Redmond over ten years ago. It CAN be done, and it's pretty painless ... especially when you balance the extreme lack of unnecessary maintenance of FOSS solutions versus the near constant headaches of admining Windows based kit (as reported here on ElReg on a weekly, sometimes daily basis).

Even MeDearOldMum runs a cut-down version of Slackware that I built for her. Support calls over the last ten years from her are not even 5% of the calls from her back when she was running Windows. The silence in that department is blissful, and worth the price of admission all by itself.

jake Silver badge

Longer ago than that ...

"DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run." was coined in the DOS 1.X to 2.x transition when 123 was trouncing Multiplan ...

If someone could stop hackers pwning medical systems right now, that would be cool, say Red Cross and friends

jake Silver badge

Re: While, um, ...

Can't get you the TPS reports until we have the results of the Perk Test.

( When I worked for Bigger Blue, back before the days of VisiCalc and Word Star, if middle management wanted to know how long it'd be before any given project would be finished, the stock answer from us techies was "We're still waiting on the results of the Perk Test" ... the manager would mindlessly nod his head, usually slack jawed, and wander off. Many of them actually had open-ended bars on their hand-drawn Gantt charts labeled "Perk Test" ... the mind boggles.

Computing's a hurry-up-and-wait kinda career. Sometimes we need coffee ... but actually, I coined the phrase after a soils engineer came out to my property to evaluate the location I had chosen for my new leach field. Do with that what you will.)

jake Silver badge

Re: The obvious solution to the obvious problem

"There is little reason for majority of the medical devices to be on the world wide web."

Then I'm absolutely certain you'll be overjoyed to hear that very, very few medical devices are connected to the world wide web.

Unfortunately, however, many such devices are connected to The Internet, which turns out to be a bit of a problem.

jake Silver badge

Obvious answer is obvious.

"The Register asked the ICRC what it hopes to accomplish by demanding governments do more"

Because they want to get into more column-inches, silly!

eBay users spot the online auction house port-scanning their PCs. Um... is that OK?

jake Silver badge

Re: Fraud is a big issue for etailer

You're not cooking it right. Try low and slow, either a crockpot on low or your favorite smoker at about 220F (105C), both at least 8 or ten hours. Or go the other way and use a pressure cooker.

jake Silver badge

Re: Fraud is a big issue for etailer

True, the farm raised version tastes like chicken ... but actually, the wild ones taste vaguely of fish. You can guess how I know this.

jake Silver badge

Re: Probably fine

"I have no problem with EBay trying to detect fraudulent software running on people's machines."

In my mind, EBay trying to run a port scanner from inside my firewall without so much as a by-your-leave is just as bad as any other skiddie trying to run code on my machine without asking.

Quite simply, it is NOT benign ... and it's entirely too far over the wrong side of the slippery slope. They should stop the practice immediately and issue a public apology with promises to not do anything of the sort ever again. And even then, I doubt I'd trust them. Once a corporation crosses the line, they always cross it again as soon as they think they can get away with it.

jake Silver badge

Re: Fraud is a big issue for etailer

Alligator, sure. They can be tasty, too. But what she purchased was supposedly aligator ... which is so endangered that most people have never even seen it in a dictionary.

jake Silver badge

Browsers don't.

javascript does.

Spot the difference, win a cookie. And hopefully promptly turn off javascript like any other sensible trained chimpanzee.

jake Silver badge

Re: Could they do a better job?

"Maybe they're blindly using an obfuscation tool they don't really understand."

Probably. There is a lot of cargo-cult programming out in the Corporate World. Probably because they are firing old programmers and hiring wet-behind-the-ears new graduates with absolutely zero street smarts.

jake Silver badge

Re: Puzzled

"I'm forced to use Chrome for ebay."

Forced? Are they holding a gun to the head of your firstborn?

Unmanned drones to slash NHS delivery times to one-fifth of road 'n' rail transport

jake Silver badge

"It has the looks of a PR exercise."

To me it has the looks of a company siphoning loot from the NHS Trust because everybody is busy green-lighting anything that says Covid-19 on it in the name of being seen doing something.

jake Silver badge

Out of curiosity ...

Has anybody done a TCO cost/benefit analysis on this?

Or is that considered politically incorrect, because Covid-19?

Galaxy S20 security is already old hat as Samsung launches new safety silicon

jake Silver badge

"we expect our connected devices, such as smart phones or tablets, to be highly secure"

Who is "we", Kemosabe?

There is no such thing as a portable secure device. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous.

So how are your remote working tools shaping up?

jake Silver badge

How are they shaping up?

Well, considering that I've been working remotely for over forty years now, I'd say they are doing OK. But what's this "bandwidth" thing you seem to be concerned about? Can you really read and type faster than 9600?

Hooray! It's IT Day! Let's hear it for the lukewarm mugs of dirty water that everyone seems to like so much

jake Silver badge

"for health reasons or something"

Or perhaps it's simply because most blokes these days don't want to get into a large bath full of sweaty, muddy rugby players?

It's a sign of the times. Bathing has become a personal activity. The Romans would be appalled, and the Japanese think we're weird.

Pardon me while I fire up the sauna ...

jake Silver badge

Isn't the link between kidney stones and drinking infusions of tea rather tenuous, at best? Seems to me I read some research somewhere that said the teabags themselves were more of a hazard than the tea inside them ...

Railway cables overpowered errant drone's compass and flung it back to terra firma

jake Silver badge

Re: "over localised regions of the bridge below"

You have to put your phone down‽‽‽‽

And Millennials play with these things? How does that work?

jake Silver badge

Re: Indeed.

Yeah, you're right. There were so many kids in the proto-SillyConValley in the 1960s sweating over Latin, Aramaic and Koine Greek and other medieval schooling practices (under constant threat of the cane, of course!), that it's a wonder that the computer revolution occurred at all.

Kids nowadays spending hours watching YouTube videos get so much more done. Why, today we have an App that will tell you if you have symptoms of Covid19! All you have to do is answer a couple of questions on your iFad, and there you go! Where would we ever be without such a marvelous invention? Ain't technology grand?

jake Silver badge

Re: Indeed.

"You falsely posit a golden age when every 10-year-old was educated and motivated to produce innovative feats of engineering."

Oh, horse shit. There was no golden age. However, there was a period of time where kids were actively encouraged to experiment with things that today are completely outlawed in the classroom.

"I suggest that you're just a moaning old codger"

Guilty!

"who looks at the past through rose-tinted specs."

Again, horse shit. I'm only a pseudo neo-luddite. The so-called "good old days" had plenty of bad to go without all of today's mod cons.

"Then, as now, these bright kids represented a fraction of the total kid population, most of whom live unremarkable lives. "

Of course.

"Today, the bright kids have even more access to the knowledge they'd require to do this,"

Access, yes. But actual hands-on school learning? Not so much.

"but they're probably focusing their efforts on coding-based shenanigans."

Drag and drop in a walled garden isn't coding.

jake Silver badge

Re: Ilegal ?

It's also illegal for you to remove the copper wire & pipes from your local station. Doing so will (hopefully) get you a term in the local hoosegow However, the dude doing maintenance is allowed, nay, expected to do that very thing. He even gets paid to do it.

Could it be? Really? The Year of Linux on the Desktop is almost here, and it's... Windows-shaped?

jake Silver badge

Re: Ah, Git ...

"Except that it isn't the only reason to run Windows"

So tell us all, Alan Bourke, why else would you run Windows, if you had no intention of running an(y) application(s)? Inquiring minds and all that ... Are you a manager whose computer only runs the screensaver? Because even that is an application ...

"blinkered fanboy."

::koffkoffkoff::

OnePlus to disable camera colour feature with pervy tendencies in latest flagship smartphone

jake Silver badge

Re: Sadly this article is useless without pictures

I believe that in the Internet vernacular that would more properly be "Post pics or it never happened!" ...

A real loch mess: Navy larks sunk by a truculent torpedo

jake Silver badge

Re: Of course it was going to hit the boat!

I tend to drive very defensively on the street. Some might say I'm paranoid, but the idiots really are out to get me. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that I understand the math(s) involved.

My 31 and 32 Fords don't have seat belts. I drive them on the street regularly. They haven't killed me yet. But then, I return the favo(u)r and don't put them into harm's way.

jake Silver badge

Re: Of course it was going to hit the boat!

1) If you are cycling in such a way that you can't maneuver fast enough to avoid an obstacle, you are cycling over your head. No number of personal safety devices will protect you from your own stupidity. Even if the bike ::koff koff:: was drunk.

2) I was taught to stay out of traffic when on my bicycle. To the proverbial thinking man, Newton's laws of motion quite obviously trump the new-age "share the road" bullshit. Simply put, if you play in traffic, you might die. Helmets don't increase those odds as much as you think they do ... worse, in some it makes them feel invulnerable, which compounds the underlying problem.

The Register calls for aid, and Microsoft's Rohan Kumar will answer... our questions about SQL Edge and Azure Synapse

jake Silver badge

Re: Surely you mean...

It's only Micros~1 when they aren't paying for the advert.

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